How Bill Paxton’s Son Took Over His Father’s Role in a Western 35 Years in the Making

Malcolm McDowell is not known for his cheerier side — at least not in the roles he plays on screen.

The screen legend, 83, became a star in Stanley Kubrick’s pitch-black A Clockwork Orange (1971). He later got swept up in the sword-and-sandal sordidness of Caligula (1979). More recently, he played Dr. Loomis in Rob Zombie’s Halloween films.

So audiences may be surprised about his latest turn, playing a cheerful educator in the Old West with an affinity for the literary classics. The film is Last Train to Fortune, and its journey to VOD on Nov. 6 marks the end of a 35-year effort to bring the Western comedy to the screen.

He originally planned to make the film in 1991 opposite Bill Paxton, who would have played the outlaw who agrees to safely accompany McDowell’s character to his new post.

At the time, Lindsay Anderson, who gave McDowell his breakthrough role in 1968’s if…., was attached to direct. But Anderson died in 1994. In 2017, McDowell suffered another shocking loss when Paxton died following heart surgery.

“I talked to him two days before he went in and he said, ‘Oh, it’s a routine thing,’” McDowell recalls of his last conversation with Paxton. “I mean, it was terrible. It was just terrible.”

It was veteran producer Brad Wyman, the producer of the 2003 Charlize Theron film Monster, who suggested reviving the film. McDowell still thought the script, by Michele Rifkin, held promise — and pitched James Paxton, Bill’s son, for the part meant for his late father.

The three sat around a kitchen table and took a crack at a read — and James proved to be an inspired choice. The screenwriter’s son, Adam Rifkin, directs.

The film also serves as a happy re-pairing with Mary Steenburgen. Steenburgen and McDowell met on the set of the 1979 time-travel thriller Time After Time, fell in love and were married from 1980 to 1990. They had two children, including Charlie McDowell, a film and TV director who has helmed episodes of HBO’s Silicon Valley. (Steenburgen has been married to Ted Danson since 1995.)

McDowell says he asked James to make the offer to Steenburgen to play the schoolteacher he encounters in the film’s final act. She accepted, but later confronted her ex-husband on set.

“The first thing she said, ‘Why didn’t you call me?’” McDowell recalls. “I went, ‘Well, you’re here. Let’s just leave it at that.’”

“I can’t think of doing it with anyone else,” he continues of their reunion. “It was so natural and so comfortable to work with her.”

Last Train to Fortune has drawn positive notices — it holds an 86 percent positive score on Rotten Tomatoes — with critics saying the film “belongs to McDowell” and crediting its “easygoing charm.”

It is available to rent or buy on Apple TV and other services beginning Nov. 6.