Writers are supposed to get it out of their system before leaving college, this temptation to write about not being able to write.

Yet you’ve probably come across the poems about not being able to write a poem. Certainly you’ve suffered through newspapers columns about the inability to write that day’s column.

Leave it to Charlie Kaufman, author of “Being John Malkovich,” to turn writer’s block into cockeyed art. Kaufman reteams with “Malkovich” director Spike Jonze in another film that turns itself inside out.

In “Adaptation,” Kaufman casts himself as the protagonist (played by a beefy Nicolas Cage), a neurotic screenwriter struggling to write the film adaptation of Susan Orlean’s nonfiction book “The Orchid Thief.”

Studio executive Valerie (Tilda Swinton) optioned “The Orchid Thief” because of its strange and crusty central figure, John Laroche (Chris Cooper), who was standing trial for poaching rare orchids from Florida state parks when Orlean (Meryl Streep) encountered him.

Laroche is a character crying out to be filmed. Unkempt, unwashed and missing his front teeth, he rumbles through Florida in a battered white van looking like a maniac but capable of such thought-provoking words as, “Adaptation is a profound process. It means you figure out how to survive in the world.”

Unfortunately Laroche’s story occupies less than half of Orlean’s book. The rest she fills with essays about trips to orchid shows, meetings with other collectors and the history of orchid smuggling. “The Orchid Thief” defies a clean screen transition for the same reasons “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” and “The Perfect Storm” did.

Considering how those films turned out, Kaufman deserves thanks for contorting his experience with “The Orchid Thief” into a fun house mirror reflection of his craft. At first Kaufman thinks he can turn the film into a reverie about flowers free of big-budget movie clichés: drug running, car chases, feel-good epiphanies, sing-alongs to old pop songs, etc.

“Adaptation” follows three general time lines: the present as Kaufman pores through Orlean’s book looking for clues that will point to a script; three years earlier as Orlean interviews Laroche; and three years before that as Laroche attempts to steal orchids with the help of his Seminole employers.
To reflect his frustrations, Kaufman creates a fictional twin brother, Donald (who shares writing credit on “Adaptation” despite not existing).

Donald is Charlie’s emotional opposite. Cheery instead of self-loathing, Donald takes the commercial route to screenwriting. After attending a Robert McKee workshop, he easily punches out “The Three,” a serial killer thriller he pitches to the industry as “Psycho” meets “Silence of the Lambs.” Brian Cox (“Rushmore”) plays screenwriting guru McKee in a hilarious cameo.

Even though Kaufman treats obsession and the Darwinian definition of adaptation as major themes, “Adaptation” works on a single level, that of the exceedingly clever, beautifully acted goof on art vs. commerce in the modern screenplay. Once Kaufman’s direction in the third act becomes clear – that his life turns into the type of commercial film he loathes – his earlier attempts at greater messages seem fatuous.

“Adaptation” is the ultimate in-joke. Those who get it will marvel at its facets. But not that many will get it.