"I don't really like interviews," Malcolm McDowell intoned with a
slight upturning of the corners of his mouth that might be called a smile. "They're an intrusion, but I accept them because they're an essential
part of selling a product. If you want to be an actor and successful - and being
successful gives an actor a sense of freedom - you have to do them and play
ball. So I just try to smile."
McDowell has been trying to smile a lot lately and, quite understandably, it
has become an increasingly difficult task. As the star of A Clockwork
Orange,
his life for the last few weeks had been one long interview with the same
questions coming up over and over again. Warner Brothers, with the full
knowledge that the film could prove to be one of the biggest grossers ever, has
been giving it saturation-blitz-media-overload treatment in the persons of
McDowell and Anthony Burgess who they have traipsed from press conference to
talk show to keep the film in the publics mind and mouth for as long as
possible.
"TV talk shows are pure torture. They should be banned. They're all so
plastic and crappy. The guy asking the questions has plastic eyes and is so
conditioned that he is more of a clockwork orange than I ever was. Now, Dick
Cavett is a witty performer and an intelligent man but you can't do what he does
five nights a week, week in and week out, because one man can't see every movie
and read every book. So he has to rely on his research staff: but the end result
is just so false. And the guests they put you on with ! I was sandwiched between
a movie critic or something, a starlet, and a politician. And then with all the
breaks and commercials, it's just impossible."
Whether or not McDowell thinks it's impossible, that's the way it's done in
the promo biz. Especially if you happen to have a surefire success, because
promo men love to hustle a hit. There's no way they can lose, while they can
take a hell of a lot of credit for winning. I first encountered Malcolm McDowell
while sitting in on an interview he was taping for WPLJ in New York. He entered
flanked by a burly publicity agent cum body guard, who had gleaned more of a
sense of self-importance from his charge than his charge felt for himself. We
went through the necessary introductions gracefully and I retired to the control
room to watch his shade of tension fade over the next hour as the interview went
well. We sat down later in the studio and talked about the man who had
essentially brought Malcolm there in the first place.
"When Stanley Kubrick makes a film, that's an event in itself. He's one
of the best technical and creative brains working in the medium today. His
lighting, for example, is simply superb and the way he chooses lenses too. He
uses natural source lighting which of course has been done before but not in his
way. And he adapted this .68 industrial lens from France to an Arriflex after
all the experts had assured him it was impossible. It enabled us to shoot
virtually in the dark. And he had this 9.8 lens which is actually a fisheye and
for special effects but when you use it to shoot a person from midriff height it
doesn't distort the person while making the room look very weird and strange.
He's just way ahead of everybody else."
"The technical knowledge he brings to the set is at times unbelievable.
For example, one time we were shooting in the street at night and the
technicians were arguing about whether or not the light on my face was strong
enough. Stanley quietly walked up and after having popped a slight rule out of
his pocket, he did a few quick calculations and announced 'OK for thirty-five
feet'. Then he walked back and as usual he was totally right."
I asked if he had any regrets as an actor to the emergence of the director as
the real star of films after decades of the actors being the only real stars.
"No, none at all," he said "because the director has always,
when you come right down to it, been the superstar." Then he added, only
half in jest, "except in this town. There's not one marquee in New York
with a director's or an actor's name on it. All you see are the name of critics.
They're the superstars, not the directors. It's things like 'I loved this film'
- David Frost. If you're down to that, God hhelp the world."
"Critics can only give their personal impression, nothing more, but
people listen to them because people are so conditioned to believe what the
media tells them."
Wanting to see the grassroots media of America at work, I asked if I could
come along with Malcolm to an intimate luncheon that Warner Brothers was having
for the "out-of-town" media. The idea , I suppose was to give each one
the impressive lead line, "Over lunch with Malcolm McDowell, I asked."
When we all sat at this promo banquet supreme, Malcolm remembered me and we
exchanged a few words. This was as much to break the conversational glacier that
had developed as soon as he walked in as anything else, but it legitimized my
hairy presence to the dowdy journalists who, until then, seemed to be waiting
for me to scream "Free all political grapefruit!" and throw a stink
bomb under the table. With some more prompting and priming from McDowell, the
conversation proved rather interesting. (He may not like interviews, but he
certainly knows how to give them.)
Intelligent and thoroughly dedicated to his craft, McDowell at twenty-eight
has had quite a bit of success in his chosen profession, having acted in films
for the finest directors working in England today - Joseph Losey, Brian Forbes,
Lindsay Anderson and of course Stanley Kubrick (the Man) himself. Born in Leeds,
a city of factories and machine shops in the north of England, he held a number
of diverse jobs before becoming an actor, everything from waiting on tables in
his father's pub to selling coffee to restaurants and hospitals. After a number
of years of study, he landed a berth in the Royal Shakespeare Company. He calls
his stint with them "the most boring period of my life" and after
eighteen months carrying a spear, quit in disgust and started to act on the BBC.
It was on television that Lindsay Anderson, director of This Sporting Life,
first noticed him. Anderson cast him in the lead role of if.… and gave him his
start in motion pictures. Since then, he and McDowell have become very close.
"He's my best friend and, in many ways, Lindsay is a father figure for me.
I never take a step without asking his advice first. I might not follow it , but
I always ask for it."
"He's going to direct my next film. It's from an original idea of my own
that came, in a sense, out of frustration when I was working at
Stratford-on-Avon (with the Royal Shakespeare Company) and had a lot of time
off. The title will be Oh Lucky Man. David Sherwin and I collaborated on the
script over the last three years and while I was working on Clockwork, he and
Lindsay kept pounding it into shape. We finally got the money - incidentally
through Warner Brothers - and we will be going into production soon."
Looking at his film career it would be easy to say that McDowell has been
extraordinarily lucky in landing the roles he has played. All the men who have
directed him are well renowned in their own right and he has undoubtedly
benefited from their tutelage. Asked about this series of great scripts, he
replied, "There are so few good scripts around that you simply have to wait
for one to come along even if it means not working all the time. So that's what
I do: wait."
And on playing Alex: "After finishing The Raging Moon (Long Ago Tomorrow) for Brian Forbes
I began to study the script for Clockwork constantly but just couldn't figure
out in even the vaguest sort of way how I was going to play Alex. You see he
isn't a real character. He has no motivations. He's just a force, an evil force
so there is no way to draw on my own experiences to interpret the character.
Alex is an evil force, but he's also a free thinker and uncontaminated. He
enjoys what he's doing, which is why he sings during the rape scene."
The conversation continued through roast beef to custard tarts with McDowell
charming all of his fellow diners throughout. It was a superb performance. He is
an ambitious and extremely talented man just entering the prime of his life. He
will undoubtedly continue to act in films, but when asked what he wanted for his
future he quickly replied, "I want to direct eventually. It's the natural progression. You can't be
a subservient fool all of your life. You have to move on. I'm a restless sort of
person."
© Crawdaddy - March 19, 1972.
Archived 2001-08 Alex D. Thrawn for www.MalcolmMcDowell.net