When I visited my parents for Christmas, I brought along my current Netflix DVD rental, A Clockwork Orange, with my other DVDs. I was sick for most of my visit so I was lying down in the couch in the basement of my parents' house looking at DVDs. When I was watching Clockwork Orange, my parents were walking in and out of the basement area. The stairs to the upstairs part of the house are in the room where my parents' DVD player is.
My father, to my surprise, recognized the movie when he heard Malcolm McDowell say those immortal words, "In out in out." Then, he told me that when he saw the movie back in 1971 when it came out originally. He insisted that the movie he saw didn't have the sex scene with the Lone Ranger music playing and the scene with the naked woman standing over Malcolm McDowell's character. I told him that there wasn't any different versions of this movie to the best of my knowledge.
I had no problems with my father with Clockwork Orange, but my mother, on the other hand, had problems with it immediately. When she started asking me questions about the film, I told her that it's a Stanley Kubrick film that came out in 1971 and the star is Malcolm McDowell. She snapped at me and said that they are only doing this for a living. I said back to her, "What does that have to do with Clockwork Orange?"
She said she had no idea who they were and that Kubrick and Malcolm were not members of our family (Aren't Kubrick and Malcolm so lucky that they're not?). I mentioned to my mother that Kubrick directed Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove, the movie that made Peter an international star. She huffed and said that the Pink Panther Movies made Peter Sellers famous. I told her about what a famous director the late Stanley Kubrick was, but all she said she never heard of him even though she had seen Dr. Strangelove several times on TV.
I told her about Malcolm McDowell who was a young actor when he did the movie and is the ex-husband of Mary Steenbergen who is the current wife of Ted Danson of the TV show "Cheers." She told me that she never liked that show, which was news to me. I do recall her watching the show in the past. I told her that she saw Mary in the 3rd Back to the Future movie. She asked me if Malcolm was the one with the long grey hair. "No, that was Christopher Lloyd," I replied.
"Do you know when the Civil War was?" she asked.
"What does the Civil War have to do with the movie I'm watching?" I asked.
She repeated the question to me and I said the 1800s. She grunted.
Then, I said, "1861 to 1864. I took a course about the Civil War at Emerson. Do you have so little faith in me? You asked me about Clockwork Orange, and I told you what I know about it and its star. I don't know everything about them."
That quieted her down and she soon left the room. I was sorely tempted to tell her that she did, in fact, seen Malcolm McDowell in Star Trek: Generations, but I didn't because she hated that movie and complained to me while we were watching it on cable a few years back. I also didn't bother to tell her that the weightlifter in the glasses in Clockwork Orange is David Prowse, the actor who later became Darth Vader, because my mother would start complaining again and asking me questions that have nothing to do with the topic we were talking about.
It's another example of why my mother and I don't do a lot of things together.
Just before I left to return to Boston, my mother asked me when I was going to visit her again. I simply said, "I don't know."
Information about A Clockwork Orange: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066921/
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