Dr. Strangelove
Once he reviewed the footage, Stanley Kubrick knew he had to cancel the custard pie fight. his megawatt farce was due to conclude with the American President, nutball generals, Soviet ambassador, and titular paraplegic former nazi engaged in apocalyptic flan-flinging. But Kubrick realised that there is nothing as unfunny as actors having fun. what he needed was the ultimate symbol of man’s urge to self-destruction.
Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb became a black comedy, said Kubrick, when he “woke up and realised that nuclear war was too outrageous, too fantastic to be treated in any conventional manner.” Literally overnight, he flipped a cold war thriller (based on Peter Bryant’s bestseller Red Alert) into a “Kafkaesque” satire, calling upon counterculture author and self–styled “existential hipster” Terry Southern to revamp the script.
The plot stayed much the same: when nuclear war is inadvertently sparked, a final B-52 fails to stand down thanks to a busted radio. Major ‘King’ Kong, the bomber’s chipper commander, carries on regardless with his payload of nukes, begetting the end of the world. Back in the war room, the high command dance around the inevitable.
nobody can agree whether it was Kubrick or Southern, but the perfect ending was devised: Kong atop a nuke, whooping and hollering, as it hurtles toward impact. cue: a montage of mushroom clouds and vera Lynn crooning ‘we’ll Meet Again’. nuclear-level irony.
They tried John wayne for Kong, but his agent dismissed the script as “pinko bullshit”. Once the film was built around a multiplicity of Peter Sellers, Kong was to be the fourth of four roles, after President Merkin Muffley, Group captain Mandrake and Strangelove. But Sellers claimed he had a “complete block” when it came to Kong’s yee-haw delivery. Then he tumbled from the cockpit — “accidently-on-purpose”, suspected Kubrick — suffering, so he claimed, a hairline fracture of the ankle. The director decided what they needed was “a real-life cowboy”.
Slim Pickens was a former rodeo champ plucked to star and stunt in cowboy pictures because he was, boots to brow, just that — a cowboy. he had a drawl that could corral chickens. Kubrick remembered him as the shit-kicking deputy in Brando’s One-eyed Jacks. Pickens jumped at the chance, before realising he didn’t have a passport.
when he finally lolloped onto set, looking as if he’d just dismounted, the British crew thought it was Method. Southern welcomed him with a slug of wild Turkey. “Play it as straight as you can and it’ll be fine,” came Kubrick’s instruction.
Pickens sat astride the prop nuke dangling from a crane, waving his hat, back in the rodeo. The image was deliberately phallic, the climax of Kubrick’s “sexual framework”, a cowboy riding to nuclear orgasm.