Everything you always wanted to know about narrative theory, refracted through the ground-breaking, rule-breaking movie Adaptation. In Jason Mittell's hands, Spike Jonze's filming of Charlie (and his fictional brother Donald) Kaufman's screenplay of Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief becomes a one-stop shopping mall that illuminates the relations between adaptation and authorship, the differences between performances and dramatizations of real people, the results of filmmakers sending up the very models and conventions they rely on, and the reasons why budding students of adaptation will be happily occupied even if no one ever makes another movie.

Thomas Leitch, Professor, University of Delaware, USA and editor of The Oxford Handbook of Adaptation Studies

Jason Mittell digs expertly into how and why cinematic stories are made, showing us the multiple relationships between narrative theory and artistic practice. The book illuminates character, structure, authorship, and the interpretive experience of film, using Adaptation. as an ideal test case. Mittell succeeds admirably in connecting the nitty-gritty to the conceptual, revealing that they are as intimately and provocatively intertwined as Charlie and Donald Kaufman. Anyone interested in the ecosystems of storytelling will find elucidation and intellectual rewards here.

Sean O'Sullivan, Associate Professor, Film Studies Program and Department of English, The Ohio State University, USA