John Malkovich and John Cusack - Cranky Critic® StarTalk

John Malkovich John Cusack

stars of Being John Malkovich

As I write this, actor John Malkovich is on the teeevee doing a Letterman Top List of "Things That Sound Creepy When Said By John Malkovich." It's a dead on category because, if there's one thing I count on in a Malkovich movie, it's that sharp, almost creepy, edge that he brings to his characters. When I first heard the concept of Being John Malkovich a couple of months ago, I couldn't think of another actor that would work better as a character. But consider this from his POV: he's a known actor with a strong character image, but he plays a fictional character with his name and face and occupation who is nothing like the "character image" we all know. It's enough to make your head hurt.

In real life, when we talked, Malkovich was quite open about most every aspect of life as John Malkovich, from his image to his acting. Joining us a couple of 'graphs down is John Cusack, whose character discovers and exploits the "passage into Malkovich's brain" Malkovich was in a suit. Cusack was in a T shirt, and they both talked in voices so soft we could barely hear them, but when they laughed, it wasn't creepy at all . . .

CrankyCritic: What went through your mind when you first saw this script?
John Malkovich: Just that it was, in all honesty, I thought it was somewhere between surprising and shockingly original, really funny, incredibly well written, very very well finished [laughs]

CrankyCritic: The people in the audience have all formed opinions as to what actors are really like, based on what we see you play on stage or screen. Here you are playing someone who is "yourself" who is probably not like yourself at all.
John Malkovich: Well, I think that's why Charlie (Kaufman) would say he made it about me. You don't know what I'm like anyway (and that's a good thing, I think). Of course people have images but that's sort of unavoidable in today's age. There's nothing you can do about it. I wasn't overly worried about it.

CrankyCritic: If you could have climbed down the portal into someone else's head, would you? And who would it be?
John Malkovich: No. Maybe sometimes I think maybe my children. I don't know, I think there are things better left unsaid and better left undone. I think that the movie in a way has within it a metaphor for acting: what we get to do, always, is open a portal and go "oh, look!" We go into a role for a day or a week or a few months and we're sort of dragged into another world. That world is how someone else who is completely removed from us views the world. So A) I already get to do that. I've done it for twenty five years. B) I would rather imagine it, probably, than live it. I would rather imagine what someone else is thinking than live it. People think it's more interesting only because it's a celebrity, which I think is the difference. There isn't a difference. It's the same thought process exactly. So I wouldn't be particularly interested in being inside the brain of anybody you know. But anybody off the street, it's probably quite interesting.

CrankyCritic: The normal people who "see through your eyes" come away profoundly changed. Do you come away from creating a character with that same kind of sensation?
John Malkovich: Not really. Not so profoundly or so clearly or even extremely. Sometimes I think the great thing about doing a play is that, by the time I've done it for a year and a half, if you took away all the words and the action (of the written play) I could probably make it up that night and it would still be that character. When you see that play you see a character at a certain point in time within a very specific situation but your knowledge of the character becomes rounder than that. You begin to really understand his view of the world.