Orlean said that the indubitably real Charlie, who has also written quirky successes including Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, is in fact “extremely shy”—but said he was not quite the self-doubting, self-loathing and socially inept character played by Cage in Adaptation.

“He’s definitely really awkward,” Orlean said before explaining further. “He’s not quite the misfit he presents as the Charlie here. He has a healthier personal life, I’m happy to report.”

Orlean also fielded questions about Laroche, played as a gap-toothed Casanova by Cooper.

Extensive research for The Orchid Thief required her to spend a lot of time with Laroche, Orlean said, noting that while she spent around three years working on the book, their relationship remained strictly professional.

“He’s a really annoying person...he’s somebody I would never know except as a writer,” she said. “He’s a good guy, not a bad guy. He’s a complete kook.”

As has been the case for most of her work, Orlean said she overreported for the book. She specifically described time spent in Everglade City, a “poor fishing town in South Florida” where unpatrolled ports made the city especially conducive to drug-smuggling.

Every adult male person in the town got involved with drug trade, she said, and every one of them wound up in jail. For around five years, the town was entirely run by females.

“These fishermen were so stupid,” she said, noting that the men went from driving “beat-up trucks” to Rolls Royces. The blatant turnaround eventually led to their arrest.

“It was an area filled with crazy schemers,” she said.

The anecdote never made it into her book, Orlean said, though she did get a good sense of the place.

Orlean also spoke briefly about her experience as a staff writer for the New Yorker.

As opposed to other magazines, where editors pitch stories to writers, the New Yorker expects its reporters to come up with their own material, she said.

“Part of what we do is bring ideas that aren’t run of the mill, that aren’t typical,” she said. “It becomes a kind of habit of mind.”

The original piece about Laroche came from a blurb she spotted in a copy of the Miami Herald tucked into the back pocket of an airplane seat on her flight home from a vacation, Orlean said.

The brief, about a man caught stealing orchids in a swamp, struck her as “so peculiar” that she pitched the story to her editor, she said.