Mind games

Being with Spike and John and John

For a film about the wispy nature of identity, Being John Malkovich has lot of big egos involved, and they are all uncharacteristically self-effacing when talking about the project.

Such as John Malkovich himself, who in the course of the movie is misidentified by a cabdriver as "John Mapplethorpe," is compelled to describe himself as an "overrated sack of shit," and does cartwheels in a number called "Dance of Disillusionment and Despair" dressed only in a bedspread.

"Whenever I see Malkovich doing the dance of despair," says the director Spike Jonze, who in person is surprisingly similar to the hayseed soldier he plays in Three Kings, "I just can't believe that he did our movie."

"I wasn't flattered when I read the script," admits Malkovich. "No, I didn't call my lawyer, I called my partner and asked him to meet with the writer because I thought it was so well written. The part was not a challenge. More a kind of a delight. I'm fairly secure, but I think a lot of actors would have done it. I think they overestimate the vanity of actors. I mean, I don't think so many actors I know would mind making fun of themselves."

So why John Malkovich? Like identity itself, the choice was both arbitrary and absolute. "If you make it about Bruce Willis, if you make it about Bill Hurt, I think it could be hilarious," says Malkovich. "It might be more vulgar, it might be less vulgar, it might be more obscure, it might be less obscure. It might be anything, but that just isn't what it was."

"It's pretty easy if you take a guy who courts publicity, who has his Planet Hollywood," adds John Cusack, who plays the film's hapless protagonist, puppeteer (puppetry is "the art form of the new millennium," according to Cusack) Craig Schwartz. "Then it becomes a very simple, broad satire. But with John that won't work. It's meaner to attack John Malkovich. It's really low."

Hence Jonze's trepidation when he first approached John Malkovich with the opportunity to play John Malkovich. "I went in there with the tactic of fear and I was very intimidated by him. But then, by the end I was cuddling with him."

"Spike is not exactly famously articulate," notes Malkovich. "He isn't really a verbal person. I had to draw out what he saw, and what he thought he was going to make. It wasn't a matter of convincing me. I just wanted to talk to him and talk to the writer [Charlie Kaufman]. I wanted to tell them what I thought it would be important not to lose. Our conversation was pretty straightforward: how we saw the film, who we saw being in it, why we wanted them, what tone we hoped it to have."

Cusack's first responses to the script were admiration and doubt. "I thought the only way someone would do it was if someone maxes out their credit cards and does it out of a van. But I wanted to do this. I said, this is the best piece of writing, the most original words I have heard in a while. I thought it was so startling that every time you read the script, you kept thinking the bottom has got to drop out, you can't keep this premise going. Then Malkovich shows up and goes into his own portal . . . "

"I think it's very accurately put when I come out of the portal and I'm screaming at Craig, `In the name of God, that portal must be sealed,' " Malkovich observes of that scene. "That pretty much says it all."

What, then, is the meaning of Being? "Basically, it's about whatever you want it to be," says Jonze. "If you go away thinking anything, then that's great. If you go away just laughing, then that's great. Basically, I think I've always just loved portals."

-- P.K.

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