Episode 7: Dr. Strangelove

Kubrick himself labeled Dr. Strangelove as a "nightmare comedy," which seems like a pretty good summary.

➡️ The titular character is a sort of comedic parody of real Operation Paperclip scientists.
➡️ How close did the world really get to nuclear holocaust in the 1960s?
➡️ For me, George C. Scott becomes a perfect embodiment of the military-industrial complex.

⚠️ Spoilers lie ahead.

Links:

https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-sh-strangelove-president-kennedy-assassination-kubrick-20131122-story.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip#/media/File:JFK_Tour_of_KSC_-_GPN-2000-000605.jpg

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2IbxzgOjmevALKdkgzjIOm

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

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/almost-everything-in-dr-strangelove-was-true

https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2014/12/08/jesse-ventura-says-the-nazis-pioneered-the-use-of-fluoridated-water/

https://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2015/09/21/dr-strangelove-a-critique-of-game-theory-as-it-applies-to-nuclear-chicken/

https://www.reddit.com/r/FanTheories/comments/5rco82/dr_strangelove_was_the_one_who_drove_general/

https://www.amazon.com/JFK-Unspeakable-Why-Died-Matters/dp/1439193886

Need more? You can visit the website at: https://consaracytheories.com/ or my own site at: https://saracausey.com/. Don't forget to check out the blog at: https://consaracytheories.com/blog. 

Transcript

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Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

Welcome to con-sara-cy theories. Are you ready to ask questions you shouldn't and find information you're not supposed to know? Well, you're in the right place. Here is your host, Sara Causey.

Hello. Hello, and thanks for tuning in. In tonight's episode, I will be talking about Stanley Kubrick's different, funny, weird crazy off the wall film Dr. Strangelove from 1964. Kubrick himself reportedly referred to it as a nightmare comedy, which makes perfect sense. I started thinking I hadn't watched that film. I think since college. I remember watching it as part of the cinema studies course that I took. But I don't think I had watched it since. So I revisited it recently. And as of this recording is available to watch free of charge on YouTube if you decide you want to do that. So I will pour myself up a beverage of choice here. And we will saddle up together and take this ride. A bit of background information. Dr. Strangelove is based loosely and I mean very loosely on a novel by Peter George published in 1958, titled Red Alert, Kubrick had bought the movie rights to be able to adapt this novel. But just as we see with the shining, he keeps certain basic elements of the source material, but takes it in a completely different direction. Because Red Alert is meant to be like a political thriller. Whereas Dr. Strangelove goes into the absurd. It is a dark comedy. Yes, it's a political thriller. But as Kubrick said himself, it's also a nightmare comedy. This again reminds me of Roger Moore and his portrayal of James Bond. This guy is supposed to be a secret agent. Yet everyone knows his name. They know his call numbers. They know who he works for. They know that he takes a martini shaken not stirred. So Roger decided to play that role tongue in cheek. And as a result, I think that's why it succeeds. When he was following up Sean Connery, who had really defined the role of James Bond for a lot of people, well, how do you replace somebody like that who's stuck in everyone's head when you take it in a completely different direction. And that's something that we see with Kubrick's adaptation. Dr. Strangelove, years later, we also see that with the shining, because he takes Stephen King's most basic premise of the hotel and the characters, but he takes the story in a very different direction. And as I said in my episode about the shining for my money, Kubrick's adaptation on film is scarier, and much more disturbing to me than the book. I know. That's heresy. I know that Stephen King fans will be mad at me for saying so. But when I read the book, I enjoyed it. And yes, there are some spooky, eerie, weird parts to the novel. But even now, when I watch the shining, it gives me the creeps. It just unnerves me in a completely different way. So I think we see a pattern here, to some degree where Kubrick gets an idea, he takes an inspiration, he takes some source material, and then he puts his own unique spin on it, before I drift off into the film and potential interpretations and critiques etc. A couple of just interesting little points to ponder tidbits to note, particularly since I talked about the JFK Pop Pop quite a bit. And in the shining, we have this reference to Allman being a JFK stand in maybe, maybe not. The decision is up to us what we think there are a couple of weird little connections here that are worth mentioning. So Dr. Strangelove, was supposed to be available to a group of Film Critics so that they could see a special preview of it. And when was this going to happen? November 22 1963. A significant date obviously, for those of us who are interested in JFK Pop Pop information. So that special preview was cancelled and the release of the movie was delayed, sort of out of respect to the trauma that the nation has gone through out of respect to people that are grieving the loss. This is not the time for somebody to go to a dark comedy nightmare comedy film about the world potentially ending through nuclear war. Another tidbit for us to chew on is that the character Dr. Strangelove is based not loosely comedically, yes, satirically, yes, but not loosely and not falsely on the idea of Operation paper. Clip scientists. So these people were Nazis confirmed Nazis that were expatriated to America to become part of the military industrial complex. And if you're thinking we did city conspiracy theory that never happened, bullshit, go look it up, it did happen. And it's a tragic thing. To me. That was really the thing I learned about that completely took the scales off my eyes. I think anybody that's interested in alternative knowledge, conspiracy theories, whatever you want to call it, people don't want to try to ferret out the truth that are more willing to go into the esoteric and the dark corners, there's usually something something we learn some knowledge that we get our hands on that tears those skills off from before our eyes, and changes who we are, it just changes the way that you see the world. And for me, that something was learning about Operation Paperclip, and then to rub salt in the wound further, you'll we get all of this Sovetsky sigh us era propaganda about though rodina and mascara sia smear it Fashi smooth, this idea of Mother Russia is going to beat back the Nazi wolves in the threat maybe at the door, but Russia will help to defeat fascism will help to defeat the cancer of Nazism. Well, then you find out that they had their own analogous paperclip program up ROTC also via him.

So it's like, well, what the hell happened to the rodina. And smart fast she's mu when you're importing these Nazi bastards to your own country. And this becomes a sort of arms race in the initial part of the Cold War? Is the fever pitch over who's going to get these Nazis that are considered too important to let go of? And I'm like, Why the hell were they not? Either tried at Nuremberg, or just not allowed to exist on the planet anymore? Why? Why on earth? Would you want to import evil like that? That that just ruined it for me. It really did learning about paperclip was like I will never see the world the same way again. And not after this. I can't. Now these sorts of topics absolutely need to be their own separate episode or episodes. I'm bringing this up here because it is relevant to the movie. And if you go to the Wikipedia page for Operation Paperclip, which I hope you will you need to learn this information for yourself and not just assume that I'm making it up or Oh, I read it in some conspiracy theorists book, it must not be true. This is public known information. Okay, speaking of the JFK Pop Pop, it's interesting because the main photograph that we find at the top of the page is a photograph. I believe it's now in the public domain. So I may use it at some point in time. But it's a photograph of Kurt Davis, who was a v2 rocket scientist later became the NASA director and was a Nazi. Again, this is known information. And he is sitting in between JFK and then Vice President LBJ at a briefing at Cape Canaveral and the body language and interesting LBJ looks like he's bored out of his mind. To be honest, Davis is staring straight ahead and looks very intense. And he has this scar on his face, which I've heard the author Annie Jacobson talk about those scars as being like a mark of Nazi pride, that they would get the scars in dueling matches, and instead of doing whatever would be necessary to heal the scars they wanted, the scars look terrible. So they would pack them with horsehair to try to make them intentionally heal hard and look bad. So here's this Nazi rocket scientist dude, who's sitting there with this terrible scar across his face, JFK is leaning in the opposite direction of him, which could be because he's trying to say something. He might have been in very bad back pain that day, or he might have been trying to get as far away from that damn evil as he possibly could. And I hope it's the latter and not the former. The basic plot of the movie is this. There's a Brigadier General for the Air Force named Jack D. Ripper, which is perfect, played by Sterling Hayden. And he decides to bug protocol buck the normal chain of command for a declaration of war. And there are these B 52 bombers with hydrogen bombs, and they're within a two hour radius from certain targets inside the Soviet Union. And he decides to give a command for these bombs to be dropped. And he has them shut off any other communications that could potentially override his command. And he has this like exchange officer from the Royal Air Force named Lionel Mandrake. And that's one of the three roles that Peter Sellars plays in the film, and each of the three roles is decidedly different. So Mandrake is kind of like this foppish, prim and proper Royal Air Force guy. That is an interesting character foil to river rivers crazy. And he's sort of your quintessential, a gritty cigar smoking American movie soldier, whereas Mandrake is very like, oh, stiff upper lip and all that. So you're sort of stereotypical Brit and a movie. Well, so Ripper tells Mandrake to confiscate all of the privately owned radios, which he does. But while he's doing that, he realizes that this bombing order couldn't have come from the military, like it should have like it didn't come from the President. It didn't come from the Pentagon. So he tries to stop Ripper, and there's this tension that happens. It's comedic tension, but there's this tension that happens between ripper and Mandrake, while they're there on the base, and also around the base. I mean, even though it's this clear engine of war, there are all these signs that say like peace is our profession, which we know better. Meanwhile, there's this general book, turgid son, who's played very well by George C. Scott. I know that Peter Sellars gets a lot of attention for this film, rightfully so because he plays three different roles so masterfully. But I think George C. Scott should not be overlooked because I really felt like his performance in this movie was excellent. And some of his comedic timing was also really spot on. So he, turgid son is informed about what's happened at this airbase, he was with his girlfriend who was under like a tanning lamp. And we see the same kind of female body shape that Kubrick loves, other than a brief moment where one of the pilots is reading a Playboy magazine. This is really the only female character that appears in this film. It is a very male dominated film. And so turgid son has to go off to the War Room, and he's briefing the President President MFI who's also played by Peter Sellars, and and where Mandrake is, kind of the foppish British soldier monthly reminds me a little bit more of like, a Mr. milk toast, businessman type, just balding, and in a suit, and he talks very much like this. And he just he reminds me of Mr. milk toast. And so they're trying to figure out like, How did this even happen? How was this guy able to go so far off the map and do this thing. They're trying to figure out if they can recall the planes in time, they're determining that they couldn't. There's this discussion in the War Room where turgid sin is like, well, we're gonna wind up killing 10 or 20 million people, that's all monthly reports back that he doesn't want to go down in history as being one of the worst mass murderers and turgid sins like Well, maybe you need to be less concerned about your appearance in the history books, and just do this. I think that really points to the attitude that some of these people in the military, industrial and the military intelligence complexes have about human life, let's consider to be an acceptable casualty number. And then what isn't? What separates it out from being acceptable or unacceptable? Where does that line get drawn? And when we think about this, not in comedic terms, it's terrifying. And I think even in the film, there's a reference to Stalin's quote that when one person dies, it's a tragedy. But when millions of people die, it's just a statistic. So the ambassador to the Soviet Union comes in. And he's played very well by the actor Peter BOL, who I had not seen in a role like this before. And he's not a native Russian speaker or a native Russian, which also adds to, I think, the interesting this of this character. And so the President and the ambassador get on this hotline to the Soviet Premier whom we never see, but who is named Dimitri kiss off. And they are winding up having this dialog kiss off his drunk and it sounds like he's at a party. And the President is trying to explain to him what has happened. And they bring up this idea of the Doomsday machine. And I think it's actually the Soviet ambassador that brings it up, but he talks about this doomed Doomsday machine that's been created as a nuclear deterrent. And so there are all of these bombs that have been buried, but they will detonate automatically if there's a nuclear strike against the country, regardless of where it's coming from the US or whoever, then all of these bombs would go off, and the Earth's surface would be uninhabitable for decades. Now, we finally meet the President's job Men Scientific Adviser, Dr. Strangelove, who's a former Nazi. And he has this weird arm. I'm not sure if it's like a mechanical arm, a fake arm, if it's some kind of tick that he has, I'm not sure which it's intended to be to be honest with you. But he has this arm that he fights with. Sometimes he bites it, sometimes the arm hangs down to the side and is like having a fight with him. Other times, when he hits the arm to try to get it to cooperate, it automatically goes into a Nazi salute. For me, this is I think, and this is just my interpretation, it could be wrong. But when I see that performance, I think it's a clear nod to this idea of once a Nazi always a Nazi, even though this guy has supposedly been repatriated. Oh, he's American. Now. He's on our side. He's one of the good guys now. Bullshit. And whenever he hits the arm, and it automatically goes into a Heil Hitler salute, we know better. He also refers to the President as mine fear and then catches himself. Oh, I'm sorry. Excuse me, Mr. President. And so we learned that from Dr. Strangelove, we learned that in order for the Doomsday machine to be an effective deterrent, people would have to know that it existed. And the Soviet Premier says or the ambassador said that the Soviet Premier had planned to reveal its existence to the world. It just hadn't happened yet. So there's continued fighting amongst Mandrake, and

Jack D Ripper back at this base, and Ripper commit suicide. He goes in the bathroom, pretending like he's gonna shave, but he kills himself. And then Mandrake is taken, custody, taken into custody by a soldier. There's this really funny exchange where Mandrake is going to try to call the War Room to tell the President what has happened, but he doesn't have enough change. He tries to make a collect phone call, but he can't. And the soldier who has apprehended him and is standing there holding him at gunpoint in this phone booth is named bat guano. And so they're looking for change. They don't have any, to be able to make this call as a paid telephone call. Well, there's a Coke Cola machine there. And so Mandrake tells the soldier guano to shoot the lock off of it so they can get changed out of the Coke machine. And go on. I was like, Well, if you're not able to get through to the President, when this thing is over with, you're gonna have to answer to the Coca Cola company. I did laugh out loud. And I thought, well, that Welcome to Modern America as well, where the corporations run everything we have this crony capitalism and one hand scratches the other. It's just crazy. You don't have to answer to the Coca Cola Company. Like that's the most important thing is that the Coca Cola company in the middle of nuclear war gets all of the change out of their Coke bottle machine. Alright, so in the midst of all of this, we also have the characters on one of the bomber planes, and slim pickins plays major King Kong. And there's a whole another hilarious scene where they talk about their survival kit, like okay, if we if we're able to make it through this disaster, here's what's in the survival kit and they get a weapon with some ammunition and some emergency rations along with various and sundry pills. A teeny, tiny Holy Bible with a Russian phrase book attached. And when I say tiny, it's like the size of a matchbook. They get some money along with nine packs of chewing gum, one issue of prophylactics, three lipstick tubes and three pairs of nylon stockings. To which King Kong says well, a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all of that stuff. Now was another moment where I genuinely laughed out loud. On the plane, they have difficulties with getting the doors to open. A very young James Earl Jones is playing Lieutenant Zog who's one of the attendants one of the pilots on his plane, they're having difficulty getting the doors to open so that the bomb can actually drop. So Colin goes down there and just does everything manually and he rides one of the bombs down and he's waving his cowboy hat and looks like he's an absolute hog heaven. As he rides the ball. Like he's riding a bowl in the middle of a rodeo. It reminded me a little bit of Robert Duvall is performance in Apocalypse Now where he's like I love the smell of napalm in the morning. It smells like victory. It's It's creepy in that context and Apocalypse Now. It's like oh man that makes my skin crawl. But here you know we're seeing King Kong riding this bomb to his death and he's happy as can be it and he says like it's clear in this film. We have gone all this way. We're We're gonna bomb somebody, even though they're flying low and everything that could have gone wrong on this mission has gone wrong. It's like dammit, we're going to drop a bomb on somebody today. Meanwhile, back at the warm room, Strange Love is recommending that several 1000 People would have to go live in these deep underground mines, where they'll be safe from the radiation and safe from all the toxic substances that are on the surface. And he proposes that they have 10 Women for every one man because they're going to have to procreate. And these are going to have to be attractive, sexually desirable women, so that the men they're going to be so put upon they're gonna have to do all this breeding they're gonna have to have all of this sex, they're going to need to be turned on all the time in order to do that. They're also going to need to have plenty of animals down there for the same reason they're going to need to breed and then slaughter and the way he says slaughter we're gonna slaughter them is very creepy. But the more that he talks about this concubine sex slave arrangement down in the mineshaft, the more excited that the men in the room get, of course, oh 10 attractive women for every one man. Well, what about monogamy? What about marriage? Oh, well, we'll have to put that aside temporarily. We're not gonna have to think about the morality of monogamy. We're just gonna have to put this aside and plow all of these women and get all of them pregnant so that we can repopulate the earth. Oh, yes, it's a sacrifice we're willing to make. But then, so much still in this Cold War us versus them everybody jockeying for position type of mentality, turgid son decides that the Soviets are going to do the same thing. They're probably going to go down in these abandoned mine shafts and have their own concubine society they're going to out breed us, they're going to outclass us that we can't have a quote mineshaft gap. Meanwhile, the ambassador has this secret camera pocket watch. And he's gone off, you know, in the midst of nuclear war, the midst of the apocalypse about to take place you have turgid Eidson, talking about how they're going to have to have another version of an arms race to be able to get ahead of the Soviet so that in 100 years, when everybody can come out from this underground society where they've been living like mold people, highly sexual mold people, we don't want those damn Soviets to be ahead of us. Meanwhile, the ambassador is going around with his hidden camera pocket watch thing, making pictures of the documents and the pictures that are in the War Room. So he's having the same thought, well, we can allow these Americans to get ahead of us. So even in the midst of certain death, I mean, even if people that are in the war room could get to these underground mines and be part of this fake ass civilization down below. They're not going to be alive in 100 years whenever their progeny would be able to go to the surface of the earth. But no, they have to make sure that the Soviets and then also the Americans don't get ahead, just the same bickering the same when two tribes go to war kind of thing. So Dr. Strangelove says that he has a plan, and he stands up from this wheelchair, and exclaims mine fear I can walk. And then the film ends with a montage of photographs of explosions and mushroom clouds and Vera Lynn singing the song we'll meet again. So it's, it's an odd film. It is laugh out loud funny at times. But then also terribly depressing. Because whenever you really think about the meaning you think about what's what's happening in the film, and what could have happened at any point during the Cold War, if somebody's nuclear trigger finger had gotten itchy. It's terrifying. In watching the film again, all of these years later, one of the first things that I thought of was a passage from James Douglass's book JFK and the unspeakable. Now he goes back to the story more than once, but there's a good concise summary of it. In his chronology for the entry July 20 1961, we find at a National Security Council meeting the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Charlie India Alpha director Allen Dulles, present a plan for a preemptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union in late 1963, preceded by a period of heightened tensions. President Kennedy walks out of the meeting saying to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and we call ourselves the human race and quote, so think about the timing of this in late 1963. If the Warhawks had had their way, there very well could have been something like this happening. Somebody that got a trigger finger And and hit the nuclear button. I guess at the time, it seemed unrealistic and maybe insulting to think that somebody could go cuckoo and potentially kill everybody. But with all these years of hindsight and the information, the documents that have been declassified, the information that we have now it doesn't seem so implausible after all. Yes, there are moments in the movie that are ridiculous and laugh out loud funny. But Kubrick is making a very important point. And when we go to the New Yorker, we find an article from January 17 2014. Almost everything in Dr. Strangelove was true. Exactly. But see, all these years later, we are allowed to say that when we're up close to something we're not.

In this New Yorker article we read the command and control of nuclear weapons has long been plagued by an always never dilemma. The administrative and technological systems that are necessary to ensure that nuclear weapons are always available for use in wartime, may be quite different from those necessary to guarantee that such weapons can never be used without proper authorization in peacetime. During the 1950s and 60s, the always in American war planning was given far greater precedence than the never through two terms in office, beginning in 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower struggled with this dilemma. He wanted to retain presidential control of nuclear weapons while defending America and its allies from attack. But in a crisis, those two goals might prove contradictory, raising all sorts of difficult questions. What if Soviet bombers were enroute to the United States but the president somehow couldn't be reached? What if Soviet tanks were rolling into West Germany but a communications breakdown prevented NATO officers from contacting the White House? What if the President were K i L. L. E. D, during a surprise attack on Washington DC along with the rest of the nation civilian leadership, who would order a nuclear retaliation then, with great reluctance, Eisenhower agreed to let American officers use their nuclear weapons in an emergency. If there were no time or no means to contact the president. Air Force pilots were allowed to fire their nuclear anti aircraft rockets to shoot down Soviet bombers heading toward the United States. And about half a dozen high level American commanders were allowed to use far more powerful nuclear weapons without contacting the White House first, when their forces were under attack. And the urgency of time and circumstances clearly does not permit a specific decision by the president or other person empowered to act in his stead in quote. So when we know this information, all of a sudden, this film doesn't seem quite as farcical. It doesn't seem quite as crazy as it probably did. Back in in the 1960s. I think probably most people would be shocked if they really knew how close that we came to these various dust ups and issues becoming incredibly deadly for large swaths of the world's population. It would be like Ziegler in Eyes Wide Shut if you really knew you wouldn't sleep so well at night. One of the other arguments that we see throughout James Douglass's book JFK, and the unspeakable is this idea that JFK really lost control of his own administration, that there were powers and forces a lot stronger than him that were outmaneuvering him, and they were doing whatever they damn well pleased. And it became an issue of, he's a thorn in our flesh, and he needs to just simply go away, he needs to not be part of the equation, he's not going to go along to get along and do what we want him to do. He's been a giant pain in our ass. And so he needs to just not be here anymore. But see people still get even now. People want to believe this idea that the President is not only the leader of the US but the leader of the free world, the most powerful person in the whole wide world can act almost with impunity mean we have in this country, supposedly the checks and balances wink wink between the legislative executive and judicial branches. But still yet the commander in chief we tend to think of that person as being the most powerful person there is who can do almost anything. And then as you start to read these declassified documents, you start to understand history better, you realize that's just simply not the case. I mean, the the subplot here with Dr. Strangelove is that Jack the Ripper has gone crazy, because he has a problem with impotence, and he decides to blame it on the Soviets. He thinks that the Soviets are putting fluoride in the water, and that is causing him to not be able to do what he needs to do with his genitalia. And he says They're polluting the precious bodily fluids of America. Which, okay, you know, again, this is, this is meant to be funny, the idea that we're gonna get thrown into nuclear war over some guy's penis. I'm tempted to say that's meant for you. But it touches on another conspiracy theory of what is going on with fluoride in the water. I mean, we still see this with people like Alex Jones. Jesse Ventura has brought it up before, what what is going on with chemicals that are being added to the water? Are they as Alex says, turning the freaking frogs gay? Are they making people docile and compliant? Are they causing people to have lower IQs and brain damage? I mean, these are all conspiracy theories that are out there. And I don't claim to have an answer to that. I think that people who, people who say that Dr. Strangelove is strictly a condemnation of conspiracy theories. And it's usually left wingers who say that about right so called right wing conspiracy theories. It's like, I think you're missing some bigger points there. That's like the acquaintance I know, who says that. For him. The Shining is just strictly a movie about cabin fever. Jack goes crazy. And then windy goes crazy. And it is just strictly a book about our excuse me a movie about being isolated and having cabin fever and how the human mind can make all kinds of hallucinations when you've been alone for too long. Now emotionally for him, that must have some kind of huge resonance. I agree with what Brando said, it's the audience that does the work. When you go to see a movie, it's less about the actors and the actresses on the screen and more about the meaning, and the emotion that gets assigned to that film and to those performances by the audience. So maybe for him, he has some real thing about cabin fever and isolation, I don't know. But for me, that's an awfully childlike and reductive way to talk about such an interesting and multilayered film. And I would say the same thing here about Dr. Strangelove, there's so many things going on in this film, and so many, so many points of absurdity, about the deterrence, and well, it's only a deterrent if everybody knows that you can use it and mutually assured destruction. And there's an article on one of the cornell.edu blogs, I'll drop a link to it that mentions the game theory. And they have this chart about doves and hawks, two doves playing the game are going to both tie a dove and a hog. One, the dove will lose and the hawk will win. However, if you have two hawks playing this game of chicken, it's going to lead to Armageddon. Nobody's going to back down. Nobody's going to compromise. So this idea of Mutually Assured Destruction. Well, what if both of the war hawks are willing to press the button and everybody dies? In that situation? Nobody's winning. So it said that Dr. Strangelove is a former Nazi and this suggests Operation Paperclip and it apparently you know, we don't know for sure, but apparently, the character is an amalgamation. I'm gonna go now to Wikipedia. The character is an amalgamation of Rand Corporation strategist Herman Kahn, rocket scientists Verner von Braun, a central figure in Nazi Germany's rocket development program, recruited to the US after the war, and Edward Teller the father of the hydrogen bomb. It is frequently claimed that the character was booked was based on Henry Kissinger, but Kubrick and sellers denied this seller said Strangelove was never modeled after Kissinger that's a popular misconception. It was always Wernher von Braun. Furthermore, Henry Kissinger points out in his memoirs that at the time of the writing of Dr. Strangelove, he was a little known academic and quote. So we have Sellars himself saying that he had Verner von Braun in mind for this character. Another interesting tidbit here, when we look at the passage about George see Scott is general book turgid son, we read according to James Earl Jones, Kubrick tricked Scott into playing the role of general turgid son in a much more outlandish manner than Scott was comfortable doing. Kubrick talks got into doing absurd practice takes which Kubrick told Scott would never be used as a way to warm up for the real takes Cubert use these tapes rather than the more restrained ones in the final film causing Scott to swear never to work with Kubrick again. Which is funny because the to me part of what makes his character so rich, so entertaining, but then also conversely, so believable in this role is that he is so outlandish oh, we're gonna kill 10 or 20 million people look, you know, isn't it kind of worth it? I mean, don't worry about that. Don't worry about your reputation in the history books just go ahead and kill these people because you know, is it really that big of a deal? Don't we think it's just an acceptable loss?

According to Wikipedia, also, allegedly, the characters of Dr. Johnson and Jack D. Ripper, satirize Curtis LeMay of the Strategic Air Command. That might be true, I don't know. I thought again of James Douglas, his book JFK and the unspeakable. There's a passage in the chronology that refers to Limaye October 19 1962, as President Kennedy resolves to blockade further Soviet missile shipments rather than bomb and invade Cuba, he meets with his Joint Chiefs of Staff, they push for an immediate attack on the missile sites, General Curtis LeMay tells him this blockade and political action is almost as bad as the appeasement of Hitler at Munich and quote. So in its way, I think, Dr. Strangelove gives us this inside baseball to how these rabid military types think. Like, again, I come back to this question, well, how do they decide what's an acceptable loss and what isn't? How many people have to die for them to decide it's an unacceptable amount of people to die? That's like, this is what war hawks do. They want war. And they have no compunction, no hesitation about sending somebody else's sons and daughters or grandsons and granddaughters into the theater of war. It's like blood lust. There's an interesting fan theory over on Reddit. The title is Dr. Strangelove was the one who drove general Ripper insane. So in this fan theory, this person has posted the idea that it was Dr. Strangelove who manipulated General Jack D Ripper into launching the strike, because he was sort of like, okay, so Ripper is having this problem being able to perform his manly duties. And so Dr. Strangelove is sort of like the one who says, well, it's not your fault. You can trust me. I'm a doctor. I'm a scientist, it's the commies. The commies are poisoning the water and somebody has to do something about it. So Strangelove manipulates the general into launching the strike, and then he manipulates the president into believing that the strike is survivable. Meanwhile, he knows that it's not, but he wants humanity to go down into these mind shafts and for everybody to listen to him. And to have this sort of Nazi esque regime down in these mind shafts will have tin women for every man. And we're going to have the the most desirable women, they're going to be selected for their sexual attractiveness, and we're going to breed the best of the best. And then we're gonna only take the best genetic specimen animals down there. I mean, you can tell this sort of eugenicist agenda coming up in what Strange Love is talking about. And then at the end, of course, he's so excited that he stands up mine fear or I can walk. You know, sometimes I kind of wonder if we're, if we're a little bit closer to being the Fourth Reich. And then we would care to admit, that is most certainly a topic for another episode. And I wish I could have some whiskey to discuss that one. So for me Strange Love is it's a great film. It's interesting. It's funny, it's dark. It's the kind of film that after you watch it, and you laugh, when you really start thinking about the subject matter, not only how close we were then in the Cold War, but how close we could be at any point in time, with all of the conflicts and all of the Sturm on drawing that goes on even now. It's very thought provoking. It's the kind of film I think, where you'll laugh while it's on but then afterwards, when you begin to contemplate the subject matter, you feel very sad. What do you think? If you haven't watched it in a while, give it another watch and see what you think about it. Stay a little crazy, and I'll see you in the next episode.

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