Reconstructing Strangelove: Inside Stanley Kubrick's "Nightmare Comedy" by Mick Broderick (review)

This monograph is based on unprecedented access to Dr. Strangelove papers that were at the time housed at Kubrick's UK estate and the official Stanley Kubrick Archive in London. It draws from extensive interviews with Kubrick's collaborators, including James B. Harris, Christiane Kubrick, Louis C. Blau, Anthony Harvey, and Pablo Ferro. It assesses the archives of coauthors Peter George and Terry Southern to divine their respective contributions and corrects numerous mythologies about the film, such as the plagiarism suit between Dr. Strangelove (1964) and Fail-Safe (1964). It utilizes studio daily continuity reports to refute the claims that actor Peter Sellers improvised most of his lines, to contradict assertions over Kubrick's multiple takes, and to reconstruct excised scenes, including the notorious pie fight. It deploys recently declassified Cold War documents to reveal the veracity and prescience of Dr. Strangelove regarding go codes, doomsday devices, and presidential predelegation authorizing the use of nuclear weapons by lower echelon commanders.

Frame grab from Dr. Strangelove (1964).