Mr. Strangelove_ A Biography of Peter Sellers - Ed Sikov [206]
Filming began at the Studios de Boulogne in Paris at the end of September.
Fu Manchu, the eponymous fiend, had long held a special appeal for Peter: “I listened fanatically to the Fu Manchu radio serials on the BBC. They were more terrifying than the BBC’s light musical programs.” Now, in performing the role himself, Peter strove to avoid what he called “the stilted stereotype of swapping rs for ls. It’s demeaning, it’s been done to death, and it’s not funny.” (In other words, it had been funny in Murder By Death, but now he was bored with it.) Instead, Peter provided Fu Manchu with the backstory of an English prep-school education—in Peter’s words, “where he learned the meaning of torture, like any proper British schoolboy”—and then claimed to have based Fu Manchu’s British accent on Lord Snowdon. Peter swore that he’d asked Snowdon for his permission, which Snowdon is said to have swiftly granted, but in point of fact the fiend’s voice sounds a good bit too Chinese for the tale to be true.
Peter also claimed that he was focusing on Fu Manchu’s astounding sex appeal. “After all,” Peter explained, “if you’ve devoted 150 years to depravity, you’re bound to get good at it.”
His makeup: a spray-applied rubber that hardened into crow’s feet and wrinkles; twelve molded sponge devices to create Asiatic features; tinted contact lenses; a beard; and long black plastic fingernails. It was all painful. “The bloody lenses made my eyes run, my skin itched from the spirit gum on the beard, and the fingernails were a bore. I kept poking myself in odd places. I don’t know how women manage with them,” Peter remarked.
In early November, the production moved to St. Gervais, the Alpine resort, for some location work, after which The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu moved back to the Studios de Boulogne. Just before Christmas, Peter flew to Gstaad for some rest, promising to return after the holidays. He did return, whereupon he promptly fired Piers Haggard, whom, like several other directors over the years, he had grown to hate for reasons of his own. Peter took over the filming himself.
In January, Peter summoned David Lodge to Paris, where Lodge found Lynne to have become “very hard—not the same person” he had met earlier. In some sense they were back together, but since their relationship had always included long separations followed by intense reunions, their current togetherness was simply par for the course.
According to Lodge, Peter retained the contractual right to reshoot anything he wanted, and he could reshoot any given scene as often as he wanted. So to Lodge’s amazement, Peter reshot Lodge’s scene entirely in close-ups. (A scene shot entirely in close-ups would produce a rather avant-garde effect.) Lodge tried to just sit there and let Peter film him, but, from Peter’s perspective, Lodge just couldn’t seem to get it right. “Your eyebrows are popping up and down like a fiddler’s elbow!” Peter told him before insisting that they retake the scene yet again.
“Do what Gene Hackman does,” Peter advised his oldest continuous friend. “Fuck all.” (By this Peter meant something on the order of “don’t do anything—just sit there.”)
Lodge concludes his tale by noting that despite Peter’s right to reshoot anything he pleased, Orion was under no obligation to use any of it, so Lodge’s scene ended up on the cutting room floor.
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The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu has two remarkable performances, both by Peter, some beautiful set designs by Alexandre Trauner (who designed The Apartment, 1960, for Billy Wilder, among other films), no script, and few laughs. The film opens with Fu’s minions singing “Happy Birthday to Fu” on the occasion of his 168th birthday. He prepares ritualistically to drink