Mr. Strangelove_ A Biography of Peter Sellers - Ed Sikov [109]
Peter embraced the new Muffley so fully that Hattie Stevenson couldn’t even identify her own boss under his makeup: “I shall never forget while he was making Dr. Strangelove, he asked me to pop down to the studios with some letters. I walked onto the set—the very lavish one they had when he was playing the bald-headed president—they had just broken for lunch—and I walked straight past him. Having worked for him for two or three years, I didn’t even recognize him.”
The War Room set to which Stevenson refers was designed by Ken Adam, the art director responsible for the looks of such disparate but equally eye-catching films as Around the World in 80 Days (1956), Curse of the Demon (1957), and Dr. No (1962). Adam supervised its construction in Shepperton’s Stage B: Twelve-hundred square meters of polished black flooring; a massive circular table, also black; a demonic halo of a chandelier suspended above the table; and a looming map of the world, with tiny lightbulbs representing centers of human population. Complementing Adam’s design were the actors’ dark, nearly identical military costumes (plus Muffley’s schvach dark suit), all made in wool. Unseen by the spectator are the felt overshoes everyone wore to protect Adam’s immaculate jet-black floor. It was all very warm.
The War Room is graced by banquet tables full of food, including a seemingly endless parade of custard pies. In Kubrick’s vision, this was the way the world would end, not only with a bang but with slapstick. The original concluding scene of Dr. Strangelove:
With all hope lost, Strangelove, having fallen out of his wheelchair, rolls around on the lustrous black floor while President Muffley demands a search of the Soviet Ambassador DeSadesky’s body cavities—“in view of the tininess of your equipment.” “The seven bodily orifices!” Buck Turgidson cries, whereupon George C. Scott points directly at the camera—it’s a point-of-view shot taken from DeSadesky’s perspective. Buck ducks, causing the President of the United States to be struck by a pie. Muffley collapses into Turgidson’s arms, a modern Pietà.
Turgidson: “Mr. President! Mr. President! [No response.] Gentlemen, our beloved president has just been infamously struck down by a pie in the prime of life! Are we going to let that happen? Massive retaliation!”
In jittery fast-motion, everyone in the War Room begins to hurl cream pies, all to the tune of hopped-up silent-movie music. Great globs of white custard cover the floor; Buck skids on it. The huge round chandelier swings as men climb on top of the conference table. Kubrick includes a tracking shot of a line of men ending with Buck atop somebody’s shoulders; you can see him stuff a handful of pie into his mouth between throws. A subsequent master shot of the room makes the brilliantly lit table look like a boxing ring.
Suddenly, a gunshot. It’s Strangelove firing into the air. Kubrick cuts to a high angle shot. Strangelove: “Gentlemen! Ve must stop zis childish game! There is verk—verk!—to do!”
Kubrick then cuts to a high angle shot of a physically recovered but mentally stricken Muffley sitting on the floor opposite DeSadesky amid a lunar landscape of custard, craters, and crust. Drenched in it, they’re happily building meringue mudpies and sandcastles. Kubrick cranes down to floor level to watch them play at closer range; the president destroys his own castle.
Strangelove speaks: “Zis is regretable, but I think their minds have snepped from the strain!” Peter bites down on every word: “Perhaps they Vill Heff To Be In-Stit-Utiona-Lized!” Buck Turgidson responds by calling for a three-cheer salute to Strangelove, at which point Kubrick brings Vera Lynn onto the sound track. She’s singing the World War II chestnut “We’ll Meet Again.”
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George C. Scott later claimed that they’d “shot a thousand pies a day for a week”; one of Kubrick’s biographers, Vincent