Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

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Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to another episode of What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast, full stop that just so happens to be about movies and how it is nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone a satire for the ages that we simply cannot seem to escape.

It's just endlessly relevant.

As always, I'm Chris Winterbauer, joined by Lizzie Bassett.

Lizzie, tell us about what movie we're learning to love today.

We are talking about Doctor Strangelove or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb.

I can't do the voice, obviously, but I do love this movie so very, very much.

I just, yeah, you said it, Chris.

This movie gets funnier every time I see it, which is both great for entertainment value and terrible for the state of our world because it gets more and more relevant every year that it exists.

It seems there will always be a large circular table filled with incredibly inept, mostly men, ruining our lives and figuring out a way for them to survive.

The image that comes to mind right now is like Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Basin.

Yes, hanging out in the war room.

You know, deciding how they're going to live through the AI apocalypse as we all are fed to the machines at the end of the day.

They're thrilled about it, just as they are in Doctor Strangelove.

Obviously, this is, I think, our third Stanley Kubrick movie that we are covering.

It's a fun one.

I don't think it's going to be quite as dark as some of the other ones, but this is, I think, my favorite Stanley Kubrick movie.

Mine too.

I think for a lot of people it is.

Yeah.

It's maybe the most accessible, but also I just think like beginning to end, it is so entertaining, so funny.

Great runtime too.

95 minutes in and out.

Doesn't overstay its welcome.

Just the world ends.

And we're good at spoilers at the end of the film.

Let's get into it.

So, Chris, when was the first time you saw Doctor Strangelove?

And also, how much does George C.

Scott remind you of Tim Robinson?

He does, he is.

We're all just trying to figure out who did this.

My favorite thing is when he's talking about the B-52 bomber that's going to basically end the world, and he's like, Can they pull it off?

Yeah, I know.

He's so excited.

When he loses the plot of what he's supposed to be rooting for multiple times throughout the film, it's so good.

I mean, Tim Robinson is doing a George, and even his just his facial expressions as he's listening to things and watching things happen is so Tim Robinson, or Tim Robinson is so so George C.

Scott in Doctor Strangelove.

I saw this movie for the first time in middle school.

I really didn't appreciate, I appreciated the broader humor.

So obviously Doctor Strangelove himself was very funny.

I did not appreciate, for example, General Jack D.

Ripper and Sterling Hayden's performance, which is he never breaks.

And that's what's so good about that role, as well as Peter Sellers' president, Merkin Muffley.

That's the funniest role in the movie to me is the president, which the older I get, the funnier that part is.

Yes, he's so impotent and he's so funny when he calls the Russian premiere.

Now, Dimitri, no, I'm sorry too, Dimitri.

Of course, I'd call you just to say hello, Dimitri.

It's very good.

So I've seen it probably five or six times now.

Like you said, Lizzie, this movie gets funnier every time you watch it.

It feels almost more modern now than it did the first time that I saw it because I'm not hung up on the fact that it's black and white, for example.

And there will always be a new apocalypse that we will stare down.

And again, I love that through all of our human engineering, we have merely come up with myriad ways to destroy ourselves through all of these safeguards.

So it's my favorite Kubrick film as well.

It's so enjoyable.

Yeah.

Well, same as you.

I think I saw this when I was maybe,

I don't know, probably late middle school, early high school.

Again, I thought the zanier parts were funny, but didn't get it.

Very similar experience.

Then I think I got this on DVD in college and I just started watching it over and over again.

I don't know how many times I've seen this movie, but it's a lot.

And learning about it made me love it even more.

So let's get into it.

Our main sources today include but are not limited to Stanley Kubrick, a biography by Vincent Labruto, Reconstructing Strange Love inside Stanley Kubrick's Nightmare Comedy by Mike Broderick, and Kubrick, an Odyssey by Robert Colker and Nathan Abrams.

This is directed, written, and produced by Stanley Kubrick.

This is his first time doing all three of those things, but of course he did not write this alone.

He shares the credit with Peter George and Terry Southern, the movie stars Peter Sellers, Peter Sellers, Peter Sellers, as well as George C.

Scott, Sterling Hayden, James Earl Jones, Slim Pickens, and many more.

Great Slim Pickens roll.

Dude, we're going to get to Slim Pickens.

He is an absolute treat.

It was released by Columbia Pictures on January 29th, 1964, which was not the original plan.

We will get to that later.

This was the seventh film Kubrick directed and the first to be nominated for an Oscar.

And the IMDb logline reads, A mentally unstable American general orders a hydrogen bomb attack on the Soviet Union, triggering a path to global nuclear holocaust that a war room full of politicians and generals frantically tries to stop.

Yeah, that's it.

So let's start with...

Old Stan Kubrick.

Now, we're not going to do a bunch of background on him because as I said, we have done two prior episodes.

If you want more background, Chris did a great job on both The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut, so go listen to those.

He spent most of his life in England, but he actually grew up in the Bronx.

He was born in 1928, which meant that he was very much coming of age during World War II and the beginning of the Cold War.

He was one of those kids that was super duper smart, but did not do very well in school.

His test scores proved that he was above average, but he cut a lot of classes and received a lot of Us, meaning unsatisfactory in the areas of, and this is fun, personality.

Works and plays well with others, completes work, is generally careful, respects rights of others, and speaks clearly.

So,

use across the board for those.

In high school, he became a staff photographer for the school paper, and in 1945, when he was just 17 years old, he photographed a newsstand wreathed with newspapers and magazines announcing the death of President Roosevelt.

Look magazine bought that for $25.

He dropped out of city college, started working for the magazine, and then traveled the country as a photojournalist for four years.

In 1951, when he was 23 years old, he worked on two short films, both documentaries.

And then his first feature was Fear and desire in 1952 it was an independent very earnest anti-war film about four soldiers whose plane crashes behind enemy lines he later said it was like quote a child's drawing on a fridge we all start somewhere i'm sure his start is an awful lot better than what i could do

So by the mid-1950s, he'd broken into the industry with his third feature, a movie called The Killing, which he had written and directed, which of course also stars Sterling Hayden.

But he was just a little bit preoccupied because he was was really, really worried that a nuclear bomb was going to blow up New York.

This was not at all out of the realm of possibility at this time in history.

It was the height of the Cold War and the federal government had actually just started simulating nuclear attacks in New York City and other major cities across the country.

I didn't know about this, Chris.

Did you know about this?

Simulating in what sense?

Like they would basically do air raid drills that you were legally required to take part in.

You would be fined if you didn't take part in them.

And then newspapers would actually publish like fake death tolls the next day.

Totally fun, not at all stressful.

And as we know now, Kubrick was a deeply paranoid person.

And he would refuse to fly later in his life.

He would refuse to go in a car faster than 35 miles per hour.

He would wear a helmet inside of cars.

Good for him.

He effectively didn't leave his house by the end of his life.

So we can see the beginnings here.

Yes.

And those drills actually went on until the early 60s, which was around the time that he came up with a plan to flee with his family to Australia, although he never followed through with that.

He does eventually, obviously, move to England.

What he did do was read a ton of books about nuclear war, anywhere from 50 to 70, depending on the source.

So again, maybe not helping the paranoia.

One of those books is called On Thermonuclear War.

It introduces the idea of the doomsday machine and discusses different nuclear strategies, including the concept of deterrence.

Chris, do you know basically what a doomsday machine is?

As described in Doctor Strangelove?

Just in general, because it turns out it's a real thing.

Oh, well, I would assume then that it is a device that is automatically triggered should a nation be attacked, which would doom the entire world in some way to nuclear winter annihilation.

Yes.

In its simplest terms, I believe it is something capable of triggering Armageddon, basically, for the human race or for, I would imagine, like a large population.

So Kubrick reads this book over and over again, and he makes his producing partner, James B.

Harris, read it too.

And by the way, it's almost 700 pages long, so it's not like a fun summer reading assignment.

And because that's not enough, he reaches out to the author, who is an American physicist named Herman Kahn.

They end up getting together and talking about it.

Kubrick's wife, Christiane, said that after talking to Kahn, quote, you would walk away very depressed, very convinced, we're going to fry any minute.

Yeah.

But apparently it was so grim that it started to sometimes drift into Gallows' humor.

One biographer even described Kahn as sort of a dark stand-up comic.

Another expert Kubrick reached out to was English journalist Alastair Buchan.

He specialized in defense studies and was apparently known as one of the few Englishmen who can make himself at home in the Pentagon.

Kubrick wanted Buchan to give him recommendations of fiction books about nuclear war.

Now, right off the bat, Buchan understood what Kubrick was up to and told him it would be unwise for him to make a film about nuclear weapons.

Interesting, it feels like maybe Mandrake, you know, a little bit of you have the British transplant in the story.

Group Captain Lionel Mandrake.

This is an RAF uniform, sir.

So funny.

Kubrick wanted Buchan to give him recommendations of fiction books about nuclear war.

Right off the bat, Buchan understood what Kubrick was up to and told him it would be unwise for him to make a film about nuclear weapons.

He said it could mislead anxious people because he would not be able to describe precisely what precautions the United States or other nuclear powers take to guard against the danger of accident or false command.

But he did give Kubrick a book list, and one of the titles was Two Hours to Doom by Peter Bryant.

Except it's not actually by Peter Bryant, that is a pen name.

His real name was Peter George, and he had been a Royal Air Force navigator and British intelligence agent.

His book, Two Hours to Doom, was known as Red Alert in the U.S.

And it's about a rogue military officer who launches an unauthorized nuclear strike on the Soviet Union.

Basically, the officer is diagnosed with a terminal illness.

He gets depressed.

He orders a preemptive strike with B-52 bombers.

He's the only one who knows the recall code, so he seals himself in his base to avoid anyone trying to stop him.

In the end, the U.S.

and the Soviet Union have to work together to prevent disaster.

So Kubrick immediately saw the potential for a movie adaptation, and he started writing with Harris pretty much right away.

If I may, really quickly, Lizzie, there are a number of both terrifying and fascinating instances of, especially on the Russian side, actually, lower-level base commanders stopping what would be nuclear

triggering launches because their radar systems picked up, for example, a flock of geese or the moon was too close that day.

Oh, God.

The first season of Snafu with Ed Helms, which Lizzie and I know the producer on, is really, really fun in a scary way and goes through a number of these instances, if you guys are interested.

Yeah, it's a very fun listen.

So Kubrick and Harris initially called their project Operation Peacemaker.

At this point, though, Chris, they were trying to write a serious drama, which makes sense.

You read that book, it does not scream comedy.

However, again, as they worked late into the nights, over the next few weeks, they would get pretty punchy.

Harris remembers one late-night session when they started asking themselves, quote, what would happen in the war room if everybody's hungry and they want the guy from the deli to come in and a waiter with an apron takes the sandwich order?

We started to giggle about it and say, do you think this could be a comedy or satire?

Do you think this is funny?

But of course, once they got some sleep, they both decided it was too risky and they should stick with their serious script, which had a new working title, Edge of Doom.

So in November of 1961, roughly a month into writing, Kubrick sent a letter to Peter George, again, the author of Red Alert, about the project.

He then went on to buy the rights to the book and he convinced George to come to New York and work on the script with him and Harris.

By February, they had a solid draft of what was now being called the Delicate Balance of Terror, or D-B-O-T.

Wow.

There's a mouthful.

Yep.

Well, less of a mouthful than Doctor Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

They just get longer.

Yes, that's fair.

And they had secured financing from 7 Arts Productions, who had just produced Kubrick's last movie, Lolita.

But Kubrick just couldn't get the idea out of his head that maybe this isn't a serious movie at all.

He worried that it was too risky to make it a comedy, that they wouldn't be able to sustain it for two hours.

But despite the concerns, the story morphed from drama to satire.

And by April, the transformation was complete.

So Kubrick called up Harris to tell him he was making a comedy.

Harris at this point had left the project to focus on directing.

And he's basically just like, what happened?

You're going to destroy your career.

You know, I left you alone for 10 minutes and you're going to ruin everything.

Now, the move also did not sit well with Seven Arts Productions, who again had agreed to finance it.

The exact date on this is unclear, but at some point in 1962, they dropped out and Columbia Pictures stepped in.

Kubrick and George were undeterred, though, and they just kept writing, most notably adding in the character of Dr.

Strangelove.

By May of 1962, the project had a new title, Doctor Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

Just five months later, in October, the Cold War came as close as it ever would to actual nuclear warfare with the Cuban Missile Crisis.

If you're not familiar, for 13 days, the entire world watched and waited as the U.S.

and Soviet Union played basically a giant game of nuclear warhead chicken.

And according to film critic Alex Walker, Kubrick was, quote, deeply disturbed by both the prospect of nuclear annihilation and the way people accepted it fatalistically.

Now, just three days before that standoff took place, the Saturday Evening Post released the first three installments of a novel called FailSafe, which, quote, described what might happen if a communications breakdown should cause nuclear-armed bombers to fly past their point of recall.

Sound Sound familiar, Chris?

Peter George certainly thought so.

And Kubrick worried what would happen if someone decided to turn that into a movie.

Now, this was not the first time they were hearing about this book.

In December of 1961, the writers behind FailSafe had actually reached out to Kubrick and Harris, sharing an outline for their consideration to make it into a movie.

Of course, at this point, though, Kubrick had not only read Red Alert, but was working on adapting it.

According to at least one source, they had actually just secured the rights to Red Alert when they received this outline for consideration.

And also keep in mind, Red Alert came out in 1958, so it does make sense that you would turn down Failsafe when you have an existing project that is so similar plot-wise.

So in January of 1962, shortly after receiving the samples from the Failsafe author, Kubrick officially declined, but sent the writers a copy of Red Alert and his treatment for the movie adaptation.

And he was deep into writing the adaptation at this point.

No red flags were raised then, but by the spring, months before FailSafe was even released, there were already some gossip columns reporting on the similarities between the two books.

And now in the fall of 1962, just as the script for Dr.

Strangelove was starting to come together, the book was out and the similarities were there for everyone to see.

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It was around this time that Kubrick decided to bring on another writer to help him punch up the script.

That would be a man named Terry Southern, who was famous for writing wild satirical books.

One of these books, called The Magic Christian, Peter Sellers had actually given to Kubrick when they were working together on Lolita.

It's a satire of greed and corruption.

The main character is a billionaire named Guy Grand, and to give you a sense of the tone, at one point, Guy stirs thousands of $100 bills into a vat of blood, urine, and feces,

and then invites people to go get the free money.

Yeah, it's like Mr.

Beast, but back

in

the early 20th century, Sellers must have really loved the book because have you seen the movie, Lizzie?

No.

So it stars Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr.

Oh.

It came out, I want to say late 60s.

I don't think it was very good, but Sellers clearly really liked it.

I didn't know Sellers had given it to Kubrick.

I just knew he was in the movie.

It makes sense that he would like it.

Terry Southern was a big fan of Kubrick.

In fact, so much so that at home, he and his wife would jokingly refer to him as Big Stan Kubrick, as if they were close friends.

That's how I feel when we talk about everyone on this podcast.

I know.

Like we know James Cameron.

Yes, but the old Jimmy C., and this is also what I am afraid of is what's about to happen is that he was sitting at home when the phone rang and his wife said, hey, it's Big Stan Kubrick on the line from Old Smoke, meaning London.

And he was like, yeah, right.

Okay, whatever.

She was not kidding, of course.

That was actually Stanley Kubrick on the phone.

James Cameron, if you ever want to call me,

I will be scared, but I will pick up.

Yep.

Kubrick told him he was going to make a film about our failure to understand the dangers of nuclear war.

He said he had thought of the story as a straightforward melodrama until this morning when he woke up and realized that nuclear war was too outrageous, too fantastic to be treated in any conventional manner.

And he could only see it now as some kind of hideous joke.

The timing is odd.

I doubt he said he'd thought of it that morning because he'd been working on it for months at that point.

Terry, but whatever.

Terry is colorful, to say the least.

He's a great writer, too.

We talk about him a little bit in Eyes Wide Shut because Kubrick briefly hired him to try to help him crack Trom Novell.

And again, Southern's pitch to him was, let's do Doctor Strangelove.

Let's turn this into a sex comedy.

And Kubrick was like, this is far too serious to be turned into a comedy, even though Nuclear War wasn't.

Yeah, Nuclear War is hilarious to him.

But Terry Southern obviously was in.

In November, he flew to England to help Kubrick revamp the dialogue.

And over the next few weeks, they had daily writing sessions that were apparently, quote, fueled by copious amounts of marijuana.

You can feel it in a good way in the final product.

Oh, yeah.

By winter of 1962, casting was then in full swing.

So we've got Peter Sellers, who would play Doctor Strangelove, group captain Lionel Mandrake, and President Merkin Muffley in the final product.

Sorry, can you explain both what a Merkin and Muffley refer to in case the audience doesn't know, Lizzie?

Well, a Merkin is a pubic wig, I believe is the technical term for it.

I don't understand the use of it.

Like, I understand the use of it for films if you're trying to cover something.

I don't understand the like personal use of it.

If you do, write to me and let me know.

And then muffly, I don't know.

I mean, I know what a muffle is

in.

Yeah, I believe it's a double pubic reference in the president's name that they're going for.

Yes, to lady parts, certainly.

Although I think Merkins can be for men as well.

Merkins can be for men as well.

Yeah.

Everyone gets a Merkin.

So he joined the CAS in December.

But interestingly, Chris, he was not Kubrick's first choice, even though they had worked together on Lolita.

Wow.

Most of what we saw in research, they had a very good working relationship.

I think both of them, as we know, could be difficult, but I don't think this was an issue of them not liking each other.

Still, earlier that year, when the script was still serious and as it became a comedy, Kubrick had several other actors in mind.

The list included Paul Newman, Orson Welles,

Noel Coward,

Burt Lancaster.

Paul Newman and Burt Lancaster, I have a hard time.

Don't make sense.

I wonder if those were for the more serious version.

Burt Lancaster as Turgitson, for example, or Ripper could be very good.

Yeah.

Friedrich March, Lee J.

Cobb.

Lee J.

Cobb, I could kind of, but again, Turgitson more.

Yeah.

And comedians like Ted Flicker or Shelly Berman.

So why did he end up with sellers?

Surprisingly, it's because Columbia told him he had to cast him.

Oh.

And I do wonder if this was actually why he may have started exploring other actors was that he was pissed that they were sort of coming down and telling him what he had to do.

The reason that they said he had to cast him was because they seemed to equate much of Lolita's success with Sellers' performance as Claire Quilty.

That's what I was wondering is that Lolita was an adaptation that nobody wanted to touch, right?

It was.

Yeah, they thought it was an unadaptable novel, one of my favorite books of all time, by the way.

Because it requires so much interiority, right?

The book is obviously written from Humbert Humbert's perspective.

And like, how do you translate that?

Yeah, it's an unreliable narrator.

And on top of that, it is a pedophile.

And obviously that movie, I don't think it was a runaway hit, but it was financially successful.

Interesting that they equated the success to sellers, though.

Right.

And in it, as Claire Quilty, he does wear a bunch of different disguises.

He also had played multiple characters in The Mouse That Roared and famously played tons of characters on The Goon Show, which is sort of where he started to first ascend to stardom.

He was a decently big star at this point and had just been cast in the Pink Panther.

So I do wonder if they smelled money on the horizon.

Now, Southern says that Kubrick was pissed and told him, quote, what we have is a film by Fiat, film by Frenzy.

I agree with you.

I think it's just because they told him what to do.

Now, Sellers also apparently was not super down to do this.

This is what makes me think that like, I don't think they had a bad working relationship, but we know Stanley Kubrick is exhausting.

And reportedly he did take some convincing from Kubrick himself until he finally signed on.

And Chris, initially, he agreed to play four parts.

Remember that number, because how many parts does he actually play, Chris?

Three.

According to Southern, again, financing was almost 100% based on the idea that sellers would play four roles.

We're doing the clumps.

That's the nutty professor.

That's what we're going for.

We're doing Medea takes nuclear war.

I'd watch it.

I would watch it too.

Oh, Tyler Perry, make that.

George C.

Scott was also cast in December, and Scott had gotten his start in the late 50s on stage at the New York Shakespeare Festival.

This factoid I love.

Apparently, his Richard III was the angriest anyone had ever played that role, according to one critic.

Scott is always the angriest option on everything, which is why I feel like everything culminates with Patton for that specific reason.

Yes.

The angriest general of all time.

There's a really good movie he was in that I really liked called Anatomy of a Murder, the Otto Preminger film.

So that's actually his first Oscar nomination.

It was in 1959.

Yeah, he's fantastic.

That was him sort of starting to break into film, but by no means was he like a household name after that, even though he had an Oscar nomination.

And he continued to work on stage, too.

It was actually a performance as Shylock in the Central Park production of The Merchant of Venice that caught Kubrick's eye.

I would have loved to have seen these productions.

As you might imagine, though, Scott had a reputation for being pretty volatile.

Again, please see the angriest Richard III ever.

Apparently, he got into a lot of bar fights, so Kubrick decided he'd earn his respect by challenging him to a series of chess games.

That's what I say.

Yeah, because Kubrick's infamous park chess player, chess master of New York.

I just love the thought process, though, of like, this man gets into bar brawls a lot.

He's volatile.

He's a little crazy.

I am going to challenge him to chess.

Yep.

That's right.

And you know what?

Kubrick absolutely pummeled him.

Of course.

According to Tracy Reed, who played Miss Scott, George C.

Scott would spend hours hunched over the board planning, and then Kubrick would swing by, make his move in seconds, and still win almost every time.

That humbled Scott, who thought of himself as a chess master, and it kind of made him possible to take direction from Kubrick.

Sort of.

Sure.

So at the same production of The Merchant in Venice, Kubrick also was impressed by James Earl Jones in the role of the Prince of Monaco.

He was also sort of a military adjacent character in that, so it served as a good litmus test for the Lieutenant Zog role that he ends up playing in Doctor Strangelove.

Just, you can tell that velvet voice.

He's also very handsome.

He's very young, very handsome.

I had actually forgotten that he was in this.

And then I was, oh, that's James Earl Jones.

And George C.

Scott, he was a Marine.

I believe, too.

He was ex-military.

There's a lot of former military people in this.

To be fair, if you think about the timing of this, it would make sense that most of the men would have served.

During World War II.

Yeah.

According to Jones, Kubrick, quote, wanted a bomber crew to be made of all the ethnics, the Jewish guy, the black guy, the Irish guy, the Canadian guy, and so on.

I love the

Irish ethnic Canadians.

In the 60s?

Sure.

Yeah, it's about time we got our representation.

James Earl Jones also said the original screenplay featured a scene where Zog questions the legitimacy of the attack as a loyalty test.

Kubrick cut the scene, and Jones was disappointed.

In 1963, Kubrick convinced Sterling Hayden to basically come out of retirement to play Jack D.

Ripper, aka I think we can all agree, R.F.K.

Jr.

Also, Alex Jones, The Water's Making the Frogs Gay, and Our Precious Bodily Fluids.

Yes.

He'd become known in the 50s for a string of high-profile Westerns and film noirs like John Houston's The Asphalt Jungle, but he had not done much in the previous four years before this.

And back in 1956, as we said, he had starred in Kubrick's The Killing, so they knew each other.

And he would, of course, go on after this to have many more iconic roles, including one we've already covered.

What is it, Chris?

McCluskey and the Godfather.

Yes, I love him in that.

But like Sellers, Hayden was also not Kubrick's first choice.

Before Hayden, he had apparently offered the role to

he's singing in the rain, Gene Kelly.

Really?

Yes.

I mean, if he played it straight like Hayden does, maybe?

It doesn't make any sense to me.

Maybe he had a totally different idea for the character.

How big was Gene Kelly?

Like physically?

I don't think he's that big, and Sterling Hayden is huge.

Sterling Hayden is like 6'4.

When Sterling Hayden's sitting on the couch and his arms are stretched out and he looks like he could bear hug Peter Sellers to death in that, and the way he can just handle the machine, the 50-caliber machine gun or whatever that is.

He was a giant man.

He was huge.

And that's one of the best parts of the character, I think, is the physicality of that character as he is talking about his withholding his precious essence from women

is so good.

By the way, Gene Kelly was only 5'8, so I don't think that would have worked as well.

No.

Finally, let's talk about the only woman in this entire film.

Obviously, this movie does not pass the Bechdel test.

This one female role is Miss Scott, played by Tracy Reed, whose father is director Sir Carol Reed.

And apparently in their initial meeting, Kubrick asked her to put on a bikini, which she would be wearing in the film.

And he apparently told her her body wasn't too bad, so she could have the job.

Thanks, Stan.

You put on a bikini.

Is she also the model in the Playboy?

Yes.

He actually wanted to stage that fake Playboy photo shoot for the film.

She would not take her clothes off.

She actually kept her suit on and laid down so her chest is covered.

And then she covers her butt with a copy of Foreign Affairs.

Yes.

So Kubrick had initially imagined shooting the film in New York, but ultimately decided to set up shop in England at Shepperton Studios.

Production designer designer Ken Adam got to work building the sets.

Kubrick had chosen Adam because of the work he did for the first James Bond movie, Dr.

No.

The biggest set, of course, in the movie is The War Room.

Adam's initial design was an amphitheater with a second level that had a glassed-in control room.

Now, Kubrick apparently loved Adam's initial sketches so much that Adam wondered why everyone had told him Kubrick was hard to work with.

So he went ahead and put his designers to work on drawings and models to design and build the set.

But after four or five weeks went by, Kubrick came back to him and said, Ken, I've been thinking about that war room.

You put it on two levels.

What am I going to do with 70 extras on the upper level?

I think you have to rethink your concept.

There it is.

Adam was not thrilled.

He had to go for a walk, calm down, but then he got right back to work on redesigning it.

The final set measured 130 feet long by 100 feet wide and 35 feet high.

The table alone was 22 feet in diameter, and at Kubrick's request, it was covered in green bays.

It's actually the material that's usually on pool tables and poker tables because he wanted to give the actors the feeling they were seated at a massive poker table gambling with the future of the world.

Interesting.

10 miles of electric cables were needed to light up the big board.

He's got to see the big board.

The big board, depicting all the nuclear bombers.

And it took 150 tradesmen to build this set.

Wow.

In April of 1963, the New York Times visited and said, quote, one enters Mr.

kubrick's warroom as one enters a mosque felt overshoes must be donned to prevent scuffing 13 000 square feet of jet black lichenite floor glittering like an eight ball caught in the rain not just for visitors by the way the actors were not allowed to walk on it in their shoes unless they were performing now of course the other big set piece is the interior of the b-52 bomber Adams and art director Peter Merton really had their work cut out for them because Kubrick wanted the inside of the plane to be totally realistic.

What do you think the problems with that might be, Chris?

How do you move a camera around inside that tight of space?

Or the secrecy around a B-52 bomber and they don't know how to design it.

There you go.

There's no internet.

You can't look this up.

They're not, you know, posting pictures of what the inside of their airplanes look like.

They can't go to the military for help because they're making a comedy about them, essentially.

I could see Kubrick, though, expressing the importance of this to the military.

Just being like, you don't understand this film.

Like, it's so important.

Like, what I'm doing is more important than what you're doing.

It reminds me of Nathan Fielder just went on CNN and responded to the FAA, like, basically saying they weren't going to take his advice.

And he just goes, they're dumb.

They're dumb.

And I can see Cooper having the same response to the military.

There's definitely some similarities there.

Yeah.

Chris, I'm going to show you the one picture that they did have and see if you feel like you could build a set based off of this.

No, I haven't seen it yet.

The answer is no, but let's take a look.

I could build that two-foot by two-foot corner.

Yeah.

Well, let me rephrase.

I could not.

I could tell you if somebody else did a good job.

There you go.

Yeah.

No, maybe we can post it on Instagram.

You're effectively seeing one-third of the cockpit.

If that, yeah, it's obstructed too.

There's a pilot in the way of it.

Now, Merton said that photo was their starting point.

And then basically, they just invented everything else based on that.

They spent hours and hours on the switches and lights alone.

They did have another important resource, though, which was technical flight magazines.

So they were reading those and basically just getting all the information that they could to try and copy the interior of a B-52.

What a great practice run for 2001.

True.

But still, there were details that they had to truly make up, most notably the CRM-114.

That's the fail-safe device.

They did their best, and apparently it was pretty good.

Because according to Adam, quote, during the shooting, we invited some Air Force personnel to visit the set.

They went white when they saw the CRM, so it must have been pretty close.

It's the equivalent of Turgidson, like scooping up all of his folders and papers.

Yes.

Don't let him in here.

Don't let them see.

Yeah, well, actually, the next day, Kubrick sent out a memo saying that, quote, he hopes he got all his research from legal sources.

Otherwise, I and he could be in serious trouble with a possible investigation by the FBI.

These commie Hollywood liberals need to get thrown in the slammer.

Nope, they made it up.

For the exterior plane shots, they used models, but the background footage was real.

The director of photography was Gilbert Taylor.

Little fun fact, he had shot the creepy foot-focused opening sequence for Lolita.

Oh, wow.

Quinton Tarantino's favorite part of that movie.

Anyway, over the course of three weeks, Taylor and a camera crew flew more than 28,000 miles over the Arctic Circle, getting the shots they needed to replicate the mountains and tundra of the USSR, which presumably they could not fly over because war.

Right.

Taylor remembered, quote, the plane used to freeze up at night.

If you touched it with your finger, you would burn your finger.

That's how cold it was.

One night, they wouldn't give us any heating for the airplane at all and we had to leave our cameras there when we opened the cameras the film was just like dust it just flaked away

his wife was apparently also on board and she remembers that when they were flying from greenland to iceland they accidentally crossed a secret u.s military base She said, quote, suddenly two American fighters came up on either side of us and waggled their wings and told us to go down.

We couldn't see anywhere to land.

It was just an ice fjord.

And so the pilot, he came down and said, everybody lie on the floor because I will have no brakes.

It took an awful long time before we stopped.

We were very close to the edge of the fjord.

Wow.

The Americans confronted them.

They saw Doctor Strangelove written on the side of the plane.

They thought it was carrying a team of Russian spies, and they had to all tumble out of the plane and be like, It's a movie.

It's a movie.

These commie trucks look pretty convincing.

Where do you think they got them?

The Army surplus store?

Yeah.

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It was around the same time in December of 1962 that the situation with Failsafe was also building towards a confrontation.

Peter George told Kubrick he wanted to sue the writers, and Columbia, as part of their due diligence to protect their interest, set out to conduct an objective study of the underlying work.

At the same time, George and Kubrick learned that a former United Artists producer who had started his own production house, ECA, had agreed to purchase the rights to FailSafe, and he was going to make it into a movie.

Just a few weeks later, in January of 1963, with FailSafe lurking in the back of old Stan Kubrick's mind, production of Doctor Strangelove kicked off at Shepperton Studios.

At this point, there were plans for an August release date.

For many of the actors, it was a rough start.

Sterling Hayden said that his first day was, quote, the worst day of my life, and that he was pouring sweat and took 48 takes to get one of his scenes right.

There we go.

There's old EasyTime Stan.

48's not even that bad for Stanley Kubrick?

No, that's nothing.

Yeah.

I think this was more Sterling Hayden was really nervous.

He had not acted in a while, as you mentioned.

That makes a lot of sense.

Yeah.

I mean, what a leap of faith.

He doesn't get to wink.

He has to play it completely straight.

He is humorless, which is what makes him so funny.

Yes.

And apparently Stanley Kubrick actually was pretty gentle with him.

Hayden said that he was touched when Kubrick told him, quote, I know you can't help what's going on and you know I can't help you, but the terror in your eyes on your face may just be the quality that we want in this jackass general, Jack Ripper.

If it is not, come back in another couple of months and we'll do it all over again.

Yeah, what a surprise.

Well, and I do think Kubrick, there were some actors he famously got along with, and then there were others he famously didn't.

So

it's not inconsistent with that.

No.

And Hayden was not the only one who was struggling.

Scott and Kubrick were at odds with how Turgitson should be portrayed as well.

Kubrick really wanted an exaggerated performance from George C.

Scott, but George C.

Scott thought Kubrick was asking him to overact and he was not happy about it.

So Kubrick did what any good director would do.

Chris, he tricked him.

Yeah, was he like pulled out the chessboard?

Challenged him.

Just did a little trickeroo.

He said, okay, you know what?

Totally fine, George.

We're going to do two takes of every scene.

And one take is going to be the straight take, but I'm just going to have you do an over-the-top exaggerated take.

Just get it out of the way.

Not a big deal.

Not totally not going to use it.

He used every single wild take, if you will, in the final cut.

As his eyes are bugging out and he's chewing gum with the force of a thousand suns.

George St.

Scott apparently was not happy, but it's so good.

It's so good.

I mean, Kubrick obviously was right.

Sellers, meanwhile, was doing a pretty good job of juggling his roles.

And at this point, remember, he had one, two, three, four.

He was not just group captain Lionel Mandrake, President Merkin Muffley, and Doctor Strangelove, but also Chris, who was the fourth character that he was playing.

I believe he was also Major TJ King Kong as well, the pilot of the B-52 bomber.

That is correct.

Captain Mandrake seemed to be a natural fit for sellers.

He'd been in the service himself, obviously he's British, not as a fighter, but as an entertainer for the troops.

He said, I used to impersonate anybody and anything I could find, mainly officers.

I wonder if they loved that.

As President Muffley, Muffley, he had the entire crew laughing so hard they cried because for the first couple of days he decided to play the character, I believe, as though he had a cold.

He was coughing and had an inhaler.

Everyone agreed it was hilarious, but they had him pivot to a more serious take because Kubrick felt the president, quote, should be the one man that understands the consequences of his actions at the one serious point in the film.

And yet he's, I think, one of the funniest parts of it.

He's so in over his head and deadpan and still trying to adhere to decorum.

It's, it's, and you do need that in contrast with the more exaggerated performances around him.

It also sounds like after working with Sellers on Lolita, Kubrick really understood the importance of letting him loose on set to improvise.

He would always film him with at least three cameras to make sure he captured every single moment from as many angles as possible.

Sellers also improvised most of the monologue where the president has to tell the Soviet leader that the U.S.

has accidentally launched nukes, which is one of my favorite parts in the whole thing.

And I feel like you can feel it.

Like you can feel Sellers is just feeling his way, imagining every response, right?

And he gives such color and personality to Dimitri.

Now, Dimitri.

Now, Dimitri, he's so good in that scene.

And I'm sorry too, Dimitri.

Yes, I'm sorry.

Well, you know, the bomb, Dimitri.

As if they're neighbors dealing with a dog that keeps running over the fence.

Other times, he would basically just mess up his lines in a way that Kubrick decided was funnier than the original script.

For example, when he's on the couch in Ripper's office, he's supposed to say that he he has a thing in his leg, but he says he has a string in my leg.

See, I've got a string in my leg, and Kubrick opted to keep that take instead.

Sellers had a particularly good time with Strange Love.

In fact, he came up with his rogue hand.

He actually took the glove from Kubrick, apparently, who was wearing it to carry around big lights on set.

According to Sellers, the character was 50-50 in terms of creating between him and Kubrick, but here is Peter Sellers on the Steve Allen show explaining more.

Sanders' idea was to have a black glove, so that his hand was sort of injured in some nuclear experiment.

And then I got it further by thinking that the hand was a Nazi while the rest of him had made the compromise that he could live in America.

But this hand here, you see, what's still in you to keep me going like this.

Mind you!

Excuse me, Mr.

President.

It's so funny.

I love the way he describes that the rest of him had made the compromise.

The Nazi hand just killed me as a kid.

And I don't even think I understood the context of Operation Paperclip, which this is riffing on, which was the U.S.

program to bring, I think, over a thousand German scientists and engineers, a lot of them confirmed Nazi Party members, to the United States and integrate them

into the U.S.

And

they were responsible for a lot of rocket technology and even the development of the U.S.

space program, which obviously that was a controversial program, like integrating former Nazis into U.S.

life.

And this riffs on it in such a funny way.

Sellers also found inspiration for Dr.

Strangelove's voice from an unlikely source on the set, Chris.

The Strange Love scenes were some of the last that Sellers shot, and he'd spent at that point months on set with a very talented press photographer, Arthur Fellig, better known professionally as Ouija.

Ouija and Kubrick knew each other from Kubrick's early days as a photographer, but Ouija had a very unusual voice.

And here is Peter Sellers again on the Steve Allen show explaining.

I was stuck, you see, because I didn't want to do just sort of a a normal sort of English broken German accent thing.

So on the set was a little photographer from New York, a very cute little fellow called Ouija.

You must have

heard of him.

And he had a little voice like this, used to walk around a set talking like this most of the time.

He'd say, I'm looking for a girl with a beautiful body and a sick mind.

And I got an idea.

I was really stuck for this.

And I thought, you know,

Ouija used to get all this stuff.

Everything.

He used to have great great big and larger lenses on the front of the camera and a cloth over his head and he'd just get ready to do it and Stanley would say not now Ouija say okay and move it all away you see

I thought if I put a German accent on top of that you see Viner suddenly got this thing you know they are just going up here and send that

and so I got into dr.

Stern's stuff so really it's Ouija I don't know if he knows it but

it's Ouija well he does now And the women would have to be selected for their sexual characteristics.

Okay.

Like, it's great.

It's so funny.

By the way, I think at some point Sellers actually is on tape talking to or interviewing Ouija, and it is exactly as he does the voice.

But while Muffley, Mandrake, and Strangelove were coming along beautifully, Major King Kong was proving to be tricky.

It seems mostly because of the Texas accent.

Apparently, Sellers, who was British, was worried that his wasn't convincing enough, but he thought Terry Southern did a pretty good one, so he had Terry record himself and he'd wander around with a headset listening to the tape.

According to Southern, Kubrick had some concerns that he was stressing himself out way too much.

But also, according to Southern in a different source, he mastered the accent in about 10 minutes.

So, who knows if that's really what the hang-up was.

I have a theory that the Southern accent, because it's actually closer to a British accent than a flattened American accent, that's what makes it maybe more difficult to slip between.

I think it could be for sure.

About a month into shooting, in February of 1963, Kubrick learned that FailSafe, the movie, was slated to come out in the summer, too.

So, would this this have been that bad?

I don't know.

On the one hand, FailSafe is a drama.

It's not a comedy at all.

The only thing I would say is, could it turn audiences off to the concept entirely?

Well, I think the answer is yes, because let me read you the IMDb log line for FailSafe.

A technical malfunction sends American bombers to Moscow to deliver a nuclear attack.

Can all-out war be averted?

So, it's literally the mirror image of this.

It's just, it's serious.

The non-comedic version, exactly.

So, it could, it could suck the air out of the room before it gets there.

It was directed by Sidney Lumet, and it starred Henry Fonda, Walter Mathow, and Fritz Weaver.

I mean, arguably, this has more star power than Doctor Strangelove.

Certainly more American star power.

Yeah, for sure.

And clearly, Kubrick thought that this would be pretty bad because he and Peter George filed a suit to stop the production of the film.

While Failsafe had a big director and big stars, what it didn't have was a major studio financing their defense.

And the studio behind it, ECA, crumbled.

It had to sell off its future productions to other studios.

Now, in a surprising move, Columbia actually acquired FailSafe in that fire sale.

Variety tried to explain the strange turn of events by saying, quote, facts behind Columbia's decision to take over the film it originally tried to prevent being made are not clear.

But as one wag put it yesterday, if Columbia doesn't get the public in to laugh at the bomb, now it has a chance to see if they'll go for it as a melodrama.

Makes sense, I guess.

It's a little weird.

I think it's just about now they can control the timing of both.

Yes, totally.

And so it's a distressed asset.

My guess is it wasn't that expensive for them to pick up.

It gives them a second bite at the apple if one succeeds, and they can control all of the marketing around both films to try to make sure they don't step on each other.

All very good points, and they all end up being exactly what happens.

In April of 1963, Columbia officially agreed to, one, release Doctor Strangelove first then FailSafe at least six months later.

Two, not show any rushes or clips of Failsafe to the press within 30 days of releasing Doctor Strangelove.

And three, not announce anything about the FailSafe settlement without Kubrick's approval.

As Harris put it, quote, a deal was worked out because they were both at Columbia, which absolutely fucked FailSafe.

Makes sense.

I'm sure that that was extremely frustrating.

At the same time, it does sound like it is awfully similar to the source material, and they knew that this movie was happening when they put Failsafe into production.

So, I don't know.

You know, it was a dual film battle, and Failsafe lost.

That's what happens.

Failsafe was no longer a threat, and the lawsuit had given the film some publicity.

But back on set, there had been an accident.

Uh-oh.

Now, the official statement was that while playing his fourth role of Major King Kong, Peter Sellers had broken his ankle.

Oof.

I believe he shot characters in the order of Group Captain Mandrake, President Muffley, Dr.

Strangelove, and I think last was King Kong.

Makes sense too, if you think about the sets, right?

Mandrake limited to the base, both Muffley and Strangelove in the war room.

And then you go to the B-52.

Exactly.

But Shane Rimmer, aka Captain Owens, remembers it a little differently than just a broken ankle.

He says they were mid-shoot with Sellers in the cockpit, which was suspended, when he and Kubrick got into an awful row that ended in Sellers falling from the cockpit 15 feet to the floor.

However, Chris, the plot thickens because there is yet another version of this story.

Here is Sellers' secretary, Hattie Proudfoot, from the BBC documentary The Peter Sellers Story.

Is it just Sellers taking a hammer to his own ankle to get out of playing the fourth role?

Well, hold that thought.

Mark you, that wasn't a very happy film, really, in the end, was it?

He got fed up with playing all these different parts.

And I mean, rumour has it, or Burt will agree with me.

I think that he actually sort of pretended he'd had an accident so he didn't have to do the last one.

The last one.

You nailed it, Chris.

You gotta do what you gotta do.

So in that interview, they go on to reveal that he had maybe faked twisting his ankle when they got out of the car the night before for dinner.

And according to Terry Southern, the news of his twisted ankle made it to set the next day, but Sellers had still shown up to play the part without too much issue.

However, Kubrick decided at the last minute to change the shooting order, suddenly requiring Sellers to climb from the cockpit to the bomb bay via two eight-foot ladders.

The first one went okay, the second one did not.

Sellers slipped and fell onto the bomb bay floor, clearly in pain.

So from everything I've read, I think Sellers maybe did fake the initial accident.

I think he was exhausted.

I think he wanted out of having to play four characters, and he was overthinking the accent.

We know from early on in production that it was something that was top of mind.

I believe he even had his agent write a note to Stanley Kubrick very early on, potentially even before he was cast, saying, I can't do the accent.

And that's part of why they had Terry Southern record the accent for him.

So anyway, I think he had long been trying to get out of this.

However, I think Stanley Kubrick maybe tried to call his bluff a little bit by having him climb up and down the ladders.

Perhaps he actually fell, genuinely injured himself at that point.

And that may have been what happened.

Again, just my theory.

We'll never know for sure.

Once the insurance company found out, however, they insisted that Sellers be replaced immediately versus continuing to perform with the injury.

So Sellers got what he wanted.

Whether he got it the way he wanted or not, I don't know.

That's interesting.

I would have assumed the insurance company would have taken the opposite position.

No, they were like, we do not want him to be hurt any further, especially because if you think about that role, it's one of the most physical ones in the movie.

He would have to be moving quite a bit in the cockpit and, you know, down to the bomb bay and everything.

But assuming they had shot his other characters first, I would have assumed that to be candid, self-interested insurance company would have said, it's important that sellers be in all four of these roles.

Let's just have them finish out the last one, regardless of the risk to the character.

I'm glad the insurance company said, don't hurt yourself further.

I am just a little surprised.

The 60s were different.

They cared.

Well,

they cared about something.

Who knows what?

Yeah.

Either way, Kubrick was way more than halfway through shooting and he needed a replacement very fast.

So the first person he approached, Chris, any guesses?

Is it someone that we've already discussed?

It is not.

It's someone very famous

to replace this role.

John Wayne?

Yes.

Oh, really?

Yes.

But he's not funny at all.

He's not funny at all.

He would have been a great ripper.

He never would do it, but he could have been a good ripper.

If you tricked him, yes, he could have been a good ripper.

Although I think Sterling Hayden's wonderful.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes, John Wayne.

Wow.

He either dismissed it immediately or never even responded, but that did not go well.

Yeah.

So then Kubrick sent an offer to another actor who was famous for Bonanza named Dan Blocker.

Apparently, Blocker's agent wrote back,

Thanks a lot, but the material's too pinko for Dan or anyone else we know for that matter.

Also, I've reported you to the House on American Activities Committee.

Die, Commi, Die.

Yes.

So, Kubrick reached out to an actor/slash real-life cowboy by the name of Slim Pickens.

So good.

Kubrick had met him on the set of One-Eyed Jacks earlier when Kubrick was temporarily attached to direct that.

I believe Marlon Brando actually ended up directing that.

Yeah.

So let's stop for a moment and talk about Lewis Burton Lindley Jr., aka Slim Pickens.

Because I love him.

He's great.

Now, even though he sounds like the most Texas man ever to Texas, Slim was born in 1919 in Kingsburg, California.

He was a tall, gangly farm boy, turned local Bronco ride and rodeo star.

And apparently his name came from a rodeo manager telling him there would be Slim Pickens that day in terms of him winning.

And since he didn't want his dad to know he'd signed up, he had them write down Slim Pickens as his name, and it stuck.

By the way,

his brother later on went as Easy Pickens.

That's great.

Different.

Yeah.

One day when he was an established Bronco rider, the rodeo clown didn't show up.

And so they asked Pickens to stand in.

He did, and he loved it.

By the way, rodeo clown is apparently the most dangerous job.

Yeah.

Which I didn't know.

Oh, yeah.

I guess it makes sense.

You're like taunting the bull.

So once he started clowning, he actually became one of the highest paid professionals in the rodeo circuit.

He had a whole number where he'd dress up like a Spanish matador.

It looked absolutely insane.

Eventually, Slim started getting jobs as a stunt writer and background actor in movies, and he couldn't believe that someone would pay him to just simply fall off a horse.

Because keep in mind, he had spent years basically being gored by bulls.

So this sounded great.

He made a career out of playing smaller roles as villains and henchmen in the Westerns, as well as continuing to perform as a stunt writer for actors like Gregory Peck.

Kubrick remembered Pickens from One-Eyed Jacks and called him up asking how quickly he could get to London for a one-day shoot.

Obviously, this is not going to be a one-day shoot with Stanley Kubrick.

Now, Pickens is pretty much much perfect for the role.

Not much acting required, even down to the fact that he had served in the Air Force.

Reportedly, he told Pickens that Sellers had broken his hip.

Again, we don't know what the hell's going on there.

And he needed Pickens ASAP.

Now, Pickens said yes immediately, perhaps even a little too quickly, because according to some sources, he had never left the U.S., so he had to go get a passport.

Yeah, I totally believe that.

I mean, international air travel was basically, you know, the result of.

It was a big deal.

Yeah, it was jet travel was created by the technologies developed for World War II.

This is very new for a lot of people.

And if there was no reason for him to travel abroad, you know.

Well, Chris, he made it to London, lickety split.

Apparently, when he asked his agent what he should wear to travel, because again, he's never done this before, his agent told him to just wear whatever he'd put on to go into town to buy a sack of feed.

Okay.

So he did, put on his cowboy boots and a giant Stetson hat.

However, this horrified, extremely British production manager, Victor Linden, who proceeded to tell Kubrick that Pickens had, quote, arrived in costume.

Well, yes, and also this was an era when men wore suits on planes and women wore dresses.

Not Slim Pickens.

When Terry Southern asked Pickens if his hotel was all right, Pickens reportedly said, Well, it's like this old friend of mine from Oklahoma says, just give me a pair of loose-fitting shoes, some tight pussy, and a warm place to shit, and I'll be all right.

Wow.

oh boy, let him improvise.

Yeah, James Earl Jones remembers that Pickens, quote, didn't change a thing on or offset, not his temperament, his language, or his behavior.

In fact, a lot of the British crew thought that he may have been method acting because he never got out of it.

This can't be a real person.

This is just a character he's created.

Now, I had a hard time confirming this 100% from a primary source, so take it with a grain of salt.

But there are several sources that say that Pickens was only sent the scenes that he was in, not the full script.

Furthermore, he may not have been told that the film was as satirical as it was.

Now, I am inclined to believe this for a couple of reasons.

One, Kubrick had reached out to both John Wayne and Dan Blocker, as we know, and they turned him down because of the material.

So it makes sense to me that he would hide it from the third person that he goes to.

Although, to be fair, I think Pickens would have said yes if he knew what it was.

Two is that Kubrick needed a replacement really fast, and there's no way he could find someone with Sellers' comedic genius that quickly.

So he may have realized he needed to just hire the real thing.

And the easiest thing to do was to hire Slim Pickens to sincerely play himself.

Also, from Pickens' perspective, he said Kubrick wouldn't show me anything that he had shot.

He said, play it as straight as you can.

It'll be fine.

I guess it was.

I think the only thing that would give it away if you were Slim Pickens is riding the bomb.

Yeah.

And you could still, I'm sure Kubert could come up with a way to say, you know, you're going to die and you're going to go out just like any rodeo rider would go out.

You're going to ride that motherfucker all the way to that commie base.

So you could still pull it off, I think.

Yeah.

You know, in some versions of this, I had always heard it told as like, oh, it was kind of like a pulling one over on Slim Pickens.

Like, look at this guy.

He's turning in this performance.

I don't think that's what it was.

No, I don't think he tricked him.

I think they were rushed.

I don't think he tricked him.

I think it was more he withheld some information from him that he didn't necessarily need.

And it's not at the expense of the character either.

The whole point is the character plays it straight.

And that's the whole tension of the film: they think they are dealing with a nuclear crisis, and everybody else knows they're not.

Yes.

And I think that Slim Pickens was very happy with this.

He had a great time.

He seems to have just enjoyed life in general.

Although, if you watch the faces of the other people in the airplane when he's talking, they look like they're fighting laughs at every turn.

I do think they are maybe a bit more in on the joke than he is, which works.

Yeah.

It also, though, works, like you said, because he is trying to inspire them and he is very jingoistic, go-co-America.

And I get the sense they don't really want to die for this cause, which is why when he rides the bomb at the end, they go, what about Major Kong?

It's so funny.

It's great.

Well, you pointed this out, but apparently, with Pickens' addition, also, that may have been the genesis for the idea to have Kong actually ride the bomb out, which makes sense as a nod to Pickens' very famous at that point, rodeo background.

But it was a last-minute addition, which stressed out poor Ken Adam.

He said, the bomb bay has already been built and it was 60 feet long.

But because they hadn't intended on the shot, there were no bomb doors built into the set.

Adam asked Kubrick, when do you need it by?

And Kubrick said, we should shoot in two days.

Adam said, Stanley, even if I work three shifts day and night to make these bomb doors practical, we will never do it in time.

So he looped in special effects coordinator Wally Weavers.

Veavers is what we used to call my cat who died a year ago, by the way.

So R.I.P.

Veavers.

who came up with the idea that made it possible.

They would take a black and white still of the bomb bay and then Veavers would cut out the doors in post.

Pickens sat on the bomb with a blue backdrop and the camera suspended from a crane which would pull back as the bomb dropped to create the visual effect of it falling down into oblivion.

Works great.

It does and they do a really nice job simulating a tilt of the bomb as well.

They're not just pulling back, they're also tipping away, which I think also sells the trajectory really nicely.

Again, I think a lot of the technology that he's experimenting with here, although it's for comedy, would really come into play in 2001.

Yeah.

So filming wrapped in late May.

That was a month later than Kubrick had originally planned, but by Stanley Kubrick's standards, pretty good.

Fantastic.

If it's not the May of the following year, that is a huge win.

I agree.

So he was now tentatively planning for an October release.

Let's talk about the title sequence, aka the airplane porn.

It's so good.

It's great.

Obviously, they deliberately set out to make something sexual because, quote, everything humans invent is sexual.

Title designer Pablo Farro searched for stock footage of a bomber refueling.

At this time, stock footage was stored in physical warehouses.

You can't just look it up online, so that's a pretty major task.

He managed to find what they needed and spliced together a scene of, quote, two planes fornicating in mid-air, which is exactly what you see.

But while he was focused on plane porn, he did make one minor mistake.

Chris, did you notice the typo in the title sequence?

No, I didn't.

Well, two or three months after the film was released, Pharaoh got a call from Kubrick informing him that he had forgotten the letter D in bass.

So to this day, the title sequence reads, base on the book, Red Alert.

Which reminds me of the missing S in the glitter IMDB log line.

And she become amusing.

And she become superstar.

So while Pharaoh was off looking for his sex planes, editor Anthony Harvey was searching for some missing film.

Uh-oh.

The very last Reel of film that he edited was a bombing sequence with Slim Pickens, and it was made up of hundreds of tiny cuts.

It had taken months to edit.

And then, according to Harvey, it suddenly vanished from the labs and was never found.

So he actually had to recut the entire last reel of film from memory.

But at least he didn't lose the negative, like meaning the original footage.

Yeah, exactly.

No, he didn't.

Thank God.

But he lost a lot of work.

Yeah, that's brutal.

Now, Chris, there was also still the small matter of how to end the movie.

You may know this, but the original ending of this movie is not what we see in the final product.

And Kubrick had struggled with this well into production.

Apparently, it wasn't until six weeks into shooting that he had made up his mind.

It was supposed to be a gigantic food fight in the war room where everyone was slinging cream pies at each other, just like countries slinging missiles.

You can feel that there's a setup with the food behind them that doesn't ever really get paid off because it's so extravagant how long that buffet line is.

That's huge table, yeah.

Right.

They shot it in one take because the studio said so on account of the mess.

And not surprisingly, it was a disaster.

The cream was too thick, people's faces got too obscured, none of the actors could stop laughing, though they were supposed to be furious.

Despite the fact that it looked like it belonged in an entirely different movie, Kubrick apparently loved it.

However, he did officially cut it from the movie at the beginning of November.

I believe the footage has only been shown once in like 1999 or something maybe.

Around his his death maybe like a retrospective you can see pictures if you look it up now it ended up being a good thing that he did cut it because that sequence showed turgidson approach the president whose face is covered in pie and say mr president mr president gentlemen our beloved president has just been infamously struck down with a pie in the prime of his life And just three weeks later, on November 22nd, 1963, the same day there was supposed to be a pre-screening of Strange Love for Film Critics, President John F.

Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

The PR team obviously canceled the preview and the filmmakers went back and they re-examined the film.

They worried about how the public would react to its depiction of elected officials after Kennedy's death.

Because of this, they actually change a line from Slim Pickens via ADR.

Did you notice this?

I've always wondered about this.

So when he's reading off the list of what's in their survival packets,

you can hear him after he notes the lipstick and stockings.

He says, a fella could have had a good time in Vegas with all that stuff.

But if you watch his mouth, what he's actually saying is, a fella could have had a good time in Dallas with all that stuff.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Which would tie in more to his Texas character.

I always thought Vegas was weird.

Yeah, that's interesting.

I never noticed until you pointed it out.

Out of respect, they also delayed the film's release by one month from December of 1963 to January of 1964.

Now, Kubrick had agreed with the studio's decision to delay the release, but he and the studio were at odds when it came to promotion.

Perhaps because famous PlainSex editor Pablo Ferro had cut some unusual TV ads.

Chris, let's take a look at a little bit of one.

Okay, you get the idea.

Chris, can you just explain to our listeners what we just watched?

So, first of all, That is amazing.

It feels so modern.

It is a frenetically cut, text-heavy interrogation of the absurdity of the film, presented, I think, in the style of a very like French New Wave editing style that also evokes subliminal messages, I think.

Yes, it has an MK Ultra vibe.

It does.

It has a very MKUltra government propaganda vibe, and it has a very conspiratorial bent.

It's very funny.

Yes.

But it's also very deadpam.

And so I would worry that it might confuse audiences who are unused to that type of material.

but I am blown away.

That is.

Oh, it's really cool.

Please look it up.

It's so cool.

Maybe we can post it on Patreon.

You can actually see a couple of them.

They're all sort of strung together.

They're amazing.

Yeah.

They also include, I don't know if you noticed this, there are shots of Kubrick himself in there, intercut.

Oh, at the beginning.

Yes.

Yeah.

You can see a few of them.

And again, it is very sort of subliminal messaging, like, you know, MK Ultra backward masking type stuff, which is really interesting.

They also had a paper pocket radio activity calculator like the one Dr.

Strangelove used, which they made available to theaters around the country.

And there was a print ag campaign micromanaged by Kubrick himself, which featured minimalist cartoons instead of photos of the actors.

So the studio is like, this is a little avant-garde for us.

They did not love it.

They were at odds with them about it.

However, As you said, Chris, these are amazing.

They're very sort of modern.

They became kind of the blueprint for promoting films moving forward.

They are better than most of the trailers released today.

That is no 100%.

By the way, though, I'm not knocking trailer editors.

I just think culturally we've moved to a point where it's so hard to get somebody's attention, you have to effectively compress the entire movie into two minutes to try to convince them to come watch it.

Yeah.

Now, another obstacle they faced, which had nothing to do with Kubrick himself, was the fact that most of its stars were extremely averse to interviews, and I believe Kubrick was as well.

So in the end, they could only convince Slim Pickens to take a slot on the tonight show.

It went great, and they showed a clip of him riding the bomb.

To be honest, that's probably the best case scenario because he's very charming.

And as you mentioned, like Scott wasn't a huge name yet, I don't think, George C.

Scott.

No, they were known, but they were not like superstars.

Of course.

And then Sellers is borderline unrecognizable through a lot of the film.

Yeah, I mean, Peter Sellers, I think, was kind of the biggest star at this point in this.

Pink Panther had come out in 1963, but I believe in in the first Pink Panther, he is not sort of as synonymous with the brand as he would become.

His part in that movie was celebrated, and of course he goes on to kind of become synonymous with the franchise as Inspector Crusseau, but that sort of took some time to build.

So Doctor Strangelove was released on January 29th, 1964.

It earned roughly 9.6 million on a budget of 1.8 million.

Pretty good.

Although under pressure from the Air Force, Columbia shipped out a special little prologue to the film that reads, It is the stated position of the United States Air Force that their safeguards would prevent the occurrence of such events as are depicted in this film.

Would they?

It actually, I think it improves the film that they had done at the beginning.

And it reminds me again of, if you guys haven't been watching, the rehearsal this season where the FAA is now saying, basically, you know, what Nathan Fieldard is depicting in this series, we have safeguards against as a governing body.

It makes it funnier.

It legitimizes it.

Yes.

Reviews surprisingly were pretty mixed, but the bad reviews were really bad.

The New York Times tore Kubrick and the film to shreds, calling it a shattering sick joke and not a bit funny.

The New York Times consistently throughout this podcast just misses the mark on some real classics.

They have.

Yeah, they really have.

It's interesting.

Others did not appreciate its warped humor, but the New York Herald Tribune said it was, quote, one of the most cogent, comic, and cruel movies to come along for many a year.

Don't miss it, provided you have the wit and stamina to withstand a savage satire on any number of society's untouchables.

The Guardian called the film Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece.

I would agree.

You can see like a UK-based publication understanding it and appreciating the humor better.

Yes, and they were thrilled to claim it as British as well, because it was shot at Shepperton Studios.

Also, Terry Southern said that Columbia Pictures initially kind of distanced themselves a little bit from it to be like, it's just a funny little, you know, zany movie.

We don't agree with that.

We love the Army.

And this, you know, this is not at the height of McCarthyism, but.

No, it's there.

The tail end, right?

Yeah, that's there, the tail end.

And Hollywood had become a very scary place of, you know, it just took one person, mostly John Wayne, tagging you as a comedy to get you.

Yeah, don't hire him for this.

Obviously, I'm being a little hyperbolic, but it did, you know, happen.

The specific movie that I want to cover at some point that I'm thinking of is High Noon.

That's right.

That's right.

Carl Foreman, the screenwriter, was dragged up in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee during the production of that film, failed to identify fellow members, got labeled a non-cooperative witness.

And I believe John Wayne, president of the MPA at the time, was one of the people who pressured the other Hollywood studios to blacklist him.

And Carl Foreman ended up going

to the United Kingdom and left the United States for some time.

The film ended up getting nominated for four Academy Awards, however, Best Picture, Best Actor for Peter Sellers, Best Director, and Best Writing.

And in 1989, it was selected for inclusion in the Library of Congress's National Film Registry.

Now, to give you a sense of its impact, Chris, after his January 1981 inauguration, then-President Ronald Reagan, of course, an ex-Hollywood actor, immediately asked his chief of staff to see the war room.

It was then that he was informed that that is not real.

There's no big board?

Where's the big board?

There's no big board, Ronnie.

Here's our final fun fact, Chris.

Sometime in 1985, a vast system of computers connected all across the USSR came online.

The system, named Perimeter, was designed to remain dormant until turned on by a high-ranking official in a time of crisis.

Once fully functioning, it would monitor a complex system of sensors to determine if the Soviet Union had been hit by a nuclear attack.

Any guesses what would happen if Perimeter decided they'd been hit?

Launch all the nukes.

That's correct.

Russia actually went and built a doomsday machine.

It's also known by the name Deadhand.

It's featured in, I believe, the final season of The Americans.

They really did it.

Isn't that what War Games is also loosely based on with Matthew Broderick?

I'm not sure, but that would make sense.

War Games was 83.

I mean, the doomsday device, right?

It's because it's a computer system that ultimately is running its own simulations.

Maybe.

This was not public knowledge until later.

So, no, I know.

I'm saying War Games was also based on the idea of a doomsday machine.

And then, what's funny is obviously Russia was clearly building that computer at the time War Games came out.

Yes.

If you look into this device more and you start reading what it does, it is literally how Dr.

Strangelove explains the machine.

And it's so funny when he said, you have defeated the purpose of the machine if you do not publicize its existence.

So we're going to announce it at the premier's birthday.

You know how the premier loves surprises.

It's so good.

And one of the reasons I love this movie so much is because for all of the grandiosity of at times very smart or powerful men, they fall victim to all of the same little hiccups, flubs, and slip-ups that we all do.

And their downfall is just the, it's always these silly, stupid little things.

And it's the human, you know, when he turns it to and says, like, you know, clearly we underestimated the human element here or whatever he's like,

because people are dumb.

People are dumb.

Amazing.

All right, Chris, what went right?

Oh, man, so much.

This is

okay.

It could go to Kubrick.

It could have go to Sellers.

I'm going to give it to

George C.

Scott.

And

I know it's not the performance maybe he wanted Kubrick to pick, but he kills me in this movie.

Yes.

He is so funny.

I love the wild oscillations of his character.

I love how he has been so ingrained to root for specific things that he will do so, even if it is at the expense of the human race.

And I love how he goes from, I will make you Mrs.

Buck Turgidson, to, so you're saying we would have to get rid of monogamy.

And it's so exciting by the end of the film.

I think the whole cast is amazing.

But when I was re-watching it, especially the Tim Robinson thing, which you had primed me for, is so funny.

And again, I don't think he gives any other performances that are this comedic in his career.

I tend to associate him with more really wonderful dramatic roles.

And I'm so glad that this performance exists.

Yeah.

Well, I thought for sure you were going to give it to Peter Sellers.

So I will have to do a duel what went right, which I think is appropriate for Peter Sellers.

Obviously, he is phenomenal in this.

I know he was, you know, something of a troubled person himself.

I think we may explore him more in other coverage.

I would like to.

He's very interesting.

He's just incredible in this.

He is so, so funny across all these roles.

And, you know, obviously, I think Stanley Kubrick was smart enough to realize that you basically just have to get out of his way and just help him sort of light himself up, which he does.

However, I think I must also share some of this what went right with Slim Pickens, who came in to replace him.

Peter Sellers, it would have been amazing.

I'm sure it would have been an incredible performance.

It would not have felt as sincere as what we end up getting from Slim Pickens.

And I think that that is a really important part of this movie.

And it ends up being kind of a bit of a palate cleanser for some of how zany some of the other performances are.

So I'll give it to Peter Sellers and Slim Pickens because I love them both.

And I love that, you know, Slim Pickens' character,

you have to believe that he is going to do this without questioning orders.

Yeah.

And you do 100%.

And he really sells that.

And I know sellers could have done that, but there is something so earnest about Pickens that works so well.

I agree.

Well, that wraps up our coverage of Doctor Strange Love, Chris.

Probably my favorite movie we've covered this year.

Yeah, it's just so good.

It's amazing.

Guys, if you haven't seen it, re-watch it.

It's available for rental on every streaming platform.

Guys, we always encourage you to purchase physical media because even if you purchase a film digitally, if you read the fine print, you're technically only renting it for as long as that platform owns the rights to set property.

So if you want a physical copy of Doctor Strange Love, the Criterion Collection, Blu-ray is fantastic and features a lot of extras.

So you can head over to criterion.com and give that a purchase.

All right, Lizzie, what are we covering next week?

We are going to be covering 28 days later, Chris.

It's zombie time.

It is.

Fast zombies, virus zombies, zombies, British zombies.

A lot of interesting turns to the zombie genre, the kind of revitalization of the genre at the beginning of the 21st century.

Very excited.

And if you're interested, we also have a little primer on zombies, their origins, and their Hollywood lineage that we're going to release on Friday before we drop 28 days later.

So stop by to check that out as well.

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Now, normally we would start to tell you about what you can get if you decide to join our Patreon, but you know what?

There's another way to support us right now as well.

And that is you can buy a ticket to our first ever live show.

Chris, do you want to tell them a little bit about what we're doing?

Not too much, because we'll tell you a lot more later.

I do.

So on October 8th of this year, Lizzie, David, and I are going to travel to New York.

We're going to bring our children and families.

We're probably,

we're all going to die.

But assuming we make it at 9 o'clock on October 8th at the Caveat Theater in Manhattan, we will be performing our first live show as part of the Cheerful Earful

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Tickets are available.

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Yeah.

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And for $50,

you can get a shout-out from Dr.

Strangelove himself

at the end of these episodes.

Lizzy, should we welcome?

Dr.

Merck Verdigliebe,

Kay Canaba, Cameron Smith, Suzanne Johnson, Ben Schindelman, as you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race, Scary Carey, the Provost family, the O's sound like O's,

Zach Everton, Galen, I Can Walk, David Friscolanti, Adam Moffat, Film It Yourself, Chris Zaka, Kate Elrington,

Of course, the whole point of a doomsday machine, Kate is lost if you keep it a secret.

M.

Zodia, C.

Grace B,

Jen Mastromarino, Christopher Elner, Blaise Ambrose, Jerome Wilkinson, Roll Ger,

Jeez.

Lance Stader, Nate the Knife, Lenna,

why didn't you tell the world, Lenna?

Ramon Villenueva Jr.

Half Grey Howe, Brittany Morris, Darren and Dale Conkling, Richard Sanchez, Jake Killen, Andrew McFago

Based on the findings of my report, my conclusion was that this idea was not a practical deterrent for reasons which at this moment must be all too obvious.

Matthew Jacobson, Grace Potter, Ellen Singleton, J.J.

Rapido, Jewish Reese Samant, Scott Gerwin, Sadie, just Sadie,

Brian Donahue, Adrian Peng-Correa, Chris Leal, Kathleen Olson, Brooke, Leah Bowman, Steve Winterbauer, Don Scheibel, George Kay, Rosemary Southwood, Tom Kristen, Jason Frankel, Solman Chainani, Michael McGrath, Lan Relad, Lydia Howes.

Mr.

President, it is not only possible, it is essential.

Thank you guys so much for tuning in.

We will see you next week for 28 Days Later.

Stop worrying.

Love the bomb.

Love the zombie.

It's going to be AI that that kills us anyway.

Bye.

Bye.

Go to patreon.com slash what went wrong podcast to support what went wrong and check out our website at whatwentwrongpod.com.

What Went Wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer.

Editing music by David Bowman.

This episode was researched by Sarah Baume and written by Jesse Winterbauer with additional editing from Karen Krebsaw.