he Libertine is the story of the Second Earl of Rochester (Johnny Depp), a 17th-century English playwright who slept with everyone he could get his hands on, wrote a play about dildos and died horribly of syphilis at age thirty-three. Box-office gold! The project was a labor of love for John Malkovich, who originated the title role onstage; he produced the film and plays King Charles II, Rochester's patron. The film is innovatively shot — all murk and shadows instead of the gloss that's such a costume-drama cliche — and the acting is incredible: Depp has never been better and Rosamund Pike is fantastic as his long-suffering wife. So is Samantha Morton as Elizabeth Barry, Rochester's actress protege. (The role was supposed to go to Nicole Kidman, and I don't see how she would have been better.) And then there is Malkovich. What can you say? I wouldn't just pay to see John Malkovich read the phone book; I would pay to watch him hold the phone book silently. So go see the movie this holiday weekend, and give thanks for latex and penicillin.
     Malkovich spoke with Hooksexup about sex and morality (and the difference), the aspect of seduction that film can never capture and his own onscreen erotic history. — Michael Martin

Did you have trouble financing the movie because of the sexual content?
Absolutely. One distributor told me it was the worst script he'd ever read. Which I would assume was his way of saying something else. But, you know, it's their money. What can you say?

You played the title role on the stage. Why did you give up the lead, and was it difficult?
No, it wasn't hard at all. I don't feel like I really gave anything up, and I had always wanted Johnny to do it — I was too old already when I did it on stage, and that was nine years ago.

What about Johnny Depp said "bawdy bard who wrote a play about dildos" to you?
Well, I thought it would be good for him because it's really an adult — not to say "mature" — role. Rochester is not a sweet outsider. In a way he's very much an insider who chooses to be out, but in no way needs to be. I thought it was something Johnny would do. He's a terrific actor, he's got a very good sense of humor, very smart.

What was so interesting about Rochester that you wanted to make this film?
Well, for me, it's not just Rochester, but the whole zeitgeist of the time. And the story seemed to be about a person's responsibility to their talent. In this story, you have Elizabeth Barry, who takes her responsibility to her talent very seriously, and you have Rochester, who doesn't play it the slightest heed. In a certain way, I saw it as a kind of cautionary tale.

Your King Charles is a complicated king. His relationship with Rochester wasn't sexual, but it was an emotional investment.
I saw his relationship with Rochester as quite complicated. Charles was quite a physical man, but I think his message to Rochester was, you know, "Yeah, drink, whore, do whatever, but when it's time to get our business done, let's get our business done." And he kept wanting Rochester to be something he wasn't. I think he honestly loved him, had very strong feelings for Rochester and his family — because Rochester's father had been very instrumental in the Restoration, and actually, supposedly, once even physically saved Charles's life. I think Charles wanted him to make use of this talent, and Rochester either didn't want to do that or wasn't really capable of it.

Rochester is voraciously sexual with men and women. How did they label that back then?
Well, they were libertines. This is a century before the Marquis de Sade or people like that. They did what they wanted sexually, when they wanted to do it. Rochester pursued sexually any person who might have interested him at the moment, regardless of their gender. I think it was just quite a bit more accepted than it would be in today's society.

Today, Rochester might be called a sex addict. Do you believe that disorder exists?
I think people are animals, and they like to have sex and they're drawn to having sex and they're drawn to having it quite often — more rather than less. I don't even know that so many people think of it as getting away with something. I'm not sure what addicted to sex means. I would think that's pretty normal.

Do you agree with that line in the film:"every man needs the whorehouse and the inn?"
I take its point. "Needs"? No. I don't need either of those, but I don't much mind what other people do. I don't check when people have sex, and who with, and how often, or when they go for a hike, or if they drink flat or sparkly water. I think part of the thing about being human and being grown up is that you have to prescribe for yourself. For generations, the church did that. Now the church, at least for part of society, has less influence on their lives. I don't think that should mean, nor do I think it really does mean, that issues of morality go away. They're just up to you now. I don't know that religious people are particular arbiters of what should be considered moral or immoral or amoral. That always scares me.

It's especially scary now.
It's scary because somebody's always telling somebody how to do their business. I object to being told it. More profoundly, I object to telling it. Even in religious terms, if we really are creatures of free will and choice, then there are things we have to decide. The main thing we have to decide in life is how we live, what is our particular morality.

Although I think there's a lot of sort of confusion between sex and morality. Sex, I think, is more of a need and desire. Moral issues are something else. And this is not in any way any kind of injunction to do this or that. I'm just saying that religion has played a big part in dictating morality for a long time. But, you know, Jimmy Swaggart once hired hookers so he could watch them get in and out of a car. That's not really my business either, and he's religious. That's his business. If you break a law, that becomes the government's business. Otherwise, I'm very reticent to prescribe what people should or should not do. And I fear being prescribed to.

Did you read Rochester's play about dildos?
Yeah, it's not very good. But it has some hilarious notions. To think you could write something like that to amuse the king — it's just an outrage. Hilarious. It's not a very good play, although he was supremely gifted and very modern. He always saw a reason for what he didn't achieve. One reason was, "the king's a cunt."

Rochester had several talents, and he should've been miles ahead of the gang. Watching someone like that is compelling, and not dissimilar to the way we watch a train wreck. Instead of leaving us work like Shakespeare or Marlowe or Kidd, he left us with a porno play that was locked away for two hundred years.

The sex in your film is more suggested than shown. It could have been much more explicit.
If I were directing the film, I might have done some things differently. But as a producer, you hire a director to execute the vision. But generally, I don't think it's necessary.

Because nudity and sex take viewers out of the film?
That's my point. They can. Do they have to? Of course not. When I was young, the films that were just utter scandals — like Last Tango in Paris — are like screen savers at the IBM office now. The world changes, and it may change back — who knows? I certainly have done plays and movies that required some degree of nudity or sexual explicitness. I would say probably the sexiest film I ever did was Dangerous Liaisons. There's very little nudity in it, and no real explicit sex, but people tell me that it's quite an erotic film.

There are very intense moments. I was just interviewing David Cronenberg about A History of Violence. My recollection was that it was a lot more graphic than it actually was. He said, "Think about the violence in this film. It's only like three or four frames at a time, but they're intense, so they stick with you." I think that applies to Dangerous Liaisons.
And I think it applies to eroticism. I remember seeing Cal, which was the first time I ever saw Helen Mirren. I don't remember that there was any sex in it, but it was erotic to me, and I'm sure because of what she conveyed.

When explicit sexuality just wasn't done, people in the movies and in art were pushing on a boundary, a wall, a fence. Now that doesn't really exist. You want to look up people screwing horses or warthogs on the internet, I wouldn't think that would be a problem. I'm not trying to make any moral statement about it at all. What I'm saying is that there are certain things movies do better than that, and certain things in terms of sex and the relaying of sexual information they do worse.

Could they do the same?
Well, I'm not sure. There's something about anonymity and the trains-passing-in-the-night thing that movies . . . I don't know how well they'd ever do that. Often in movies — and, I think, quite a bit in life — it's the idea, not the act. You look for that other thing, something ephemeral, undefineable.

So many sexual fantasies, when actually realized, are disappointing.
The imagination is just so much more powerful, and so much less complicated. It's what you want or desire without too much reflection. And then the act, you have to start reflecting — contemplating, regretting, etc. That's why people fantasize.

What is the most libertinistic thing you've done recently?
Very little. I can't even think of one. I'm not much of a libertine, really.

We're looking forward to Art School Confidential.
It's about a bunch of cretins in an art college, and I play one of their even more cretinous teachers who paints triangles for twenty-five years — or, I suppose I should say, a triangle for twenty-five years. The enormous arc he makes in the movie is that he starts to paint circles. So that probably gives you an idea.  n°