"Where Movie Critics Get A Taste Of Their Own Medicine"
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AN INTERVIEW WITH:
ROBERT ALTMAN
AND MALCOLM MCDOWELL
by Peter Sobczynski

January 2, 2004

Robert Altman and Malcolm McDowell have, between them, been responsible for some of the most electrifying moments to ever occur in the world of cinema-the former through films like "Nashville", "Short Cuts", "The Player" (to name only a few) and the latter through such iconic performances as Alex in "A Clockwork Orange" and Mick Travis in "If", "O Lucky Man" and "Britannia Hospital". Not counting a brief cameo that McDowell made in "The Player", their paths never crossed until "The Company". In the new film, Altman takes viewers into the world of ballet by illustrating a season in the life of a typical ballet company (consisting of star-producer Neve Campbell and Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet) and McDowell steals the picture as the egocentric-yet-dedicated leader of the troupe, a man whose entire life is dedicated to equally serving the needs of both art (by putting on pieces that challenge and excite the dancers themselves) and commerce (by balancing those performances with audience pleasers that will pay the bills).

Returning to Chicago, where they shot the film in late 2002, for a benefit premiere screening, Altman and McDowell sat down with a group of writers to discuss the film as well as their considerable contributions to the art of film. These are some of the things that they said during the conversation.

Robert Altman	Malcolm McDowell

Were there any dance-related films that you looked at for inspiration before beginning work on "The Company"?

Altman: No, none that I am conscious of. I didn’t have any idea of what I was going to do or how it was going to work. This was really walking into the fog-I had no idea how the dancers or the dance masters would work with me. I kind of just pussy-footed through until I could see what would work and then I followed that path.

I found, to my surprise, that the dancers...before this, I had done "Gosford Park" with many, many top professional actors in it. They were great and they couldn’t have been more cooperative, but they were actors and you would have 18 people on the set saying "Oh, am I late?" or "I hope Maggie is here because I don’t want to get to the set before Maggie does!" and all these other things. I thought that with 40 people in this, it would be very difficult but I found out that when I got there, the dancers were already there. We would walk through a scene to see how much space there was and I would ask a dancer to stop a little shorter and forever more, they would stop at that spot until told to go somewhere else. They were so disciplined and like one organism that it was wonderful.

In the past, you have made several films in which you have used a particular subculture-the country-music industry in "Nashville", the Hollywood studio system in "The Player" and even the health-food industry in "Health"-as a symbol for America as a whole. In "The Company", though, the world of ballet is never used for any other symbolic purpose. What led you take a more straightforward approach this time around?

Altman: I had nothing to say other than to present what it is that they do. In my mind, the film was nothing more than a season-in-the-life story. I decided to give you hints of the regular six stories that would emerge from that plot. I was able to start a little story so that you could draw a focus on one or two of the dancers rather than just seeing them, but I didn’t give you the whole story because you already know the whole story. I wasn’t trying to do anything else because I didn’t want to do that same thing again. This was, in my mind, a film about the joy and pain of dance, period.

Then I had this great force I was able to put in there in Malcolm McDowell. He was the force that gave it a dramatic impact at every moment. He managed to bring such a three-dimensional hook to that character-the way he played it is exactly the way that Gerry Arpino really is. He’s a charlatan, a fund-raiser, an artist, an egoist and Malcolm got that. I didn’t know what was going to be said in those scene; I just said "Play the scene the way it needs to be played." I don’t know where those words came from-I suppose that Barbara wrote some of it but if she did, it came from her listening to him.

Since Robert Altman is famous for allowing actors a unusual amount of leeway in creating their characters, how did you go about developing your role in the film?

McDowell: When you work with Bob, it is a great event. Making a film with him is very different-you never really what is going on. The worst thing you can do is come in with any preconceived notions-those will not work and you will find that out very fast. It is good because it really does bring you up as an actor and it makes you rethink what you are doing. Of course, I have been doing this for a long time, 40-odd years, and you tend to get a technique by then. I have to say that I have never worked in this way before-I’ve never really done improvisation before. It really was an all-stars/no-stars thing-we were all there just making a dance movie.

I was very lucky in having such a generous person as Gerald Arpino to work from-he was very open. I think at first he was very disappointed because he was expecting Al Pacino to show up or at least Bob DeNiro. After his initial disappointment, he was quite happy. I wasn’t really playing him-it was a performance inspired by him but I am not playing him at all. It was a weird situation-I had someone looking over my shoulder even though I wasn’t exactly playing them but someone like them. I think that is what Bob wanted; at one point, he even said "Less Arpino, more McDowell".

Altman: He has a hell of a job. His job is to get the rich ladies to come around and bring their rich husbands around so they think "We have to help the artists, blah-blah-blah". I don’t know how they stay afloat.

McDowell: He is a very creative person and he takes all that creativity from the dance floor and puts it into fund-raising, which is what happens. It is true that the sad state of arts funding in this country is that a dancer can be the lead prima donna of a company one day and is working as a waitress the next day at a club to pay the rent. They don’t do it for money-they do it because they have to dance and that is all they can do or want to do.

Altman: I find it very melancholy. They start when they are 4 or 5 and by the time they are 19, their bodies have changed so much that they walk like a duck. I could take you out on the street and point at people and say "She’s a dancer" just by the way they walk. They can’t make a living at it-or just barely- and when they are 33, they are finished and are teaching other little kids. At 18,. they look at themselves and realize that they will never become famous but that they can’t quit. They can’t have any social life outside the company-it is very incestuous. A girl can’t go out on a date with a guy with a normal job because her demands are so great. They have to watch their weight so there is a lot of anorexia. It is very hard to go through teenage years under that kind of discipline.

But if they make a relationship with one of the guys in the company, the whole thing is like being in a fishbowl. When that breaks up, what do they do? They go to others but they still have to dance with the people that they used to go out with and they are all practically naked out there-they lift the girls up and their legs are spread out.

About 10 years ago, you came to Chicago to stage the opera "McTeague". Did any of the experiences you went through on that project find their way into "The Company" and how important was it for you to select Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet as the focus of the film?

Altman: Barbara Turner and Neve Campbell selected the Joffrey-they had worked on it for two years before I had ever even heard of it. I think they picked it because they are an all-star/no-star company and their repertoire is very broad-they don’t just do classic. As for Chicago, it was great shooting here-I had done it before. The crews are terrific-I didn’t have to bring anybody in. We shot it in Hi-Def, which was a little strange for all of us.

Canada is ruining film production in America with all of the runaway productions shooting in Canada-that was actually part of the reason for me doing this film. I was supposed to do a film with Paul Newman and a bear for some guy named Harvey Weinstein, who told me that it had to be made in Canada. At this time, I was turning Barbara and Neve down: "I’m not doing a dance movie, I don’t know anything about it. I’m going to do this bear movie." They wanted me to do it in Canada and I kept saying "Why, aren’t there any bears here?" I said that I wasn’t going to do that and I finally quit. They were thrilled-Harvey called Paul Newman and said "We got rid of Altman-who can we get to direct this?" Newman said "Uh, you don’t seem to understand. I was only doing this because of Altman. I’m out of here." The film was shot last year and ended up with Redford and J-Lo, who I would not hire-she just was not right for it. It was like "Sesame Street"-you had the Spanish girl, the black guy, the white guy and the bear. Lasse Halstrom directed it and it is called "An Unfinished Life".

In "The Company", "My Funny Valentine" is used throughout the film in various capacities. What was the decision behind using that particular song as the theme?

Altman: The dance to "My Funny Valentine" was one of the very first things we did-we actually shot it during pre-production when we went out to Grant Park for a few days. It seemed to set up a nice theme for Neve’s character when she met James Franco. I wanted to play that because we took all of the words out of that relationship-all the plot-and basically made it a pas de deux. It was boy-meets-girl, boy-fu**s-girl, boy-and-girl-fall-in-love. There is even a happy ending-until the day after the ending of the picture. The whole point of all of that stuff was that I wanted to do those scenes with Franco and Neve like they were doing a pas de deux, so I kept using the same music in different renditions. If you shove all those pieces together, you would have something like a ballet.

What were the challenges of taking one specific art form and attempting to transplant it into another?

Altman: I’m not making it into anything else-I was just trying to record it. This is a documentary film, I feel, only we staged everything. There are no real performances but we controlled everything. In my mind, it was a documentary film.

Both of you have been working in film for several decades and have made some world-famous films, especially in the Seventies. What is it that keeps you motivated to continue on?

Altman: Well, I would say that nothing changes. It is the same-you go into every film with a great deal of fear and trepidation because you don’t know what you are doing. (If you do know what you are doing, you may as well not do it.) In you mind, you see a history while in my mind, I see experiments and I am sure that it is the same thing with Malcolm. Malcolm said that he had never worked in this way before and neither had I. We would do our creative work and when there was a problem, we would have to figure out how to solve it and then we would do it.

When you look back at films of Malcolm’s or films of mine from the early Seventies, they are a part of history for you and they mean different things to you because you saw them at different times in your life. People will come in and say "Oh, that film changed my whole life" when they are talking about something like "Nashville" or "O Lucky Man". However, you realize that the people who are saying these things are very young-the experience is new to them and they are recognizing something and they are thrilled by it. It was how I felt when I walked out of "Brief Encounter" in 1946 and thought "Wow, who is that ugly girl in the sensible shoes that I am now in love with?" You never forget those things.

McDowell: A year or two ago, they made a new print of "A Clockwork Orange" and they showed it at the Egyptian is Los Angeles and I went to see it because I hadn’t seen it in 20-odd years. I’m watching this and I was thinking that Kubrick was a genius-I missed that the first time I saw it because I never looked it like that even though his contributions were so amazing. The film finishes and I went out and there was this young guy in the foyer who saw me and said "Wow, "Clockwork Orange, right?" I said yes and he said "Wow...which part did you play?" He thought I played one of the old guys and didn’t remember that it was 30 years old. That shows you how brilliant Kubrick was-he made a film that was so timeless that this guy thought it was made only a year or so ago.

-- PETER SOBCZYNSKI

Copyright © 2004 Peter Sobczynski
All rights reserved.
Used with permission
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