Chicago Tribune Interview with Malcolm McDowell 11/03

An affection for dance draws McDowell to city
By Sid Smith - Chicago Tribune arts critic 11/03

    Until he came here a year ago to film a movie about dance -- something he admits he himself does very poorly -- Malcolm McDowell had never set foot in Chicago.
    Lately, he seems to be everywhere. While shooting Robert Altman's movie "The Company" last fall, McDowell became enamored of the Joffrey Ballet troupe. He returned a few weeks ago to rehearse onstage narration (by Gertrude Stein) that he'll deliver during certain Joffrey performances of Frederick Ashton's "A Wedding Bouquet" in February, a coup for the company that's sure to prove a box-office draw.
    He showed up earlier this month as a guest at the annual Dance for Life Aids benefit at Navy Pier. The Chicago connections keep coming: During last fall's movie shoot, he caught director Gary Griffin's "Sunday in the Park With George" at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, and McDowell now plans to play Zeus in a new Broadway venture (with songs by AC/DC vocalist Brian Johnson) called "Helen of Troy," which Griffin is set to direct.
    But mostly McDowell's Chicago love affair is about dance, specifically the Joffrey's version and the tough, irrepressible struggles dance artists and managers endure just to keep going.
    "I'd never been close to a dance company, but I wound up a sort of honorary member, though God knows I can't lift a leg in dance myself," McDowell says, relaxing in Joffrey artistic director Gerald Arpino's office between rehearsals. In "The Company," screened at the Toronto Film Festival and due to open in December, McDowell plays an artistic director inspired by Arpino, a "fictional alter-ego," McDowell says.
    "He's an amazing person, and we had a wonderful rapport," McDowell says. "The Joffrey is a company that reminds me very much of the one where I started, the Royal Shakespeare Company. It's a kind of all-star, no-star ensemble, like the RSC. I'm in awe of dancers, anyway. What they do requires a dedication beyond my scope. They can't gallivant about like young actors, who gallivant about all the time."
    Joffrey officials return the compliment. "We're thrilled to have him here, and his wanting to do it is a statement of his affection," says Jon Teeuwissen, the Joffrey's executive director. (McDowell and veteran Chicago actor Nicholas Rudall will take turns serving as narrator at various performances.)
    Arpino notes that McDowell is a hard worker both in the movie and in mastering the tricky challenge of the verse like cadences of the Stein narration. "For the movie, Malcolm followed me around like a chipmunk," Arpino says. "He really studied me. We'd go for long walks, and he quietly got inside me in an indirect manner."
    In "The Company," McDowell wears Arpino's long, flowing, trademark scarves and combines guts, passion and eccentricity. In one memorable scene, McDowell and veteran Joffrey dancer Pierre Lockett engage in a knockdown, drag out quarrel borne of Lockett's frustration with McDowell/Arpino's vague, arty directions.
    "Pierre turned out to be a wonderful actor, and he came all the way with me improvisationally in that scene," McDowell recalls. "You can't put everything in a film, but I wanted to get the flavor of Mr. A (as he invariably calls Arpino). And I wanted to make it funny. I didn't want it to be a stereotypical choreographer, yelling all the time. It would have been easy to mimic Arpino. But this isn't an imitation. Bob Altman said, `I don't want Arpino. I want McDowell.'
    McDowell's long, fascinating film career hasn't been smooth. After a stunning debut in "If," Lindsay Anderson's 1968 anti-establishment allegory set in a boarding school, McDowell starred in one of the most acclaimed, provocative and studied movies of that era's cinematic renaissance: "A Clockwork Orange." As Travis in "If" and Alex in "Clockwork," McDowell became an instant celebrity boasting a new anti-hero formula. He was cool, seductive, his eyes glinting with mischief.
    When he followed some years later with a charming, sympathetic portrayal of H.G. Wells in "Time After Time," McDowell seemed destined for a major movie career. Despite steady work, the years since have seen plenty of disappointments, including the notorious "Caligula." Now 60, McDowell often plays the villain, if not an outright wacko. To McDowell, for instance, fell the honor of finally killing the Starship Enterprise's Capt. James Kirk in "Star Trek: Generations" (1994).
    "Does killing Capt. Kirk make me a wacko?" he rejoins. More seriously, "My favorite Hollywood actor of all time is James Cagney, by a mile. If there's some heinous bastard out there nobody else will play, they give it to me. I think it's because I'm good at eking out some humanity somewhere in the most dastardly, despicable humans."
    Filming "The Company" with Altman fulfilled a long-lasting mission to work with another director from the Kubrick-Anderson era.
    "I've known Bob since the '70s, and we've remained fast friends," he says. "Whenever we chanced to be in the same city, we'd get together. We've weathered the Altman career ups and downs and the McDowell career ups and downs." But aside from a small bit in "The Player," McDowell hadn't worked with him. McDowell says, "My joke for years was, `Don't befriend Altman. He'll never cast you in one of his pictures.'" As for "The Company," "it proved well worth the wait, not disappointing in the least. Altman's a national treasure."
    His thoughts on Kubrick are less charitable. He said before Kubrick died that he would never make another movie with him. "If he had actually asked me, I'm sure I would have worked with him again," McDowell admits now. "There were certain promises I felt that were never fulfilled, and that drove a wedge between us."
    Although he discourages any comparison of Altman, Anderson or Kubrick as an exercise as fatuous as comparing choreographers George Balanchine, Robert Joffrey and Arpino, McDowell admits Anderson was his favorite.
    "He was such a great friend and we did so much work over the 28 years I knew him, including theater and three films," he says. ("O Lucky Man" in 1973 and "Britannia Hospital" in 1982 complete the "If" trilogy.)
    McDowell says Anderson consulted him in scripting the "If" sequels. He is asked unceasingly about those days and he answers politely, but he doesn't like to dwell on the past. "Time After Time," for instance, he recalls as the movie that introduced him to his second wife, Mary Steenburgen, the mother of his children, Lily and Charlie.
    He and his third wife, Kelley Kuhr, have been together nearly 15 years and are expecting their first child. That clearly gives him more pleasure than anything from the cinematic archives.
    "I had no idea what we were making with movies like `Clockwork Orange,' and I didn't really appreciate or understand all the noise surrounding it. I thought that's what you did when you worked in the movies. But that's when movies were good. Kubrick, Sam Peckinpah, Altman and Arthur Penn. But I don't go to many retrospectives or seminars. You can get too bound up in the past, and I'm always looking for something new."