Articles

John Malkovich

Univercity Magazine
by Sherry Weiner

John Malkovich has a sly smile that curls up catlike and is hard to read. He was once quoted as saying, "I don't think that talent is anything to be flattered about. I have talent, so what?" This and other frequently smug remarks (often directed at himself) might be the reason he's considered such an enigmatic person. (Plus the fact he rarely answers questions directly). But it does make him the perfect candidate to be at the center of Spike Jonze's directorial debut, Being John Malkovich, which debuted at the New York Film Festival this year and is an outrageously funny comedy that pokes fun at the notions of identity and celebrity. Malkovich stars as himself. Malkovich has a long theater pedigree that begins in Chicago where he co-founded the Steppenwolf Theatre Company with his friend Gary Sinise. He made his New York stage debut in Sam Shepard's True West. He also starred in Death of a Salesman with Dustin Hoffman and Lanford Wilson's Burn This on Broadway. His film debut was in Places in the Heart opposite Sally Field which earned him an Academy Award nomination. That same year he also starred in The Killing Fields. Another of his memorable films was Dangerous Liaisons opposite Glenn Close. He received his second Academy Award nomination for In the Line of Fire opposite Clint Eastwood and he also appeared in Jane Campion's The Portrait of a Lady. He will next be seen in Luc Besson's historical biopic, The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc.

Sporting a 2-day growth of beard, his balding head shows traces of gray. He's impeccably dressed in a black designer suit and crisp white shirt. His hazel eyes glisten mischievously as he talks, much like his alter-ego John Malkovich in the movie.

UNIVERCITY: At the Venice Film Festival you were quoted as saying that you had hoped this film wouldn't get made or even circulated that much.

John Malkovich: [smiling] I said that jokingly -- it was a joke! I always loved the script. It's very original and very funny. I'm extremely happy with how it turned out.

UNIVERCITY: How did you first react to the idea of this film?

JM:I thought it was great. You know I'm 45 years old and have probably done 30 films, maybe more. Only five or six of them were scripts that needed to be made -- and this is one of those. I can't believe it, it seems inexplicable that it actually got made -- but it did.

UNIVERCITY: The producer, Michael Stipe, said that you're the only person who this film could be about and that if you hadn't agreed to do the film then it wouldn't have been made.

JM: I'm not sure how to respond to that. I think Charlie (Kaufman), the writer, would be a better person to speak about that. Charlie always said that I'm someone who is known in certain ways without being known at all. That's something that's hard to do and hard to find with a celebrity because for someone like Tom Cruise, for example, he is very involved with spin control and has a lot of concern with how he's presented. I, on the other hand, don't really care how I'm presented, at all.

UNIVERCITY: When you're reading scripts that come your way, do you ever say, 'This is as good as it gets, so I'll do it?'

JM: Sure. You know I did a few films a couple of years ago with directors who were in their late eighties and have done some great European films. They're going to be dead soon so, for me, it was now or never. Or it could be I just bought a house or I just did a play for a year and made $200 a week. If you asked me if I only did great scripts that I was absolutely certain -- not would be -- but could be and should be great films, I would have done only three or four films. I would have done The Killing Fields, Les Liasons Dangereuses and this one, Being John Malkovich.

UNIVERCITY: Is there an element of ego involved that someone wrote a script with you at the center?

JM: No, because my reading of it is that it certainly was not meant to flatter me. [laughs] Anyone who's seen the film will know what I mean. I think that's what Charlie's writing about and making fun of -- ego and celebrity -- and I accept the point.

UNIVERCITY: Do you think with this film coming out you'll be recognized more?

JM: [jokingly] Oh, it'll be just for a couple of years. Instead of people coming up and saying, [gruff voice] 'Hey, Cyrus the Virus' they'll go, 'I loved you in the jewel thief movie.' Life will just continue on.

UNIVERCITY: Tell us about the first time you saw the scene where your character enters the portal to your mind and everyone in the scene is you.

JM: It's such a great scene in the script. You keep reading the script waiting for it to run out of gas like a very interesting late 60's off-Broadway play. Yet, somehow, he keeps stomping on your face. And when you get to that scene it's just so shocking in the script: everybody's Malkovich and everyone can only say Malkovich. It's very funny.

UNIVERCITY: Why is John Malkovich such a good choice to be at the center of this movie?

JM: I didn't really think about it very much. I could see why someone would want to make fun of me as much or more than anyone else. In some ways I'm an easier target. In some ways I'm a harder target. Maybe, in some ways, I'm a more interesting target.

UNIVERCITY: In what ways are you a more interesting target?

JM: Well, I've done a lot of different things and I don't really have a category and people don't know very much about me. To some people I've always been enigmatic, I'm told. I really don't think about why, I just accepted it for what it was. It was the way it was. If it had been about Alec Baldwin I might have loved it, too... or Sean Penn... or Bruce Willis... but that isn't what it was. So if it was this other person it would have to be about their life -- a party with forty hookers or whatever and it would then be this, that or whatever -- and that could also be great. But I never questioned it because that wasn't what Charlie wrote. Charlie wrote what Charlie wrote.

UNIVERCITY: Did you draw any line and say I won't let the joking go past here?

JM: [laughs] That's funny. At one point, I felt they had toned the script down from the first time that I had read it. I'm not accusing them of anything cynical, mind you. I just felt that somebody had written a script where somebody sort of says, 'Open your mouth, I'd like to pee in it' and then they go, 'By the way, would you like another swallow?' They don't expect you to go, 'Yeah, sure.' [laughs] But what do I care, I don't care. So, if anything, I tried to get them to be meaner. There's a line in the movie that I hated when they needed to cut it out. Someone said, 'I have the laser disc version of Making Mr. Right, the director's cut.' That was funny. [laughs]

UNIVERCITY: Was there anything else that you thought was great that wound up on the cutting room floor?

JM: There was a lot of stuff that had to get cut because the film was too long. Right now the movie is a very good length. There was this scene that actually happened to me in real life that we added to the script but didn't make it to final cut. During that scene where Johnny and Catherine are at the office and I walk up and ask people, 'Excuse me but what's going on here?' and they say, 'You get to go into John Malkovich's head for fifteen minutes for 200 clams.' Well, that day on the way to work I was walking to the hardware store with my children in an area of Los Angeles where I used to live. This guy started to yell out, 'Mr. Malkovich, Mr. Malkovich, can I talk to you?' He said, 'I don't want to bother you but...' I said, [smiling] 'Yeah, but you're going to anyway, so go ahead.' And he pitched me a script about Vlad the Impaler. He told me the lead part was already taken by Ralph Fiennes but there was this secondary part for me. And all I was trying to do was go to the hardware store. So we put that into the scene when the whole group of people knock me down. One of them got up and said, 'Mr. Malkovich, Mr. Malkovich, sorry we didn't mean to beat you up but, by the way, I have a script for you called, "Vlad the Impaler."

UNIVERCITY: In real life how do you handle those situations where someone comes up and begins pestering you?

JM: I've learned to just say, 'Yes, thank you sir, thank you.' It doesn't matter if you're trying to write, think, have a conversation or have a nervous breakdown, get divorced or get married. They don't care. They need to say, 'You were great in the jewel thief movie.' So, it's easier to just say, 'Thank you.' The reality is I wasn't even in the jewel thief movie. But it's too hard to get into that.

UNIVERCITY: Any plans to come back to the New York stage?

JM: No. I still work with the Steppenwolf Company in Chicago and do plays in London but I don't have any plans to come back to Broadway.

(Source)