One of my favorite movies came on last night, one I had not seen in a pretty good while — 1993's In the Line Of Fire, with Clint Eastwood playing a Secret Service agent and John Malkovich playing the role of a would-be presidential assassin — and Malkovich plays the role to the hilt, too, arguably one of the greatest villain performances in cinematic history. They couldn't have picked anyone better to play that role. Anyway, this afternoon just screwing around, I googled John Malkovich, and in his Wiki entry, I see this couple of tidbits...
Malkovich is a political conservative, and has been described as staunchly pro-war and an ardent supporter of the death penalty. When the serial killer John Wayne Gacy was executed in 1994, Malkovich organized a champagne party for himself and his friends.
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In a 2002 appearance at the Cambridge Union Society, when asked whom he would most like to "fight to the death," Malkovich replied that he would "rather just shoot" scientologist Tom Cruise, journalist Robert Fisk, and British MP George Galloway. Fisk reacted with outrage. When interviewed by The Observer, Malkovich elaborated on his comments: "I hate somebody who is supposed to be a Middle Eastern expert who thinks Jesus was born in Jerusalem. I hate what I consider his vile anti-semitism. This being said, I apologize to both Fisk and Galloway; they seem like good men but if they make such a heinous mistake again, I will not hesitate to murder them brutally by way of the gallows." Malkovich later added: "I'm a Christopher Hitchens fan myself, but no one has thinner skins than journalists, in my experience, and I come from a family of them... They can dish it out but they can't take it. But the reason I don't like the topic, why I don't really say anything about a whiner like Fisk, is it gives them more oxygen."
Wow, just...wow. I never thought anyone could approach in real life the level of bad-assery that Clint Eastwood inhabits in the movies, let alone one of his fellow actors. But that's about the closest I've ever seen, right there...
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