Ultraviolence in the $2 Bin: Lou Waxman on A Clockwork Orange Soundtrack

Despite what Pauline Kael might say, Stanley Kubrick is a flat-out genius. He is up there in the Pantheon with Picasso in art and Miles Davis in music.  A master who constantly evolved and challenged himself.  His Wikipedia has 372 footnotes.  So, you know for a fact that he is important.  He made arguably the greatest science fiction film ever (2001 A Space Odyssey) and the greatest horror film (The Shining).  Dr. Strangelove is one of the great comedies of all time.  A Clockwork Orange is one of the great mindfucks.  In Lou’s mind that is a genre.  Of course, his finest achievement was the Apollo 11 Moon Landing, but he also mastered the war film and film noir.  He did costume drama.  Any genre he touched, he elevated it.  Each film is different and often a unique take on a worn-out idea or concept.  He was an expert technician as well whose films forced the industry to develop and innovate in technology and techniques.  In addition, he has been the subject of some incredible documentaries.  He excelled at every facet of film.

There are two genres that Lou wished Kubrick would have tackled.  The first is the Western.  Given all the genres that Kubrick worked with, it is weird that he never did one.  For Lou, The Wild Bunch is the king of the hill.  Surely, Kubrick could have topped Bloody Sam.  The Western was on Kubrick’s radar.  He was signed up to direct One-Eyed Jack’s starring Marlon Brando but was fired because Brando considered him too difficult to work with.  Wow!!  All for the best.  What Lou really wanted to see was Kubrick do a film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridan.  Blood Meridan is on the short list of Great American Novels, and the book seems tailor made for Kubrick.  Given what he did with a much lesser book like The Shining, it is fascinating to consider Kubrick confronting a work that is on his level.  Lou wonders if he would struggle with the challenging content like he did with Nabokov’s Lolita.  What-ifs are what drinking at the bar all alone with just a bartender well versed in popular culture is all about.

Fuck sports, politics, or religion.  Lou wants to shoot the shit about the eternal questions.  Like what if Stanley Kubrick made a porn film?  The bartender might say, “Well, Lou what about Eyes Wide Shut?”  None of that Skinamax After Dark bullshit, man.  None of that Caligula crap.  What if Kubrick directed Deep Throat?  As censorship eased in the late 1960s and movies got much more explicit in images, language, and content, the fantasy of a porn film with major studio backing and A-list stars took hold.  Terry Southern wrote a novel about it, the underrated Blue Movie.  Kubrick’s name was always thrown around as the guy to do it.  In fact, Kubrick and Southern toyed with the idea.  In part, Southern’s book is a fictional account of it.  Eyes Wide Shut clearly shows that Kubrick was intrigued by the possibilities of pornography.  There is only one porn movie that Kubrick should have done, which would be on the level of him doing Blood Meridan.  Lou must keep his eyes and mouth shut about it, but if you catch Lou at The Black Moon Public House enjoying the can that made the man, he will take you outside and whisper a pitch into your ear.  

Given the success of movies like Midnight Cowboy, the only X-rated film to win an Oscar, Kubrick touches on the obscene and transgressive in A Clockwork Orange, the adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s only readable novel.  Burgess like Harper Lee or Ralph Ellison is a one-hit wonder.  Unfortunately, unlike Lee and Ellison, Burgess kept publishing shit for decades.  If he would have written only A Clockwork Orange and mysteriously disappeared, only surfacing with enigmatic letters to the editor of various newspaper book review pages, Lou would be fascinated.

As it stands, Lou has not read or watched A Clockwork Orangesince college, when he would sit in the AV Center watching movies or reading books off the syllabus in late night study in order to get a break from the pressures of the grind.  Lou suspects that Kubrick’s Clockwork deserves a rewatch.  A copy of the film’s soundtrack was sitting in the two-dollar bin at The Vogue and, boy, did it look like it had been through a bit of the old ultraviolence.  Lou was worried that it would not play.  He did some minor cosmetics on the vinyl and hoped for the best.  One skip at the beginning of side two.  Sad.

Like the book and film, the soundtrack is famous.  Composed by Walter Carlos, who burst on the scene with Switched on Back in 1968, the Moog Synthesizer is the star.  Carlos transitioned to Wendy, but for years Lou thought Walter Carlos was the drummer for Cheap Trick.  But that would be Bun E. Carlos.  A totally different guy.  Or girl.  Or whatever.  Very confusing for a simple old soul like Lou.  Listening to the soundtrack, got Lou interested in the movie all over again and he watched a few clips on YouTube.  The movie looks and sounds amazing.  If Lou had the attention span to sit through an entire movie, he would definitely give Clockwork another go, but watching a movie is for Lou like a scene out of Clockwork.  It is pure torture.  So, the soundtrack and movie clips are it.  As for Burgess’s book.  Once was enough.  A Clockwork Orange is an example of a classic book and a classic film where the film was better.  Catch Lou at the Black Moon after a couple few and he might tell you the same holds true for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.  Maybe more than a couple few.  

Suggested Sites and Sounds:

Kubrick and One Eyed Jacks:  Marlon Brando gets rid of Stanley Kubrick

Southern and Blue Movie:  Terry Southern - Blue Movie ("The Casbah Sequence")

Bun E. Carlos:  almost 8 minutes of Bun E. Carlos

Alex at The Vogue:  A Clockwork Orange (1971) - Alex Visits the Record Shop

— Lou Waxman