New Yorker magazine writer Susan Orlean has been vividly brought to life in the new movie "Adaptation," in which she is played by Oscar winner Meryl Streep.

That's the good news -- or at least the part Orlean can still tell her mother.

That's because in the quirky new movie from the mighty imaginations of screenwriter Charles Kaufman and director Spike Jonze ("Being John Malkovich"), Streep's version of Orlean -- whose actual 1998 book "The Orchid Thief" serves as the very loose basis for the screenplay -- does a number of things. These include leaving her husband for an adulterous affair with a madman, taking drugs, posing nude for a porn Web site and attempting to kill screenwriter Charles Kaufman, played by Nicolas Cage.

"I love the movie. It is just fantastic," Orlean tells The New York Times, also quickly admitting, "I don't take drugs, and I'm not a gun-toting floozy."

She was, however, anxious about showing the movie to her parents, given that the movie is geared "for the post-post-modern generation," not for visiting parents from Cleveland, she said.

Then again, notes the paper, there's some truth to her character. Parts of the movie do accurately reflect Orleans's book. And she and her husband really did split up when "The Orchid Thief" came out -- though its publication "had nothing to do with why we broke up." Still, seeing that in the script, "I almost passed out," she said.

Overall, the question still begs to be asked: How on earth could she possibly have allowed her name to be dragged through the mud the way it is in the movie -- especially given the highfalutin reputation of writers for the New Yorker?

"I initially said, 'Well, go ahead, but change my name,' " she tells The Times. But then she decided she didn't want some strange name slapped on her story, so she finally caved.

"What the heck?" she said. "It's an adventure."