Never Apologize (An Evening with Malcolm McDowell)

Never Apologize, Mike Kaplan

10.15.07

Today I’ve been listening to the soundtrack of O Lucky Man! on my Fisher Price record player. It’s a shame that this film seemed to slip out of people’s memory over the years. Finally it is getting a DVD release on October 23rd (ed. note: out now). The director of O Lucky Man!, Lindsay Anderson, seems to have been forgotten as well. Malcolm McDowell who was a close friend of Anderson’s and worked with him numerous times said, “Many people don’t even know who Lindsay is any more, and some of those people work at Warner Bros!” (Who refused to release the DVD for years.)
McDowell appeared at the Chicago International Film Festival to introduce and answer questions about Never Apologize, a feature length video of McDowell giving an informal lecture, more of a stage show actually, about his relationship with Anderson and the groundbreaking work they made together. Even though as a movie Never Apologize is basically just documentation and archive footage, but with McDowell there is never a dull moment. McDowell alone commands your attention and his ability to tell stories is amazing, along with uncanny impressions of other actors and directors.
It was endearing to watch McDowell express so much pure love for a director and mentor. McDowell said Never Apologize was “a love poem to a director” and it is exactly that. Anderson had started McDowell’s career by casting him as Mick Travis in If… a movie about students rebelling against their boarding school, in reality they are rebelling against England. It won the 1969 Golden Palm at Cannes, right around when the Paris Commune and student revolutions were happening. It marked that moment in history. McDowell became a star from that film, and it is the film that Stanley Kubrick saw and decided that McDowell would be perfect to star in his next film. A Clockwork Orange.
McDowell brought up the point, after the screening, that there are very few directors that care about actors, and Lindsay Anderson was one of them. McDowell saw Anderson as a teacher, friend, and mentor, which lasted longer than the times they spent on set together. Kubrick wasn’t like that at all, they’ve barely talked since A Clockwork Orange. McDowell came up with the idea for O Lucky Man! based on his experiences, as a coffee salesman, and Anderson didn’t dismiss him, they developed it together, with writer David Sherwin. Which doesn’t happen a lot, McDowell said he was a 20-something year old cocky actor who told Anderson, “We make a great team, let’s do another film together.” But Anderson didn’t brush him off, and O Lucky Man! became a definitive moment of British cinema.
Like Godard and Truffaut, Anderson was a film critic before he was a director, but somehow his name isn’t pushed onto film students and his movies aren’t overplayed in classes. Yet they should be, they mark a time and a history that is very important to England and to the era they represent. Like Godard to France and the sixties. Without McDowell, who knows if these stories of Anderson would be told outside of the realm of British Cinema critics and lovers? For McDowell to have that power to breathe life back into his old friend and pass that on to others is incredible. McDowell created the perfect homage to Anderson.

(Criterion is releasing "This Sporting Life" Anderson's first feature on January 22nd 2008)