The MoJo Interview: John Cusack
Interview: The former Lloyd Dobler banters with MoJo editor Clara Jeffery about his movie War, Inc., her inner 16-year-old, and what it's like to still be Gen X's favorite antihero heartthrob.
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Okay, I won't lie. The prospect of talking with John Cusack was almost as exciting at 40 as it would have been as a teen. After all, he has embodied every phase of angst of those of us who grew up in the '80s, from teen dating dilemmas, to horrific high school reunions, to making lifetime commitments (which he hasn't, at least publicly). But War, Inc., which he cowrote and produced, is a different kind of film. True, he plays a nihilistic hit man (slash trade-show promoter) struggling with love and morality, just as he did in Grosse Pointe Blank. But this film—in which his character fixes problems for a Halliburtonlike company that runs the "first war ever to be 100% outsourced"—is much darker, angrier, and so jam-packed with obscure references to the war on terror, venal corporate-branding strategies, and private military contractors that even this editor of Mother Jones struggled to keep up. Going from teen heartthrob to Shock Doctrine devotee could easily make one a deadly annoying jerk, and I worried he'd shatter expectations 25 years in the making. But not to worry, ladies. He seems just as smart, and smart-assed, as the characters he plays. Maybe he just needs a good editor.
John Cusack: How are you doing?
Mother Jones: I've got a cold, so if I start sneezing, just know that the 16-year-old on the inside is dying of embarrassment.
JC: The 16-year-old?
MJ: Yeah, I've been watching you since then; we're basically the same age. Speaking of which: Perhaps more than any actor, you symbolize the angst and ambivalence of our generation, Generation X. In many roles you've turned to the camera and given an almost pop-Hamlet speech, weighing whether or not to act. Does that kind of role appeal to you? Or is it typecasting?
JC: I guess it's a modernity thing, right? And probably something about being an artist, feeling like you're not a part of the pack. There's also some element of coming of age during the Reagan administration, which everybody has painted as some glorious time in America, but I remember as being a very, very dark time. There was apocalypse in the air; the punk rock movement made sense. I mean, that's the political answer to the question.
MJ: Your characters are usually engaged in a personal struggle to figure out where they are in the world. But War, Inc. is a satire of where America is in the world. How did that come about?
JC: I don't think people knew that the Bush agenda was going to be as radical as it was in implementing the Milton Friedman playbook of radical privatization—what Naomi Klein calls "disaster capitalism." As Iraq was still on fire, literally, Paul Bremer rode in, dressed like my character in his Brooks Brothers suit with his military boots, the uniform of the disaster capitalist. It was a messianic fantasy where Iraq was going to be a free-market utopia. Now, when it's the clusterfuck that it is, they say this is just a failure of management. The lies and the hypocrisy are so savage that your eyes start to water.
THE DOBLER EFFECT
Great soundtrack + angsty ambivalence + memorable quips + misbegotten love = the quintessential Cusack role.
Walter "Gib" Gibson, The Sure Thing
Angst: Easy lay with hot dumb girl, or relationship with smart (and also hot) girl?
Takeaway: Smart is sexy.
Lloyd Dobler, Say Anything
Angst: Pursue career as professional kickboxer or the girl he loves?
Takeaway: Nice guys finish first. Don't buy, or sell, or process anything that's bought or sold.
Martin Blank, Grosse Pointe Blank
Angst: Is "moral flexibility" reformable?
Takeaway: You can go home again.
Craig Schwartz, Being John Malkovich
Angst: Is attraction about the mind or the body?
Takeaway: Play puppet master at your own risk.
Rob Gordon, High Fidelity
Angst: Can fears of commitment be solved by the perfect mix tape?
Takeaway: You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes...
MJ: Do you think America's ready for a dark satire about the war on terror? Often the satires that reverberate with the public are at least a decade behind actual events.
JC: In a weird way, that's not really my job. My job is to just express something that I want to express. And if I'm ahead or behind the curve, that's for others to decide.
MJ: There's an almost Pynchonesque use of names. Your character is Brand Hauser—"house brand." And Hauser works for a Halliburtonlike company called Tamerlane, presumably after the Mongol warlord. And Hilary Duff does this hilarious turn as an oversexed Central Asian pop star named Yonica Babyyeah. What was the writing process like?
JC: I got to work with two wonderful writers. Mark Leyner, who's a Célinelike writer with an electric, eclectic, corrosive aesthetic. And Jeremy Pikser, who wrote Bulworth. We figured we'd try to make an incendiary political cartoon, shifting from absurdity to seriousness to pratfalls to melodrama to Telemundo soap opera.
MJ: Yeah, and did I hear a Michael Bacon joke fly by? Is that for the genius round of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon?
JC: Could be.
MJ: Because when I encounter lines like, "Get me Katie Couric, Al Jazeera, and 100 gallons of sheep shit," I'm like, That had to be fun to write. Was this an entirely sober writing process?
JC: No, no, no, no. Not at all. Not at all.
MJ: This is also the first press release that's ever come across my desk touting the role of a "sexy left-wing journalist." Speaking for all of us, I have to thank you for that.
JC: Well, The Daily Show has "News I'd Like to..." So I can't say we're the first.
MJ: The film is also a salient critique of journalists, who report via something called the "Implanted Journalist Experience," a sort of virtual reality/Six Flags ride of the battle space. Is that your take on where journalism stands now?
JC: Well, that's a tricky one. The real reporting we've gotten from Iraq has been from really brilliant, courageous journalists who put their lives on the line. So I wouldn't say that that is an indictment of journalists in the field as much as the state of journalism. But as far as the pundits who sit on television every night and repeat the talking points given to them by the administration—they might as well have a chip in their head.
MJ: You got the, um, august John McLaughlin to participate, which was a fun touch.
JC: Once he signed a waiver, we never looked back.
MJ: Are there dangers of mixing politics and celebrity? Folks like Susan Sarandon have taken it on the chin for doing so.
JC: I think you have to consider the source. Usually they're pundits, right? And they get in front of a camera and wear makeup and sometimes other people write their lines. Who does that sound like? Fox News gave you a cable show, and you're going to call yourself a journalist?
MJ: When you were a kid, we were all watching you. What movies were you watching?
JC: Oh God, I don't know if you were all watching me. But I was watching all sorts of movies. My dad had a commercial film company, so he had a videotape player before anyone. So he got Mel Brooks movies or Citizen Kane or some classic old movies. And every summer the revival house in Evanston would show the great films from the '50s and '60s and '70s. And I remember just loving them all.
Photo: First Look Studios/Simon Versano
first americans have to get the war mongering out of their system.
ie detune the industrial military complex. wont happen soon americans like/love being the super power.
economic bankrupt will do it for them.
moving in that direction very fast now living on borrowed money and massive printing of money. devalue time.
oh the fruits of karma.
Editor pleeez!
No!
Give me more. Give me more!!!!!!!!!!!
Want less criminal activity and perversity? Then encourage and promote EDUCATION and free thinking...The change, resistance and fallout from Free thinking is a whole lot less chaotic and costly for us as a society than the brutality and ignorance enshrined in gangsterism as a change management strategy.
I think people are more scared and intimidated by the mysterious and powerful threat of Free thinking than all the militaristic might of our political and street gangs, drug barons and serial killers put together....
Gangsters are like gorillas. The lower aspect of ourselves that only needs a little education to think freely. Leonardo Da Vinci once said...Give a gorilla a piece of art to look at and he will want to know if he can eat it. The free thinker will want to know who grew it, does that grower invest and promote the creative ideals of humanitarian democracy and free speech and also "Is it good to eat?"
Intelligent, liberal-minded people of my age have so long admired Mr. Cusack, Lloyd Dobler (or even better, Lane Meyer), and "Mother Jones" because--like ourselves--these people and characters have displayed an enormous compassion, humor, and plain ole' smarts in the face of the egregious brutality of our world.
What else is there to say to Mr. Cusack and to "Mother Jones" other than, "Thank you...for give us strong voices and demonstrating that we are not alone"?
I, too remember the 1980s as a dark, sinister anything goes time.
Although I prefer to think of the 80s as the time of break-dance that military service and the passage of time have moved beyond the scope of my abilities, I also remember seeing biracial couples having to defend themselves when accosted by gangs even in progressive California. I remember the “I got mine” mentality for which one can attribute the current economic crisis and how just speaking Ronald Reagan’s name without an accolade could bring a person an accusation of treason. I never forget how the “New American Dream” was the big kill that sets someone for life to get as rich as one could as quick as one could. “He who dies with the most toys wins!” I remember as a freshman, I heard the president of the College Republicans rebuff a petition for a donation to feed starving children in Africa, saying “why should we? They’re just gonna grow up to be fat commie pigs!”
Sex was taboo but violence of bozos like Rambo and Chuck Norris was applauded, the hypocrisy. The Lethal Weapon series was a Rambo for liberals. The bad guys were CIA cut-outs, Apartheid-era South African drug dealers, cops turned gun-runners, Chinese mobsters smuggling poor Chinese immigrants so that even those that voted for Mondale could hate someone, too.
That’s coming of age in the Reagan administration.
What I like about John Cusack was that one could relate to his characters. Even my (grand)children like his movies and ask me if that’s how it was in the 80s. I tell them that I spent some of that time break-dancing to raise money for college so I didn’t get to even see any Diane Court.
Back then, if “Diane Court” was from a different cultural group, one wasn’t about to put oneself or Diane in a potentially dangerous position by picking up a “ghetto blaster” and holding it up while blaring the strains of the song to which she gave up her virginity.
If that were Allen Payne holding up the boom box outside Ione Skye’s house or if John Cusack did so outside Halle Berry’s either of those two men would be taking their life in his hands. People of color had to rival the Ninja in stealth in relationships crossing the color line in the 1980s.
Then Lloyd Dobler (if Allen Payne were playing that role) would have to use his martial arts training in a far more practical way than as a professional athlete. That’s not a joke because I actually saw an African American boy trained in Karate defending himself and his white girlfriend against several others at school and he got suspended for it.
And don’t let me get started on so-called “Christians.” Most of the ethnic jokes I heard during the 80s were from participants in the so-called “Youth For Christ” movement and I saw in my church a black boy persecuted for wanting to go out with another girl in the congregation. When I learned that the pastor wouldn’t do anything about it, he left the church and said something about religion that rhymes with “duck.” Because of that, I stopped going to that church, too. I couldn’t believe that Christ could condone such behavior, but that’s the 80s for you.
Martian Child was my favorite of Mr. Cusack’s movies. I saw it twice as an in-flight movie and cried at hearing Mr. Cusack say the same things to his would-be adopted charge that I’ve said to my own adopted children. I loved how his character would do anything and everything including sacrifice his career not for a woman but for the love of a child. Imagine adopting a child from a country whose language is outside one’s linguistic bank. I’d imagine his character would do as I did: trowel the Net looking for language materials.
I also liked how Mr. Cusack’s character in Runaway Jury made justice prevail using his intelligence rather than his muscles.
On top of that, for someone to be whining about capitalism when he makes his living based on it, well, that's stupid too.