On Friday night, I got to moderate a tribute to John Malkovich, the star of Wild Horse Nine, at Telluride.
The actor has had a prolific career, and is still constantly working. He delighted the audience with stories from some of his most memorable performances.
When Malkovich nabbed his first two movie roles—The Killing Fields and Places in the Heart—he found the transition from stage to film quite challenging, he told the packed crowd at the Werner Herzog theater in Telluride. “Because when you do a play, you’re the editor. It’s a whole different planet. I always say the two are not even cousins really,” he said. “And so it was discomforting and I didn’t like it so much because I was used to such freedom.”
Vivien Killilea/Getty Images
He eventually grew to love the format, and has starred in more than 100 film and TV projects over the years. Malkovich spoke about how he was eight hours late for his first day on The Glass Menagerie, the film directed by Paul Newman. He accidentally slept through the day. “I got there and I was really too horrified to even apologize,” he said. He remembers that Newman almost always wore sunglasses when they would go out in town. “Even inside, because women sometimes had sort of alarming reactions when he didn’t wear sunglasses—and probably a number of men as well,” he said.
He also shared that Con Air was a very unique experience for him. “The cast was generally composed of people you wouldn’t let stay in your yard,” he said, to laughs. “So that was the kind of first. I mean, before that I’d mostly done plays with girls, so that was wild. But it too was great fun.”
And of his iconic role in Being John Malkovich, he said he had originally hoped to direct the film himself, but found that Spike Jonze did an incredible job with the film. “My favorite note I got from Spike—he didn’t say it in any kind of ironic way—we did a scene and I did something and he said to me, ‘John Malkovich wouldn’t do it that way,’” he said. “And I said, ‘Oh, okay. How would you do it?”’”
Malkovich said he had been trying to work with Martin McDonagh for many years, and had even almost been in Seven Psychopaths, but the scheduling didn’t work out. He knew immediately that he would sign on for Wild Horse Nine. “I love Martin’s writing. I found this script perfect, really,” he said.
McDonagh and Steve Buscemi, who also stars in the film, were in the audience as Malkovich received his Silver Medallion. Malkovich is a two-time Oscar nominee, but has yet to win. From the buzz both here and at Venice, it seems like his towering performance in Wild Horse Nine should finally have him back in that conversation.
Vivien Killilea/Getty Images
