I attended an event interview thing with Charlie Kaufman a few years back.

He mentioned that the script got around to John Malkovich while it was in development. He read it -- and immediately thought Charlie Kaufman was a stalker. Apparently he lived in apartment 7 1/2 and thought the 7 1/2th floor was in no way a coincidence.

Charlie's response was something like -- I must have been really tuned in to the, uh, cosmic, uh, collective unconscious or something. Because I had no idea.

Kaufman also sited this coincidence as a likely reason Malkovich agreed to not only lend his name, but be a part of the film.

Great scene that really opens us up to the weirdness that is about to take place.

Also, there's an error in the elevator scene -- he's talking with WOMAN #1, but all of the action sequences refer to a man.

@James: That is a terrific bit of trivia. And another example of the kismet / synchronicity that exists when one immerses themselves in a story universe.

@Darren: You win the Observation Gold Star as I wondered who, if any, might pick up that discrepancy.

Very good, ableit strange, movie I haven't watched since it first came out. I think I need to see it again. No, I know I do. (I was reminded of it - for some reason - while watching Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast...ever watched that weird one?)

@Susan: Kingsley's performance in Sexy Beast is fantastic, one of his best. And I definitely support your desire to see Being John Malkovich again. Worth it!

One of my favourite scenes in Being John Malkovich is right after this one where Mr. Lester is convinced that it's he who has the communication problems, not Floris, and that Craig is just being kind to him.

It's played so well by both characters.

I have to do this in 2 chucks due to the comment limit.

Nothing drastic has changed between the script and the scene other than the idea of scaling the furniture to the size of the room.

Elevator Scene

According to the script there were three people in the first scene: Craig, a man who walks into the elevator with him and a woman (it is not clear from the script if she was already in the elevator or was waiting for it with them).

The man was removed from the scene.
- Only two people were required for the scene: Craig and one person to guide him to floor 7-1/2.
- A woman works best for the scene, especially a short one, and a very no-nonsense one.

This is all about absurdity. Having a 7-1/2 floor, a crowbar just sitting in the corner of an elevator, crowbar marks on the elevator door where the crowbar has been used many times, the woman knowing that he's going to 7-1/2 and being so matter of fact about picking up the crowbar and jamming the door, it's all craziness. But if a man were to pick up a crowbar in the middle of an elevator it's possible the audience could detect a threat. That is definitely not what you want to introduce here.

The woman has selected the 11th floor, whereas the man in the script had selected the 9th floor. Not sure why this was changed other than to make it very clear she is not going to his floor. 11 is the first button on the upper left and you can't misconstrue an 11 for anything else. She must go to a floor above his, which explains why she is so practiced in the art of letting someone off at 7-1/2.

Scott said: "@Susan: Kingsley's performance in Sexy Beast is fantastic, one of his best. And I definitely support your desire to see Being John Malkovich again. Worth it!"

Great performance but his greatest was in The House of Sand and Fog.

Hmm. My Part Deux isn't appearing. Here it is again. (And my first post is supposed to say "chunks", not whatever I typed.)

On Floor 7-1/2

The scene description states that "the number on the wall across from the elevator is 7-1/2. This was changed in the clip to number 8. I don't understand this change. The sign with the number 8 is below the floor above, which seems to indicate that they are indeed on the 8th floor rather than 7-1/2. I think they should have stuck with the script on this one, or show no sign at all. The absurity is already being shown, and we already know which floor Craig is going to.


There is also something odd: the chairs by the open elevator door on the floor above seem shorter than the chairs on floor 7-1/2 (compare the leg size of the chairs). I can only assume this is on purpose, but it is not clear to me why this was done.

There is one mistake in the set. The shot from the elevator shows the floor above as having a thickness of about 1 inch. When Craig comes out of the elevator there is regular framing around the elevator door or around 3". We would see that 3" from the shot inside the elevator looking out to the hall. Perhaps that was to add to the absurdity, to show that once you get on this floor all perspective is changed, but it didn't for me. It just bugged me.

Also, once Craig reaches the door to the office, there is suddenly a crowd of people in the hallway, some appearing from in front of him, others from behind. In the previous shot of Craig making his way down the hallway there is no one to be found (which was nice - it really highlighted the craziness of the floor). They appear out of no where. Perhaps they are trying to a pull a Kubrick from The Shining by disorienting us with an impossible floor plan.

I can't tell what is written on the door, but it sure doesn't seem long enough to be "LesterCorp - Meeting America's Filing Needs Since 1922" as suggested by the script.


In the Office

"All furniture is scaled down to fit into this low-ceilinged space. A few other short men sit reading tiny magazines. Craig approaches Floris, the receptionist."

In the clip, nothing is scaled. Everything remains scaled to a the human, not to the height of the ceilings. The chairs, sofa, things on the receptionists desk are all 'normal' sized. This is the most important change to the script.

I'm not sure why they changed this. Perhaps the absurdity lies in the fact that everything is normal other than the ceiling height. Perhaps scaling things as per the script was too much. I wonder if they tried it and nixed the idea when viewing some of the shots.

There are very minor changes to the script remaining. Chris says he has an appointment with Dr. Lester rather than "Mr. Lester" which could have been a mistake in the script as the next script reference is to Dr. Lester.

Craig doesn't say "Forget it" after another misunderstanding with Ms Floris. He says it with gestures instead, always much better.

And Floris doesn't call across the room "Fork ah did?" which was too weird anyway. She gets words all jumbled up when interpreting what is said to her, not when she initiates (as in "Welcome to LesterCorp. May we meet your filing needs?" or "Please have a seat, Mr. Juarez" or "I'm sorry, I'm afraid I have no idea what you're saying right now".) For her to suddenly blurt out nonsense out of the blue wouldn't be consistent. Besides, we already got the joke by this point. Adding this line would could alienate the audience in that eye rolling "yeah, yeah, we get the joke already" fashion which is a killer in this context.

@lise: Thanks for that detailed comparison between the script and movie. One of the reasons I wanted to include a Charlie Kaufman script is that he has a very specific visual sense of scenes, so it's intriguing to see how, in this case, the director Jonze varied from the script.

The most amazing thing about this script is that it wasn't written with Malkovich's approval or developed with him. Kaufman wrote it as a spec and picked Malkovich because of his enigmatic quality and because he thought his name sounded funny. He didn't even know the guy. Talk about gutsy. In a Q&A at one point someone asked Kaufman what would have happened if Malkovich had declined the role, would they have picked another actor? He said luckily it didn't come to that since he couldn't picture anyone else doing this film.

This scene reads like it came out of an episode of Flying Circus. The whole third act of the script is quite different from the film and includes a final confrontation between Malkovich and a sixty-foot tall puppet of Harry S. Truman. I guess it was unfilmable, but it is so good – much better than the film. I'm all for breaking the rules but Kaufman seems to not care they exist in the first place. Gotta love him.

I'm a big fan of his writing style and if you look at this script, hardly anything is capitalized, not even character introductions. The writing is very subtle and economical and it forces the reader to pay attention. He lets the ideas do the talking. I can highly recommend reading this entire script for those who haven't yet. It's a great read.

@Teddy: Perhaps it's something we should read for the GITS Script Reading and Analysis Series? Although I'd love to read Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which I have not read yet.

@Scott, I'm up for reading both 'Malki' and 'Eternal' again. Both were a joy to read. Definitely put them on the list for later this year.

Did you ever read Killing Charlie Kaufman? It's a script supposedly written by Kaufman's "former colleague" Wrick Cunningham. It's pretty funny and very meta.