Malcolm McDowell in the highly influential Stanley Kubrick movie A Clockwork Orange (Picture: Everett/REX/Shutterstock)

A Clockwork Orange star Malcolm McDowell has blasted Kanye West for claiming he’s more influential than director Stanley Kubrick.

In a leaked, profanity-laden video from backstage at Saturday Night Live, Kanye claimed he was ‘more influential than any other human being’, but specifically named the late filmmaker twice.

Now Malcolm – the star of Kubrick’s gruesome 1971 masterpiece A Clockwork Orange, no less – has put the rapper firmly in his place, via a tweet.


Malcolm McDowell in August last year (Picture: Startraks Photo/REX/Shutterstock)

Mr. West, If you have to tell people you're a genius, you probably aren't one. Kubrick lets his movies and artistry do the talking. — Malcolm McDowell (@McDowellMalc) February 19, 2016

What a burn.

Malcolm’s Clockwork alter-ego Alex DeLarge would have been far less restrained with his take-down.

Kanye’s SNL rant included these delusions: ‘Are they f*****g crazy? Whoa, by 50 percent [I am more influential than] Stanley Kubrick, Picasso, Apostle Paul, f*****g Picasso and Escobar.



‘By 50 percent more influential than any other human being. Don’t f**k with me. Don’t f**k with me. Don’t f**k with me. By 50 percent dead or alive, by 50 percent for the next 1,000 years. Stanley Kubrick, Ye.’

Kanye West makes 50 per cent more influential phone calls than you (Picture: Buzz Foto/REX/Shutterstock)

To be fair, Kanye did name his other would-be inferiors – Pablo Picasso, Paul the Apostle and Pablo Escobar.

But Kim Kardashian’s husband seems to have a bit of an obsession with Kubrick, who also directed classics The Shining, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Eyes Wide Shut, among others.

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Stanley Kubrick on the 2001: A Space Odyssey set in 1966 (Picture: Getty)

During a visit to a school in Armenia in November 2015, he told a teacher of his frustration that Keeping Up With The Kardashians isn’t shot with a more Kubrick-esque flair.

He said: ‘They’re shooting my wife’s show, and I keep on, like, asking them to shoot it like it’s Stanley Kubrick.’

Their refusal to go full Kubrick is part of the reason he’s refused to appear on the show, which does not appeal to his aesthetic sensibilities.

And Kanye’s music videos are apparently indebted to Kubrick, too. When he was shooting his video for Runaway, he tweeted pics from Kubrick movies.

Speaking about his video for Flashing Lights, Kanye described how he was ‘bringing it to real life and crashing it against Jim Henson and George Lucas type whimsy and taking, like, a [Federico] Fellini, [Stanley] Kubrick pacing and a very graphic novel/ comic book type setup on all the shots.

‘There’s a lot of shots that are borderline illegal for a film student. It just breaks rules, because I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing.’

But if Kanye West knew anything about Kubrick, he’d know they have nothing in common. Kubrick was obsessive and meticulous with his art – he never had ‘no idea’ about what he was doing.

He was also an introvert who never left the UK after moving there in the early sixties, and rarely gave interviews.

Kubrick sadly passed away at 70 in 1999, but we don’t reckon Kanye West and his banal tweets would have done much for him anyway.

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