(ACO) Anthony Burgess acceptance speech for the New York Film Critics Awards 1972

Anthony Burgess acceptance speech for the New York Film Critics Awards 1972
       

Anthony Burgess's acceptance speech for Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange for
the New York Film Critics Best Picture Award at Sardi's in 1972.
The speech was 9 minutes and an audio recording does exist, which I transcribed
this from. It was a big hit and received much laughter and applause throughout.
    Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know whether you are entitled to call me a
colleague. I was a film critic many years ago. Indeed, I was a film critic on
the oldest European newspaper The Gibraltar Chronicle, which in 1943-44, when I
worked for it, was the only non-fascist newspaper in continental Europe, even
though it was run by the British army. We soldiers in this fortress had been
informed, through Washington, by your great, dead president, President
Roosevelt, that we had a duty to perform, and that was to protect the Rock. On
behalf of a very large American insurance company... we were told that if we let
this rock fall into fascist hands, the future of the American civilization would
be in jeopardy. And as an earnest of this American civilization that was in
jeopardy, we were allowed to see many American B films. It was my task to
criticize these films, or praise them. I was rather bored with the job, and went
to very few of them and ended up by inventing my own films, my own cinemas. The
Rock is a very cavernous place, and there may be the odd cinema lurking
somewhere in St Michael's cave in the water, not like anybody had had actually
ever been to, but thought they might someday. You know I was fired from this job
and never did film criticism again.
    In 1966, which was my Annus Mirabilis, for the benefit of any drama critics
who may be present, a wonderful year. I had many jobs: I was drama critic for
The Spectator, and simultaneously I was opera critic for Queen, a great
heterosexual magazine. I was television critic for a magazine, ironically called
The Listener. And I was food and wine critic for a left-wing paper that
eventually folded up. It was generally recognized that I couldn't do all these
jobs efficiently at the same time and I noticed one night at a particular
theater during the first act there were other critics who'd been deputed by
their newspapers to sit behind me and see if I genuinely walked out after the
first act. My normal procedure was to see one act of a play, the second act of
an opera, and have some food and wine afterwards. It was assumed by everybody
that I would never get up early enough to see films, so I never became a film
critic.
    Now as for my connections with the cinema, this is equally tenuous: my
father was a cinema pianist. He played in those days which most of you are too
young to remember, when there was no soundtrack and the accompaniment had to be
provided by an orchestra in the evenings, by pianists during the day for
matinees. My father never saw any films before he accompanied them. He did it
all by ear, memory, instinct, intuition, and he had a very much foreshortened
view when he accompanied. He told me on one occasion that he worked in a cinema
for six months, where the piano didn't work above middle C, so all the music was
somewhat Wagnerian. He was fired from this job because, without his knowing it,
the film he was looking up at one afternoon, foreshortened, was a religious
film; and he saw what looked like a scene of great festivity among men
proceeding, and he started playing "Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here!" This
turned out, of course, to be the Last Supper. I'm sorry I've been allowed a
blasphemous note to intrude, but this is, after all, a New York Sunday!
    If I continue just for a second with a blasphemy, I suppose my own
relationship with this film is that of primal creator with ultimate interpreter,
which finds its most megalomaniacal, if I may use the term, or a most mythical
metaphor in, say, the relationship between God and Cecil B. DeMille, or maybe
the other way round. God wrote a marvelous book, best-seller - marvelous title
called The Old Testament. I don't think he's ever received a penny's royalties
for it; but God is a spirit, and I am merely a consumer of spirits. In my case,
rather than God's, this masterpiece, which I think will make a lot of money, is
somewhat different. As far as Kubrick is concerned, I knew little about him. I
was told over the telephone that Stanley Kubrick wished to make my book A
Clockwork Orange into a film and I would get no money from it. Well, I said: I'm
not ignorant, I know this already; you needn't tell me! But he said: "Would you
rather he made it and get no money, or somebody else make it?" Well, I had a
vision of Ken Russell making it, so I said I was prepared to pay Kubrick to make
the film. It turned out to my surprise that Kubrick did not actually need the
money at the time. Kubrick reappeared in my life, or very nearly, he hadn't
really appeared at all had he? He reappeared by name, very nearly, when I was in
Australia and I was summoned to London to see Kubrick because of two lines in
the book. He wasn't sure whether it was a copyright or not, whether they were
quotations of an existing song, or whether I had actually written them. So I
rushed from Australia to New Zealand, to Hawaii, San Francisco, New York,
eventually I ended up in London and appeared for lunch at that old English
tavern called Trader Vic's. After a couple of old English noggins of Mai-tai,
Kubrick did not turn up.
    Then Kubrick used the Australian vernacular and nearly gave birth to a set
of diesel engines, when he discovered that the British edition of the book was
different from the American edition. Indeed, the American edition, if anyone is
interested, has twenty chapters, whereas the British edition has twenty-one.
There's a cartoon in the British Daily Express, which shows a man and a woman
leaving the cinema, having seen Kubrick's film, saying, 'George, dear, I do hope
they don't make Son of A Clockwork Orange.' Well, this is no joke because
chapter 21, in the British edition, is precisely that: it's the account of the
son of A Clockwork Orange, and anybody who wishes to make this movie as a follow
up is welcome to see me afterwards.
    Well, as you know he doesn't travel, God, I mean Kubrick doesn't travel, and
he is stuck there in Borehamwood, about two miles from Pinewood Studios outside
London, and if I may use again a dramatic allusion, it was no question of
Borehamwood coming to Dunsinane, Dunce's here. So all I can say now is that I
know your little droogie, a little malenky droogie back there in Borehamwood,
will smeck down to his very keeshkas or even his yarbles, and then I'll place
this horrorshow paglilok into his rookers.
    On his behalf, ladies and gentlemen, I say thank you for your generosity, on
his and my behalf I say thank you for your perspicacity, on my own behalf, my
fellow writers, I say thank you for your hospitality.
This transcription © 2007 Alex D. Thrawn for www.MalcolmMcDowell.net