Q: It was a perfect fit of actor and material. I cannot imagine it any other way.
MM: I wrote myself a good part! Actually I didn't. The truth is I was really nervous about playing this because I didn't have a lot to do except react. So I went to Lindsay on the Sunday night before we began shooting on Monday and begged him to get me out of it. Give me another part, let me play anything, but this part. He looked at me and said, "Malcolm you are ridiculous, you're bonkers. Just have a valium, calm down." That was the answer in those days.
Q: Why did you want to get out of it?
MM: Because I thought, "Christ this guy is the most boring idiot on the planet!" How many times can you act surprised...innocent. I even came around corners like this in the end (makes overly happy face). I couldn't think of what else to do.
Q: It seemed like there were many variations on naiveté.
MM: I tried to get a new look for everything. I just couldn't do it in the end, I found myself repeating.
Q: Why were there so many recurring actors?
MM: I think that he felt that in life you meet people that you sort of vaguely think, "Is this the same...no." You've got some good actors, let them play some different parts. Why should they just play only one part? I was a bit pissed off because I only had one part. He gave me the one in the beginning so I was happy. "I only got the one part Lins." He went, "God, you're in every damn frame. What more do you want?" I was teasing him of course.
Q: At the end is that the audition for if....?
MM: Of course. It didn't happen like that, but...it made me cringe seeing that again. I haven't watched this film in 25 years or more. It amazed me actually. Every time I see I'm thinking of the day we shot it and what happened. I remember distinctly the whole sequence at the end with Lindsay playing the director. That's not him really because it's a very good performance from him. He wasn't exactly like that, he's playing a director. It's not quite Lindsay, it's a variation of. This whole smiling business David Sherwin had written it in the script. The director hits him with a copy of the script which by the way, as you can tell by the lens, was a damn long, big, thick script. Then Mick is supposed to smile the smile of success. Well you get hit by a ten pound script and see how you would smile! Lindsay was in the scene hitting me so he wasn't being objective. They hit me on the head, they would slap me up and down with this damn thing twenty times or more! I'm going, "I can't smile for crying out loud! I just don't feel it." He said, "Just smile for god's sake. It doesn't matter!" So Michael Medwin the producer, who also plays various bit parts in it, started to tell jokes behind the camera. It was the stupidest thing which made me practically cry, let alone laugh. When we looked at the material in the end it was the third take that had this extraordinary enigmatic smile that you could take whatever you wanted out of it. This was exactly what it should have been. It was David Sherwin's smile of success that wasn't possible.
Q: It was a little Mona Lisa?
MM: You said it.
Q: It was ambiguous.
MM: That's right. After going through the whole thing, we shot it at the end of the film. The party at the end was the wrap party for the film they shot. That's how they could afford it. They cheated the actors. In fact Warren Clarke refused to come and Lindsay gave him the iron door...which meant he never worked with Warren again. I'm really sad because Warren Clarke was a wonderful actor who I had with me in Clockwork Orange, he played Dim - my sidekick. He'd worked on the stage with Lindsay who I don't think ever talked to him again. I would beg him, "Oh, come on let's get Warren." "No! No!" That was it.
Q: Looking at the film 25 years later do you dwell on the experience of making it?
MM: No, I just enjoy it. I really do. I think it is an incredible work by a great director.
Q: Do you still have the gold suit?
MM: I wish. It's probably on the Internet, on eBay.
Q: You were great in the film.
MM: Thank you.
Q: Were the political connotations yours?
MM: Right. That was my line by the way.
Q: Was it a play on the African influence on Europe to have a white man in black face?
MM: Could well be. It could be taken many ways. Arthur Lowe was fantastic in that part. So why not? A black hamlet - why not? That's the other side of it.
Q: It seems quite contemporary now. It was of that time and our time.
MM: It is now. Obviously this is a very political film. Lindsay was a social commentator and he was a very political person. I once said to him, "Look Lins, you're not conservative, you're not labor, you're certainly not liberal. What are you? He said, "I am an anarchist! I want to pull it all down." I don't know whether he was joking or not. In this film he really takes a swipe at everything. He goes for the lot. It's so dense. There's so many layers going on, some stuff I'd sort of forgotten, some times which were really beautiful, fantastic. The difference between Lindsay and Stanley Kubrick for instance is that Lindsay so loves humanity. Even when they're tucking him into bed, when they've given him sleeping pills at the Millar Research Clinic, the nurse tucks him in bed and just fondly touches his hair. It's the sort of humanity being cared for as they rip his legs off or transplant another body on his head or something. You get the sense of "aaahh".
Q: There was a lot of people you had worked with before?
MM: Right. Everybody. All of them.
Q: Was the film conceived with the Alan Price sections from the start?
MM: Yes. As we were writing the script Lindsay would read it and go, "Ooh this is getting a bit boring. Time for Alan." So he would get the script and he would come up with these jewels! Incredible songs. From this he got the lead in "Alfie 2" - the Michael Caine thing they redid. He wasn't really an actor, that was his own admission. He's charismatic. My god when he is singing he's very charismatic. When he's acting it's a different thing all together.
Q: Where is he now?
MM: He's still singing these songs. He had a 60th birthday concert at the Festival Hall in London I was told. His daughter who was that big (waist high) when I knew her is coming to my town in California, she doesn't even know that I live there, to see a mutual friend. She's thirty odd now or something. It's so weird. It's been a very fast thirty years. I suppose when you are having fun right?
Q: He did more, this wasn't the only thing he did?
MM: No, but he didn't really do any more music for films because in England having done that and it wasn't a HUGE success so he was never asked again. How stupid is that? He did a musical that opened in the West End about Andy Capp which is a cartoon character in England. He's recorded and done songs and stuff, but he's never, ever gotten to the level of this I don't think. He had a director to kind of push him. They used to have incredible rows. We all had rows with Lindsay, but nothing like the Alan Price ones that were like "Wow!" But Lindsay always got his way in the end. The only song that Lindsay wanted was the last one. (Sings) "Everybody's going through changes." That's of course from a hymn. Lindsay wanted that at the end so Alan rewrote the lyric. There was a huge row on that, but he got his way on that too.
Q: That's a famous hymn. What's the name of it - "What a friend I have in Jesus"?
MM: It sure is. Yes. The Greek Chorus
Q: When is OLM! coming to DVD?
MM: I asked them because they had me in three months ago to do the DVD for Time After Time. It is a weird process because you kind of sit while they show the film and go, "Oh yes I remember that. The food was very bad that day. I had a case of diarrhea the whole time I was running." I mean what can you say? I said to them would you please ask them to release O Lucky Man! on DVD - the full length one. This is as it was, as Lindsay did it. What happened was at the Cannes Film Festival they give tickets to a lot of hair dressers to fill up all these theaters. You don't know what the audience is. They loved it and it was fine, then they got a bit restless and were looking at their watches for the parties. Then when the barrel comes down and goes to blackout everybody got up to leave. We are all like, "Uh, oh." It was Ted Ashley, the chairman of Warner Bros., John Callie and all the top brass came back to the Carlton hotel. All I heard was this little man only a bit bigger than a dwarf, Ted Ashley going, (does deep voice) "I've never been so humiliated in all of my life. It didn't bode well for our distribution did it?" Then they brought me in and said, "You've got to talk to Lindsay Anderson and get him to cut this film - it is way too long. And if you don't we're not going to release it in America." I thought, "Oh, Christ. I can't..." I walked out onto the balcony, this is at Cannes, across the quasette to the beach in front of the hotel and I see Lindsay sitting there with 40 or 50 journalists around him. All listening on every word of the great man. I'm thinking, "In ten minutes time, you ain't gonna be so happy." Sure enough I have to go across and take him up the beach and he just turned and ran off. I said, "They won't do it. You have to do it." So he then came to a meeting and said to them, "If you want to cut it, YOU cut it." I was horrified. So Ted Ashley actually started to look around for cuts. He then said, "Did you really want to cut it?" He couldn't cut it - he didn't know where to cut it. What happened was back in England we were watching the thing again, all of us, Alan Price included - looking for places to do trims. The projectionist dropped the ninth reel which is the one with Rachel committing suicide and it went straight on. We all went, "Lindsay!! Great cut! Thank god we got the cut. Now we can distribute the film in America." He was going, "I did not cut it! What the hell are you talking about? This is nonsense!" We're going, "That is the perfect cut." And Alan's going, "It is not. I've lost one of my songs." I went, "Fuck your songs. We want this thing to open." They did drop that reel.
Q: So that took care of 20 minutes?
MM: Ten minutes. So they released it. The first time that Callie and all the top brass saw this film I was with them in the screening room just off Warders street. It is quite long so we rushed off to the bathroom at the end. I'm standing here and John Callie and Ted Ashley (on each side) and we're all having a pee. John Callie said, and I swear to god, "That film is a masterpiece! It is way better than A Clockwork Orange. I think this is one of the greatest films I've ever seen." I'm like, "Jesus, wait until I tell Lindsay this." Within a month it had all gone pear shaped. That was it, so be it. There it is. It still holds one's interest.
Q: It is very pertinent today. Where did that come from?
MM: That's because the themes it's addressing are universal and are always with us. Corruption is corruption whichever way you look at it. Governments or whatever are always bureaucratic and they're always the same. It's the political game. The only thing that really dates it are the cars. I actually had that little brown Ford escort that I had my samples in. I had it at my country house. I used to keep it down there and drive it around...no samples in the back. For years! I had it for around twelve years after the film. I was loathe to get rid of it because it was my lucky film. It was my lucky thing. Lindsay sort of liked it. He was like, "Oh, god. You've still got that old banger?" I said, "Yes. I rather of like it. It was falling to bits, but..."
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