PT: Is it true you improvised that scene in Line of Fire where you take Eastwood's gun in your mouth?
JM: Uh-huh.
PT: That's the quality that everybody seems to talk about when they discuss Malikovich. He's able to draw upon the natural impulses that people have in real life, put it into a portrayal and not have it seem inorganic but transcend what the writer could have possibly thought of, in a positive sense. You're not dictated to by the linearity of the emotion of the moment.
JM: Well, what you are dictated to, even in a linear way, is the truth of human experience. Human experience is incredibly dictatorial. You have to allow for that kind of--I would call it not freedom--I'd call it discipline.
PT: What were you thinking? Can you capture that moment in Line of Fire? Do you know what came out of the Mitch Leary character that moved you to put Eastwood' s gun in your mouth?
JM: Not really. I thought it would be something sexually intimidating, a boy's thing. And plus I thought it would kind of make Clint laugh, which it did. But it just sort of happened.
