-- Removing a literary reference: The Bombs have the words "Dear
John" and "Hi There" scrawled on them. In George's novelization, one
of the bombs is nicknamed "Lolita."
(B.S.)
GENERAL
-- The B-52 interior was classified at the time of the film's
production. But apparently, Kubrick's researches found a photo of the
interior published in a British aviation magazine, and the end result
was the extremely accurate set we see in the final film.
(B.S.)
-- Kubrick on game theory: "I started out being completely unfamiliar
with any of the professional literature in the field of nuclear
deterrence. I was at first very impressed with how subtle some of the
work was -- at least so it seemed starting out with just a primitive
concern for survival and a total lack of any ideas of my own.
Gradually I became aware of the almost wholly paradoxical nature of
deterrence or as it has been described, the Delicate Balance of
Terror. If you are weak, you may invite a first strike. If you are
becoming too strong, you may provoke a pre-emptive strike. If you try
to maintain the delicate balance, it's almost impossible to do so
mainly because secrecy prevents you from knowing what the other side
is doing, and vice versa, ad infinitum . . ."
(submitted by B.S., quoting Alexander Walker)
-- Kubrick on game theory II: "Two men get on a train in different
cars -- they know the rules but they can't communicate. And the game
is this: that if they both get off at the first station, man A gets
ten dollars and man B gets three dollars. If they both get off at the
second station, man B gets ten dollars and man A gets three dollars.
But if they don't get off at the same station, in other words if they
get off differently, neither one of them gets anything. So here you
have a situation where you have mutual conflict and mutual interest
and great chances for misunderstanding, even under the circumstances
where one side was willing to give a little more than the other, or
than he was willing to take."
(Ciment, p. 88)
For an article on THE PRISONERS' DILEMMA (to which this example is
very closely related), go to
ftp.netcom.com, /pub/kr/krusch/home.html
-- Kubrick on why DR. STRANGELOVE is a comedy: "As I tried to build
the detail for a scene I found myself tossing away what seemed to me
to be very truthful insights because I was afraid the audience would
laugh. After a few weeks of this I realized that these incongruous
bits of reality were closer to the truth than anything else I was
able to imagine. After all, what could be more absurd than the very
idea of two mega-powers willing to wipe out all human life because of
an accident, spiced up by political differences that will seem as
meaningless to people a hundred years from now as the theological
conflicts of the Middle Ages appear to us today?
And it was at this point I decided to treat the story as a
nightmare comedy. Following this approach, I found it never
interfered with presenting well-reasoned arguments. In culling the
incongruous, it seemed to me to be less stylized and more realistic
than any so-called serious, realistic treatment, which in fact is
more stylized than life itself by its careful exclusion of the banal,
the absurd, and the incongruous. In the context of impending world
destruction, hypocrisy, misunderstanding, lechery, paranoia,
ambition, euphemism, patriotism, heroism, and even reasonableness can
evoke a grisly laugh."
(Submitted by B.S., quoting Alexander Walker, p. 34, and Nelson, p.
81. This is actually a composite quote, the two sources juxtaposed)
VOYAGER LASERDISC -- DETAILS
-- Voyager-Criterion issued a remastered laserdisc of DR. STRANGELOVE
in 1992. This version was struck from Kubrick's personal print of the
film (one generation removed from the original negative). The disc
jacket reads: "The film was shot using in-camera mattes with
alternating aspect ratios, between 1.66:1 and 1.33:1. A new digital
film-to-tape transfer was created using a 35mm duplicate negative and
35mm 3 track magnetic master."
The different mattes for the film's different aspect ratios are
probably best noticeable at the top of the frame, in the shots where
Major Kong puts on his Stetson hat. Also, as Kong rides the bomb, the
bomb can be seen jumping "over" the background matte plate.
The Criterion disc also includes a wealth of materials outlining
the civil-defense plans of the early 1960s, including still frames of
various pamphlets, the famous short "Duck and Cover," and an early
"video" of George McCulvey's "My Teenage Fallout Queen." There is
also a British Film Board-approved trailer advertising Strangelove,
which -- unique for its day -- includes photos of Kubrick himself.
Best of all is an account of the film's laser remastering, as well as
a frame-by-frame representation of an early STRANGELOVE script. The
cover of the Criterion disk was also designed by Kubrick.
An early draft of the script -- written by Kubrick, before Southern
was brought in -- can be read frame-by-frame on the Voyager-Criterion
laserdisc. In this early draft, the film is presented as a recovered
record found by aliens on a dead planet called Earth. (The opening
credits describe a "Micro-Galaxy-Meteor" logo with a squalling alien
head. Amusing, in light of the stylized MGM logo used in 2001.) This
script is clearly less than the final product; a great deal of the
final film's better lines clearly came from Southern's later
contributions, including General Ripper's "bodily fluids" obsessions.
Although there is a character named Turgidson, a character named
"Buck" Schmuck gets most of what eventually wound up as Turgidson
dialogue. (Interesting note: in this early script, one General is
named "Toejam." So is a Marine in FULL METAL JACKET.)
(B.S.)
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