The Oscar nominee who didn’t even exist
Gaining recognition in the form of an Oscar nomination or win is viewed as the pinnacle for many within the industry, some of whom would have had every right to be frustrated after discovering somebody who didn’t even exist managed to get one.
That’s not to say it wasn’t a merited nomination because Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation was, without a doubt, fully deserving of its ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’ nod, even if the writer completely invented his own sibling and credited them both for the script.
Nicolas Cage was also shortlisted in the ‘Best Actor’ race for playing the dual role of Charlie and Donald in Spike Jonze’s typically offbeat, self-aware, and metatextual character study, which was born from Kaufman’s professional failings and transformed into one of the finest pieces of writing his idiosyncratic career has had to offer.
Kaufman really was hired to pen an adaptation of Susan Orlean’s novel The Orchid Thief, with Jonathan Demme attached to direct. However, Kaufman struggled with trying to translate the tome to the page, but despite failing to crack the actual movie, he decided to craft one of his own based on the experience.
Adaptation follows the struggling and self-loathing screenwriter as he tries to hammer The Orchid Thief into shape on the page, only for a spanner to be thrown into the works when his freeloading brother Donald not only moves into his house but decides to follow in his identical twin’s career path.
Charlie and Donald’s names were both present on the script for Adaptation, and the film was also dedicated to the latter. When the time came for the Academy to dole out its annual list of Oscar contenders, they presumably didn’t bother to investigate whether or not both parties were genuinely flesh-and-blood people who existed.
Naturally, there was interest in speaking to Charlie’s elusive sibling to gauge his reactions to becoming an Oscar nominee, which all ended up heading down the same rabbit hole when it was discovered there was never a Donald at all. Regardless of that fact, though, history continues to show him as among the countless names in the ceremony’s history to have been up for a prize.
Ronald Harwood ended up emerging victorious on the night for his work on translating Władysław Szpilman’s memoirs to serve as the basis for Roman Polanski’s The Pianist, which subsequently robbed the Oscars of what would have undoubtedly been one of its most curious moments ever.
Had Kaufman taken the stage to collect the trophy were Adaptation to be named as the winner, then he could have either doubled down on Donald, made excuses for his whereabouts or lack thereof, carried on trying to convince the world he really did have a twin, acknowledged the ruse, or simply claimed his prize and exited as swiftly as possible.
