Malcolm McDowell Interview, Halloween

 Posted by: Sheila Roberts

MoviesOnline sat down with Oscar winning veteran actor, Malcolm McDowell, at this week’s Los Angeles press day for his new horror movie, "Halloween,” in which he plays noted child psychologist Dr. Samuel Loomis. In "Halloween,” director Rob Zombie re-imagines one of the most iconic films in the annals of horror, director John Carpenter’s 1978 classic, "Halloween,” featuring the ruthless, masked psychopath Michael Myers. The film also stars Scout Taylor-Compton, Brad Dourif, Tyler Mane and Daeg Faerch.

Inspired by Carpenter’s 1978 original and his theme that "evil can appear in even the smallest of towns,” Zombie’s "Halloween” focuses on the early years of young Michael Myers and the events leading up to his fateful Halloween night murder rampage in the quiet town of Haddonfield, Illinois. Following that brutal night, Michael begins 17 years of incarceration at the Smith’s Grove Sanitarium maximum-security mental facility where he is treated by Dr. Samuel Loomis – the only person who can truly understand Michael’s evil nature. Now, 17 years later, Michael escapes from the mental facility on Halloween day and begins a murderous trek back to Haddonfield to continue his killing streak and seek resolution to events from his past.

Malcolm McDowell is arguably among the most dynamic and inventive of world-class actors, yet also one capable of immense charm, humor and poignancy. McDowell has created a gallery of iconographic characters since catapulting to the screen as Mick Travis, the rebellious upperclassman in Lindsay Anderson’s prize-winning sensation "If…” His place in movie history was subsequently secured when Stanley Kubrick finally found the actor he was searching for to play the gleefully amoral Alex in "A Clockwork Orange,” when McDowell himself conceived the idea for Mick Travis’ further adventures in Anderson’s Candide-like masterpiece, "O Lucky Man!,” and when he wooed Mary Steenburgen and defeated Jack the Ripper as the romantically inquisitive H.G. Wells in "Time After Time.” The star of dozens of films most recently appeared as Terence on the hit HBO series, "Entourage,” and as Linderman on NBC’s "Heroes.”

"A Clockwork Orange” is Rob Zombie’s favorite film, so selecting McDowell to fill the big shoes of the role made famous by Donald Pleasance was both an easy decision and an honor. "Malcolm was somebody I knew from day one I wanted for Dr. Loomis,” Zombie says. "The way I wanted to play Dr. Loomis was sort of different and I knew I needed an actor that could balance the quality where he’s not even really a likeable character – he’s kind of egotistical and annoying – but he’s charismatic. And I knew Malcolm could bring that quality to it. So you like him even if you’re not sure you should.”

McDowell acknowledges that he was very skeptical about doing a horror film at this point in his career, but when he met Rob Zombie he had a change of heart. "It was obvious that the man was extremely intelligent and had a wonderful take on the subject.” McDowell states. "He wanted to make something new and fresh and really a classic horror film. And the genre is so exciting in its classical form that he didn’t really have to work hard to sell me.”

McDowell did not want to repeat the performance of his old friend and colleague, Donald Pleasance. "I certainly didn’t want to do a pale imitation of Donald Pleasance, so I talked it over with Rob and we agreed that it would be much more fun if this character could bring a lighter side,” he says. "I don’t mean to say that he’s a comedic character, he’s not. But he’s a little pompous. He’s a doctor and a bit of an egotist. He thinks he’s the greatest in his field. The thing that I latched onto was the fact that Loomis got a lot of mileage out of this patient. He’d written a best selling book and is a pundit on TV. So if you have a sort of lighter side with the doctor, then the scary moments become a lot scarier.” With Dr. Loomis’ role in the film spanning 17 years, the make up and hair department also had to change McDowell’s age, appearance and looks for two separate timelines. Malcolm McDowell is a terrific guy and we really appreciated his time. Here’s what he had to tell us about his latest film, Rob Zombie’s "Halloween”:

Q: Long ago Rob Zombie wrote a part for you in Devil’s Rejects, had you wanted to do that at the time?

MALCOLM MCDOWELL: I’m glad he never showed it to me. I think we did the right thing together in this project because I think it was synergy that we came together on this. I think that if he’s got any sense, this will be his last horror film. Ahhh, surprise and shock! He ran away when he heard that. He just saw millions of dollars flying out the window. No I think Rob Zombie is a real talent and you don’t want to be stuck in one genre as a director or an actor. You want to move around if you want to be taken seriously as an artist and Rob is an artist. He is. So I would think he may do other horror films but not next.

Q: A lot of actors work with him again. Is that something that you’d be interested in doing?

MALCOLM MCDOWELL: I’d work with him reading the phone book even though he calls me a drunk. [Laughs]

Q: Scout said she really enjoying chatting with you on set and learned a lot from you. Could you say a little about that relationship?

MALCOLM MCDOWELL: She’s a doll. She’s way too young for me. She’s at the start of her career. I see a lot of these kids and she’s got tremendous talent. It gets to the point where it’s not about talent. It’s about character. And all the bullshit that goes on around this business, around any business I suppose, she’ll have her head turned and with all the traps and the rest of it, it’ll really be up to her and her character to see if she can come through this and move on up. That’s the name of the game and that’s what’s difficult.

Q: When you were a young actor, did you ever think some day when I get older I’m going to be playing the kinds of parts that Donald Pleasance has played?

MALCOLM MCDOWELL: No, when I was a young actor, I always looked at John Guilgud in awe because I wanted to be like him. Not that I’m anything like him at all. I’m not. I’m not even remotely the same kind of actor that he was because he was an actor more of the voice. I’m much more of movement, energy, and all that. But he was always somebody that I admired and I admired him because I figured that John Guilgud learned how to act on film in his 60s. He didn’t really understand film until he did Charge of the Light Brigade with Tony Richardson. I think he was 64 or 65 when he did it and he gave an absolutely incredible performance and then when I got to work with him, I asked him about it. [imitating Guilgud’s voice] "I didn’t understand film. I was terrified. I was intimidated, but I enjoyed it.” It was interesting that he was intimidated by it. And this thing in England if you’re a stage actor, you look down on film actors because they can’t do it basically because it’s a different technique, you know. People say film acting is acting to 10 people instead of a 1000. But that’s not what it’s about at all. That’s what theater actors think film acting is which it isn’t.

Q: Was Donald Pleasance a friend? Did you know him?

MALCOLM MCDOWELL: I knew Donald Pleasance. He was a lot older than me. I knew him. I knew his daughter, Angela, who’s a very good actress. And Donald, I met him a few times around the Royal Court Theatre. He was in Polanski’s Cul de Sac which is one of Roman’s first English language movies. And then he was in The Caretaker, the Harold Pinter thing. I think he did on Broadway, Men in a Glass Booth, the Robert Shaw piece. And I worked with Robert and I was around at that time so I knew him and I always thought he played those sinister parts very well. Of course, he did. He was our Peter Lorre really and he was a brilliant, brilliant actor and perfect for Loomis. I’m glad I didn’t see his movie. I’m glad I didn’t see the original.

Q: How did you see Loomis as a person?

MALCOLM MCDOWELL: He’s a doctor of course who’s deeply unsuccessful but would never admit that to himself. He’s a failure as a man, as a human being, a failure with a big F because if you’ve got a patient for 17 years who goes out and murders half the town, how successful can you be with your treatment? But, of course, Loomis has an enormous ego. Don’t most doctors?

Q: Did you base this on anybody you knew?

MALCOLM MCDOWELL: No, but I made it up because I thought I can get one back at doctors on this one. And so you know he’s well meaning and all the rest of it but I find his character fun. I found him a sort of Clouzot of the psychiatry set. Almost, almost, not quite.

Q: Do you think he thinks Michael Myers is a gold mine?

MALCOLM MCDOWELL: I think that it dawned on him, hey, there’s a book here and maybe a series, let’s sell it to Hollywood. But doesn’t everybody do that? You see them on the Today Show parading through every day. I thought well that’s a good angle. There’s lots of ad libs and I’m sure they’re not in the thing. "Oh you want me to sign the book.” Sign the book like he’s some ..you know…like it means something. It’s unbelievable the ego. But the flaw is what makes the character interesting.

Q: Did you do some improving in some scenes?

MALCOLM MCDOWELL: Every single thing I think is improved.

Q: Did you come up with the line "It’s longer than my first marriage”?

MALCOLM MCDOWELL: Of course. Are you kidding? And it’s true. [Laughs]

Q: You didn’t see the original when you did this part, but have you seen it since?

MALCOLM MCDOWELL: No.

Q: Do you have any interest?

MALCOLM MCDOWELL: No.

Q: Are you not a horror fan?

MALCOLM MCDOWELL: No, I’m sorry. I’m not. I don’t like slasher movies, but this isn’t one so… This one I will see tomorrow night. I haven’t seen this one yet.

Q: If it’s not a slasher movie, what would you say it is?

MALCOLM MCDOWELL: I think this is more a classic horror film. I think it’s a sort of Greek tragedy, isn’t it? It’s a classic horror movie really. It’s the boy next door. That’s the scary part, that it’s the boy next door, you know, that it’s this angelic child. But it’s really an indictment about mental health as much as anything else if you want to get sort of ridiculous about it.

Q: There almost seem to be elements of True Crime in the movie. It’s almost seems to be a True Crime tale based on a serial killer.

MALCOLM MCDOWELL: Sort of.

Q: It’s so brutal. I know you haven’t seen it yet.

MALCOLM MCDOWELL: Brutal, yeah, I can imagine.

Q: Did you get a sense of that on the set?

MALCOLM MCDOWELL: No, but I knew what Rob was up to.

Q: Who came up with the look of your character in the 15 years earlier segment?

MALCOLM MCDOWELL: Rob asked for this wig and it was such a mess that when I put it on, it went this-a-way and bunched up and I looked like Beethoven on a bad day and I went, "There’s no fucking way. No fucking way.” I’m looking at this in the mirror going, "Is this man fucking insane? No, no, no, no!” And Rob came in and he went, "Oh! Oh my God!” So we started cutting it and it was like unbelievable and then eventually it didn’t even fit. I had a great piece of bubble gum. I mean it was beyond belief. And it was made for me at great expense, like $8,000 bucks or something. I mean it was unbelievable. The guy must have been high on pot or something. It was so bad. So we eventually whittled it down. When I did the first scene in it, I was so glued up that I felt like I could barely move, but I started getting used to it. Then I realized that Rob was always doing this, [imitating Rob] "God, get a haircut man. Jesus!” And actually it worked really quite well for the character because this sort of aged hippie kind of thing was cool. It was good for the character.

Q: Do you feel there’s a certain dichotomy in terms of what the character tells people about Michael Myers and how he acts with Michael Myers? He’s saying this guy’s the devil and yet he’s saying I’m sorry I failed you which isn’t what you’d normally say to the devil.

MALCOLM MCDOWELL: I think that he’s just trying to sell books. I mean seriously I think that he’s saying that this is the very epitome of evil. But the thing is, is somebody really evil if they’re incapable of rational thought, if they are in fact a psychopath or a schizophrenic? Would you condemn someone for having cancer or diabetes? No. Then why? Of course their behavior is anti-social. They’re murderers, you know. This is always poignant, and especially in America. It’s so black and white here. There’s this poor woman in Texas who drowned her children. You’d have to be a fucking moron not to get the fact that the woman is going through a psychotic episode with this post-partum depression and you kind of know absolutely, instinctively, that this is what’s going on. She’s hearing voices. And yet they sentence her to death. What kind of a barbaric society is that? If you look at it that way, it’s so shocking. To me, it’s such an indictment upon our society.

Q: Actually I think she was sent to a mental institution.

MALCOLM MCDOWELL: She was on appeal. But they sentenced her to death originally. The definition of insanity in Texas is so insane that it’s impossible to be insane in Texas.

Q: Otherwise our President would be locked up.

MALCOLM MCDOWELL: Exactly.

Q: Most of the state would probably be locked up.

MALCOLM MCDOWELL: Yeah, probably.

Q: Do you like TV work? Are you going to do more?

MALCOLM MCDOWELL: It’s okay. Yeah. Good work.

Q: Is there any kind of show on now that you’d like to be on?

MALCOLM MCDOWELL: Not particularly.

Q: What about the cameos on Heroes?

MALCOLM MCDOWELL: Heroes is a good show. I’d go back on Heroes.

Q: But there’s no intention right now? They haven’t asked you?

MALCOLM MCDOWELL: They haven’t sent me a script, but you know that could come up. I would definitely do Heroes because I love that show and I loved the character. It was a great character. It was wonderful. And I loved working with Adrian. He’s a wonderful actor. They’re all great on that show.

Q: They were saying they’re going to be doing flashbacks with Richard Roundtree and Cristine Rose and it seems like your character would probably be in that because of the whole generations thing.

MALCOLM MCDOWELL: Oh, is that right? Oh well.

Q: In the Los Angeles Times this weekend there was an article on Rob Zombie and you were quoted as saying that he reminded you a little bit of Stanley Kubrick.

MALCOLM MCDOWELL: Only from the side. [Laughs]

Q: Just a little bit.

MALCOLM MCDOWELL: Well he does. There are certain things that [would make me] mention them both in the same breath. Rob’s at the beginning of his career. I worked with Stanley in the absolute golden period and Stanley was at his height as an artist. He was 47 and he had just finished 2001 so he was an amazing director. But I sense in Rob this commitment, this blinkered sort of dedication and channeling of energy that Stanley had that would be very similar to Rob. I wasn’t really talking about anything other than that. I don’t want to take anything away from Stanley who was probably one of the five greatest directors that ever lived. Of course that’s debatable but he’s certainly up there with the very greatest and he made some of the greatest movies. I think Rob though honestly is at the beginning of his career and my feeling is that if he moved on, he could really be something. I don’t think it’s ever going to get close to Kubrick because how do you ever get close to a genius almost. It’s like saying get close to John Ford. There’s nobody who’s ever going to come close to John Ford.

Q: Is there anything you’d like to say about the movie that nobody’s asked a lead in question for today?

MALCOLM MCDOWELL: That’s a good question. I feel like I’m in a sort of Twilight Zone because I haven’t seen it. So you’re all at an advantage on me. It’s very rare that I haven’t seen the work. But I live out of town. I’m not so anxious to see the work the moment it comes out. I could care less actually but you know I like to support it obviously. I think I’ve been asked pretty much everything about it.

Q: Are you planning on sitting down and writing your memoirs?

MALCOLM MCDOWELL: I may do that but you know what I’m most proud of is that I did a one man show about my relationship with this great director, Lindsay Anderson, who started me off in movies and has become completely forgotten even though he made some of the great movies of the period. I did a one man show about him at the Edinburgh Festival and it was a very extraordinary experience doing this. I got all these letters to me and other people from these archive, from the University at Sterling, and all his diaries and everything, and I went through them and worked out a sort of road map and then basically told my story as it pertains to Lindsay and all that. I called it Never Apologize because he never did. I then did it in the town where I live up near Santa Barbara. I did it as a benefit for the film festival and I thought I’d get rid of that all in one go and I walked into the auditorium. It was a school auditorium and there were 5 cameras and it was just weird because the guy who was in charge of these video cameras was just setting up his own production company and he wanted to test run. And so I went, "Well great, put a camera there.” And we placed the cameras and I did the performance and then this friend of mine took the material, cut it together, put in scenes from the movies I was talking about and posters and stills and all the people I’m talking about -- I sort of mimic a lot of the people including Rachel Roberts and all these people -- and he showed it to someone and we were invited to the Cannes Film Festival. And I said I’ve got to pay these cameramen off. What do I owe? It was $1,200. Of course, it was thousands more to edit it and all the rest of it, but basically this film played at the Cannes Film Festival, got a standing ovation for 5 minutes which was so unbelievable, so I think that’s my memoir and I don’t think I can honestly top that.

Q: Do you have distribution for the film yet?

MALCOLM MCDOWELL: It’s going to come out. Yes. It’s opening in England at the beginning of November at the ICA and then we’re hoping it will open here. There’s a big distributor. If he can sell it to HBO, if he can get karma up there, we’re in and that’s where it should go. It’s sort of like an historical document. It’s about the period because it’s how we wrote Oh Lucky Man and vis a vis how I auditioned for If. It was only because I fancied the girl I was supposed to be playing opposite. I didn’t have the script. All I was doing is looking at her, "Oh my God, I’ve got to take her out for coffee or something.” She was a real kind of Cockney. She’d go, "Why would I want to go for coffee with you?” "Hey darling, you know, I’m not a schoolboy. This is just costume. Okay?” She went, "Ah, no, you disgust me. I’m not going out with you.” "But you don’t see that I am in love with you? Alright, I’ll be honest. I’m in love with you.” "You don’t even know me.” "I don’t care.” "Okay.” And this went on, this banter, and I was totally in love with her and enamored of this girl and if it hadn’t have been for her, I would have never gotten the part in If which lead directly to A Clockwork Orange.

Q: Is it still called Never Apologize?

MALCOLM MCDOWELL: Yes. It will be coming out. It’s just one of the things that I did for love. I did it just because I wanted to put the record straight about Lindsay Anderson and what a genius he was. And he was the nearest thing I’ve ever come to it.

Q: Is there a role that you’ve never played in your career that you would still like to do?

MALCOLM MCDOWELL: No.

Q: Is there a director that you haven’t worked with that you’d like to?

MALCOLM MCDOWELL: Oh, I like these young directors. It keeps you on your sort of mettle a bit. There are so many great directors actually but of course now I can never think of one. I think it’s honestly better to never hanker after a part because you sort of play it in your mind and by the time you come to do it, you’re always flat. I’ve had that experience once. I never want it again. Honestly I never, ever want to play something in case they offer it to Patrick Stewart or Ben Kingsley. I don’t ever want to feel any animosity to these nice gentlemen. I just want to keep the slate clean. It’s best never to feel that you’ve got to play something even though it’s sometimes obvious, but nothing’s really obvious. And let’s face it, we’re all dispensible.

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