Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
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Josh, thanks for letting me lure you into the studio. I'm excited. Thanks for having me. I was thinking about how it's your birthday coming up. Oh, no. And for once, we're not going to get to spend it together. That's true. We generally do. Yeah, but you're going to be in London. I will indeed. Well, I was thinking about one of my favorite stories that you've told, which is the season six premiere of The West Wing. Sure. When you all went to Camp David.

in the show. And you had Marine One. And on the side of it, they made a typo. Untied. States of America. Untied States of America. And so I thought...

in honor of your birthday. I made this last night. Oh, oh, God, you're good. Oh, it's so good. I love it. Will you describe it? Yeah. Is it going to be a piece of new merch? It's a new t-shirt. It's not available only to me. I won't have the only one. All right, I'm going to measure my excitement. Well, I'm seeing the front and the back. Yeah, the front is our pin, which actually looks amazing on a shirt. This is very exciting. Of course, what's next? Flentil A Veritas. It looks fantastic. It's

And on the back, "Untied States of America." Brilliant! We're gonna offer it in a couple of different colorways. One, just a stark black and white, the way it appears on Marine One, black with white type. But then, I also thought... Oh, my God, that's such a good idea. ...in honor of another moment from this episode that I love, which is when you are running through the woods...

and you rolled up your sleeves against Alex Graves' wishes to show your massive guns on screen in that Carnegie Mellon sort of like athletic shirt. We're also going to do a tri-blend black, sort of like the shirt you're wearing in that episode, so that people who get the shirt can roll up their sleeves and show off their biceps. Yes, maybe we can all show up at Alex Graves' house. So this is going to be a new piece of merch that's going to come out, and we're going to have all of our stuff

for sale at thewestwingweekly.com slash merch. But check out the new Untied States of America t-shirt

in two different ways. And then there's going to be a premium version because you know how whenever the president is on Marine One, he's got the cool windbreaker? Oh yeah, exactly. We're also going to do this as a windbreaker. Are we really? We can do that? We're going to do a black windbreaker. Same thing, the Westman Weekly Seal on the front, Untied States of America on the back. Can't wait to get one. And

And I could just see people all across the country putting it on as Martin Sheen would put it on over his head. Amazing. Oh my God, this is fantastic. And so many people are going to be approached and asked, you know, there's a typo on the back of your shirt. Oh, exactly. It'll just be endless. And that's how you know they are the enemy. They're not in the club. Anybody who points at it, maybe enemy is strong. Yeah.

I want to give a shout out to Chuck Gibbons who sent me an image on Instagram that I think is relevant for anybody who gets this shirt. It's a tweet from Dropped Mike. It says, interviewer, quote, can I get your references? Me, probably not. No one else does. Oh, that's good. That's really good.

I'm also excited at the prospect of, for the next four years, wearing something that says "Untied States of America." I didn't want to get too dark, but this might be a good reflection of how people are feeling at the moment. And then, lastly, in my small contribution to the overall campaign, Josh Molina is Nice.

I'm going to donate proceeds of this piece of merch to the American Red Cross. Wow. That is awesome. Oh, what a gift. Oh, I'm excited. If you want to support the American Red Cross, who's been doing amazing work here in LA as the wildfires have been just... I'm giving on Monday before I fly to London. Ravaging stuff. And yeah, Josh, if people want to join the Josh Molina is nice...

blood donation team, do they give blood or platelets or both? It all counts if you give through the American Red Cross and you join our team through the app. Of course, I'm also just here to generally encourage giving blood, whether you do it through the Red Cross or not. But if you do through the Red Cross, please join our team. Yeah. And if you get the Untied States of America shirt, that's another way you'll be supporting the Red Cross. Yay. I'm going to wear it to platelet donation, not Monday. Yeah.

But as soon as it's available and I can donate again.

And if you have no idea what we're talking about, it might be time to visit or revisit our episode on Season 6, Episode 1, NSF Thurmont. Right. Very good. Not suitable for work, Thurmont. You'll see. That's a joke you made on that episode as well. Of course I did. What do you think? I got a new joke for this? There's a picture of the untied States of America that Josh took before the art department went and fixed it on Marine One.

One of the great photos of all time from the West Wing. By the way, I also, since you mentioned my guns, I occasionally I search my name on Reddit and Reddit is where you get the real honest people who really tell you what they think of you. And there's always something horrible. This comes to us from Cavewoman22. She says, Josh Molina has always had a face made for radio and a body made for late night cinemas. Yeah.

The sad part is I read that and I'm like, oh, it's just saying I'm ugly. But oh, net gain. I was like, for me, that's a rave for Reddit. Amazing. So go to thewestwingweekly.com slash merch to get your Untied States of America shirt or windbreaker. And now, on to the episode.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit Progressive.com to see if you could save. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations.

You're listening to the West Wing Weekly Political Film Fest. I'm Rishi Keshe here away. And I'm Joshua Molina. A few days after we recorded this episode, James Earl Jones passed away. It goes without saying that he was a legend with a long, long list of iconic roles. We talk about him in our conversation, but we just wanted to add this note to mark his passing and pay our respects.

Today, we're talking about the film Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. It was written by Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern, and Peter George. It was directed, of course, by Stanley Kubrick, and it was released on January 29th, 1964, almost two years to the day, give or take a couple weeks before I was born. Josh, did you know that that release date actually got moved? It was supposed to come out earlier. And what happened? John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

Oh, it was supposed to come out in November? It was supposed to come out, I think maybe in December, but the very first public screening of it was going to be a preview screening on November 22nd, 1963.

Oh, wow. The movie is based on a book called Red Alert by Peter George, the third credited screenwriter. And Kubrick initially planned to make a pretty straight-ahead movie out of the straight-ahead serious book on which this is based. But he kept finding that when he tried to carve out the absurdities of the situation from the book,

He had nothing left. And there was no way to tell the story without the dark comedy of the reality in the premise. And I think what's so incredible is that even though it is so funny, all the comedy in the movie doesn't detract from how terrifying the nuclear threat of everything is.

Yes, it's a pretty nifty trick pulled off by Kubrick et al. I love this movie. It's a masterpiece, I think, of tone. They got the tone pretty much just right throughout the movie so that it is really funny. And even if you're not laughing out loud, it sort of both gave me chills and sort of made me smile during its entirety, the actual comedy.

premise feels real, some of the violence feels real, and yet it's still also absurd and funny throughout. Yeah. I found a synopsis from Stanley Kubrick himself when he was suing the film Failsafe because

because of its similarities to Red Alert and to what would be Dr. Strangelove. Do you know about this part of the story? Oh, wow. No, I know that Sidney Lumet directed Fail Safe, has starred Henry Fonda, I want to say, and I think it came out after Strangelove and bombed. - Exactly. - So to speak.

It was being made at the same time that they were working on this script for Dr. Strangelove. And he was worried that they would basically come out first. It was an independent production and they were moving ahead. They were further along than. It was an arms race of sorts. Exactly. Yeah. There was the release gap. Yeah. And he and Peter George sued the book that Failsafe is based on.

for infringement, for basically copying Red Alert. Interesting. Was he successful? They settled out of court and the settlement terms involved that Columbia, who was releasing Dr. Strangelove, would buy Failsafe, which was an independent production.

and release it as a Columbia movie, but after Dr. Strangelove came out. Interesting. And is the general wisdom that Strangelove killed Failsafe? I don't know if it killed it, but it certainly prevented it from killing Strangelove, you know? Failsafe is critically acclaimed, but yeah, it didn't have the kind of massive success that Dr. Strangelove did.

Then I think 15 or 20 years ago, didn't George Clooney do a live version of Failsafe on TV? I didn't know that. Yeah, in the year 2000. 24 years ago. The play was broadcast live in black and white on CBS, starring George Clooney, Richard Dreyfuss, Harvey Keitel, and Noah Wiley. Noah Wiley? I didn't even get to read for the role.

So in reading about that lawsuit, I found this synopsis from Kubrick himself. Let's hear it. A sort of Kubrick rubric. He called it a nightmare comedy in which a psychotic Air Force general triggers an ingenious, foolproof and irrevocable scheme, unleashing his wing of B-52H bombers to attack Russia. The president of the United States, unable to recall the aircraft, is forced to cooperate with the Soviet premier in a bizarre attempt to save the world.

Yeah, that's about it. By the way, that's making me remember my first Trump III moment in a while. I'm watching this. I was thinking how prescient this scenario posits a deranged military man, a general going rogue.

and the politicians having to try to pull back the situation he's created. But under Trump, we could have a president who's utterly out of his mind who could make something horrible like this happen. Oh, yeah. Do you also want the DVT box synopsis too? Yeah, let's hear it. I have it. Okay. Stanley Kubrick's black comedy classic about an, quote, accidental nuclear attack received four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.

Convinced the commies want to pollute America's, quote, precious bodily fluids, a crazed general, Sterling Hayden, orders a nuclear airstrike on the USSR. As his aide, Captain Mandrake, Peter Sellers, scrambles to unlock a recall code to prevent the bombing. The U.S. president, also Sellers, calls a drunken Soviet premier on the hotline claiming the proposed attack is all a silly mistake.

While the president's advisor and ex-Nazi scientist, Dr. Strangelove, Sellers once more... Also Sellers. ...verifies the existence of a dreaded doomsday machine, a retaliatory device designed by the Soviets to end the human race once and for all. There it is. Incredible triple role. Incredible. I think he's fantastic in all three and understated even as he plays...

A Nazi who can't keep himself from, you know, desperately trying to sig Heil and salute. Unbelievable piece of physical comedy. Brilliant physical comedian. Even from his first, just as the RAF, the Royal Air Force officer, Mandrake, his initial walk, the way he carries himself, there's something beautiful in his physicality in all three roles. Yeah. I fully buy him as these three incredibly distinct individual characters. Yeah.

Yeah, although he doesn't, you know, no offense to anyone else, but, you know, in whatever, Eddie Murphy movies where he plays nine characters or other things like that, they're always just so loony-toon and so over the top. And they can be incredibly funny, but there's something about the nuanced and sort of finely realized performances in all three roles that knocks me out about Peter Sellers. Yeah, so the president character that he plays, Merkin Muffley...

Originally, he played him broader and more comedic and sillier. He had like an inhaler and he had everybody apparently like really laughing. They filmed for a couple days with him doing this more comical version. Oh, that's fascinating. And Kubrick said, actually, no, this guy needs to be serious. This guy needs to understand he's the one person who understands sort of the gravity of everything. And they were talking about it and he kind of was describing what he was experiencing.

imagining him as, and Peter Sellers was like, oh, like as if Adlai Stevenson had actually won the presidency.

And Kubrick said, yes, exactly. And so imagine that when you watch that character. How great. And I read somewhere also that during the rehearsal process, they would allow Sellers to improvise in all three roles. And then they'd take the best of the improvisations and then write them into the script. Yeah, it's amazing. Which makes me wonder what's his and what's theirs. Yeah. I mean, all the stuff, I think, where the president is on the phone with the Soviet premier, right?

It's like the first line is what's scripted and then he's just doing his own thing. Now then, Dimitri, you know we've always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the bomb. The bomb, Dimitri. The hydrogen bomb.

And those are, I think, some of the funniest parts of the movie. I agree. Incredibly funny. And, you know, I've done my share of phone call scenes. They're difficult. Yeah. Even if you have, well, I mean, usually in a phone call scene, you hear the other person, you hear what's going on. So like to do the one-sided phone call entirely on his own and to know that it's improvised is just...

awe-inspiring. It's amazing. It's incredible. Yeah, and we don't see or hear, we don't see or hear Dimitri, but we get their relationship, and it's entirely created by Peter Sellers' one-sided phone call. Yeah, his whole depiction of the other guy's personality just comes through in his responses. It's exquisite. Incredible. Can you imagine how I feel about it, Dimitri? Why do you think I'm calling you? Just to say hello? Of course I like to speak to you. Of course I like to say hello.

Did you know that Peter Sellers was actually supposed to play four roles? No, what other role? He was also supposed to play the slim pickings role.

of Major Kong, the one who, you know, rides the bomb down. Iconic, iconic cinematic moment, yes. Yeah. And what happened? How did they decide? I mean, Slim Pickens is perfect, brilliant casting, the cowboy of it all. Peter Sellers got hurt on set when they were filming, and he couldn't do the sort of cramped cockpit scenes because of that. So then they had to find somebody else to do it, and Kubrick basically said, well, we can't replace him with another actor. We have to get someone who's genuinely a cowboy. And that's how they got Slim Pickens.

Oh, that's so brilliant. And to me, Slim Pickens, you know, I guess his apotheosis was riding the bomb, but blazing saddles. Has anybody got a dime? Somebody's got to go back and get a shitload of dimes.

One of my favorite lines of all time. That's interesting, wow, because it's such brilliant casting. I'm trying to think now what the Sellers version even would have looked like. Yeah. Apparently, Columbia wanted to have Peter Sellers play as many roles as possible. That was kind of one of the conditions they had for financing the film. Huh. Okay, should we start just right at the beginning of the movie, finally? Let's do it. I...

Just have to say the opening titles, you know that I was going to talk about the titles right there. Of course. So beautiful and so zany and unique and at this point iconic. They are by a title designer named Pablo Ferro, who was actually not a title designer at the time. He was an editor.

And he got hired on the movie to make the trailer for it because he was a, he used to make commercials and Kubrick really liked the way that he would cut his commercials. So he hired him to cut the trailer and then he ended up doing the titles. And what you see was actually supposed to be like the rough draft and he was going to have somebody cleaned it up. And Kubrick was like, no, no, no. I like it. Kubrick loved it. Yeah. Oh, that's great.

But what's great about it too is that because of that sort of loose thing, there are some typos in the titles. Oh, are there really? He did them by hand. It's like grease pencil on glass. And instead of saying based on the book, Red Alert, it says base on the book. Oh my God. How did I miss that? That's fantastic. I love it. And in the, you know, the disclaimer that like it's not based on anyone, fictitious is spelled incorrectly.

Wow. Unlike me to have missed that. How fantastic. He actually also forgot to put his own name in the credits until Kubrick pointed it out, but he'd already finished all the cards. And so if you go see it, his name is squeezed in this very awkward way in between two other things on just like a random place on one of the title credit cards. Fantastic.

Classic Rishi to have noticed all that. I did a deep dive on this and I'll put a link in our show notes to this great feature that was done by the art of the title, which is a wonderful website that I

subscribe to, love, where they talk about some of the best opening title sequences in films and TV. Funny, I always loved the opening title sequences to the Pink Panther movies, also, of Peter Sellers' fame. The music that plays over the opening credits is an orchestral version that the composer arranged of the song "Try a Little Tenderness" that predates the famous Otis Redding version. Oh, wow.

Much like Josh Molina, that would come a couple years later. Mm-hmm. Right. And all the footage that we see in the opening titles, that's all stock footage.

I think it's like promotional footage that was made by Boeing or whoever. It's very sexual, I think. Yeah. They saw it and they thought it was so funny how weirdly erotic it was. Yes. And they thought that they would maybe try and recreate it. And Kubrick was like, no, let's just use this.

Yeah, no, brilliant. And coupled with the sort of romantic music, it's really a fantastic way, weird way to start the film. Yeah.

So the book is by Peter George. And just because, you know, I think you were saying before that when you watch now, you automatically go into a weird critical thinking space. I realized what my version is. My brain automatically tries to find connections between things like the crazed person in the back room drawing maps with red string from photos to words and things like that. Insanity wall. Yeah. Sometimes they're relevant and sometimes they're things like me writing down

based on the book by Peter George, Peter Sellers, and George C. Scott. Can we just talk about George C. Scott for a second? Do let's. Well, I guess, first of all, the naming of the characters is also amazing in this film. Fantastic. A lot of phallic names. For example, he plays Buck Turgidson.

And are you a Tim Robinson fan at all? Do you watch I Think You Should Leave? I've watched every moment of it and love, love, love it. So watching this, all I could think was George C. Scott is doing a Tim Robinson impression. Oh, that's funny. If the pilot's good, see, I mean, if he's really sharp, he can barrel that baby in solo. You ought to see it sometime. It's a big plane, like a 52.

- That's really funny. - He makes faces and the way that he says some of his lines, it seems like a character from "I Think You Should Leave."

That's brilliant. And yet in someone else's performance, it would be horrendous mugging with George C. Scott. It's the guy. It's the character. It works. Yeah. And I think the context makes a big difference, too, because, yeah, and I think you should leave. Everything is so heightened and so crazy. But here, like you said, because the tone is so dry, I mean, it feels over the top, but it also just works. Yeah.

Yeah, completely. George C. Scott is brilliant in this movie. I love everyone in this movie. It makes me like them personally. Josh, there's a moment that you actually teased in our last episode as something that you really love, which is the George C. Scott fall. Yeah. I mean, I think it's inadvertent. I don't think it was planned. I think it's a stumble that turns into a cheap thrill where I very worked up, but

Buck Turgidson is sort of walking kind of sideways, walking backwards in the war room. And it seems to me that George C. Scott sort of trips over himself and he just rolls over, keeps talking and gets right back up and continues. It's an incredible piece of like, you know, sprawling.

braai choreography. And it's one of my favorite things in cinema of all time. I remember the first time I saw it, I was like, "Wait a minute. What just happened?" Yeah. He never breaks character. -No. -He even is talking through the somersault. Yeah, who does that? It's a piece of, like, inspired madness. I'd read that Stanley Kubrick had asked George C. Scott to do takes where he went way over the top. He was like, "Just give me one that's, like, way too big."

You know, George C. Scott would do his sort of version of the performance. And then Kubrick would say, give me another one and just go wild. And then he used all of those wild versions. That's what he used. And George C. Scott resented him for it. Oh, that's funny. Because I was going to say, there are actors who won't give you that. I hat tip to George C. Scott. Because, of course, once you give a director a take in a certain way...

it's then the director's prerogative to use it. It's completely out of your hands. And there are some actors who won't, you know, my feeling is you got to just trust the director and part of your job is to give the director what he or she wants. But I've seen actors sort of not giving whatever the version is that they don't want to give. Like I'm just, and be like, I can't get there or I can't do it or whatever. But it's like, no, they don't want to do it because they don't

want you to use it. So that's funny. So you're saying, so George C. Scott in the ultimate final thing wasn't thrilled with his own performance because of the way Kubrick cut it and used it? That's what I read. I don't know if he changed, you know, once the film became a classic. As people hailed it, I bet he got over that quickly. Yeah. But that little backwards somersault thing, I mean, talk about the Tim Robinson character. Like, that really feels like something from I Think You Should Leave. It does. You're right. It does. It does.

Sterling Hayden came out of retirement. I guess Cooper convinced him to come out of retirement to play... Jack Ripper. Yeah, Jack Ripper. He's really the one who incites everything because he's the one who decides that he's the only one who's going to solve the Soviet problem. That's right. I was thinking too, like Sellers and Sterling Hayden are very, very good together. And it's such a sort of... We've often seen every sitcom...

In many, many movies, the thing where there's the person who's sane and they're with somebody who's insane. They're trying to hide the fact that they think the person's... It's almost like a hack comic premise at this point. But it's so well done with the two of them in that office and his being trapped. It's so delicious, the relationship between the two of them. I don't know how well I can stand up under torture. Well, of course, the answer to that is, boy, no one ever does.

And my advice to you, Jack, is to give me the code now. And if those devils come back and try and erupt stuff, we'll fight them together, boy, like we did just now on the floor, eh? Yeah, it's so great. And I think, again, because the danger of that character, Ripper is so scary, legitimately scary, that it gives an edge to this thing that would otherwise be, yeah, like you said, a sort of...

I don't know, comic cliche. Yeah, and I like how Kubrick and his DP, his cinematographer, Gilbert Taylor, often are shooting Sterling Hayden from a really weird angle where the camera's really low and it's tilted up at him and it just gives him a crazed look.

sort of manic intensity. Like there's something just not right about the guy. I thought the exact same thing. Yeah, I thought that low angle made him both incredibly intimidating and also loony. Yeah. And when he delivers the line... War is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time...

the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. Did your Sorkin alarm go off? Yeah, it's pretty Sorkin-esque. It's very Sorkin-esque. And I mean, knowing Aaron's brain and the way it works and the way he feeds off other people and other work and synthesizes it, I've got to believe somehow that little couplet of lines led Aaron

in some indirect way, to Colonel Jessup's. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I mean, I couldn't believe it. I almost fell out of my chair. I was like, whoa, there's that. Yeah, yeah. I didn't even think about that line specifically, but yeah, you're 100% right. And I had already been in that mind because I was thinking when we're initially introduced to

Slim Pickens and his crew and the B-52 bomber. There's so much like Sorkin techno speak. "Poll prefix locked." "Switch all receiver circuits to CRM discriminators."

All circuits switch to CRM discriminators. And I thought, like, that's something else that, you know, Aaron loves. And I could see a connection there, too. I have the feeling, were I to ask Aaron, and perhaps I shall, that this is maybe a favorite film of his. I wonder. So George C. Scott got cast as...

in this film because Stanley Kubrick saw him in a production of Merchant of Venice. I would have loved to see Scott on stage. He loved it so much, he got him to come play Buck Turgis, but the other person who he cast because of seeing that production in his first film role was James Earl Jones.

Oh, no kidding. Oh, that's wild. Yeah, I know. And in such a brief film appearance, it's wild to see him. And he's already James Earl Jones. He's so great. Yeah, for sure. Yes.

I don't know if I'm retroactively applying, you know, James Earl Jones-ness to... It's hard not to. But I mean, you know, the voice is there, too. Exactly. The voice is the voice. Bomb at air ready, sir. Bomb fusing master safety on electronic barometric time and impact. Bomb fusing master safety's on electronic barometric time and impact. I thought that was also really well done in the plane, absolutely.

Everybody has these really calm, sonorous voices in the cockpit. And then you've got Slim Pickens. He's the one who like really stands out. Everybody else is sort of measured.

Yeah, I also thought they did a ridiculous comment, but very good eating. Because they're all sort of, you know, it's just another day. They're up in the air. We've been told that these B-52s are up in the air just in case something happens. Obviously, it's just another day. They don't expect anything to happen. Even when it looks like something's happening, they're not so sure. And they're all just eating. And actor eating can be so annoying, but it's all so real. They look like a really bored...

And there's one guy's doing cheap thrills with his two decks of cards. Yeah, I love that. So the one bomber with Slim Pickens and James Earl Jones in it, they get their target and it is the ICBM complex in Laputa. Laputa. Which is the name of a flying island in Gulliver's Travels. Oh, fantastic. It stuck out in my mind because just the other day,

I went to an outdoor screening of Spirited Away, the Studio Ghibli film. Oh yeah, good movie. So beautiful. And there was a little trivia night thing beforehand. And one of the questions was, you know, like, what was the very first Studio Ghibli film? And the answer was Castle in the Sky. I don't know if you've ever seen that one. But the full name of that film is actually Laputa, Castle in the Sky. Really? Yeah. It also borrows from Gulliver's Travels. So it was funny to just hear that again. The

the same week that I'd already been thinking about it. Is that how you put it together and figured it out? Yeah, I didn't know that Laputa was from Gulliver's Travels, but I knew that... Once you heard a second Laputa. Yeah, I was like, wait a second, what is this? It's pretty cool. Mandrake is phallic too, right? Isn't a mandrake sort of a penis-y? Penis-y is a word, isn't it? Yeah, as opposed to the... Woman Drake. Yeah, you got there. It's a race. It's always a race.

It's not about quality, it's about speed. And bad. I was thinking about how all three Zellers characters have M names. I don't know what this means. Because you've got Mandrake,

You've got the president, Merkin Muffley. Merkin Muffley. Merkin, also a groinal reference. Exactly. Merkin being a pubic wig. Yep, yep. And muff perhaps in the Muffley as well. Yes, yes, well said indeed. Merkin Muffley is good. Yeah. And Dr. Strangelove, that's his new name. His original name in German was Merkwerdekliebe. Yeah, I believe it's Staines who tells us that. Yeah. Also, Staines makes me laugh. Yeah.

That's great. I just love there's a character called Staines. Yeah. I love that you want that one too.

I'd love that Strange Love's original name is actually Merkwürdigliebe, which is just German for strange love. Oh, is it actually? Yeah. That was good. Oh, that's fantastic. I didn't even type it in. I thought like that can't be an actual word. Yeah, no. So you got Muffly Mandrake and Merkwürdigliebe. I'm sorry to anybody who speaks German. Lieber, that makes sense. I'm sorry that anyone has to speak German too. Now we're going to take a quick break and now back to the show.

Let's talk for a second about Dr. Strangelove's characterization. Well, characterization or character itself? Do we think, I mean, I guess, I assume he's inspired by Wernher von Braun, right?

the Nazi responsible, I think, for the German V2 rocket program that decimated London. Once the war was over, we brought him over to help us out. And he worked on our rocket program and eventually worked in our space program. I had taken some notes about the characterization, actually, and specifically the voice, because there's a great story. Oh.

Oh, let's hear it. Do you know the photographer Ouija? Yes. He did sort of like lurid crime photos in the 40s. Right. And by the 60s, he'd kind of, I don't know, his moment had kind of ended. But Kubrick used to be a photographer and he was a fan of Ouija's. And he actually got him to come do on-set photography for Dr. Strangelove.

Really? So he'd be on set, and this is what Ouija sounds like. I'm just going to play you a little clip of an interview. This is the most wonderful experience for any man or woman to go through. It's like a modern Aladdin's line, if you rub it, in this case the camera.

You push the button and it gives you the things you want. Okay, you got that? Yes, yes, yes. Okay, let me play this little interview clip from Steve Allen. Peter Sellers was on Steve Allen and he talked about The Voice.

I was stuck, you see, because I didn't want to do just 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 probably heard of him. And he had a little voice like this. He used to walk around the set talking like this most of the time. He used to go and say, I'm looking for a girl with a beautiful body and a sick mind. Ha, ha, ha, ha.

And I got an idea, I was really stuck with this, and I thought, you know, ah, Weegee used to get all this stuff, everything, he used to have great big enlarger 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, Weegee, he'd say, okay, and move it all away, you see? I thought, if I put a German accent on top of that, you see, then I suddenly got this thing, you know, where it's going up here, and so I got him to Dr. Strangestop. So really, it's Weegee, I don't know if he knows it, but it's Weegee. Well, he does now.

That's fantastic. That's amazing. I think of Ouija as a New York guy. Yeah. Or that's where he did his work, I think. Yeah, you're right. But at that point, he was at such a low point in his career. He was doing like really, really low budget, low quality films in Europe. And somehow Kubrick found him and got him to come to London for this job instead.

That's so great. I also love how, as Strangelove, he smiles always. He's essentially always smiling. He can't not smile. Yeah. But it's just like an incredible thing where that character is so iconic and that voice is so iconic. And just like, what would the movie have been if it hadn't been for this other completely unrelated decision to bring Weegee on as the on-set photographer? Yeah, but also if he was the on-set photographer, it sounds like...

It must have happened very late in the game that he adopted that manner of speaking. Yeah, exactly. I mean, in other words, if they were rehearsing, he must have been doing something else, or maybe he was there for rehearsals or whatever, but it must have happened like right at the moment. I don't know. I wonder if he came planning to do something completely else and just found it there. Like the confidence of Peter Sellers to...

create and create on the spot is amazing. Yeah. And even like the thing about Merck and Muffley changing after two days of shooting from this comic version to the more serious version. Yeah. I was thinking about that. A comedian who's worked out a whole thing and a big thing and then being told, no, no, you got to play it straight. Like that's not, not everybody would take that note from a 36 year old director. I think Kubrick was 36 when he made the movie, which is also astonishing. Yeah. Yeah. The kid.

In the war room, where we first meet Strangelove and Merkin Muffley, President Muffley, that is, there's a great other detail that I found out about that is completely lost on us because the film is shot in black and white, which is that in the set, I mean, that set is incredible.

this huge, huge room that they built. I wrote down the actual dimensions. First of all, the War Room was shot in London because that's the only place they could find a studio big enough to build a room that was 130 feet long by 100 feet wide with 35-foot high ceilings.

It's cavernous. An incredible set. So there's that giant table that's in the war room where all of the principals are, you know, having their conversation. And Kubrick asked the production designer to cover it in green felt. Again, like a detail completely lost on us. But he wanted it to feel like these 22 people were playing a poker game for the fate of the world. God.

God, that's fantastic. I love that. So just so cool. Every detail is so considered. I was trying to look too, before Strangelove is even officially introduced in the film, you can see him at the table just barely. And I can't tell whether it's actually him

Peter Sellers sitting there or they had someone who looked a lot like him so that Sellers could play the president. You see this wavy hair on somebody. Yeah. Another thing about this set, you know, we talked about how the West Wing has influenced future administrations who watch the West Wing and...

I think you've actually, when I was looking at In the Loop, Armando Iannucci talked about how he got a tour of the White House from Reggie Love, President Obama's body man. And during the tour, Reggie Love showed him a room and he's like, so this is where CJ and Josh would sit. And Armando Iannucci was like, no, no, no, it's where you sit. You are the actual person. There's something terribly wrong here. Well, in a similar kind of thing,

This is the story I heard. When Ronald Reagan was inaugurated and came to the White House for the first time, he said, okay, you know, I'd like to go see The War Room. Oh, yeah. Because he had seen the movie. And he was told there is no war room. He's like, I've seen it in the film. Oh, that's terrifying and fabulously funny. Yeah.

And, of course, another iconic line. Gentlemen, you can't fight in here. This is the war room. Just a classic. Classic, classic, brilliant. Do you think there's any chance, I'm very excited to check as soon as we're done, that anybody on Twitter misspelled President Muffley and I can correct them? LAUGHTER

Like they put an extra F in there? Yeah, or maybe it would be one F and I could point out that it's two. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, probably not likely, but I mean, if anybody wants to tee one up for me after hearing this. Create a new fake account just for that. Exactly. There's one place where I thought the comedy just disappeared and it was legitimately terrifying and an action movie, basically, which is when the B-52 clocks that there's a missile closing in on them. Range 20 miles.

Missile still closing distance. Distance. And tracking steady. Attack range gate on maximum scan. Range gate on maximum scan. Range 10 miles. You know, the Russians have like started to detect the radar presence of all these planes. And so they're firing at them. And somehow they, you know, they try and evade it and they managed to get away. And then it still explodes about a mile away from them. And the whole plane gets rocked with the impact and things explode. It felt like

As terrifying as just the worst parts of like the hunt for Red October or something like that. Yeah, I completely agree with you. I would also say that when the troops are sent in to try to attack Burpleson Air Force Base and Sterling Hayden and others on the base shoot back, it's like it's real violence and people are dying. You're totally right.

And it's shot realistically in a way that I didn't really remember. I was kind of maybe sit up like, oh, yeah, this is like, you know, real stakes. And somehow he makes everything work tonally and fit together and be cohesive, even when it's like jarringly real. Yeah, watching that part especially and watching Ripper and Mandrake throughout it.

I also started to feel like, oh, I can see how this comes from the same person who made Full Metal Jacket. Yes, yes. In sort of a flipped ratio of comedy to horror. Yeah. But both movies that blend both elements. Very well said. Full Metal Jacket has its dark humor as well, for sure. Yeah, exactly. Thinking about when they're in boot camp and, uh,

They're getting sung Happy Birthday Jesus at Christmastime. Yeah. Real fear and real comedy at the same time. I like when Ripper's trying to get Mandrake to help him with the belt of ammo. You see the string in my leg's gone. What? The string. I never told you, but you see, got a gammy leg. Oh, dear. Gone.

He's lying on the couch with no intention to help him. Yeah. Really, really funny. There's a part where Mandrake is finally trying to convince Ripper to give him the code when Ripper seems to have kind of given in to the fact that his men have been defeated.

He puts on so much charm, and he's trying so desperately to tell him, like, why don't you just give me the code, old chap? There was something about his delivery there that reminded me very, very much of David Mitchell. Do you know that British comedian actor? He was in Peep Show. Oh, no, I keep hearing his name, and I'm always wondering whether there's a writer whom I love named David Mitchell. It's not the same person, but I keep meaning to find out who the other one is. I feel like you and I have watched the Are We the Baddies series.

skit before. Wait, I don't remember that. Oh my God. It's making me laugh, but I can't remember it. It came after Peep Show, but it's the two guys who starred in that show, Mitchell and Webb. It's from their show, that Mitchell and Webb look. And they're playing Nazis. I'm just going to play. I think it'll come through even with just the audio. Hans, I've just noticed something. These communists are all cowards. Have you looked at our caps recently? Our caps? The badges on our caps.

Have you looked at them? What? No. A bit. They've got skulls on them. Have you noticed that our caps have actually got little pictures of skulls on them? I don't... Hands, are we the baddies? Right, let's see. We should be able to hold them at this point here, at least for a few hours. Why skulls, then? What? Why skulls? Well...

Maybe they're the skulls of our enemies. Maybe. But is that how it comes across? It doesn't say next to the skull, you know, yeah, we killed him, but trust us, this guy was horrid. It's really funny. No, I've never seen that or heard that. Maybe you might have even caught it from just that bit of hearing David Mitchell.

But to me, Mandrake in those moments sounds so much like him. I'm a religious man myself, you know, Jack. I believe in all that sort of thing. And I'm hoping, you know, Jack...

Yes. You know what? I'm here. No, Jack, let me take that for you. I'll take that for you, Jack. And you know what I'm hoping, Jack? I'm hoping you're going to give me the code, boy. That's what I'm hoping. That's really funny. He's got that same kind of manner. I've watched so many hours of David Mitchell between Peep Show and the game show Would I Lie to You, which is also fantastic. Yeah, I have watched some of that. I've probably seen him then. Oh, yeah. I should watch Peep Show, I guess. You definitely should. It's created by...

Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong of, you know, succession fame and in the loop. So,

David Mitchell, I just was like, oh, yeah, he sounds like David Mitchell. And so I just looked it up and David Mitchell says in multiple interviews that his comic hero is Peter Sellers. Oh, that's great. Well done. Nice sleuthing. I guess it's not that much of a surprise because he is a comic hero to so many. By the way, if people are not realizing that Sterling Hayden was in The Godfather, he played Officer McCluskey. Oh.

Spoiler alert, whom Michael shoots and kills in a very, very famous and memorable death scene in the restaurant. I could spend the rest of the time just talking about the last scene with Dr. Strangelove and his plan for the mine shaft. At the bottom of some of our deeper mine shaft, radioactivity would never penetrate a mine some thousands of feet deep.

These last moments after the bomb has been dropped and they know now for certain that the doomsday machine is going to be triggered and they were unable to recall the last plane. You know, I think earlier, up until this point, you might have wondered, why is this movie called Dr. Strangelove? But I think that this scene and really everything from here to the end makes it clear and also gives the fact...

the fact that the movie is called Dr. Strangelove, such a chilling quality because you realize like, oh, actually what these two countries have done, this brinkmanship between the Soviet Union and the USA actually ends up paving the way for Hitler's dream to come true, right? - Poof. - I would hate to have to decide who stays up and who goes down. - That would not be necessary, Mr. President.

could easily be accomplished with a computer. And the computer could be set and programmed to accept factors from youth, health, sexual fertility, intelligence, and a cross-section of necessary skills.

Kubrick was really obsessed with the threat of nuclear fallout. And I don't think that that's one that really comes out when people imagine the devastation. It's like, oh, and by the way, here's a sneaky side door to creating the master race in

I think it's a really brilliant just little moment, too, where he has some weird little paper pinwheel that he messes with to figure out how long they'll have to stay underground. It comes out about 100 years. That's a pocket radiation calculator. It's a real thing. It's a real thing. Wow. That's funny because I was literally watching thinking like, who thought of this? What a great idea that he's got this little thing he can play around with and figure out roughly. Yeah. Isn't this wild?

Wow. I can't believe that's a thing. It shows rads per hour. It has all these, you know, different settings that you can use. That's wild. That's intense. And this is where like the hand comedy is just unbelievable. Oh my God. The idea that every other part of him has kind of compromised and come over to the U.S. except for the one hand, which is still a Nazi. Right.

Yeah, the physical comedy there is brilliant. He's straggling himself at one point. He's straggling himself, yeah. Oh, it's so good. It's unbelievable. And then to end, the most chilling ending, right? The ending is he gets up out of the wheelchair and says, Mind if you're I can walk?

Hitler's dream is up and about once again. Right. Yeah. Everything that he was having to suppress, he's now free and he can walk again. Incredible. I watched an interview with Steven Spielberg actually saying that when he left the theater, he was more terrified than he'd ever been in his life about a nuclear attack.

Yeah, I think that's the ultimate purpose of the film, to make you laugh along the way and then walk out to scare the bejesus out of you. Because I was reading somewhere, somebody in one of the reviews that came out at the time was faulting the movie for not offering a solution. Huh.

I think you missed the point of this movie. Yeah. I saw this film for the first time when I was in high school or whatever it was. Right. I think I didn't fully appreciate the terror of it at the time. Sure. And the boldness. When was the Cuban Missile Crisis? 62? Yes. This was all conceived right in the immediate aftermath of the Bay of Pigs.

I mean, that's astonishing. That's amazing. The boldness, the audacity to make this film in this manner and to make a comedy on the heels of that. Yeah, because that happened in 1962, I think October 1962, right? And then this movie is made between January and October of 1963.

Wow. Yeah, I can only imagine what it must have been like to walk into a theater in 64 and see this film. When did you see it? I don't remember. So I think the answer is very, I think at an early age, and then I revisited it often. It's one of the movies I've probably rewatched as much as any other.

Well, I think it was a masterpiece then. I think it holds up as a masterpiece now. Yeah. 10 out of 10 H-bombs? Oh, gosh. Is that too soon? No. How about 10 out of 10 bodily fluids? There we go. How about the final song, by the way? It's We'll Meet Again by Vera Lynn. Meet again, don't know where to go.

Yeah, I know the Ink Spots version the best, which I actually, I think, just recently heard in the new TV show Fallout. Have you watched that? I have watched Fallout. I've watched it all. I love it. What's amazing, I thought, besides the fact that, yeah, We'll Meet Again plays here,

Dr. Strangelove, in coming up with the idea for the mineshaft and the idea of outliving the nuclear fallout, basically describes the setup of fallout. Yeah. Wow. Well done. Oh, wow. And did we get onto this because you're saying they used We'll Meet Again?

In the show Fallout, you know, there's a lot of nostalgic imagery and music. And one of the recurring bits of music are songs by the Ink Spots. And one of their classic songs is a version of We'll Meet Again. But I know we'll meet again some sunny day. I need you.

I think that does it for another episode of TWWWPFF. Thanks for watching, watching, watching. No, you don't watch us. Thanks for listening. Let us know what you thought of the film on a scale of 1 to 10. Precious bodily fluids.

What are we going to watch next? It's your choice, right? Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, I thought we might watch something a little more recent. We've been watching older films, and I thought it might be time to turn to something more contemporary. And my nomination is Judas and the Black Messiah. Have you seen it?

Have not seen it. Don't know anything about it. It has Martin Sheen in it. It was nominated for Best Picture and a bunch of other Oscars. Great. I look forward to seeing something I've not seen before. Thanks so much to Margaret Miller and Zach McNeese for their help making this episode. Best in the business. The West Wing Weekly and the West Wing Weekly Political Film Fest is part of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, artist-owned,

Listener-supported podcasts. You can find out more about our show and other fine shows at radiotopia.fm. Our website is thewestwingweekly.com, and we have our Patreon, patreon.com slash thewestwingweekly. If you're there, you can join us for our weekly talk.

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