Factory as laboratory: Vinyl – the Tavel/Warhol Clockwork Orange

The initial acclaim and subsequent critical reputation of Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s novel A Clockwork Orange have effectively overshadowed a pre-Kubrick history of adaptations – attempted, actually made, and indeed lost. This article considers one such adaptation: the 1965 theatre performance/16 mm film Vinyl, from a script by Ronnie Tavel and ostensibly made by Andy Warhol in his New York studio, known as the Factory. The article examines the genesis of this project and its overlap with the developing Theatre of the Ridiculous via Tavel’s script. It further illuminates how this loose film adaptation utilized Burgess’s text as the prompt or catalyst to present or even enact BDSM-inflected alternative lifestyle cultures and practices. These are considered as signalling towards a (queer) politics of resistance in the 1970s, and beyond. In this respect, the Tavel/Warhol project represents a quite different take on Burgess than that of Kubrick (of a liberal/Hollywood disposition) – anticipating the coming politicisation and political efficacy of alternative lifestyles in the coming decades.