Being John Malkovich
| Being John Malkovich | |
|---|---|
 Being John Malkovich movie poster | |
| Directed by | Spike Jonze |
| Written by | Charlie Kaufman |
| Produced by | Steve Golin Vincent Landay Sandy Stern Michael Stipe |
| Starring | John Cusack Cameron Diaz Catherine Keener John Malkovich |
| Cinematography | Lance Acord |
| Edited by | Eric Zumbrunnen |
| Music by | Carter Burwell |
| Distributed by | USA Films (1999-2002) Universal Pictures (non-USA only 1999-2002, worldwide since 2002) |
Release dates |  September 2, 1999 December 26, 1999 March 17, 2000 May 18, 2000 |
Running time | 112 min |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $13,000,000 (estimated) |
Being John Malkovich is a 1999 film written by Charlie Kaufman, directed by Spike Jonze, and starring the actor John Malkovich as John Horatio Malkovich. (The actor's middle name is actually Gavin)
The film was widely praised for its originality, both in terms of the script and Jonze's direction. Kaufman's blending of fact and outrageous fiction was a theme continued in his next film with Jonze, Adaptation. Malkovich's performance as himself attracted considerable attention, as did Cameron Diaz's role as the dowdy Lotte, in which she was almost unrecognizable.
Taglines:
- Ever Wanted To Be Someone Else?
- Be All That Someone Else Can Be.
Cast list
- John Cusack as Craig Schwartz
- Cameron Diaz as Lotte Schwartz
- Catherine Keener as Maxine
- John Malkovich as John Horatio Malkovich
- Orson Bean as Dr. Lester
- Mary Kay Place as Floris (Lester's secretary/receptionist)
- Charlie Sheen as himself
Plot
The film centres on Craig Schwartz, an unsuccessful puppeteer involved in a forlorn marriage with his pet-obsessed wife Lotte, who secretly desires to be a transsexual.
Ordered by his wife to get a job, Schwartz begins to work as a filing clerk for LesterCorp at their offices on floor 7½ - a floor between floors - in the Mertin Flemmer building in Manhattan. It is whilst working here that Schwartz discovers a mysterious portal in a wall, which when entered transports him into the consciousness of John Malkovich - allowing him to observe the world through the eyes of his host for about 15 minutes before being unceremoniously dropped into a ditch by the side of the New Jersey Turnpike. The puppeteer demonstrates his discovery to Maxine, a co-worker he has an obsession for, and she takes control and proposes the two form a business to sell the experience of being John Malkovich at $200 a time.
Visiting Schwartz's boss Lester, Lotte stumbles upon a strange room with a timeline of John Malkovich hung onto the walls. Schwartz tells Lotte about the portal; she tries it and becomes obsessed with the experience, wanting to return to Malkovitch's mind immediately. She enters Malkovich again when he is at home reading, and is present in his consciousness when Maxine calls and arranges a meeting with Malkovich at 8:00pm that night. Lotte covertly returns to the portal at 8:00 that night as well, and finds herself deeply attracted to Maxine, who later claims to have sensed Lotte's presence inside Malkovich's mind during their meeting.
Lotte invites Maxine to dinner. Maxine refuses both of their advances and reveals that she is not remotely interested in Schwartz but is attracted to Lotte when she can sense Lotte inside Malkovich's mind. The pair agree to meet again in this fashion, and Maxine meets and then makes love to Malkovich as soon as she realizes that Lotte is present in his consciousness.
Left alone by the two women, Schwartz realizes the only way he will be able to get close to Maxine is by pretending to be Lotte in Malkovich's body. He forces his wife at gun point to call Maxine and arrange another meeting as Malkovich before tying her in a cage with her pet chimpanzee "Elijah." Maxine seduces Malkovich again, thinking that Lotte is in his mind, but actually it is Schwartz, who discovers this time that he is not a mere passive observer - he can actually manipulate and control Malkovich's body too.
Malkovich becomes paranoid that he is being controlled by a supernatural force and, after consulting his friend Charlie, comes to believe that Maxine is a witch. He follows her to the Mertin Flemmer Building where he discovers JM, Inc.—the company Schwartz and Maxine set up to sell the experience of being Malkovich. He enters his own portal, which manifests itself as a world where everyone (male or female) has his head and can only say the word “Malkovich.” He is then dumped at the turnpike. Schwartz meets the severely frightened Malkovich there and Malkovich orders him to close the portal. Schwartz ignores the request and again forces Lotte to arrange a meeting between Maxine and Malkovich.
After Schwartz leaves to enter Malkovich, Lotte's chimp is inspired to untie her, recalling a childhood memory when he and his parents were captured in the jungle and he tried in vain to untie his father. After the escape, Lotte is then able to call Maxine and inform her of Schwartz's deceit. Surprisingly, Maxine tells Lotte that she was also aroused by Schwartz and that she will still be going to meet Malkovich with Schwartz, who is inside him.
This time when Maxine arrives at Malkovich’s apartment Schwartz is able to take total control of his body and the pair make love before deciding that Schwartz will remain inside Malkovich permanently. Schwartz begins to control Malkovich and, as the story jumps forward eight months, we find that he has reinvented himself as the most successful puppeteer the world has ever seen. It is disclosed that he has become married to Maxine, but that the two are becoming increasingly distant and that this distance has been growing as Maxine's now 8 month pregnancy has progressed.
Lotte goes to see Lester, Schwartz's boss, who confesses to her that he has known about the portal for many years and has in fact used it on several occasions in order to live forever in the body of hosts like Malkovich. He has been monitoring Malkovich from a young age and plans to enter his body when it becomes ripe at age 44, along with several of his close friends, and then, they will be able to control it in the way Schwartz has been controlling it. Lester also explains to Lotte that after midnight on the day the host becomes ripe, the portal will move to the next host candidate and that anyone entering after midnight will become trapped in the new host, whose very young subconscious will be powerful enough to overpower whoever has entered the portal. Lotte explains that Schwartz is controlling Malkovich and Lester believes he will be too powerful to remove, so a plan is hatched to force him out of Malkovich.
Lester and his cohorts capture Maxine, then call Malkovich to tell Schwartz they will kill her if he does not leave. Schwartz reluctantly leaves Malkovich and Lester and his friends are able to enter his body in time to take it over. Maxine and Lotte fall in love when Maxine reveals that she has had feelings for her since she and Malkovich first had sex, and that she is carrying the baby of Malkovich from when Lotte was inside him.
Schwartz becomes distraught when he finds this out and rushes back to the portal to attempt to re-enter Malkovich, but it is now after midnight. In a cruel twist ending, we see that he is trapped in the body of the next host, who happens to be Maxine's daughter Emily, conceived by Lotte when she was in Malkovich. Suppressed by the host’s subconscious he is unable to do anything but watch Maxine and Lotte live happily ever after through the eyes of their child.
Trivia
 | This article contains a list of miscellaneous information. (June 2007) |
This file may be deleted after Friday, 3 August 2007.
- Craig discovers that LesterCorp is on the 7 1/2 floor of the Mertin Flemmer building by seeing a "7 1/2" on a building directory in the lobby. This moment occurs at the 7 1/2-minute point of the film.
- After the script was written, Kaufman was surprised to learn that 7 1/2 was the actual apartment number of John Malkovich's apartment. He recalls, "it was kind of cool because I thought I might have tapped into something."
- The play that Malkovich is reading into a tape recorder is Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard. The line beginning "I'm as hungry as the winter..." is at the end of Act Two, where Trofimov is speaking to Anya, pontificating on his rejection of materialism.
- The play that John Malkovich is rehearsing on stage is Shakespeare's Richard III. The lines "Was ever a woman in this humour woo'd? / Was ever a woman in this humour won?" are I.ii.239-240, where Richard is gloating over his use of power, lies and crime to obtain the woman he desires, Queen Anne. This rehearsal scene is immediately followed by the first time that Craig has sex with Maxine via Malkovich.
- At the beginning of the film when Craig is trying to guess Maxine's name, one of the names he mumbles is "Emily," the name of the child that Maxine gives birth to at the end of the film. The other names Craig mumbles are an allusion to Dr. Lester and his group of friends that can exist within other souls.
- The 1990 Steppenwolf Theatre building in Chicago (Malkovich was one of the first members of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, and remains one today) includes a half-floor used for storage.
- Charlie Kaufman sent the screenplay to Francis Ford Coppola after he wrote it. Coppola liked it very much and showed it to his daughter's husband, Spike Jonze. Jonze liked the screenplay so much that he approached Kaufman about directing the movie.
- In the scene in the Mertin Flemmer building lobby, when Craig browses the floor listings to find LesterCorp, the camera scrolls past the listing "Eric Zumbrunnen, CPA." Eric Zumbrunnen is the film's editor.
- Spike Jonze makes a cameo appearance as Derek Mantini's assistant. Brad Pitt also has a half-second-long cameo, as a miffed star in the documentary on Malkovich's career. He seems to be on the verge of saying something before the shot ends.
- The play that Craig was performing on a street corner with his puppets (when he gets punched by an angry parent) is based on the letters of Abelard and Heloise, written between 1115 and 1117 AD, which were found, copied and abridged by Johannes de Vepria, a 15th century Cistercian monk, into "Ex Epistolis duorum amantium" ("From the Letters of Two Lovers"). This became a classic document of early tragic romance, used by many artists in their work, including William Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet. In addition, screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's later project, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), took its title and no small amount of inspiration from Alexander Pope's Eloisa to Abelard.
- A fictional behind-the-scenes glimpse of the making of this movie appears in screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's subsequent movie, Adaptation. (2002).
- The scene when John Malkovich is hit in the head by a can thrown by a passenger in a passing car was unscripted. Apparently an extra brought beer on set, and decided to throw one of his beer cans at John Malkovich. The director liked the scene so much that he left it in the film. The extra got his SAG card, a pay raise since he now had a line in the movie. See director's commentary on the DVD.[1]
- Craig's Dance of Despair and Disillusionment is choregraphed to the end of the second movement of Bela Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta.
- Dr. Lester mentions Gary Sinise, who starred in a 1992 adaptation of Of Mice and Men with John Malkovich. Malkovich's character in this film, Lenny, is the "retard" referenced earlier in the film by the fan Malkovich meets in the restaurant.
- Film Director David Fincher makes an uncredited appearence as Christopher Bing in the American Arts & Culture John Malkovich psuedo documentary. Spike Jonze had made an appearence in David Fincher's 1997 film The Game (film).