By Connell Barrett, Associate Editor, 2004 Golf Magazine March 2004
"Funny game," says Malcolm McDowell, waiting to
tee off on the 138-yard 4th hole at Spanish Hills Golf & Country Club near
Los Angeles. "You can struggle for 17 holes and then, on 18, the golf gods
do something to bring you back." This may be wishful thinking -- he's been
chopping it up so far.
A cell phone rings. It belongs to Brett Rice, McDowell's
playing partner and a co-star in Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius, the biopic that
wrapped on Spanish Hills' 12th tee just two hours earlier. The caller is Rice's
wife. McDowell's piercing blue eyes light up as he grabs the phone.
"Sweetheart, it's Malcolm," he says. "Are you wearing panties? A
thong? No? Mmm, nice. Your husband has been telling me about his prowess, which
is odd, because I thought he played for the other team."
Rice laughs. He's a good sport, considering that a man is
having faux phone sex with his wife. But such bawdy behavior is no surprise from
McDowell, who has spent 35 years filling movie screens with menace, most
memorably as the sadistic, bowler-wearing droog in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork
Orange and as the depraved Roman despot in the soft-core sex flick Caligula.
Rice's attitude: Render unto Malcolm....
A recovering alcoholic and former cocaine user, McDowell is
short on vices these days. He's pretty much down to flirting with friends' wives
and playing golf, which he took up three years ago. "I thought it was an
old man's game," says the 60-year-old Englishman, who plays Jones's friend
and biographer O.B. Keeler in the film. "Then I hit this 7-iron that soared
like a bird, and I was hooked. I've been looking for that damn bird ever
since."
McDowell takes a short, handsy swipe, knocks one to five feet
and gives his club a cocksure twirl. "Don't f--- with me!" he crows.
His brash manner must please the game's deities, for a gift from the gods awaits
him.
Jim Caviezel, who stars as Jones, is as bashful as McDowell
is bold. He greets you with a soft handshake and a shy "hi." In
character, though, he's all Southern charm .and swagger, as when answering an
off-camera autograph request. "Well suh, I usually charge $5," he
drawls. "But for you, I'll make it $10. After all, I am the one and only
Grand Slam winnah."
Spanish Hills is an ideal golf-movie location, bordered by
the Topa Topa mountains, the Pacific and fragrant fields of strawberries. But it
must feel like a muni compared to the sacred fairways that have already hosted
the Genius crew: Augusta National and Atlanta Country Club as well as the Old
Course at St. Andrews, where no other film crew had ever been allowed. Today
this Bob Cupp design subs for New York's Inwood Country Club, site of the 1923
U.S. Open, Jones's first major victory. Caviezel, surrounded by a tweedy throng
of extras, has just sent a key tee shot into the rough, and he musters many
wide, mocking grins to show Jones's disgust. After one take too many, he says,
"I feel like I'm in a Wrigley's commercial."
Opening April 30, the $18 million period piece chronicles
Jones's grueling march to the 1930 Grand Slam. It may seem a curious choice for
the 35-year-old Caviezel, who wasn't a golfer before taking on the role (he's
now hooked). But he's not like other leading men. A devout Catholic, he abhors
love scenes (he had co-star Jennifer Lopez cover her breasts during a steamy
moment in 2001's Angel Eyes), married a schoolteacher, and prefers character
studies to blockbusters. Caviezel, who watched Jones swing on tape
"literally a half-million times" to master the move, was drawn to
Genius because it's about a man, not a myth: "Jones carried great burdens.
He had family problems, enormous pressure to win the Grand Slam, a disease that
was taking over his body -- he was on the verge of snapping."
Caviezel, who plays Jesus in Mel Gibson's controversial The
Passion of the Christ ("I went from playing the messiah to the messiah of
golf"), admits that being a movie star with deep faith can be trying.
"There's temptation, but I can't have everything. God says what you do in
private is who you are. And at the end of my life, I want to meet Bobby Jones
and say, 'Hey, let's play golf.' "
By the 17th hole, the sun has slipped behind the topa Topa Mountains, turning
their chiseled peaks the color of cotton candy. "We call those 'pink
moments,' " says McDowell, who lives in nearby Ojai with his third wife,
36-year-old artist Kelley Kuhr. His only mistress is a King Cobra 440 SZ driver,
courtesy of Tom Crow, the Cobra Golf co-founder who helped finance Genius.
"I love this driver. I kill the ball. But I need new irons. Can you get me
a set of Titleist 690s?"
McDowell can afford his own swag. After some lean years (see Cyborg
3: The Recycler, or better yet, don't), he doesn't lack for work. He got
raves early this year as the driven director of a dance troupe in Robert
Altman's The Company. Tackling Keeler was a no-brainer, he says -- when you're
best known for playing a psychotic thug who pummels an old man while crooning
"Singin' in the Rain," you jump at a good-guy part. "I got fed
up, always having to play some version of Alex," he says of his Clockwork
role. "But all the best parts are nutters. And hey, it's an honor to be in
a film that's become part of the language."
McDowell's own language has been blue but good-natured,
though the golf gods have been no kinder to him than Kubrick was. The Clockwork
director sent his star to the hospital with scratched corneas while filming the
infamous scene in which Alex's eyes are pried open with metal clamps. "When
I came back from the hospital," McDowell says, "Stanley said he needed
a close-up, and I said 'No f---ing way. I won't let you! The stand-in has blue
eyes -- use him!' But the stand-in says, 'I'm not doing it!' So Stanley badgered
me into it -- and he scratched my cornea again!"
After finding the fairway on the par-4 18th, McDowell shanks
one into deep brush, curses and drops a ball in the second cut. From 170 yards
out he creams a 6-iron and trudges toward the shadowy green. But there's no ball
to be found. He checks the rough and both bunkers. Nothing.
He walks to the flag, takes a peek and, yes, finds his ball.
McDowell's in shock, and he is not acting. "It's in the f---ing cup!"
he says, sounding a little put off that the twilight has kept him from
witnessing the shot of his life.
"I've been playing for 10 years," another player
says, "and I've never seen a hole-out from that far away."
"Neither have I," McDowell answers, stunned.
"And I still haven't."
Dialed In
Malcolm McDowell
Handicap 16. "I'd be thrilled to get into the low 80s."
Low round 74, at White Columns Country Club, a Tom Fazio design near
Atlanta
Favorite club "My lob wedge 'Larry,' a beryllium Ping Eye2 that I
found on eBay. Some guy named Larry had etched his name on it. The time I shot
my 74, my mantra was, 'Just get Larry out and Larry it.' "
Dead right "I killed Captain Kirk in Star Trek: Generations. Fans
still come up to me and say, 'Thanks for getting rid of that boring ass.' "
Jim Caviezel
Handicap "I just started playing, but I think I can be
scratch."
The one that got away "I was up for Bagger Vance. I wanted to take
Matt [Damon] on, but I never got the chance to audition. It was all for the
best."
On Bobby Jones's swing "He had so many moving parts. It was easier
learning to fence for Count of Monte Cristo."
Memorable roll "In one scene, I made a 93-foot putt, and the crowd
went nuts. I look over and [director] Rowdy [Herrington] has his face in his
hands. He said, 'Jim, we missed it. The camera wasn't rolling.'
© 2004 Golf Magazine
Archived 2004-08 by Alex D. Thrawn for www.MalcolmMcDowell.net