Erstellt am: 9. 5. 2015 - 12:46 Uhr
Meeting John Malkovich
John Malkovich is many things. Stage and screen actor, director, fashion designer and producer, just for a start.
He's also nothing if not international - while American born, he has English, French, German, Scottish and Croatian roots - and his work is as international as his ancestry.
This week, Reality Check finds out what it's like, being John Malkovich.
EPA/JAVIER ETXEZARRETA
John Malkovich: on fame and success:
APA/Hans Klaus Techt
You know, like anybody, if you think of this little kid from Southern Illinois, who ends up at the Oscars, or at the Molieres, for that matter, or at the Ronacher, or at the Opera House in Sao Paulo, you have to have accepted a long time before that your life isn’t maybe what you thought it would be. You have to kind of get used to it, and you have to say “OK, now I’m in Hamburg at the Schauspielhaus, getting ready to go on stage with a full baroque orchestra , and two sopranos, and recount the horrific history of Jack Unterweger". If you thought about that too much, you’d be in a mental institution, I think. You just have to go, “OK, well, that’s where I am, and this is what I’m doing, and I like doing it." And it’s OK.
You know, when I ended up at the Oscars, I remember I said to my then manager… she goes “Now, honey, there are going to be a lot of people there.” And I said “That’s fine, Phyllis, we’ll go in the side door.” And she was like this, snapping her fingers, saying “Honey! Honey! There’s NO SIDE DOOR! It’s the Oscars! WAKE UP!” And I was like “Wow, that’s strange, so you can’t avoid this?”
EPA/ENNIO LEANZA
So I understood, no, there are some things you can avoid, but if you’re like me, and I’m not alone in my business, believe it or not, if you’re like me and the main thing you like is the actual work, and the challenge of the work, and the beauty of the work, and the interest of the work, and even the amount of failure inherent in this kind of work, if you’re OK with that, you won’t go crazy, I think, unless the work leaves you. But I believe that if you have the correct attitude, the work won’t leave you; you’ll always approach it in the same way.
...on US and European Cinema
They are two different worlds – don’t make a mistake about that. Cinema in Europe was not founded as an industry, it was founded as a form of self-expression. In America, we don’t really care for that sort of high fallutin’ notion. We are, and I believe, remain, at least on some level, profoundly anti-intellectual, and fairly not anti-self-expression, but art for art’s sake is not what we do, so much.
The Weinstein Company
If we can get somebody to do “Some Like it Hot” or “Chinatown”, they can express themselves all they want and, in fact, they can even be European, as Billy Wilder was, and as Polanski was – and there can be many others as well, from Wolfgang Peterson, to Wim Wenders, to Luc Besson, to anyone you want to name – Bernado [Bertolucci] won 13 Oscars, I think, for “The Last Emperor”, the only thing is, you have to make money. You can’t just express yourself.
So, when there is such a fundamental difference about how something was created and what it was meant to do, it would be like expecting that in Europe, you could invent a car which was great, but it didn’t take you anywhere, it just sat there. That’s what it’s like for Americans when you go, “Hey, my car has to take me from Philadelphia to Dallas. I mean, I can’t just have a car that sits here being nice to look at. The purpose is to go from here to there. And they see the purpose of movies as to make money. It’s a business.
Miramax
... on celebrity and the problem of intrusive fans
Well, I don’t think really that’s a problem in the business, per se, or industry, I think it’s a problem in life. Last night we were having dinner, and we get our food, which came quite late, and we sit down and have two bites, and then the waiter comes over and says, “Can you come with me to take a photo. There’s a woman here who wants a photo and I would like one.” And I said “Of course not! What are you talking about? I’m having dinner! Probably not, but maybe after I’ve finished dinner, but I don’t belong to you, I’m not a slave.” Doing a photo with anybody I don’t know, that I have no connection to… I’m not talking about the waiter who served me dinner. I’m talking about someone else who just comes over, maybe he’s just dressed like a waiter.
I’ve been hassled to take photos at a Mexican wedding, while I was on the phone with my sister who was sobbing hysterically because she didn’t make it back to our home town, when our mother had died moments before.
APA/Georg Hochmuth
Eventually, about a year ago, I said “I’m not going to do this anymore. This is insanely rude.” I mean it’s no different than me saying to a woman, “Do you mind taking your clothes off?” or to a man, “Do you mind taking your pants off? Or, your shoes off? I like feet, so I’d like to see your feet, right now. I need it. And, I need a record of it, you see. And if you don’t do that, it’s you who are badly raised, and impolite, and arrogant, and graceless.” When really, no, it’s the modern society that makes you think that’s OK.
...on life and philosophy
You know, I’ve worked with people who were incredibly known, and known through the world, and right at the very top of their profession, and with people who nobody knew, and maybe only I believed in, and everything in between, and I’ve never regretted anything. That’s what’s made my life worthwhile. I don’t really have much in the way of beliefs, I don’t really have much in the way of ideology, I don’t really care about lots of things that maybe I should care about, or that people do care about. Who gets elected? I don’t see that it makes any difference, really. They’ll all end up detested anyway.
Columbia Pictures
What I have been able to do, even across cultures, and continents, and languages, is find a great group of comrades with whom I’ve had great amusement, great interest, have done some terrific work – and some not so terrific, but that happens – and I’ve really explored and investigated what it means to be human. I’ve lived a remarkably lucky and full life – so, I’m only part way home, but what I’ve found so far is that if you treat people well, and take and interest, you’ll be rewarded a thousand times over, I think. So that, to me, is kind of beyond a religion, or an ideology, or a political standpoint, or anything. It’s a kind of belief, maybe very naïve, but a belief in, if not the goodness of people, then the interest of people, the interest people provide.
... on the fascination of "furries"
I heard a story the other day, about people called furries. This couple, one was dressed in a wolf suit, with a tail, and paws, and ears. And eventually, the wife of the couple went mad, and the guy just left. So she was taken in by friends of hers, and she really was, and is, quite mad.
UIP
At a certain point, one of the friends tried to explain to her, “You know, your husband left, and he’s not coming back.” And she said, “Sure he’s coming back.” And they said “How do you know?” and she said, “He left his cages.” So, he was fed in cages.
Now, the kind of inexplicability of that is an amazing human thing. So there’s just no end the mystery, no end to the discovery. And even when there are things like furries, which I can’t say I fully understand, they are of interest because they are humans.
Renata Schmidtkunz provided the material for today's programme from an interview she recorded with John Malkovich for the Ö1 programme "Im Gespräch".
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