How John Malkovich Manipulates the Music in Opus

Writer/director Mark Anthony Green’s Opus begins with a reclusive pop star named Moretti (John Malkovich) inviting a select group of journalists and influencers to his secluded compound, for a chance to listen to his first new album in thirty years. It’s an opportunity any music fan would die for, at least figuratively… Or maybe even literally, as chaos ensues.

Ayo Edebiri stars as Ariel, one of the journalists who finds herself caught in Moretti’s web, but Malkovich owns the screen as the David Bowie-esque figure. The veteran actor had some new experiences working on the movie, including recording three real songs written by Nile Rodgers and The-Dream, under the guise of Moretti. But one thing that wasn’t new to him: Wearing heels.

In fact, Malkovich took them (literally) in stride, as he tells Consequence in a Zoom interview. “In period films, depending on which period, you often wear heels. If you go back to Greek times, then you could have huge platforms. I actually wore platforms in the ’70s, and I’m fairly versed in those. And Mark Anthony has very distinctive taste and wanted a very distinctive look, which I think I understood and could contribute to hopefully a thousand percent.”

Opus was made on a tight budget with a limited number of shooting days: “It just seems completely deranged,” Malkovich says. “When I started in films, just a regular film took like four months. And now it’s ‘Oh, how many scenes? 32. How many days of shooting? Three. Oh, okay.'”

Yet within that time, first-time Mark Anthony Green was able to pack in a lot. Green describes Opus to Consequence as “a cautionary tale about tribalism, that hopefully causes us to ask some questions about the people that we idolize, beyond entertainment and art. I think the observation that I’m making in Opus isn’t one that is special to just me and my worldview… I love standup comedy, and the best joke is when a comedian says something that you’ve thought about, but never quite articulated it that way. So we tried to figure out the most fun way to articulate this point, and I’m super proud of where we landed.”

Malkovich didn’t struggle to understand the character, or Green’s point of view, because “a good script more or less dictates what you need to do. I think good scripts tell you who the person is, how they view the world.”

That said, Malkovich says that “from the character to the music to the costumes, we had a close collaboration on everything — as it should be. Because when you’re an actor, it’s difficult for people to understand you are a figure in someone else’s dream. It is not your dream, and you have to get that through your fat head sometimes. It is their dream. That’s pretty much how I always work with a director.”

Key to creating Opus was Moretti’s music, for which Green was able to bring in two all-star producers: The director still seems in awe of being able to collaborate with Nile Rodgers and The Dream. “It’s really tough for me to put you in what happened to my little heart,” he says. “The Venn diagram of all my tastes is, it’s John Malkovich, Nile Rodgers, and The Dream… You’re talking about two of the greatest producers and songwriters in history. They’re literally in the studio with Beyoncé — I’m having to pull them away from Beyoncé to go do this thing for no money. We had gone through such an arduous process of making it work — I was really demanding with Nile and Dream on the songs, but they were amazing, amazing partners.”

Green remembers the day they started recording with Malkovich, in a studio in Boston. “We were waiting on John, and everybody’s kind of being their true self — Nile just looks incredible, and Dream is watching football and probably making another record. John walks in, and you could tell that John had come to play. There was a seriousness, like a prize fighter, where you’re like, ‘Oh, he’s really here to do this.’ And so unafraid. And I saw them match his intensity, and then his intensity rise, and then the engineer’s intensity…”

About 30 minutes into the session, Green says, “There was a moment where John hit a note and everyone looked around like, ‘Holy shit, this is amazing.’ And it felt like if the movie never came out — if this was it — to have felt whatever I felt in that room that day, I’d be all right. There was such an alchemy, such a beautiful feeling in that room that day. We did something really special.”

Adds Green, “I feel spoiled. My next film, the character’s not a singer. So I don’t know what I’m going to do, how I’m going to recreate that feeling. But I am addicted to it at this point.”

The first single from Moretti, “Dina Simone,” is now currently available on all streaming platforms — which means that Malkovich is now officially a Spotify artist. He has no strong opinions about the way the company currently pays out royalties, but he still enjoyed his time as a rock star.

“I really felt that I was in the hands of people who were extraordinarily competent at what they did,” he says. “They know how to make a record, that was never in doubt. And to get to have that experience was a really momentous event for me in my career. I’ve done all kinds of unlikely things. But that was really a singular experience, to be in a recording studio with them.”

Opus arrives in theaters on Friday, March 14th.