0:00

No matter how you connect with Allstate, you're in good

0:02

hands. You'll find all our discounts for all your

0:04

home and auto insurance needs online or by calling

0:06

888-ALLSTATE. Discounts vary by

0:08

state and are subject to terms and conditions. Allstate Fire

0:11

and Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates, Northbrook, Illinois.

0:22

Welcome

0:22

to Alienating the Audience,

0:25

the show that explores the deeper side

0:27

of science fiction. I'm Andrew Heaton,

0:29

the Thinking Man's nerd. And today,

0:31

congratulations, you're going

0:33

to become John Malkovich.

0:38

I am joined today with

0:40

returning guest, Henrik Kudo. He

0:43

is the host of Weekly Spooky and a

0:45

absolute delight. Good to see you again, Henrik. So

0:47

happy to be here and to be John Malkovich. And

0:50

to be John Malkovich. And we are joined by

0:52

Matt Sienkiewicz. He is a professor of communications

0:55

at Boston College. And you have

0:57

now rounded all of my programs, Matt. You've

0:59

been on the political program, the funny program, and

1:01

the nerd program. Congratulations. It's

1:03

a grand slam. Thank you for having me. And

1:06

we're going to be talking about being

1:09

John Malkovich. When did you guys first encounter

1:11

this film? Oh, man. I

1:14

remember renting it on VHS

1:16

at Blockbuster. Well, I

1:18

remember my mother renting it and me

1:20

going, what? Because

1:23

it came out like 99, right? Yeah, 99. Yeah.

1:27

How about you, Matt? Oh,

1:30

I was a film student in college. So

1:32

I was the worst. Oh, you were a

1:34

film student? I didn't know this. I was. I

1:37

was. Oh, shit. Okay, great.

1:40

Get ready to bring it. This is a big deal in college. Yeah.

1:43

So I did see it. I saw it in the theater because

1:45

like, you know, I was, like I said, I was the worst. I was

1:47

a film student. So I had to see every, you know,

1:50

like, you know, pretentious thing out

1:52

there. And then, and

1:54

then also I associate this film deeply with

1:56

like needing to buy DVDs you'll never watch again. Uh-huh.

1:59

Right? Just as like, sort of like planting

2:01

your flag, you know, put it in your room, you know,

2:03

show it off to whoever comes in there. Oh yeah. Come

2:06

on in before we go on our date, if you want to

2:08

check out my movie tower, you'll see

2:10

that I have many, I have Amelie and

2:13

being Jean-Valkevich and several other films.

2:15

About Schmidt. About Schmidt, yeah.

2:17

That's right. That's right. So

2:19

yeah, so I bought the DVD and

2:22

I don't know if I watched the DVD, but I definitely

2:24

showed the DVD to people

2:27

on multiple occasions. So I saw

2:29

this probably

2:29

a year or two after it came out.

2:32

I saw it on VHS as well and

2:34

was in high school. And I think

2:37

this was about

2:38

like having an acid

2:40

trip for the very religious, very

2:43

tightly wound young man that I was at that

2:45

time. Like I

2:47

think

2:48

being John Malkovich and encountering

2:51

Douglas Adams were both actually really

2:53

formative moments for me in my

2:55

younger days because this is such

2:57

a bizarre film. It is so incredibly

3:00

weird that it sort of, I feel

3:03

like it rewired my brain slightly to go,

3:05

oh, the world's a lot,

3:07

could be a lot weirder than it needs to

3:09

be. And as I was

3:11

rewatching in preparation for talking to you guys,

3:13

I was struck by just

3:15

how

3:17

weird it is and yet comes

3:19

together. Like it's odd

3:22

that it's able to do that where there's

3:25

they're on floor seven and a half. There's

3:28

a libidinous 104 year

3:30

old man. They live

3:32

with a chimp. All like all of these crazy

3:35

things are happening that would already make it a zany

3:37

film prior to there being a

3:40

portal into the mind of John

3:42

Malkovich. Like before that's even established,

3:45

it's already really so weird. And yet

3:47

I find that it all comes together. OK,

3:50

it

3:50

works together. It doesn't strike

3:52

me as a particularly zany film,

3:55

even though it's very outlandish. Yeah,

3:57

no, that's totally right. I mean, that's the Charlie Kaufman

3:59

thing. thing, right? Where he makes these films

4:02

that are layered in these like incredible, bizarre

4:05

ways and yet you can also teach like

4:07

three acts structure with it if you want

4:09

to. Right? Like it's still nonetheless kind of like

4:12

comes back in like the plot points are

4:14

there when you need them. It can

4:17

go into these directions, right? It can cut to the monkey's

4:19

subconscious sort of dream of

4:22

being a, you know, like kidnap. And

4:24

then like, which makes, on the one hand makes no sense.

4:26

On the other hand, it's just a plot point, right? She's got to get

4:28

untied. Like Lotta is tied in the

4:30

cave and that cage and it turns out that, you

4:32

know, this has been established earlier, right? Any

4:34

good Hollywood film, it's going to like give you a twist

4:37

that previews the twists before. So

4:39

it, you know, she spends like the first half of

4:41

the movie previewing that the chimp has

4:43

like, uh, this dramatic history.

4:45

And of course, that's what saves her later

4:48

on, right? It's completely bizarre, but it's like Hollywood

4:50

one-on-one at the same time.

4:52

Yeah. It's, it's one of those, uh, knowing the rules

4:54

so you can break them kind of mentality.

4:57

And I think that you're absolutely right. Charlie Kaufman

4:59

has it down to a science, which is ironic

5:01

because he's so artistic that it's basically

5:03

a science. Like, uh, have you, have either

5:05

of you seen, I'm thinking of ending things?

5:08

Uh, I saw the first 10 minutes

5:10

of it when I was at a friend's house, but I've not seen anything

5:12

else. It's, it's very, very good,

5:15

but like you really have to pay attention.

5:17

And,

5:18

and which is actually why John Malkovich

5:20

is such an odd film for me, because I

5:22

remember seeing it when I was far too young and being

5:25

just confused. And then I remember catching

5:27

pieces of it on cable, which makes it

5:29

even more confusing, you know,

5:31

to pop in for just 20 minutes of being

5:34

John Malkovich. Actually, can, can reek,

5:36

uh, I've, I've

5:38

done what I've normally done, which is I've, I've been

5:40

so excited that I've launched into this with actual,

5:42

without actually saying what the hell the film is

5:44

about for anybody that is listening that's unfamiliar with it.

5:47

Can you, can you give a synopsis of

5:49

being John Malkovich for the uninitiated? Being

5:52

John Malkovich is about a frustrated

5:55

puppeteer

5:56

who, Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Also a weird bit

5:58

that comes together. Yeah. Thank you.

5:59

A frustrated puppeteer

6:02

played by John Cusack, who is

6:04

in a marriage that he's unhappy

6:06

with for, in my opinion, for reasons.

6:09

He's just a bored dude. And

6:12

he ends up getting a job because he's

6:15

tired of getting punched in the face for doing puppeteering,

6:17

which is a normal issue with puppeteers.

6:20

And

6:21

so he ends up working at this odd office where

6:23

he... I love how

6:26

describing this movie sounds like you're making

6:28

it up as you go. So he

6:31

finds a portal

6:32

in the back of this strange office building he's

6:35

working at,

6:36

where if you go inside the portal, you

6:39

enter John Malkovich's brain

6:41

for 15 minutes and you get to witness what

6:43

he's doing and his life and

6:46

then get dumped out by the New Jersey turnpike.

6:49

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Uh, great

6:51

synopsis. Uh, yeah, and then

6:53

I suppose we don't need to spoil it or

6:55

maybe we'll cross that bridge when we get to it, but

6:58

that's at least a spoiler-free synopsis of the film.

7:01

And yes, it is incredibly outlandish because

7:04

it is literally a portal

7:06

into the mind of Malkovich.

7:08

You know, to go back

7:10

a little bit to Charlie

7:13

Kaufman, this is the first film

7:15

in my memory that

7:17

I called a film by the name of the

7:21

writer as opposed to the director. So,

7:24

like, I don't think of being John Malkovich as a Spike Jones film,

7:26

even though he did a great job with it, and I think

7:29

probably saved it from some of the more outlandish

7:32

bits of Charlie Kaufman. But this is a Charlie

7:34

Kaufman film, and I tend to think of, like,

7:36

adaptation, eternal sunshine,

7:38

and a lot of... Kaufman's the

7:40

only writer that I have that relationship with.

7:42

Matt, being a former film student, you

7:45

probably know a billion writers, but I don't. This

7:48

is one of the only screenwriters I know.

7:50

Right, in terms of writers that are going to be, you

7:52

know, sort of what you... The name you associate with

7:54

a film, Kaufman is, you know, not totally unique,

7:57

but in the contemporary world.

8:00

It's very unusual. And,

8:02

you know, I think a lot

8:04

of credit

8:05

goes to Jones, right? In that he was a

8:07

very, I mean, he was sort of still young at this

8:09

point. But due to his music video career, he had this sort of

8:12

auteur thing to him, right? This

8:16

aura to him. He was this sort of brilliant visual guy with

8:18

the fact that he plays slim videos. And

8:21

he could really do this amazing visual stuff. And

8:24

then you watch the film, and I had the same

8:26

sort of reaction that you just expressed. He is restraining this

8:28

thing. He's not showing off. He's

8:31

letting the story be wild and using,

8:33

you know, visual tricks just when he has to, just when he needs

8:35

to. So it can be a Charlie

8:38

Kaufman film in the best possible way. And

8:41

so that was actually rewatching it. Looking back,

8:43

the restraint that Jones pulls, giving

8:45

you, if you see his music videos, you see some other films

8:47

he's made. He could like amp this up

8:49

to a million. And like Michelle Gondry

8:51

does do that a little bit in Eternal Sunshine. I think

8:53

a little bit to its detriment. But

8:56

Jones just like sort of stays with the material. He

8:58

takes it extremely seriously, even

9:00

though it's completely ridiculous. That's sort of the

9:02

brilliance of the direction. I think that's why it works.

9:04

Yeah. Yeah. And he lets it be a Charlie

9:06

Kaufman movie. And it sort of allows

9:09

a writer to be the star of a movie, which is something

9:11

you almost never see. Yeah. So yeah, I'm with

9:13

you on that. Yeah, I think you're right. He did

9:15

two things in my mind that three things that really grounded

9:17

it. One, the soundtrack is fantastic.

9:20

So to contrast this, I despise

9:22

the soundtrack of Eternal Spi... Eternal

9:25

Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, because I

9:27

don't want that film to be a wacky sitcom

9:30

in an off season of 30 Rock. And that's

9:32

exactly what the soundtrack is. The

9:35

soundtrack to this one is smart

9:38

piano music.

9:39

And it gives it a backdrop

9:42

of an art house film as opposed

9:44

to an acid trip. Like,

9:46

this is not a... If

9:49

the soundtrack were a little bit more

9:52

wacky, this would come off as a

9:54

campy film. And it doesn't. Instead, it

9:56

comes off as this sort of bizarre

9:58

cousin to...

10:00

I don't know, like, 2000-foot Space Odyssey or

10:02

something. Something with depth that's very strange.

10:05

He did a great job with that. The

10:07

lighting to it, I think, actually is important.

10:09

It's a very grungy, dim film. It's

10:12

kind of finchery.

10:13

Yes. David Fincher. Yeah,

10:15

but less shiny than Fincher, even. Yeah.

10:18

Like, it has like a social realist sort of thing to it, right, which is,

10:20

I think that's what attracted me to it

10:22

at first, right? All of these efforts, I mean,

10:25

realism is a funny term when it comes to movies, period.

10:27

But these things are sort of, we associate with like social

10:30

realism, even documentary sort of kind

10:32

of aesthetics, layered on to as

10:35

fantastical a thing as you can find, right?

10:38

I mean, like, the John Cuset character is like

10:40

this dark kind of like, you

10:42

know, sort of masculinity gone

10:43

wrong kind of character that you could make a

10:45

very serious film about. And

10:48

it sort of is that film layered on top

10:50

of all these sort of bizarre twists

10:52

and turns. Yeah, 100%. So

10:56

I read some of the interviews that Kaufman did about

10:58

being John Malkovich. And

11:01

his process for writing this film was

11:03

he'd previously been collaborating with

11:05

a buddy and they were having some

11:08

good synergy, but he decided to

11:10

do a film himself. He was really blocked up. He

11:12

was having a difficult time doing it. And he

11:14

decided he was going to collaborate with

11:16

himself.

11:17

So he basically bifurcated himself into

11:20

two different positions and wrote

11:22

two films and then merged them.

11:24

One film is about a

11:26

sad bored man who

11:28

is falling in love with a woman who is

11:30

not his wife and reconciling

11:32

these differences. And

11:36

then the other film is there's a portal into

11:38

John Malkovich and

11:42

put them together. I

11:44

think Spike Jonze making

11:47

the lighting so dim, I think was

11:49

an intentional choice to offset what

11:52

would be very wacky outlandish science

11:54

fiction. It kind of grounds it.

11:56

It gives it some reality. And the other

11:58

thing I'll say Spike Jonze did is In

12:00

reading the

12:02

the Kaufman interview, the original

12:04

draft he wrote was very, very

12:06

zany and outlandish. Like I'll read this paragraph

12:09

to you that Spike Jonze dragged

12:11

back to earth. In an entirely different

12:13

third act, Craig combats

12:15

the devil in a puppet on puppet battle involving

12:17

Malkovich, a 60-foot tall Harry Truman

12:20

doll, and a death-defying stage performance

12:22

of Equus. When Craig loses,

12:24

the devil inhabits Malkovich's body and

12:26

enslaves mankind, forcing Maxine's men

12:29

and others to dance for their Malkovich-shaped ruler

12:31

as he hovers

12:32

ten feet in the air. Around the corner, Laudie,

12:34

rescued by escaped animals, makes out with her pet

12:37

chimpanzee. The final scene reveals Craig

12:39

to be a puppet himself. Over the closing credits,

12:42

put your hand inside the puppet head by

12:44

They Might Be Giants is supposed to play. So it

12:46

basically just… I was with it until

12:48

They Might Be Giants. In

12:52

the first draft he wrote, like, because you

12:54

see this sometimes, like, one of the tools you

12:56

can do in humor is just escalating

12:59

absurdity to the point where now it's

13:01

just crazy.

13:02

And that seems to be where

13:04

he was going. And Spike Jonze went, no, either

13:06

for purposes of budget, because this was back

13:09

in a period of time where we actually had mid-level films

13:11

or mid-budget films, or because

13:14

he just knew it would be crazy. He kind of drug it to

13:16

the current form that we have, which works great. Yeah.

13:20

That's right. I mean, Kaufman… Kaufman…

13:24

I mean, this… Synecdoche, right, does this

13:26

a little bit where it kind of… Like, his other film, Synecdoche,

13:28

New York, where it kind of, like, he's the director of

13:30

it and it does kind of, like, unravel like

13:32

that. I hate that film. Yeah.

13:35

It really unravels. And it's like, oh, man, give

13:37

this to Spike Jonze, right? Should have given this to

13:40

some people. It should have pumped the

13:42

brakes. So I think we have, like,

13:44

a counterbalance or, like, a control and

13:47

an experiment here. See what happens when

13:49

nobody pumps those brakes. It's not quite

13:51

as crazy as what you just put. But yeah, the end of

13:53

that film, I don't think I'd rewatch

13:55

it. It's sort of like it eats itself,

13:57

right, in this really annoying way.

13:59

three hours long and feels 17 hours

14:02

long. And is this

14:04

really, really artsy,

14:07

mopey story of a playwright

14:09

trying to write a play, but the play metastasizes

14:12

like cancer. And oh

14:15

my god, in the last line of that, I

14:17

think I came up with an ending to my play.

14:19

I was like, oh, fuck you, Charlie Kaufman.

14:22

Fuck you. Just turn the thing off. Yeah,

14:25

no, but that is what happens without... I

14:27

mean, I think part of what

14:29

Jones brings to it is one is just

14:32

sort of a sensibility and sort of

14:35

a

14:35

economy to it. But also his

14:37

background as a music

14:40

video director, sort of like getting

14:42

to things quick, right? Like the

14:44

scenes don't linger. The visuals,

14:47

like he finds that interesting visual, gives it to you, he

14:49

finds the interesting point and moves on from it, right?

14:51

Whereas it seems like Kaufman's sort of natural

14:54

instinct is to go further and further and

14:56

deeper and deeper and longer and longer until you've lost

14:58

the part that was actually what was engaging you. And

15:00

so the film is really good. Every time it's about

15:03

to go off the rails, when we're in that monkey

15:05

dream for a little, we get out of the monkey dream pretty quick,

15:07

right? We get the interesting thing, we get in and out. And

15:09

so I think, again, the combination here, this is like a perfect

15:11

pairing. Well, and I think Spike Jonze,

15:14

people often when

15:16

they look at his music video work, how it's, like

15:18

most music videos, it's kind of big, bombastic,

15:21

colorful, whatever. It's not because

15:23

that's his style, it's because he appreciates

15:26

what

15:26

he has to get across with the material.

15:29

So if the material makes sense visually

15:31

to be bombastic and loud and ridiculous,

15:34

he's going to go for it. And if it's being John Malkovich,

15:37

it's going to be like a scuffed

15:39

and dull David Fincher film, you

15:42

know? And that's something I mean, I've

15:44

been a big fan of Spike Jonze for a long

15:46

time. I mean, Heaton, the first film you and I ever

15:49

spoke about was a Spike Jonze movie with her.

15:51

We talked about her. Yeah. And

15:53

that's another film that benefits greatly

15:56

from restraint

15:56

and from taking the subject

15:58

matter very seriously. And

16:01

not taking it so seriously that

16:03

it almost becomes a parody. Just

16:05

taking it seriously, treating it

16:08

like a story that matters. And I think that

16:10

that's really important in any filmmaking

16:13

processes to take your story seriously,

16:15

at least to some extent. You know what,

16:17

it's funny, like, to get into some... I'm

16:21

way out of my league talking to you guys about film, so

16:24

I'm going to pull it back into humor where I can bullshit

16:26

much easier.

16:28

Improv-based humor

16:30

is very much about earnestness. There's

16:33

a weird situation, Matt and I are in a scene

16:35

where we're beavers getting a divorce. What makes

16:38

that funny is that Matt and I are committed

16:40

to the truth of this scene, that we are

16:42

having a very intense conversation about

16:45

what we're going to do with our beaver baby at

16:47

the dam, and if we're going to split the dam, and it

16:49

works better if we're really into

16:51

it and we're committed to it, right? Whereas

16:54

stand-up tends to be more of,

16:56

ah, rip the rug out from under you, you thought it was this

16:59

wrong, it's this. So stand-up is more

17:01

Zucker Brothers or maybe

17:05

Anchorman. Whereas the

17:07

funniest part of this entire film, in my opinion,

17:09

that made me laugh out loud, is

17:12

when people are acting very normal

17:14

under absurd circumstances. It's

17:16

in the orientation video for the seventh

17:18

of the half floor, where everybody's

17:20

just walking like... They're all just stooped over

17:23

and hunched back, and they're like, oh,

17:25

hey Janet, how are you? I'm pretty good.

17:26

Hey, do you

17:28

know why our floor is only five feet tall?

17:31

It's so funny, and everybody's

17:34

acting like it's normal, and it's brilliantly funny. And

17:37

every time it cuts to them doing normal business

17:39

things, they're hunched over. Yeah, yeah. Hunched

17:41

over, right, because it's the reality. My

17:43

equivalent happens around then is when Orson Bean

17:46

gives Cusack the test.

17:48

So Cusack's in there,

17:50

and he's trying to determine if he's going to be good at filing

17:52

things. So Bean, he says,

17:54

okay, he'll give you a test. He takes two pieces

17:57

of paper, and one he writes a B, and the other

17:59

he just scribbles it.

17:59

on and he asks

18:02

Cusack's character Craig, he asks him which one of these comes

18:04

first in the alphabet and Cusack just deadpan

18:06

says that the symbol on the left is not a letter, sir.

18:09

And they just play it like totally clean,

18:11

totally. He's like, ah, very good. Very

18:13

good. My boy. Very good. Right. Okay.

18:16

Looks like you're qualified for this job on the five foot,

18:18

seven and a half floor. Like the

18:20

ability to sort of fold these things in and sort

18:22

of keep that straight face commit to it. Hey, he's on

18:24

a job interview. He's not going to, he's not going to

18:26

make a joke about it. Right. It's really wonderful

18:29

the way it, it keeps that

18:29

restraint. Also, I love

18:32

Orson Bean. He is my favorite actor. He's

18:34

fantastic. He's so good. No, he's killer.

18:36

He's absolutely killer. I love that his character

18:38

is like 105 years old. He's like super

18:41

well versed in people and things

18:43

and his own feelings, but he's completely

18:46

gaslit by his secretary

18:48

that he doesn't, that he has a speech impediment.

18:52

He's yeah,

18:54

I love Orson Bean. I

18:56

was so enchanted with his performance and rewatching

18:58

this film that I Googled him to be

19:01

like, who is this guy? And

19:03

he's Orson Bean

19:05

one guy, because he was, I think he

19:07

was in his seventies when they filmed this, not

19:09

actually 104. That was just movie magic. He

19:11

was really only in his seventies. He

19:14

had been

19:15

blackballed back in the day

19:17

from Hollywood for dating a communist

19:21

and then rehabilitated

19:24

his career and then became like

19:26

one of the first, what he called neo

19:28

celebrities. Like he was very self-aware of

19:31

I am a celebrity because I'm on Johnny

19:33

Carson. So people think I'm a celebrity. Like,

19:36

and became one of those talking heads on like, you know,

19:38

Hollywood squares and that kind of thing. Yeah.

19:40

And then ended up like it is seventies writing

19:43

articles for Breitbart about how all the

19:46

conservatives were getting blackballed from the same

19:48

sorts of people that used to blackball the commies. So

19:50

we had this like complete arc. And

19:52

then in his nineties, he got hit

19:54

by a car.

19:55

Like he, he died in a, in a basically

19:57

a car accident in his nineties. So.

20:00

So yeah, sorry,

20:02

I shouldn't have mentioned that bit. But anyway, I love

20:04

that actor. Sorry, sorry about that. No, he's

20:06

charming and run over apparently.

20:09

All goes downhill after the commie girlfriend.

20:11

That's how you set yourself up to die in a car accident.

20:14

It'll get you. Yeah, yeah. But

20:16

I love it. I'll say the other thing that,

20:18

so I watched this a couple

20:20

of days ago at the age of almost 39.

20:24

And I watched it for the first time, probably

20:26

at the age of like 16 or so.

20:30

And so the relationships

20:33

are much more meaningful to me now

20:35

than they were before I kissed

20:38

a girl or whatever the chronology was

20:40

back in my earlier life. Like I'm

20:42

aware in this second viewing,

20:45

Craig's a real piece of shit. Like

20:47

he's not a sympathetic character. Like he's-

20:50

Not at all. And is this, you

20:52

guys know Kaufman better than me. I feel like Kaufman likes

20:54

writing characters that have a lot of

20:56

self-hatred.

20:57

They're the protagonists where we're

21:00

curious about them. We're not really rooting for them

21:02

so much. Adaptation is just an exercise

21:05

in self-hatred. At

21:08

times sort of in this worrisome way

21:10

where it seems like it's a romanticization

21:13

of self-hatred, right? But

21:15

I mean, I don't think there's anything redeeming about Craig.

21:18

It was the relationships that stuck out to me.

21:21

Also, I mean, I have a question.

21:23

And we are the exact wrong panel for this

21:25

question. Perfect. Right? But

21:28

Maxine is a really badly written

21:30

character. Is she not?

21:32

Why do they fall in love with Maxine? Like

21:36

she's then- Because she's exactly

21:38

my type.

21:39

That's why. Yeah. I

21:42

don't think that she's thin and she's pretty. I

21:44

think that it's two things. She's

21:46

glamorous, but overwhelmingly

21:48

confident. That is to me

21:50

the defining characteristic of Maxine is she

21:53

is so aware of how

21:55

much potency she has sexually

21:58

or however we want to define it.

22:00

that she does not need you and doesn't

22:02

care and can just dismiss you. And

22:04

like, what's that term, nagging? She is

22:07

nagging at an industrial strength

22:09

capacity. And I think that's what's going on. Right.

22:12

Which is why I bring it up so that then the argument that you're making is she's the mirror image

22:14

of Craig then, right? Yeah, could be. So

22:17

Craig, you know, that Craig's like the impression

22:19

in the dirt, right,

22:22

that like the Maxine bomb sets off

22:24

or something, right? It's all absence kind of, like all

22:26

sort of lack of what's out there. So

22:29

they're both like kind of

22:30

self obsessed or- You

22:32

go 100%. Selfish people. It's

22:35

just that she actually has some shit to hold over other

22:37

people whereas Craig does not.

22:39

Right. It's all power

22:41

in there. And then the question, I mean, I guess this is the deeper sort of personal

22:43

question like, okay, is that like sort of

22:45

good, clever writing or are those just thin people, right?

22:47

Are those just sort of thinly rendered characters? You

22:51

know, my real question, I guess, it was, so

22:53

I get why, so I totally buy the argument

22:55

for Craig is just this sort of thing

22:58

that hates himself, has no self confidence,

23:01

doesn't like, doesn't even know what he wants necessarily.

23:03

And she's the opposite of that. But why does Lada,

23:06

played by Cameron Diaz, right,

23:08

the husband of Craig,

23:10

why does she fall in love with her so much? Right?

23:14

Why that's that, that was the relationship that to me

23:17

seemed like, oh, sexy on paper we'll have

23:19

Cameron Diaz and Catherine Keener, you

23:21

know, fall in love. Like that sounds fun. But

23:23

like, that is the part that didn't quite grab me.

23:25

I don't know if you have a different take on that. Well,

23:28

to back up a little bit with

23:31

Craig, I don't

23:34

think he is a thinly written character.

23:36

I actually think it was very clever in how Kaufman

23:38

wrote him. The telltale sign for

23:40

him early on that I caught in this

23:43

viewing that I didn't initially is

23:45

his wife, Lottie comes in and says, Elijah's

23:48

feeling kind of sick. Can you check on him? And

23:50

he says, which one's Elijah? When

23:53

I watched it as a kid, the presumption

23:55

that I had was, oh, this must

23:57

be a veterinarian. She has so

23:59

many.

23:59

animals living in the house that he can't possibly

24:02

keep track of the various transient creatures

24:04

coming through. And on this viewing, I was like, no,

24:07

they have a chimp and a parrot. Yeah,

24:09

and a dog. Like, if Bat and I were

24:11

roommates, and Bat

24:13

had a parrot, a dog, and a chimp,

24:16

I am confident I would learn the

24:18

name of a chimp. If a chimp lived in my house,

24:20

I would be- You have a lot of chimps. I

24:23

think I memorized up to seven chimps named Tom Babbitt. Yeah,

24:26

I could, Dunbar's number would definitely- Less

24:29

than five.

24:29

But Craig is so self-obsessed

24:32

and so uncaring that when a motherfucking

24:35

chimp lives in his house, that

24:37

is beneath his scrutiny to learn

24:40

the name of the chimp. So I

24:42

thought he was pretty good. With

24:44

the relationship,

24:46

it might very well be shoddy writing, I

24:48

don't know. I think that it also gets

24:50

into some of the deeper themes as well, which

24:53

is,

24:54

Lottie, they use the term transsexual,

24:56

which I think has now been

24:59

displaced by- Transgender.

25:04

Thank you, transgender. And

25:06

so there's a little bit of that. I don't feel like that's a

25:09

prominent thing. It's almost kind of a benign

25:11

joke or a neutral joke in it. I don't

25:13

feel like Kaufman's really making a statement, but

25:16

we are seeing

25:18

Lottie be wildly

25:20

in love with Maxine in her body and in

25:22

the body of John Malkovich. And then when the

25:25

entire trip concludes, back in her

25:27

body. So there seems to be a emotional

25:30

fixation on Maxine rather than

25:32

just a physical sensation. At least that's my

25:35

take on it because it exists

25:37

regardless of what body she's in. Well,

25:39

I want to mention the only moment in the

25:41

entire film

25:42

that I feel something for Craig

25:45

is when he's doing the puppet performance

25:48

on the street. That's what I was going to talk about. Yeah.

25:50

And he gets punched in the face because he's doing like

25:53

some sexual stuff. He's doing

25:55

a Rottica for children on the streets of New York.

25:57

Yeah. And he gets punched in the face.

25:59

And when he walks into the pet store that his wife's

26:02

at, she's just like, honey, again? And

26:04

she's like, why? Which again is amazing

26:07

on its own. Again is the funniest word in the movie, I

26:09

think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then

26:11

the way he looks at her earnestly when she

26:13

says, like, why do you do this to yourself? And he

26:15

just says, I'm

26:16

a puppeteer. That's

26:19

the only, that's the one moment where I'm

26:21

like, I identify with

26:23

this man. I identify

26:25

with his chosen suffering. Oh,

26:28

see, that made me dislike

26:30

him more weirdly. To me

26:33

it's like, whenever the thing you love makes

26:35

your life suck. And I feel like creatives

26:37

deal with that a lot. See, conversely,

26:41

as a fellow creative, the

26:43

world doesn't owe me anything. Like, I don't

26:46

get to go, I'm a creative and

26:48

everybody has to go, yay, okay, you

26:50

get to do exactly what you want and we're gonna pay

26:53

you well for it. Like, them's not

26:55

the cards. And then he wants to specifically

26:57

be a professional world-class

26:59

puppeteer. Which maybe

27:02

Jim Henson and three other people. Well, they

27:05

pause it, they pause it, that other celebrity

27:07

puppeteer, right? In

27:09

order to establish the concept. The guy with the

27:12

big, Emily Dickinson. Emily Dickinson,

27:15

the bell of the Amherst. You know

27:17

what's funny? One of my good

27:19

friends, David Bizarro, is a puppeteer and

27:21

I have been to puppeteer parties. Like, there is actually

27:24

a vibrant New York City puppeteer community.

27:27

Of course there is.

27:28

They all know each other. I

27:30

used to be, David was

27:32

on a

27:34

improv puppet team called

27:36

Team Lopez and I think I was the

27:38

only regular audience member that wasn't married

27:40

to one of the puppeteers. So I would show up and be like,

27:42

yeah, Team Lopez. So there actually

27:45

are puppeteers, but

27:47

it's, I think, somewhat funny in that if someone

27:49

says, like, you know, I'm gonna be a painter, we're

27:51

like, man, that's tough, good luck with that. And he's like, no,

27:54

I'm gonna be a puppeteer, which is even more

27:56

esoteric and more

27:59

limited in terms of career.

27:59

opportunity. And I want to mention,

28:02

I really mean I felt for him only

28:04

in that moment.

28:05

Every other time he expresses

28:08

what he wants in life,

28:09

I was like rolling my eyes. But the

28:11

one time that he just shrugs about why he lets

28:14

people punch him in the face and says it's because he's

28:16

a puppeteer, that's the

28:18

one thing I really identified with is just

28:20

because I was like, you know what? Why do

28:22

you let life beat you down? Why do you have such

28:24

a crappy car? It's like, because I have

28:27

a thing I want to be and it matters

28:29

to me more than literally everything. And

28:31

I'm probably stupid and a bad person.

28:36

That's the moment where you can't

28:39

unsee adaptation in Being

28:41

John Malkovich. Yes, absolutely. So,

28:43

you know, obviously, adaptation comes later, so it's not

28:45

there on the first viewing. But

28:48

now, watching it, that specific moment in particular,

28:51

right, where he, okay, now he is, he's

28:53

Charlie Kaufman,

28:54

right? From Being John Malkovich,

28:56

I mean, from adaptation, right? He has

28:59

to suffer for this thing that you can't tell if he's brilliant

29:01

at it or terrible at it, right? Like, in

29:03

some ways, he's obviously brilliant, but in other ways, he's obviously terrible.

29:06

And actually, that informed my entire,

29:08

like, I also, I'll be honest,

29:11

I got a bit of a cold, so I took, I watched this

29:13

film with a nice glass of Nyquil. So,

29:15

I'm kind of coming in now. Did you do that of a wine glass,

29:17

like a classy person? Of course, I did. What do you think?

29:19

What do you think of my piece of glass? Of course,

29:22

of course. You got a PhD. Yeah,

29:24

the fire and the, yeah, of course.

29:27

But, you know, you sort of, then you

29:29

see sort of the theme, right, which becomes Kaufman's,

29:32

like, major theme, right? This artist who suffers

29:34

and is, like, sort of brilliant and sort of terrible. But

29:37

then from that point forward in the film, I was like, oh,

29:40

this is, you know, this

29:42

is Charlie Kaufman from adaptation.

29:44

And then, you know, some, like, Catherine

29:47

Keener's character's got a little bit of Donald, like, this

29:49

overconfident sexuality that

29:51

doesn't make total sense to me. And I kept reading the films

29:53

back and forth. And it's because

29:54

he has that moment where you do feel for him

29:56

somewhat when he says I'm a puppeteer. Because, like,

29:59

if you want to have a

29:59

watch adaptation like Charlie, just stop writing

30:02

man. It's okay. There's other

30:04

things in the world, but he can't stop.

30:08

A defining moment for me in New York City

30:10

when I was like, I'm not going to another goddamn

30:12

open mic was because open

30:14

mic for standups in New York City is very brutal.

30:17

It's a lot of people that like truly

30:19

need to go get therapy. There to get you. Instead,

30:22

telling horrible masturbation jokes

30:24

to each other. And it's just there's a lot.

30:26

And I went to a

30:30

a workshop one time and the

30:32

guy leading it standup comedian that ran a bunch of

30:34

rooms around town was

30:36

doing advice. We were doing question time and I went,

30:39

yeah, I'm having a real hard time motivating

30:41

myself to go to these open mics. And he goes,

30:43

let me tell you something. I thought about

30:45

killing myself the first three years I did

30:47

standup comedy. Every time I walked

30:50

by a subway, I thought

30:52

about jumping in and I fucking stayed

30:54

with it. I was like, you're crazy.

30:57

You should have taken up kite flying. Like you should

30:59

have become an accountant

31:00

or something and then just picked a hobby. But

31:02

I do get it though. Like, Henrik, like I've

31:04

thought about, I really want to get a bust of failure,

31:07

the Greek muse of humor, because

31:09

that is who I serve. And I'm

31:12

this like shit rogue cleric

31:15

that is not even employed by one

31:17

of the temples, but I'm still under her

31:19

fucking auspices. So I get it. To

31:22

backtrack a little bit, Matt,

31:24

the relationship between Lottie

31:27

and Maxine, do you think that

31:29

is just Kaufman playing

31:32

with two hot ladies for fun

31:34

on camera or is it speaking

31:36

to a deeper theme of

31:38

love transcending bodies and genders? Are

31:42

we stooping or are we stretching?

31:45

Yeah, I mean, that's the one that I couldn't quite get my, I

31:47

buy your arguments for the Craig and

31:50

Maxine elements. I

31:52

don't think we

31:54

get enough Lottie to truly

31:56

explain it to the animals

31:59

never see. to be weird to me

32:01

with her.

32:02

Whereas the puppets cease to be weird in a

32:04

sense because it becomes this theme inside

32:07

the Malkovich world of you know like

32:09

we need, Cusick has to be a puppeteer for

32:11

a number of reasons, not the least of which is he's going to inhabit

32:13

Malkovich and turn him into a puppet right.

32:16

So it's extremely bizarre but it's entirely

32:19

like sort of diegetic it's in the story right.

32:21

Whereas in I maybe I'm missing something deeper

32:24

the the the the animals

32:26

the the like I can't connect

32:28

so what do we know about her right. We know she loves

32:30

animals right. She knows she's deeply

32:32

sympathetic and sort of empathetic and caring.

32:35

She wants a baby.

32:36

She wants a baby right. So right yeah right she was

32:38

she's a nurturer right and she really cares

32:40

about sort of the deeper elements of these

32:43

animals right. She's really worried about the childhood trauma

32:45

of the chimp and and here the

32:47

thing that I wanted that I didn't get is I never

32:49

got the equivalent of her

32:51

in her relationship to Maxine

32:53

right. What is Maxine doesn't have that

32:55

backstory doesn't have that Maxine's a hot

32:58

bitch. She's just sort of skinny

33:00

pretty and mean yeah right. You're a real

33:02

bright lipstick and she's real confident yeah.

33:04

And that's the opposite of what she cares about that we know.

33:07

We know she loves like the dirty smelly chimp

33:09

who's got a sad story but like I mean

33:11

once you learn it you realize like oh she can really

33:14

bond with the chimp in ways or whatever and

33:17

I just don't I never I mean I'm certainly

33:19

willing to listen to an argument but the rest

33:21

of the relationship stuff is sort of tight enough

33:23

to me and I see the characters and

33:25

I don't really get a lot of seems like a half-finished

33:28

character to me and that makes the relationship between

33:30

Maxine a lot of seem half-finished to me as well. That's

33:33

fair however I do wonder

33:35

Craig is not a confident character. Craig

33:38

is a is a mopey character that

33:40

that you know uh plays in his his

33:43

like he says workshop but plays in his closet

33:45

with his dolls. Yeah basement. I

33:48

could see Maxine being electrifying

33:51

to somebody that is locked

33:53

in this collapsing

33:55

relationship with a with a a

33:57

person lacking confidence. Maxine is.

33:59

vibrant, alive, and confident.

34:02

So I could see that, but I think you're right though. The

34:04

depth of Maxine is never really established.

34:07

Nor is there ever any reason any of us are supposed

34:10

to like Maxine. Like we don't fall in love

34:12

with Maxine. There's no part where we're like, oh, we're

34:14

rooting for that lady. Like she doesn't, she never

34:16

has any growth. Well, and I think Lottie,

34:19

I mean, this is a half-baked opinion, or

34:22

thought about her, but like it seems

34:24

to me like she's kind of, I mean, she's

34:26

definitely in a rut.

34:27

And she's in a situation where

34:30

all her life revolves around is taking

34:32

care of the chimp, taking care of the

34:34

bird, taking care of that iguana, taking

34:36

care of her husband, and then taking

34:39

care of the store. And then what does she want? What

34:41

is the one thing that she wants she won't get is to have

34:43

to take care of a baby. Like she's

34:45

kind of doing all these things. And I feel like

34:48

her falling in love with Maxine or, and as

34:51

well as, you know, just loving being John

34:53

Malkovich, loving that she's what

34:55

it's like to be a man. Maybe her

34:58

just simply seeing

35:00

what life has to offer other than what she's already

35:03

convinced herself she has to be all about, which

35:05

is you're supposed to be all about your husband. You're supposed to be all

35:07

about your pets. You're supposed to be all about your business.

35:10

And all of a sudden she's like, wait, maybe I'm all about having

35:12

a dick

35:13

and a bitch,

35:14

like a really bitchy woman. So

35:18

to the credit of the actors of this

35:20

movie, and I'll

35:23

get to, we haven't even really talked about John Malkovich yet. One

35:27

of the things that I am impressed

35:29

by this film is this is peak Cameron

35:31

Diaz. This is Cameron Diaz a year or two. Yeah,

35:34

she barriers herself. Within three

35:36

years of something about Mary,

35:39

where Cameron Diaz is the preeminent

35:41

blonde hottie of the United States. And

35:43

she is now the

35:44

mousy housewife who pales in

35:47

comparison to the hot femme

35:49

fatale, which is an impressive thing for her to do

35:51

at that time. And I'll also

35:53

like hats off to John Malkovich,

35:56

not only on an excellent performance, but on

35:58

being a world-class.

35:59

class good sport to even

36:02

do this film. He

36:04

is damned if you do, damned if you don't.

36:07

If the film sucks and it bombs

36:09

and there's no way to know how it's going to go when you're

36:11

reading this crazy script, his

36:14

name's on it. That's going to be him. It's

36:16

going to be the John Malkovich bomb.

36:19

No one's going to think of it as the Charlie Kaufman film.

36:22

They're going to think of it as the John Malkovich is an egotistical

36:24

asshole who started

36:27

a film about John Malkovich where the whole, and

36:29

it didn't work asshole, but if it

36:31

works well, then he's

36:34

an egotistical asshole for appearing

36:36

in this film about him. And if it does moderately

36:39

well,

36:40

that's the rest of his career, which I think

36:42

is exactly what happened. I think

36:44

I've seen John Malkovich and maybe three other

36:46

films, one of which was Transformers. This

36:49

is in my mind the apotheosis

36:51

of John Malkovich. The key score is way

36:53

up though, right? The number of human

36:56

beings who know who John Malkovich is, it

36:58

did hit in that sense, right?

37:00

He goes from being essentially

37:03

a non-name actor to most filmgoers

37:05

to at least for a period of time. It might be fading.

37:07

We're talking,

37:08

oh God, I don't want to think how long ago, 20, whatever years ago.

37:11

But

37:12

what percentage of people who know John Malkovich

37:14

know him not even from having seen the film,

37:16

but knowing there's a film called Being John Malkovich?

37:19

So he sort of hit the upside, right? The

37:22

middle straight or whatever, it seemed very unlikely. But

37:25

like, I agree. Going

37:27

into it though, you're looking at this and like, it can

37:30

go wrong in 25 ways and right in

37:32

one way. But you know, you're right. Because this

37:34

is something I don't know. I know John Malkovich

37:37

as the actor in Being John Malkovich. Yeah, right.

37:41

Which they

37:42

make fun of in the film in a nice way, right? The

37:44

guy from the Jewel Thief movie. Which they also do. It's

37:47

so great where no one actually

37:49

knows where the hell John Malkovich is. No, he's

37:52

famous. They know that bit. But there's this

37:54

running joke about him being a Jewel Thief. The other bit

37:56

that made me laugh in the film is when John

37:58

Malkovich goes to the

37:59

the portal into his up so conscious comes

38:02

out on the other side and like really

38:05

gives the stentorian performance

38:07

of this has to be shut

38:10

down for the love of

38:12

god and then he walks

38:14

down the road and somebody goes, think fast Malkovich

38:16

and throws a beer can in his head. It's great.

38:20

Right. The idea of this person driving down the

38:22

Jersey turnpike from the back Yeah,

38:24

recognizes John Malkovich. Let's

38:26

throw a beer can in his head. Yeah.

38:28

Oh, it's so funny. And that's one of

38:30

the, one of the things I love about that

38:32

sequence is when Malkovich goes

38:34

into his own portal into his

38:37

own mind, he's in a restaurant

38:39

where everyone is John Malkovich

38:41

and the only words they can say are Malkovich

38:44

and this sounds silly and it

38:47

is, but the

38:49

sheer fear and terror

38:52

that it incites in John Malkovich

38:54

himself and how when he gets spit out,

38:56

he's like, I've seen things no one's ever

38:58

supposed to see and it has to be destroyed.

39:02

That is so amazing

39:03

because it makes you it makes you actually

39:06

think about, wait, no, but really, what would I think

39:09

if I went into a world where I was everyone

39:11

and we can only say my

39:13

last name? He, Malkovich,

39:16

I think does a great job with this film. He

39:19

also,

39:20

he's a good comedic actor. He's very good

39:22

at restraint. One of the other funniest

39:24

scenes of the whole thing and I don't quite

39:27

know why this works, but it's,

39:29

I think it's when Lottie comes through the

39:31

portal into John Malkovich and he's buying towels

39:34

and it's just this long

39:37

like, yeah, do you have corn

39:39

flour? Okay, no. Well, then

39:41

I guess I'll take Primrose and it's like

39:44

using these tertiary pastel

39:46

colors. Like, it's, it's so

39:48

bland. It's, it's so blase.

39:51

It really

39:52

emphasizes you are

39:55

not going into an exciting person doing an exciting

39:57

thing. You're going into like kind

39:59

of a B level. just doing his day

40:01

and how thrilled people are to do that. They're

40:04

so happy to not be them anymore. And

40:07

that's the thing that's really kind

40:09

of heartbreaking and endearing at

40:11

the same time about being John Malkovich is every

40:13

single person

40:15

is like crying when they leave

40:17

his body because they're so happy they

40:19

weren't themselves for some amount of time. Yeah, yeah. That's

40:22

right. And

40:24

the fact that they just line up to pay $200 to

40:26

do it again and again and again

40:30

That's a great moment where, you know, it's

40:32

Maxine saying, you know, what do you do? You get to be

40:35

somebody else for 15 minutes. Like,

40:37

well, you know, who can I be? And there's like, you

40:39

know, the person. You know, there's a lot of that.

40:41

She goes, you can be John Malkovich. John Malkovich. He's

40:43

like, well, that's number two on this. That's my second choice. Yeah,

40:46

yeah, yeah. He's random. Which I

40:48

love it. That guy's like, well, I'd like to be the president,

40:50

but if that's taken, John Malkovich

40:52

is my second. Yeah. And

40:54

then he starts spilling his guts about his insecurities.

40:57

How he's like, I've always been a fat man. They're like,

40:59

do you want to go

41:00

in now or not? Like they have no desire

41:02

to treat the underlying issues. They're

41:05

just like, look, you're gonna be somebody else so you

41:07

can leave. We're not gonna listen to your I was a fat kid

41:09

story. Henrik, do

41:11

you think that's the main theme of the film is

41:14

escapism? Because I suspect

41:17

for me, the things that really stood out in terms of themes,

41:19

as opposed to just the crazy

41:22

premise, which is really the showstealer,

41:25

the big themes that struck

41:27

out to me were

41:29

having a sad, desperate life and

41:31

trying to escape it and just fixation

41:34

on celebrities, qua celebrity. Those are the two

41:36

things that seem to me to be what he was playing around with in terms

41:39

of themes. I think so. And I do

41:41

think that there is an element of just, yeah, everybody

41:43

wants to be somebody else. Everybody wants

41:45

to escape from who

41:47

they are. And some people

41:51

desperately want control. And

41:53

I think that's like not a lightly

41:56

veiled thing because he's a puppeteer. He

41:58

literally wants to control.

41:59

puppets and make them do as he pleases.

42:03

And what he realizes is his

42:05

dream is to control others or

42:07

to control these whatever, but then the comeuppance

42:09

at the end is that

42:11

Cusack ends up spoiler

42:13

alert. He ends up stuck in someone's

42:16

mind as a viewer forever,

42:18

which is similar to the, the, the horrors of

42:21

a get out that, that eventually

42:23

will replace you and you'll just be a

42:25

passer by in your own eyes.

42:27

And that's the thing. Cusack ends

42:29

up in his own literal hell. He

42:32

will never, ever control anything

42:34

again. He'll only be a passive observer. It's

42:37

an indictment of movies in a

42:39

sense though, right? Right. Like

42:41

what happens is that Cusack gets locked watching

42:43

a movie for, for his whole life, right?

42:46

That sort of doing, doing the thing that you

42:48

are doing, right? Sort of trying to living vicariously

42:50

through this, this screen in front of you.

42:52

Right. That's the ultimate hell in this world,

42:54

right? Is to be a passive viewer, to be

42:57

somebody who's, who's

42:57

out of control. Um,

43:00

and it's worth noting that Malkovich does not play himself

43:02

or at least doesn't seem like he does. No. Right. He

43:04

plays John Horatio Malkovich. Yes.

43:07

Is that just, is that John Horatio? That's

43:09

not his name. Fast. No, great. Even

43:12

he is not himself. This, this is a

43:14

character very similar to John

43:16

Malkovich, but a little bit. It's a world,

43:18

right? Where, where John Malkovich, it seems

43:21

to be more or less John Malkovich, but he's not

43:23

John Malkovich. He's John Horatio Malkovich. He

43:25

did not want to play himself literally.

43:28

So he played a character like

43:30

himself. That those were his own words

43:32

about it. No, that makes, that, that

43:35

makes sense. Um, like I, like, uh,

43:38

in a, in a very, very minor level, I used

43:40

to do a program called mostly weekly

43:42

and I was the host, but we started

43:45

creating character attributes for the hosts that

43:47

weren't actually me and it gets real complicated to

43:49

that point. Cause you're like, okay, well now

43:51

it's not really me. It's a character

43:53

like me. And then by the end I was like, man,

43:56

I wish we'd picked a fake name for this. Cause then we,

43:58

we could have gone.

43:59

different direction because now like if I say

44:02

this thing, people are like, Hey, I heard that you hate

44:04

cake. And it's like, no, that's a bit. Yeah.

44:08

Um, and I'm sure you've noticed this with actors.

44:10

Um, some actors cannot do

44:12

be

44:13

themselves on camera like and

44:15

talk to a camera or whatever. I've, I've

44:18

learned that a lot working with actors that like they'll,

44:20

they'll, uh, be able to, you know, sob their

44:22

eyes out while naked in front of 20 strangers. But

44:25

if you say, Hey, could you look into this camera and say, I

44:27

am your name and I'm thrilled to have you

44:29

here today for blah, blah, blah. And they're just like,

44:31

um,

44:32

what? And you're

44:35

just like, Oh, say it as you. Yeah.

44:37

And meanwhile I can just, and I know Heaton,

44:39

I know you're the exact same way. Like I can just be like, what

44:42

am I getting across? All right, roll that thing.

44:43

Yeah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm a monkey.

44:46

I dance for whatever you need. Yeah. To

44:48

the point where I did, uh, a friend of mine

44:50

was doing a live coverage of the midterms

44:53

about a month ago from our, from when we were recording

44:55

this and, uh, I was on for three

44:57

hours and drank like three quarters of a bottle

44:59

of Prosecco the first two hours and I'm having

45:02

a great time just getting sloppy and everything. And

45:04

then he goes, uh, like, and I'm, I'm

45:06

like, you know, roughed up hair, tied

45:09

out

45:10

wacky friend on, on the set. And

45:12

then he goes, okay, Hey guys, we're going to record a podcast

45:14

real quick, uh, everybody. And then like, I just go,

45:17

all right. Yeah. Justin, I think that, uh, actually

45:19

the, the, the midterm coverage has indicated

45:21

that Trump and like, and it was apparently really

45:23

freaky for people in the audience because they're watching

45:26

me get drunker and drunker and then all of a sudden

45:28

be dead clean sober. And they were like,

45:30

so is heat and faking the drunkness

45:33

or is he always drunk and faking sobriety? Like,

45:36

what is he? But yeah, but I know exactly what you're talking about on that ability

45:38

of like, I can, I, I

45:40

was sick the other day. I went and did stand up. I

45:42

was fine right when I got on. Uh,

45:45

uh, before I forget, uh, there, there's

45:47

a, like a metaphysical element

45:49

to this film that I, I want to work out.

45:52

Uh, at the end of the film, Dr. Lester

45:55

at all,

45:56

all go into Malkovich, uh, and,

45:58

and become Malkovich. So, is

46:00

it that Dr. Lester is

46:02

controlling Malkovich and all of his friends

46:05

are in the passenger seat voluntarily

46:07

or are they all kind of, do

46:10

they all have a hand on a steering wheel, a

46:12

bit like a Ouija board? Is this a Ouija board

46:14

situation for John Malkovich? It has

46:16

to be a Ouija board, right? Because it has to contrast

46:18

to the situation that Craig is in.

46:20

Yeah, you're right. Yeah. So,

46:22

I was thinking the same thing. My question is, can they talk to each other?

46:25

Oh, interesting. Like, you know, so I

46:28

think I take it. Does Lottie and Maxine

46:30

see each other when they go into, I mean, granted

46:32

they're in the weird subconscious thing, but they're able

46:34

to see each other in that world. Right, but they're

46:37

both there. Yeah. Yeah.

46:39

So, I think the Ouija board approach has to be right. Again,

46:42

because like the nightmare of this is being stuck in

46:44

a movie for your whole life as opposed to a video

46:47

game, I guess, or something like that. Whereas they

46:49

are all basically in a chat

46:51

room feeling

46:52

the vitality of

46:54

his body and able to talk to each

46:56

other. No, I think we should brush

46:58

our teeth and then eventually they work up kind of a rhythm like

47:01

when you're dancing. Yeah, that makes sense, right? So,

47:03

it's Herman's head then, basically. Yeah.

47:06

If that reference is going to be

47:08

too elder millennial for you. Very apropos

47:10

for the time period. Oh, that's perfect.

47:13

Yeah. Yeah. In

47:16

fact, I want to look up and make sure Charlie Kaufman didn't write Herman's

47:18

head. But

47:20

yeah, you can Google it if you're

47:22

not 40 years old. So a couple

47:24

of other considerations in the film,

47:27

this never occurred to me till this viewing, Maxine

47:29

never goes in. She never

47:32

goes in, which is mind blowing to me

47:34

when I consider the implications of that, that

47:37

she just sees a way to make $200. She

47:40

doesn't care about anybody else. She doesn't want to be. That's

47:43

her thing, right? Right. Like her

47:45

thing is that she seems to love who she is,

47:48

I guess until maybe the very end she gets weirded

47:50

out like at the end. But yeah,

47:52

but exactly. She's the one person

47:54

in though in I think this film posits a world

47:57

in which she is the only person in the entire universe

47:59

who does not want to be.

47:59

to escape herself. She thinks

48:02

all of her terrible jokes are funny to her. Like,

48:05

yeah, she's like thin and pretty, but she

48:07

thinks she's thinner and prettier than she is. Right?

48:09

Like- She can't be that

48:12

successful either, or she would be- She works in the seventh

48:14

and a half floor. Working in the seventh and a half floor. No

48:17

one with five feet of clearance in their

48:19

offices doing particularly well in their

48:21

career ambitions. She's not escaping there.

48:23

She definitely doesn't need to escape herself. And she

48:25

doesn't need to become John Malkovich because she can

48:28

have John Malkovich. Oh, interesting.

48:29

Yeah. So she doesn't

48:32

feel that need for escapism or

48:35

to live vicariously through someone

48:37

else because she can just get that person to lust after

48:39

her.

48:40

Man, now, see, now I feel like I get

48:42

Maxine. See, this was very, this has been very

48:44

productive because now I get it. Yeah,

48:46

she's the only one who has any degree

48:48

of liking oneself

48:51

and that would make her incredibly attractive.

48:54

Yeah. You're all

48:56

right. Yeah, confidence and self-esteem are

48:58

attractive traits. The

49:01

other bit, and I'm still trying to work this out.

49:03

So in the epilogue,

49:05

Lottie and Maxine are together. They have a

49:07

kid.

49:08

Lottie is a

49:10

woman, whereas presenting is a woman.

49:13

She's got long hair. She doesn't- Yeah, she's

49:15

a woman. So yeah. So

49:17

like she, in the course of the film,

49:20

she thinks in her words, I think I'm a

49:22

transsexual Craig, don't stay

49:25

in the way of my actualization as a man. He's

49:28

very dismissive of this, if

49:30

not freaked out by it. She doesn't appear

49:32

to go that track after the Malkovich

49:35

experience concludes. That does not appear to be a thing. She seems

49:37

to be content

49:38

being herself with Maxine.

49:40

She seems to be a lesbian, yes. That's a simple

49:42

reading. So

49:45

yeah, my interpretation of that was she

49:47

enjoyed the confidence that she

49:49

got being John Malkovich, and she enjoyed

49:51

some sense of power in

49:54

his life that she felt contrasted

49:56

with her powerlessness in her life as

49:58

Lottie, wife of-

49:59

Palpatine living in, you know,

50:02

a horrible dingy apartment. And

50:04

that once she goes through this

50:06

experience, she is

50:07

not so much concerned about altering

50:10

genders, but she does actually have

50:12

lust for Maxine, love Maxine. And so that

50:14

that's kind of her arc of being okay

50:17

with herself and achieving the romantic

50:19

climax.

50:20

And maybe she

50:22

found out that she deserved to be with

50:24

someone who doesn't hate themselves.

50:27

And that's maybe that's maybe that's where Maxine

50:29

kind of gets a redemption is

50:31

that maybe Maxine's belief

50:34

that she's wonderful and she's so great, maybe it's catching.

50:37

I'm not sure, but maybe. Although

50:40

like I, you know the Myers-Briggs test?

50:43

I am really high on

50:45

Jay. I'm very high on judging. It's very

50:47

difficult for me to watch films

50:49

and not go, this person's terrible. They

50:51

should be in prison. Like, cause I get

50:54

all of the characters in this film are bad people.

50:57

Even, even Dr. Lester, who

50:59

is so charming, is literally

51:02

living in someone else's body that he's imprisoned.

51:04

And that is getting all of his friends to repeat

51:07

the process

51:07

to John Malkovich. Like he, he

51:09

is a, they're all bad people. They're all

51:12

effectively enslaving someone for

51:14

their own machinations. It's just that they're just you know. What

51:16

about Malkovich?

51:17

Is Malkovich? Malkovich is the only

51:19

character and possibly his friend, Charlie.

51:22

Charlie Sheen. Yeah, Charlie Sheen, yeah. Although even

51:24

then at the end of the film, Charlie Sheen is going

51:26

to be inducted into the next round of this. So Charlie,

51:29

but you're right. Malkovich is

51:32

a, at least a morally

51:34

neutral character. He seems to be an okay guy

51:36

and he gets constantly. He gets a little

51:38

horny and, you know, basically

51:40

in bounds. Yeah. There's no ethical lapses

51:43

that I saw with Malkovich. He's the only one.

51:45

But everybody else in the film is willing

51:47

to subvert other people

51:49

for their own interests on a regular basis.

51:52

Do you know who John Malkovich thought should

51:54

be the lead in this film? Because he loved

51:57

the script, but hated the idea of being the main

51:59

character. He

52:00

thought it should be, and I'm not kidding,

52:02

I read up on this, he thought it should have been

52:05

being Tom Cruise. He thought

52:07

it would have been so much more interesting

52:09

because Tom Cruise is much more eccentric

52:12

and popular and da da da da da da. Doesn't that

52:14

ruin it though? I agree it does. I think

52:17

you beat Tom Cruise by just watching a Tom Cruise

52:19

movie, right? Like, I mean, in some sense, right?

52:22

Like,

52:23

Tom Cruise embodies movie starness.

52:25

Like, it's in that, it's a ground that in another reality would seem

52:27

to me. You would lose the

52:29

contrast between the film and the reality in the

52:31

film. But from a producer

52:34

standpoint, I feel like it would

52:35

make sense because it would bring you more money

52:38

if you got him to commit to it. It would bring more

52:40

audience if you got him to commit to it. And I

52:42

guess it would be wackier and zerier. But

52:45

there's no comedy. Everybody would

52:47

love to spend 15 minutes seeing

52:49

what the hell Tom Cruise is up to, right? Like, there's

52:52

no incongruity to that. Like, the thing

52:54

that emphasizes the themes that you're bringing out is the fact that

52:56

like, I

52:57

mean, right now, if I said you could be John

53:00

Malkovich right now for 15 minutes, I think I

53:02

might rather go get a cup of coffee. I don't know. I'd

53:04

do it. What is he going

53:07

to be doing? He's eating ramen noodles

53:09

and he's looking at Reddit. Like, it's that. He's

53:11

doing what you're doing, right? You wouldn't even notice necessarily.

53:14

You know, whereas at least in my mind, if I chose to be Tom

53:17

Cruise, that's like going on a roller coaster or something. Right?

53:19

That whole line. I mean, the thing about it is that they're in that

53:21

line waiting to do nothing. Yeah, couldn't agree with you

53:23

more. Waiting to bite topa,

53:26

topan towels, right? Like, that's the

53:28

comedy, right? I

53:30

think you're right. 100%. I don't think the comedy, the

53:32

comedy is that juxtaposition between

53:36

the desperate escapism and

53:38

thrill of being a celebrity. And

53:40

the celebrity in question is a largely

53:43

unknown, frequently mistaken, pretty

53:45

low energy guy doing bland,

53:48

mundane quotidian tasks, right? Yeah. If

53:51

it's this Tom Cruise would be working for that. If it's this

53:53

Tom Cruise would be working for

53:53

that. Right? That there's a fist pump that when they land in the turnpike is

53:56

funny because like he was just ordering

53:58

towels or whatever it was.

53:59

At least in my mind, Tom Cruise would be whatever,

54:02

some Scientology route, whatever. Or a

54:04

flying airplane. Yeah, right,

54:06

right. So you go, yes, and be like, oh, that makes sense.

54:09

The joke is all in that. Yeah, exactly. It

54:11

had been Tom Cruise. I don't think they would have

54:13

been able to avoid the temptation of making it

54:16

a parody of Tom Cruise film.

54:18

Oh, yeah. So like, what was it that came out? A Nic

54:21

Cage thing. The Nic Cage stuff. Exactly, exactly.

54:23

Earlier this year, the unbearable- Or

54:25

the Van Ness stuff. Yeah. Yeah,

54:28

the unbearable lightness of being Nic

54:29

Cage. The unbearable weight of massive

54:32

talent. That's it. The unbearable weight of massive talent,

54:34

which was a fun film, but not one that

54:36

we're going to be analyzing on this program, and I

54:38

doubt will be analyzed 20 years from now. It's

54:41

fun. It's a romp, but it's mostly just making fun

54:43

of how Nic Cage has become

54:45

a meme of himself, and he's kind of become

54:47

the sort of Shatner-esque, ironically

54:50

hip character. If that had

54:52

happened with Tom Cruise, it would be the film would

54:54

have had an obligatory scene of him dancing at his

54:56

underwear, and lots of scenes where he's running,

54:59

and then a scene where he's

54:59

on a couch jumping up and down, and it would have become

55:02

the Tom Cruise's wacky thing. Or he doesn't

55:04

do those things, and that's the joke, right? Yeah. It

55:06

could be either way.

55:08

Who would it be today? Who would we be

55:10

today? If you were to cast this movie right now, being

55:12

who? Oh, that's

55:14

a challenge. So let's put you on the spot.

55:17

I'll throw out being

55:20

Michael Cera.

55:22

Yeah, I think you're right. No,

55:24

that makes total sense, yeah. I

55:26

think being Michael Cera, yeah, because it's like, yeah,

55:29

okay. No, I've seen him in a couple of things. It's super

55:31

bad, right? Yeah. He wasn't super bad,

55:33

and like, was he in a... And I could see him ordering towels. Yeah,

55:36

you could definitely see that guy ordering towels, 100%.

55:40

Now that you say it, that's what I feel like he does

55:43

all day, is order towels.

55:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I think he would be

55:48

a good one. I'm going to double down on that. Henrik,

55:50

do you have an alternate? Oh, man. I'm

55:52

racking my brain, because I think one of the things that made

55:55

John Malkovich such a great choice is

55:57

he was just the quintessential character actor

55:59

of his time.

55:59

Too ugly to be a leading man,

56:02

but so talented, he

56:04

could be a villain or, you know, the

56:06

best friend of the lead. You know, so

56:09

I'm really thinking about it because I'm

56:11

fascinated by the concept of character actors.

56:14

There's a documentary I highly recommend

56:16

anybody watch called That Guy Who

56:18

Was In That Thing. And it's

56:20

just a bunch of interviews with character actors talking

56:23

about their careers and what it's like to have people

56:25

not know who you are. Is Steven root

56:27

in that? Because he is my, probably my favorite

56:29

all-time actor, but also my favorite all-time

56:32

character actor.

56:33

Oh, I love Steven Root. I don't think he's in that

56:35

one.

56:36

I think we're identifying something though now, right? Like

56:39

when Malkovich became Malkovich,

56:41

right? The relative, compared to today, limitation

56:44

of what's out there for movies, right? A lot of people

56:47

would see basically, you know, every movie in

56:49

a movie theater, you

56:50

know, throughout the 80s and 90s, right? Now,

56:52

I mean, the level, I think you have to

56:54

bump up who Malkovich is

56:56

in terms of stardom because that level

56:58

of person is truly unknown today.

57:01

Right? Like the number of people watching

57:03

these films, individual films is

57:05

too low for the, and equivalent to it. If

57:07

you just did one-to-one Malkovich to Malkovich, a great

57:09

character actor who sort of doesn't stand out, well,

57:12

the number of viewers per film makes that person

57:14

very unfamous at

57:16

this point. The long tail effect of just their... Yeah,

57:18

too much out there, right? I

57:21

mean, look at the box office for anything

57:24

that isn't Top Gun. And it's

57:26

just, you know, I mean, the idea of somebody being

57:28

a tertiary character in a film, being

57:31

a celebrity even now, I think, is a questionable,

57:33

uh, secondary character in a film. Or

57:35

that's not where celebrity is, you know, that's like being

57:38

a backup player, an NBA team to me or something, right? It's

57:41

not enough stardom in that any longer. I

57:44

think you're right. I think in a way, you're right and in a

57:46

way, you're wrong because thanks

57:48

to social media,

57:50

lots of middling celebrities

57:52

can have like fervent fans and they can have

57:55

like a little bit of a fan basis. Right, so

57:57

smaller, yes. Yeah, for sure.

57:59

The idea that everybody says, oh,

58:02

that's that guy, I feel like that is basically

58:04

dying out. Yeah, I agree. Because we haven't seen the

58:06

same thing for us to walk down. So I said

58:08

I walk with Henrik and Heaton down

58:11

the street. Oh, he's that guy from that thing. Well,

58:13

I haven't seen that thing.

58:14

Whereas rounders will

58:16

say for Malkovich,

58:20

most dudes have seen rounders

58:23

at some point. What's rounders? You've

58:25

not seen rounders, Heaton? No. What

58:27

the hell? What? It's

58:30

the Jewish Malice, no, it's the poker movie. It's

58:32

the poker movie where Malkovich famously

58:35

puts on the worst fake accent in

58:37

the best performance in the history of cinema.

58:40

It's so bad, it's so good, it's so good, it's kind of bad.

58:43

I have my being though. Being Clancy

58:45

Brown. Being

58:46

Clancy Brown. Who's Clancy Brown? That's my problem.

58:49

That's my point. Who's Clancy Brown?

58:51

Clancy Brown, most famous

58:53

now for being the voice of Mr. Krabs

58:57

on SpongeBob, but he was a major character.

58:59

Starship Troopers. Yeah, he was one of the main guys in Starship

59:02

Troopers. Pet Sematary 2,

59:04

he was the cop in it who was all

59:06

crazy. He was one

59:09

of the main villains in Dexter New Blood that

59:11

just came out. He's kind of getting a lot

59:13

of love lately because he was

59:15

that guy in that thing or that voice in that

59:18

thing for like 35 years. Right,

59:20

but way back then, not anymore, but okay. Yeah,

59:22

no, it's a pretty... I just think he'd be fascinating. So where is the

59:24

two ideas? I could

59:26

see him sitting there

59:29

on the phone and talking about insurance.

59:31

So this just reminded me of a quick story. So the

59:33

first time I ever made a film with somebody

59:35

I would consider to be a real celebrity,

59:38

it was Jeffrey Combs. He was from Reanimator,

59:40

Star Trek, Deep Space Nine, all this stuff. Oh

59:43

wow, Wayoon?

59:44

Wayoon, yeah. Oh, fun. That's a great answer.

59:47

I love Jeffrey Combs. We became best

59:49

friends because of my love

59:51

of Deep Space Nine. Can I touch you? I would

59:53

love that. He

59:56

could not believe that I love Deep Space Nine

59:58

so much. He would quote it to me.

59:59

He was quilting, he was quilting, grunt and

1:00:02

wayoon and everything. So anyway, we ended up

1:00:04

having dinner

1:00:05

because I was the producer on the film, I was

1:00:07

driving him around anyway, he was like, let me buy you dinner. So

1:00:09

I was like, okay. So we went out to dinner and

1:00:12

literally I'm sitting there and I'm like, wow, I'm sitting with this guy that

1:00:14

I've admired for so long. And he's just on

1:00:16

the phone trying to figure

1:00:18

out if his daughter can stay on his insurance. Like

1:00:21

that's the celebrity experience.

1:00:24

Like he was like, I'm sorry, one moment. And then he's just like,

1:00:26

no, it should be fine until she's 27, I

1:00:28

don't understand why they would have a problem with it. It's just like,

1:00:31

but I'm enamored. I'm like, whoa.

1:00:34

So I guess I would want to be Jeffrey Combs as well.

1:00:36

Jeff, I would a thousand

1:00:39

percent watch being Jeffrey Combs.

1:00:41

Oh yeah, no I would. I love that actor,

1:00:43

he's incredibly talented. I

1:00:45

would like, a lot of the time

1:00:47

I scoff at celebrity

1:00:50

drool where people, you'll

1:00:52

see on

1:00:55

the internet, like Taylor Swift broke

1:00:57

up with so and so and I'm like, why

1:00:59

does anybody care about like, go learn

1:01:02

guitar, what are you doing with your life? But

1:01:04

if it says like Patrick Stewart's getting a divorce, I'm

1:01:06

like, what? And I'm like, Star

1:01:08

Trek is my version of the Royal family

1:01:11

that I feel like I

1:01:13

will lust after that. I

1:01:16

think that there's multiple reasons this film would not

1:01:18

be the same if it were made today. One, I don't

1:01:21

know if you could make it today. I don't know as much

1:01:23

about the film industry, but in reading

1:01:25

Kaufman interviews, he talks about how this

1:01:27

was this weird final

1:01:29

time in a particular phase

1:01:31

of Hollywood right before 9-11, where

1:01:34

there was a lot of money, it was before streaming

1:01:37

services, studios still ruled

1:01:39

the world and they had so much money, they

1:01:41

could fling it at weird projects. This was

1:01:43

a

1:01:44

mid-level budget

1:01:47

for a film that

1:01:50

was done by like Sony,

1:01:52

not Sony Studios, but just Sony,

1:01:55

the people that make like PlayStations for

1:01:57

a bin had their own production

1:01:59

company.

1:01:59

they were like, yeah, we'll do this, right? So

1:02:02

that already would appear to be a thing that would be difficult

1:02:05

to do. I also suspect that it would be

1:02:07

different now because

1:02:09

of social media that you brought up, Henrique. A

1:02:12

lot of this film is about living through proxy

1:02:15

and about getting

1:02:18

out of your life into a more glamorous life. And

1:02:20

I feel like there's all

1:02:22

sorts of interplay that this would have with

1:02:25

social media, with Instagram, with

1:02:27

influencers and so on and so

1:02:29

forth.

1:02:29

Maybe virtual reality, if it were done today. I'm not saying

1:02:32

it would be worse, but it would be different.

1:02:34

For sure, and I wanna mention, being

1:02:36

John Malkovich, its budget was around $14 million, which

1:02:39

actually was not a very big

1:02:42

budget for the level of talent

1:02:44

involved. So it was, they

1:02:46

were being a little careful with

1:02:49

their finances, but I do agree,

1:02:51

I think that that film had

1:02:54

to have been in the right place at the right time

1:02:56

with the right people looking at it because it's

1:02:58

such a strange

1:02:59

call to make that film

1:03:02

and put it out into the marketplace. I

1:03:04

think it paid off very well. I don't know what the box

1:03:06

office was actually, I should have looked that up.

1:03:08

Also like hats off to Charlie Kaufman.

1:03:11

This is Charlie Kaufman's breakout film.

1:03:14

He had not done adaptation yet. He had not done

1:03:16

Eternal Sunshine or any of the other ones that he's

1:03:18

lauded for. He was at this point,

1:03:21

a largely failed comedy writer.

1:03:23

He had been a sketch writer

1:03:25

on the Dana Carvey show. He'd

1:03:28

been a sketch writer on a couple

1:03:30

of other programs, I think maybe like Mad

1:03:33

TV, stuff like that, but not even Mad TV

1:03:35

level, like things that lasted one or two seasons

1:03:38

and then shut down. So that was his background.

1:03:40

So he is a

1:03:42

B level sketch comedy writer.

1:03:45

And this is a world I know where that's

1:03:48

like, yay, we're doing it. And then you're out and

1:03:50

you're like, oh no, I'm gonna starve to death.

1:03:53

And now he's at a meeting with Sony

1:03:55

and he's like, all right, here's my pitch.

1:03:58

You know how we all want to be John...

1:03:59

What if there was a portal

1:04:02

in the back of a filing cabinet that you could

1:04:04

enter to get into like that had to be the weirdest

1:04:06

goddamn pitch meeting imaginable for him

1:04:08

to be able to convince Sony to give him the money for

1:04:10

this film. Although I think what he actually did was just

1:04:13

called Francis Ford Coppola because he was married

1:04:15

to his daughter or something. Yeah, that's how

1:04:17

he found it was it got passed to him through

1:04:19

Sofia Coppola. So it did $33 million in the box office.

1:04:24

So a modest success for that

1:04:26

type of film.

1:04:27

And DVDs I sent it from the start right these

1:04:29

were a thing then I mean, they

1:04:32

were still 20. Yeah, blockbuster

1:04:34

video was was was a place

1:04:36

where you made money in the film industry. I mean, today,

1:04:39

today, it's an eight part. It's an eight part Netflix series,

1:04:41

right? Yeah, it's sort of like Russian Russian

1:04:43

doll meets severance

1:04:45

kind of thing. It's probably not

1:04:47

as good. It probably has to be shined up a little bit.

1:04:50

It's probably a little like sort of

1:04:51

sillier and funnier. But I

1:04:53

could I could see the concept

1:04:55

if that concept had never been done that concept

1:04:58

would be would be bought. I

1:05:00

feel in the current environment, but that's because the

1:05:03

amount of content at the moment, we all get to have

1:05:05

our own TV show today. Yeah, right. That's

1:05:07

not going to last that long. But for now, I think I

1:05:09

think it gets made just not like it did.

1:05:11

My new dream is I want Charlie

1:05:13

Kaufman to write a Netflix

1:05:15

series starring Jeffrey Combs.

1:05:18

That is my my leg. I

1:05:20

can take you call him right after

1:05:23

we finish this and be like, hey, we've got a really good idea.

1:05:26

I mean, I can I do I shockingly have

1:05:28

his phone number. So I don't know that will answer. That's

1:05:30

the that's always the question. Just don't call him

1:05:32

and say there's a problem with his daughter's health care. There

1:05:34

we go. He'll have to call you back. Yeah. Oh,

1:05:37

I want to point out. So because

1:05:39

I always get into the weeds with

1:05:41

film stuff, Gramercy and working

1:05:45

with Polly Grammer who financed this film and

1:05:47

they were the arthouse

1:05:48

division of Universal. They did

1:05:50

stuff like the Mystery Science Theater 3000

1:05:53

movie, Barb Wire,

1:05:55

Jude Bound. They

1:05:58

distributed Fargo.

1:05:59

So they had taken

1:06:02

a lot of risks with art house stuff prior

1:06:05

to being John Malkovich, but being

1:06:07

John Malkovich was kind of the last

1:06:10

thing they did that was really like that.

1:06:14

So you're definitely right, the money

1:06:17

changed in

1:06:19

Hollywood for sure. And they were not as,

1:06:22

they became more risk averse, which is strange

1:06:24

to say because, you know, Hollywood's

1:06:27

not known for their fiscal responsibility.

1:06:30

Even,

1:06:31

yeah. Oh, and I wanted to mention another

1:06:33

reason I think this film wouldn't hit as hard now

1:06:36

is we now have a meta

1:06:40

entertainment is much more common. It's

1:06:42

much more common to watch a TV show or a movie where

1:06:45

an actor, director, whatever is playing

1:06:47

themselves. And that was still

1:06:50

very,

1:06:51

it was still very novel

1:06:53

in the nine of us. So to curb your enthusiasm

1:06:55

was a fascinating idea at the time. Now

1:06:58

every country had, and almost every actor has their

1:07:00

own sort of version of this. And in some ways

1:07:02

it's eaten point. Social media sort of is

1:07:04

that for literally everybody anyway, right?

1:07:07

So you've got to sort of establish

1:07:09

genre and then you have this whole other sideline where people

1:07:11

are sort of half joking on

1:07:13

themselves constantly in order to increase

1:07:16

name recognition. Yeah, absolutely.

1:07:19

Well, we'll wrap up here in a second. Matt, do you have

1:07:21

any closing thoughts, anything that we've not hit that you'd

1:07:23

like to touch on?

1:07:24

Oh gosh, should have saved something. I

1:07:27

talked about the letter that is in a letter.

1:07:30

Maxi, gosh, I

1:07:33

gave you my Michael Cerny. I think I'm done. I

1:07:35

think I've done a fair amount. You're fine. I

1:07:37

just, I was yielding the floor if necessary,

1:07:39

but I feel like we've hit a lot of

1:07:41

stuff in this wonderful film and very

1:07:44

much enjoyed talking to both of you about it. Henry

1:07:47

Kukuto, host of weekly

1:07:49

spooky. Hey everybody, go check it out and

1:07:51

come back on again soon. Matt Sinkowitz,

1:07:54

everybody enrolled at Boston College to take one

1:07:56

of Matt's courses. And Matt, you have a book. What is

1:07:58

it? It's called That's Not Funny.

1:07:59

how the right makes comedy work for them and

1:08:02

it stars Andrew Heaton as the good guy. I

1:08:04

have touched

1:08:07

by that. I believe this is the only book in

1:08:09

which I occur. Like, I think this

1:08:11

is the only book where anybody's

1:08:13

ever thought to put me in a book. And

1:08:16

Matt was very, very kind, did

1:08:19

a long interview with me and then we became

1:08:21

friends through that process. And

1:08:24

Matt, to his great credit, called me

1:08:26

and was like, hey, I know that you've got some

1:08:29

non-disclosure agreements

1:08:29

with various outfits you've worked with. I'm

1:08:32

going to give you an advanced copy of this book.

1:08:34

And if there's something you said that you want stricken,

1:08:36

we'll take it out so that you don't get in trouble.

1:08:39

And you said totally valid. I'm

1:08:41

not going to change any of my interpretations of

1:08:43

things, but you like, by the way, this

1:08:45

is not standard, Matt. Yeah,

1:08:49

sorry to hear that. I don't do humor interviews

1:08:51

anymore unless I know the person really well, because

1:08:54

they will take things out of context. And

1:08:56

multiple times, Andrew Heaton,

1:08:59

who is not racist,

1:08:59

comma. So

1:09:02

it was a lot of fun. I'm

1:09:04

just going to brag. Vulture yesterday

1:09:06

named it the number three comedy book of 2022.

1:09:09

Nice. Congratulations, man. Congratulations.

1:09:11

Thank you. Thank you. Well, you're the star, so congratulations

1:09:14

to you. Thanks. Wonderful.

1:09:16

Well, gang, it has been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you

1:09:18

so much. It was fun. Thank you. Thank you so much.

1:09:20

Yeah, thank you.

1:09:23

Thank

1:09:23

you. That's the show. Thanks for listening.

1:09:26

Thank you media assistant Eric Stipe who

1:09:28

edited today's program. Until

1:09:30

next time, tally ho.

1:09:39

Yeah, Eric, take that. When

1:09:42

you drive the most dependable mass market brand,

1:09:45

you can stop thinking about what you can't do and

1:09:47

start doing what you never thought possible. Visit

1:09:50

your local Kia dealer today to see yourself behind

1:09:52

the wheel of the number one most dependable mass market brand

1:09:54

three years in a row by J.D. Power. Kia

1:09:57

movement that inspires call 800-334-Kia.

1:09:59

for details. Always drive safely. Kia

1:10:01

received the fewest reported problems among mass market brands in the

1:10:03

J.D. Power 2021 to 2023 U.S.

1:10:05

vehicle dependability studies. 2023 study based

1:10:08

on 2020 models. See jdpower.com slash

1:10:10

awards for 2023 details.