Debunking the myths of A Clockwork Orange

MALCOLM MCDOWELL reveals the truth behind the many legends about Stanley Kubrick’s controversial classic

PREMIERING IN THE US the week before Christmas 1971, A Clockwork Orange is the perfect festive film, warm-hearted and fuzzy. Hang on, no: it’s a bleak, dystopian nightmare, just as shocking today, 50 years after its release. Stanley Kubrick’s truly iconic adaptation of Anthony Burgess’ novel, about psychopathic delinquent Alex (Malcolm Mcdowell), became legend a mere year after its UK release when, due to a handful of controversies and accompanying press hysteria, the director withdrew it from British distribution. To this day, many erroneously believe it was banned; over the decades, other myths about the film have grown too. We sat down with the lead droog himself, clamping open his eyes as we ask him if those tales are true or false. Viddy well…

MCDOWELL DIDN’T AUDITION FOR THE FILM TRUE

Legend has it that Mcdowell got the part without even meeting the director. “Yes. Kubrick saw me in If .... ,” confirms the actor of Lindsay Anderson’s 1968 boarding-school satire. “That was my audition. Years after he passed away, [Kubrick’s widow] Christiane told me that he’d heard a lot about If .... and was dying to see it. He had a projectionist at his house. I did my entrance into the movie, he pushed the intercom and had them re-lace [i.e. replay] it five times. At the end of it he turned to Christiane and said, ‘We’ve found our Alex.’”

MCDOWELL CAME UP WITH ALEX’S COSTUME TRUE

You’d think the droogs’ iconic white costumes would have gone through several design iterations — in fact, it is said, Mcdowell just owned one already. Correct, he says. “I said to Stanley, ‘What are we gonna wear?’ And he said, ‘What have you got?’ I said, ‘I’ve got my cricket gear in the car.’ He goes, ‘Get it out.’ Then he said, ‘What’s this?’ I said, ‘That’s a protector.’ He said, ‘Wear it on the outside.’

That’s how the iconic outfit came about! It’s my cricket gear from school.”

MCDOWELL WAS TEMPORARILY BLINDED FALSE

During the infamous Ludovico Technique scene, in which Alex is forced to watch horrific footage with his eyes clamped open, it is well known that Mcdowell’s cornea was scratched. It’s also said that he went blind. “No. Well: the lid-locks kept falling out of my eyes and when they fell, they scraped through the cornea, and if you get a cornea scratch you can’t see out of that eye. Luckily, my doctor lived around the corner, so when I got home he came over, gave me a shot of morphine. The pain of scratched corneas is quite something.”

THE ‘SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN’ SCENE WAS UNPLANNED TRUE

The sequence in which Alex summons the spirit of Gene Kelly while carrying out a brutal

assault was, Mcdowell reflects, completely spontaneous. “Yes. We’d been sitting there for five days, no action at all, no turning of the camera, nothing,” he says. “It’s no good doing just a naturalistic thing where the boys come in, kick the guy, throw bottles through a window. That’s what was in the book. I remember Stanley passing me and saying, ‘Can you dance?’ I was so bored after five days of inactivity, I jumped up and said, ‘Can I dance?!’ And I went straight into ‘Singin’ In The Rain’.”

MCDOWELL NEARLY DROWNED FALSE

At one point, Alex’s head is shoved into a trough of water for a good minute. Supposedly Mcdowell almost drowned. “No. Jesus, I would have knocked. I’m not that much of an idiot,” Mcdowell laughs. In fact, there was some breathing apparatus hidden in the water, which he had to locate with his mouth. “I said to Stanley, ‘You must be joking. How am I supposed to find this thing? You try! Show me.’ I said that to him to piss him off. Most of the time, I couldn’t find it. It took at least 20 takes.”

KUBRICK NEVER TALKED TO MCDOWELL ABOUT ALEX TRUE

Despite the director’s exacting practices, apparently he didn’t once have a discussion with Mcdowell about how to play the character. “Yeah. Pretty much,” says the actor. “Stanley’s style of directing, he hires someone he thinks is gonna do it, and he doesn’t wanna know how they get there. I asked him some questions and he just said, ‘Well, that’s why I cast you.’ And I made a joke, saying, ‘The call sheet says: “Director: S. Kubrick”. How about some direction?’ He laughed. I thought, ‘Jesus, he’s given me a hell of a responsibility, but a gift. The gift is: ‘Show me.’”

MCDOWELL BROKE HIS RIBS FALSE

During the scene in which Alex gets stomped on, Mcdowell supposedly broke a couple of ribs. “They weren’t broken,” he says. “Stanley goes, ‘Well, he’s gonna have to push harder than that.’ I should have then said, ‘Give me a pad.’ Like an idiot, I didn’t. And when [the actor] pushed with his heel, it didn't break the ribs, but I had a blood clot under the rib. It was so fucking painful.”

MCDOWELL BEAT KUBRICK AT CHESS FALSE

Kubrick was almost as good at chess as he was at cinema. But did Mcdowell, as legend has it, once beat him? “No, I never played him, I wasn’t that stupid,” he says. “But I beat him at ping-pong. I loved whupping him at ping-pong. One day he’d come up with some theory that he’d got this Chinese serve. And it would be some pathetic little serve with not much spin on it, and I’d whack it back. I was pretty good at ping-pong. I think it irked him a bit.” Small revenge for that scratched cornea. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE: ULTIMATE COLLECTORÕS EDITION IS OUT NOW ON 4K