Being John Malkovich (1999) on Netflix
Unemployed puppeteer Craig Schwartz takes a file clerk job in a Manhattan office building. Behind a filing cabinet, a hidden door leads into the mind of John Horatio Malkovich.
- Netflix3.4/5
- IMDb7.7/10371,411 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes94%
Trailer
Plot summary
Puppeteer Craig Schwartz and animal lover and pet store clerk Lotte Schwartz are just going through the motions of their marriage. Despite not being able to earn a living solely through puppeteering, Craig loves his profession as it allows him to inhabit the skin of others. He begins to take the ability to inhabit the skin of others to the next level when he is forced to take a job as a file clerk for the off-kilter LesterCorp, located on the five-foot tall 7½ floor of a Manhattan office building. Behind one of the filing cabinets in his work area, Craig finds a hidden door which he learns is a portal into the mind of John Malkovich, the visit through the portal which lasts fifteen minutes after which the person is spit into a ditch next to the New Jersey Turnpike. Craig is fascinated by the meaning of life associated with this finding. Lotte's trips through the portal make her evaluate her own self. And the confident Maxine Lund, one of Craig's co-workers who he tells about the portal if only because he is attracted to her, thinks that it is a money making opportunity in selling trips into Malkovich's mind after office hours for $200 a visit. Craig, Lotte and Maxine begin to understand that anyone entering the portal has the ability to control Malkovich's mind, which also alters his entire being. This experience makes Maxine fall in love with a composite.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Being John Malkovich (1999)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Charlie Kaufman wrote the script on spec in 1994 and every studio and production company that read it passed; it only reached director Spike Jonze because Kaufman sent it to Francis Ford Coppola, who forwarded it to his daughter Sofia's then-boyfriend, Jonze.
- Producers Michael Stipe and Sandy Stern pitched the film to numerous studios; New Line Cinema dropped the project after chairman Robert Shaye asked why it could not be Being Tom Cruise instead.
- John Malkovich feared the film could go badly for him either way: as Jonze recalled it, if the movie bombed his name was not only above the title but in it, and if it did well he would be forever associated with the character.
- The film is dotted with cameos: director Spike Jonze as Derek Mantini's assistant, Brad Pitt as a miffed star in the documentary on Malkovich's career, Sean Penn as himself, a fan of Malkovich's puppeteer work, and film director David Fincher, uncredited, as Christopher Bing.
- Cameron Diaz's make-up artist Gucci Westman described styling Diaz in the role as “a challenge, to make her look homely”; the script included minimal physical descriptions, and Diaz did not know that “people weren't going to recognize me”.
- Phillip Huber animated the film's puppets, and Jonze said he was a full-time puppeteer who controlled them with impressive means, using strings and no rods, and swinging the puppets on high wires.
- On a budget of $10 million, principal photography began on July 20, 1998 and continued through August, taking place primarily in Los Angeles at locations including the University of Southern California campus and the Observation Bar on board the RMS Queen Mary.
