No, no, there's not going to be a remake of A Clockwork Orange starring Mick Jagger. At least I don't think so. This is just a fun bit of what-could-have-been. We like to play around with alternate-universe casting here once in a while, and this one's a doozy. Someone found a letter from producer Si Litvinoff to legendary director John Schlesinger, urging him to consider directing an adaptation of Anthony Burgess's novel. And part of the pitch was that Mick Jagger wanted the role of the psychopathic Alex, and that the Beatles "love[d] the project" and wanted to provide the musical score. Fortunately (?) Schlesinger wasn't interested and the project eventually wound up falling to good old Stanley Kubrick.The Clockwork Orange we got was -- like all of Kubrick's work -- too singular a film to even try to imagine how someone else's version would have been different. But I admit I'm amused (and intrigued) by the notion of Jagger taking on the Malcolm McDowell role. Hell, after watching the manic two-hour stage show he put on in Shine a Light at age 63, I'm kind of convinced that he's actually omnipotent. As for the Beatles? That's just creepy. I'll stick with Kubrick's classical selections.
[hat tip: Movie City News]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-07-2008 @ 10:20AM
Camperton said...
Is a question mark after "Fortunately" really a good idea at this point. Not only is this movie almost 40 years old so it is a moot point to begin with, it is considered one of the best films ever made, the lead performance one of the classics of the medium and it's director arguably the best that ever lived. It just looks ridiculous to do that.
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5-07-2008 @ 10:25AM
Camperton said...
Admittedly the notion of a Schlesinger directed Clockwork Orange with Jagger and Beatles music is intriguing, but in the way the alternate version of Fitzcaraldo with Jagger and Robards is intriguing... it's interesting to know it almost happened but thank God we got the Kinski version instead.
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5-07-2008 @ 10:34AM
Eugene Novikov said...
Yeah man. I was half-sarcastic, but who knows what would have happened?
5-07-2008 @ 12:27PM
Midnight13 said...
The Beatles doing the soundtrack to "A Clockwork Orange"? You know if they got to do every unusual idea for a project they probobly wouldn't be the band they are. They would be a band with a lot of "What were they thinking"? head scratchers. Jagger as Alex probobly wouldn't have worked, because his casting would have overshadowed the already controversial material as it is.
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5-07-2008 @ 1:00PM
LiqwidZero said...
This was all in the documentary on my "A Clockwork Orange" HD DVD.
They wanted the Rolling Stones to be the Malcom's droogs and Jagger to be Alex.
I like it with Malcom McDowell and the rest of the cast much better.
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5-07-2008 @ 4:27PM
Jean B said...
I saw the doc "Lord of the Fans" the other day, and they mentioned that The Beatles were also trying to make LOTR. Good think they didn't.
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