Costume dramas

John Malkovich, president of this year's festival jury, is a man of many parts. Since founding Chicago's celebrated Steppenwolf Theatre Company in 1976 he has gone on to act in more than 30 films, has received two Oscar nominations and numerous awards for his stage work. "Yet there are many people who only know me from Con Air," he once told an interviewer. "I've costumed more pieces of theatre than I've played bad guys in the movies, but who cares."

There is, of course, more to the man than costuming, and as head of the jury at the Cairo International Film Festival everyone involved in the official competition probably cares quite a lot. Is he, then, a particularly hard person to please?

"I'm not a very harsh critic really," he says. "If I don't like something, which is usually, I just sort of turn it off; and if I like it I really love it."

Which might seem pretty harsh. But he insists: "So, I'm not a terribly harsh critic, really. And being president or not being president wouldn't affect that, you know."

The smile is convincing, if not a little menacing. And at least one reason why he is such a convincing bad-guy becomes obvious.

"I'm not a big movie-goer," he admits, confessing to scant knowledge of Arab cinema. "Over the years I've seen several Arab films but, you know, they don't play so much in America. In France [Malkovich currently lives in a farmhouse in Provence] Arab films are shown on TV, but I really don't know that much about cinema. I know... about the theatre, and I hope to do more theatre than I've done in the past couple of years... it's been two years since I did a play, which is the longest period of my adult life and I'm not particularly happy about that."

The stage, he regularly announces, remains his first love. As far as movies are concerned, his time appears to be split between the mainstream -- films such as Dangerous Liaisons and Con Air -- and those of a more alternative bent, not least Antonioni's adaptation of Paul Bowles' The Sheltering Sky. He has appeared in several adaptations of novels, including Of Mice and Men, the film Mary Reilly, based on Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde, and most recently The Man in the Iron Mask. Does the cinematic treatment of literature, then, constitute a particular interest?

"I like all kinds of books," he responds, " an enormous amount of fiction, non-fiction. Period, no; genre, no but apart from that anything, everything from anywhere. I suppose in some ways I like things that expose me to a culture or a type of life, of world view, that I may not have known. I read many modern novels and many older ones too."

"I did do a film, not a very good film at all, but I did a film of a wonderful book Elleni, the true story of a New York Times reporter whose mother was killed by the communists in the Second World War. It was a great book but not a good movie. And I produced a very modern novel for the cinema called The Accidental Tourist a few years ago. It's a wonderful American novel. I'm also developing a couple of films from contemporary novels and I worked for three years on the screenplay of a novel called The Dancer Clears."

But with two Oscar nominations under his belt, and his recent appearance in the blockbuster Man in the Iron Mask, is he, perhaps, being gently seduced by Hollywood away from such projects?

He claims not: "I don't think I was ever seduced by Hollywood. I think everyone's seduced by money. And I'm susceptible to being seduced by money, maybe less so than some people and maybe more so than other people. Hollywood is just about money. Everyone in Hollywood has been seduced by money. You may as well call it Dollarwood... I'm a very good actor on stage. With cinema it's complicated because what makes a good actor? I think theatre's definitely the acting. It's just what acting is. You don't have to be an actor to be in the movies, not at all. But I try to do my best in the movies because I'm a person who tries to do my best, whether it's theatre or architecture. I think people who think that just because you love something you're going to do it well are stupid. I think you do it well because you do it well. If you get paid $3 million dollars to do it or $20 million or no million you're still going to do it well, if you do it well."

And back to being president of the jury, back to the film festival, for John Malkovich is on a tight schedule, and my scheduled 20 minutes have already slipped by. What future the Cairo Film Festival?

"It should never want to become Cannes. There are a lot of things that Hussein Fahmy wants to do and he will do to improve the festival. But one must take into account that there are certain political, cultural and social realities. It's a fact of life. There's censorship... issues to be dealt with. But every society has its problems and restrictions and people and customs and religions and political creatures and business creatures that you have to pay obeisance to."

And Cairo itself, what of that? The man of many parts is at the moment playing jury president, and not tourist.

"I don't really get to see very much or do very much. I mean I work all day, so I've seen very little apart from seeing films and doing interviews but...I'm here as a guest of the festival and I have to in some way honour their request to do the pressing and squeezing, whether I like it or not. It's just part of being a guest."

photo: Sherif Sonbol