He was half-drowned, spat on and nearly blinded while
filming A
Clockwork Orange...but he wouldn't have missed it for the world.
Stanley Kubrick's controversial film is about to be seen in
Britain for the first time in 25 years. Its star, Malcolm McDowell, tells Clark
Collis about the making of the film and his love-hate relationship with the
revered director.
When celebrated American film-maker Stanley Kubrick set about
casting A Clockwork Orange in 1969, he only had one man in mind for the lead
role of violent, Beethoven-loving teenager Alex. He had recently seen Lindsay
Anderson's film if.... and believed that Malcolm McDowell - who played a gun-toting
public schoolboy - was perfect. But what made McDowell first choice for
Kubrick's adaptation of Anthony Burgess's novel had little to do with talent or
beatific looks.
"Stanley loved the fact that I could belch on
command," says the actor. "I used it a few times in the film, and in
subsequent films. When you have a talent like that you get it out whenever you
can. It should be on my CV."
It's difficult to imagine that his CV has any space left.
McDowell has appeared in almost 100 films, including O Lucky Man!, Cat
People, Robert Altman's The Player and, somewhat less memorably, Cyborg 3:
The Recycler. But he clearly rates A Clockwork Orange among his best work.
The film is re-released in Britain on March 17, almost
exactly a year after Kubrick's death. A quarter of a century on, it remains an
artistic triumph. Yet while many critics of the time praised Kubrick's technical
achievements, media attention soon began to concentrate on the scenes of sex
and, in particular, violence.
Within months A Clockwork Orange had become one of the most
controversial releases ever, as the belief grew that the film could inspire
viewers to commit criminal acts. At the height of the hysteria, rumors spread
that Kubrick felt his family might become subject to physical attack. It has
always been assumed that this is why, in 1974, he withdrew the film from
screening in his adopted homeland.
"We never actually had a conversation about why he
banned it in England," says McDowell, "because by then I wasn't really
speaking to him, sadly. I heard rumors that he was worried the film might have
inspired gangs to terrorize his family. If that was a real fear, he had every
right to do it. He was one of the few directors who could determine what
happened to his films."
A Clockwork Orange is set in a dystopian near future that is
almost the polar opposite of the antiseptic vision of Kubrick's previous film,
2001: A Space Odyssey.
Kubrick pretty much left the actor alone to develop the part
of Alex. "I once said, 'Stanley, what's this character about?' "
recalls McDowell. "He said, 'Gee Malc, I don't know. I'm not RADA. I'm
hoping you can come up with that.' That was a bit different from talking to
Lindsay Anderson about character and motivation. Then I asked him how he
directed. He said, 'I guess I don't care how long it takes to get. I just make
sure I get it.' "
The shoot would prove arduous for McDowell who, thanks to
Kubrick's relentless perfectionism, endured cracked ribs and then a
near-drowning: breathing apparatus failed while his head was held in a horse
trough for two minutes. But his most painful experience came when filming the
sequence in which Alex's eyelids are clamped open - part of his treatment at the
hands of the authorities who eventually catch him. McDowell was fitted with
surgical "lid locks" that could be endured under only a local anesthetic.
"I go home," he says. "The anesthetic wears
off and I feel that I've been cut open by razor blades. I'm in so much pain I
have to be given morphine. Both corneas were scratched. I see Stanley just
before I go home and I've got a big patch over one eye. He goes, 'Oh my god. Can
we shoot on the other eye?'
"Another time he did 25 takes before he was satisfied
with the part where the parole officer spits in Alex's face. Stanley shouted out
to the crew, 'Does anyone want to spit at Malcolm?' They all came over and took
turns."
It has been rumored that Kubrick decided that Alex should
keep a pet snake because he knew that McDowell was frightened of them. "Now
that's not true. He wasn't being cruel to me. I didn't mind the snake, because
it wasn't a poisonous one. It was a squeezer. Basil the boa.
"Of course, it was funny, because that set was a real
flat in Borehamwood. I had to reach down to a drawer under the bed and take the
snake out. Stanley said 'Action,' I got up off the bed, opened the thing and the
snake had disappeared. The whole room cleared so fast. They had to get the
handler to come out and find it."
McDowell's contribution did not end with the filming. As
Kubrick refused press interviews, McDowell and Burgess found themselves flown
around the globe to defend A Clockwork Orange against growing criticism.
Even before its release the Home Secretary Reginald Maudling
had demanded to see the film. It was eventually released uncut, but the papers
were soon full of scare stories that linked watching the movie to subsequent
criminal activity. Though behavioral experts have argued that such connections
are tenuous, the idea lingers that A Clockwork Orange can incite violence.
"The film does have a lot of power," says McDowell.
"But I don't think any film has the capability to make somebody walk out of
a cinema, take a sawn-off shotgun and go into a school and blast people. You
have to start with a very disturbed individual. Now, something may trigger it.
But it could be a cat walking across a road."
When one watches the film today, it is clear that Kubrick's
intention was not so much to shock his audiences as to make them laugh.
"Exactly!" agrees McDowell. "You know, that
was the point that was lost when it first came out. When I made it I thought,
'I'm making a black comedy here.' Not one critic ever mentioned the humor of the
film. It was always the violence, the violence, the violence. So now, after all
this time, I'm hoping that people will go, 'That was bloody funny.' "
McDowell eventually fell out with Kubrick, who was notorious
for discarding co-workers once they were no longer useful to him. "Maybe I
was just too young," he sighs. "I expected something back from him as
a friend, you know. That wasn't his intention and I felt slighted and rejected.
I wasn't mature enough to understand that it's only a movie experience - you go
through these things and you move on."
If the re-release proves financially successful, it seems
that McDowell will not benefit, having been paid a flat fee of $50,000.
"That's another reason why we fell out," he says. "It's rather a
sore point.
"I was a young actor, I was sort of screwed out of it.
It's a shame. But I have a great soft spot for him. All the other stuff is
petty. Now that he's gone I feel that I should have made more of an effort. I
could have picked up the phone. I regret that I didn't make my peace with
him."
One thing that McDowell does not regret, despite all the
on-set physical abuse and subsequent disagreements, is taking the job in the
first place. "Oh no. No, no. Listen, I knew I was working on
something extraordinary. I didn't know that people would still be excited about
it 28 years later. But I certainly knew that it was one of the great parts that
an actor could play. You know, what we went
through was an amazing experience and I'll always love Stanley for that. You
only get one Clockwork Orange in a lifetime - if you're lucky."
© telegraph.co.uk 3/3/00
Archived 2001-08 Alex D. Thrawn for www.MalcolmMcDowell.net