Laroche himself is a student of orchids, and he narrates a poetic passage about the limitless shapes that orchids can take in attracting insects - imitating their shapes and coloring, while all the while neither the flower nor the insect realizes what is happening. By using real Seminoles to obtain his specimens, he exploited their legal right to use their own ancestral lands. It could also have been a straight fiction film about the life and times of John Laroche, a Miami eccentric who hit upon the idea of collecting endangered species of orchids from swampland that was Seminole territory. Considered simply like that, the book might have inspired a National Geographic special. It involves mankind's fascination for these extraordinary flowers, the blood that has been spilled in collecting them, their boundless illustration of Darwin's ideas about natural selection and a contemporary orchid hunter in Florida who is a strange, compelling man.

The movie is inspired by The Orchid Thief, by Susan Orlean, a best seller expanded from an article in the New Yorker. Jonze spends most of his time making music videos and documentaries, but when he makes a movie, it's a spellbinder, and he has the serene confidence to wade into this Kaufman screenplay and know that he can pull it off. The movie is the second collaboration between Kaufman and director Spike Jonze, after the equally brilliant ' Being John Malkovich' (1999).

Scene it dvd 2002 opening