User:AdamSmithee/Strangelove

Production

Novel and screenplay

Kubrick started with nothing but a vague idea to make a thriller about a nuclear accident, building on the widespread Cold War fear for survival. While doing in-depth research for the planned film, Kubrick gradually became aware of the subtle and unstable "Balance of Terror" existing between nuclear powers and its intrinsic paradoxical character. At Kubrick's request, Alistair Buchan (the head of the Institute for Strategic Studies), recommended the thriller novel Red Alert (1958) by Peter George. Kubrick was impressed with the book, which had also been praised by game theorist and future Nobel Prize in Economics winner Thomas Schelling in an article written for the "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" and reprinted in the "Observer" , and immediately bought the film rights.

Kubrick on the set of Dr. Strangelove.

Kubrick, in collaboration with George, started work on writing a screenplay based on the book. While writing the screenplay, they benefited from some brief consultations with Schelling and, later, Herman Kahn. Following his initial intention and the tone of the book, Stanley Kubrick originally intended to film the story as a serious drama. However, as he later explained during interviews, the comedy inherent in the idea of Mutual assured destruction became apparent as he was writing the first draft of the film's script. Kubrick stated:

"My idea of doing it as a nightmare comedy came in the early weeks of working on the screenplay. I found that in trying to put meat on the bones and to imagine the scenes fully, one had to keep leaving out of it things which were either absurd or paradoxical, in order to keep it from being funny; and these things seemed to be close to the heart of the scenes in question."

After deciding to turn the film into a bleak comedy, Kubrick brought in Terry Southern as a co-writer. The choice was influenced by reading Southern's comic novel The Magic Christian (1959), which Kubrick had received as a gift from Peter Sellers.

The screenplay was put together by writers Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern, Peter George (also writer of the novel), Peter Sellers (uncredited) and James B. Harris (also uncredited).

Sets and filming

The iconic Pentagon War Room set.

Dr. Strangelove was filmed at Shepperton Studios, in London, as Peter Sellers was in the middle of a divorce at the time and, thus, unable to leave England. The sets occupied three main sound stages: the Pentagon War Room, the B-52 Stratofortress bomber and the last one containing both the motel room and General Ripper's office and outside corridor. The studio's buildings were also used as the military airport's exterior. The film's set design was done by Ken Adam, the famous production designer of several James Bond films (at the time, he had already worked on Dr. No). The black and white cinematography was done by Gilbert Taylor and editing by Anthony Harvey and Stanley Kubrick (uncredited).

For the War Room Ken Adam first designed a two level set which Kubrick initially liked, only to decide later that it is not what he wants. Adam next realized the design that was used in the film, an expressionistic set that was compared with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Fritz Lang's Metropolis. It was an enormous concrete room (130 feet long and 100 feet wide, with a 35-foot high ceiling) suggesting a bomb shelter, with a triangular shape (based on Kubrick's idea that this particular shape would proove the most resistent against an explosion). One side of the room was covered with gigantic strategic maps reflecting in a shiny black floor inspired by the dance scenes in old Fred Astaire films. In the middle of the room there was a large circular table lighted from above by a circle of lamps, suggesting a poker table. Kubrick insisted to cover the table with green felt (although this could not be seen in the black and white film) to reinforce the actors impression that they are playing "a game of poker for the fate of the world". Kubrick asked Adam to build the set ceiling in concrete to force the director of photography to use for filming only the on-set lights from the circle of lamps. Moreover, each lamp in the circle of lights was carefully placed and tested until Kubrick was happy with the result.

The Pentagon did not cooperate in the making of the film, as it had done with the 1955 film Strategic Air Command. Because the B-52 was state of the art in the 1960s, it was considered strictly secret and its cockpit was off limits to the film crew. The set designers reconstructed the cockpit to the best of their ability by making a comparison between the cockpit of a B-29 Superfortress and a single photograph of the cockpit of a B-52, and relating this to the geometry of the B-52's fuselage. When some American Air Force personnel were invited to tour the B-52 set, they said that "it was absolutely correct, even to the little black box which was the CRM." It was so correct that Kubrik was concerned that Ken Adam, the production designer, had done all of his research legally otherwise they "could be in serious trouble, with a possible investigation by the FBI."

• The nuclear explosions at the end of the film are all actual US nuclear tests. Many of them were shot at Bikini Atoll, and old warships (such as the German Prinz Eugen heavy cruiser) expended as targets are plainly visible. In others the smoke trails of rockets used to create a calibration backdrop on the sky behind the explosion can be seen.

The original musical score for the film was composed by Laurie Johnson and the special effects were by Wally Veevers.

Cast

Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove.

• Peter Sellers as:
  • Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, a British exchange officer with an upper-class English accent
  • President Merkin Muffley, the American Commander-in-Chief
  • Dr. Strangelove, the sinister German nuclear war expert
• George C. Scott as General Buck Turgidson, a strategic bombing enthusiast
• Sterling Hayden as General Jack D. Ripper, who is equally (and rabidly) paranoid and patriotic.
• Slim Pickens as Air Force Major T. J. "King" Kong, the B-52 Stratofortress bomber captain
• A young James Earl Jones, acting in his first film, plays bombardier Lieutenant Lothar Zogg
• Keenan Wynn as Colonel "Bat" Guano
• Peter Bull as Soviet ambassador Alexei de Sadesky
• Shane Rimmer as Captain "Ace" Owens
• Tracy Reed as Gen. Turgidson's seductive secretary Miss Scott, the film's only female character; she also appears as the centerfold in the "Playboy" magazine that Major Kong is reading

Peter Sellers' roles

Columbia Pictures agreed to provide financing for the film only under the condition that Peter Sellers would play at least four major roles. This condition stemmed from the studio's impression that much of the boxoffice success of Lolita (1962), Kubrick's previous film, was based on Sellers' playing multiple roles. Kubrick accepted the demand considering that "such crass and grotesque stipulations are the sine qua non of the motion-picture business".

Peter Sellers plays three roles: Dr. Strangelove, President Merkin Muffley and Group Captain Lionel Mandrake (left to right).

Group Captain Lionel Mandrake

Peter Sellers is said to have improvised much of his dialogue during filming. For his role as Lionel Mandrake, it is said that he was aided by his experience of mimicking his uptight superiors as a Royal Air Force airman during World War II. His appearance and interpretation of Mandrake's manners are reminiscent of actor Terry-Thomas.

President Merkin Muffley

For his performance as President Merkin Muffley, a decent character, understandably flustered somewhat by the situation, Sellers drew inspiration from unsuccessful presidential contender Adlai Stevenson. Sellers had to flatten his natural English accent to sound like an American Midwesterner (Stevenson was from Illinois). In early takes Sellers faked cold symptoms to amplify the character's apparent impotence, although this was ultimately deemed inappropriate by Kubrick (the film crew burst out laughing every time Sellers spoke, ruining take after take) and in the takes used in the film he played the President straight.

Dr. Strangelove

The title character, Dr. Strangelove, serves as President Muffley's scientific advisor in the War Room, presumably making use of prior expertise as a Nazi physicist: upon becoming an American citizen, he translated his German surname "Merkwürdigliebe" to the English equivalent. Twice in the film, he accidentally addresses the President as "Mein Führer."

The character is an amalgamation of RAND Corporation strategist Herman Kahn, Nazi SS officer-turned-NASA rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, and "father of the hydrogen bomb" Edward Teller. At one point, Strangelove refers to a study which he had commissioned from the BLAND Corporation (a pun on the RAND Corporation, a US military think tank). In his interpretation of Dr. Strangelove, Sellers' accent was influenced by that of Austrian-American photographer Weegee (the pseudonym of Arthur Fellig), who was hired by Kubrick as a special effects consultant.

Strangelove's appearance echoes the movie villains of the Fritz Lang era in 1920s Germany, in which sinister characters were often portrayed as having some disability. Sellers improvised Dr. Strangelove's lapse into the Nazi salute, borrowing one of Kubrick's black gloves for the uncontrollable hand that makes the gesture. Kubrick perpetually wore the gloves on the film set in order to avoid being burned when handling hot lights, and Sellers found the gloves to be especially menacing.

At the end of the film, Dr. Strangelove is animated by the thought of a post-war, centrally controlled, male-dominated society whose members have been specially selected from the population. This idea is evocative of Nazi visions.

Air Force Major T. J. "King" Kong

At the start of the film's production, Sellers was set to play a fourth role, that of Air Force Major T. J. "King" Kong, the B-52 Stratofortress bomber captain. From the beginning, Sellers was reluctant to play the role, being concerned that he could not reproduce the Texan accent required. Kubrick pleaded with him and requested Terry Southern (who had been raised in Texas) to record a tape with Kong's lines spoken in the correct accent. Using Southern's tape, Sellers finally managed to get the accent right and started shooting the scenes in the airplane. However, the actor sprained an ankle while going to a restaurant and could not play the role, as technical constraints would have confined him to cramped space of the cockpit set.

Slim Pickens as Major Kong

Slim Pickens, an established character actor and veteran of many Western films, was quickly tapped to replace Sellers as Major Kong. It is no coincidence that his performance turned out so authentic; fellow actor James Earl Jones recalls, "He was Major Kong on and off the set—he didn't change a thing—his temperament, his language, his behavior." According to some sources, the British film crew thought he was a method actor, and his mannerisms were his way of "finding" his performance for the character, unaware that that was the way he really behaved.

Kubrick biographer John Baxter further explains in the documentary Inside the Making of Dr. Strangelove:

"As it turns out, Slim Pickens had never left the United States. He had to hurry and get his first passport. He arrived on the set, and somebody said, "Gosh, he's arrived in costume!," not realizing that that's how he always dressed… with the cowboy hat and the fringed jacket and the cowboy boots—and that he wasn't putting on the character—that's the way he talked."

Pickens, who had previously played only minor supporting and character roles, stated that his appearance as Maj. Kong greatly improved his career. He would later comment, "After Dr. Strangelove the roles, the dressing rooms and the checks all started getting bigger."

Fail-Safe and Seven Days in May

Red Alert author Peter George collaborated on the screenplay with Kubrick and satirist Terry Southern. Red Alert was far more solemn in tone than its film version and the character of Dr. Strangelove never even existed on its pages. The main plot and technical elements, however, were quite similar. A novelization of the actual film, rather than a re-print of the original novel, was later penned by George. George committed suicide in 1966.

During the filming of Dr. Strangelove, Stanley Kubrick learned that Fail-Safe, a film with a similar theme, was being produced. Although Fail-Safe was to be an ultra-realistic thriller, Kubrick feared that its overall plot resemblances would damage Strangelove's box office run, especially if it were to be released first. Indeed, the novel Fail-Safe (on which the film of the same name is based) is so similar to Red Alert that Peter George sued on charges of plagarism and settled out of court[3]. What worried Kubrick the most about Fail-Safe was that it boasted an acclaimed director, Sidney Lumet, and first-rate dramatic actors, Henry Fonda as the American President and Walter Matthau as the bold ex-Nazi advisor to the Pentagon, Professor Groepenschelesche. Kubrick decided that it would be in his film's best interests for a legal wrench to be thrown into the gears of the Fail-Safe production. Director Sidney Lumet recalls in the documentary, Inside the Making of Dr. Strangelove:

We started casting. Fonda was already set... which of course meant a big commitment in terms of money. I was set, Walter [Bernstein, the screenwriter] was set... And suddenly, this lawsuit arrived, filed by Stanley Kubrick and Columbia Pictures.

Kubrick tried to halt production on Fail-Safe by arguing that its own 1960 source novel of the same name had been plagiarized from Peter George's Red Alert, to which Kubrick himself owned the creative rights. Also, he pointed out the unmistakable similarities in intentions between the characters Groeteschele and Strangelove. The plan ended up working exactly as Kubrick intended; Fail-Safe opened a full eight months behind Dr. Strangelove to critical acclaim, but mediocre box office results.

Also released in 1964 was Paramount Pictures' Seven Days in May (now owned by Warner Bros. Pictures). The plot involves a coup attempt by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to prevent the President of the United States from signing a nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviets, who, they believe, cannot be trusted.

The Kennedy assassination

A first test screening of the film was scheduled for November 22, 1963, the day of the John F. Kennedy assassination. The film was just weeks from its scheduled premiere, but as a result of the assassination, the release was delayed until late January 1964, as it was felt that the public was in no mood for such a film any sooner.

Additionally, one line by Slim Pickens ("a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Dallas with all that stuff") was dubbed to become "in Vegas". The dub is apparent if Pickens' lips are watched closely when he speaks.

Alternative ending

The cream pie fight removed from the final cut.

A climactic cream pie fight scene, originally intended to appear at the end of the film, has become one of the most famous "deleted" scenes in cinema history; it was not included in the laserdisc and DVD releases, and the only known public showing of it was in the 1999 screening at the National Film Theatre in London following Kubrick's death.

Accounts vary as to why the scene was cut. In a 1969 interview, Kubrick said: "I decided it was farce and not consistent with the satiric tone of the rest of the film."

Film critic and Kubrick biographer Alexander Walker observed that "the cream pies were flying around so thickly that people lost definition, and you couldn't really say whom you were looking at."

Nile Southern, son of screenwriter Terry Southern, suggests that the fight was intended to be less jovial. "Since they were laughing, it was unusable, because instead of having that totally black, which would have been amazing, like, this blizzard, which in a sense is metaphorical for all of the the missiles that are coming, as well, you just have these guys having a good old time. So, as Kubrick later said, 'it was a disaster of Homeric proportions.' "

However, editor Anthony Harvey states that "it would have stayed, except that Columbia Pictures were horrified, and thought it would offend the president's family."

The scene included General Turgidson exclaiming, "Gentlemen! Our gallant young president has been struck down in his prime!" after Muffley takes a pie in the face. In the wake of the Kennedy assassination, this line, no matter how coincidental, would have hit too close to home to be used.

Trivia

• In several shots of the B-52 flying over the polar ice en route to Russia, the shadow of the actual camera plane, a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, is visible on the snow below. The B-52 was a model composited into the arctic footage which was sped up to create a sense of jet speed. The camera ship, a former USAAF B-17G-100-VE, serial 44-85643, registered F-BEEA, had been one of four Flying Forts purchased from salvage at Altus, Oklahoma in December 1947 by the French Institut Geographique National and converted for survey and photo-mapping duty. It was the last active B-17 of a total of fourteen once operated by the IGN, but it was destroyed in a take-off accident at RAF Binbrook in 1989 during filming of the movie Memphis Belle. Home movie footage included in Inside the Making of Dr. Strangelove on the 2001 Special Edition DVD release of the film show clips of the Fortress with a cursive "Dr. Strangelove" painted over the rear entry hatch on the right side of the fuselage.
• "Reportedly, Spike Milligan was responsible for suggesting the montage ending, while Tracy Reed, not knowing how the film would end, suggested "We'll Meet Again" for the ending song when asked what would be best.

Other stuff

Kubrick: "Strangelove and Zempf are just parodies of movie cliches about Nazis"

Kubrick: in the case of Dr. Strangelove, Peter Sellers was in the process of getting a divorce and could not leave England for an extended period, so it was necessary to film there

Kubrick: after a screening of Dr. Strangelove I cut out a final scene in which the Russians and Americans in the War Room engage in a free-for-all fight with custard pies. I decided it was farce and not consistent with the satiric tone of the rest of the film

Strangelove was based on a serious book, Red Alert. At what point did you decide to make it a comedy?

I started work on the screenplay with every intention of making the film a serious treatment of the problem of accidental nuclear war. As I kept trying to imagine the way in which things would really happen, ideas kept coming to me which I would discard because they were so ludicrous. I kept saying to myself: "I can't do this. People will laugh." But after a month or so I began to realize that all the things I was throwing out were the things which were most truthful. After all, what could be more absurd than the very idea of two mega-powers willing to wipe out all human life because of an accident, spiced up by political differences that will seem as meaningless to people a hundred years from now as the theological conflicts of the Middle Ages appear to us today?

So it occurred to me that I was approaching the project in the wrong way. The only way to tell the story was as a black comedy or, better, a nightmare comedy, where the things you laugh at most are really the heart of the paradoxical postures that make a nuclear war possible. Most of the humor in Strangelove arises from the depiction of everyday human behavior in a nightmarish situation, like the Russian premier on the hot line who forgets the telephone number of his general staff headquarters and suggests the American President try Omsk information, or the reluctance of a U.S. officer to let a British officer smash open a Coca-Cola machine for change to phone the President about a crisis on the SAC base because of his conditioning about the sanctity of private property.

Initial reviews of most of your films are sometimes inexplicably hostile. Then there's a reevaluation. Critics seem to like you better in retrospect.

That's true. The first reviews of 2001 were insulting, let alone bad. An important Los Angeles critic faulted Paths of Glory because the actors didn't speak with French accents. When Dr. Strangelove came out, a New York paper ran a review under the head MOSCOW COULD NOT BUY MORE HARM TO AMERICA. Something like that. But critical opinion on my films has always been salvaged by what I would call subsequent critical opinion. Which is why I think audiences are more reliable than critics, at least initially. Audiences tend not to bring all that critical baggage with them to each film.

And I really think that a few critics come to my films expecting to see the last film. They're waiting to see something that never happens. I imagine it must be something like standing in the batter's box waiting for a fast ball, and the pitcher throws a change-up. The batter swings and misses. He thinks "Shit, he threw me the wrong pitch." I think this accounts for some of the initial hostility.

Ken Adam: Personally, I prefer Strangelove because I was given the possibility of creating an imaginary decor, 'another' reality and, of course, a studio is more suited to that purpose. Especially as the American Army had refused all co-operation and there was no hope of shooting inside the Pentagon....

(...)

In Dr. Strangelove, how did you conceive the War Room set?

While we were discussing it, I amused myself by scribbling, by doodling on a sheet of paper and Stanley, who was watching me, told me he found it very interesting. And I said to myself that everything people said about him -- that he was a difficult person to work with, etc. -- was false because he liked my first ideas. He told me to continue along the same lines. For three weeks I developed my ideas and one day, when we were driving to the studio and I was getting ready to have the set built, he told me that it wouldn't work, that he would have to fill the different levels which I had imagined with actors and he didn't know what he'd get them to do, etc. -- and he asked me to think of another idea. And all that after encouraging me to develop my conception! For a few hours, I was completely demoralised, because I had already built the set in my head.'That was fourteen years ago and I wasn't as flexible a designer as I am now. It took me some time to calm down; but the strang it wo the battle. And then he became the perfectionist we all know. He wanted to improve the concept. And that's very exciting for a designer. You think you've finished, but a creative director can add a whole new dimension to your work, which you wouldn't have thought possible. There's nothing more stimulating than this kind of improvement, whereas often my problem, when I've designed a set, is fighting with the director or the lighting cameraman to insure that my conception of the set gets up there on the screen, without being spoilt. With Kubrick nothing is impossible. For example, he insisted that I build a ceiling for the War Room in concrete to force the director of photography to use natural light instead of the artificial lighting which we use in studios. Before installing my circular lighting, he made tests with the actors to study the height from every possible angle, for all the characters were going to be lit from above. When I thought up that huge circular table, Stanley said to me: 'It's interesting, because it looks like a gigantic poker table. And the president and the generals are playing with the world like a game of cards.' So we developed the idea. He asked me to create a lighting system which would allow him to light the actors naturally. We sat someone down on a chair and placed a lamp above him, at a certain angle and at a certain height, until Stanley was satisfied with the lighting. And I conceived that gigantic circle of light which 'duplicates' the table and became the principal source of light for the whole set.

There is a contrast between the realistic scenes at Burpelson Base and the expressionist decor of the War Room.

Stanley was aiming for absolute realism. He was fascinated by the idea of shooting those battle scenes in a newsreel style, with a hand-held camera. We used a large part of Shepperton Studios for the attack on the base. Sterling Hayden's office was designed realistically, as was the interior of the bomber, except for the two atomic bombs -- it was the period of the Cuban crisis and we didn't have the co-operation of the authorities for the film! We didn't know what shape they were. I decided to go all out for unreality, for making it larger than life, and Stanley had the brilliant idea of having Slim Pickens sit astride them. For example, this was a sequence for which I made a 'storyboard'.

Dr. Strangelove was originally to end with a custard pie battle.

It was a very brilliant sequence with a Hellzapoppin kind of craziness. Undoubtedly one of the most extraordinary custard pie battles ever filmed. The characters were hanging from chandeliers and throwing pies which ended up by covering the maps of the General Staff. Shooting lasted a week, and the sequence ended with the President of the United States and the Soviet ambassador sitting on what was left of the pies and building 'pie-castles' like children on a beach.