From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to the treatment.

You can also hear the show at KCRW.com.

My guest is John Malkovich.

We tend to think about the gays, and there's a judgmental quality to that gaze, whether it's being used playfully in a comic sense or in a dramatic sense.

And I think it's one of the most interesting tools an actor can have.

And John, first of all, thanks again for being on the show.

Thanks for having me.

Pleasure.

The Cohen brothers are very different kinds of directors, aren't they?

I mean, one thing I've heard about people who come here and talked about them is that you start with white pages and you end with white pages, which is that there's not a whole lot of changes, right?

No.

I've worked with directors who are really control freaks, meaning kind of to the level of sort of emotional instability, I would say. But they seem to me to have

generally a really good idea what they want or a really good notion of how to find what they want.

At the same time, though, they always seem pretty up for accidents and surprises, meaning, you know, when you

go and shoot something, things happen that are really unexpected. And they always seem quite

cheered by that. It may not be what they use in the end, but they're cheered by it. Whereas I would

say people who control too much,

I always have the question bouncing around in my head, why are they doing this film? It's already

made. I mean, there it is on the storyboard. And no change or accident or surprise would be countenanced.

And that, of course, isn't fun at all.

But the Coins aren't like that.

...