if.... Question and Answer NY 5/22/02

Q: How many times have you seen this film, in the last few years?

A: Well, I’ve seen the end of it an awful lot. (Laughs) Because I stand at the back and I know every single sound cue. When I used to watch it with Lindsay, at the end. He used to run off into the projection booth to turn the sound another three notches higher for the shock of the bullets. That used to please him greatly. It is strange for me looking at this film because this is where it all started for me and to think of the great Lindsay Anderson, because it is really his night as well. (Applause) Thanks to him I’m standing here today because without me being picked by Lindsay for his film if.... I would never have been cast of course by Stanley Kubrick, and I guess the rest is history.

Q: How did you get the part of Mick Travis?

A: See ‘O Lucky Man!’, the end of it is pretty accurate. I went to an open audition. I was late. I rushed to the Shaftesbury Theatre in London in the day, so the theatre was ‘dark’ as they say. They were using it for auditions. I rushed in and they were all packing up for lunch. I was rehearsing a play at the Royal Court, a very bad production of ‘Twelfth Night’. I went in and I couldn’t see anything because the footlights were on. I couldn’t see anything out the front, but I sort of walked on and I heard somebody say: “Name?” I said: “McDowell.” “Turn round would you?” I said, “What is this a cattle call?” I sort of glared at them and turned round. I thought he must be gay because he wanted to see my ass. It really pissed me off that we poor actors are treated like cattle. I came around when suddenly this man jumped up on the stage. He was short and a bit stout with a hooked nose and a sort of Roman Emperor face with that incredible haircut. And he said: “Hello, I’m Lindsay Anderson. What are you doing?”
    “I’m doing this production of Twelfth Night.”
    His eyes lit up. “What’s it like?”
    “To be honest with you, I think it is absolutely horrendous.”
    He said, “Oh good, do tell me about it! What’s that director like? Isn’t she awful!”
    “Yes she is. Absolutely. God we are opening next week and I don’t know where I come on or where I go off. She won’t tell us anything.”
    He said, “I know, she’s the worst!” So we had a great gossip about the director and the cast and then he looked at me and he said: “Oh, you do know Malcolm I’m a director of the Royal Court.” No, I didn't. Anyway I read the scene for him and two weeks later I was called back to do another reading. He told me later he had already cast the part, 90% it was cast. I said, “Who’s the actor?” He said: “I can’t remember his name, David something or other.” I think he retired from the business. Lindsay said: “He writes jingles for commercials and he is awfully good.” Oh good...Anyway, I went back two weeks later and had to do an audition with a girl, Christine Noonan, who is wonderful in the film. She was already cast. I wasn’t allowed to read the script. I was just allowed to read the pages (for the scene). I could tell that it was set in a school or something, and that it must be a comprehensive school because this girl is in it. It couldn’t be an all boys school. Anyway, I didn’t really know what it was and we started to do this scene, which I hadn’t really read. She'd prepared it and knew it perfectly so she didn’t have the pages (in front of her). I was stumbling thorough it. The stage direction was something like: ‘Mick grabs hold of girl and kisses her passionately on the lips.’ Which I did, of course. The next thing I didn’t read was the next line, ‘Girl slaps Mick viciously around the face.’ I literally hit the deck with water streaming out of my eyes from the sheer shock of this. I looked at her as if I was going to absolutely kill her and I literally stalked her around the stage. I was speechless. I didn’t know what to do. The pages of the script were all over the place. So I just stalked her around the stage I think. Eventually I picked up the pages and we went on with the scene, which was the cafe scene, where we ended up naked on the floor together. I knew then that this slap changed the destiny of my life. It was a Zen moment if ever there was one because from this I could have done anything. I felt absolutely empowered from the rage inside me, the anger. The eyes were burning and it was because of Christine’s slap. It was no great acting on my part, but anyway I got the job. Thank god.

Q: Why is some of the film in color and some of it in black-and-white?

A: The real answer is basically economics. They couldn’t light the inside of the chapel. They didn’t want huge Brute lights on the rafters, the beams of the building and they couldn’t afford to put these huge Brute lights through every window. I think there were eighteen windows, so you would've needed 18 of these huge Cleat lights, I believe they call them now. So Lindsay said, ‘All right, we’ll shoot in black and white so we don’t need that many lights.' So they shot it in black and white and I was sitting next to him at the dallies watching it and he said, “Oh God, I do love black-and-white! What are we shooting tomorrow?” They told him and he said, “Good, we’ll shoot it in black and white. That’ll give the critics something to think about.” And here we are 30 years later talking about it.
    And before I get the question about it, I'll tell you when we were shooting the chaplain coming out of the drawer. I said to Lindsay,
'I think it’s a terrible mistake. I can believe in everything up to this, but I really can’t believe in this. I can’t shake his hand. It doesn’t make any sense to me. It's sort of bullshit.'
    He said, 'Malcolm, look here old boy, in Cinderella do you or do you not accept the fact that when twelve o’clock strikes the carriage turns into a pumpkin?'
    I said, 'Yes.'
    'Well it’s the same damn thing!'
    So there you are and I do get his point. It is very poetic. Lindsay was a great intellectual. He had a great, great mind. And he was a great humanist. He was a fun man. He had all these vulnerabilities as well as being an absolute curmudgeon. If you made a stupid remark, which of course I was want to do from time to time, he would lambaste you and go for your throat. I know there are some people here who knew him and who know exactly what I am talking about. Of course there was also this great vulnerability to him, a great humanitarian. He was the greatest friend you could ever possibly have. He was one of the only people I have ever known in my life who you could call literally at four o’clock in the morning. He would probably blast me, but then he would listen and do whatever he could. It is so great. Thank you very much to the Lincoln Center and Joanna for showing his films as part of my thing. But really for me it is for him and it's great.

Q: How accurate a portrayal of British boarding schools is it?

A: This is fairly liberal. It is a lot worse than this. I went to one of these schools. The one I went to in England they put everything in little compartments. It was a minor public school as opposed to a major public school, which means nobody had ever heard of it. It was small and insignificant. They never had any of the old boys from my school who ever did anything. In other words it was not like Eton and Harrow or Cheltenham, which indeed is where Lindsay went to school. Which was the school Lindsay went to and is in the film. He got permission to shoot. There's an Old Cheltonian Headmaster and indeed, when the Headmaster a year later saw the film, Lindsay was very, very nervous. It was the first time I had seen him really nervous. I said, 'What do you care?'.
'For God’s sake, it is the Head of my school. What was he going to think about the shooting of all the parents?' And of course you did doctor the script Lindsay, because you didn’t want to show him the script where they all get shot at the end. 'Don’t talk about that now, for God’s sake!' Lindsay left the screening early and the Headmaster came out and was white as a sheet. He wrote Lindsay a letter which, for at least two or three years later was sitting on his mantelpiece in his flat...unopened. I never found out what he said, but I know it was scathing report.

Q: I guess he never went to any reunions afterwards?

A: No, Lindsay wasn't the reunion type.

Q: Was the homosexual tone radical and isn't an all boy gay boarding school cliché?

A: When I hear "cliché" I take it as a kick in the ass. I'll make a note. If you get an all-boys school, just by the law of averages you are going to have some hanky panky aren't you? Somewhere along the line I would think. And the same would happen at an all-girls school I would imagine. So I don't think that is cliché, I think that is exactly what happens and I think he handled that rather tastefully. Since he passed on, he died seven years ago, he left a diary and he was, in fact homosexual. It is very explicit in the diary, his sexual feelings and all the rest of it. Gavin Lambert wrote a book about Lindsay Anderson and used a lot of this diary. I know some people in England, such as David Sherwin who wrote this were very angry about it because he doesn’t feel it did Lindsay justice and why bring out the sexual preference and stuff in a diary? But I think the fact is if you write a diary and you leave it around and you are a filmmaker or in the public eye, it will at some point be published. Obviously he wanted it known, I would imagine. The other thing was that he was born in India. His father was a Major-General in the English Army of Occupation, they called it 'The Indian Army’ but, of course it wasn’t the Indian Army. The soldiers were Indians but the officers were English upper class and went to schools like this. And schools like this were brought into being in England so that pupils could go out and rule the Empire. That's why these schools exist. And they did a fairly good job for five hundred years or whatever it was. Another thing is that only a man who loved his school and who basically loved his country, could make a film like this. It is of course a scathing attack on the establishment, on almost everything in fact. It is quite scathing here but he really gets going on O Lucky Man! He takes swipes at everything in that film. This is a microcosm of what was happening in England in 1968.

Q: I think a school like this with a hierarchy will bring out everything bad because of the structure.

A: The spirit of revolution was very strong at this time. There were demonstrations in the streets every weekend. I used to live near Hyde Park and I know. Every weekend there would be some great cause to get involved with. It would be anti-Vietnam, Nuclear disarmament or Gay Pride or whatever, 'Free the Panovs!' If I took my dog for a walk in the park and I got stuck in some march about something. I did that twice, once with John Gielgud, who said ‘Oh, there’s a frightfully good Italian restaurant, I’ll think we’ll just stop.” And I said: “John, we are marching to free the Panovs.” “I don’t give a fuck about the Panovs.” (Laughs)

Q: What was the reaction of the British public to if... ?

A: They were horrified, amazed and amused. Like all good establishments they acted like a sponge and brought it in as one of their own: “Only a public school boy could make a film like this.” And, in fact, in most of the boarding schools in England they show this film as part of the curriculum. Which is quite something isn’t it? Lots of younger Englishmen come up to me and say: “They show that film if... at our school the whole time.” I suppose because now they are more progressive, but actually I think it is pretty much the same.

Q: How was the title decided on?

A: Originally when I got the script the title was ‘The Crusaders’. Everyone thought that the audience was going to think it was about the Crusades in the Middle Ages, Richard the Lionheart. Lindsay put it about in the Memorial offices that if someone could come up with a title they would get a hundred pounds. Of course there was a big scramble (of ideas). Michael Medwin’s secretary, Daphne, came up with the Rudyard Kipling poem. As soon as she said it, I think everyone threw up the script, that was it, it was immediate that was what it was going to be. Of course Lindsay added the dots!

Q: How much did Lindsay explain about Mick?

A: Of course it (the script) was fairly explicit. The riding of the motorcycle was the first image he told me about. The next day I was told I had the part by Miriam Brickman who cast the film. She called me at The Royal Court as the curtain came down they said there was a call for me, take it in the management’s office. “Hello?” It was Miriam Brickman a woman of very few words. (Imitates her) “Malcolm, you are playing the part in Lindsay Anderson’s film. He wants to see you tomorrow morning at ten o’ clock.” Click. I rushed off to the dressing room and of course, everyone had left. I rushed over to the pub to celebrate, ordered a bottle of champagne, looked around the pub and I couldn’t see one member of the cast of Twelfth Night. So I went over to a fellow who was vaguely familiar and I said, 'I’ve just got a starring part in a film. I’ve got a bottle of champagne. Don’t I know you?” He said, “Actually I play guitar in the production you are in.” “Oh, yes, that’s right, well thank you. Have a glass of champagne.” I don’t know who the hell he was but, anyway we finished the bottle. Did he tell me? No, it was very explicit in the script. Lindsay was not one of those directors, in fact I've very rarely worked with directors who actually tell you what to do.

Q: Did you rehearse it a lot?

A: We rehearsed it a bit. I can’t remember ever rehearsing it, but we must have. He was a stickler for rehearsals. We certainly rehearsed ‘O Lucky Man!’ Anyway, let’s say we rehearsed it. As far as I remember coming back from the Old Vic having seen Laurence Olivier do 'A Long Day’s Journey Into Night’. There is a moment in the play where Olivier sits down and - whoosh - crosses his legs like that. The audience went nuts! I thought ‘My God, that’s good. I’ll do something like that in this film and see what Lindsay thinks.’ So, I can’t remember exactly what it was, but I did this absolutely ridiculous movement apropos of nothing, from nowhere, from left field and he looked at me. The camera was running, I do know that, and he said, 'Cut. What on earth are you doing?' I said: “I thought that would be...” He said: “For God’s sake, just do it.” So that was the end of that little experiment. Then I'd seen an actor do this in the West End. He'd speak very quietly, THEN SUDDENLY TALK LIKE THIS. Jesus that was awfully good because he got my attention. I tried that out too and Lindsay said: “Christ. Cut. What on earth are you doing now?” I said: “Look I saw it in a production.” He said: “For God’s sake, Malcolm, just cut that crap. Just do it normally.” So when I came to do the next film with him it was shorter. I knew exactly what he wanted. He said to me once on the set, 'You know you’re a very Brechtian actor.'
    I went, 'Really...? Is that good or bad?'
    He said, 'For God’s sake, it’s good.'
    'What did he do now? Did he write The Threepenny Opera?”
    'For God’s sake!'
    'Why am I a Brechtian actor?'
    'You always clear the way. You tell the audience, you tell them that you are in film. You are acting, but they believe you anyway.' I think that is how he directed. You know these wonderful magic moments that he has you go, ‘My God, that’s ridiculous! It will never happen. Why do you bayonet a chaplain and he pops out of a drawer?’ It was very Brechtian I suppose. I don't know. One more?

Q: What were you thinking about when you shot at the pictures in the study?

A: I'm glad you asked about that. I asked him, 'Could I shoot the things myself and could I choose the targets?' and he said, 'Yes, go ahead.' I was quite a good shot and I had a BB gun with these little pellets, feathered darts, and I got to put cherries in the martinis, and I thought they’d all think I’d shoot the Queen and I thought it was very clever not to. But I did hear that Mel Ferrer was really pissed off. Which I must say pleased us all.