Alex in the Chelsea Drug Store
“I went down to the Chelsea Drug Store,”
“To get your prescription filled…”
The Rolling Stones, You Can’t always Get What You Want, 1969
How much Stanley Kubrick trivia can you stand? One of the delights of DVD over VHS tape is the ability to step frame by perfect frame through any given film sequence without the picture being disturbed by noise. This reveals a lot more detail should you wish to scrutinise a favourite scene like the single dolly shot in A Clockwork Orange where Malcolm McDowell makes a circuit of the “disc-bootick” before chatting up a couple of devotchkas.
The location as it is today, rendered safe and banal courtesy of McDonald’s.
The scene was filmed in the then very trendy Chelsea Drug Store on the corner of Royal Avenue and the King’s Road, London SW3. Since the whole film was shot using the same approach as Jean-Luc Godard in Alphaville, with selective views of the contemporary world standing for a fictional future, there’s no attempt made in this scene to disguise any of the cultural products of 1971.
Throughout the Eighties and Nineties A Clockwork Orange was unavailable on video or TV in Britain due to a bizarre embargo by the director. This means that Kubrick fans like myself who were too young to have seen the film in the cinema had to rely on bootleg videos of depressingly variable quality that did no justice to John Alcott’s superb photography or to the great soundtrack. Especially frustrating was spotting Tim Buckley’s Lorca album on one of the shelves in the record shop scene but not being able to make out what else might be there. This might seem like a rather fatuous complaint but there aren’t many places you get such a pristine snapshot of a British record emporium in the early Seventies. More to the point, you have a chance here to enjoy some sly Kubrick humour. So what does the DVD reveal?
Before Alex appears we can see two albums in the racks, Livin’ the Blues by Canned Heat and The Time is Near… by the Keef Hartley Band.
When Alex wanders in he passes a large rack of albums, some of which elude my occasionally sketchy knowledge of Seventies’ rock. I can recognise these: 1) U by The Incredible String Band, 2) Atom Heart Mother by Pink Floyd, 3) As Your Mind Flies By by Rare Bird, 4) Get Ready by Rare Earth and 5), the one that started it all, Lorca by Tim Buckley.
Alex passes a booth stacked with magazines and newspapers. The one at the lower right is a popular film magazine of the time, Films and Filming.
As he passes the other side of the magazine booth he picks up a magazine and leafs through it as he walks. I’d never paid much attention to this before until I was stepping through the scene again and recognised the cover as a copy of Cinema X (The International Guide for Adult Audiences), a rather scurrilous title that existed solely to show people stills of nude scenes in any films currently doing the rounds. This is Kubrick’s first joke since Cinema X is exactly the kind of magazine that would attract Alex’s attention (even though he discards it a few moments later). The only reason I recognise the magazine logo is because I have a single copy, volume 4, no. 6, which has as its main feature……. A Clockwork Orange.
Alex leafs through the mag and passes a poster for Ned Kelly, a film starring Mick Jagger who’d sung about the Chelsea Drug Store only a couple of years before. No idea how I recognised this, it was a lucky guess.
Two more Kubrick jokes and a possible appearance from the man himself. On the left there’s a copy of the soundtrack to SK’s earlier film 2001: A Space Odyssey at the front of the album racks. On the right there’s a gentleman who looks remarkably like the director did at the time, browsing what appear to be classical records since there’s a Deutsche Grammophon cover visible lower down on the rack. I’ve not read a refutation anywhere that this isn’t the director so I’ll continue to consider it so, not least because right by his face there’s another joke, the sleeve of the Missa Luba album by Les Troubadours du Roi Baudouin. This is an album of gospel songs sung by an African school choir that was released in 1959. The reason it’s there? The ‘Sanctus’ song from side two was played throughout Lindsay Anderson’s brilliant film If… which featured Malcolm McDowell in his first major role playing another figure of rebellion. It was that role that landed him the lead in A Clockwork Orange so we can see Kubrick giving a nod to the earlier film here.
Alex ditches his Cinema X and passes a copy of the first album by Stray.
Arriving at the record booth we can see a number of albums on display. On the upper shelves there are copies of Magical Mystery Tour by The Beatles and another copy of Pink Floyd’s Atom Heart Mother. In the racks at the front there’s a more prominently displayed copy of the 2001 soundtrack (in a different sleeve) next to John Fahey’s “fake” blues album, The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death.
Lastly, that big graphic swirl above the booth is the label from Vertigo records.
Places like the Chelsea Drug Store were the magical homes of music before the corporations moved in and turned high street stores into warehouses flogging albums in bulk. In some ways A Clockwork Orange serves less now as a warning of the future and more as a window on a world that’s disappeared.
8 Comments, Comment or Ping
#1 posted by Eroom Nala
Stan the Man
When I bought the LP of A Clockwork Orange in Sydney, Australia I can’t remember how many years ago now the guy I bought it from told me “I was working in the record store when they made the film”. He didn’t actually tell me the name of the store and I’d always thought the Chelsea drug store was a chemists.
Terry Gilliam has a large poster of Brazil in the video store in The Fisher King. How many other directors made self references to their previous cinematic outputs in later films?
Kubrick Expert Trivia Quiz:
http://pages.prodigy.com/kubrick/kubquiz.htm
Ths Shining Trivia:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081505/trivia
During the making of the movie, Kubrick would call King at 3am and ask him questions like “Do you believe in God?”
2001 trivia:
http://www.moviemistakes.com/film8/trivia
various films trivia & mistakes:
http://www.moviemistakes.com/name3422
ACO Trivia:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066921/trivia
Anthony Burgess originally sold the movie to Mick Jagger for $500 when he needed quick cash. Jagger intended to make it with The Rolling Stones as the droogs.
Director Cameo: [Stanley Kubrick] examining magazines with his back to the camera on the right of the screen as Alex walks through the record shop.
He should have put an LP of Singin’ in the Rain in the store too
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045152/soundtrack
:-)
Apr 13th, 2006
#2 posted by John
Oh yeah, good point about Jagger and ACO, I should have remembered that. Can’t imagine him playing Alex somehow, he’s a pretty terrible actor. Performance was okay because he’s playing a version of himself but Ned Kelly is pretty ropey even though it’s a very well-made movie in other respects. Oddly enough, it was the Stones version of ACO that led to Performance, if I remember correctly. Sandy Lieberson was going to produce ACO but they decided they couldn’t do it so Performance started being planned instead with SL producing. A curious web of connections.
Apr 13th, 2006
#3 posted by Eroom Nala
PS:
The shot of the bride falling through the gallows trapdoor (during Alex’s fantasy) is footage from Cat Ballou (1965).
I never would have guessed that.
Stanley Kubrick asked Pink Floyd if he could use their “Atom Heart Mother Suite” in the soundtrack. However, because Kubrick wanted unlimited license to determine what portions or edits of the song he used, the band turned him down.
One of the reasons why Stanley Kubrick withdrew the movie from distribution in the U.K. were, according to his wife Christiane Kubrick, several death threats that his family received because of the film.
This film was shot almost entirely on real locations as opposed to sets and was lit almost entirely with a Lowell Kit, a staple for film students, perhaps as a reaction against the huge apparatus needed for Stanley Kubrick’s previous film, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
Wendy Carlos’s synthesized score features the first ever use of a vocoder.
After filming the famed brainwashing scene, Malcolm McDowell has since had an overwhelming fear of eyedrops.
Contrary to popular claims, this film was never banned in the UK. It originally received an “X” rating in 1971 and was withdrawn from distribution in 1973 by the film’s director. In 1999 (the year of Stanley Kubrick’s death), the film was released again and received an “18″ rating.
You could have a whole trivia night based on ACO and some other Kubrick films.
Apr 13th, 2006
#4 posted by John
Yeah, I knew all this apart from the Atom Heart Mother thing. Strictly speaking, the score doesn’t use what later became known as a vocoder, rather it’s a similar form of vocal synthesis that Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind developed themselves. The Wendy Carlos soundtrack album is one of my favourite records of electronic music.
Apr 14th, 2006
#5 posted by jon
i have 2 copies cinema x clockwork orange editions 4 sale.Delectus books state extremely rare & r asking 200 quid.having a laugh. offer up 4 75 each including secure packaging 1st class insured & address 4 signature.quality. my computer is going up the shoot as high def virus/worm[incl. on 2 motherboard & running rings around norton,spysweeper & bt anti-spy - these boys r gonna take over the world]insides being replaced any day next week =seeking ip range change= bt dont even know what that fucking means so have 2 resolve. so best contact me; jonpink@3mail.com 2 get pics but would prefer phone call 07742328941. dont block yr number so can call straight back or send text.pen &paper,done & dusted.
Apr 29th, 2006
#6 posted by Alison
No censorship problems that I am aware of in Australia - saw it when young & also quite recently & am still fascinated that my total sympathies are with Alex. Especially when his former droogs push him underwater in the horse trough. McDowell nearly died during the scene, as he was meant to bite on to a scuba type mouthpiece supplying oxygen, but missed it, so his struggles for survival were only too real but no-one realized it. Just thought what a great performance he was giving.
Dunno why Kubrick was so paranoid about a film that ia one of the greatest ever made. Perhaps he believed Burgess’ blarney about the book being based on the rape & savage assault of Burgesses wife - an event that took part purely the author’s imagination.
“Ned Kelly” was a dud but that was Tony Richardson’s fault, not Jaggers. Richardson knew nothing at all about us or the iconic status of Kelly. Overseas actors just learn the lines & take direction. Richardson gave Kelly an Irish accent, but he was Aussie born & “currency lads & lasses” i.e. native born, spoke with our distinctive accent as do the children of new migrants. Can’t have been easy for him either with Marianne hovering between life & death in St Vincent’s ICU, & an new instant Kate Kelly having to be conjured up.
Hate to say it but “Performance” is also on my list of top greatest films. Mick Jagger displayed amazing versatility as he moved between the two main opposing personas with consummate skill & ease. “Memo from Turner” is still a classic Stones track (& video clip). On matters musical, Missa Luba is used to great effect in “Lost & Delirious” as is “Add it Up”
Thinking musically
Oct 7th, 2006
#7 posted by John
I forget the details but I believe the UK ban on ACO came after the family Kubrick received anonymous threats. No doubt one of the main Kubrick sites has the full story.
Performance is also on my list of favourite films, as this earlier post shows.
Oct 11th, 2006
#8 posted by Ray Abbots
Interesting read about the film and the Drug Store, I worked in the Drugstore in the 70,s, it had lost its grandure by then but was still one hell of a place to be in. If anyone remembers me (Ray) get in touch through this webb site.
Feb 21st, 2008
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