John Malkovich: "I am a corrupt actor, we all are"

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Robert Schwentke's Seneca

is anything but a conventional film.

It would be said that "this furious anachronism" (as the director himself says) is the opposite of almost everything.

And not in the best of ways perhaps.

The one who remains safe in the most euphoric representation of himself ever seen is a John Malkovich (Illinois, 1953) more involved in the role of John Malkovich than ever.

The actor with more than 150 films to his credit (one of them as a director) and dedicated theater enthusiast (his great passion, he says)

and he ended up committing suicide to analyze how much cinema, corruption, "stupidity" have changed thanks to political correctness and, for that matter,

What has he learned from Seneca after getting inside him to the bone? I couldn't say.

She knew Seneca before doing this movie.

I was familiar with his history, his philosophy and, of course, his plays.

Let's say I've changed little and this character hasn't influenced me more than any other I've played in my life. Seneca is the story of a man who sells himself to power, perhaps to change it, and fails.

I wonder if the life path of an actor who has worked for Hollywood is not similar.

Is it possible to work in the global entertainment industry without being corrupted? Seneca's metaphor applies to me and to everyone.

Life is essentially corruption.

That has been my experience all my life.

We are all corrupted in some way.

And we are from birth.

If you were born in Europe or the United States, you enjoy privileges that you do not have in any other part of the world: education, health, material goods... Already that point of departure is profoundly unfair and, therefore, corrupt.

Look at something so childish about how talent is valued.

Why is the work of a Hollywood actor valued more than that of a school teacher?

Maybe the kids were born pure, but all they have to do is go to school and... jump into a pool of sharks. Do you feel especially corrupted when you have to make a particular movie?

Otherwise, has he ever worked on any production knowing in advance that he was loathsome?

That is, has it been sold as Seneca did? Sure.

But I don't sell myself, I rent.

It's a small distinction, but a very important one.

But I wouldn't just talk about movies and Hollywood.

When you do a play and you don't get paid anything, you're already corrupt.

I worked for 40 years in the theater and did it essentially for free.

I think my biggest salary was $750 for directing a play and they stopped paying $250. That's a scam.

On the other hand, and to stick to the question, you never fully know if a work is good or bad.

Neither before nor after.

You can have blind faith in a script and then it's all turned upside down.

Or you can make a great movie and people won't go see it.

What you do know, no matter what, is that you need money.

That doesn't fail.

Seneca, beyond wanting to influence the emperor, what he wanted is to collect.

Yes, as he said, life is corruption and, like everyone else, I am a corrupt actor.

I worked for 40 years in the theater and did it essentially for free.

I think my biggest salary was $750 for directing a play and they stopped paying $250. That's a scam.

On the other hand, and to stick to the question, you never fully know if a work is good or bad.

Neither before nor after.

You can have blind faith in a script and then it's all turned upside down.

Or you can make a great movie and people won't go see it.

What you do know, no matter what, is that you need money.

That doesn't fail.

Seneca, beyond wanting to influence the emperor, what he wanted is to collect.

Yes, as he said, life is corruption and, like everyone else, I am a corrupt actor.

I worked for 40 years in the theater and did it essentially for free.

I think my biggest salary was $750 for directing a play and they stopped paying $250. That's a scam.

On the other hand, and to stick to the question, you never fully know if a work is good or bad.

Neither before nor after.

You can have blind faith in a script and then it's all turned upside down.

Or you can make a great movie and people won't go see it.

What you do know, no matter what, is that you need money.

That doesn't fail.

Seneca, beyond wanting to influence the emperor, what he wanted is to collect.

Yes, as he said, life is corruption and, like everyone else, I am a corrupt actor.

you never quite know if a play is good or bad.

Neither before nor after.

You can have blind faith in a script and then it's all turned upside down.

Or you can make a great movie and people won't go see it.

What you do know, no matter what, is that you need money.

That doesn't fail.

Seneca, beyond wanting to influence the emperor, what he wanted is to collect.

Yes, as he said, life is corruption and, like everyone else, I am a corrupt actor.

you never quite know if a play is good or bad.

Neither before nor after.

You can have blind faith in a script and then it's all turned upside down.

Or you can make a great movie and people won't go see it.

What you do know, no matter what, is that you need money.

That doesn't fail.

Seneca, beyond wanting to influence the emperor, what he wanted is to collect.

Yes, as he said, life is corruption and, like everyone else, I am a corrupt actor.

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Did this awareness of corruption, to close the topic, come suddenly, was it always there or is it learned little by little? I don't know.

I am an unreflective person.

Sometimes I see other people's children or my grandson and they are capable of much deeper reflections than I am capable of.

The work of an actor in my case has always been the same.

I don't know if I learn a lot about myself. The film that he has made, and there are many other examples in his career, is essentially different.

He has never been afraid of risk, of exposing himself.

It would be said that Seneca is a manifesto against what we call political correctness.

What is your opinion of how things have evolved in this regard? I have a lot to say about it and nothing positive.

People who are so aware of political correctness do not realize that his attitude is a gratuitous insult to others,

which is ugly, inelegant.

I am an atheist, but I have no desire to go around insulting religious people.

Why do they me? What exactly does it mean? I'll give an example.

I make a piece with a pianist based on the text by Ernesto Sábato

.

The character I play is someone who believes that the blind rule the world through nightmares, hallucinations, and other bizarre maneuvers.

Does not matter.

At one point theorized about the existence of God.

In the novel there are about nine or ten theories, but in the work we reduce them to three: God does not exist;

God exists and he is a bastard, and God exists but he falls asleep from time to time.

Well, there are countries in which it cannot be represented because it is considered offensive.

It is not about me but about the work of Sábato that is deep and dark.

I mean, I'm not talking about them insulting me but a great work.

How is it possible to consider offensive literature?

If you look closely, literature has to offend.

If it doesn't offend, it's not good literature. This reminds me of the current case of the rewriting of Roald Dahl's works... By God.

What is this that people can not be called fat?

Is talking about overweight instead of fat going to make someone lose weight?

I was overweight as a child and I have not died.

I have neither died nor have they killed me.

And I grew up reading Roald Dahl.

With this I do not mean that calling anyone fat is okay or fun, but there are things that must be respected.

What is this absurd change of synonymous words for? Perhaps the idea is to avoid what it says: for a child to believe that calling another fat person can be fun... One of the Tennessee Williams characters said that the only thing he did not understand was human cruelty.

And I agree.

But you have to respect that there are polemicists like Pasolini or Christopher Hitchens.

They are there to bother us and provoke us.

I recently saw that there are people tracking other people's tweets to point them out.

Things are happening that would have made Goebbels himself faint.

Hypocrisy runs rampant.

After all, if we are strict, we know that all the important works of humanity are white trash.

A lot of them are white trash making fun of white trash, but white trash nonetheless.

That must be accepted and what cannot be done is that we start rewriting books. What other changes disconcert or upset you?

How do you analyze the evolution of cinema itself? That is another matter.

Cinema has changed since it was born.

It changed with sound, with the appearance of television... When I started making movies in the eighties, VHS video began and there was talk of the great crisis in movie theaters.

Now what has really changed is the duration of things, the very conception of time.

With the internet or with TikTok videos, the experience of one's own vision of things is another.

I remember that as a child to see a movie I had to travel 170 kilometers. And is that bad? I couldn't tell you.

It is what it is, it is a new reality and I imagine you have to adapt to it.

Furthermore, there is no other option.

Rejecting reality leads nowhere.

On the other hand, what is cause for regret is that the need to go to the movies, the desire to see movies, has decreased a lot.

But I imagine that this has to do with the poor quality of the movies that are being made now. What do you think the stoic Seneca would have done right now? What he did, commit suicide.

It is a new reality and I imagine that you have to adapt to it.

Furthermore, there is no other option.

Rejecting reality leads nowhere.

On the other hand, what is cause for regret is that the need to go to the movies, the desire to see movies, has decreased a lot.

But I imagine that this has to do with the poor quality of the movies that are being made now. What do you think the stoic Seneca would have done right now? What he did, commit suicide.

It is a new reality and I imagine that you have to adapt to it.

Furthermore, there is no other option.

Rejecting reality leads nowhere.

On the other hand, what is cause for regret is that the need to go to the movies, the desire to see movies, has decreased a lot.

But I imagine that this has to do with the poor quality of the movies being made now. What do you think the stoic Seneca would have done right now? What he did, commit suicide.

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