An article by Jamie Stuart
When
John Malkovich enters the room he sucks all the energy toward him. Yes, John
Malkovich. The actor. Not the guy that played the jewel thief. Malkovich. Not
Milosevic. And no, his nickname is not Malkatraz.
I’m at Fox Searchlight in New York to interview him and Javier Bardem, the
star of Malkovich’s directorial debut The Dancer Upstairs. Malkovich is
calm, well-mannered and deliberate. I ask him if he had any problems behind the
camera. He looks directly at me and says: “No.”
After a few moments he drolly elaborates, “I’d rate the experience as
slightly more pleasant than internal bleeding.”
The film fictionalizes real life events that took place in Central and South
America during the 1970s and 1980s. The plot follows police officer Agustine
Rejas (Bardem) as he attempts to track down a Communist revolutionary. Graphic
depictions of terrorism throughout made for a difficult sell, culminating in a 6
year incubation period before the picture was finally made.
According to Malkovich, “I remember the man at Dreamworks -- he called me the
day he read it, when it was getting ready to fall apart 6 years ago. 6 years
ago, I sent it out to the very few people I knew in Hollywood. He called me that
day, said, ‘I absolutely love this script. It’s fantastic. It’s rich. So
bright. So strange and interesting.’ We talked about it for 20 minutes. After
20 minutes, I said, ‘But you’re not gonna do it.’ He said, ‘No.’”
This worked out well for Bardem, who at the time wasn’t entirely prepared for
the challenge. As he explains, “He came to Spain in ‘96, and he talked to me
about doing the smaller role -- the policeman who’s the partner of Agustine
Rejas. I was very young at the time. I said yes.” He confesses, however, “He
was the first foreign director to come to me asking me for a roll. I could not
even speak English. I was uncomfortable. I could not express myself in front of
him. I can barely now. It took me like a week to read the script cause I had to
go to the dictionary.”
Malkovich had no trepidation and plainly admits, “I think he’s the finest
young actor there is.”
As for working with the first time director, the young actor says, “It was the
first time that I’ve worked with an actor. He’s directed 50 plays. He’s an
actor himself so he knows everything. You cannot hide anything. The first 2
weeks I was nervous, cause I wanted to impress him. My ego wanted to impress not
just the director, but the actor. He knew that, and he came to me and said,
‘Forget about me. Just do your work. I chose you, so you don’t have to show
me anything. Just enjoy and create your character.’ That was nice of him. He
will deny it. He’s very humble. But he helped me in a way I cannot even tell.
It was a very silent way to help me. He was very subtle.”
Both men are well aware that the film’s subject matter is timely, and in
conclusion both offer their opinions in relation to current world events. The
director meticulously offers, “I don’t think it’s possible for the world
really, for the most part, to remain unattached or unencumbered or untangled. It
is tangled. Already. Because someone in Yemen meets someone in Saudi Arabia or
Afghanistan to do something against Russians -- later does something in New York
or Bali to people from Australia, which will be responded to perhaps by people
from Guatemala. This is our world. There’s no way around that.”
“The sad thing about life is that many of the people who do those kinds of
things -- participate in those kinds of movements, or feel driven to do so --
are not always how we wish they are. It’s terrible. It’s sad. They’re not
sort of cookie cutter monsters, despite whatever monstrous they did. And the
sooner people...some are. Some monsters do monstrous things. But some people
aren’t. And they’re attracted by a capillarity of things. Their
personalities consist of numerous characteristics which people would find
attractive or human. That’s not my fault.”
The star in turn offers a moral: “I think what it says is that there are 2
ways to approach the same problem. A peaceful way and a violent way. This is
based on a true event and this man captured this leader by chasing him carefully
and with a lot of patience. And also with a lot of clues. He didn’t shoot any
bullets. He didn’t kill anybody. And in the end he’s the one who captured
him and made the system work again. While the government and military people
were killing everybody around. So, yes, it says: what option are you, and what
do you want your world to be? And what’s the price that you have to pay for
the world you want to live in?”
-Copyright
2003 by Jamie
Stuart