So I want to understand the cultural context in which Being John Malkovich happened, like what was Malkovich’s specific deal at that time that they could meta-title a movie about him like that. If they made Being John Malkovich today, who would it be instead of John Malkovich

— Casey Johnston (@caseyjohnston) August 12, 2022

The broadest possible answer is that 1999 was arguably the peak of US creativity in many areas, or right behind the peak. I’m not just saying this because I was fairly young then, but because the enormous wave of studio consolidation had not yet occurred (concentrating on just cinema here), the film world was not yet dominated by sequels, and there was just tons of money sloshing around to fund creative shit as the economy was booming. That said, specifically, the movie was about Malkovich because he was appealingly weird, most people knew him from Con Air two years prior, and he agreed to take the part.

Not only were strange films like Being John Malkovich released that year, 1999 also saw mainstream-but-still-oddball films such as The Matrix and Fight Club hit theaters and become major box office winners. That in itself would be unusual (read: impossible) now for non-sequels. In addition, there was a whole slate of offbeat movies out that year, now long-forgotten, that are worth a revisit. Some of those are Hideous Kinky, The Thirteenth Floor, Pushing Tin, Jawbreaker, 8mm, Go, and Ravenous — among many, many others.

Unless we nuke monopolies and prevent industry consolidation, there will probably never be another year in film quite like 1999. That’s the cultural milieu in which Being John Malkovich made sense and was a moderately successful film.

(The modern Malkovich would be Kate McKinnon.)