if.... 2 (Remains Unfilmed)

Interviews

Malcolm mentions if.... 2
3/87 in an interview in The Face magazine

Notes

This screenplay was written in the mid 80s by David Sherwin, the screenwriter of the original if...., and was mentioned by Malcolm as far back as March 1987 . With the death of Lindsay Anderson, the director of if.... in 1994, the project was put on the back burner, but Malcolm has expressed interest in getting it made possibly with Sherwin or Milos Foreman directing.
With the death of Richard Warwick it makes it even more unlikely that the project will ever get done which is a damn shame.

Quotes

"We'll all return to the school much later in life when we've become bank managers and things..." - Malcolm McDowell 3/87

"I think that was a bit of a fantasy of Lindsay's, after Britannia Hospital flopped, but at the time I didn't quite believe in it and I don't think Lindsay did either. It's hard for a director to face rejection in the way that he did." McDowell says he once asked Anderson what Mick Travis would be doing 25 years down the line. "'I think he'd be a bank manager, don't you?' he said. I thought he'd be an insurance salesman or something." - MM 2004

Scenes

The cast and crew gather for a Gala screening of if.... In the audience is the Queen Mother (“inspired by her marvelous performance in Britannia Hospital”). After the screening, she knights The Crusaders on stage, and slices off David Sherwin’s head.

It is 25 years after the events of if... and the school now has girls in the sixth form (17 and 18 years old). Everyone comes back for a reunion and Rowntree is a government minister who is invited for the anniversary to lay the foundation stone of a new college house. The headmaster is the same, but he is being shadowed by the man who is going to replace him, an African chief. The boys are sleeping in a makeshift dorm in the library. Johnny dreams he is having a playfight with Mick and he kills him with a knife and is put on trial. Wallace dreams he still at school (at age 45) in a class of teenagers and trying to win a Greek scholarship. Biles dreams he has grown breasts and a vagina. Mick, who is now a film star, hasn't arrived. He, Wallace and Johnny have arranged to meet on the school roof on the following evening. At the appointed time, Wallace and Johnny climb up onto the school roof and hear the music from the Missa Luba. It is being played by Mick from a tape recorder. They go to visit their old haunts, meet the students who are now using their study and they go under the stage where they found the weapons. There they come across a group of students called The Cell who plan to kidnap Rowntree in protest against his repressive and violent policies...Alan Price performs at the school ball and Rountree gets crucified by Mick!

That's the first twenty minutes. There's a brilliant scene when the headmaster is showing them around the school which now has a TV studio where the kids are being trained to be politicians - and taught how to never give a direct answer to a question.

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