Mr. Showbiz
1999
Few people, not even the most famous, ever have a movie named after them. It's an honor usually reserved for the notorious (Dillinger), the revered (Abe Lincoln in Illinois), or the lamented (Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean). But the distinction now belongs to the well-known, yet curiously uncelebrated John Malkovich. In Being John Malkovich — easily this year's weirdest, most original comedy — a puppeteer (John Cusack) finds a portal that takes one into Malkovich's brain for 15 minutes (the length, not so coincidentally, that Andy Warhol once predicted everyone would be famous). As thoughtful about issues of identity, celebrity, and experience as it is bizarre and funny, Being John Malkovich obviously couldn't exist without one John Malkovich, who plays himself — kind of — in the film.
"I tell you," Malkovich's co-star Cameron Diaz says, "this is one guy with a sense of humor about himself." And Malkovich does indeed have a dry sense of humor. The film, scripted by Charlie Kaufman and directed by music video whiz Spike Jonze, has the actor not just making love — mentally — to both a man as well as women but also performing a modern dance solo, impersonating a puppeteer, and much, much more.
Born in tiny Charleston, Ill., this son of a newspaperwoman and an environmentalist father co-founded Chicago's famous Steppenwolf Theater Company more than 20 years ago with buddy Gary Sinise. He made his big-screen debut in 1984 with The Killing Fields and shortly thereafter nabbed a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his work as a blind man in Places in the Heart. His movie career blossomed when he portrayed Glenn Close's sexual antagonist and Uma Thurman's seducer in Dangerous Liaisons, and he garnered his second Supporting Actor nomination for a splashy turn as the heavy opposite Clint Eastwood in In the Line of Fire.
Continuing his career with a mix of European and Hollywood projects like last summer's Man in the Iron Mask, Malkovich has settled in France with his two children and current companion Nicoletta Peyran, whom he met while making Bernardo Bertolucci's The Sheltering Sky.
The 45-year-old dandy, known for his fastidious fashion sensibility, met with Mr. Showbiz sans entourage in a cluttered hotel suite. Chain-smoking, calm, and slyly humorous, the effortlessly elegant Malkovich is dressed in a white shirt, tie, and three-piece, three-button, single-breasted dark gray suit. He speaks softly, in a strangely slight voice given his 6-foot-4 frame, and with frequent pauses, about celebrity, identity, and playing the part of John Malkovich.
What did you think when you first saw the title Being John Malkovich?
I just thought, "This is a one-line joke." You know, occasionally somebody will mention your name in a piece of writing. My name has been mentioned in novels. I never really think about that kind of stuff, but when you see that title on a screenplay, it gets your attention. Once I read it, I thought it was a terrific piece of writing.
Were you amused? Surprised?
I wasn't particularly surprised, I didn't really think about it terms of me. I just thought it was a very funny idea, and exceptionally well written, very original.
Did you call up the screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and say, "Why me?"
No. No.
Was it unsettling?
The only thing I found unsettling … is that the script got certain things about my life right. For example, I actually lived at 7 and West 75th Street, which for a minute really gave me the creeps because he had that address in the movie.
At a press conference at the Venice Film Festival you said, "I hope nobody makes this film."
That was the Italian translation. I don't think anyone reading this script who has ever lived or worked in Hollywood for more than a week — make that a second — would ever expect this film to get made. So I was just joking.
Why wouldn't it get made?
Because it's good. Because it's daring. They probably never thought I'd make it for starters. So all this sort of originality and innovation of it would be a total waste of time. The very costly process of … casting and designing it, at any second I could have just come along and said, "You can't use my name." Just on a sort of legal level it was a dare for these people. But they had one thing going for them. They asked me, "How many good films are made?"
People think you've got to have a great sense of humor about yourself to do this movie. Do you see it that way?
Well, I think, "What better person to know what's asinine about you than yourself?" You know?
Are you playing a character called John Malkovich in this movie or are you playing yourself?
It doesn't have much to do with me, but neither does John Malkovich. I often feel like I'm playing at being John Malkovich on a daily basis. It's a role I think I do particularly well.
Actually Spike Jonze our director was constantly on me. He would say to me, "John Malkovich wouldn't do it like that." At those moments, John Cusack would actually get a cigarette and sit down. Spike nevertheless would tell me how to play me. And how can you argue. If someone says, "You wouldn't do it that way," I had to say, "OK." Yes, I felt like it was harsh criticism, but I had to wonder, "How do you think I would do it?"
Was that easier to play a fictional character?
Well, I don't think it was easy. But … see, I don't know how someone could even ascertain what a supposedly public figure called John Malkovich would be doing in his life anyway. Certainly, I've eaten toast [as depicted in the film]. I've ordered things from catalogues [ditto]. I've even, oddly enough, read The Wall Street Journal [again ditto]. But I don't really think of myself as a public person. For me, it's just another character.
Did you have to play off your media image as a loner and sometimes a scary guy?
I didn't write it. I had nothing to do with how I'm portrayed in the movie. I just played it. Charlie says he saw a lot of theater I did. He knew a lot of work I'd done and blah, blah, blah. Because I don't read interviews or reviews or watch anything I do ever, I would have no idea what my so-called image would be. Not only couldn't I imagine it, I wouldn't want to think about it."
What about this talk, that this could mark the first time someone is nominated for an Oscar — for playing someone named after themselves?
Oh, I hadn't heard the talk. That would be unlikely. But I don't really think about it in terms of me. Because I'm not related to that person.
What is the movie saying about identity? And about seeing the world through a celebrity's eyes, if only for 15 minutes? Was that what appealed to you?
[Lights a cigarette] In this case it's me, but it could have been Bruce Willis, Bill Hurt, Gary Oldman. I don't know, whoever really, Sharon Stone. You sort of make a pact with the devil, in that subject yourself to a certain amount of ritual abuse and hazing. You can be part of making a point about the media, the culture at large, about people's obsession with celebrity. How they somehow think our joys and sorrows and foibles and frailties and blowjobs are somehow more interesting than theirs. I never liked that. I don't think it's true. I've never accepted it. Nor do I think it should be legal. I think it should be a kind of prisonable offense. And in order to make that point, I'm the person whose life is sort of laid open in a way. That concerned me — because as so-called public people go, I'm a fairly private person really. So, that was sort of a decision.
Because you could have said, "NO. I don't want to be part of this."
Yes!
You could have said, "I'm honored or flattered but I just don't think so."
Well, I don't think Charlie Kaufman's intent was to flatter really. But I think I would have said, "Listen, I actually love the writing. … If you change it to you or Tom Cruise or anybody else, I'd love to direct it or produce it. Because I love the story, I don't know just how interested I am in crossing that particular line."
But in the end it really would have meant his vision, such as it was, wouldn't have been realized. So I was trying to balance my personal thoughts, not objections, but thoughts or queries, with knowing that if I said no, this really good film wouldn't get made. Or not get made in the spirit in which it was written.
Are you really pals with Charlie Sheen [who is very funny playing himself as Malkovich's movie star buddy]?
No, I wish I were.
I love that bit in the film where the taxi driver says, "Aren't you that actor?" And then he tells you how he loved you as a jewel thief — and you tell him you've never played a jewel thief.
Yes. But people will also say they love some very unsuccessful film I've been in, or they loved a play I directed 20 years ago. Or they love my fashion film. Or they HATE something I did. Or they think I was in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest all the time, they think I was in Amadeus all the time. They think I'm in various things all the time.
I loved your acrobatic solo dance. A marvelous moment.
You know, Abba wrote "Dancing Queen" after me, I have to say.
You've settled in Europe. Was that a conscious decision? You figured you weren't a Hollywood guy and you weren't going to do theater in New York, so you'd go far away?
Not really. One of the principal reasons is that in France there is a law that socalled public people have the same right to privacy as socalled private citizens, as if those exist in some way. I don't quite know how. Also to get away from the culture of gossip and nonsense. … I mean, in Hollywood I never heard five conversations about work really.
They never discuss how to approach a role, or methods of performance?
It's just the grosses and agents and power. I just could never get interested in that. It actually puts me to sleep.
Who do you play in Luc Besson's Joan of Arc story that's coming next?
I'm the Dauphin.
Did you do the Dauphin because the part appealed to you?
I liked the part and I liked Luc a lot and he asked me to do it. And why not? I liked working with him enormously.
And you're Herman Mankiewicz in the HBO film about the making of Citizen Kane, RKO 281. Is that an American movie?
Made in London.
You don't look like Mankiewicz, although it doesn't much matter since no one knows what writers look like anyway.
No. We're just writers.
In real life, unlike the character in Being John Malkovich, you're not a single guy running around. You've married again since your divorce.
I'm not married, I live with someone. For many years. I'm not married but I was married once. Two children.
Do you think your children will act?
I don't think so. No.
Are you coming back to the stage?
Not in New York. But I will direct a play in Chicago in November called Hysteria, a wonderful play by Terry Johnson, a gifted English playwright, about the meeting of Freud and Dali.
A fictional meeting?
Yeah. The meeting took place but it was totally inconsequential. It was in London, I think, just before Freud died.
What about your long-gestating movie about the Shining Path?
I was just on a scout [for locations] in Spain. And probably in the end of March we'll start shooting. In Spain, Portugal, and South America.
And you've been trying to do that for years now.
Just five.
What is this we heard about John Malkovich, action hero. Last September in Madrid when you stopped a fight?
Oh! [Looks surprised.] Oh, I see.
People were cheering you on the streets?
So I heard.
You just went up to these two guys and stopped a fight?
No, no. We were trying to go somewhere, to meet the Minister of Culture. Traffic was blocked because these guys were alternately screaming and hitting each other. It went on for 10 minutes, and finally I thought, "Well, why let this go on," so I just grabbed one of them and walked him away. It was funny, it was nothing and it was in the papers. But I didn't even mention it to my family.
Then it turns out you've done this previously. You mentioned you'd stopped fights in England as well?
What I really said I think was lost in translation. I said you have to be really careful about doing it because obviously it's a good way to get killed. Yeah, I've done it many times. Here, in England. Usually people don't really want to fight. Except in England.