STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The actor John Malkovich has spent decades onstage and screen. His characters are often morally compromised. As a young man in "Dangerous Liaisons," he played a French nobleman who seduces and then brutally dumps his lover.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "DANGEROUS LIAISONS")
JOHN MALKOVICH: (As Vicomte de Valmont) Listen to me.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character, crying)
MALKOVICH: (As Vicomte de Valmont) You've given me great pleasure. But I simply cannot bring myself to regret leaving you. It's the way of the world, quite beyond my control.
INSKEEP: Now, as an older man, Malkovich plays an aging CIA agent having liaisons with his dark past. The agent has spent his career overthrowing governments and assassinating people in the Cold War. And now it's 1973 in Chile. He's about to take part in a coup that the United States really did organize, and he can't stop talking about secret plans.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "WILD HORSE NINE")
MALKOVICH: (As Chris) Girls, can I ask you something? How do you like your new president, your new left-wing president?
SAM ROCKWELL: (As Lee) What'd I say about before, Chris? What'd I say?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Yes, we like him. Everybody likes him.
MALKOVICH: (As Chris) Not everybody. That wouldn't be true. Well, enjoy him while you can, ladies.
INSKEEP: In the new movie "Wild Horse Nine," the agent is in his early 70s. He's like a walking history of the CIA. And he's been involved in everything from the Bay of Pigs to the JFK assassination.
It seems a premise of this film is that all the conspiracy theories about the CIA are true.
MALKOVICH: Well, I mean, some of them, let's face it, aren't conspiracy theories.
INSKEEP: They're history, yes.
MALKOVICH: They're fact. They're history. And I think there are many more where that came from.
INSKEEP: While the evidence we have does not support the idea that the CIA killed the president, Malkovich's character has reached the point where he's no longer sure what is true. This is the moment to advise you that this story mentions suicide.
MALKOVICH: Chris, the character I play, is in early stages of dementia and also has a disease that will soon end his life.
INSKEEP: So the agent asks his partner, played by Sam Rockwell, to help speed things along.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "WILD HORSE NINE")
MALKOVICH: (As Chris) You could take me out.
ROCKWELL: (As Lee, laughter) Take you out? As in take you out, like, in the sense of...
MALKOVICH: (As Chris) Like you just shoot me in the head on Easter Island.
INSKEEP: As I watch your character on film, sometimes he begins a sentence, and you're so worried about him, you're not even sure he's going to finish the sentence. He's so fragile.
MALKOVICH: Yeah, sure. Yeah. Well, I'm an old man. So for me, it's fairly close to me. I mean, I don't have dementia any more than I ever did probably.
INSKEEP: (Laughter).
MALKOVICH: But, you know, I'm 72 years old, so the end is nigh. And, yeah, all people are fragile, I think.
INSKEEP: Is this a buddy movie?
MALKOVICH: Yes. I mean, they're kind of like a bickering couple.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "WILD HORSE NINE")
ROCKWELL: (As Lee) Can't you shoot yourself in your own head?
MALKOVICH: (As Chris) Nah.
ROCKWELL: (As Lee) Nah? Just nah?
MALKOVICH: And I think they are two guys who love each other and love being around each other and kind of need to be around each other because each other is the person who understands them.
INSKEEP: We're at this moment when there's all kinds of public discussion about the role of men or the decline of men or the oppression of men, or the struggles of men to find a place in society. What does this movie about two men, centered on two men say about men, if anything?
MALKOVICH: I mean, I think it probably says a lot of things about men. They've done incredibly brutal things in their lives. I think, as long as I've worked and as long as I live, I can't imagine saying a line that's sadder than the one I say in this film.
INSKEEP: His character remembers a real-world event in the 1960s. The United States took part in overthrowing Patrice Lumumba, the newly elected leader of what was then the Republic of the Congo.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "WILD HORSE NINE")
MALKOVICH: (As Chris) The night before they shot him, he said, Chris, don't you know that if you kill me, you'll be killing democracy in Africa for the next 50 years? I said, Patrice, what do you think we're trying to do?
That's a great piece of writing. And it's funny only in the very darkest, in the very, very darkest way. But it's incredibly tragic and also true.
INSKEEP: Does that say something about men?
MALKOVICH: Yeah, I think it does, that they're capable of doing terrible things, but I think people are in general. I don't think men are particularly special in that way.
INSKEEP: Got it.
MALKOVICH: They just, throughout history, have normally had the power to enact terrible things.
INSKEEP: The very same example that you gave about Patrice Lumumba also speaks to this moment because it's about America's role in the world - in the past, true. But here we are in this moment having a big debate about, what is America's role in the world? What is America's place in the world? Are we doing good in the world or not so much? What does it mean to put this film out at this moment in that way? What does it say about us now?
MALKOVICH: It has the proper distance from its topics in terms of tone and time. It has a distance between these events. And what I think it does is call an audience to reflect, to understand some of the things that happened, and yes, may have happened - and understand some of the things they never heard about and will never even look up which happened, and say, does the end justify the means? And, see, I'm more of a means person.
INSKEEP: Go on. What do you mean?
MALKOVICH: So, well, if the end is such that I have to achieve it by these means, then maybe the end is not something for me. Murder in the service of a cause is not really my thing, I'm afraid.
INSKEEP: That's a good place to end it, I think. John Malkovich, thanks so much for your time.
MALKOVICH: Thank you, sir.
INSKEEP: His new movie is "Wild Horse Nine." And by the way, the suicide hotline, if you should need it, is 988.
(SOUNDBITE OF CARTER BURWELL "OUR FIRST BIG HEADS - SUNSET SURVEILLANCE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
