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Cast | Notes | Pictures | Transcript

Cast

Directed by Gary Leva

Notes

• 28 minutes, from 2007

• Malcolm McDowell does not appear in it.

• Sydney Pollack died 5/2608

Pictures

Bernard Williams
Milena Canonero
Barbara Daly
Bill Butler
Rare costume test of Billyboy's Gang
Alex from the deleted library attack scene

Transcript

Clips - various ACO
Sydney Pollack - Stanley likes to explore the edges of everything, the far out edges of everything that was primal and controlled in civilization.
William Friedkin - You could walk into the film and not know where you were and know it was Kubrick film.
Clip - I was cured all right.
Steven Spielberg - I think the first thing that makes Stanley so special was that he was a chameleon, he never made the same picture twice. A different story, period, a different risk.
Clips from Kubrick's films.
Bernard Williams - He took stories with a different twist, the idea of James Mason with a 13 year old.
"A fine book for the sinny!"
Paul Duncan - Terry Southern gave Stanley the book while working on the set of Dr. Strangelove.
John Baxter - So Kubrick read it, but he just didn't get it.
Paul Duncan - the problem was the nadsat language. Kubrick felt no one would read this, watch this or understand it.
1970
John Baxter - Kubrick was always aware people thought he was out there up to something, but here were these kids doing things he never thought of (Making films like Easy Rider, THX-1138). He had the idea of a youth film, then I'll come in and make the great youth film.
Peter Hyams - Kubrick wanted to push the envelope, he wasn't interested in the ordinary. I think the ordinary bored him.
J. David Slocum - Kubrick took over the ACO project after making 2001.
David Hughes - It had all the things he liked - a great plot, a lot of action and as he said it had one of the greatest characters ever committed to fiction, someone as evil, untouchable and engaging as Richard III.
Clip - now they knew who their master was.
John Baxter - He deiced he needed a screenplay and got Burgess to write one and he threw it out. He decided he could do better himself and said I've got the book, I'll write my own.
Bernard Williams - Instead of carrying around a big screenplay, he carried around the book which was a new way of making movies.
John Baxter - He would be on the set, open the book and say page 27 how are we going to do that? He would sit around with the actors and technicians and they would work out the way to do it.
Paul Duncan - When Kubrick made the film he followed the novel rather closely using the language he said would be rejected.
Clip - yarbles
John Baxter - Burgess invented this futuristic slang of the street kids of Russia which he called nadsat which was more in tune with Russia.
Neil Fulwood - It consists of corrupted Russian, about 200 words, cockney slang, Gypsy and Roman.
Clip - Will the English.
Stuart McDougal - In the film Kubrick uses the language, but uses much less of it. He always supports the language with visual images. So the first is the start of the film which is an extraordinary close up of Alex, then the camera pulls back and he explains who he is. If you don't know what a droog is you see these 3 guys with him and figure it out.
Clip - nice and sparkling clear
"It's all about me my droogies!"
David Hughes - Kubrick would've seen Malcolm McDowell in Lindsay Anderson's if… , he had the boyishness, the lovable in spite of his badness that Kubrick would've felt was key and no other actor would've had.
John Baxter - The combination of velvet and violence, snobbery and violence.
Hugh Hudson - It's like a child and I mean that in the nicest way, the most positive way.
Clips of Alex
John Calley - Malcolm does unbalanced very well, he does extreme personality disorder very well.
David Hughes - I think the only other person at the time who was ever considered for the part, though before Kubrick was involved, was Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones would've played the droogs. Kubrick did say if Malcolm hadn't been available he wouldn't have made the movie.
John Baxter - In a way Malcolm didn't play another role after that, he played it forever and ever because it fit him so well.
Clip - Korova/Lucy
"These paltry gollies won't buy us peanuts!"
Bernard Williams - When I went to meet Stanley and asked what was the budget going to be for the film he said tight. I said how tight and he said here it is and I looked at the front page and was horrified. I said is this real? you are Stanley Kubrick. He said I know I've got to make it and prove I can do low budget picture.
Stuart McDougal - Kubrick decided to do as much on location as he could. So he and his associates sat down with a pile of architectural magazines to scout locations.
Clip - various ACO locations.
David Hughes - He was imagining the future on a very small scale so instead of building an apartment block, the idea was to use the worst possible apartment block that you could find in the 1960s London and there was lot of them being thrown up.
Clip - Alex coming home.
Milena Canonero - He didn't want to do a futuristic movie the traditional science-fiction way. He wanted what was tomorrow, today, maybe near. So we tried to give a look that was possible to recreate. The street gangs in those days were all wearing clothes they put together themselves. They were not going to some costume house to put together hi tech futuristic things. The gangs of the day and today are very inventive, but they do it with ordinary things.
Bernard Williams - I said this is so anti-government, Stan you are an American, but for me as a Brit if you put a bowler hat on that guy that is really shoving it to the politicians and he liked it.
Barbara Daly - Part of the thing was to do something we thought these guys would do to themselves, it was like tribal decorations, because they were indeed a tribe. We had these fake eyelashes because it was the early 70s, they were probably mine in the box. I suddenly thought this could be the thing, just try an eyelash. I called Stan over and that was it. It was the right idea at the right time, very simple. It was just what we were looking for. If he thought someone had a valid opinion about anything even if it wasn't there department or area he was interested. If someone was sweeping the floor and had an idea about something else he would want to hear it.
Bernard Williams - He would say to me, Bernie when you get the script give it to the guy on the door. Really, the doorman? Yeah, if anybody comes up with one idea that is great I want to hear it.
Jay Cocks - He had no doubt about who was in control, he didn't feel threatened. He never knew when someone would come up with a great idea, so he listened to everyone.
Barbara Daly - That was why he was such a great director. He was a big sponge with all the information, he would come in and work it all out.
Clip - I feel very low in meself.
"A real pain in the gulliver he was…"
Sydney Pollack - He would give a new definition to the word controlling.
Caleb Deschanel - From the writing to the casting to the shooting to editing to use of music he is so profoundly involved in every aspect of the film.
Bernard Williams - He was the producer, director, writer, cameraman, soundman, the designer, he was in everyone's department. He was a one man band on the set
John Calley - He just did everything in the movie business better than everyone else.
John Baxter - Kubrick had a unique relationship with Warner Brothers, the respect in which he was held was staggering.
John Calley - I wanted to do what I wanted to do and I wanted to do what Stanley told me.
Sydney Pollack - Stanley was a perfectionist, he was the one true 1000% perfectionist that I ever worked with.
Barbara Daly - We would always spend a lot of time with the lighting that was the one thing I really loved that Stanley took a lot of time to set the scene.
Bernard Williams - Stanley spent a lot of time rehearsing. You could go to work at 6am and not shoot anything until 2 in the afternoon, but then he wanted to shoot until midnight and he did.
Barbara Daly - If you didn't want long days you didn't work for Stanley Kubrick.
Bill Butler - I never saw my children for ages, they would be in bed when I left and when I came home.
Bernard Williams - He would just be 'what if, what if, is there more, have you tried everything? Have we really looked, let's look again,' it was constant. Don't resist it or you will be miserable.
Bill Butler - There was no relief. There was no easy night, no let's go out and get a beer and chat about the film, it was always bang, bang, bang.
Bernard Williams - Malcolm was getting tired and Stanley was like what's wrong with this guy? Actors get to go to their dressing rooms and we stand around in the cold and rain all day, we have to be hearty. These actors! (Laughs)
John Baxter - People do get knocked around on Kubrick films, it's part of the game.
Clip - Alex is beaten on stage.
John Baxter - He was very attracted to the idea of making the aversion therapy look very realistic. He went out and got these metal clips to hold open the eyes.
Bernard Williams - So poor Malcolm is sitting there with a strait jacket on with these clips holding his eyes wide open. You sit there with your eyes open and see how long you can take it. So 30 takes later and your eyes are still clipped and you have this drip to keep them moist. At one point Malcolm couldn't take it anymore and panicked, screamed or was angry. I don't know what it was. He just wrenched his arms to get out of the straight jacket and in doing so he hit one of the clips and scratched his cornea. He was in hell and in so much pain. That was the end of that scene.
John Baxter - Another one is when he's taken by his old friends and brutalized and they dump him head first into a trough used by pigs.
Bernard Williams - I watched that scene and went is this real? It went on forever and ever. England is freezing cold, it's not like California. He's laying on clay ground that is soaking wet, freezing cold with a skimpy outfit on.
Clip - Alex in the trough.
John Baxter - Kubrick had the water made up by coloring it with meat extract. Malcolm complained after 27 takes of being dunked in this cold soup that he was utterly revolted by the smell of this thing forever.
Bernard Williams - Hats off to Malcolm, he was in every scene, I mean he did well.
Clip - what's so stinking about it?
"A bit of the old ultra-violence…"
William Friedkin - Though there isn't a lot of blood, there's vivid explicit savagery. The idea of a group of thugs breaking into the home of an elderly couple and beating the shit out of them is one of the most disturbing things you can put on film. The idea that your own home is not a safe haven is much more disturbing than if you would see someone stabbed with a knife or shot with a gun. Now you see it every night on TV in profusion. TV shows are now more graphically violent than ACO was. Why are they not more disturbing? Because ACO goes to the deepest fears of human beings. They are not safe in their own house no matter what, that the law can't protect them.
Clip - attack on Mr. Alexander.
Sydney Pollack - Stanley had a way of looking at violence and he had a way of looking at sex too. In a certain way he wasn't pulling punches, he was pushing punches. He waded right into sex and violence, but he made it stylized. It wasn't like walking into a room and discovering two people beating each other or having sex, it wasn't like that.
Caleb Deschanel - It's interesting because in ACO which a lot of people consider to be a very violent film, most of the violence is very stylized. The one time he actually kills a woman they cut to a painting in the woman's house instead of seeing someone actually killed.
Ernest Dickerson - Voom! That is much more impactful.
Sydney Pollack - Stylized violence is often easier on the senses, easier to each with out feeling affected.
Caleb Deschanel - Kubrick will actually counterpoint things with music or with visual images that have a sophistication. There is a wonderful scene where this horrible gang is raping a girl on stage and you start with these beautiful artistic images then you pull back until you realize these guys are beating up this girl on stage.
Clip - Billyboy, Singin' in the rain
Neil Fulwood - They shot for about three days and Kubrick wasn't happy with the stylized destruction of the writers house and his wife. He thought it was flat and wasn't working.
John Baxter - Kubrick asked Malcolm if he knew any songs and he said I only know one, it's Singin' in the Rain and Kubrick said OK wait a minute.
Bernard Williams - He was rehearsing for days this sequences and it wasn't working. I heard singing and said what was that, are you making a musical? He started shooting and I said Stanley you have to get permission. He said call the studio. I said no it's famous song, you are raping and beating up two people who've done nothing to Singin' in the Rain. He said just get over there.
William Friedkin - It's awesome to see that as a director, to see a beating inflected on people while Gene Kelly is doing Singin' in the Rain on the soundtrack. It messes up the circuitry of the viewers mind.
Neil Fulwood - It's a key scene in terms of audience complicity. When I first saw the film I laughed and then I felt embarrassed. You shouldn't laugh, but it is so unexpected.
Stuart McDougal - It's one of those things that once you see it you can never see Gene Kelly's Singin' in the Rain the same way again.
Bernard Williams - They pulled it off. I'm sure Gene wasn't too happy about it.
"This is the real weepy and tragic part of out story, oh my brothers…"
John Baxter - There are a lot of legends about the release of ACO, there are a lot of legends about the release of all Kubrick's films I suppose. When it came out it was fairly, widely disparaged as being extremely unpleasant.
J. David Slocum - Malcolm's performance is a tour de force and critics of the film, those who dislike it, very much dislike that his performance is so powerful, it is engaging, it allows viewers in spite of themselves, in spite of what's fair and moral, they are routing for him.
Ernest Dickerson - He's a bad kid. He does some pretty horrible things and yet we are having fun watching him do it.
J. David Slocum - Kubrick had a few bad experiences first of all with screening of the film, people misunderstood it and people had fun with the violence, they felt it was giving them a rush.
Stuart McDougal - It was seen as encouraging violence, every youth crime of the time was blamed on the film ACO.
Bernard Williams - Teenagers after the film came out started telling judges 'I was influenced by ACO, that's why I did it sir.'
William Friedkin - ACO made violent youth culture attractive for many young people around he world. I don't think he set out to insight violence, but I think he did.
Paul Duncan - There were several incidents in the UK of ultra-violence.
Neil Fulwood - The first was the attack and rape of a Dutch girl on vacation in Lancashire. The gang of youths actually sung Singin' in the Rain while the attack occurred. There is a clear link to the film.
Sydney Pollack - I'm quite sure that Stanley was terribly hurt by the reaction to ACO and felt it was completely misunderstood.
Bernard Williams - That hit too close to home for him when they started blaming him and ACO for violence in the country.
William Friedkin - You have to say Kubrick did not see that coming, but once it did come he recognized it.
John Baxter - Kubrick then quietly without telling anybody withdrew the film.
John Calley - He just felt he didn't want to bear the burden of responsibility for violent crime.
Bernard Williams - That's why Stanley pulled the movie 2 years after it came out and it wasn't shown in England for probably 25 years.
Clip - at the police station Alex says they made him do it.
George Lucas - It's the same thing when you have someone commit a murder and it's shown on the news. There's somebody out there that wants to copy that same crime and they get the idea from movies, TV, the news and from people's actions.
Sydney Pollack - We all have the responsibility that what we do is capable of affecting the way people think. It's propaganda, defining what it is.
George Lucas - We all teach, we all set examples. People who make movies or are in the media have a loudspeaker.
William Friedkin - Some people look at that movie as an essay on violence. Some people, probably even more receptive to moving images and thought viewed it as a blueprint for their own lives.
Clips montage

2007-08 Alex D. Thrawn for www.MalcolmMcDowell.net