'Malkovich's Mail' - a documentary about Hollywood dreams and realities
Twenty years ago, a little documentary named Malkovich's Mail was released. Even now, two decades later, I still find it worth watching. I’ve embedded it below - fifty minutes long, time well spent in the company of five hopeful amateur writers - and John Malkovich.
The documentary was advertised as follows: “It explores aspirations of a sometimes wacky group of Hollywood hopefuls. The one-hour documentary examines the dreams of these Hollywood neophytes, their pet projects, their perception of Hollywood and the scant realities of attaining access to Malkovich with a letter.”
The central focus was on Mr. Mudd Productions, a production company co-founded by John Malkovich. As every other such company, they get flooded with query letters by writers from every walk of life, people who dream of one day seeing their stories come to life on the silver screen.
In the documentary, five of those pitch letters are looked at, and the filmmakers visit the people behind those letters. As you might imagine, their chances of ever making it in Hollywood are just about zero - but then, those chances are just about zero for everyone!
The Mr. Mudd producers are clear and open about the business and the odds - and so is John Malkovich when asked about engaging with those countless unsolicited letters. It’s just not possible, says Malkovich, “I have a limited time on Earth, I have a limited time in my days. We have our own things to do which are enormously difficult. Come on, there are hundreds of thousands of scripts. There are literally millions of dreams. There are, as I always say, millions of paintings on cave walls.”
I genuinely like this documentary. It’s gentle, it’s real - and yes, it shows that it is practically impossible to make it in this crazy business (for anyone, really, but all the more so for people far outside the business). But if that depresses you, then I’d say, stop writing screenplays. “Practically impossible” is the norm.
We write because we love to write - if someone like Malkovich actually bites, then that’s the icing on the cake. For these portrayed writers, a door opened in the curious way of this documentary. For a moment, their lives connected with thta of John Malkovich. And even if their scripts didn’t get made (as most scripts), they are immortalized in this documentary - and, more immediately - John Malkovich took the time to read some of their dialogue and send it to them in the form of a VHS tape (remember those?). That must have been pretty cool!
I have not looked them up on IMDB. Have either of them made it? Likely not. Are they still writing? I most certainly hope so. Writing stories, living in those imaginary stories with those imaginary characters, is life intensely lived.
To me, the test is always the same: “If there were no a chance in hell of your script ever getting produced, would you still write?” The true writer will answer with a resounding yes. And the writers in this documentary were (and hopefully still are), in my view, true writers.
