with a nod & a bow to Kubrick, George, & Southern, a brief homage

Dr. Weirdlove

or How I Learned to Stop Worrying & Love the Virus

Dr. Weirdlove:

“The whole point of a doomsday virus is lost if you keep it secret!!
Why didn’t President Xi tell the whole world?!”

Chinese ambassador:

“It was to be announced at the Party Congress on Monday; you know how much President Xi loves surprises.”

This slight paraphrase of the revelatory lines of dialogue from the magnificent satirical black comedy Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb echoes to us from the depths of the Cold War in 1964 (mayhaps in this latter day, all too easily evoking a chilling realization how, among weapons of mass destruction, biological weapons can challenge nuclear ones for their devastatingly destructive potential).   Turning the thriller into a comedy gave it maybe its most eerily terrifying effect.

When the United States Library of Congress, in 1989, created the National Film Registry to preserve movies that are deemed to be “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”, Dr. Strangelove was one of the original 25 that were included.   These are among the very many other lauds for this masterpiece: when the AFI (American Film Institute), in 2000, announced its compilation of the top 100 funniest movies in American cinema, this was named #3; in 2017, it was listed #2 on BBC Culture’s 100 greatest comedies of all time throughout world cinema.

THE READER IS INVITED TO TAKE NOTE OF THIS MESSAGE

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It may not be the magnum opus of each of the three scriptwriters (yet that might be open to debate), but for each of them, this certainly is recognized as one of their most prominent and greatest works.

Stanley Kubrick, who also produced and directed it, is widely cited as one of the greatest and most influential moviemakers in history.   Having made masterpieces in more different genres than almost anyone else (rivaled perhaps only by Billy Wilder), he died in 1999.   While it might be difficult to choose one out of the several famous classics among those, this one is the highest rated of all of Kubrick’s films on the movie reviews aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, holding a 98% approval rating.

Peter George died just two years after Dr. Strangelove came out.   It was inspired by his best-known novel, Two Hours to Doom (later published by the title of Red Alert), which he wrote in 1958 while he was a serving RAF officer, drawing on his own personal experience during World War II and the Cold War.

Terry Southern was a novelist, screenwriter, and essayist, famed for his distinctive satirical style, in particular with his gift for and skills at dialogue writing, which he put to masterful use when joining the writing team and helping to recast the script as a black comedy.   The release of Dr. Strangelove launched the most prolific phase of his scriptwriting career, contributing to many well-known movies throughout the rest of the ’60s and into the ’70s.   He died in 1995.   And tomorrow is his 96th birthday.

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