Malcolm, Kelly & Seamus McDowell at the event
Malcolm McDowell finds good in being bad
By Eric Volmers, Calgary Herald April 23, 2010
About the early controversy surrounding A Clockwork Orange. (The Catholic
Church "condemned" the film in America and director Stanley Kubrick
had it withdrawn from British theatres after it was blamed for causing
violence.): "My reaction was 'good God, they are missing the whole point of
the movie.' This is a satirical, funny, black comedy and they just don't get it.
I watched it in New York, it was jammed. It was the most successful movie that
Warner made that year. It was dead silence watching the entire movie. It was
like, 'They just don't get it. Maybe it's an English sensibility, this black
humour thing.' I didn't realize the audience coming to it were overwhelmed by
the visuals and how extraordinary Kubrick made it look."
On 1979's Time After Time, where he was cast against-type as meek scientist
H.G. Wells, who travels forward in time to chase Jack the Ripper and ends up
falling in love with Mary Steenburgen (McDowell's future and now ex wife):
"It was very different than A Clockwork Orange. The film wasn't a huge hit
so they never asked me to do that sort of softer character again. It (was
marketed) as a Jack the Ripper suspense movie, which it never was. It was a love
story about a man who was an Edwardian who gets thrust forward in time to meet
the modern-day woman. The great thing about H.G. Wells was that he was a
socialist, one of the first. He believed in equality of women. He meets one in
reality and doesn't know what the hell to do."
On being cast by longtime friend Robert Altman in 2003's The Company, where
he played the artistic director of the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago: "I loved
the film. It's really Altman working with a quintet rather than a full
orchestra. It was so much fun to do. He came to see me. I was presenting a film
in Lincoln Centre in New York City called Gangster No. 1 and he was there. We
went out for dinner afterward and his said 'All right kid, can you dance? We're
doing a little dance movie.' I said 'Dance!?!? Good God, no!' And he looked at
me and he goes 'Well, you don't have to.'"
On being cast in 1994's Star Trek: Generations, where he kills Captain James
T. Kirk: "I wasn't really a huge fan of (Star Trek) to be honest with you.
I hadn't really seen any of them before I did it. Of course, I knew Bill Shatner
and Leonard, they are the reason the whole thing was such a success. So to be
asked to bump him off was sort of fun. I think I turned it down a couple of
times until my agent said 'You gotta do it!'"
On Caligula, the notoriously graphic 1979 epic that was assailed by critics.
Produced by Penthouse Magazine founder Bob Guccione, it had an early screenplay
by Gore Vidal and co-starred John Gielgud, Peter O'Toole and Helen Mirren:
"I haven't seen it in 30 years or whatever. I think, to be honest with you,
it was a great opportunity missed. With the cast we had it was sad that it never
got worked out. Of course, Gore Vidal had a terrible row with Guccione, so he
left. We never had rewrites, we had to fend for ourselves. It was not much fun,
really. Especially when your reputation was on the line. The guy who brought me
into it was Gore, and then he left. And that was it. It was very
disappointing."
On In Good Company, the 2004 comedy-drama in which McDowell plays powerful
CEO Teddy K in an uncredited appearance: "It was only one scene, but it was
an important, key scene. It was quite a long speech and I had to really work
quite hard at it. They wouldn't pay me. And I wanted to do it for (director Paul
Weitz), so I said, 'OK, well you can't use my name. F-ck. you.' They paid me a
pittance, which really pissed me off. Usually they give me six scenes to make everybody hate me and to
destroy the world or whatever it is. It's sort of ridiculous. But it can be a
lot of fun. I just try and flesh it out and make it a real person and look for either
humor or humanity or something, Because it's never black and white. I'm always
looking to make it a three-dimensional person, somebody who is more
believable."
But for all the time he has spent on the dark side, there has never been any
doubt as to how he first earned his stripes as one of modern film's most
convincing villains. It was Stanley Kubrick's 1971 stunner A Clockwork Orange,
which still stands as one of the most shocking, darkly comic visions of dystopia
in the history of film. As "little" Alex, McDowell raped, robbed and
murdered his way through the streets of a crumbling England in a bowler hat and
fake eyelashes, creating one of the most lethally charming young demons to ever
prowl the silver screen. At 28, McDowell was older than the teenage character
author Anthony Burgess created in the original novel. Nevertheless, the
mercurial Kubrick decided the actor - who the director had seen play a
rebellious teen at a strict British school in Lindsay Anderson's classic if.... a few years earlier - was the one and only choice for the role.
"I asked him, actually, why he chose me," McDowell says. "He
said 'Well, there's many ways to go with this part, but what really got me about
him is his intelligence. I needed an actor who could portray intelligence
without having to act it.' "
Thanks to recent roles in cult television shows such as Entourage and Heroes,
his turn as child psychologist Dr. Samuel Loomis in Rob Zombie's reimagining of
the Halloween horror franchise and his infamous place in Star Trek lore as
Kirk-killing madman, Dr. Tolian Soran, McDowell's stock on the fanboy circuit
has continued to rise over the years. But he admits when he is at events such as
this weekend's Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo, he still mostly fields
questions about A Clockwork Orange. And while McDowell doesn't seem to mind chatting about the film, he does say
it made such an impression on the world that it was initially tough for people
to see him as anything else. "I think the movie was so overwhelming that nobody offered me a
job," he says. "Nobody offered me anything interesting. I got nothing
from Hollywood."
So it's easy to forget that McDowell is a versatile actor, more than capable
of stretching into some against-type roles and showing a softer side. After A
Clockwork Orange, he again worked with Anderson as a naive young go-getter in
the cult classic O Lucky Man! He played a befuddled H.G. Wells, who travels to
modern times in 1979's criminally underrated sci-fi romance Time After Time. In
2003, longtime friend Robert Altman cast him as the artistic director of The
Joffrey Ballet of Chicago in The Company, a role that was based on famous
choreographer Gerald Arpino.
So while McDowell's bulging filmography may include a few duds, it has also
allowed him to work with three of modern cinema's most enduring mavericks:
Altman, Kubrick and Anderson. "They all work completely differently and it's my job as the actor to be
a chameleon," he says. "For whatever style they are working in, you
adapt to that. Lindsay was a man of the theatre, so would talk about the
psychology of a theme. He wasn't into reality, but he was into real. Reality
bored him. Stanley was more interested in the look rather than the actors, and
he didn't want to discuss anything to do with the character. Bob Altman was
great fun. Actors loved working for Bob. They get to do their thing. It's
wonderful to make up stuff and improvise." And while McDowell, who has a new family that includes a 15-month son, may
not always get to work with directors of that caliber, he is certainly keeping
busy these days. According to the Internet Movie Database, he is attached to 13
projects in the next year. "Well, you know," he says with a laugh, as his young son babbles in
the background, "I am busy. But I never believe anything until they put the
money in the bank. There's dozens and dozens of (offers). But who knows?"
This page 2010 Alex D. Thrawn for www.MalcolmMcDowell.net