Interview with Si Litvinoff 7/02

By Luke Ford
Probably in 1965 or early 1966, while I was practicing law (and still producing plays), Terry Southern, who has been my client and dear friend for many years and who knew that I was starting to option books in hopes of beginning a movie producer career, suggested that I read an English novel titled "A Clockwork Orange" by Anthony Burgess. I had already optioned several books including "Henderson the Rain King" and "End of the Road" by John Barth, with the hope that Terry, who was a hot novelist and screenwriter at that moment could be proposed by me as screenwriter and thus get a studio to pay him to write the screenplay and we could co-produce together.
    When I read the book (no easy matter), I was electrified with excitement. All of my work has been influenced by my love of music and my history of involvement with the music industry. This book read like music to me (and as I later found out, to some of The Beatles and to some of The Rolling Stones). The Nadsat language that Burgess created was musical to me. All of my work has always had a socially significant underpinning. This black humor book had that as well. I visualized a movie opening with a futuristic monolith of a building darkened except for one lit up apartment wherein a young man is playing with a snake and listening to Brahms or Shubert or better still, my favorite, the chorale "Ode to Joy" from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
    I was hooked and almost immediately started my quest to acquire the rights (and I also started reading other Burgess books which I would later option-but that's another story). Being able to tell Deborah Rogers who was the agent for Burgess, some of the higher profile clients I represented and some of the books I had optioned and being able to tell her that I wanted Terry to write the screenplay helped enormously. The fact that no one else was interested (despite all that is in print of people who say they sought the rights or held the rights) also helped and by March of 1966 I had the option. The first option payment in 1966, for one year, was $1000. Yes, I know that it has been printed that Burgess in interviews (Playboy, Rolling Stone), still in print, still taken as gospel, said he sold the rights for $500 and got only a few pennies more. I have the contract if you would like to print it. Bear in mind that that $1000 was only for the first year and Burgess was to receive, and did receive more $1000 payments as well as the full exercise price payment. Add those payments to his percentage of net profits, sales of the suddenly famous book as well as new interest in his other books and a new career as a screenwriter and celebrity and you will see how fraudulent his $500 sale price statement was and is. By my count to date he has received and his estate continues to receive thousands of dollars (well over $100,000) from the film (not to say the least of what he receives from book royalties which were close to nil prior to the film). I also can include the monies he received from me for options on several of his other books and the payment he received for a screenplay of Clockwork. And one can add the sums he suddenly received to write screenplays.
    In passing let me explode another myth, which appears in a book about Stanley Kubrick by John Baxter, which states that a British critic named Adrian Turner saw the Burgess screenplay and it was more than 300 pages long. More nonsense. The Burgess screenplay, which I have, is 89 pages long. There is much more that is incorrect in that book as well as in Lee Hill's book "Grand Guy Terry Southern" which is loaded with inaccuracies (including that Terry dropped an option just as Kubrick agreed to do the picture-he had no option then as I had the only option from March 1966 on, that David Puttnam set it up at Paramount, which never happened, that Paramount put it in turnaround which never happened, that Max Raab co produced The Man Who Fell to Earth which is not true etc.) and out and out falsehoods.
    After many failed attempts beginning in 1966 of trying to get financing for the film with Mick Jagger to star, Terry and I were at the opening party at the Plaza Hotel for Antonioni's film Blowup and we talked to David Hemmings who was an instant hot new star who was going out to Hollywood to star in "Camelot" and he instantly agreed to star in Clockwork. He knew the book and loved it. A few days later I flew out to LA to see if I could get his new heat to get financing. I went to the set of Point Blank which [Robert] Chartoff, [Irwin] Winkler and [Judd] Bernard were producing to see if the director John Boorman would be interested. I had seen a movie he had directed for a rock group and I was impressed that in my opinion he was able to make something out of nothing. Despite the fact that in my heart I really wanted Nic Roeg to direct and Mick Jagger to star I was not getting anywhere with the studios with that desire.
    Well, again I got a fast yes from Boorman who also knew and loved the book. It seemed as I would continue to learn, the English were fans. Next step was to get Hemmings and Boorman's agency, the William Morris Agency, to know and understand the project which was obviously not the usual kind of movie they would normally come across to help sell the package. Luckily the agent was Joe Wizan, who later on was a successful producer and studio executive. Joe could read and had taste. But all of his attempts to get U.S. studio backing were unsuccessful. Thereafter there were many trips to London to try my efforts there with the Roeg-Jagger package.
    The problem was that the "censor" Lord Trevelyan would give the film an X rating which would preclude all of the huge number of Mick's teenage fans from buying theater tickets and hence investors were so wary of that economic loss that they would not finance it. I tried everywhere, Mick's agents tried, my agents tried and tried but no takers. This even with the promise of a music score by some Stones and some Beatles. Back in LA , with Ray Wagner we were co-developing several projects with studios when he got a "go" on his own film "Loving" so my wife and I decided to sublease out my then rented Malibu beach house and go back to our Bridgehampton, Long Island house for the summer. Soon thereafter I received a phone call from Brian Epstein, the manager of The Beatles, saying that he knew of me from the play that I produced in which the Beatles company had invested and of the project which "the boys" had told him about and that he would like to meet with me on his next trip to New York with regard to his desire to co-produce and finance Clockwork.
    Well you can imagine my excitement at the potential of that partnership for me and for the film. Unfortunately it was not to be and before our meeting ever took place Brian was dead. But it was not too long thereafter that Max Raab called to say that he was prepared to finance the film as I originally dreamed, with Nic to direct and Mick to star. Sometime in late 1969 and early 1970 when we were in preparation I started to receive visits from some L.A. based Warners executives always inquiring about Clockwork and when our NY lawyer Bob Montgomery said that a NJ accountant had made a $100,000 offer for the rights for some anonymous person I intuited that it was Kubrick to whom Terry Southern had given the book many years earlier. He had not read it earlier, apparently because the copy Terry gave him was the US paperback with bikers pictured on the cover and which had a glossary of the Nadsat language and it was unappetizing to him. Obviously someone had touted it to him all these years later. Only a few years ago I learned that he was secretly in touch with Terry with implied promises of Terry's draft of a Michael Cooper spec version being used while trying to get information from Terry. A few years ago Terry's son Nile gave me a copy of a letter that Stanley sent to Terry, which illustrates his motives, which were predominantly founded in economic greed and paranoia. It is clear in the letter he knew, even though I did not at that time, until too late, that Terry had sold his share of potential producers profits that I had voluntarily assigned to him as part of our original arrangement, to Max Raab for $5000 and 10% of Max 's profits and what the Burgess deal was.
    When I refused the NJ deal I knew that I would hear from someone other than him, at first, someone to ferret out information in a deceptive manner. I just continued to go forward preparing for production until John Calley, a much wiser more straightforward intelligence who was a friend of mine and who was as close to Stanley Kubrick as anyone could be and who was running Warner Brothers telephoned me and became the intermediary for a deal to ultimately be made by us with Warners. Although it was not my original dream, it all turned out with Nic quickly able to go to his dream Walkabout. And Stanley Kubrick made Clockwork a big box office hit.
    Oddly enough Walkabout opened in New York in the summer and Clockwork at year's end and Walkabout received much better reviews from the critics and only fair business and Clockwork did huge business. I have always thought that any of the directors I had asked to do the picture would do it successfully. The difference is that they thought it was dark and Kubrick did it in bright white light.