THE MAKING OF A LEGEND
Anthony Burgess wrote the first draft of 'A Clockwork Orange' after being diagnosed with a brain tumour and given less than a year to live (!!!). However, he was to bounce back and prove the doctors wrong - the book was published in 1962, and Burgess died in 1993.
Stanley Kubrick read the book in one sitting (having decided upon Malcolm McDowell, whom he'd seen playing a rebellious schoolboy in 'If...', for the role of Alex by chapter 4) and immediately began rereading it. When the time came to make the film, he rejected Burgess's own screenplay and wrote his own. Nice!
Actor Malcolm McDowell claimed he'd had to read the novel three times before he got his head round it. He then pronounced it a modern classic and agreed to play Alex. He may have starred in around a hundred other films besides this, but it remains his most well-known and successful role to date
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The shoot was scheduled to take 10 weeks - it dragged on for a year. The notorious rape scene alone took a week to film. Kubrick asked McDowell to do something to liven up the scene, resulting in the actor's interesting interpretation of Gene Kelly!
Kubrick recieved death threats following the film's British release, and opted to withdraw it, agreeing only for it to be rereleased after his death. The tabloids had reported numerous copycat attacks around the country, including one where an assailant allegedly sang 'Singing in the Rain'... |
