Walter Carlos and a phone conversation with my mom

Walter Carlos, now known as Wendy Carlos, has had quite a successful career as an electronic musician and composer. She is credited for the soundtrack of many notable movies such as Disney's Beauty and the Beast (1986) and Tron (1982) as well as Stanley Kubrick's bone-chilling The Shining (1980), and of course A Clockwork Orange (1971).

Using what we've learned about the song, "Singin' in the Rain" we can't help but wonder... Why did Carlos choose this song for the rape scene in A Clockwork Orange? I've been able to think of a few theories. Irony? The directors could have probably guessed that this scene would pretty much disgust the audience. But the addition of this chipper song with the horrible sight shown would be an even better way to get the audience's attention...and provoke some thought. And lets not forget that the character is actually singing the song while performing such a stomach-churning act, it's not just background music. However, when I researched the million dollar question I got an interesting answer. The song wasn't planned-- in fact, there wasn't any music planned at all. Kubrick asked McDowell if he knew any songs he could maybe try to sing, and "Singin' in the Rain" happened to be one he was very familiar with. He tried it out, and then we had ourselves one of the most memorable scenes in film history.

When I called my mom to see if she had seen any of the classics we discussed, we had an interesting conversation. Once I named a few, she immediately named some back that we had indeed discussed. I sensed some nostalgia when she enthusiastically asked if we talked about Polyester, one of her favorites. She also told me about when one of her high school teachers got special permission to open the school for a night showing of A Clockwork Orange. Oh, how times have changed. She talked about the "Singin' in the Rain" scene right away. When I asked her if people passed out in the theaters of Earthquake, her response was "Not in Brooklyn they weren't." She does remember seeing it though and mentioned the sensaround. She remembers it being scary, but not nearly as scary as Birds was. I was pretty surprised that my mom had seen so many of these movies, and her response was that if movies today were a dollar a pop, that's how I'd be spending my days too. I added that maybe if movies today were anything like they used to be, I'd also be more of a movie-goer. Thinking about some of the movies that are released these days, I'm not sure that it's such a bad thing that they're twelve dollars a pop. That being said, I really need to get my hands on some of these classic films.