Michael cooper photographer biography examples

(Guildford:Genesis Publications / Hedley 1990). Hardcover. Limited UK First Edition. One of the most important books to document the rock-and-roll era. A tribute to the photographer Michael Cooper, best known for his photographs of the world of rock music in the 1960s and early 1970s and a close friend of The Beatles and The Stones. Introduced by Terry Southern, with Forewords by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and conceived by Bill Wyman, who has signed every copy (the only contributor to do so). The edition was limited to 5,000 copies (this being number 1476) each signed by a different selection of contributors. This copy is signed by:[Neil Aspinall, Terry Doran, Ralph Gibson, Yoko Ono, Bill Wyman, Adam Cooper, Julie Driscoll, John Haworth, Anita Wallenberg and Larry Rivers]. A very good+ copy in the original black morocco and yellow buckram; original handmade silkscreen box with a sliding blind revealing a photograph unique to each copy. Signed by Author.

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Some Unproduced Projects

You were involved in A Clockwork Orange with the photographer Michael Cooper around 1966. How did that project end up with Kubrick?

When Michael Cooper turned me on to that book [A Clockwork Orange ], I read it and said, "This is really good and so cinematic." I sent the book to Stanley, circa 1966, and said, "Look at this." He got it and read it, but it didn't appeal to him at all. He said, "Nobody can understand that language [Nadsat, the newspeak-type lingo Anthony Burgess created for his novel]." That was that. The whole exchange occupied a day. Still, I thought someone should make a movie of this book.

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At one point, I was making so much money on movie projects that I needed someone to handle paying the bills. I got involved with this friend of mine, Si Litvinoff, who had produced some showbiz things in New York like off-Broadway theater. He did a couple of things for me as a lawyer. I showed him the book and told him how it would make a great movie. He said, "You have enough money. Why don't you take an option on it?" So I took a six month option on A Clockwork Orange [by Anthony Burgess (London: Heinemann, 1962)] for about $1,000 against a purchase price of $10,000 and some percentages to be worked out. I wrote a script, adapted it myself. I thought I'd show the book around, but meanwhile, I would have the script too. After I finished the script, I showed it to some producers, including David Puttnam, who was working with various companies like Paramount. He was one of the people who read the script and saw the cinematic possibilities of it. In those days, you had to get the script passed by the Lord Chamberlain [then British censor of film and theater]. When we submitted it to him, he sent it back unopened and said, "I know the book, and there's no point in reading this script, because it involves youthful defiance of authority, and we're not doing that." So that was that.

About three years later, I got a call