How do all and welcome back for Day 3
of Director Week via Stanley Kubrick. Well our boy has tackled some
taboo, some terror and adventure. So how about a dark comedy? Yes a
satire depicting our planetary leaders in the midst of a Cold War
nuclear crisis, in which Peter Sellers is brilliant in. This is Dr.
Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
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| Mein Fuhrer, I can smirk! |
With heightened paranoia as the order
of the day, U.S. Air Force Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling
Hayden of The Asphalt Jungle,The Killing, Hard Contact, The
Godfather, The Long Goodbye and 1900) commanding SAC
(Strategic Air Command) has recently discovered there
is fluoride in the water which in his addled mind must mean... a
Communist plot to deplete the American's precious bodily fluids. If
you were expecting a hyperbole or punchline, no that is an actual
line in this movie.
Ripper gets on the horn with his XO
(Executive Officer) RAF Group Captain Lionel Mandrake
(Peter Sellers of Only Two Can Play, Lolita, The Wrong Arm of
the Law, The Pink Panther, A Shot in the Dark and Casino Royale)
who puts the base on full alert, has the B-52 bomber loaded with 40
megatons of radioactive fun for all the Soviet boys and girls but
realizes that Bomber Plan R can only be implemented if the higher
command has been obliterated. Meanwhile in the War Room, President
Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers) is reviewing how our
bombers could have been sent out and demand an immediate recall back
to base.
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| But enough about nuclear arms, look at those gams. |
Confabbing with General Buck Turgidson
(George C. Scott of The Hustler, Patton, Rage, Bank Shot, The
Changeling, Firestarter, A Christmas Carol and The Exorcist III)
who flim flams about how the American Military's diligence to duty is
what makes the country so great that they cannot radio the bomber to
simply stand down as it can only utter a new code from the CRM-114 of
3 letters and only the Brigadier has that code. Trying to get the
Premier on the phone shows to be difficult as they must correct this
oversight.
Well the Army spring into action to
overrun the Air Force base, The President consults with his
scientific advisor, the former Nazi, Dr. Strangelove (Peter
Sellers) starts calculating the potential fallout of the
impeding nuclear holocaust that awaits them if they go underground,
stockpile nuclear energy, gather several hundred thousand people and
prep a breeding program to save the human race. Naturally the ratio
of female to male would be 10 to 1 but that is just good math. Will
the bomb drop? Can we avoid this horrible future? Will the word
"Commie" be stuck in my head all day?
Some interesting tidbits about the
film. George C. Scott was annoyed with Stanley Kubrick getting him
to overact his role. While vowing to never work with Kubrick, even
Scott had to see that was an amazing performance. It has been a
rumor confirmed fact that Peter Sellers improved most of his lines
and Kubrick encouraged him to do so. Major Kong's line about the
survival kit was originally "A fella could have a pretty good
weekend in Dallas with all that stuff". It was decided that
Dallas would be overdubbed with Vegas due to the assassination of
John F. Kennedy. The film was set to be released on 1963 but that
same assassination would be foremost in American minds so they waited
the next year. As research for the film, Kubrick read nearly 50
books on nuclear war.
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| Extreme close-ups are never that extreme!!! |
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