John Malkovich dives into epic photographic collaborations
Then there’s improvisation. In Sandro’s new book, he also includes a flash drive of short films you made with him. Your first film together, Butterflies, No dialogue. Just premise.
That’s really all you need when you’re an actor. Things happen to you. You have flashes of things you’ve seen, things you’ve lived, things you’ve read, things you’ve heard, things you’ve witnessed, and then it all comes out.
Have you ever been afraid of yourself in a situation like that? I don’t know if Martin Sheen was afraid of himself. when filming the opening scene of Doomsday now, But he definitely scared the director and crew.
No, I’m not afraid of myself. I think that basically, people are capable of doing almost anything, really, including a lot of terrible, unfortunately bad things. And I think I always have to give myself permission to say, Oh, I think this is like that. I don’t necessarily want to To be that, and I don’t necessarily think it’s my fault that I think like this. I have to be free to use whatever experience I have and powers of observation or inclination or hunches to be able to say, This person behaves this way in this situation. If it’s a play, you might just say this person behaves this way in this situation tonight. Tomorrow night might be different. The matinee, maybe, was different earlier that day. Closing night will definitely be different from opening night, because you’re constantly learning and reviewing and deleting and adding and subtracting and refining and distilling and so on. You know that’s what we do. I don’t consider myself an element at all, except to consider myself a thing that the observations exist on.
A link to the story. What is an example of that?
For example, in the past six months, I have been singing an opera duet with Cecilia Bartoli, and i did some disco songs with Nile Rodgers in a studio. The insanity of those two things, the absurdity, the impossibility. The sheer absurdity of me getting a bunch of songs one morning, listening to them once while taking an Uber to a recording studio in Boston, and then starting recording music from Dream and produced by Nile Rodgers was crazier than the recording studio. “What do you want me to do?” Okay, record. “I don’t know if I can sing any of these. I don’t really have enough time to do this. But let’s start recording.”
So fear doesn’t seem to get in the way of your life very often.
No, it’s not. At least in that aspect of life, because, what are you afraid of? You’re afraid of failure. But failure is my constant companion. Failure is my best friend.
What was going through your mind when you were about to recreate Annie Leibovitz’s classic photo of John Lennon and Yoko Ono? Hours after that shoot, which was done at the request of Rolling Stone, John was shot dead in front of his apartment. I know for Sandro it was one of the most emotional shots of their collaboration because he knew the fate that awaited John.
