[music] Well, opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like this before. You know, what was this? I'm kind of mad at you. [music] Welcome to Pushing Up the Movie Podcast, where two old friends discuss and debate films in the canon that one or both of them have issues with. My name is Damien. Hello, and this is my co-host, the venerable Adam Nightingale. Hello. Today we'll be discussing Stanley Kubrick's nuclear war satire, Doctor Strange Love or colon, how I stopped worrying and learned to love the bomb from 1964. So Adam, let's start off with a little synopsis. What have you got for me? Yeah, well, it's a nuclear war comedy thriller, drama, and it's basically the premise is that in the American government, there's this mechanism by which you can start a nuclear war without the authorization of the president if you feel that the nation is under attack. And so there's a colonel called Jack D. Ripper, who's insane, who initiates this protocol and sends a host of B-52 bombers to bomb Russia with nuclear bombs. And it's a race against time to stop this happening and recall the bombers before all-out nuclear war has happened on the will of one paranoid man. And this drama's played out, not quite in real time, but I'd say over the course of maybe an evening. And the protagonist trying to stop this happening are a British RAF officer who happens to have been stationed in some kind of exchange program with this general. You've got the whole crisis being played out in the war room, this underground bunker where news reaches the president and he's trying to sort of stop it, but then running into fearances, a sort of Randy General played by George C. Scott. And in the middle of it all is this insane German Nazi sort of scientist, the Doctor Strange Love of the title, who just wants nuclear annihilation so he can repopulate the world with beautiful women in bunkers. Three of the protagonists are played by Peter Sellers, and then you have great character actors and sort of character actors stars like George C. Scott. Sterling Hayden is the general, and it keeps the action flips backwards and forwards between what's happening in America and what's happening in this B-52 bomber manned by the Great Western character actors slim peckins as they get closer and closer to Russia and all-out nuclear war. And it's a comedy, there we go. Amazing, that's great, thank you, that's brilliant. Okay, I'll give you a little background to the film. So in 1962, Kubrick acquired the rights to a book called Red Alert by Peter George. It was a novel about a deranged general, pretty much the same synopsis that you've just given, who sends a bunch of B-52 planes to launch a nuclear attack on Russia. Kubrick proceeded to adapt the book or began to adapt the book with Peter George. But as he was doing so, he sort of kept seeing the absurdity of it all, and it just felt like a straight adaptation of the book, which isn't a comedies, very much a drama really, wasn't going to work and that the comedy element would work. So he decided to be better served as a satire, and previously being given the book The Magic Christian by Terry Southern from his friend and previous collaborator, the English comedy actor Peter Sellers, who we just used in the later two years previously. So Kubrick hires Terry Southern to start work on the script. This is in 1962, sorry 1962 yeah, the film comes out in 1964. So whilst working on the script, another similar story about the threat of nuclear war, the novel failsafe, comes out in 1962 and is about to be made into a film. So Kubrick, feeling that it might have a negative effect on his own film, ends up suing the novelists Eugene Burdock and Harvey Wheeler on charges of plagiarism and ends up settling out of court. And also then believe that like making it a black comedy would separate it from failsafe. Scrains love ends up getting released in January 1964 and failsafe, which was directed by Sydney Lumet was released in October later that year. As Adam said the film stars Peter Sellers playing three parts. We also have starring Sterling Hayden, who previously appeared in The Killing for Cubic years before, George C. Scott, as you mentioned, Slim Pickens, Keenan Nguyen, which we'll come to later on, and the voice of Darth Vader himself and Tulsa Doom, James Earl Jones in his film debut, interestingly enough. So principal photography began in Shepperton studios in London in January and finished in April 1963. It was released in January '64 to critical and commercial acclaim. The film received four Academy Award nominations, Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Actor for Peter Sellers. It had a budget of 1.8 million and took 9.2 million at the box office and it was the last black and white film that Kubrick ever made. That's it. That's my brief little synopsis on the making of it. We'll get into more as we go along. Before I let you out of the gate, I'm just going to say that I chose this film. As we know, if you've listened to any of these podcasts, you'll know I'm a massive Kubrick fan. And I had a problem with this film when I first saw it, I was like five, six, seven, eight years ago. I think I might have seen it around the time when the exhibition was on, which I don't know when that was. We can work that out later. I had a problem with Peter Sellers. I had a problem with Peter Sellers being in so much like three different parts. It's just, it got in the way. And then the same thing happened when I saw Lolita. I just felt it was oversellers and I just wasn't buying it. This time around, I felt slightly different, but I'll pass it over to you, mate, to give us some more background or some. Okay, so, so this you would just a few, just a few extra sort of little tidbits of information. Interesting. You would have hated it a quarter more if Sellers had been casting all the roles he wanted to play because he was going to play four roles, leading the Slim Pickens Major King Kong. What stopped him doing that was he'd break his ankle and the famous sequence. Really? Oh, did he know? Oh, okay. He basically didn't want to do the fourth part. All right. So it steps out of a car at one point and pretends to break his ankle and goes to hospital pretending that he's done this. So Kubrick doesn't make him do this fourth part that he wanted him to do and Sellers didn't want to do. Oh, fascinating. I didn't know that. Yeah. So it shows you what a brilliant physical comedian he is that he can pull that off. Absolutely. This is like witness evidence for the defense there already. But yeah. And there was that we didn't mention the production designer Canardan. And this is maybe a magnum opus. And you know, he's kind of famous for, you know, creating the war room and the famous war room interior. And he was a production designer on the whole thing. And then probably most famous for being the great builder of, or designer of Bond film sets, you know, like the sort of crater headquarters of Spectre in. You only live twice being probably like the most notable example. They weren't allowed. They obviously didn't have the cooperation of the Pentagon on this for obvious reasons. And so they had the problem of trying to, trying to design the interior of a B-52 bomber and they weren't allowed any access to them. So they use and they guess from a B-29 flying fortress and they just basically kind of guess. But then the interior was so coincidentally exact to the interior of a B-52 bomber that it's thought that Ken Adam had some inside help. From CIA people legally leaking information. That's fantastic, a bit of casting what if, according to Terry Southern, as this may or may not be true. John Wayne was actually asked to play Major King Kong. And for, you know, being a very, very famous anti-communist and patriot turned it down in a heartbeat. Probably didn't give it another second thought until it came out and probably raged against it. But man, how do I do what he thinks is best? Yeah, so John Wayne could have been in that movie, which would have been fascinating. And yeah, I'm, well, I would get anything else. Oh, yeah, my favorite. I love sort of perverse Oscar results. What we didn't mention was that every, in every category, Dr. Strange I've lost to my fair lady. [LAUGHTER] Andy Kubrick lost to, I think it was Stanley Donan. And yeah, so I think that's one of the great perverse. Whatever you think of the film, it's got to be better than my fair lady. And, you know, lost in every category to my fair lady. Yeah, well, I think I'll leave that there if anything else pops up. This would be interesting, contextually appropriate. And I remember I'll throw it in. So you've already, you've already let the cow, the bag. Now, I was very, very surprised when you nominated this film because I know how big a Kubrick fan you are. But I did not realize, I think you had mentioned it in the past, you're deep, deep loathing for Peter Sellers acting. [LAUGHTER] I'll tell you what I thought of what he did after you've sort of run out of. This time round, so I did a bunch of research on Peter Sellers. I watched three parts BBC Arena documentary about his life. So I got to know a lot more about him than I had done before. And then, and we were going to a couple this episode with being there. Did you watch being there? No, I couldn't be bothered. OK, no worries, no worries. It's definitely worth seeing. We watched it and didn't hate it as much as I hated it the first time. And he did win an Oscar for that. No, he didn't win. He never won. He didn't win. Oh, he never won. It was just nominated for that. I think there's only two Oscar nominations for acting were being there. Who won that year, do you know? I have no idea, but it wasn't. That's so good. Yeah, cool. I think my problem with Peter Sellers was, as I said, in Dr. Strangelove and in Alita, is that it takes me out of the film. It becomes a little bit too. It's what Mike Myers does, right, in Austin Powers, playing like, you know, different parts or even Eddie Murphy in "The Nutty Professor." It sort of slips into pure bass or pure, sort of, pure rile comedy that takes me away from it. I read "Red Alert," and it's really interesting and it's really well written and it takes you on a great journey. It ends very differently. The world doesn't explode and the bombs don't go off like that. The bomb does go off, but it goes off away from its target and so the problem is very minimal to the Russians and they're constantly, the president is constantly on the phone to the Russian remia. The arguments of Colonel Quinton, who becomes Jack D. Ripper, are much more based in logic. The idea that he wants to, that they really felt that the communism was a threat, not because of the foreignization or trying to take bodily fluids from, you know, Americans, but because, you know, he felt that it was a threat to the actual livelihood of the Americans and so if they take them out, then it will be a way to keep peace. Also, Colonel Quinton was diagnosed with a terminal illness, had like six months to live, which obviously makes it very different to Jack D. Ripper. And I don't know, I felt, I felt with strange love that if it was played a little bit more seriously that it might have, that I might have enjoyed it more. Like, this is not for me, you know, everybody loves this film. It's like a number, whatever on the AFI film list and seen as like, you know, an incredibly, one of the best American films ever made, right? And I get it because at the time, I understand like 1960s, 1962, it was just off the back of the Cuban Missile Crisis, like the threat of nuclear war was so high. It was also quite high in like the early '80s, but as I remember, you know, when threads came out and the idea that it was a possibility that we were all going to get nuked. I think it is an important film. It was probably one of the first times that they made light of a subject on this level. I don't know, maybe you'll be able to drop something in that is, that's comparative, but like, yeah, I think that everybody was so scared that they needed to have a laugh. My problem with it is that, my problem with it is Dr. Strangelof himself. That's my main problem with the film. Like, I like what he's doing with Merkin Muffley and, you know, the sexual, sorry, the sexual connotations throughout the whole film, the names, the phallic sort of rockets, the phallic planes, everything about it. It was all a little bit too on the nose. I mean, Kubrick was coming off the back of "The Leader", which is a film about sex without any sex in it. And I think that he was probably about frustrated that he couldn't make the film that he wanted to make because of the pressure from various sensors. Dr. Strangelof, it should have been called "Fuck the World", right? So it's still a sex film, really. Maybe he's just sort of getting that out of his system. But I don't like Strangelof, I didn't like his, it felt too comic, too Mike Myers, too sort of way on the nose to, yeah, I wasn't, I didn't find it funny. Are you talking about the whole film now when you say I don't know? I'm talking specifically about the character of the character. Well, they would be, but digitally, there would be much time and little to do. But with the proper breeding techniques and the ratio of, say, ten females to each male, I would guess that they could then work their way back to the present gross national product within, say, twenty years. Who I understand isn't in the original novel, these are complete in battle. They added him, like Peter George, he's an interesting guy, he's an X-R-E-F guy, who basically shot himself. I know two years later, it's crazy, right? But out of Kubrick, you can't have a Kubrick film without someone getting like massively burned by Kubrick because Harry Southern gets the lion's share. We had this in Easy Rider, didn't we, like, the jostling, the Reddit and the extent to which Terry Southern was or wasn't involved. That just seems to be the curse that follows him around, you know, in that he's clearly, I think, responsible for the comedy. You know, and so in a sense, you know, is a significant author of the film because it's a comedy. And he, but, you know, there was, I think there was a life article in which Southern Kubrick were interviewed and Southern's credited as the principal's green writer or level with Kubrick and George is sort of relegated. Yeah, but other than that, it's a pretty harmonious shoe. You would imagine someone of Peter Sellers nature and Kubrick's nature, they would fall out, but they really got on with each other. I really, I actually agree with you about Sellers. I was going in there expecting to dislike Sellers because I dislike him as a person. I think the more you know about him and the more you see, he was spectacularly unpleasant man, very damaged man. Arguably, it raised his own personality and these meticulously constructed or grotesquely constructed characters. I like actors who play multiple comedic roles. So I like the first Austin Powers film. I like what Eddie Murphy does and I really like. I actually like everything Sellers does in this, but I think what you get, actually, is the film works brilliant because I don't think anyone's really playing it for that. I think George C. Scott's big, his performance is very big. It's quite, you know, I think it works. I think it works in the context of the film. I think Sterling Hayden is absolutely brilliant in it. I think if you're farming out other Oscars, I think he deserved a nomination, definitely. I think he has some outrageous things to say, which I love. I love all this stuff about essential bodily fluids. I think that's hilarious. Why do you realize that 70% of you was water? Not. And as human beings, you and I need fresh, pure water to replenish our precious bodily fluids. And it's scary because he absolutely believes it. And he's delivering a very, very straight pace performance saying stuff that's out. And I think the way he interplays with Sellers, who really kind of, with his English kind of RAF officer, he kind of hovers on the edge of, you know, a comic character. I think he just keeps at the right level of it. I think his president is brilliant because he plays it incredibly straight. And there's all this chaos going around him that he can barely control. And then along comes Dr. Strangelop, who actually isn't in the movie that much. If you clock up the screen time, it probably amounts to less than maybe 10, 15 minutes or 10 minutes. Yeah, that's what you remember. And it feels like a character that's sort of straight out of the goonshow and ending up in this movie. And it feels like it belongs in another movie because it's so kind of over the top with his sort of, we talked in the Frankenstein, young Frankenstein episode about Kenneth Mars and his like kind of arm acting with this kind of wooden out of control arm. And you've got, you know, a scientist is clearly a Nazi with his comedy Nazi accent in his wheelchair with his sort of hand that he can't control doing sea chiles. And I think, I think, I think Strangelop works because all the absurdity is anchored by characters who are playing it deadly straight and everything else is just chaotic and ridiculous. And actually not that over the top because obviously, you know, the threat of nuclear annihilation was very, very real for about, you know, 30, 40 years and stuff like that. And then Salas comes along and does this like comedy bear, which he, I think he just about gets away with, but threatens to basically kind of capsize the movie. You mean, people could actually stay down there for 100 years? Would not be difficult, my fear, nuclear reactors could, I'm sorry, Mr President, nuclear reactors could provide power almost indefinitely. Greenhouses could maintain plant life, animals could be bred and slaughtered. So I actually kind of agree with you. Although I do find the film really, really funny comedy was like the best way to treat this subject because I find this film chilling. It's really funny, but I love the fact that they subvert the ending of the book. And it ends as badly as it possibly could end for the human rights. And it sort of ends on that absurd note and it's one of the best uses of counterintuitive music, isn't it, with that virulence will meet again to this montage of real mushroom cloud footage from various nuclear atom bomb tests and things like that. I actually think it's chilling and I'll put this to you that it's a better film than Oppenheimer and makes its point. I agree and I haven't even seen it. Yeah, but it makes its point, it makes its point better for using comedy and actually being two hours, which is a unique Kubrick experience for me, a film coming in at just a little bit over an hour and a half. No, it's not and I think it makes its point and then it clears off and it's funny, but it's chilling and Oppenheimer is so weighed down by the seriousness of its subject matter. It can't edit itself. Your face is constantly being rubbed into this is serious, this is serious, this is what we nearly did to ourselves, this is what we've unleashed on the world. And it's kind of boring in places, it's heavy. And I often think that comedy can be the best way to tackle a counterintuitive approach can often be the best way to tackle this subject. I mean, I think this might get people like sort of tearing the hair up. I actually think Django Unchained is a better way of delivering a lesson about slavery in a way than 12 years or so. As you watch 12 years, you know, how many people have watched 12 years as slaves twice, you know, it's all, you know, Django Unchained Smuggles stuff in in this like pork story and there's a surprising amount of, you know, it makes the over the top. And as the fact that it's a sort of revenge story, it's really entertaining. There's an awful lot in there that is so kind of out there and extreme that did actually happen. You know, and more people would have watched that. It's a Trojan horse movie and I think I think Dr. Stringsworth is like that. I think they don't smuggle it. It's front and center, but it delivers something that is incredibly serious and paradoxically the kind of horror of it is accentuated by the fact that they're treating it as a comedy. This is a black comedy. This is what we are. We are a joke. We could potentially annihilate ourselves over like kind of a ridiculous sequence of events set in motion by one lunatic. You know, and it's funny because it's not that funny if that makes sense. So that's my kind of rambled. Yeah, I like it. What you were saying about Stirling Hayden's Jack Ripper's conspiracy theory, it's scary because it's not actually that far away from some of the, you know, ridiculous theories that are out there that people of power have been spouting and sharing. In the last, since the pandemic really, you know, it's not that far away. They were even saying that it says it's not based on anybody, but apparently there was one kernel that was very similar to this character. I could bomb bombs, bombs away. Hey, it was made some general bombs may who was responsible for him. Yeah, he was the thigh bombing of Tokyo guys so he was he was there. Although I don't think he wasn't mad and he was very self aware. I was talking to my brother is like a war to not any new he was and he was saying that, you know, he was essentially he was like the, the kind of American equivalent of bomb Harris, you know, the kind of area bombing that guy in the RAF and it was just like, I'm making this strategic decision that will kill civilians. Our fire bomb. Yeah. If the Japanese win, I will be I'll be executed as a war criminal. If we if we win, it's a different story but but yeah he's say he was he was a sort of very. If this is Curtis Lemay you're talking about Curtis yeah but it's yeah Curtis yeah yeah yeah yeah. It says here, the cigar chewing Curtis Lemay provided an easily recognizable prototype for the film's fanatical general Jack the Ripper. Lemay never met a bombing plan he didn't like. In 1957 he declared to a congressional committee charged with investigating US military policy that if a Soviet attack ever seemed likely, he planned to knock the shit out of them before they ever got off the ground and bombed them back to the Stone Age. Reminding but reminded by committee members that a preemptive first strike was not official government policy, he retorted no it's not official policy but it's my policy Yeah, yeah no that sounds like that sounds like the Ripper that you see a little bit more like that I didn't know I didn't know about his his I didn't know he'd said that about that makes more sense that it would be a caricature of him and stuff. It's, I've got something else that I was going to refer about what you were talking about. Oh yeah, the voice of Dr Strangelove came from the photo journalist Arthur phallic, more famously known as Ouija, who was a photographer on the set of Strangelove. So I'm so that's heard his voice and his voice is quite high pitched. And so he brings the puts a German element to it and then it becomes a little bit you know, so that's quite interesting right because you mentioned Ouija before in one of my previous When we were talking about the killers we were talking about Lee Marvin by way of happily but we got on to the killers and like Ouija's photographic styles heavily influential on the look of film noir and Ouija appears in the band cast a version of the killers Yeah, he's in the audience, maybe taking a picture I can't remember but yeah so I didn't I didn't I didn't know about that I didn't know about Ouija's forms it was very, very interesting. So I mean what's your relationship with Peter Sellers growing up because he's a fixture of my childhood pink pant for movies, yeah, you know, just I remember sort of catching the last few Peter Sellers movies at the cinema. So I never saw a pink pant for film at the cinema it was always a television thing for me, even though they were on I remember them being on I saw the fiendish plot of Dr Fu Manchu which I think was his last film, which I remember I don't really remember much about it apart from the opening Joe, which feels like a very thing that might might emulate where he's playing, he's playing the famous fugue on organ fugue that is associated with horror whose name I can't remember that and then sort of goes into the happy birthday You know, sort of tune and start singing Happy Birthday to Fu, I seem to remember that being the funniest joke in it and desperately desperately trying to kid myself that it was funnier than it was I think sort of like the last hurrah was being there but he did a couple of really kind of dog awful comedies I think he did a version of the Prisoner of Zander as well. And then the one I really remember is the sort of, we were talking earlier before the, before we started recording about the recent documentary The Clones of Bruce Lee, you know, about all the all the Bruce Lee knockoffs. And in that documentary they spent a fair little bit of time on Game of Death, you know, which was assembled, a film built entirely around 20 minutes of Bruce Lee fight footage and how ghoulish that was. And I remember going to see, I can't even remember what it was called, the Peter Sellers movie, the Cluso movie that was... The one that was assembled from all the outtakes and comics, yeah, and again sitting there just desperately trying to find it funnier than it was and you realize the reason that these did make it into the movie is because they weren't very funny and things like that. And so, that's my cinematically, my relationship with Peter Sellers, I absolutely loved him growing up, I love the Inspector Cluso films. Yeah, I love the party, which probably hasn't dated very well, you know, one replays that the kind of Indian actor and things like I had a Peter Sellers album. Oh, no, no, no, I didn't have a Peter Sellers album, I bought it my brother for Christmas or his birthday and he always accused me of buying it for myself. And so it's become a shorthand in our house, if you buy someone else a present and it would appear that you are more invested in that gift than they are, my brother will just suck it. Best of Peter Sellers. And so, and I think that was the first time when I started to kind of find him a bit grating, you know, because a lot of the songs were a little bit kind of drawn out one joke. Some of them were very funny, you know, like he does a version of Hard Day's Night as Richard III, but then that's the joke. And it doesn't seem to advance beyond that say, you know, he's clearly a brilliant, like, character comic, don't you think, or do you find his characters annoying as a general rule. No, he's definitely a talented dude, like his capability of the way he mimics is incredible. Even one of the voices in Lolita he does takes on Kubrick. And it sounds really like him, you know, like he's got the intonation and the rhythm, very, very spot on. He's yeah, I never saw being there when I was young, and I lied about Pink Panther strikes again that's a lie that was in 76. There was like trailer the Pink Panther, Curse of the Pink Panther and Son of the Pink Panther, which came out sort of post death, I think. I think trailer Pink Panther was the assembled one, wasn't it? Yeah, I think I remember seeing that at the cinema. I loved him as a kid, you know, but then you love him because he's an inspector Cluso, like really not. I think I did go and see the finished plot of Fu Manchu have absolutely no recollection of it so that piano thing like no, I just don't remember it at all. Yeah, yeah, it's not a film that I probably rewatch. I don't know, like he feels like an empty vessel in a sense that he pours in these characters and is able to, it's almost like he's in a robot or an AI. Like even when you're watching him doing President Muffly, like I think he's great in it, but I do feel like where's the humanity? Yeah, I feel that's a bit lacking. Can I read you something? I had some quotes prepared that this seems to be a nice opportunity to read. This is from the David Thompson's biographical dictionary film, some massive, literally physically massive books, you have to excuse me as I get to weird angles to read it. Yeah, he's not, I don't think he's not a fan of sellers, so he's written this essay on sellers. And this is what he says. He was often funny, the one film he was broader than he had been on radio, but he was too evidently a virtuoso and little else. His comedy never helped him find a character as happened with Fields, Groucho and so many others. There was no attitude there to sellers. His deafness was ghostly, yet he could be very dull when some serious fancy took him. His health was poor, but his ego was very strong. He was not easy to work with, and he was very self-indulgent, as Inspector Cluso. What do you think about that? I think that's spot on, really. You think about comedians who transition into film and do it very successfully, somebody like Robin Williams. Robin Williams always brought the humanity to. He always bought three dimensions to him, but if there's something lacking in, like you were saying, you don't really look at Peter Sellers. I don't think Peter Sellers knew who he was as a person. It feels like the only time that he was probably alive was when he was impersonating or mimicking or getting a reaction from somebody and then made a career out of that. Although technically he's brilliant, there's a moment in being there where he cries and it's not a... His eyes are red and there's some tears coming down. It's quite a moving moment in the film, and that's probably why he was nominated. It's probably that scene that is the closest thing to humanity, but I just don't think it's there. David Thompson likes being there precisely because the character from being there from what I understand is an empty vessel anyway, isn't it? It's almost like the perfect utility. For those who haven't seen being there, which includes me, can you explain what his character is and why that utilizes the fact that he seems to be this brilliant android or this empty vessel that replicates life rather than lives life on screen? Yeah, he plays a gardener who's been working for the same person since he was a child and never learned to read or write, likes to watch television, but doesn't really have any opinions. I think I suspect he's quite slow or not well educated and also maybe has some sort of neural divergence going on, and so then when he goes out into the real world, he just kind of reacts to what he sees, but not in a way that, say, an average member of society would react. There's a disconnect there, and I think that as I was watching it, I was thinking this is the perfect film from no wonder he's getting nominated for, he got nominated for an Oscar because it is, it seems like the closest thing to him. You know, he's kind of wandering around like, yeah, a robot, and everybody just mirrors what they want to see from him through his blank demeanor, you know? Because what you're saying about the absence of personality and what David Thompson says, I think in the comedians that we cited, I mean, he talks about Fields and Groucho, and they're very much personality comics, so every time you watch them, they have the character they play, but in terms of the kind of of cruelty character, I think you get warmth in Eddie Murphy, don't you? Whether you like them or not, what you get is you get warmth from him. Get the fuck out of here. No, I cannot. It's serious. There's this great attitude and this warmth and, and, and, and my, as you just, I think you get his passion for the characters, I mean, clearly loves, you know, like with Austin Powers, he's, you know, I think this was, you know, he loves the sort of swinging sixties or sixties of blowout, you know, the, the kind of Flynn movies, the Bond movies, and you get that sort of passion and there's warmth in what he does, they're like, incredibly likable character. I don't know. What do I think about Cluso? I like Cluso as a character. I think there's a lot of kind of self-indulgence in the worst of the Pink Panther movies, or there's always a like a routine that goes on a little bit too long, but you can say that about Myers. Do you think, what do you think? Because I'm looking at like sellers, successors, the people that have kind of taken the mantle and my Myers is like, obviously, a candidate, but Sasha Baron Cohen would be the other one. You know, the, the, the multi, the character comic, you know, the, you know, the multi, multi character comic. Although, I don't think he doesn't play multiple characters in the same movie, I don't think, but he's, but he's, to me, because he's British as well. He, to me seems to be the obvious successor to the, you know, the, the, the, the seller's mantle. Have you got, what do you think? I mean, do you enjoy Sasha Baron Cohen performances or films or? Yeah, I mean, for the most part, I think, you know, obviously, we all loved Ali G when he first came on the scene. Bora on the 11 o'clock show. Yeah, then obviously went on to Bora. I don't think I saw Bruno. I think it's quite funny, but what I saw of it, I thought it was funny. I didn't find, I watched like 15 minutes of the Brothers Grimm. Is that called the Brothers Grimm? Oh, Grimm's. Yeah, it's different titles. Grimm, that Grimm is the Brothers Grimm's. Yeah. Yeah, I found that horrible. Oh, well, I, I wet my pants laughing. I love that film. Yeah. Yeah. But, but, but that, that would be where he, that would be where he leans into, like, the sort of, the sort of Peter Sellers who has a kind of self-indulgent comedy built around him, where he's, he's, he's effectively allowed to do what he wants. There's little restraint on what he does and it can, it can sort of veer into the, the sort of, the self-indulgent. It's crude, crude, and I think that a lot of, a lot of his comedy beforehand was very clever. It was, it was. It was still crude. I mean, Bora is, Bora is really crude at the same time. It's very satirical and hold holding a mirror up to, you know, kind of very society's attitudes and having them reflected back in this kind of essentially misogynist character and stuff like that. Yeah. And I like, I like, I like, I like the way he pushes, I like the way he takes something that's just utterly tasteless and just pushes it and pushes it and pushes it. Yeah. And I think he does it very well. But what do you think about, say, pre-Stardom Sellers? Because obviously he came, I'm not a massive student at the goons. I find, I understand that a lot, to a lot of people, the goons is essentially the best thing he did. And I think David Thompson, who I quoted, likes the goons. I'm very familiar with Peter Sellers as a supporting player in, say, Ealing Comedy's coming up. You know, where he's essentially second fiddle to Alice De Cemore, Alec Guinness and the Lady Killers or something like that. And he's very good. He's very good as a sort of second banana comic character actor in a lot of these movies. Have you any relationship with the Ealing Comedy's or the early pre-Stardom? Because I'm not really honest. No, not really. I never saw, I'm alright, Jack. He's the lead character, isn't he? But any of those films, I think I saw them, but I don't know. I don't have any kind of real... I think we're struggling to really poke the bear on this one. I think we agreed very early on, didn't we? Yeah, that's kind of interesting to kick it back. I did want to just say about... So Peter Sellers, he did a play where he had to be performed, you know, six days or six shows a week, and would constantly change lines, come on in different costumes, do everything, you know, whatever he wanted because he was bored. I think his mind wasn't very disciplined like that, and I don't think as far as a professionality, he wasn't a performer like that. He was a self-indulgent performer who wanted to entertain himself. Like in this Stanley Kubrick archives book, Shelley Winters talks about her scenes with him in Lolita, and she said her patience was tested on his over-reliance on improvisation, and she said he tended to stray so far away from the script that he was, in her words, acting on a different planet, I never could connect with him. He seems to act in a bubble of his own, and I think that's the problem. Like when you're an actor who's just concerned with your own performance rather than serving the piece. We talked about Three Musketeers recently, didn't we briefly? That's a great French version of the two films that just came out this year and last year. That's a great example of that, where you've got big, big stars who were able to just serve the piece well, and I don't think Peter Sellers can do that, and that's not his strength. But as you said, maybe in his earlier films in E-Link, where he supported, maybe once he became a star, maybe it was just never going to happen for him to be that character again, where he was able to support. Because that's interesting, apart from the films he did with Kubrick, where he's forced to interact with people. I think in his twist credit, he interacts brilliantly with Sterling Hayden and George C. Scott, because obviously in the war room, most of the- They're just great actors as well, though, aren't they? Yeah, they are. I'd be sturling how I could talk for ages about Sterling Hayden, just as a man and as an actor and stuff. But maybe this is perfect dance partner, but there's points where he's interacting seamlessly with himself. Isn't it? Where the President is talking to guns, rangelons, stuff like that. Other than that, and other than say the fact that he's in an ensemble as a star in Lolita, I can't think of any movies where he shares the screen with another comic. Whereas obviously you think of all the great, I don't know, maybe all the great postsellers, comics and things like that, you think of Eddie Murphy as a great collaborator. Yeah, he's a breakout movie collaborator. That's a good word, mate. Yeah, but he is. He's a breakout movie's 48 hours and it wouldn't work if Nick Nolte, he didn't collaborate so brilliantly with Nick Nolte. You think of Steve Martin and how well he works with the comics and the three amigos and his work in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels with Michael Caine and things like that. I think, but you don't get that. You don't get those duets, Steve, those comedy duets with Peter Sellers. He goes too big, I think. I think of Kato, apart from both. Yeah, and even then, even then, like, Kato's the butt of the joke, really, even though, like, in a sense is not the butt of the Jase. The kind of straight man in a sense, but he's, yeah. Well, hang on, I'm about to contradict myself because I think that the great running relationship is with her, but long, excuse me, in the... In the, you know, as Inspector Dreyfus, who's like his boss, who's driven mad, but maybe that's a metaphor for Sellers himself. Like the person who's driven mad by this sort of agent of chaos and then wants to kill him. And then the running joke is that his boss is constantly trying to kill him in all of these movies and things like that. And then I think at even one point, he puts the kind of blow felt figure in one of them and stuff. But yeah, I don't know, he's a fascinating, complex, aggravating, brilliant, ultimately empty... And died at 54, like, hard time. I think he was that. I think he looked older, but then I think everyone in the 70s. Yeah, back then. Well, I also heard from his goons partner Spike Milligan, who I do like Spike Milligan. I already have like a relationship with the goons, I don't think I've heard or seen enough of it. But I quite enjoyed Spike Milligan's, some of his stuff. Anyway, Spike Milligan was saying that Sellers never exercised, you know, just, and he was always worried about him. And this is, you know, probably when he was in his like 20s and 30s. And so obviously that led to his demise at some point. Just briefly go back to the strange love. The ending, they were meant to have a massive pie fight in scene. Do you know about that? Yeah, I do, yeah. And so that was cut because obviously the Kubrick thought that it was too much. But also strange love was meant to preview. It was meant to preview on Saturday, November the 23rd, 1963. Yeah. But had to be cancelled because it was the day that JFK got killed. Now, in the pie throwing contest, George C. Scott, I think, says when President Muffley gets a pie in his face, the president has been taken out in his prime. I would say something like that. And so obviously they couldn't, they decided to cut that whole pie eating pie throwing contest. It was filmed over five days. And who was the production designer again that you were saying? The Bond guy? Ken Adam. Yeah, Ken Adam was saying that that was probably like the biggest pie throwing competition. I've seen loads of stills in the book. You see loads of stills of that scene that got taken out. And I wonder, I don't know, it does just seem like it descended into absolute chaos before the nuclear bombs got off. So they end up ending it with that whole strange love mind shaft, 10 women per man speech that. Yeah, it's the only bit that I don't really kind of like. I enjoyed the rest of it, to be honest with you. I really liked his Muffley. I really, as you said, he teases on the edge with Mandrake, the British captain, and I think he lands on the right side of that. And I think the fact that he's working with two actors of such high caliber, forces him to engage in a way that he probably doesn't have to engage so much later on in his career. And they're the funny characters, generally speaking, they're the funny characters. And he's playing, I think he's very funny when he's not being funny. I think his conversations with the Russian premiere are brilliant. Well, when he's trying to avoid a nuclear war, the man's like, the man who you never see, the man on the end of the phone is just upset that he doesn't phone him enough. Only phones him when there's an international crisis and that he doesn't like. Hello, hello Dimitri. Listen, I can't hear too well. Do you suppose you could turn the music down just a little? Oh, that's much better. Yes. Fine, I can hear you now, Dimitri. Clear and plain and coming through fine. I'm coming through fine, too, eh? Good. Then... Well, then, as you say, we're both coming through fine. Good. Well, it's good that you're fine, and I'm fine. I agree with you. It's great to be fine. And again, you've got that phenomenon. You said we were going to talk about Keenan when, and we haven't. You want to know what I think? Yes. I think you're some kind of deviated prevert. I think, General Rupa, found out about your preversion and that you were organizing some kind of mutiny of preverts. Now, move. That absolutely brilliant sequence where the whole fate of the world hinges on him getting points to make a phone call. And Keenan wins the soldier who's breached the compound and won't let him... Well, there's this whole conversation about change, and I don't bring spare change into combat. And then he wants to shoot me. This is one of my brother's favorite sequences, actually, where he wants to shoot the Coca-Cola machine. He goes, "Well, your answer brought to the Coke." All this kind of ridiculous, strange, you know? I'm just coming through on capitalism, coming to the unlike. Also, bureaucracy as well, bureaucracy. Absolutely, yeah. Jobs' worth-ness in the middle of a cry. And I think they're both brilliant in that sequence. And I don't think... I don't think Salas indulges himself or is indulged. They play it straight. His exasperation is real. It's the situation that's absurd. And same with all the Japty Ripper sequences. You get a real sense of jeopardy and you get a sense of anxiety. And Sterling Hayden's at his most chilling when he's being his most reasonable, trying to explain things to Peter Salas. What's going on with his mouth is just sheer madness and insanity. Yeah, absolutely. Keenum wins great. I like Keenum win. He's a great sort of heavy. He's just a great heavy in a lot of terrific movies. And it's nice to see him have his moment. And Slim Pickens, we haven't really talked about him enough. He's absolutely wonderful. And has a single best image in the movie of him like Roadhog. iconic. Yeah, he's wonderful. Wonderful Slim Pickens. Great actor. I haven't mentioned Pack and Pie yet. Great Pack and Pie actor. Oh, there you go, mate. You have now. That's probably the best death scene in a Kubrick movie. And... Really does, yeah. The best movie. Yeah, the most moving death scene. Pack and Pie movie. Yeah, yeah. Pack our ability. I've exercised my contractual obligation to mention Pack and Pie. You know, that's absolutely nothing to do with him. But yeah, are we done? Yeah, I think so, mate. I think we did the thing that was good. It was nice to just discuss the film regardless of, you know, ultimately, I think it's probably a film I may watch again at some point. I loved it, by the way. I thought it was a real treat to rewatch it. It's probably like the most enjoyable rewatch. Of a film that I haven't. So, yeah, it's just one of the most enjoyable rewatches I've experienced. I don't really have any serious issues with it, apart from a little bit of self-indulgence towards the end, by scholars as the actual Doctor Strange of, which I still found very funny. You know, so to say. So it's been like the most point, annoyingly benign, punching up. It's hardly punching. A little bit of a slap, not even, not even like a, you know, like a hard, full smith slap. A little bit of a shoulder prod. And then an apology. That's okay. I think it's... No, we're punching up. We need to get ugly. No, it's okay, mate. You've got ugly enough for us previously, and I'm sure it's more ugly to come. Yeah. Especially, we have tee up the next one, mate. Well, the next one, the reason that we did this, because we're trying to be a little bit more topical when these episodes come out and try to put them out to a lie with the topical thing, rather than sort of being the last person in the stable, smelling what the horse manure with the no horses. So the reason, one of the reasons you wanted to do this is because in England, Armando Inucci and Steve Coogan are collaborating on a stage version of Doctor Strange Love, in which Steve Coogan still plays all three characters. I'll be fascinating to see how that works. I'm sure they've thought about it. But Gladiator 2 is coming out in November. I am not a massive fan of Gladiator, and you really don't like Ridley Scott very much with a couple of exceptions. I have a bit more of a sort of, you know, one step forward, two steps backwards, relationship with Ridley Scott's filmography. I've liked most of what he's done in recent years. Despite my better judgment, I'm really looking forward to Gladiator 2. I'm really happy to sort of put the boot into Gladiator 1, as it will now be. Yeah, I'm looking forward to Reece in that. I don't think I have that much of a problem with it, but I probably will do. No, I mean, we can sort of prod the bear about Ridley Scott, and I'm sure we'll get a lot more venom. And I was hoping for this episode. You disappointed me, Dave? Yeah, yeah. You remain annoying, annoyingly benign. And even I couldn't really work up that much of a head of steam about scattering by anything. Well, it's topical over punching, then, really at the moment. But we'll see. Yeah, I'm barely punching. Clicking the tab. All right. Steady. The tab is here in England, by the way. Okay, sorry. I'm an Australia tab. I mean, something totally different for all that, multiple multitudinous listeners around the world, a flicking of the tab. I'm not even sure if it's like sort of an idiom that... Stop saying it, mate. Stop saying it. I have to tell you say it. It's like another nail of cancellation in my coffin. It's an ear. There's plenty of those. Hello. Fab. All right, mate. Well, thank you for that. That was great. From sunny Australia. Ruva Durchi, Adios. Ciao. Until the next time. Sorry, I was just talking over you. Goodbye. Okay. From sunny one day rainy another. Some time in England. Goodbye. We'll see you in the next one. We'll meet again. Don't know where. Don't know where. But I know we'll meet again. We'll make sure that things complete. Ruva. [Music]
