re: Most obvious casting decisions ever.

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Single Cell producers Michael Stipe and Sandy Stern pitched the film to numerous studios, including New Line Cinema, who dropped the project after chairman Robert Shaye asked: "Why the frick can't it be Being Tom Cruise?". Jonze recalled that Malkovich asked the same question, and that Malkovich had felt that "Either the movie's a bomb and it's got not only my name above the title but my name in the title, so I'm fricked that way; or it does well and I'm just forever associated with this character."Kaufman said that there was never another actor in Malkovich's place in the script: "The screenplay was always "Being John Malkovich", even before I had any expectation that John Malkovich would even read the script. "He chose Malkovich because he believed there to be "an enigmatic quality about him that works", though Malkovich was partly chosen because of the sound of his name in repetition. Kaufman explained that "When we were thinking of alternatives, we found that a lot of them weren't fun to say."

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