Avid reader Charlie Kaufman wrote plays and made short films as a young student. He moved from Massapequa, New York to West Hartford, Connecticut in 1972 where he attended high school. As a comedic actor, he performed in school plays and, after graduation, he enrolled at Boston University but soon transferred NYU to study film. Charlie worked in the circulation department of the Star Tribune, in Minneapolis, in the late 1980s and moved to Los Angeles in 1991, where he was hired to write for the TV sitcom Get a Life (1990). He went on to write comedy sketches and a variety of TV show episodes. Between writing assignments, he wrote the inventive screenplay Being John Malkovich (1999), which created Hollywood interest and the attention of producer Steve Golin.Charlie is invited to write a movie adaptation of the book The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean, and he accepts, hoping that this would be his chance to break through genres, to capture the true nature of the book, which has little plot and narrative. In his attempts to adapt the book, he ends up writing himself into the story, following the author's mantra Write what you know. Show less «