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EP 111: BEING JOHN MALKOVICH - For $200 I'll Let You Crawl Into This Hole

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Good Morning!!!!

This week we creep around in John Malkovich's head through a portal that spits you out on the New Jersey Turnpike. Line up folks, get your fifteen minutes of mundane. 


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Wendy:

Foreign.

Bridget:

Good morning.

Wendy:

Good morning.

Bridget:

I'm Bridget.

Wendy:

And I'm Wendy.

Bridget:

And this is Flickin Beans.

Wendy:

Join us every Monday where we talk about a movie over coffee. Today's coffee is weird. Have you tried it yet?

Bridget:

I think this coffee is delicious.

Wendy:

It's pretty good. Yeah. Coffee concentrate that just comes out of a pump.

Bridget:

That's neat.

Wendy:

Yeah, it's called, Javi, sponsor us.

Bridget:

Holy crap. It's cold out.

Wendy:

Yeah.

Bridget:

And you guys got snow.

Wendy:

Yeah. And it stuck.

Bridget:

Yeah, it's surprised. It's on people's windshields and on your yard.

Wendy:

Yeah, it's. Our whole back deck is covered in snow still. It didn't melt.

Bridget:

Made. You have to put on socks.

Wendy:

I know. I have to put on. She used to take the trash out now. I used to just do it barefoot.

Bridget:

I have three layers on. Four, if you count my bralette. Have you noticed that songs on the radio are getting really dirty? Sabrina Carpenter's new song is called Tears. Some of the lyrics are, the thought of you makes me wet. Tears run down my thighs. That's nasty.

Wendy:

Oh, we're hot. I don't know.

Bridget:

It's on the radio, though. I know. It should be on the explicit. And have you heard the one Taylor Swift does where she's clearly singing about Travis's huge.

Wendy:

Yeah, that's not on the radio, but yes, wood is the name of it. I love it. I like the part where she's talking about something about climbing like a redwood.

Bridget:

Yeah. Oh, God, yeah.

Wendy:

Yeah. You know, I get it.

Bridget:

I get it. I hope she gets pregnant. Have I said this before?

Wendy:

I don't know, but I think it's.

Bridget:

Coming, and I want her to still go on tour and do her same moves.

Wendy:

Yeah.

Bridget:

She will be so f******. Then.

Wendy:

She can be the second person to perform pregnant at the Super Bowl.

Bridget:

Oh, who is the first? Rihanna. Rihanna. I think when Beyonce was getting ready to do Coachella, she was only, like, three months after having a baby.

Wendy:

Really?

Bridget:

Oh, my God. She worked her a** off.

Wendy:

Insane.

Bridget:

This is not normal. No, you have to have, like, a trainer and somebody, like, literally locking.

Wendy:

You have to have a f****** wet nurse. Somebody gonna take that baby. So you don't. So you don't see it for three months while you're preparing for Coachella. That's wild.

Bridget:

Speaking of wet nurse. Okay, if you're lactating, it's gonna leak through your pants.

Wendy:

I mean, well, if it gets that far.

Bridget:

Here's why I said this.

Wendy:

Yeah. Okay.

Bridget:

Okay. I actually stayed up late enough to watch SNL last night, and there was A sketch. And at the end, Mikey Day stands up and he has the little wet spot where his drips were dripped out. And it wasn't part of the sketch. And I was like, oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

Wendy:

It wasn't part of the sketch.

Bridget:

Not at all.

Wendy:

Whoa.

Bridget:

He stood up and it was very obvious. Oh, no. Oh, no. I wonder if that'll come out in the gossips.

Wendy:

Oh, somebody else noticed for sure.

Bridget:

Good Lord. Everyone noticed. God, it gets really dark and it's very round. You've seen it.

Wendy:

We all know exactly what dudes.

Bridget:

Of course. Imagine what a hurry they're in.

Wendy:

Place. Yeah. Changing outfits and everything. While you're live on television.

Bridget:

And it's like other people are dressing you. Oh, my God. You know, they've all seen each other naked.

Wendy:

Oh, yeah.

Bridget:

Purpose or. Or accident. Okay, on with the show. Our movie this week was being John.

Wendy:

Malcolm, 1999, and guess who it stars.

Bridget:

John Malkovich.

Wendy:

Yes. And another John.

Bridget:

John Cusack and Cameron Diaz, who is unrecognizable.

Wendy:

They try to make her again, another actress they try to make ugly. And they don't. They kind of succeed, but not really. You're like it just very much. You can tell that that's not her hair.

Bridget:

Why not hire somebody ugly?

Wendy:

Yeah.

Bridget:

I did read that when she talked to people on the set as the character they didn't recognize.

Wendy:

Yeah. Her hair is very different. And they under makeup her.

Bridget:

Right.

Wendy:

So she's kind of plain. She's still beautiful. They really have to try hard at it.

Bridget:

Oh, my God. Okay, so this movie is f***** up.

Wendy:

It's so wild.

Bridget:

Everybody that read it thought, this is a great concept. Nobody's gonna make this movie. John Malkovich was the only person they had in mind.

Wendy:

Really? I was gonna say, is that something you saw? Because it could have been done, really, with any actor.

Bridget:

Well, that's what he kept saying. He kept turning it down and turning it down. And he even said, well, I'll make the movie with you as long as somebody else plays the guy.

Wendy:

Okay.

Bridget:

He finally gave in. But why do you think John Malkovich?

Wendy:

I don't know. That's a crazy question. Maybe he's a great person that is recognizable but isn't so famous that it's not like a Jennifer Aniston or a Brad Pitt. It's like somebody that everybody can recognize his face, but maybe you don't know who he is, which makes him a little bit more accessible to them. But that could be a lot of people, too. So I don't know, like why John Malkovich. But it works because he is weird and it needs to be somebody that's a little off.

Bridget:

I think he's also a little boring. He was literally ordering towels and being mad that it didn't have the bland color that he really wanted. Loden.

Wendy:

What is loden? Is that a blue?

Bridget:

I feel like it's a really dull light greenish gray.

Wendy:

Okay.

Bridget:

It's not. So another movie where the main character has a weird job.

Wendy:

A puppeteer.

Bridget:

A puppeteer who actually knows other puppeteers that are his rivals. Come on.

Wendy:

In particular, the marionette puppeteer.

Bridget:

Right.

Wendy:

Which obviously is always used as a metaphor for being under the control or being in control of someone else. Not just a puppeteer. A marionette. Which is used as a metaphor as it is in so many other movies about being in control. Either someone else controlling you or you being the puppeteer. And John Cusack wants to be in control and he is not.

Bridget:

There's a lot of symbolism there.

Wendy:

Yeah.

Bridget:

Does become able to control John Malkovich when he's in his head the way they get in his head. That's a weird start to the movie.

Wendy:

There's so many weird things about this movie that probably didn't need to even be in it. Like the office. It was just a way to make you feel more uncomfortable the whole time. I think. Goes to this job interview. And it's on the seven and a half floor. And the idea is that was built for a little person for some reason because they can't work. The ceilings are too high and I just don't fit in anywhere.

Bridget:

And the man who married the George set up, he said, I'll build a special floor for you and your accursed kind.

Wendy:

Yeah.

Bridget:

And that was basically the only training video.

Wendy:

Yeah. We don't know really what they do there. Except for file.

Bridget:

Right. It's hilarious though that everyone's hunched over.

Wendy:

Yeah.

Bridget:

Basically the ad was for someone of short stature with nimble, fast fingers. Profiling.

Wendy:

And now that they all work on this super short floor, there's not one little person that works there. It's all normal sized people. Tall people that have to bend over.

Bridget:

It's ridiculous. And the secretary who thinks everyone has a speech impediment, but she's crazy. He says, schwartz. And she's like, Juarez. Mr. Juarez. And like, I don't know what you're saying. And his boss is like, I can't believe she puts up with me with my terrible speech impediment. Thank you for pretending to understand me.

Wendy:

Yeah. She's gaslit him into thinking that it's him.

Bridget:

That was a bit of comic relief. So he discovers a small door behind a file cabinet. So, yeah, let's open this little door. We get the perspective of being inside the hole, looking out at him. And it looks nasty. It looks like dirt. What's the first thing I can think of? Maybe a flashlight. Instead of just crawling in.

Wendy:

Just go for it.

Bridget:

Right. And suddenly he finds himself looking in the mirror and placing that as John Malkovich. Yes. He's in his head.

Wendy:

He's eating toast.

Bridget:

Yeah. And it's muffled and it's. He's just broached the tip of this. Cause later he gets way more involved, obviously, because he's gonna keep doing it again and again. You know, the idea of being someone else for a day, or in this case, 15 minutes and then being spit out on the New Jersey Turnpike.

Wendy:

Yeah.

Bridget:

He's wet. Why is he wet?

Wendy:

I don't know. We never learn why the portal was created, who created it, how it works. None of that is ever addressed. So who knows what's going on, what kind of witchcraft? Well, they do kind of address it in the end, when they're all trying to. There's folklore that. It's like a generational thing. And on his 44th birthday, they all have to get in his head so they can be there forever. So I guess they kind of address it, but we don't know why it.

Bridget:

Exists, so he doesn't keep it a secret. And his sexy coworker, this character is horrible. But she hated playing that, too. She's like, I'm not a sexy vixen. She gets in there and it's like, oh, my God, she's greedy. We can sell this for $200. I was thinking, what a great serial killer ruse. Get people there, get $200, and then be like, crawl into this hole. Trust me, it puts the lotion on its skin.

Wendy:

Yeah. I thought you were going to go a different direction with that, is that you would go into John Malkovich and be killing people.

Bridget:

Ooh.

Wendy:

Which is another angle we could do.

Bridget:

Yeah. The other thing I was thinking is he's got Cameron Diaz at home. She's a whole other thing. But he's, like, instantly ready to cheat.

Wendy:

Yeah.

Bridget:

And I don't know why they're not happy.

Wendy:

Craig's character, he's looking for something to make him feel better about being a loser puppeteer. She's there, but she also expects things of him, like, get a job.

Bridget:

Right.

Wendy:

So their relationship isn't. Isn't good. So he's looking at this fantasy of this woman that he works with. Isn't. It's not real.

Bridget:

And she doesn't really have a relationship with Craig. She has a relationship with a f****** apartment full of animals.

Wendy:

Yeah.

Bridget:

Like a chimpanzee. And, you know, she focuses on the chimpanzees childhood trauma which you put upon.

Wendy:

It by stealing it from its parents.

Bridget:

Correct. She was ultimately not focused on him. And he didn't give a s*** about all those animals either.

Wendy:

Right.

Bridget:

I actually knew a couple that was a lot like them.

Wendy:

They had a chimpanzee.

Bridget:

They had a lot of animals, smaller animals in their apartment, which was very tiny and dirty and not enough light overall. In their apartment. It was very small. Similar.

Wendy:

Their home in this is very crowded and noisy because of all the birds and animals chirping. Got talking birds and a chimp.

Bridget:

I was going to talk a little bit about his actual puppeteering. I'm sure it was stop motion. I mean, I don't know if they had CGI like that, but if that's a real puppeteer, that's amazing.

Wendy:

I thought the same thing. I was wondering whether the things he was doing with the puppets were actually possible with a marionette.

Bridget:

God, it was incredible. It conveyed emotion. And at that one point, when he's puppeteering on the street and the little girl stops, her dad looks away and everything becomes really sexual.

Wendy:

Yeah. Sexual and religious at the same time. It's like a nun and a priest humping the wall across from each other.

Bridget:

It was totally him. Wouldn't you love a puppet of yourself?

Wendy:

Yeah.

Bridget:

Especially if you could move it like that.

Wendy:

Yeah.

Bridget:

Who's really acting out his own angst.

Wendy:

I don't understand there's a lot of movie at all how you would do it. When he becomes famous and is doing.

Bridget:

These large shows and things like that as John Malkovich.

Wendy:

Right. It no longer is in just your hands. He's got, like, strings and a hole that I could see that working. But when he's just got the hand. I'm doing this like people can see what I'm doing. When he has the puppets just in his hand. I don't understand how he could possibly make them dance like that. I know it's impressive. I'm sure it probably does exist.

Bridget:

Jump ahead to. He did find a way to inhabit John Malkovich's body and become him. But also make him quit acting and become a famous puppeteer.

Wendy:

Yeah.

Bridget:

And then did you notice his hair was so long and scraggly like John Cusack's was.

Wendy:

Yeah.

Bridget:

And there was a fat guy that went into his body, and you saw him. Control. At least that's how I read it. Make him get out of the chair and sat down. The thing he was actually doing. Open the fridge, open a Chinese food container and set it on the counter and then open another one he's checking out. What kind of leftovers does this guy have? Yeah, it's kind of like you'll be who you are anyway in someone else's body.

Wendy:

Yeah.

Bridget:

Yeah. It's weird.

Wendy:

It's very weird. And apparently very captivating and addictive because everybody that goes through, even though they're the fat guy, for example, he only sees John Malkovich, like, in his. His kitchen ordering something off a catalog. It's not exciting, but just that, like, relief from being yourself for 15 minutes, I think, is so addicting to people, and they want to go right back in always.

Bridget:

It's like heroin.

Wendy:

Yeah.

Bridget:

You know, it doesn't. Or crack. That I've heard.

Wendy:

Yeah. Yeah. All those things are to escape yourself.

Bridget:

Right. And it doesn't last very long, but you want to keep going back for more. It's not like kissing God, as they say.

Wendy:

But, yeah, it is weird how Transformers the experience is, even though it's, like you said, very benign most of the time. They force John Malkovich into situations that are more exciting later, like weird threesomes.

Bridget:

That's part of. Kathryn Keener's character. Basically seduces John Malkovich while John Cusack is inside him.

Wendy:

It's Lottie first, but. Yeah.

Bridget:

Is it Lottie first?

Wendy:

Yes.

Bridget:

So, obviously, lesbian relationship develops.

Wendy:

Yeah. She's, like, not attracted to women, but she's attracted to women. To the idea of a woman being attracted to her.

Bridget:

Have you ever seen Black Mirror?

Wendy:

Yeah.

Bridget:

Have you seen that episode where the guys are playing video games together? And in the game you can feel everything and his friend plays a female and then ends up coming on and they end up having tons of sex, they're not gay, and they even try to kiss in real life just to make sure they end up punching each other out. But, yeah, it's like that weird fantasy.

Wendy:

Is best left in fantasy. So when you are able to build this whole world around it, but it doesn't have to actually get in your regular world, I could see where that would be very addicting. And, yes, I have seen that episode. They fall in love and they get addicted to each other, and it's just very weird. It's a whole other, like, double life.

Bridget:

Well. And she gets Pregnant. And that f****** end of the movie where Cusack is trapped in their child forever has to see their love develop. How then does he not? I mean, this is unanswered, but how would he not sometime be able to control the child?

Wendy:

You'd think he would be able to. He's a master puppeteer. But you still don't get an escape from your brain.

Bridget:

You get despair. Loneliness and despair. It's just overall sadness. You'd want to kill yourself, but you couldn't.

Wendy:

Yeah, we watched the new Frankenstein last night.

Bridget:

Oh, goodness. It's so good.

Wendy:

A theme of that, though, is that he's immortal and he can't die. And, like, all. And why that's such a torture. And this seems almost worse than that because. Well, for me, anyway, like, the part of me that tortures me the most is my brain. And what if I only had my brain? I couldn't, like, go for a walk or take a drug or something else to, like, get away from your brain.

Bridget:

Yeah.

Wendy:

That sounds terrifying.

Bridget:

You know what I did the other day? I played records during work.

Wendy:

Yeah.

Bridget:

And I turned it up really loud, and I was like, oh, hey, I.

Wendy:

Can'T hear you, brain.

Bridget:

I couldn't hear my thoughts. And I was like, okay, it's nice. It goes by faster. I usually leave the TV on. And I know, like, I quit when Jeopardy Comes on.

Wendy:

Yeah.

Bridget:

What else about this movie?

Wendy:

I'm wondering now the folklore, if it is a real folklore of some kind, and they're like, let's give it a Hollywood spin.

Bridget:

Well, there are portals. So I've heard.

Wendy:

I think the only other thing that's worth mentioning is all of this is about power. Really? Like, so many things. It seems like it's about sex. It's not really. It's about power.

Bridget:

A lot of times sex is about power.

Wendy:

Yeah, it is. Catherine, she is almost only turned on by power. So this whole dynamic of, like, having two people in one head, both, like, lusting after her, unimaginable to her, and she can't get enough of it. And it's kind of weird, but I have to be like, would that be cool? Because threesomes seem awkward. You're like, there's too many. Too many parts. So if you could have a threesome where it was, like, two people but one body, maybe that I could see the appeal of that.

Bridget:

Okay. Yeah. Because the threesomes came up during the episode the Wrong Missy.

Wendy:

Yes.

Bridget:

And I was just like, at some point, somebody's feeling left out, and that means it's. I'M gonna have to get up and make myself a sandwich.

Wendy:

Sandwich? Yeah. Cause I had the friend sketch. What'd you have? Turkey. A little mustard.

Bridget:

All right. You got a new tattoo?

Wendy:

I did get a new tattoo on Friday.

Bridget:

It is large.

Wendy:

Yes.

Bridget:

And how long did that take?

Wendy:

A long time. All day.

Bridget:

It's amazing. It's a tribute to ukulele. Anyway. Did we do it?

Wendy:

I think we did it.

Bridget:

We flicked some beans.

Wendy:

Okay. Love you. Bye.

Bridget:

Bye. Party all night long.

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Bridget

Co-host
Head Shot

Wendy

Co-host