John Malkovich reflects on the legacy of ‘Being John Malkovich’

Posted On September 10, 2024September 10, 2024

Few actors are both as recognisable and varied in their body of work as John Malkovich. With a strong background on stage, Malkovich has carved a path in cinema reflective of his theatrical gravitas, ranging from airborne blockbusters to indie sleeper hits. In that time, he’s distinguished himself as a performer capable of brooding terror, deadpan comedy and manic outbursts, never afraid of a challenging role setting him back. Few titles in his filmography fit the descriptor better than Being John Malkovich.

During a successful career of nearly 50 years, Malkovich had already collaborated with some of cinema’s greatest boundary-pushers before the 1999 oddball classic. In the late 1980s, he earned an early breakout film role in Stephen Spielberg’s Empire Of The Sun, moving on to Stephen Frears’s Dangerous Liaisons before a defining performance in Gary Sininse’s Of Mice And Men in 1992.

Guilty pleasure staple Con Air, with Nick Cage, John Cusack and Steve Buscemi, earned Malkovich’s name even greater household recognition, claiming over $200million at the box office despite a lukewarm reception from critics. Despite this, Malkovich doubted he would be a big enough pull for audiences in the highly surreal film that bore his name, released just two years after Con Air. However, accepting that the film would succeed or fail whether or not he played the title character, he took the plunge.

At this point in time, screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, who cut his acerbic comedy teeth writing sketches for National Lampoon, only had unproduced scripts to his name where the film was concerned. Versions of Being John Malkovich were in circulation from 1994 but could not find an interested director until Francis Ford Coppola handed it off to Spike Jonze, his then-son-in-law.

An MTV-era creative, Jonze was also green around the gills when it came to moviemaking, having only worked in the worlds of guerilla skateboarding films, music videos, and documentary shorts. It’s perhaps this background in scrappier, conceptual work that drew him to Kaufman’s off-kilter worldview.

Being John Malkovich is a twisted web of love and obsession, kicked off when a desperately lovelorn puppeteer Craig – played by Malkovich’s Con Air co-star John Cusack – discovers a portal into Malkovich’s mind (playing a spoof version of himself). Craig confesses his discovery to the colleague he’s in love with, Maxine, played by Katherine Keener, and the two embark on a money-making scheme joyriding in the actor’s body until Craig attempts to make the body-snatching permanent. He eventually gets his grim but just desserts.

As a well-known and reputable name, Malkovich had significantly more to lose than relative unknowns Kaufman and Jonze at the time. The result is an unexpected storm of meta-inventiveness that critics deemed a breath of fresh air from an actor at the peak of his powers and two exciting newcomers.

“I would say the film’s biggest legacy was that it was an introduction to the world of two extremely gifted filmmakers: [screenwriter] Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze, whom I hold in great esteem,” Malkovich told Roling Stone in 2015. “In my mind, they’re visionaries who have gone on to do some of the most excellent work in American movies for a long time.”

While fans of Malkovich may credit the film as a high, creative watermark for an actor who’d already secured an incredible legacy, the man himself doesn’t feel it’s appropriate to accept too much kudos. Concluding, “In modern culture… It’s kind of like if you get a blowjob from the wrong person, then your life becomes a blowjob. So, Being John Malkovich always has to be referred to in some allegedly clever or ironic or snarky way.”

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