From Alex DeLarge to Caligula, and H.G. Wells to Dr. Soran. Malcolm McDowell has embodied some of the most memorable characters to ever hit the big screen. This weekend, come celebrate three of those roles with us…and him!
Malcolm McDowell will be appearing in person all weekend at Laemmle’s Royal. He’ll do Q&A following select shows of his new film, Last Train to Fortune (see below for more details). He will also introduce the Saturday night show of A Clockwork Orange Sept. 26th at 8:30 p.m., and appear for a Q&A after the Sunday matinee show of Time After Time at 12:3o p.m.
For Last Train to Fortune, on Sept. 25th, the Q&A will follow the 7:00 p.m. show, featuring director Adam Rifkin alongside stars Malcolm McDowell, James Paxton ,and Laura Marano, and moderated by Dan Povenmire. Mr. McDowell will also participate in a solo Q&A after the 6:00 p.m. show on Saturday, Sept. 26th. On Sunday, Sept. 27th, he will introduce the 4:00 p.m. show.
Adam Rifkin previously gave an 81 year-old Burt Reynolds his meatiest late-career role in The Last Movie Star, playing a familiar veteran actor who has to journey to a podunk film festival to get an award, accompanied by sullen youngster Ariel Winter as his ride. With Last Train to Fortune, he applies a similar template to McDowell (though this script was actually written by his late mother in 1986). It’s set in the Old West, with the star playing a schoolteacher who…has to journey to a podunk town for a a new job, accompanied by sullen young gunslinger James Paxton (son of Bill Paxton) as his ride. The formula by design works as well as the actor at its center, and 83 year-old McDowell puts in maximum effort as Cecil Peachtree, a loquacious bibliophile who finds America overly rough and vulgar, yet has no choice but to adapt.
Either McDowell is improvising a lot, or he memorized pages of monologue for each scene. Whatever the case, he’s not just playing a man who sells himself to others with his words – he’s selling the movie to you, as you watch it, with his performance of them. Paxton’s under-educated Dooley may be an audience surrogate for some, missing literary references that Peachtree rapid-fires at him, but McDowell’s performance gets the point across even when the verbiage verges on the pointedly, excessively florid. Appearances from Bernadette Peters as a tough bartender, McDowell’s ex Mary Steenburgen as a fellow schoolteacher, and MC Gainey as a ruthless outlaw invariably lead to further enjoyable moments, in service of a storyline gently advocating for the entire country to get smarter, more literate, and less gun-obsessed.
McDowell’s other two movies, both all-timers, screening this weekend have varying takes on the matter. In A Clockwork Orange, the actor plays Alex, a juvenile delinquent who enjoys sexual assault and random violence; when he is finally caught, he is medically conditioned to feel sick to his stomach any time those aggressive thoughts occur to him again, which makes him easy pickings as a potential victim. Directed by Stanley Kubrick with an eye that forces the viewer to judge, it’s a movie that asks what level of governmental control and punishment we’d consider unacceptable, even to the worst among us.
In Time After Time, the movie that introduced him to his second wife, Mary Steenburgen, McDowell plays H.G. Wells, who in this telling has created the time machine from his novel for real. Unfortunately, it’s hijacked by Jack the Ripper (David Warner), and the two pursue each other through 1970s San Francisco, with Wells falling for the killer’s next targeted victim, Amy (Steenburgen). The movie was the directorial debut of Nicholas Meyer, known for Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan and The Day After.
Just as Cecil Peachtree in Last Train to Fortune tries to instill love of his favorite books in anyone who’ll listen to him, McDowell himself wants you to see his classic films, and he’s stopping by to tell you exactly why! Come hear a master thespian introduce his craft, vintage and new.
“Thanks to a brilliant McDowell, passionate messages about reading and education, and the movie’s overall amiable, jovial tone, [Last Train to Fortune] is likely to win viewers over right from the start.” – Jeffrey M. Anderson, Common Sense Media.
“McDowell is perhaps the perfect choice to play Cecil, not because the part demands something no other actor could provide but because his very familiarity creates a mask of ambiguity that the film is able to exploit.” – Kenneth R. Morefield, 1More Film Blog.