Tuesday, November 16, 1999

Film a door into mind of 'Malkovich'

Watch closely the dreamlike dance of the sad marionette at the beginning of "Being John Malkovich" (now playing at Century 16). Later on the eponymous star repeats it, step for step, as proof that he's not quite himself.
   It's a wonderful scene. Lots of wonderful things happen onscreen in this dark comic fantasy from director Spike Jonze and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman.
   "Being John Malkovich" is about the common desire to be someone else, if only temporarily. Kaufman and Jonze literally open a door into the mind of actor John Malkovich (portraying himself with terrific abandon). Step through the tiny door and slide down a rather sticky chute and, for a Warholian 15 minutes, the traveler finds himself seeing the world through the eyes of the actor as he reads Chekhov, brushes his teeth, orders from catalogs or seduces a beautiful woman.
   Puppeteer Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) is ready to go through that door. He's wasting his talent with delicate, depressing street performances of "Abelard and Heloise" that draw jeers and violent outbursts from passing New Yorkers. His wife of 10 years, Lotte (an unrecognizably frowzy Cameron Diaz), nags him relentlessly and saves her affections for the ailing menagerie she keeps in their gloomy apartment. (The chimp with repressed memories serves as an important plot element toward the end of the movie.)
   Schwartz puts down his puppets and takes a file clerk job located on floor 7 1/2 of a midtown office building. He thinks it odd that the ceilings are so absurdly low he has to walk like Groucho Marx, but no one else seems to notice or care. With an arch-browed coworker named Maxine (Catherine Keener), Schwartz discovers the hidden portal that takes him into the mind of Malkovich. The two conspire to run a business charging visitors 200 bucks for the quarter-hour trip, at the end of which the ticketholder falls puppet-like in a heap on the side of the New Jersey Turnpike.
   Schwartz falls for Maxine. Lotte falls for Maxine. Maxine wants to be Malkovich. Schwartz wants to be Malkovich being with Maxine.
   A group of old people led by Orson Bean all want to be Malkovich as a means of achieving immortality.
   And Malkovich wants to know why he's suddenly lost control of his own limbs.
   Enjoy "Being John Malkovich" on a variety of levels: as a metaphor for losing control of one's life, as a chance to see the title actor playing something other than a villain, as a diversion from the noisy crowd of millennium madness movies. The cast of this film is remarkable. The outcome, unpredictable.
   Any film that can successfully incorporate Orson Bean, puppets, a chimp, John Malkovich, Chekhov, Charlie Sheen (surprise!) and Brad Pitt (surprise again!) gets big snaps for originality.
   Answer: Everybody wants to
   "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" is still the show to beat in November sweeps. The ABC Q&A hit has been pulling in more than 20 million viewers a night during its 15-night run so far.
   The quiz show beat NBC's "Frasier" last Thursday, helped ABC score big ratings for Friday night's TGIF comedies and was a primo lead-in for the Saturday night biopic about the Partridge Family.
   There's already talk at the network of bringing back the Philbin-hosted series full-time in January.
   After a slow start the previous Thursday, last week's "Greed" on Fox managed to attract more than 11 million viewers in the adult 18-49 demo (the one advertisers like). That quizzer hosted by Chuck Woolery is giving Fox its best Thursday night numbers since last May's baseball broadcasts.
   WWF wrestling on UPN is the No. 1 Thursday night show with teens for the 12th week in a row, and is drawing more viewers to the network on that night than any show since "Star Trek: Voyager" back in 1997.
   In projected 10-night November sweeps averages, ABC leads with a 5.7 rating in adults 18-49, up a gigantic 30 percent over last year. NBC has dropped 14 percent to a 5.5 rating, Fox is down by 23 percent to a 4.4 and CBS is down 3 percent to a 3.6. Each ratings point in the adult demo is worth 1.25 million viewers.
  
  
  

 
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