John Malkovich says asking a friend to end your life is the ultimate request
John Malkovich discussed the moral limits of friendship while promoting the dark comedy "Wild Horse Nine," noting his character’s request to a friend to kill him.
Actor John Malkovich said there are clear boundaries to what one can ask of a friend, referencing a scene in the upcoming dark comedy Wild Horse Nine in which his character, CIA veteran Chris, asks his partner to end his life.
"I think asking a friend to take your life is about as big an ask as one can make," Malkovich told a news conference in Los Angeles.
He added that he would not do it himself. The film, directed by Oscar-winning writer-director Martin McDonagh, follows two CIA spies on Easter Island in the months before the 1973 U.S.-backed coup in Chile.
Malkovich said he was attracted to McDonagh’s script, praising the writer’s skill with dialogue and his focus on men’s relationships and their inner conflicts.
"He's a terrific writer of dialogue. He's a terrific writer of writing about men, I think, and their various complications... their relationships with themselves and with other men, their need for other men in their lives and their rejection of that need," he said.
Co-star Sam Rockwell and actor Steve Buscemi, who plays the CIA’s Latin American bureau chief, emphasized that the film is driven more by character dynamics than by plot.
"The story really is the relationships and what these characters have to do, what they ask of each other, how they relate to each other," Buscemi said.