Ep. 19: A Clockwork Orange Carries Complexities on Pages Screens and Behind the Scenes
Release Date: 10/08/2025
In this episode of 'Adaptation: The Book to Movie Podcast,' Nate and Chris discuss 'A Clockwork Orange,' originally written by Anthony Burgess, before being adapted for the screen by the one and only Stanley Kubrick, the legendary filmmaker behind 'The Shining,' '2001: A Space Odyssey' and many more.
They discuss how Burgess created his own vernacular for the characters of his fictitious world, what the title actually means and the biggest difference between the movie and its source material.
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00:00:00 - Nate
Welcome to Adaptation, the book-to-movie podcast. I'm Nate, and I'm Chris, and today we are talking about a certified classic. What book and movie are we talking about, Chris?
00:00:25 - Chris
Yeah, this is A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.
00:00:30 - Nate
And the film adaptation written and directed by Stanley Kubrick. But before we dive in, what you been up to? How are you, buddy?
00:00:39 - Chris
Um, good, good. I think maybe a little bit better now that I'm done reading this book. We got another hefty one here for ourselves. Not in the same way as Caught Stealing was, but we'll get into that. Yeah, yeah. Still down. We've got a couple more days here in Florida before we head back up. What have you been up to?
00:01:01 - Nate
I've just been packing. I'm moving this weekend as of recording. So just doing that and getting in a couple car accidents that are not my fault. And that's an important distinction. If you know me, that's important that I add that extra bit there. Very important, yes. But you've been reading lately besides Clockwork Orange?
00:01:25 - Chris
A little bit. I've only finished one. I didn't talk about this last time, right? Tender is the Flesh?
00:01:33 - Nate
Oh, I don't think so. Maybe you did, actually. Why does that sound familiar? Is that a famous one?
00:01:39 - Chris
This is that one that Ariel sent you and I.
00:01:43 - Nate
Okay, no, I didn't read that.
00:01:45 - Chris
This came out in 2017. It is an Argentine author. Yes. Agustina Basterica. It's basically a modest proposal on steroids. It's exactly what the title sounds like. It is a wild ride. It made a Clockwork Orange feel a little bit tame. So if that tells you anything, yeah.
00:02:12 - Nate
Did you tell Ariel? We were supposed to have Ariel on for this episode, but had some scheduling snafus. So we'll get her on a later one. But did you tell her that you read it?
00:02:21 - Chris
I don't think I have yet. I only just finished it a couple days ago, and I've been on such a journey trying to track down our next one, Kiss of the Spider Woman, that I think it kind of slid by unnoticed a bit.
00:02:35 - Nate
Oh, well, I look forward to hearing what her reaction is to your reaction.
00:02:42 - Chris
I mean, she seemed to, well, I can't tell if she seemed to enjoy the book terribly, but she definitely was trying to get us to read it pretty hard.
00:02:49 - Nate
Yeah, I'm just not going to do that.
00:02:52 - Chris
No, I know. I knew. But what have you been watching?
00:02:58 - Nate
I have been busy, like I said, getting ready to move and whatnot. So I haven't been to the theater actually since the last time we spoke. I did catch up finally and watch the new Superman movie last night, maybe the day before. It's okay. It's fine. That's pretty much all I have to say.
00:03:21 - Chris
Makes sense. Again, we've discussed, I've never found you to be a big superhero cat.
00:03:30 - Nate
Yeah, exactly. I'm sort of burnt out on it, and I don't love the writer-director. So I think it was one of those movies that I was not going to love regardless, you know?
00:03:39 - Chris
Yep. Yep. Yep.
00:03:41 - Nate
But that's about it for me.
00:03:44 - Chris
Excellent.
00:03:45 - Nate
Well, let's talk Clockwork Orange. You read the book, and now it's time for you to teach me about it. A few quick notes before we dive in, actually. Both the book and the movie, A Clockwork Orange, contains some pretty graphic sequences, including psychological, torturous procedures, and violence that's both physical and sexual. And Chris and I talk about those in some detail throughout our discussion here. So please do what you need in order to protect your peace while you listen to this podcast. Also, we felt this discussion about A Clockwork Orange in particular wouldn't be very effective if we avoided spoilers to our usual degree, or try to at least. So please be forewarned that this episode will contains spoilers for both the book and the movie. Thank you for listening, and enjoy our discussion.
00:04:32 - Chris
Yes, okay. Well, strap in. As I told you before we started recording, I've tried to pare this down a lot. There is a lot to talk about here. So real high level, I tried to give you the super-fast of the author himself, and then get into the book a little bit. A Clockwork Orange, the novel, was published in 1962 by Anthony Burgess, born in Manchester, UK, born in the UK, which we really keep finding a lot of British authors. Yeah, we do. We should diversify a little bit. Yeah, yeah. Seems to happen a lot. I found a very cool quote from him here to kick off our discussion that I think summarizes a lot of my thoughts trying to talk about him as an individual. Okay. He said, "...I have a feeling that many other people whose trade is in words are not sufficiently concerned with finding out what words are. They are happy to join words together, but not, in my view, interested in analyzing their sounds, forms, and meanings. "And this is from a book that he wrote and published in 1969 called Language Made Plain. He was, near and dear to my heart, a linguist.
00:05:58 - Nate
Yeah, that does sound right up your alley.
00:06:01 - Chris
Yeah, super stoked. We'll get into that as we go here, but I thought that was so cool finding an entire book of his very far away from A Clockwork Orange, and we'll explain why in a second. Again, super fast, highlight reel. The Crazy Life of John Burgess Wilson, born 1917 in Manchester, England. Mom and sister died during influenza epidemic. Believed his father held this against him that they passed and he did not. Was raised by paternal aunt until here married the landlady that owned the shops. They were a relatively affluent middle-class family because pre-war, war years, they ran basically a booze and tobacco shop. Shocker. Pretty recession-proof, yep. He joined the army during World War II, was stationed in Gibraltar. There was a blackout in England while he was stationed there, and his pregnant wife at the time was brutally assaulted and raped by four American soldiers who had deserted the front, causing her to lose the child and inspiring one of the more horrific scenes of the book we're discussing today. You still with me? Yeah. Okay, he was essentially a professional educator and journalist from here on. They said he had this sort of anti-establishment streak, but nonetheless was picked out in the army for his natural gifts, skills in linguistics, so he ended up becoming a sergeant major, I believe, before retiring. Went back to England, then went to Malaya as part of the British Colonial Service, was moved on to Brunei, which is a little bit further east, while in Malaya, learned Malay proficiently. Very difficult Southeast Asian language. Went to Brunei. A lot of controversy around this. Different sources I found. The primary accepted story is that while there in the civil service, he received a medical examination that showed he had a terminal inoperable brain tumor. He claimed, at least at some point, that this was a false medical report because he had been doing some writing that was not appreciated by all parties while there, and this was their way of getting him out of the service. There's a lot going on. Some others at the time who knew him believed he had – I didn't write down the medical term – that he was a habitual liar, and he faked this entire thing in order to get back to England and begin writing full-time. Regardless of where the truth is in there, an equally wild story of what came next was that supposedly, at least from the public view, he did believe he had a terminal inoperable brain tumor and would die in one year, and spat out five novels back-to-back in order to provide fiscally for his wife, who he believed would soon be a widow. Attaboy. Still with me? Yeah. Okay. That includes this novel, which he called – again, I didn't write it down, crazy French literary term – Esprit de Triomphe, something like that. Supposedly, he wrote A Clockwork Orange in exactly three weeks, just a blazing torrent of pages and ideas.
00:10:07 - Nate
That's crazy. That's wild.
00:10:10 - Chris
Yes. I mean, even if that's an exaggeration and the truth is three months as opposed to three weeks, that's crazy. But he does go back and begin writing full-time finally after this very sordid career through many other outlets. He's teaching at universities around England, meets an Italian woman who was familiar with his work. They begin an affair, but he refuses to leave his wife. Again, unconfirmed, but supposedly because he was maybe afraid of this paternal uncle who was a cardinal in the church. His wife is an alcoholic, ends up dying from whatever the psoriasis liver failure, the alcoholic disease. And it was crazy not finding these details, but just looking at his marital details. That first wife died in 68, and he got married that same year. It's because he had already been in a relationship with this woman for four years with whom he already had a son. And he marries her and finally officially recognizes the son of his that he had not officially recognized for the first four years of that poor boy’s life. CBT Oh my god. Imagine being the kid that inherits this legacy. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And it's from a second marriage and an illegitimate relationship. Crazy. Absolutely crazy. If I remember correctly, I believe this son has also passed. Yes. Paolo Andrea passed in 2002.Yeah. A lot going on there. So that's the big picture of him. And just this one novel, he also wrote plays. He also did a lot of journalism, writing articles for The Guardian. He wrote a review that I cut from our discussion for time of The Hobbit for The Guardian in like 74 or something like that. Cool. He wrote over 250 musical compositions. What? Musical compositions? Uh-huh. Orchestral compositions. He wished to be remembered as a composer who also happened to write novels, as opposed to what is clearly the truth, that he is known as a novelist. And I would imagine almost no one knows he was a composer at all. Right? I have to imagine that was news to you. Yeah. I mean, it makes sense given some of the stuff in A Clockwork Orange. But how many did you say? Musical compositions? 250.Some being fairly interesting. Oh, you looked some up? I have been listening to him all week. Wow. As of the time of writing these notes, he had roughly 399 monthly listeners on Spotify. So I believe that made me number 400. His discussion of music, as you just stated, they discuss classical music a lot in Clockwork Orange, and it is fairly interesting and astute. Oh, I actually wrote this down as like a little mini question for you. Do they get into that dialogue and analysis in the film? About classical music?
00:13:33 - Nate
Yes. Not really beyond the fact that the protagonist is a fan of Beethoven.
00:13:41 - Chris
Okay. Okay, that's fair. Yes, Alex throughout the book, yeah, talks a lot about classical music. Okay, that actually seems fair. I really expected it to be along the lines, this will only be interesting for like my buddies, Jay and Tucker and my dad, but that's fine. I thought it would be along the lines of like Arnold Schoenberg or Alban Berg, this weird modern, what the heck is happening? Most of it is fairly interesting. He's been compared to Hindemith. And shoot, there was a second one that I can't remember off the top of my head now. And itis along those lines. He has some weird stuff. He has some guitar quartets and the Bad-Tempered Electronic Keyboard, which is a mildly humorous allusion to Bach's famous, The Well-Tempered Clavier. But okay, yeah, absolutely fascinating. He wished to be known for that. Me and 399 other people have listened to him this month, and that's it. Crazy.
00:14:42 - Nate
Well, a lot more people probably read Clockwork Orange this month.
00:14:46 - Chris
Oh, yeah. And again, we will get to that. So wrote a whole bunch of music, wrote just north of 30 novels besides his nonfiction work, taught himself piano at the age of 14 because he wanted to be a composer and his parents said there's no money in it, so they wouldn't pay for lessons, taught himself Persian, and getting back to what we almost nearly just touched on, ultimately detested unquestionably his most famous work, A Clockwork Orange. Really? He compared it to Rachmaninoff's Requiem and one of Beethoven's pieces that they were both very well known for, but they were pieces written very much in those individuals' youth before they really came into their own, and essentially considered people ignorant consumers. Exact same thing. This was something he wrote literally because he needed the money. He was not very proud of it. It sounded, his description smacked of the lead singer of Flock of Seagulls complaining that everyone wants to hear their one hit and that's it. It's like, hey dude, you did something that people love, what do you expect? So that was pretty fascinating, yes. Not pleased that that is the piece that he became known for at all.
00:16:23 - Nate
That just blows my mind. I would just simply shut my mouth and take all of the money that I would have gotten from this and move on.
00:16:33 - Chris
Well, he very much believed that the book's success was in large part due to the Kubrick film adaptation, and we will get into why that particular motive really rubbed him the wrong way. But I will give my final notes on him as an individual and transition from here into the book description. So Burgess was a polyglot, which means you are proficient in six languages. He spoke over ten. He invented NADSAT, the slang sort of youth language used throughout A Clockwork Orange.
00:17:13 - Nate
Oh, he invented it. Okay.
00:17:17 - Chris
Yes. That was why I went down the rabbit hole of seeing if there was any connection between him and Tolkien, another author that we've obviously already discussed who made up languages for his books.
00:17:28 - Nate
Yeah.
00:17:29 - Chris
Okay.
00:17:30 - Nate
That's interesting, and that will probably come up later.
00:17:34 - Chris
Oh, it fascinated me to find out because the entire time it was really tough initially. I had to go very slow. I did the audio book of this one, which is super cool. One had an incredible, I think it was the 88 version, had an incredible preface by Burgess himself, which is where a lot of my facts here came from. The book itself is read by Tom Hollander, and then the end of the recording that I had from the library, about an hour of it was Burgess himself reading excerpts from the book.
00:18:13 - Nate
Oh, cool.
00:18:15 - Chris
So it was a banger of an audio book edition. Usually I'm not one to recommend a particular printing or reprint of a book, but this was anyone listening interested in the audio book, if you can get your hands on this one in particular, it was incredible.
00:18:30 - Nate
Yeah.
00:18:31 - Chris
This was, first of all, not the first language that he invented for a book. I found at least one other one, and he also deliberately chose to make up his own sort of youth vernacular slang as opposed to just copying whatever would have been current in early 1960s England, because he knew that whatever the slang of the day was would immediately become outdated.
00:18:59 - Nate
Yep. Makes it timeless.
00:19:01 - Chris
Yes.
00:19:02 - Nate
And he's 100% correct.
00:19:04 - Chris
You can't pin this down to one time. You don't read it thinking, oh, this is what people said50 years ago, you know, which I think happens in—I immediately evoked the Beatnik, The Road, some of the books like that, where you absolutely are like, all right, I'm on board with the writing, but this slang is just corny.
00:19:28 - Nate
You know what I mean? Yeah.
00:19:30 - Chris
Yeah. Yep. So I think he obviously made a great call there. He also said of the story more broadly that to show people changing is to create a novel, and when it lacks this, it becomes a fable or an allegory, and that's going to come up in reference to the movie, because he considers Kubrick's rendition and creation exactly that, a fable, where what he set out to make and did make was a novel.
00:20:06 - Nate
Huh. Okay. Okay.
00:20:09 - Chris
I see.
00:20:10 - Nate
I see what he's saying. I'm just deciding if I agree.
00:20:13 - Chris
Keep that—just keep it in mind. Keep it in mind.
00:20:15 - Nate
Okay. I think you're going to come around.
00:20:17 - Chris
Okay. And then the book itself, finally, the book itself, he described it as a cash grab. He needed the money at the time. He had just been diagnosed with the tumor, given a year to live, cranked these books out to raise funds for his soon-to-be widow, right?
00:20:37 - Nate
Right.
00:20:38 - Chris
Yeah. It is the tale of a youth, Alex, who we follow, or I guess, is that his name in the movie?
00:20:43 - Nate
Yes, it is.
00:20:45 - Chris
Okay.
00:20:46 - Nate
Yes.
00:20:47 - Chris
He pursues his daily fancies of committing ultra-violence and general mischief, essentially as far as we can tell, mischief for the sake of mischief, right?
00:20:57 - Nate
Right.
00:20:58 - Chris
One of the early scenes, I'm curious if this is what they start with in the movie, he and his friends, his three buddies, what does he call them, his Droogs, have plenty of money on them, but they go to the bar, buy a bunch of drinks for these old ladies, basically as an excuse to spend all their cash so that they can go rob a convenience store to get more cash.
00:21:22 - Nate
Oh, no, it's not. That scene isn't in the movie, but it would fit in perfectly. Interesting.
00:21:29 - Chris
It seemed like such an appropriate opening. Okay. But yeah, you see what I mean.
00:21:35 - Nate
Crime for the sake of crime, yeah.
00:21:40 - Chris
He was very particular about the symbology of writing the book in 21 chapters. So he deliberately wrote the book in 21 chapters because 21 is the age of majority in the UK at the time where you can go out and make your own decisions. And regardless of how fast this was written, how much he tried to ignore it or disown it later, this is very much a book about free will and you making your own decisions and how that interacts with society, right?
00:22:19 - Nate
Totally.
00:22:21 - Chris
So 21 chapters, deliberately so, because in the 21st chapter, and I think this will be a massive shock for you. So sit back, get stable, Nate.
00:22:33 - Nate
Okay.
00:22:34 - Chris
Four on the floor. He completely renounces his ways, suddenly decides, oh, this is dumb. Why am I committing crime? I want to settle down.
00:22:43 - Nate
I want to have a family. That's how it ends.
00:22:47 - Chris
Yep. And he walks away from the life of crime.
00:22:50 - Nate
Yep.
00:22:51 - Chris
That's crazy. Uh huh. Right. And here's why that is a shocker for you. Having only seen the movie, the American publishers did not want that. The 21st was removed from the American version.
00:23:09 - Nate
That's kind of a bummer to do to his vision.
00:23:13 - Chris
Isn't that crazy?
00:23:14 - Nate
I guess I didn't realize that like, like international, that they could just do that.
00:23:22 - Chris
Yep. Well, they had such a fiscal incentive for him. He was like, I needed the money in 61. And so this was completely changing the story. But I said, okay, because it's what they demanded.
00:23:34 - Nate
Oh, I guess. Okay.
00:23:36 - Chris
I guess that tracks. And then even though I believe he said Kubrick filmed it in the UK, he still based it on the American publication, which is America is the only publication that did that. It's been translated into dozens of languages, obviously was huge in the UK for almost two decades before the film was made. Nope. For one decade before the film was made. And only the American version does this.
00:24:02 - Nate
So why, why did the American publishers not want that?
00:24:07 - Chris
Great question. I'm glad you asked. This was this is another quote from his interview here, his preface to the 88 release, re, reprint. I send letters of intention or mis intention, while Kubrick and my American publisher coolly bask in the rewards of their misdemeanor. The American publishers claimed that Americans as a people are stonier, tougher. And they believed removing that last chapter, which is the only thing that makes Alex a dynamic character, would make it more gritty and real. And they thought, he didn't actually want this to happen to Alex, he just had to soften the ending for the story to be palatable to other audiences.
00:24:54 - Nate
Okay, that's interesting. That'll come up in our movie discussion, too.
00:24:59 - Chris
Okay, I wondered and I hope so. Yeah, that's, that's that big difference that in his opinion, makes his version, a true novel with a dynamic protagonist. And Kubrick's was a fable, no, no change, a guy, he had a fascinating description in his interview, he called, he called his Kennedian, in reference to JFK. In the flow and change, and the Kubrick American version, the Nixonian, bad people do bad things. And that's it, view of the world.
00:25:38 - Nate
Okay.
00:25:39 - Chris
Um, yeah, absolutely wild. That this, this weird chicken and egg situation now develops for us to dissect. He believes the book was one of his weaker works of a frankly massive body of work, never would have been that famous without the movie. But the movie makes such a
massive critical change. I mean, I can't say it's virtually a different story. But that is a huge change.
00:26:10 - Nate
Yeah, that is a big deal.
00:26:14 - Chris
And it is because of that being made, that the book is even known. So it's like, oh, you made this huge change to my story, you know, from their point of view, well, no one would have even heard your story if we hadn't published it.
00:26:26 - Nate
Right?
00:26:27 - Chris
Yeah.
00:26:28 - Nate
Crazy.
00:26:29 - Chris
Interesting. Yeah. So besides that massive, massive shift at the end, criminal, becoming not criminal, we've put the cart before the horse here a little bit. The reason that's such a crazy ending in and of itself is the kind of linchpin of this entire story up to that point is the crazy conditioning and deconditioning, which I have to imagine was absurd to witness in film form.
00:26:59 - Nate
Yeah, totally. 100%.
00:27:01 - Chris
Okay, I'll let I'll let you describe that when we get to it.
00:27:05 - Nate
Okay.
00:27:06 - Chris
But this is a massive state experiment. You see clear allusions to the conservative, at this time, mid 50s to mid 60s, UK, the Macmillan administration and prime ministers under Elizabeth II. The threat of the socialists to the West of this time, you know, this is coming right after McCarthyism and America's big second Red Scare.
00:27:34 - Nate
Right? Yeah.
00:27:36 - Chris
Yeah. So you see this fairly simplistic character built, followed by an insane government intervention where he is conditioned and then deconditioned once they get caught with their hand in the cookie jar. Right?
00:27:50 - Nate
Right. Yeah.
00:27:52 - Chris
And then again, in book form, goes right back to his merry crime committing ways, and then suddenly decides not to and walks away from it. And then that part is removed from the American, but it's just, I can't get over it. It's absolutely wild. My last bit about the book, you have a very curious relationship with the protagonist throughout.
00:28:18 - Nate
Sure. Right.
00:28:20 - Chris
Once again, similar to the last couple we've covered, frankly, an objectively deplorable creature in this violent youth that just loves to beat people up, shred books, a cardinal sin, steal money and commit rape. Like just absurd.
00:28:41 - Nate
Yeah. Right. Yeah.
00:28:44 - Chris
Yeah. But we are also presented with this myriad of ways that he is subsequently mistreated by his family, obviously by the government, by the jailers. And again, in the novel version, eventually, by his own accord, decides to walk away from his previous antics. And so it is tremendously deep and complex and compelling.
00:29:12 - Nate
Yeah, absolutely.
00:29:16 - Chris
So again, I hope I included few enough details to still make this an enticing book. I know there was one big spoiler included in there, but you truly there almost isn't a discussion without that included.
00:29:30 - Nate
Yeah. Oh, yeah. I don't know how you could talk about this without getting into the nitty-gritty a little bit.
00:29:37 - Chris
Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Should we do a little ad break and then get to the movie? I am so curious how they treated this in film.
00:29:46 - Nate
Yeah, absolutely. We will be right back. Welcome back to Adaptation, the book to movie podcast. Today we're talking about Clockwork Orange, written by Anthony Burgess and adapted to film by Stanley Kubrick, and we're about to dive into the film side. Chris gave us a great lowdown of the book. The movie version of this story was released in 1971, like I said, both written and directed by Kubrick, who is and has always been and will always be one of the greatest directors to. ever make movies. And it stars Malcolm McDowell as Alex, the young man that you were describing. This movie, we've talked about this movement off mica little bit and in a pre-recorded episode that nobody has heard yet. It came right in the middle of the new Hollywood movement, or really right at the beginning of the new Hollywood movement, which was a change in the way that American movies were being made. People were a lot more lax about displaying violence and sex and profanity and things like that. And then a lot of the themes of these movies had to do with disaffected people, or people feeling disaffected by their society, government, big brother, sort of thing. So this movie was very much a watershed moment within that movement, because in particular of its depictions of violence and sex, and the fact that they didn't pull a lot of punches, no pun intended, when they were putting these things on screen. Yeah, sorry, Ahad to say it.
00:31:36 - Chris
And this is still considered an American film. I mean, it's a book written by a British author, published in the UK originally, and then filmed in the UK, but it's still an American film?
00:31:49 - Nate
Yes, because it was backed by American companies, American financiers. I also pulled a quote. I thought it's funny that you started with a quote from Burgess, because I was lucky enough to see this movie in theaters this weekend. So I guess I did go see a movie in theaters now that I'm thinking about it. But as I was walking out of the theater, I was like, I just want to know what Kubrick, like how can you put into one sentence what I just saw? And so he described it in the Saturday Review as, quote, a social satire dealing with the question of whether behavioral psychology and psychological conditioning are dangerous new weapons for a totalitarian government to use to impose vast controls on its citizens and turn them into little more than robots. And I thought it was kind of interesting that he gave such a clinical definition of the movie. You know, like, so much of that sentence is about the ideas behind it instead of how he told the story or how the story was told by Burgess. So I just thought it was very interesting, like I said, clinical or sterile of an answer that was.
00:33:04 - Chris
Yes. Sterile is great. I mean, it feels antiseptic. It feels like he lifted that straight out of theDSM-5.
00:33:10 - Nate
Oh, yeah. It feels like a talking point that he and the studios probably rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed and worked out with legal and just very interesting that that's kind of the way they leaned. Like you mentioned, the U.S. edition was adapted, which was missing the final chapter of the novel. I did not look up what was in that final chapter, but obviously you've told me now. But my understanding was that it was quite crucial to Alex’s redemption arc and that the story takes a very redemptive turn in that last chapter. This movie instead ends on a very ominous and uncomfortable note, which I think is very in line with the rest of the movie. You're supposed to feel uncomfortable basically top to bottom.
00:33:59 - Chris
Yes.
00:34:00 - Nate
And that's true in every frame of this movie. And Kubrick has said in interviews that he found the final chapter of that book to be thematically inconsistent with everything else in A Clockwork Orange. So he sort of stands by his decision to not have included it. Interesting .Yeah, because that redemption arc, I mean, having only seen the movie, I can tell you that my feeling is that the fact that he walks away from a life of crime really downplays those themes of like being disaffected and being at the mercy of people that you shouldn't be at the mercy of. So it's just a little bit more in line with the time period and with some of the themes that Kubrick explored in a lot of his filmography. So I can see how the puzzle pieces fell the way that they did.
00:34:59 - Chris
Yeah.
00:35:00 - Nate
Yeah.
00:35:01 - Chris
No, I see what I see. I see what you mean. I mean, it's not like the final chapter lends itself to this redemption arc. Chapter 21 is the entire redemption arc. Full stop.
00:35:15 - Nate
Okay. It's not really an arc so much as a plot point.
00:35:19 - Chris
Yes. Well, and again, the numerology of having 21 chapters was so deliberately important to him. And to both the American publisher and Kubrick's credit, it feels very ham-fisted. It is kind of shoehorned in there at the end.
00:35:38 - Nate
Really?
00:35:39 - Chris
Yeah. I think if I had had not heard the analysis of his intention, I would also have felt… Well, I did. Initially upon reading it, I did find chapter 21 unsatisfying. So I do very much understand their complaint.
00:35:55 - Nate
Yeah. Interesting. What I was not able to figure out or didn't look into, I guess, was whether Kubrick had read the 21st chapter beforehand. If he knew he was adapting the American version, I'm sure at some point that information came across his desk. I do have. But like I said, it's very in line with his filmography to have cut that last chapter to maintain the momentum of the themes, basically.
00:36:24 - Chris
Yep. Yep. Am I misremembered? Is Kubrick the one who did One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?
00:36:31 - Nate
He did not do Cuckoo's Nest. Okay.
00:36:34 - Chris
Oh. Okay. Okay.
00:36:37 - Nate
I don't know why that's… But I'm sure we'll cover it at some point on this pod.
00:36:39 - Chris
I think we'll have to.
00:36:41 - Nate
Yes. Yeah. Clockwork Orange ended up being nominated for four Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Editing. It did not win any of those, but interesting that we'll sort of get back to its reception here in a minute. Okay. Interesting that it ended up with four pretty major awards or nominations. There was a lot of, what's it called when people leave jobs a lot? Like turnover. There was a lot of turnover in the pre-production of this and a lot of sort of big ideas in the lead up to this film being made. Several directors had been attached or interested throughout this process. What I thought was really interesting was that at certain points, both the Rolling Stones and the Beatles were considered to play Alex and his Droogs.
00:37:34 - Chris
Fascinating.
00:37:36 - Nate
I couldn't tell which Beatle was supposed to play Alex. I do know that Mick Jagger was supposed to play Alex, which is kind of interesting because he a little bit looks like Malcolm McDowell. I just am so fascinated by that coincidence. The idea is that these bands would
have also contributed to the soundtrack because music plays such a big part in this story. Huge. Huge. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how I feel about them. I'm pretty much in the minority, but I don't like the movies that the Beatles starred in. I find them to be kind of kitschy and not very good. So I sort of think that they made the right call when all of that fell through and Kubrick eventually ended up with the rights to make this film, but would have been interesting to see nonetheless.
00:38:25 - Chris
It would be very interesting. It would be a completely different piece. Totally.
00:38:32 - Nate
I mean, the statement piece of it all would just be so much bigger, you know, if they had like the world's biggest stars in this movie.
00:38:42 - Chris
It almost feels like that would have made it like just the predecessor to The Wall, you know, the Pink Floyd movie.
00:38:51 - Nate
Yeah. Yeah.
00:38:53 - Chris
Like it would have inherently made it so much about whatever music they attached.
00:38:59 - Nate
Right. Yeah. And I don't totally know if it was going to be like, you know, some of the Beatles movies are like straight up musicals and some of them are just like movies with a Beatles soundtrack. I don't know what the details were on their contributing or, you know, potential to contribute to the soundtrack. But you're right. It would have we'd be looking at it totally differently. Yeah. It just would have been a product of this band rather than this cinematic experience.
00:39:26 - Chris
Boy, that's fascinating. Like my brain is stuck now just picturing them in this setting.
00:39:36 - Nate
Totally. The other thing that I really noticed while I was watching the movie was that was the score because I wanted to mention it to you. It's really unique because there's music playing almost the entire time in the movie, even over dialogue and things like that. I was like, this is it’s just very kind of unusual for it to be so prominent in the movie. It's made up mostly or at least partially, I guess, of famous classical compositions. Not very much Beethoven, the Ninth Symphony. His Ninth Symphony is played several times throughout and, of course, referenced, I don't know, umpteenth times. But for the most part, the already composed music was written by Henry Purcell, Edward Elgar, and Rossini, among a few others for the
score of the movie. So kind of interesting that Kubrick really leaned into that musical side of it as well.
00:40:39 - Chris
Yeah, that is interesting. I mean, it feels more interesting in light of like his blatant disagreement with the author's original intention. Like, oh, so this part you thought was cool and you should be faithful to.
00:40:50 - Nate
Yeah. Yeah. That is interesting. I wish, I guess I wish that he had explored some of the themes of classical music a little bit more because it was very jarring that this character was so into Beethoven. You know, like, that's not at all who you expect to be into classical music. So I would have loved a little bit more depth there, especially because they use it in part to do that. What did you call it? Conditioning?
00:41:17 - Chris
The torture, basically. Yes. Yep. And he's so infuriated by it.
00:41:21 - Nate
Yeah. Yeah. When the movie came out, it was actually met with mixed reviews at the time, which is pretty standard for movies of the new Hollywood movement because they were so jarring. A lot of people maybe could have held personal biases against seeing violence and sex online and online on screen. But a lot of people critiqued it. Like I said, they don't dig into a lot of these ideas deeply like the music. The reference to the title is completely left out of the movie, which we'll talk about later.
00:41:56 - Chris
Or when he says it in the dialogue of the book, they do not include that in the movie?
00:42:00 - Nate
Yeah.
00:42:01 - Chris
No, it's not in the movie.
00:42:02 - Nate
Why? What? Well, I don't know. I had to look up. I didn't, I didn't realize for about two days after watching it that I didn't know what the title meant. I had to look it up. But we'll get more into that later. I did note that popular film critics Roger Ebert and Pauline Kael did not like the movie, which is really odd considering they were big proponents of new Hollywood films. So I included that to just sort of highlight the fact that just everybody was kind of uneasy with this movie. I think partly because it was so severe, but it's obviously been much more embraced since then. One thing notable at the time as well is that Kubrick actually had the movie pulled from British theaters and stopped screening it altogether in England after accusations that it inspired copycat crimes of rape and abuse.
00:43:01 - Chris
My gosh.
00:43:02 - Nate
I know. The movie really leans into sort of younger people versus older people. That's a theme that's pretty heavy in the movie. And that was just being repeated and it would occasionally come up in like court depositions and stuff that people felt inspired by the movie, which is thick and sad and crazy. So he had it pulled and from what I've read, it was very difficult to view it in any capacity in the UK until Kubrick died in 99.
00:43:36 - Chris
Wow. That's crazy.
00:43:38 - Nate
Yeah. It's crazy that it had such a huge cultural effect. Not just the UK either. Lots and lots of countries. I was going to list them all out, but there was just too many to do it and a lot of them have such weird nuances. Several countries have banned this movie outright. Some of them, they've banned it in all settings except academic. Like I said, lots of weird loopholes and nuances. Some of the countries have lifted those restrictions in the years, again, since Kubrick’s death and of course, the release of the movie. Others have not. There are still countries where you can't watch this movie.
00:44:14 - Chris
Really?
00:44:15 - Nate
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like I said, it's really severe. The conditioning scene, oh, that's right. You wanted to know how they depicted it.
00:44:26 - Chris
Yes.
00:44:27 - Nate
It's severely uncomfortable. He's in a, they call it a rehab clinic, but you know, it's not. Basically they drug him and then they take him into a movie screening room where they, my mom is going to hate this part. She's always talked about how much this part of the movie has disturbed her. So you can skip ahead, mom, if you need to. They hold his eyes open with like these metal headpiece and they subject him to watch these videos of violence and sex and general crime and debauchery and hate. A lot of these films include like Nazi symbolism and propaganda and the drugs that they gave him made him really sick. So he starts to physically associate being sick with, you know, these hateful, hurtful crimes. Really disturbing because Malcolm McDowell's performance is really, really strong. And, you know, he's just like absolutely wigging out in these scenes. I wrote in my letterboxd review that this movie is a tough watch if you're a sympathetic puker like I am, because he spends a lot of time kind of retching and gagging throughout the second half of the movie, really. And I also, just as like a fun, that's a fun aside, had, you know, laser eye surgery earlier this year and had, you're awake during it and they pin your eyes open. And so I had to come home and take my rescue anxiety medication because I was a little bit triggered by these crazy scenes.
00:46:02 - Chris
That makes a lot of sense.
00:46:04 - Nate
And fun fact, there's somebody sitting beside Alex during these screenings that's keeping his eyes moist. They're just putting like saline drops or something in his eyes. That was an actual optometrist that was there to keep the actor's eyes moist during the scenes because there’s like two or three scenes of this during the movie that are very long, which means he spent like days with his eyes propped open and they needed to make sure. And I believe he got his cornea scratched at one point and it was a pretty chaotic piece of the film to film. So yeah, that was a real medical professional giving him eye drops. But despite the movie’s severity and some people not being able to, you know, revisit it like my mom, it has become a cult classic and has really been culturally reclaimed and it's now known as truly a great film. And in the year 2020, it was added to the National Film Registry after being deemed culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant, which is the standard for getting into that collection. What a turnaround. Yeah, yeah. So crazy, just kind of a wackadoo story and a wackadoo movie and yeah, just crazy all around. I went into this discussion like so excited we were talking about maybe watching it tonight after we recorded. But I'm really having second thoughts about whether this is a movie I want to see. I think, I mean, I think, yeah, we'll get to it later. But okay, I think it's worth if you've not seen it, I think it's worth a watch. I don't know if it's like family movie night material, but we'll talk about it. It feels like it's like noon alone in the living room with all the lights on and windows open is the only way I could stomach it. That's pretty much, yeah, like I said, I had to come home and take medication because it was too much. And that, you know, I like when a film is affecting like that, but holy shit. Yeah, yep, absolutely. But let's dive into our discussion questions. Why don't you hit me with one? Yes. Okay. Once again, as we've discussed this entire time, a bafflingly violent book. I feel like you've, to a large extent answered this already.
00:48:30 - Chris
But as I was reading, I was immediately ready to ask you how much of this was brought to the screen. As I read, I pictured like a black and white film of some youths wandering the streets of England, committing crimes for an hour and a half. Like that's what I pictured for this film. And I can't imagine that's the full extent of it.
00:48:52 - Nate
No, not quite. It's not black and white. First of all, it's in color.
00:48:58 - Chris
So you can adjust yourself. I don't know why I thought it was in black and white. Yeah.
00:49:01 - Nate
It is very violent. There's really only a couple of scenes. Well, that's not totally true. Well, yes, itis. Wait, let me think about this for a second. There are only a handful of violent scenes, but the scenes are very long. So if I were to tally up the number of horrible acts I saw Alex and his Droogs commit, I could probably count it on one hand. But it made up for a huge portion of this two plus hour movie.
00:49:31 - Chris
Yes. So that's pretty faithful. They really didn't, as you said, pull punches.
00:49:38 - Nate
Yeah. And, you know, like I said, in the 70s, they were showing more of this on camera. So you’re actually seeing the blows land and they like tear women's clothes off. They do sort of cut away right before you see any real sexual violence occur. But there's plenty of nudity in the film in these dangerous and unfortunate circumstances. Yeah. And just beating people up on camera. And it's part of the reason it was so affecting in the 70s is because people hadn’t really seen movies like this very much before. Yeah. So, yeah, there's plenty of screentime of Alex and the Droogs running around, beating people up for basically no reason.
00:50:22 - Chris
Right. Beating each other up for no reason. Yeah, yeah. Each other. Yeah. I mean, percentagewise, it's kind of the majority of the book. It's like violent crime.
00:50:35 - Nate
Yeah, I would say the same with the movie. One of my big issues with it is the pacing kind of once he gets into trouble, which is arguably the important part of the story.
00:50:47 - Chris
Right.
00:50:49 - Nate
Is when it really starts to fly by and I'm like, well, wait, I need a little bit more here. And I could have used less of the beatings and raping’s earlier.
00:50:57 - Chris
Yep. Yep. No, I agree completely. I think that and what we've already kind of gone over about the 21st chapter, those are really the signs to me of, okay, yeah, dude wrote this in three weeks.
00:51:12 - Nate
Yeah.
00:51:14 - Chris
Could have been polished a bit.
00:51:16 - Nate
Finessed. Yeah.
00:51:17 - Chris
Yeah.
00:51:18 - Nate
Interesting. Okay. Well, I wanted to ask you about the title. When I wrote this question down, I had not deliberately looked into it, hoping that the meaning would come to me. And I really wasn't getting anything because clocks and oranges are not referenced in this movie. Like I said, eventually I did look it up and I understand that it's a metaphor for something that appears organic, but is actually mechanical, which makes sense because we had a human that was conditioned against his nature basically, right? By the government. But I was hoping you could give me the context and tell me, like you mentioned, it was in the dialogue. Can you tell me how that happens in the book?
00:52:03 - Chris
Yes. So this was again, a deliberate, and I think for the most part failed attempt on Burgess’s part, because quite frankly, I had the exact same question myself. Um, when does he say it in the book? I do not. I know it's one of those scenes where he's sitting there speaking to sort of an authority figure. I don't recall if it's his probation officer before being arrested or his, his little interview to join the program to do the fast track, whatever, or the, uh, uh, the head from the department of the inferior or interior. Yeah. I don't remember which of them he’s talking to, but he does say it in the book. And I believe if I understood the Burgess interview correctly in that context, he intends it as exactly what you just alluded to. It was like a turn of phrase at the time. Uh, but then later again, mid eighties, he goes on to explain the title is intended to be much more. And so this was Burgess speaking. He said a clockwork orange, uh, if he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a quote unquote clockwork orange, meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with color and juice, but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the devil, or since this is increasingly replacing both the almighty state. Huh. Okay. And so I think, I think he intended to, I don’t know, provide this really insightful reinterpretation of the phrase, but in my mind, everything about his own description there is exactly what you described. It is this creature that has lost its, um, free will more or less. Okay. I mean, it's not a phrase I've ever heard outside of this book. And I'm sure no matter how perhaps common it was in the vernacular, then after the book, and certainly after the movie, there's no way you could continue using it on a regular basis.
00:54:29 - Nate
Yeah. Now it means something else. Yeah.
00:54:32 - Chris
Yep. But yeah, I was glad that you had that question because I had the exact same thought. I was deliberately not looking it up. I wanted to understand it from the context of the text
itself, and I was just getting nothing.
00:54:49 - Nate
Huh. It's so weird. It's just another one that I guess, like you said, I just have never heard the term clockwork orange before. I'd be curious if anybody listening has, but I just, like, again, sort of like the music thing, like thematically that was never really addressed. I'm like, why an orange or a clock? Like when, you know, why not a toy soldier or something like that, that you could compare them to just about an equal measure, right?
00:55:17 - Chris
A much more ready analogy.
00:55:20 - Nate
Yeah. Yeah.
00:55:21 - Chris
And that's what I mean. I think he really thought he was doing something clever and potentially could have, but didn't, you know, didn't give it the time to develop that idea. I think. Because he only had three weeks. Exactly. Exactly. That could be wrong. Maybe he communicated all he wanted to, and it just wasn't that great. I don't know. I don't know.
00:55:44 - Nate
Okay. What else do you got for me?
00:55:45 - Chris
Okay. This, again, really sitting, thinking about the changes, I think more than I usually do. I really rely on, I'm going to learn about the book, and then I can't wait to hear what Nate tells me about the movie. For some reason, this one really kept scratching my brain. Why Kubrick? The book just feels so thoroughly and deliberately British through and through. You know, the whole time I'm reading it, I'm picturing The Wall by Pink Floyd, all of the mechanical children, the sex pistols, this rebellion against the monarchy, right?
00:56:31 - Nate
Yep.
00:56:31 - Chris
I cannot understand why they would choose an American to interpret such a text.
00:56:38 - Nate
Hmm. That's a good question. Well, first of all, like I said, he was not first on the list. They went through a few directors. And I didn't write down who else they considered, but I would be stunned if there was not at least one Brit on that list for that exact reason. But this movie is really in line. I'm sure it was more a matter of Kubrick being really interested.
00:57:00 - Chris
Okay.
00:57:01 - Nate
Because it's very in line thematically with a lot of movies that he's made. Dr. Strangelove, for example, was kind of a black comedy like this that also explored government overreach, I guess, and oppression of people. A lot of his movies have violence in them. You know, he would go on later to direct Full Metal Jacket and The Shining eventually.
00:57:28 - Chris
The Shining is what I was thinking of earlier, not Cuckoo's Nest, The Shining.
00:57:33 - Nate
Yeah, well, then yes, you're correct. Kubrick did do The Shining. Yeah, it's like morality and control is another thing that he really looks into. His final film was about like a sex cult, basically. So, I think it was just probably really interesting to Kubrick more so than the studio seeking him out. But also, like I said, he was known as one of the greats. So, that's like Steven Spielberg wanting to adapt your book. You're like, yes, please. I don't care. Interesting question, though, because to fit into the new Hollywood movement, it could not have been a British film. So, I would be curious to look at like a list of films in that movement and see how many of them are set in Britain. I'm confident that this one would be on that list. Yeah, yeah.
00:58:30 - Chris
It just seems so straight. It feels, I mean, honestly, halfway through this book, I'm like, what the heck were they doing to these kids? It also actually is very reminiscent to me of, this is going to feel like such a non sequitur, but Harry Potter. Really? The aunt and uncle in their brick row houses keep calm and carry on. Dude works at what, like a drill bit factory or something? Oh, yeah, something silly. And I just see, I mean, maybe it's the media and music, certainly, that I consume personally, but just, again, Pink Floyd, Sex Pistols, The Clash. Not that every country and culture doesn't have their form of youth rebellion. But this entire book, I'm thinking, man, Alex, your parents don't seem that bad. And you literally just verbally abuse them and then sit in bed all day till 7pm when you can go commit violent crime. It doesn't add up to me.
00:59:45 - Nate
No, no, it doesn't. Totally doesn't.
00:59:47 - Chris
I mean, that makes sense, though. I see what you mean. If he expressed interest, yeah, what was Burgess going to say? No, you're not the right director for me.
00:59:57 - Nate
Right. Well, and if he was, this movie came out only a decade-Ish after the book, so he still might have been in that mindset of getting money. Yeah, just trying to make money. Yeah, absolutely. All right, well, my last question for you, I feel like you kind of answered it when
you said that Burgess made up the slang. But I noticed a huge shift in dialogue in this movie, which by the way, the movie is narrated throughout by Alex. But it's narrated from the perspective of Alex at the end of the story. So he's undergone all these conditionings and treatments. There's a huge shift in dialogue. from before the conditioning to after. Before he's using all the... It's almost Shakespearean the way that I'm like, whoa, you slowdown. Like I need you to go back and say those things again so that I can really understand what you're saying. And then afterwards, after the treatments, that's kind of ironed out and he, you know, speaks a little more sort of quote unquote normal modern English. And I was just curious if that was something you saw in the book as well, if that slang, I guess, disappears with the treatments.
01:01:15 - Chris
I mean, yeah, yeah, I see. I see exactly exactly what you're asking. Yeah. NADSAT. N-A-D-S-A-T. It's actually a combination of other slangs. Ah, nuts. What did they call it? Like, I think it's the Yorkshire slang where a word would rhyme with something and they would start using that instead. Instead of God, Bog, the Rookers of Bog, instead of the hands of God. He started creating it when he first began relearning Russian, and it's supposedly reminiscent of the youth slang that he experienced there. And then obviously these smatterings of more familiar bits, like for no reason, they would say Noche instead of night. Yeah. Okay. So it's the one Spanish word, you know?
01:02:10 - Nate
Yeah.
01:02:11 - Chris
You can't, you can't put your fist, you filthy Rooker in my gob, you're like, I can see where you’re going. It's kind of, I mean, it's, it's frankly brilliant. And that's, you know, coming from me with a publicly known fetish for linguistics. So maybe only I think that, but it truly is brilliant. There are, that was far too lengthy a description. There are parts throughout the story when he needs to, you know, kind of act straight and he knows that this is not proper English and he kind of shapes it up when he's at court and when he's trying to talk the chaplain into speaking up for him to go do this experimental treatment when he's talking tohis parole officer very early on. Did he do that more after the conditioning? A little, but it was not in the book. It was not presented as, I believe you're suggesting this is like a psychological change.
01:03:10 - Nate
Yeah, basically, yeah.
01:03:13 - Chris
In the book, it's presented more as the context that he is in, um, okay. Trying to go to the library and being beat up by those old men and then Dim and Billy being the cops who take him out of town and beat him. And then he's going to the guy's house who turns out to be the husband of the now he finds out deceased woman that he and his friends assaulted.
Like it's this series of situations where, um, it's in line with how he had already been set up as a character trying to speak more quote unquote straight English.
01:03:49 - Nate
Yeah. Okay.
01:03:51 - Chris
Interesting. That is odd though. I, boy, I really, I think I have to watch the movie. You've really piqued my curiosity.
01:03:58 - Nate
Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think you should.
01:04:02 - Chris
This was almost alarming at the time. I found myself thinking in the vernacular of this NADSAT.
01:04:10 - Nate
Oh no.
01:04:12 - Chris
That's crazy. From working, from working through the book and I'd be walking along and yeah, I would say I would like, you know, stream of consciousness to myself.
01:04:21 - Nate
I would, I would, yeah.
01:04:22 - Chris
Refer to my head as my Gulliver, my hands as my Rookers. And it's like, Oh, this is, this is weird. I mean, just it's, it's the juxtaposition to me of the fact that so many aspects of like the foundational parts of this story seemed so unpolished and yet dude made up an entire youth slang vernacular that is absolutely brilliant and used to magnificent effect.
01:04:53 - Nate
Totally. It's sort of interesting too, because it, it reminded me, you know, I mentioned Shakespeare, but it reminded me of that poem Jabberwocky as well. I forget who wrote it, but it's, I think it's like mostly made up words, but you know exactly what they're saying. And at the same time, it made me think of all this like skibbity six, seven, whatever brain rot that we’re all coping with now that we're like, we don't know what the hell these kids are talking about, you know?
01:05:26 - Chris
Yep.
01:05:27 - Nate
So there's that timeless feature coming in, it spans generations.
01:05:34 - Chris
Jabberwocky was a delightful nonsense poem by Lewis Carroll.
01:05:38 - Nate
Well let's, let's talk ratings a little bit.
01:05:42 - Chris
Yeah.
01:05:43 - Nate
Yes. Tell me about the film. I gave it four stars on Letterboxd. I'm kind of waffling on bringing it down to a three, five, just because I really do think that some of those ideas and thematic pillars, I guess, of the story were not quite as well explored as I would have liked. It's also, I know it sounds silly, but it's a really big deal to me that they didn't address why the film is called that, called A Clockwork Orange. That to me is like so irritating. They could have even given us a subtle nod and they just didn't. And then also one thing that I found unsettling later upon later reflection was that I take some issue with the fact that Alex becomes a sympathetic character throughout, especially at the end, there's this moment where you’re like, oh, is he realizing that he's getting played by the government right now? And maybe it’s just like 2025-itis, but you feel a little bit bad for him in those moments. And considering how awful of a person he is, that makes me feel like the movie is just a little bit confused in its ideology.
01:06:59 - Chris
Yeah. So you find forgiveness and redemption unsettling. Yes, I see.
01:07:06 - Nate
Yeah. If you're evil, you're evil. And that's that. No, I'm just kidding. But I just think that, I mean, he cut out that last chapter of complete redemption. So I don't know that that idea was really there. And the redemption is not genuine, I guess, you know, it's manufactured because he went through this treatment. He didn't really become a better person. He was twisted and tortured into a better person.
01:07:33 - Chris
No, it is unquestionably very confused of itself.
01:07:39 - Nate
Yeah. But I think that's kind of the problem.
01:07:41 - Chris
Especially, as you said, without that last chapter. I think there really is a compelling and deeper point there that he nearly got to. And this was a perfect storm of leaving that chapter out, reinterpreting some of the middle work such that they, instead of pursuing a
somewhat fleshed out idea, they kind of pursued two disparate ones and landed far short of both.
01:08:11 - Nate
Yeah. Yeah.
01:08:13 - Chris
Does that feel appropriate?
01:08:15 - Nate
Yes, totally. I will say, though, I really love that this movie's aesthetic, you know, it's dystopian and it's sort of set in this version of Britain or Earth or whatever that doesn't exist. And it’s very ambiguous. The movie actually, there's a lot of debate about whether it is referencing whether they live in a conservative or liberal environment, and whether the government is conservative or liberal and things like that. I actually really kind of jived with the lack of exposition, which is not something I find myself saying very often. But I thought here it helps keep it timeless, it helps keep the focus on the themes, which like I just finished saying, is something, you know, the movie could use some help with. So I just wanted to shout out that there were some really cool things about it too, despite the things I didn't like.
01:09:09 - Chris
Yeah, no, that's very interesting.
01:09:12 - Nate
I completely agree with you. What did you rate it on Goodreads?
01:09:18 - Chris
This one, and this is a known flaw in my system because it doesn't necessarily denote sheer quality, but this is right up there with our recent discussions, Orient Express and Remains of the Day. This is a five out of five Goodreads stars for me.
01:09:34 - Nate
Whoa, five out of five.
01:09:38 - Chris
But again, that is due to my own self-imposed, defined rules. There's so much going on here, these jerking twists. I think the text simply demands more than one sitting to fully digest. And I think it is worthy of that demand. I think it deserves it. And I think I will almost certainly make my way back to this. Maybe not imminently, but I will be making my wayback eventually.
01:10:07 - Nate
This was your first read, correct?
01:10:09 - Chris
Correct. Yes, I've intended to for a long time. And I finally did. I had no idea what it was about, have never seen the movie, and it was just terribly compelling. Again, I think Publisher’s Credits, the reprint, the 88, 84, whatever reprint that I got my hands on, did some heavy lifting. I think without Burgess's explanation of a number of contentious sticking points, this would have been a very different read for me.
01:10:47 - Nate
Yeah, interesting.
01:10:48 - Chris
And so I can see where people may not feel the same. I guess I didn't even check. I don’t know what its average rating is. Average of four stars with three quarters of a million ratings. That is a high number of ratings and a high average for that number of ratings for this particular app. So actually, it looks like a lot of people agree with me. I mean, there's just something there along the lines of our very recent anti-hero discussion. Yeah, he in this brilliantly cutting and concise way presents a bad dude that you do not like. And by the end, you’re absolutely thinking, yeah, but look how they treated him. How did he feel at the end? It really makes you do some thinking.
01:11:45 - Nate
Yeah, it does. Based on that thinking, who do you recommend this movie to? Or I'm sorry, book. Who do you recommend this book to? Yes.
01:11:56 - Chris
So that was a little more difficult. Absolutely not everybody. You know, I'm not sending a copy to my nephew for Christmas. I did come up with, in my mind, a somewhat whimsical list, but it is sincere. I think your average police or crime novel fan, dark coming of age fan, lover of punk music, classical music, or Pink Floyd, and those who see the wrongdoing all around them and hope for better, will enjoy this text.
01:12:28 - Nate
Wow, cool. That's an optimistic list, I feel like.
01:12:34 - Chris
Well, he really does kind of key in on some redeeming qualities, some unexpected turns. It makes you think. It makes you think, and not in bad ways.
01:12:48 - Nate
Yeah, that's a lot of this stuff, right?
01:12:52 - Chris
Exactly. Exactly. Yes. What about the movie? I know we don't do this anymore, but would you recommend it for me?
01:13:00 - Nate
For you? I mean, I have a hard time saying no, because I want to know your take on both sides of the coin here. I think that you're going to find it incredibly uncomfortable, which is sort of my blanket statement for recommendations in general, is that most of the people that I would recommend it to are people that are interested in seeing these sort of history-making movies, people like cinephiles, or fans of Stanley Kubrick that are just trying to run the gamut of Kubrick movies. It's so uncomfortable to get through. It's really tough to tell anybody to sit down for almost two and a half hours and take this thing in.
01:13:39 - Chris
Two and a half hour runtime?
01:13:42 - Nate
I believe it's just shy of two and a half hours. It could have been that I saw some extended cut or something, because again, I saw it in theaters. It's possible that I saw a longer cut than what’s available out there, but I mean, it's tough to sit there.
01:14:02 - Chris
And I think Burgess would take that as such a compliment.
01:14:05 - Nate
Yeah, I think so. This is supposed to be a story that really ruffles your feathers, chills your bones. But I did mention that fans of Tarantino or movies like American Psycho or Fight Club might find it enjoyable just because you've really got to have that sort of extra thick skin to get through the crazy parts of this movie.
01:14:28 - Chris
Yep. That makes sense.
01:14:30 - Nate
That makes a lot of sense. I do think you should watch it, though. I would be so interested to know, especially given our discussion about, we don't mean to pit Burgess and Kubrick against one another, but I do think that there's something to be said for two sort of huge artists both putting their spin on this story.
01:14:52 - Chris
Yes. Yes. Sparks, undoubtedly. Yeah.
01:14:56 - Nate
Yeah. Well, that was a great conversation. And I think I need my anxiety medications all over again.
01:15:01 - Chris
Agreed.
01:15:02 - Nate
I 100% agree.
01:15:03 - Chris
Yep. Thank you all for joining us for this conversation.
01:15:05 - Nate
And we look forward to a couple weeks from now when we will be covering, like Chris said earlier, Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig. And it's two film adaptations, it'll have two by the time we're recording.
01:15:24 - Chris
So thank you for that.
01:15:25 - Nate
Oh, fantastic. And thank you very much.
01:15:27 - Chris
That's the show for today.
01:15:30 - Nate
Thanks for tuning in. Let us know in the comments what you're reading, what you’re watching, and what adaptations you'd like us to cover. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at adaptation underscore pod and on Twitter at adapt pod. See you next time.
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UP NEXT: 'Kiss of the Spider Woman' by Manuel Puig, with film adaptations directed by Hector Babenco and Bill Condon.
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