Andy Warhol's A Clockwork Orange

Cast

Character	Actor
Victor	Gerard Malanga
Scum Baby	Ondine
Cop	J.D. McDermott
The Doctor	Tosh Carillo
Girl	Edie Sedgwick
Extra	Jacques Potin
Pug	Larry Lettreille

Directed by Andy Warhol
Written by Ronald Tavel based on ACO by Anthony Burgess
Sound & Assistant Camera - Bud Wirtschafter
Also - George Hampshire, Gilbert Tedeschi, Jennifer Burns, Roger Trudeau
Lighting - Billy Linich

News

12/07

Andy Warhol's Vinyl will be reborn at the Northwest Film Forum complete with "super hot" models-cum-actors. The pop-art painter had an affection for avant-garde film (his own and others'), and this weekend the Seattle School and local filmmakers will compete and collaborate in A Clockwork Reduction: a restaging of Vinyl with simultaneous acting, directing, filming, improvised musical scoring, remixing, and screening in two cinemas. Audience members who like to do more than watch are invited to add to the creative mish-mosh, and return on Sunday to view the final masterpieces created Friday and Saturday. Need more enticement? Did we mention the fresh waffles and Cool Whip? $12-$15 Daily from Fri., December 14 until Sun., December 16, 8:00pm

Cinematheque Ontario's new season features an appearance by Gerard Malanga who will be on hand Oct. 7, 2006 to introduce Vinyl.

At the Chicago Cultural Center, 77 E Randolph, (312) 744-6630: The Factory Films: Warhol and Morrissey w/introductions by Steven Watson, author of Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties – Vinyl – “the Factory version of A Clockwork Orange” w/Gerard Malanga, Edie Sedgwick and others – Nov. 14, 2003.

Notes

Warhol made his own unofficial bizarre (of course) "interpretation" of ACO because he couldn't get the official rights to make it. It was extremely low budget and only bares a passing resemblance to the book.
The only thing that remains is some of the violence toward a man carrying books and the brain washing cure.
The name "Vinyl" was about fakeness, as in fake leather because the torture was so fake.
Warhol made sure Malanga partied quite heavily the night before the shoot so he would be too tired to rehearse.
Filmed in 16mm B/W, during a day in March 1965 and runs 66 minutes. The film has never been commercially released on any format because of legal reasons.
First screened on June 4, 1965 at Jonas Mekas' Cinematheque.

Pictures

Opening shot of Victor
Victor lifting weights
Victor, cop and girl
Victor and friends dancing
Victor being prepared for therapy

Quotes

"I respected what Andy was doing, I was working on it, but he wasn't my favorite then and he is not now." Gerard Malanga 4/06

My Summary

    Victor is in a room working out with weights. Sitting on his right is a man in a suit and on his left is a woman who drinks and eats, but says nothing. Victor is a young, white blond haired JD (juvenile delinquent). Nothing much happens until a man comes by carrying a bunch of magazines. Victor and his buddy Scum Baby stop him and Victor tells him how good it is to see people who read. He then takes some of the magazines and rips them up. The two then proceed to take him in the back and torture him. Afterwards he announces he is bad and gets off on it and that if he gets caught it doesn't matter. There are other people in the back of the room and one of them puts on the record "Nowhere to Hide" by Martha and the Vandellas. He and the woman dance around until the record ends. As soon as it ends, it starts up and plays again. The dancing continues and the man laughs at him a few times.
    After it ends the second time Victor comments to his friend Scum Baby, who has now joined him, that it was beautiful. Scum Baby agrees, but apparently not enough for Victor's tastes. Victor jumps him and they begin to fight. Scum gets the best of him and throws him down and calls the police. It turns out the man who has been sitting there the whole time is a cop. He arrests Victor and ties him to the chair he just vacated. The cop asks him if he wants to spend the rest of his life in jail. He does not. He informs Victor that there is a chance he can be good again instead of being bad, but he hasn't come up with the plan and doesn't really approve of it. Victor agrees to it and the cop has him sign some papers. A man in white is behind him slapping someone. He is revealed as the Doctor and is brought forth. The Doctor rips Victor's shirt off and uses electrical tape to tie Victor up and puts a bondage mask over his head and has him watch films of violence. We can't see them, so the Doctor makes Victor describe what he sees. He talks of JDs causing violence to old men and giving chicks the old "up yours". After some time he starts to confess he doesn't like what he sees. The Doctor tortures him by dripping candle wax on him and telling him he shouldn't like it.
    He removes the mask and allows him up. The Doctor offers him a chance to hit him and to take drugs, both of which he refuses. More music is played and the group begins to dance again to The Kinks "Tired of Waiting for You" and hint at some kind of homosexual sex.

My Review

    While I applaud Andy for being an ACO fan I've never liked anything about his "art" and this film solidifies my beliefs. After hearing about this "original version of ACO" for over a decade I had to watch it - even though I dreaded doing so. I knew it would be bad, but it went far beyond my worst expectations. It is worse than you could possible imagine. This is THE worst "film of all time. To call it a film is really an insult to real films and filmmakers. The whole film takes place in one dark room, in the same spot, with a camera on a tripod that doesn't really move for an hour. It gives new meaning to the term boring. It is awful beyond words. Please don't watch it - there is no reason to. I have never seen a "professional" film so poorly done, it is more like the worst student film ever made. The lack of polish makes The Blair Witch Project look like it was filmed with a $200 million dollar budget. I am flabbergasted when Warhol fans describe this as the closet to a real movie he ever made in his early films. That means everything else he did was even worse than this!? The only thing worse would've been a close up of his buttcrack for 2 hrs.
    I remember reading one person who said that Kubrick ripped off the intro of his film from this one. Whomever wrote that must've been stoned out of their mind. The film starts with a close up of Victor, that's true, but there is no steady pullback. In fact Victor's face disappears leaving you to believe something happened to the film. Only after a while do we learn he is going up and down because he is lifting weights, even though it is a few minutes before we can actually discern this. I also read someone who said how perfect the acting was that and the second you saw Edie you knew she was a star. Whomever would say that is either criminally insane or a pathological liar. Shadow puppets have more depth. Her acting had all the excitement of a drunk passed out in the gutter as garbage floats by. Maybe the biggest joke of all was that someone took a writing credit on this film!? If writing cue cards counts a screenwriting credit then nothing makes sense.
   There is barely one scene out of the novel. It is when they harass a man with books. Since they are inside and and you can't really see anything it doesn't add up to much. The dialog is trite and stilted - you can tell they are making it up or reading from cards off camera. There aren't even any cuts at all in the film! It is just one long take until the film reel ends. The film then stops and starts again. It was so disappointing because I thought it was over! One time you could tell the Cop was desperately trying to think of lines to say and the girl hands him a magazine to help him out. Suffice to say the acting is so awful, one can't even call it acting - more like sleepwalking. The only laugh I got was with the pathetic attempt at nadsat when Victor talks about giving a little of the old "up yours" instead of in-out, in-out. Asinine!
    The "Ludovico" technique is unbearable. It takes place in the same spot as everything else. There is no movie screen, film clips or anything. Instead the Doctor just keeps saying to Victor, "Tell me what you see." He gives these god awful descriptions like, "I see some JDs and they are bothering a man." If this isn't horrible enough, most of the action takes place somewhat off screen. You can't really see Victor's head and what they are doing to him. They didn't have the camera lined up for it and didn't bother to check until it was almost over.
    The most bizarre thing is there are no title cards or credits. Instead after five minutes Victor just says, "Andy Warhol's Vinyl" and three quarters of the way through the film the Cop announces the actors and their roles and near the end announces the crew names!? The ultimate in plot destruction! Way to tear down the walls between the audience. The only thing you could possibly do with this film is to stay up really late and have a contest with a friend by putting the film on and play for money on who can stay awake the longest. It would still be torture and you might prefer to lose the money instead of being forced to sit through it. I wish I could give this a lower rating that a zero.

Rating 0/10

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