I'm slowly working my way through a list of 200 movies I've never seen, and doing so in alphabetical order. Find the list HERE.
Being John Malkovich
1999
When I started taking movies seriously—I guess you can consider this moment around the
2018 Academy Awards (yes, I know, it wasn't that long ago)—I decided that I would consider a movie to be "great" if 1) it stayed interesting through its entire run (this one is obvious), and 2) it served some higher purpose, making me think about it even after the credits rolled. I'm starting to find that maybe there are too many exceptions for this two-part rule to be considered a good way of going about thinking about films in a critical manner.
Enter
Being John Malkovich, a batshit crazy movie that absolutely kept me interested during every moment, but doesn't seem to exist for any purpose other than to be weird. If we're asking "What's the point?" then I think the answer truly is "to be weird." That's it! And the best part about it is that I really, really enjoyed
Being John Malkovich, even though it does not serve any higher purpose. This makes me think that maybe great movies don't need to do that. They can just exist for your enjoyment/bafflement, and that can be it. That's okay!
Let's talk about what happens in this movie, and you can tell me if I'm missing something. There's a guy—played by John Cusack—who is a fantastic puppeteer, but, ya know, needs to pay his bills, so he gets a job filing papers in a bizarre office where the ceiling is five feet high. Behind a filing cabinet, our protagonist finds a portal that leads directly into John Malkovich's mind. That's John Malkovich, the actor, playing himself in this movie (or at least a fictional version of himself).
It only gets more bizarre from there, to be honest, but I don't want to spoil anything. Not that there could be anything to spoil; there's not a "twist ending" or anything like that. It's just that the movie is so whimsical, with so many little touches of dreamlike quirkiness, that to describe it in hard blog prose would be to suck the joy out of it. It's like going through a haunted house—of
course there's a dude dressed like a werewolf hiding behind that coffin, this is a haunted house for christ's sake, but who wants to be warned about it beforehand? Let's just let you enjoy the ride.
So that's it though, right? That's how I would've tried to justify the "greatness" of this film according to my strict (arbitrary) guidelines. "I don't know what this movie is 'about,' but because it's so weird, I've been thinking about it anyway." The higher purpose is that there is no higher purpose, and so on. I guess that makes sense? But I think I'd rather just accept the fact that there are great movies that don't adhere to your stinkin' rules. I shouldn't have to use pretzel logic to justify the quality of a film.
Maybe you could also try to make something up about the purpose of this film. Who's going to question you? Especially here on Puke on Your Birthday? I read somewhere that
Being John Malkovich "symbolizes Hollywood." Maybe I could say that in order to justify
BJM's greatness. "You see, it's a commentary on the way we use actors as puppets for our own amusement." There might even be something to this theory! And who the fuck am I to dismiss the theory? If it helps you sleep at night, then feel free to see
Being John Malkovich as some fable about the Screen Actors Guild.
I would only argue that it's not really
necessary to stretch the movie beyond where it's already been stretched. I'm comfortable in admitting that this is just a wild ride and it was thrilling to be able to hold on tight as we hit those drops. At least, I'm comfortable now. No need to make this anything more than it is: simply great.
...
...
...
"And for the color, uh... periwinkle?"
I can't possibly let a blog post end like this. And I almost did. Like, I almost literally ended it by saying that
Being John Malkovich (of all fucking movies!) had no further questions, and certainly no answers, and that it wasn't worth thinking about too deeply. I wasn't even going to write the "Who's Involved" section or anything like that. Guys, these Never Seen It posts take so much out of me. It's overwhelming to think that I have to write 187 more of these. And I'm currently (as of this writing) busting my ass to catch up before I go on a Wildwood vacation that I am currently on (as of this/your reading), and it was so tempting to just say fuck it and leave my write-up for
Being John Malkovich in a ditch by the New Jersey Turnpike.
But I can't. I just can't. I can't be like Charlie Sheen in this movie, who is told by his friend John Malkovich that someone is inside his brain and that the girl he is seeing is only seeing him because of that person controlling his brain, and Sheen simply responds "that's hot." The fact that this is
Charlie Sheen must be significant. I can't possibly want to follow Charlie fucking Sheen's lead on this one.
No. I have to follow Craig Schwartz (Cusack). When asked what it all means, he responds: "The existence of the soul. Am I me? Is Malkovich Malkovich? Do you see what a metaphysical can of worms this portal is?" And even though the script undercuts the importance of this by letting a somewhat pathetic, flopsweat-drenched ne'er-do-well express this heightened philosophy, I still, at my core, believe it to be the right response.
Being John Malkovich isn't just a "wild ride." There's more to it. It's about the motherfucking
soul. It's about EVERYTHING.
For what it's worth, Charlie Kaufman has never really said "
Being John Malkovich is about ___" as far as I can tell. He never talks about what he wrote, but more so how he wrote it. This tracks: as a screenwriter, you are a storyteller, and what is the creation of
Being John Malkovich but just another story? He talks about what it was like writing for TV shows and using someone else's voice, and then finally finding his
own voice by writing a script that he didn't think anyone would ever make. He calls storytelling "dangerous" while implying that he is courageous enough to take his storytelling to the big screen. He acknowledges that story within
Being John Malkovich is bold and varied. But he never really digs into what he meant to really
say when he was telling that story.
But maybe the point of telling the story of making
Being John Malkovich is that it is a story that runs parallel to the story
within the film
Being John Malkovich. This is a story of a group of people whose lives, they feel, are so mundane that they'd rather be inside the head of a famous actor as he orders bath towels for fifteen minutes than be stuck inside their own heads at all. Maybe the point is that Charlie Kaufman was one of the mundane, and that he too found some mysterious purpose by entering the mind of John Malkovich, not through a literal portal, but a script that acts like one anyway.
Maybe I am one of the mundane as well. Say that we, audience, don't really have to know how the portal works, just like we don't really have to know what the film "means" or "is trying to say." We just know that such a portal, and such a film, are a means to escape, for a little bit of time (either fifteen minutes or just under two hours), away from who you are, and into the head of an actor or director or writer, a way to explore the weird interiors of their brain and turn off your own at the same time.
You could extend that explanation to all great movies. Maybe those original two points are one in the same. A movie has to make you feel something, sure, but isn't that feeling itself the part that matters after the movie ends? That you were able to feel something means that you were changed in some indescribable way, forever. A great movie does that.
Being John Malkovich is great.
Okay, I guess that'll do for now.
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Who's Involved
It's tough not to immediately mention the titular character/actor, but it's probably more important to mention the screenwriter and director team in this section first, and then continue to the actors.
Obviously, this is a
Charlie Kaufman enterprise. As mentioned above, it was his first. And it's really not that large of a filmography in the past 20 years! He has seven writing credits on major motion pictures (with two more soon to be released). But among them are some very heavy hitters—
Adaptation. (
already covered on this blog in a roundabout way),
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (was at one point going to do a Your Favorite Movie interview for this one, COVID kinda put the kibosh in that), and
Synecdoche, New York (I've seen this one before, so it's not on Never Seen It, but man, I could do with a rewatch, since I was definitely too young and stupid to get even 1% of what the movie was trying to say).
The point being that, to those familiar with film, you can say "this movie was Kaufmanesque" and they'd know what you mean. His scripts usually question life within a metaphysical framework, and often take absurd ideas as far as logic will allow (and sometimes past that too). I found it really interesting to hear Kaufman himself comment on this legacy: "I’ve seen critics say 'This is a Charlie Kaufman–type movie, and so-and-so made it,'...and it’s like, why do they get to make Charlie Kaufman movies and I don’t? I think about that all the time." It must be weird to be too weird for Hollywood.
Director
Spike Jonze seems to have escaped being branded as "too weird" by doing a lot of other shit before
Being John Malkovich. This dude cut his teeth on MTV, directing music videos that were cool enough that not even
Being John Malkovich's worst detractors could take away the built-up cred. Jonze directed
"Buddy Holly"! This was the first music video that I ever saw. I mean, I saw other music videos prior, I'm sure, but this was the first one I was ever intimately familiar with (it's possible that, since the video was included on the CD that arrived with Microsoft Windows 95, a lot of people have a similar story).
I mean, shit man, what a fascinating resume. Grammys for music videos, Oscars for films, director for dozens of skateboard videos and commercials. CO-CREATOR of motherfucking
Jackass. There's a jack of all trades and there's a master of one, and then there's Spike Jonze.
This is just me praising him just based on reading his Wikipedia page, don't mistake me for some Spike Jonze superfan. Until I was told he had a cameo role in
The Wolf of Wall Street during my preparation for that film, I used to think that he and Spike Lee were the same person. Out of the thousands of ways I am proving to you in this column that I am not a movie buff, that should be the most outlandish example.
The man has a pretty fascinating romantic history as well—again, this is just according to Wikipedia, I'm not presenting myself as a gossip column expert—but the only one that applies to our discussion of
Being John Malkovich is his marriage to Sofia Coppola, another film director, whose father is Francis Ford Coppola, who you may remember from
Apocalypse Now. (I swear I'm not doing this to build a "six degrees" type thing, there's a point to this.)
They were together from 1992 to 2003 (they met on set while Jonze was directing Sonic Youth's
"100%"), and I suppose in 1996 or so, Jonze's girlfriend's dad read a script about a portal in John Malkovich's mind after some crazy unknown scriptwriter sent it to him. FFC passed it along to his daughter's boyfriend, who was looking to get into major motion picture filmmaking at the time.
So is this an act of nepotism? Or is this just genuinely how Hollywood has always operated, and I shouldn't think too much about it just because a famous director was helping his son-in-law get his foot in the door? I think I'm just gonna throw these questions out there and not worry about them too much at the moment. We will definitely get back to this subject in a year or so, when we get to
The Godfather III, a film that apparently stars Sofia in a somewhat more brazen example of nepotism. (We won't see S. Coppola again in a directorial role, and I don't really feel bad about it, because she directed the total shitshow that was the Bill Murray Christmas Special a few years ago, fuck 'em all.)
Hey, let's write about some actors. One of the stars of this movie is someone I had never heard of before... what was his name? John something.
I was surprised to learn that the titular role of "
Being ____" was always
John Malkovich, according to Charlie Kaufman. There was never anyone else seriously considered, even before Malkovich himself was aware of the script's existence. Apparently, Kaufman just liked the sound of his name, and considered it an integral part of the joke. John Malkovich had some understandable concerns with the role—if it was uber-successful, then he might forever be associated with this movie, and if it bombed, then his name was
right there in the marquee.
I don't think that I am as attached to the joke as Kaufman is (for example, Malkovich suggested that maybe Kaufman should change it to "
Being Tom Cruise," which I think would've been equally fascinating, but Kaufman was insistent), but I was definitely more interested in finally watching this movie due to the fact that it was about an actor I was not familiar with at all (i.e. it's why this movie ended up on Never Seen It). I didn't even know if John Malkovich was a real person.
He is, and he has a very extensive filmography, one that I am not familiar with AT ALL. He has had an acting role in over 70 films, and I've seen a grand total of two—
Con Air, and
Adaptation. (the latter being a cameo role, as it features a scene where Nicholas Cage, playing Charlie Kaufman, is filming
Being John Malkovich). Had I not been completely baffled by
The Young Pope, I might've made an effort to watch him in as the titular role in the sequel series,
The New Pope, but it hasn't been high on my priority list (though next Sunday's
Record Club selection was inspired by
The New Pope apparently, so we'll see what comes of that).
Malkovich is only fourth-billed in this movie.
John Cusack gets top billing with a pretty great performance. What's so good about his role here is that he gets to play it with that same awkward charm that he perfected in movies like
Say Anything..., but here it's dirtied up and soured to a degree that the awkwardness is actually uncomfortable, instead of just cute. This dude is a loser, and you don't want him to win.
Cameron Diaz plays his (bisexual? transgender?) girlfriend (whom he locks in a cage, jeez this movie gets a little dark). Now
this is an actress who is ubiquitous in pop culture, no? You don't have to be a movie buff to know who Cameron Diaz is. Which is why I was surprised to see that she hasn't acted in anything since 2014. I guess I had missed her 2018 announcement that she was retiring from acting. On the one hand, good for her, I can't imagine any part of Hollywood is good for one's soul. On the other hand, what's the over/under for when she returns to acting. 2022? Or is COVID fucking up the betting line?
Catherine Keener is so good in this movie at playing the inscrutable minx. You know how there are certain actors and actresses whom you will always think of as the first role you saw them in? For me, Catherine Keener will always be the romantic partner in
The 40-Year-Old Virgin, for better or worse. But so I'm familiar with her as quirky and optimistic from that role, and it was fascinating to see her play someone who was still quirky, but in a dark, pessimistic, sexy way. Looking at her filmography, she definitely seems to have a loyalty to Spike Jonze. She's even in
Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa! (Because
Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa is not on the Never Seen It list, we won't be seeing her again in this column.)
Not much to say about anyone else. We already mentioned
Charlie Sheen's great performance as himself (I guess this is technically the second movie during Never Seen It featuring Charlie Sheen, if we're counting
cut scenes). Orson Bean does a decent job as the strange profane boss and eventual hivemind leader (took me a minute to find out that I recognized him from the "Slapsgiving" episode of
How I Met Your Mother). You might recognize Mary Kay Place from
The Big Chill. I did not recognize "First J.M. Inc. Customer" a
s W. Early Brown until I saw his name in the credits—that's
Dan Dority!
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IMDB Trivia
The best and the worst and the worster of
Being John Malkovich's IMDB trivia page.
BEST: "Cameron Diaz's makeup artist Gucci Westman described styling her in her role as 'a challenge, to make her look homely.' The script included minimal physical descriptions of characters, and when Diaz took the role she did not know that 'people weren't going to recognize me.'" I like how this piece of trivia leaves it open whether Diaz was upset about the makeup. I also like how everyone is clearly padding Diaz's ego by saying shit like this; yes, Cameron Diaz is very attractive, but c'mon, you could totally tell it was her.
WORST: "Willie Garson (Guy in Restaurant) improvised the scene where he encounters John Malkovich and says, 'You were really great in that movie where you play that retard.' According to Garson, director Spike Jonze had instructed Garson to use the word 'retard' as many times as he could." Besides the fact that it's not okay to use that word anymore, let's talk about the fact that it wasn't truly improvisational if Jonze was giving him direction?
ALMOST CASTED (WHO THE FUCK CARES): "The original script has Kevin Bacon in place of Charlie Sheen, as Malkovich's actor friend. John Malkovich recommended Sheen for the part." Who the fuck cares? (Okay, maybe we would've had an extra card in our pockets while playing Six Degrees to Kevin Bacon if that happened, but for real, who cares?)
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The Rest of the Other Bullshit I Usually Talk About Here
Clearly I'm not very invested in this blog post. I'm sorry. I'm down the shore, it's tough to care about anything here. But out of a sense of obligation, let's type another 500 words and call it a day, alright? We can talk awards if you want. Here ya go.
Being John Malkovich did not earn a nomination for Best Picture (despite Roger Ebert threatening suicide if it didn't happen). This was the year of
American Beauty, a film I've never seen, and have no immediate plans to because of the whole Kevin Spacey thing (maybe I'll watch it eventually).
The Sixth Sense was nominated that year too, which seems like it should've won the award, based on how much I marvel that movie even a full 20 years later.
The Green Mile was nominated too—we'll be watching that film in this column eventually.
BJM did get a couple nominations though! Jonze, Kaufman, and Keener all were nominated. The first two lost to
American Beauty, the third to Angelina Jolie. Kaufman, to me, feels especially robbed, but don't worry, he eventually won for
Eternal Sunshine.
Spike Jonze's nomination was strange to begin with—rare is it that a director gets dominated when the film itself does not. He was nominated for a bunch of other awards that year, and won some of them, but I'm most interested in the MTV Movie Award he won for "Best New Filmmaker." This reads to me the same as when an artist who's been around for ten years wins "Best New Artist" at the Grammys. Didn't Jonze make a ton of music videos for MTV in the '90s? Was this award more of a legacy award for all this work in the music industry? Am I asking way too many questions about the fucking MTV Movie Awards?
As always, we examine the
Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards.
Being John Malkovich was not nominated for anything. Not even Favorite Animal Star! This movie has a monkey! C'mon! Fuck you Salem from
Sabrina the Teenage Witch!!! Goddamn, I fucking love this awards show.
Big Daddy won Best Picture! Beating the
Pokémon movie!! "Wild Wild West" by Will Smith won TWO awards!
Donkey Kong 64 was nominated for Best Video Game (that game has not aged well at all)!! I could go on, but I'll stop short because the Yankees baseball team won an award, and I want to be happy, not sad. Thankfully,
Being John Malkovich did have a large presence at the ceremony, as John Cusack showed up to put on a puppet performance, and then was told that there was a portal to the side of the stage that he could enter, so he did... but it was a joke, he just got slimed.
Haha, yeah, that bit is always funny to me. I'm never gonna stop. What else do I usually type about? Oh, how about sequels? There's never going to be a sequel to
Being John Malkovich. Well... not officially, anyway. Depending on who you ask, there already
is a sequel to
Being John Malkovich. There is an internet theory that Jordan Peele's
Get Out is a secret sequel.
Let's examine the evidence compiled on The Ringer. Plausible? Sure, in the "barely" sense that all internet movie theories are. Also kind of annoying in the same sense that all internet movie theories are. I do enjoy picturing Catherine Keener getting bamboozled by a random journalist who believes this theory.
Don't I usually do a "Does This Movie Hold Up?" section? I guess sometimes I do. There's nothing about this movie that doesn't hold up, unless you are counting the R-word bit (I guess I should count that). I guess Lotte's sexuality is treated more as a joke than it might today? Though it's also not the butt of the joke either. I.e. it's not like Craig is "disgusted" by the fact that Lotte is in love with Maxine or whatever. But also maybe that whole idea not fleshed out to the degree such a subject deserves? It's probable that I'm grasping at straws here and that I should just put this fucking blog post out of its misery as soon as possible.
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FINAL THOUGHTS
Wikipedia has a section this movie's page, toward the bottom, titled "Analysis." If you are looking for answers, you'd think this would be a good place to start. Here's the gist of the analysis: "The film has been described as quite strange and confusing with many unexpected turns being presented." When fucking Wikipedia doesn't even know what this movie is about, then you're probably not going to find many answers elsewhere. But that doesn't matter, right? A movie can just be a great movie, right? Probably. Maybe. We'll see. Let's see what else the Never Seen It list has in store.
GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5.
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NEXT TIME: We're watching
Ben-Hur, which is apparently not what I thought it was (I got it mixed up with the rat movie
Ben, shit!).
