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CU Boulder鈥檚 chair of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts shares insights on Stanley Kubrick鈥檚 masterpiece 鈥榙oomsday sex comedy鈥� and why the film is more relevant than ever

In early 1964, U.S. Air Force Gen. Jack D. Ripper ordered his bomber group to launch a preemptive nuclear strike on the Soviet Union to defend the purity of 鈥渙ur precious bodily fluids鈥� from communist subversion.

Fortunately for the state of U.S.-Soviet relations at the time鈥攁nd for the planet鈥攖he surprise attack was entirely fictional, serving as the plot for the movie Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, director Stanley Kubrick鈥檚 dark comedy that satirized Cold War tensions while also offering up a heaping dose of sexual innuendo.

In the years since its debut, Dr. Strangelove has joined the pantheon of Kubrick鈥檚 great films, which also includes classics such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange听and The Shining.

With this year marking the 60th anniversary of Dr. Strangelove鈥檚 debut, Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine recently asked Ernesto R. Acevedo-Mu帽oz, chair of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts at University of Colorado Boulder, who has been teaching a course on Stanley Kubrick as a filmmaker for more than 20 years, for insights into the making of the film and why it has retained its cultural relevance. His responses have been lightly edited for style and condensed for space considerations.

Question: Kubrick made a number of memorable films. How much time during your course do you devote to Dr. Strangelove?

础肠别惫别诲辞-惭耻帽辞锄: There鈥檚 an advantage in that Stanley Kubrick only finished 13 movies and a normal semester is 14 weeks鈥攁nd since this isn鈥檛 a comparative course, it鈥檚 more like the history of a filmmaker鈥檚 aesthetics and history of a filmmaker鈥檚 concerns鈥攖hen we鈥檙e able to talk about all the movies he did.

And, unlike my Alfred Hitchcock course鈥擧itchcock completed 52 films, so to curate 14 out of 52, you have to start cutting here, cutting there, and being very jealous about the period that you鈥檙e going to cover鈥攚ith Kubrick, we don鈥檛 have that problem. We start the first week of classes by watching his two shorts that we have access to and his first feature film, which is only 67听minutes.

And we talk about all the Kubrick movies all the time. I make reference to some visual moment in his early movies where I say, 鈥楲ook at this here, we鈥檙e going to see this again in Dr. Strangelove, and we鈥檙e going to see this again in 2001: A Space Odyssey.鈥�

Question: How you would describe Dr. Strangelove, if you had to describe it succinctly for people?

础肠别惫别诲辞-惭耻帽辞锄: Well, I would make a very simple amendment to how Kubrick described this movie. We refer to it as a doomsday comedy, with the irony implied in that label. But I would add the word 鈥榮ex鈥� to that label. So, it鈥檚 a doomsday sex comedy.

As the observant or the dirty minded will quickly realize, the movie is full of sexual innuendo and most of the punch lines in the movie are some kind of sexual innuendo.

It鈥檚 a doomsday comedy, but it鈥檚 really a doomsday sex comedy all the way up to and including the very explosive, orgasmic series of nuclear events at the end, with the irony of the lyrics, 鈥榃e鈥檒l meet again. Don鈥檛 know where. Don鈥檛 know when.鈥�

When we saw the movie as kids, we were laughing at Peter Sellers doing Peter Sellers things鈥攖he body comedy, the farcical situations and such. But then seeing the movie again as an adult, there comes a moment where you realize, 鈥極h, wait a minute. I see now all these airplanes penetrating each other. That鈥檚 sexual innuendo. And the way Dr. Strangelove鈥檚 right arm keeps raising up in salute, that鈥檚 sexual innuendo.鈥�

A working title of this movie was, I sh-t you not, The Rise of Dr. Strangelove. I鈥檓 not making this up.

Question: Besides the political and satire, what are other aspects of the film that you share with your class?

础肠别惫别诲辞-惭耻帽辞锄: We spend a lot of time talking about two things in particular: the production design鈥攚hat the sets look like and what the function of the of the movie sets are鈥攁nd special effects.

In the case of Dr. Strangelove, when we talk about the production design, we鈥檙e talking particularly about the war room. There are stories, which may or may not be apocryphal, of the CIA and intelligence agencies being concerned about how Kubrick and his production designer, a man named Ken Adam, had come up with the set design, because it looked like the real thing.

The same goes for the interior of the bomber, which again, Ken Adam, the production designer, he鈥檇 been a Royal Air Force pilot during the war, so he knew what a bomber looked like. But then he had to sort of bring that up to speed 20 years, to the mid-1960s.

It鈥檚 really fantastic that Kubrick would put so much emphasis in production design of spaces that nobody has ever seen. Or nobody who isn鈥檛 part of a very special, small elite.

Do you know what the interior of the war room looks like? No, nobody does. So, how did Kubrick and Adam come up with this part? It鈥檚 one of the truly amazing things.

An important part of the movie is that all the action is contained within these confined spaces that are treated with this deadpan realism. And they have to be functional spaces. In fact, the lights that you see in the war room are actually doing the lighting of the set. That鈥檚 extremely rare.

The other thing I mentioned is special effects. Those might look primitive to contemporary audiences, but they are decidedly state of the art. Consider what we see with the B-52 in flight and the explosions.

With Dr. Strangelove, a significant part of the budget went to production design and special effects.

Question: Beyond the production elements, are there other notable or distinguishable elements about this film?

础肠别惫别诲辞-惭耻帽辞锄: Few people realize that Dr. Strangelove takes places in real time. We have a phone call at the opening of the movie and the doomsday machine goes off at the end of the movie, and in between that we have about 89听minutes of action in which at no point is there a discernible time ellipsis.

Real time is a very hard thing to pull off in cinema. Kubrick was not the first one to do it, but this was his only real-time movie. It is admirable how compact this movie is kept in terms of its narrative structure.

In terms of story structure, that鈥檚 a very difficult thing to do, and this is a function of both the writing and editing to maintain a movie in real time. You have to write it that way, and then you have to edit it in a way that these transitions are seamless. It鈥檚 a major reason why Dr. Strangelove got an Oscar nomination for best adapted screenplay.

I should mention the movie is based on a book, Red Alert, which is dead serious. Kubrick determined that the scenario was so demented that the only way to do the film was to make it a comedy.

To do that, he hired American humorist Terry Southern, who is really the person who shares most of the screenwriting credit with Kubrick. Southern was a humorist and a playwright and a screenwriter, and when Kubrick needed a funny person to come up with this script and make it absurd and yet believable, he came to Terry Southern, so I always emphasize that connection with my students. Coincidentally, Terry Southern鈥檚 son, Nile, is a long-time Boulder resident.

Question: How was Dr. Strangelove was received by the film critics and by the greater audiences when it debuted in 1964? Have perceptions of the movie changed over time?

础肠别惫别诲辞-惭耻帽辞锄: The movie was a huge hit, commercially. Some critics may have been baffled by it, but the reviews were largely positive. The movie got four Oscar nominations, which was quite a feat at that time. It was Kubrick鈥檚 first nomination for best director, along with best screenplay. The movie was nominated for best picture, and it was nominated for best actor for Peter Sellers, of course.

In the end, Kubrick made some decisions where things could have gone differently. The movie originally was going to end with a big pie fight. They tried the ending and it kind of fell flat. So, he dropped that and gave us that ending that was sort of improvised with the orgasmic series of nuclear explosions. 鈥�

Today, Dr. Strangelove is regarded as a classic.

Question: How do you view Dr. Strangelove in relation to Fail Safe, which was released after Dr. Strangelove and which offered a serious take on the possibility of a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union?

Ernesto R. 础肠别惫别诲辞-惭耻帽辞锄: Fail Safe was perfectly well-received when it came out. It was made by Sidney Lumet, a respected director, and starred Henry Fonda playing the president of the United States. 鈥�

It鈥檚 just that not every movie鈥攅ven every good movie鈥攊s destined to be a classic. We don鈥檛 know if a movie is destined to be a classic until some time has gone by. But today, you didn鈥檛 call me to talk about Fail Safe, did you? We鈥檙e talking about Dr. Strangelove.

And Dr. Strangelove still gets shown on Turner Classic Movies and sometimes in movie theaters, and people still get up off of their asses and go to see it. That staying power is attributable to a lot of different elements, which is why it鈥檚 never possible to predict if a movie will become a classic.

Kubrick also made Barry Lyndon, which is the most gorgeous movie ever made. Period. And this was the movie that Kubrick wanted to be remembered for. And do you know what happened? Nobody remembers it. So, you never know.

Question: Do you think Dr. Strangelove was Kubrick鈥檚 most political movie?

础肠别惫别诲辞-惭耻帽辞锄: Kubrick always said he wasn鈥檛 a political filmmaker, but you only have to look at his movies to realize that they are, in fact, political movies. 鈥� And I should add any movie made in the 1960s with a Cold War setting and the nuclear race as part of its environment is, by definition, political.

The fact that Kubrick and Terry Southern have both the president of the United States and the premier of the Soviet Union come out looking like complete morons is a political statement. And having the military establishment filled with this toxic masculinity is a political statement, which Kubrick went on to do even more transparently in Full Metal Jacket. 鈥�

Or look at the Slim Pickens character, Major King Kong, who rides the bomb between his legs like a bull, waving his 10-gallon Stetson hat as his cowboy persona takes over. That鈥檚 a political statement.

Question: The Cold War officially ended in the 1990s. Do you think Dr. Strangelove has the same relevance today that it did back in the day?

础肠别惫别诲辞-惭耻帽辞锄: The cold war is over? We are having more tensions with Russia today than we have had in 30 or 40 years, since the 1980s.

Frankly, as long as there are lunatics with their finger on the nuclear button鈥攁nd I鈥檓 thinking here of Kim Jong Un, I鈥檓 thinking of Vladimir Putin and I鈥檓 thinking of Donald Trump鈥攖his movie will be as relevant as ever, if not more. I have no qualms making a comment like that.

Precisely because it鈥檚 comedy, it also has that kind of lasting power. As the great American philosopher Homer Simpson says, 鈥業t鈥檚 funny because it鈥檚 true.鈥�

It鈥檚 why we take movies seriously鈥攁nd it鈥檚 why we鈥檙e celebrating 60 years of Dr. Strangelove. Hopefully at 70 years we鈥檒l be celebrating it as a cautionary tale rather than as a prophecy.

Top image: Peter Sellers playing the titular听Dr. Strangelove听(Photo: Columbia Pictures Corporation)

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