Oranges and Lemons

Some weeks back a high school-aged kid came in looking for A Clockwork Orange. Amazingly, he wasn't looking for the movie, but the original book. Too bad we don't own it. I offered to interlibrary loan it for him, which took some explaining as his expression clearly said "I know not this Enter-Liberry Lone process of which you speak." I guess everyone has to start their knowledge base somewhere, though, so I explained, Well, we don't own the book. This other library does. We're gonna get them to loan it to us and we'll then loan it to you. See?

"Oh, sure."

He was still a bit frustrated that we didn't have anything on hand for him that met the criteria of literature he was searching for, which was, "Books that have crazy dialogue like that and stuff."

Ah, so he HAD seen the movie.

Of course, my brain farted about that time and nothing crazy came to mind, outside of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which was out. I tried to find him a Mark Leyner book, as I'd attempted to read one of those once and found it pretty EFFing' crazy. Unfortunately, we'd weeded the only one we have and it probably vanished in the book sale. Kid eventually left, empty-handed.

A week later, kid popped back in to see if we had his book yet. Oddly, it had just arrived in the mail. He signed for it and immediately slipped off the blue ILL cover wrap, which clearly has "DO NOT REMOVE THIS!" printed on it in bold type. While still standing at the circ-desk, he began a careful study the cover of the book.

"Anthony Burgess?" he said in a borderline disdainful tone. "I thought Stanley Kubrick did Clockwork Orange."

"Stanley Kubrick directed the film of A Clockwork Orange," I said. "Burgess wrote the original book, though."

"Really?"

"Really."

"So, this guy," he said, pointing to Burgess's name, "wrote it up as the movie too?"

"Well, I don't know if Burgess had anything to do with writing the screenplay. He probably just sold the movie rights to a film studio who then hired Kubrick to direct it."

Kid gave me a dubious look. Was I really going to have to explain to him how movies get made too? Come to think of it, though, I was starting to feel a little deficient in my Nerdness. After all, what kind of true film-nerd am I if I don't know every last detail about any given Kubrick film? Was Burgess the screenwriter? I didn't know off hand.

"Are you sure this is the real book?" the kid asked, as though I were playing a trick on him. "There aren't any others?"

"No. That's the only one," I said. Reluctantly, he took it.

Now that I've IMDBed it, I see that Kubrick himself actually wrote the screenplay as well as directed it, but he wasn't attached to it from the start. Seems Mick Jagger originally bought the rights from Burgess, very cheaply, and intended to let the Rolling Stones play the Droogs. Eventually, the rights were repurchased for more money and Kubrick was brought in. Some of the trivia about this movie is indeed fascinating.