When Malcolm McDowell was 28, he was chosen to play the part of 'nadsat' leader
Alex in Stanley Kubrick's film version of 'A Clockwork
Orange'. The film rightly
secured his reputation as one of Britain's best screen actors and assured 'A
Clockwork Orange' an honored place in cinema history. In Santa Monica, out of
reach of the RSC, he welcomed their forthcoming stage version of the novel.
'It's good that Burgess' book is done in as many versions as possible and I'm
glad for him because I never thought that when we did the film originally that
he got enough out of it. It was always a Stanley Kubrick movie and his original
creation was sort of forgotten about. It's a good piece for the stage,
theatrically written, and I understand they're doing it with music, which is
very interesting. It has all the elements that would make a good musical, a kind
of West Side Story of the '90s. In fact originally, before Kubrick had the
movie, the Rolling Stones had it, Mick Jagger was going to play Alex and the
Stones were going to be the Droogs. I'm glad they didn't get it off the ground
because it allowed me the opportunity to do it.' Jagger - a candidate for
aversion therapy? The equipment couldn't take it.
In the USA the movie runs all the time on cable and it's a cult picture for
college kids. So McDowell is understandably unsympathetic about Kubrick's
British ban and clearly skeptical about the death threats the director received
after the film's first British showing back in 1972.
'Oh come on - it's true it's scary, but come on, honestly! Stanley said that
the IRA tried to bomb him. I don't think anybody's going to be after Stanley,
the film's as tame as can be. It's still brilliant, but to say it would
influence anybody is a joke, There are far more violent films and if Stanley's
scared about being blamed for all the muggings in Britain forget it. I don't
think anyone would blame him at all.'
McDowell's experiences of Kubrick are sufficiently unusual to allow him to
question the maestro's reasons. After 'lf . .' and during Losey's 'Figures in a
Landscape' McDowell was given a copy of 'A Clockwork Orange' by Kubrick. On the
third reading he got into it.
'So I called him up and I said " Look Stanley, I'd like to meet with
you, can you come by my house?" I didn't know that he never leaves
Borehamwood, I hadn't got a clue you see, I thought he was a regular guy you
know - who wouldn't? Subsequently I realized he's totally paranoid about any
form of travel or leaving the house or anything. Anyway he eventually arrived
and I thought "My God! He's brought an escort! He's in a white Landrover
with a car in front of him and a car behind, it's ludicrous." In he came
and a bemused McDowell then waited patiently for 20 minutes for the great man to
use the toilet from which be could not escape. 'I heard this muffled banging, he
was beginning to panic. Stanley is a brilliant man but be is a peculiar fellow
in many ways.'
McDowell says the only adverse reaction he got from the film was being
typecast by Hollywood. But it's not all one-sided. He seems to take the savagery
of Alex and his Droogs too lightly, more lightly than the audience, and possibly
the director, are able to. One reason is the way McDowell approached the part.
'It's very simple. Alex's character, as written, enjoyed violence and raping.
He was at his most euphoric. That is why in the film I started to sing
"Singing in the Rain" spontaneously, because for the actor the emotion
is euphoria. It just means that my actions are rather strange, they don't really
fit euphoria. I always felt the style of the film was high, it was real but not
realistic. there was no blood and all that, so to me it was extremely funny. It
was hard not to laugh and I went to play for the comedy. I know it's very black.
I suppose when you see it the first time it's too overwhelming to get the humor
but if you watch it a few times you see that it is actually very funny. There's
one scene in there I know which is purely my interpretation of Eric Morecambe.
Forget about the gangs and the peripheral violence. What it was really about was
the freedom of the right to choose. I think the dichotomy of the film is that
you have this immoral character of Alex and, by a matter of manipulation through
the performance (and I only speak from my own point of view, not from
Stanley's), you actually have sympathy for him because he has redeeming
features, that he is a lover of Beethoven, that he is a sympathetic character.
And that when the government makes him an automaton you feel it would be better
if he was a free man to choose what he wanted to do, even though it may be a
violent choice. And that's what is so difficult about the film and that's why
it's so violent.'
McDowell has always been a very vigorous defender of personal freedom. And
though he may not quite say it, the authority of the thug is less irksome to him
than the authority of the establishment. Let alone the British establishment. At
45, he has the seasoned diplomacy of a star, but the Northern disregard for a
nation that belongs to people in the South still shows through.
'I'm neither pro nor anti-British. I think the British are taught to
be very
patriotic, through the Royal Family and the school system….thank God I've
dropped all that. I enjoy coming to England but I've got very mixed feelings
about it.'
It's no surprise that his directorial debut, to be cast from England and shot
in Zimbabwe, is an anti-apartheid story. Money has yet to be found but there is
a sense of moving on.
'I've just come off a flood of movies, another just starting here in
Hollywood. Then I hope to direct this story which I've been wanting to do for
ten years. Obviously it's something that I believe in and so I can go in and
sell it without doing a performance. And if I'm going to make a film, put my
name on it as the author. It has to be something I really believe in, especially
the first one.'
Take away the violence and Alex De Large and Malcolm McDowell are not so far
apart. As Alex tells us in Burgess' book: 'Badness is of the self…and they of the Government and the schools cannot
allow the bad because they cannot allow the self And is not our modem history,
my brothers, the story of brave malenky selves fighting these big machines? I am
serious with you brothers over this. But what I do, I do because I like to do.'
© 20/20 January 1990
Archived 2001-08 Alex D. Thrawn for www.MalcolmMcDowell.net