The scene Stanley Kubrick wanted to delete from history: “He thought it was crap”
Stanley Kubrick was never worried about touching upon questionable subjects in his movies. Whether it was murder, space travel or questionable methods of rehabilitation, Kubrick was on hand to create stories around whatever he saw fit. However, even he might have moved a bit too quickly when he made Dr Strangelove.
The Cuban missile crisis had pushed the global superpowers to the very edge of conflict. There was a lot of talk about nuclear war, and amongst the chatter, a lot of creatives decided to make something which was either a hypothetical look at the end of the world or a satirical look at having such a power. In the case of Kubrick, he opted for the satirical approach, and Dr Strangelove was born.
Kubrick’s message with Dr Strangelove was simple: people are stupid. The premise of the Cold War is ridiculous: two superpowers escalate tension, which promises to end in their mutual destruction. Kubrick did a fantastic job of highlighting the ridiculousness of this tension and, in turn, made a movie that is still considered one of the greatest satires ever committed to the screen.
Kubrick does an excellent job of knowing when to play into the film’s humour and when to let the anger shine through. He pulls back at the right time and pushes forward with impeccable timing. This is a tricky subject to handle, and the fact that he managed to navigate it in a way that people still seem able to connect with is awe-inspiring.
The film was based on Peter George’s 1958 novel, Red Alert, which isn’t a comedy, but Kubrick saw the rationale of adapting it into one. “I started work on the screenplay with every intention of making the film a serious treatment of the problem of accidental nuclear war,” he admitted. However, he kept coming up with ideas which leaned further towards the ludicrous nature of such a topic. After a while, he realised it would be better to treat the film as a satire rather than a tragedy.
“After all, what could be more absurd than the very idea of two mega-powers willing to wipe out all human life because of an accident,” asked Kubrick, “Spiced up by political differences that will seem as meaningless to people a hundred years from now as the theological conflicts of the Middle Ages appear to us today.”
The issue that started to arise was knowing how to balance the ridiculousness throughout the film. Kubrick had to remind himself of the balance he needed to strike. If he went all in with silliness, then the message would be lost somewhere. If he relied too heavily on the message, then the humour of the movie would dissipate. There were some moments where he didn’t get the balance quite right, and an example of this was in the finale, as Kubrick’s original idea wound up being cut from the movie and replaced.
Originally, the film was going to end with a custard pie fight. The sequence was filmed and edited, and it almost became the official finale. However, Kubrick decided to replace this at the last minute. Over the years, he grew to not only dislike this ending but to resent it completely.
Jan Harlan reflected on Kubrick’s hatred for the scene and that people continued asking to see it. “It’s just so bad,” he said, “He would say, ‘Well why don’t you shoot your own pie scene? Leave me alone’. He hated it. He thought it wasn’t worth studying, he thought it was crap.”
