When successful yet insecure screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) is hired to adapt a nonfiction book about a fanatical orchid breeder, John Laroche (Chris Cooper), he is completely stumped. Though on the surface the book is about Laroche's flower-poaching adventures in the Florida Everglades, it's also about the desire in all of us to experience passion. This longing plagues the book's author, Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep), and, Charlie realizes, himself as well. It doesn't help that Charlie's twin brother, Donald (also Nicolas Cage), who has moved in with him, writes and immediately sells a screenplay. When in desperation Charlie decides to use his own dilemma as a framework for the script, he inadvertently sets in motion a chain of events impacting the lives of all the characters.