Just watched "Dr. Strangelove" for the first time

[Catlover827]

Loved the names. "Bat Guano." "Jack D. Ripper." "Burpelson AFB." "General Turgidson." :rofl:

[gratuitous]

1. What a treat!

It's fun seeing old classics with a newbie. Gives you some new eyes and a fresh appreciation.

[Catlover827]

2. It was our Netflix pick, and Mr. Catlover wouldn't watch it because

"It's no fun to watch movies in black and white." EXCUSE ME? That's a lot of great movies he's choosing to overlook!

[Chan790]

3. Tell him it's one of the greatest films ever made...

and one of the funniest pieces of satire ever captured on film. Apparently Slim Pickens refused to ever speak to Kubrick again because SK never told him it was a comedy during filming and filmed all the bomber scenes as being drama. It makes the film better, the last scene amazing...but Pickens felt he'd been made a fool and to look like a jingoist.

[Catlover827]

6. Slim Pickens was wonderful in that role

I told Mr. Catlover, but he begged to differ. I'm in charge of Netflix picks, and then he complains. DO IT YOURSELF THEN!!

[kentauros]

14. In that case, you should order MORE movies in b&w!

Like Young Frankenstein, Casablanca, A Night at the Opera, and Psycho! }(

[Graybeard]

18. Charlie Chaplin, Laurel & Hardy, Buster Keaton

He's depriving himself of some great

entertainment.:shrug:

[kentauros]

19. A lot of people do that these days.

And yet, they accept perfume/fashion commercials that are filmed in b&w, other than the single bit of color on the product.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

16. Sorry to say,

it sounds like Mr. Catlover has no imagination.......... :o) Welcome to DU! :bounce:

[cloudbase]

25. Watch it a dozen more times.

I guarantee you'll find something you previously missed in each viewing.

[hobbit709]

4. President Merkin Muffley

[Catlover827]

5. Forgot that one!

[Chan790]

7. I'm convinced the only reason that name got by censors...

is because to went right over their heads, toupees and all.

Merkin: a pubic toupee.
Muff: Slang term for female genitals, specifically the pubic hair upon them.

In effect, President Fake Pubic Hair.

[Auggie]

9. Soviet Premier Kissoff

[pink-o]

8. It's on my top ten list!

Along with the other great Peter Sellars movie (his last) Being There. If you haven't seen that one, it's also a great political satire. Sellars was Da Bomb (Strangelove pun intended) I loved him in everything.

Also, little bit of trivia: Stanley Kubrick knew Henry Kissinger from Harvard, but never admitted Dr Strangelove was modeled after him. From Starr:

"...Both Kubrick and Sellers denied that Dr.Strangelove was inspired by Henry Kissinger. Sellers said, "Strangelove was never modeled after Kissinger, that's popular misconception. He was always Wernher Von Braun. But the one gloved hand that kept rising to salute, well, the man was a Nazi. That idea just came to me, it was entirely spontaneous. And Stanley stopped everything and shot the gesture with three cameras."

[mucifer]

13. of course he wasn't supposed to be kissinger. Jews cannot be nazis

It's a fact. They just won't let Jews into the nazi party.

[Graybeard]

17. Look behind Sellers in that scene.

Kubrick kept the cameras rolling during the,"Yes, Mein Fuhrer!!!" salute even though actor Peter Bull (playing the Russian ambassador)is breaking up doing all he can to try not to laugh out loud.

[kentauros]

27. I've noticed that, too,

and I think it makes the scene that much funnier :D

[Lionel Mandrake]

29. Who was Dr. Strangelove?

It never occurred to me that Wernher Von Braun was the model, but Peter Sellers said he was, and that would seem to settle the matter.

The most popular candidates in the 60s were Edward Teller ("Strangelove west") and Henry Kissinger ("Strangelove east"), though neither of these makes much sense.

Teller used to get very angry when people called him Dr. Strangelove.

Unlike Teller, Kissinger had a sense of humor. Referring to the regime of Salvador Allende, Kissinger once called Chile "a dagger pointed at the heart of Antarctica".

[edbermac]

10. "You can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"

Probably one of the greatest satires ever made.

[nolabear]

12. Heeeey! Okay. I get "They want to rob us of our precious bodily fluids."

Purity of Essence indeed.

[nolabear]

11. "You can't fight here; this is the war room!"

One of the movies that changed my life.

[geardaddy]

22. lol

[kentauros]

15. Did you also notice a very young James Earl Jones on the bomber?

"Hey! What about Major Kong?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueuauKKjPZI

}(

[Catlover827]

24. Yes, I did

He looked SO young! (guess he was)

[MicaelS]

20. Believe it not, it was based on a serious novel

Red Alert by Peter George published in 1958. Kubrick originally planned to do a straight serious adaptation of the novel but changed his mind. Red Alert is available from Amazon. I've bought it and read it, and Dr. Strangelove is a pretty close adaptation. The big differences between the two, is the lack of comedy in the novel, and that war is averted as the last US bomber crashes short of the target.

The much more well known novel Fail Safe (1962) is a rip off of Red Alert. The differences between the two is that in Fail Safe the attack on the USSR is accidental instead of deliberate as in Red Alert. In Fail Safe, Moscow and New York City both are destroyed.


http://www.amazon.com/Red-Alert-Peter-Bryant/dp/159654581X/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1314371843&sr=8-4


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Alert_%28novel%29

Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler's later bestseller Fail-Safe so closely resembled Red Alert in its premise that George sued on the charge of plagiarism, resulting in an out-of-court settlement. Both novels would inspire very different films that would both be released in 1964 by the same studio (Columbia Pictures).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove

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 research, Kubrick gradually became aware of the subtle and unstable "balance of terror" between nuclear powers. At Kubrick's request, Alistair Buchan (the head of the Institute for Strategic Studies), recommended the thriller novel Red Alert 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.

In collaboration with George, Kubrick started writing a screenplay based on the book. While writing the screenplay, they benefited from some brief consultations with Schelling and, later, Herman Kahn. In following the tone of the book, Stanley Kubrick originally intended to film the story as a serious drama. But, as he later explained during interviews, he began to see comedy inherent in the idea of mutual assured destruction as he wrote the first draft. Kubrick said:

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 make the film a black comedy, Kubrick brought in Terry Southern as a co-writer. The choice was influenced by reading Southern's comic novel The Magic Christian, which Kubrick had received as a gift from Peter Sellers. Sellers is also sometimes considered an uncredited co-writer, as he improvised many lines later added to the script.

[Blue_Tires]

21. Just for fun, go watch "Fail Safe"

(both movies were based on the same book) and see what the story is like when played 'straight'...I was expecting it to be campy as hell, but it is surprisingly good...An excellent compliment to each other

[MicaelS]

23. Sorry you are wrong....

They were NOT based on the same book. See my other post.

[Blue_Tires]

26. my mistake...

[Curmudgeoness]

28. The greatest anti-war movie of all times. Watch it over and over

again, because there is just so much subtle humor/satire there. And I hope that Mr. Catlover will change his mind and watch it.

[pokerfan]

31. Mein Führer, I can walk!

never seen this poster before:

[Lionel Mandrake]

30. "Peace is Our Profession"

The Strategic Air Command adopted this motto in 1958. George Orwell would have loved it. Stanley Kubrick had fun with it.