BEING AND NUTTINESS NICOLAS CAGE PORTRAYS 'MALKOVICH' WRITER, TWIN FOR FOLLOW-UP.

Byline: - Glenn Whipp

It's always a little weird for an actor to play a real-life person and then have that person show up on the set. But when that real-life person is a reclusive eccentric who wrote the movie, which means he's on the set almost every day - well, that goes beyond weird.

And that's an appropriate place to go if the movie is ``Adaptation,'' writer Charlie Kaufman and director Spike Jonze's follow-up to the 1999 fun- house head trip ``Being John Malkovich.'' The main character in ``Adaptation'' is a writer named, yes, Charlie Kaufman, who is having a difficult time turning Susan Orlean's best seller ``The Orchid Thief'' into a movie. Then Kaufman's twin brother, Donald, shows up with advice. Then things take a strange turn.

Nicolas Cage portrays both Kaufman brothers (there is no real-life Donald, by the way), while Meryl Streep plays Orlean. Jonze says the shoot was an ordeal for the famously private Kaufman, who became paranoid any time he caught Cage watching him.

``Charlie was always wondering if Nicolas was taking notes in his head,'' Jonze says. ``Where the real Charlie Kaufman and the movie's Charlie Kaufman intersect, though, I don't know. There's a vague line between the two.''

Says Cage: ``It's definitely open to interpretation,'' adding that while it was sometimes uncomfortable on the set, ``the genuinely big challenge was playing twins and having that interaction with the tennis ball and blue screen and trying to recall what I did as Charlie when I'm playing Donald and vice versa.''

If that's confusing, don't worry. Jonze promises all questions will be answered once you see the movie.

``I know the movie sounds sort of strange and incomprehensible on paper, and who knows, maybe that's how it plays,'' Jonze says. ``I think once you see it, though, it will make sense and be kind of fun.''

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Nicolas Cage in ``Adaptation''