How to get a head in acting

It's been hailed for its originality but it took a rock star to bring life to Being John Malkovich. DAVID DALEY reports

WITH an audacious plot about an out-of-work puppeteer who discovers a portal in a Manhattan office block leading straight into the head of a famous Hollywood actor, Being John Malkovich has already been hailed as one of the most original (and strangest) American films of the decade.

In fact, the film is so strange that you'd better sit down for this next bit: John Malkovich actually plays himself (or at least a louche, smoking jacketed caricature of his screen self) as do Sean Penn and Brad Pitt. Charlie Sheen also stars and for the roles of the puppeteer and his wife, director Spike Jonze has recruited two of Hollywood's hottest names: Cameron Diaz and John Cusack.

And in case you're wondering, yes, the director is the same Spike Jonze as stars in Oscar-tipped Gulf War film Three Kings (alongside George Clooney, Ice Cube and Mark Wahlberg), who also goes by the names Adam Spiegel and Richard Koufey and who has an alternative career as a director of pop videos.

Spiegel is his real name - he's heir to a million-dollar business in America - but it was as Koufey that he picked up a gong at this year's MTV Awards for his direction of Fatboy Slim's Praise You video. Arriving at the podium wearing a vest, he launched into a gushy speech thanking the Torrance Community Dance Group, with whom he claimed to have spent several formative years. He didn't. There is no Torrance Community Dance Group.

The events which led to the film being made are no less bizarre than the film itself. Written by jobbing sit-com writer Charlie Kaufman in 1994, the idea was touted round (and rejected by) every major Hollywood studio until it came to the attention of a movie industry outsider - REM lead singer Michael Stipe.

So while it's Jonze who is currently taking the bows for Being John Malkovich, it's Stipe and his production company, Single Cell Films, who really deserve the credit.

"I naively thought that I'd start a film company, and we'll make great movies," says the REM frontman. "We'll make great movies with people who I thought were wildly talented but whose talent was being squandered within the Hollywood system."

Stipe loved Kaufman's script and brought Jonze in to the project. "It begs the questions 'What are we? Who are we? How separate are we, one from the next?'," says Stipe. "It's throwing up gender, throwing up ideas of the soul. In the late 20th century, separation of mind, body and spirit is way behind us. People are slowly coming out of that and towards something else. This story has all these underlying themes but doesn't smack you in the face with it. It's surreal and bizarre but not didactic." It's also very funny.

Jonze, who had directed ads for Nissan as well as editing a skateboard magazine and working with bands such as Weezer and the Beastie Boys, had read the script himself some years earlier and jumped at the chance to direct his first major feature. And he knew Stipe through his work on REM's Crush With Eyeliner video.

"I've known him for a long time, and he's always been so supportive," says Jonze. "He's always hired young directors to do videos, and now he's given us the chance to direct movies."

STIPE'S own interest in filmmaking is deep-rooted and he has long been known for his willingness to experiment with young directors on REM projects, even very early songs such as Radio Free Europe.

Besides Jonze, other directors given their first shot with REM include Jake Scott (who graduated from the Everybody Hurts video to the Liv Tyler-Robert Carlyle film Plunkett and Macleane), Tom Gilroy, whose Spring Forward (starring Ian Hart and Ned Beatty) won an award at this year's Toronto film festival and Mark Romanek, who directs Brad Pitt in next year's Urban Townies.

Stipe was also responsible for bringing to the screen one of last year's most visually striking films, Todd Haynes' love letter to glam- rock - Velvet Goldmine, which starred Ewan McGregor. Meanwhile an REM song provides the title (and title theme) to Man On The Moon, Milos Forman's biography of another Kaufman - comedian Andy Kaufman - which is scheduled to open in America on Christmas Day.

"I'm 39 now. I've pretty much made my mark in music," says Stipe. "Through producing films I'm able to help artists like Todd and Spike see their scripts through. That to me has great satisfaction. Also, selfishly, I'm able to be around people who are very expressive artistically, and that feeds my own creative thing. It's very symbiotic. I know my own work has benefited greatly."

What he doesn't have is any interest in acting or directing himself. "I have no desire to direct whatsoever. I know directors who wake up in the morning and they want to direct. They see movies in their head. They wake up and that's what they have to do. I don't wake up thinking I want to direct or act."

Of course, the key to the success of Being John Malkovich was the participation of Malkovich himself. Some casting was done to try to find an actor who could play him, but in the end Jonze and Stipe knew what they had to do: Jonze, who is married to Francis Ford Coppola's daughter Sofia (director of the upcoming Virgin Suicides), persuaded his father-in-law to call Malkovich at his home in France and ask him if he would take the part. Coppola's pitch involved telling Malkovich that in 10 years' time he'd probably be working for Jonze anyway. He was only half-joking and, not surprisingly, Malkovich agreed.

"I don't really have a relation to this person called 'John Malkovich' who's supposedly in the public domain," Malkovich claimed when the film wowed audiences at the New York Film Festival.

"It just doesn't mean anything to me. I don't have a press agent. I don't do spin. I don't touch up photos. So I'm already quite removed from 'John Malkovich.' He's not even a cousin."

Scottish audiences have a chance to decide for themselves about Being John Malkovich, with its cast of eccentric characters and real life cameos, when it screens at the Glasgow Film Theatre early next month.

The film opened in the US last weekend to the highest per-screen average in North America. "A dizzying farrago of brilliant nonsense," is how the New York Times described it - the reception in the UK is expected to be equally enthusiastic.

Being John Malkovich is at the Glasgow Film Theatre on December 2 and goes on general release next year

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