"A Rather Rough Fellow": An Interview with Malcolm McDowell

by Robert Cashill

Malcolm McDowell, portrait by Robin Holland

With more than 200 film and TV credits to his name—nine of them slated for 2011 alone—Malcolm McDowell is the very definition of a journeyman actor. Recent blizzards of activity for the sixty-eight-year-old veteran include ten episodes of HBO’s Entourage as the shifty head of a Hollywood agency, nine episodes of NBC’s superhero saga Heroes as an enigmatic experimenter, and an unctuous reprise of Donald Pleasance’s role as the doctor tracking the undying serial killer in Rob Zombie’s remakes of Halloween (2007) and Halloween II (2009).

His supporting stint as an eccentric lawyer on the TNT series Franklin & Bash this year joins his ballet master, arrogant yet sensitive toward his talented “babies,” in Robert Altman’s The Company (2003) as one of his few prominent parts not tinged with malice. On a resumé that extensive there are of course others, like his burnt-out rocker in the comedy Get Crazy (one of his personal favorites) and editor Maxwell Perkins, opposite the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings of then-spouse Mary Steenburgen, in Martin Ritt’s Cross Creek. But overshadowing those credits, both from 1983, was his villainous helicopter pilot in that same year’s hit Blue Thunder. Killing off Captain Kirk in Star Trek: Generations (1994), and aging into the unrepentant mobster played as a younger man by Paul Bettany in Gangster No. 1 (2000), typify his Internet Movie Database entry.

Such is the legacy of his signature part, that of Alex, the thuggish “droog,” in A Clockwork Orange (1971). Audiences reeling from the violence of The French Connection and The Devils earlier that year got no relief at Christmas, as Dirty Harry, Straw Dogs, and Stanley Kubrick’s pitch-black satire, from Anthony Burgess’s novel, all went into release. The book was published in 1962, the year Kubrick’s controversial but restrained adaptation of Lolita came out. The filmmaker took greater advantage of a more permissive era with A Clockwork Orange, leading some critics to charge him of indulging in “the old ultra-violence” like Alex and his cronies.

When alleged “copycat crimes” were blamed on the wildly popular film in England in early 1972, Kubrick had it withdrawn from British distribution, and it went largely unseen in the U.K. until after his death, in 1999. In the U.S., the thirty seconds of sexual romping cut when the movie was rerated R from its original X in 1973 have long since been restored and A Clockwork Orange has never lost its fascination. Beyond its overarching status as a “Kubrick film,” its pointed social and moral commentary, and its dystopian sci-fi trappings, much of its appeal—if that’s the word for such an unrelenting, in-your-face vision—lies with its star, who gives a performance of enormously ingratiating insolence.

That quality was first spotted by director Lindsay Anderson, who gave McDowell his first screen role, as Mick Travis, in his surrealism-laced satire of English public school, if…. (1968). Kubrick saw the film and immediately knew that he had his Alex. McDowell proved a gifted collaborator on what was an unusually speedy shoot for the director, who was eager to make a movie more nimbly after the protracted, multiyear odyssey of 2001 (1968). It was McDowell who suggested the use of “Singin’ in the Rain” to spark the film’s rape scene, to the rumored displeasure of Gene Kelly. Perhaps realizing that he had bottled lightning with his star, Kubrick spared him the extreme stylization he demanded of the supporting cast, a gallery of grotesques that Alex meets on his rampage and subsequent government-sponsored “rehabilitation,” including Patrick Magee, as his early victim and later adversary. “Malcolm, am I doing too much?,” Magee asked McDowell between a series of popeyed takes. “I feel like I’m taking a shit!”

McDowell shares these and many other stories with DVD producer and film documentarian Nick Redman on the commentary track of the fortieth-anniversary edition Blu-ray of A Clockwork Orange, which is also part of a Blu-ray limited edition collection of nine of Kubrick’s movies, including the format debuts of Lolita and Barry Lyndon. A new and reportedly improved print of the film is in circulation but A Clockwork Orange is a reissue of a prior, and acceptably, attentively transferred, Blu-ray. It ports over all the special features from the 2007 edition (including the commentary) and includes, on a second disc, Jan Harlan’s engrossing 2001 documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures (presented, frustratingly, in standard definition) and Harlan’s free-flowing portrait of McDowell from 2006, O Lucky Malcolm! The actor participates in just about all the supplements, including a new look back at the film (surrounded by memorabilia) and an interesting piece original to this edition, Turning Like Clockwork, where he, Oliver Stone, Paul Greengrass, and others discuss the film’s violence and its literally eye-opening “Ludovico Treatment.”

Alex in A Clockwork Orange

Warner Home Video has also released, on DVD, Never Apologize (2007). The engaging film is drawn from McDowell’s one-man stage show, in which he reminiscences about Anderson, his friend and mentor, and reads from his letters (a so-called “apology” to Alan Bates, whom Anderson had slighted at a party, is a highlight). The film is directed by Mike Kaplan, who, full circle, met McDowell during the Clockwork Orange shoot and produced Anderson’s last theatrical feature, The Whales of August (1987). The show also gives McDowell, who good-naturedly tweaks Kaplan repeatedly in O Lucky Malcolm!, the opportunity to crack wise about the famous folk in their orbit. Reporting for duty on Caligula (1979), Alex’s most notorious side effect on McDowell’s career, he encountered costar John Gielgud, who, by way of introduction, said, “I’ve never seen so much cock in all my life!”

Rarely at a loss for words, given so much material to work with, McDowell recently spoke with Cineaste in New York.—Robert Cashill

Cineaste: When you made A Clockwork Orange, did you realize you were making a film that would have such continuing impact?

Malcolm McDowell: I’d like to call myself a prophet but I don’t think anyone, least of all the people who made it, including Stanley, had any idea that it would become so iconic. It’s taken all of us by surprise, including its distributor, Warner Bros.—it’s become a movie that kids find, and have to have. They go to college and, boom, up on the walls go the poster, with Alex’s face.

Cineaste: What do you think they get out of it?

McDowell: That’s changed over time. What they get out of it is the political side of the movie, not the violence, and the look of it, which everyone copied. Look at all the videos, with the guys wearing bowler hats and the white backgrounds, there’s always someone ripping it off…well, that’s not the right term, it’s influenced a lot of people. And a lot of social behavior, from punk rock to groups named the Korovas and Heaven 17. Not to mention the generations of filmmakers it’s inspired.

Cineaste: The impression you tend to get of Kubrick is as a taskmaster and martinet, but the production shots used in the disc supplements suggest a lot of waiting around for inspiration to strike.

McDowell: It was unique, and I’d say that only a director with the confidence of Kubrick could wait. He would wait until something came, until there was something there to shoot, that he loved. You’d present certain things to him, some he liked and some he didn’t, and that was it, really. I must say that the ones he liked I generally agreed with, and the ones he threw out I almost agreed with in every single case.

Cineaste: You act the final scene so amusingly, when Alex is being spoon-fed. It’s beyond a simple eating scene, you open your mouth so outrageously at one point…

McDowell: That one gesture is the one that’s remembered. The minister is basically wrapping up the movie, and giving us all this stuff that we need to know. How could we deliver this, and still keep the movie watchable and fun? I could see Kubrick thinking, “Oh, this is long,” and thinking about cutting it. So I just threw that one in. And it happened to be the perfect gesture; it made the actor hurry up and feed me while he’s still talking away. It became a treat to watch.

Cineaste: Coincidentally, after I watched the disc I went back to the TV and there you were, as a high-school principal in the movie Easy A (2010). The idea of either Mick or Alex as a high-school principal later in life was very funny. Did the filmmakers cast you for those associations?

McDowell: It is funny to think that but, no, Will Gluck, the director, lives in my hometown and I think he was embarrassed to pitch me in the coffee shop. We had the same agent at the time and I went and did it just because of that.

McDowell and Lindsay Anderson

Cineaste: In terms of how A Clockwork Orange might have affected you, it brings to mind an anecdote from Never Apologize. In 1984 Lindsay Anderson approaches you to star in an Off Broadway production of David Storey’s play In Celebration, which he had previously directed with Alan Bates. You’re talking about the qualities of actors, and mention that Bates has a lot of charm. You ask Anderson what quality you might bring to the role, and he says, “You’re a rather rough fellow.” “No charm?,” you say. “No.” Did a perceived lack of charm influence the direction of your career?

McDowell: No. I mean if you’re lining me up with Alan Bates you’d have to say that Alan Bates was way more charming, because he was. I worked with him a few times and it was always such fun, as he had tremendous ego, but in a lovely way. He used to look at himself in the mirror for hours. I’d say, “What are you looking at? What is so fascinating?” And he’d say, “Don’t you find this face of mine rather beautiful?” “Well, yeah, it’s alright, but for an hour?,” I’d respond. And we’d laugh. I don’t know anyone who knew Alan who didn’t love him.

I had seen Alan in the play fifteen years earlier and he was amazing, as was Brian Cox. I was intimidated about even trying it, and about doing it justice. Then I remembered that the play was the thing and that it was stronger than my insecurity. What Lindsay was saying was, “You could bring danger to it.” It wasn’t charm that I brought to that particular production.

Cineaste: You did, however, have an outlet for that in Time After Time (1979), where you played a time-traveling H.G. Wells. There’s a story you tell in O Lucky Malcolm! about telling your costar Mary Steenburgen that you loved her right before one of your biggest scenes in the movie, but you don’t tell how she responded.

McDowell: I think she was thinking of the implications of what I had said. [McDowell was already married at the time.] It was a love affair, and certainly a great one. It’s nice to hear that you can see how we felt about each other on the screen but no one knew on the set, except for the soundman. He’d listen in on me occasionally when I was making arrangements, as quietly as possible: “When we get the scene done we’ll meet at that restaurant—you go there first and I’ll just arrive.”

Oh, and by the way, I’m very charming in Franklin & Bash. Write that down.

Cineaste: Why doesn’t Never Apologize go into your final appearance as Mick Travis, in 1982’s Britannia Hospital?

McDowell: It came much later than the period I was concentrating on, which was really if…. and O Lucky Man! (1973), and more the latter, which is when I really worked with him on the writing and development of the film. I was away in New York at the time Britannia Hospital was being written and Lindsay just asked me to be in it; it wasn’t as personal an experience for me. I do read the letter when he asks me to be in it, as it wouldn’t be the same without me, and I said of course I’d be there. He was an extraordinary man.

I only did the show to remind audiences of who he was. Time passes and people forget, especially if you’re predominantly a stage director. The memories of stage shows die off. But a film is there forever and I’m thrilled to see that Never Apologize is on DVD. And it’s not really a one-man show, which is a hard enough sell. It’s one man with a lot of friends, including Alan, and Rachel Roberts (someone I loved, who made me scream with laughter, and who doesn’t get her proper due), and Lindsay. I did the show I hope without getting sticky or sentimental. That’s Lindsay’s jacket placed on the chair near me, and I felt his presence on the stage with me when I performed it.

With Mary Steenburgen in Time After Time

Cineaste: In contrast to your long association with Anderson, on the Clockwork Orange commentary you say you were upset when Kubrick didn’t keep in touch after the filming.

McDowell: When you work long hours for a year straight, the expectation is that you would be friends, at the very least. And that didn’t happen. I was rather naïve about it.

I couldn’t believe it when I heard he’d died, far too young. A few months later I went out to visit Christiane, his widow, and we walked out the kitchen to see where he was buried. I burst into tears. And that took me by surprise. Then I regretted not picking up the phone to him, which is one of my only regrets.

Cineaste: Given the success of those first two movies with Anderson and A Clockwork Orange, did you feel let down when other filmmakers didn’t come up to their standards?

McDowell: As a professional actor you may work with great directors but most of the time you don’t. How many great directors can you count on one hand? If you can get to your thumb you’re very lucky.

Between Lindsay and Stanley I worked with Joseph Losey, a gentleman, on Figures in a Landscape (1970), a very grueling movie to make. The next film he made, The Go-Between (1971), was I thought his great one.

Cineaste: With Alan Bates…

McDowell: With Alan Bates! There you go. Certainly a way better movie than ours. Some you win, some you don’t.

Robert Cashill, a Cineaste Associate, is the Film Editor of Popdose.com and a member of the Online Film Critics Society.

Purchase the fortieth-anniversary edition of A Clockwork Orange or Never Apologize,

Cineaste,Vol.XXXVI No.4 2011

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