Creating ‘John Malkovich’

The Oscar nominating committees huddle behind closed doors. There is much wringing of hands, pounding of foreheads.

“Do we have a category for least likely screenplay to see the light of day?”

“How about best performance by an actor playing some cockamamie notion of himself?”

“Can we do a special Who’s Afraid of Elizabeth Taylor prize for most de-glamorized use of Cameron Diaz?”

If there ever was a picture to justify the reevaluation of film awards, it is “Being John Malkovich,” which opens Friday. That said, this screwy comedy of identity confusion and reinvention would probably lose in the category for best trailer; its looking-glass world is just too weird to reduce to sound bites that would make any kind of sense.

But we’ll try.

Down-and-out puppeteer (John Cusack) takes lowly filing job, working on the 7 1/2 floor of office building for eccentric 105-year-old man (Orson Bean). Puppeteer develops crush on sexy co-worker (Catherine Keener). Finds passageway behind file cabinet that sucks him into brain of John Malkovich (Malkovich) and dumps him onto New Jersey Turnpike. Puppeteer’s wife (Cameron Diaz) goes into Malkovich’s head, discovers she is a transsexual. Puppeteer and wife compete for sexy co-worker. Puppeteer and co-worker sell tickets to go inside Malkovich’s head. Malkovich is confused. Everyone is transformed.

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Not surprisingly, the creative force behind “Being John Malkovich” is an odd-duck assemblage of impudent, anti-establishment class nerds who give the refreshing impression that the inmates have taken over the asylum.

Director Spike Jonze is not your average renaissance man. In recent months, he has copped an MTV award for his Fat Boy Slim video, stolen “Three Kings” from his fellow actors by playing a Southern cracker gunning for action, and won the hand of Francis Ford Coppola’s daughter, Sophia. This from a wiry, unprepossessing 29-year-old with a nasal voice that recalls the young Jerry Lewis.

Thirtysomething writer Charlie Kaufman, who was writing for “The Dana Carvey Show” five years back when he first dreamed up the screenplay, is a skinny, irritable artiste who resembles Chico Marx and reveals about as much as Harpo.

Ask him how he got his ideas, he’ll tell you, “I don’t know.” Ask him if it’s autobiographical, he’ll tell you he’s not comfortable discussing his personal life. Ask him, “Why Malkovich?” (as opposed to, say, Glenn Close or Denzel Washington), he’ll tell you that your theories are worth more than his.

OK, here’s a theory: Malkovich, an actor whose masculine and feminine sides operate close to the surface, is useful in a comedic Pandora’s box like this, in which characters are compelled to reinvent their sexual identities.

‘A Metaphysical Can of Worms’

That theory goes down well with Michael Stipe, the bespectacled, skin-headed lead singer of R.E.M., who co-produced the film with a gangly go-getter named Sandy Stern. Stipe, (who also produced that paean to rock androgyny, “Velvet Goldmine”) calls himself “the fluid sexuality guy.”

“It’s a metaphysical can of worms,” as Cusack says in the movie.

“I hate millennial stuff and numerology,” Stipe says. “It’s all garbage. But we still have this hangover of separation of mind, body and spirit that I think we are starting to move beyond. People are beginning to understand that these are not separate entities, but things that are intertwined, circular. Nothing is that geometric, including sexuality.”

The problems were more earthbound for Malkovich, who enacts such pointedly mundane activities as reading the paper, ordering towels, checking his teeth in the mirror. How does an actor play himself?

“I don’t know really who that is,” says the 45-year-old actor. “Privately we are a million things. Some days it would be sort of funny because I would find myself in a discussion with Spike, talking with this 5-year-old about what John Malkovich would say or how he would say it.

“He’d say, ‘I don’t think you would do it that way.’ ‘Oh, really? OK, how would I do it? Oh, maybe you’re right.’ But it’s really an idea of myself. I don’t think of that as myself in particular.”

As the film moved closer to becoming reality, Jonze, Kaufman and their producers tossed around dozens of names in case they couldn’t get Malkovich to come aboard, but no one else seemed quite right. Luckily for them, Malkovich agreed after breaking past two apprehensions: the inexperience of his video-trained director and the creepy coincidence of the 7 1/2 floor. When Malkovich lived in New York in the 1980s, he lived at 7 W. 75th St. “He was concerned it was maybe a protracted, bizarre form of a stalker letter,” Stipe says.

The movie subverts our notions of celebrity mythology versus fact, according to Malkovich, who didn’t contribute an iota of autobiographical material. “It’s close enough to me to not matter anyway. I don’t know if I ever had a conversation with a girl where I said the name Camus as KAY-MUSS. But I probably did. And if I didn’t, I may as well have.”

Charlie Sheen as Buddy-Confidant

Malkovich’s one inspired contribution was to have Charlie Sheen playing himself in the smarmy Gig Young-best-buddy-confidant mode. Malkovich came up with the idea after Kevin Bacon, the actor for whom the role was written, opted out.

“I thought: Who would I go to if I were in trouble, not just staring into the abyss, but actively tumbling into it? Who would you go to for that kind of tough love? And I thought: Charlie Sheen. Besides that, he’s a really good actor. He just nailed it. I wish he were my best friend. I might be in jail more often.”

Made on your basic wing-and-a-prayer independent movie budget (the producers won’t give figures), “Being John Malkovich” flies with some very expensive-looking visual effects. Among the more memorable is the body-crunching, Munchkin-tall 7 1/2 floor that was built in an abandoned Los Angeles office building.

Working on the “low-overhead” set for three weeks was no comedy. “The sound man wore a bicycle helmet because the first day he was on it, he knocked himself out,” explains Jonze, who also had to hire an on-set chiropractor to attend to the cast and crew.

Perhaps the most versatile special effect was Malkovich, who performed a gymnastic dance--somersaults included (“You know ABBA wrote ‘Dancing Queen’ for me,” he says with a devilish grin). He also spent two days jumping in and out of dozens of costumes and poses for a climactic coup de thea^tre in which Malkovich beholds a roomful of John Malkoviches: midget Malkovich, waiter Malkovich, businessmen Malkovich, lounge singer-in-drag Malkovich.

Malkovich found a fountain of meaning in the film. “It speaks to the gaping need we have to escape ourselves: the puerile interest the public and especially the media has in celebrity, the desire to know about celebrity divorces and celebrity breasts and celebrity sex acts and how the joys and sorrows and foibles of celebrities are just so much more interesting than anybody else’s could ever be. Which is a much more sinister thing.”