The colour green and immersive thinking: How an unseen detail in ‘Dr Strangelove’ explains Stanley Kubrick
One of the most baffling things about Stanley Kubrick’s legacy is how often he seemed to predict things that there was no way he could know for certain.
In 2001: A Space Odyssey, his understanding of space travel was so thorough that it sparked the enduring rumour that he had actually directed the 1969 Apollo 11 mission. Kubrick’s own space film felt so realistic that audiences argued he must have either had access to classified information or that NASA had seen the movie and gone straight to him, wanting to borrow his skills for what some people consider to be the government’s biggest hoax.
It had happened before in 1964’s Dr Strangelove, the satirical war film that moves between several key locations, one of which is inside a B-52 bomber. This is where Major TJ ‘King’ Kong is stationed, and where, eventually, he drops out of the sky riding a nuclear bomb like a mechanical bull.
The important detail here, though, is that the B-52 bomber set is completely accurate to an extent that pilots were somewhat taken aback. Initially, when building it, the government refused Kubrick access to a real-life B-52 as they were too state-of-the-art. Getting only an image of the plane and a quick peek inside, his team managed to build a complete recreation, including the detail that shocked pilots: the prop plane’s black box was in exactly the right place, despite that information being classified.
But the key to understanding that, and understanding so much of Kubrick’s madness, comes down to another set in that particular film.
As the leaders gather around one giant war table, Kubrick demanded that it be made with green wool, despite it being a black-and-white movie. He told his team that he specifically wanted the table covered in the exactly green material used on poker tables. As an extra expense that would make absolutely no visible difference, his set designers pushed back, reminding him that the audience wouldn’t be able to see the detail. To that, he calmly responded, “The actors will”.
This seems to be the key to understanding the director in his entirety. He made that set one giant poker table, all to add to the sense that the world leaders were treating the wartime situation like a game, gambling with life. It’s a detail that speaks to their arrogance and recklessness, and even if the audience wouldn’t be able to see it, Kubrick knew that simply having that green fuzz would remind the actors of that.
It’s similar to his habit of breaking actors down with endlessly repeated takes, which likely made little difference to the actual quality of the final shot. Chances are that many of the discarded takes were just as good as the one that made it into the film. But when his characters were filled with madness or anguish, perhaps it came from the same desire to share the experience with those in front of the camera, pushing them closer to understanding their roles through on-set details or experiences that the audience would never see.
Maybe it was all to be immersive, or maybe he was just an asshole, but either way, the demand for a green that no one would see suggests a devotion to every single little detail, all to aid the actors.
