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Michael Arbeiter<\/strong> and Mental_Floss<\/strong><\/a> present 15 Things You Might Not Know About\u00a0 Dr. Strangelove<\/em><\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 Here are three of my favorites…<\/p>\n 1. THE MOVIE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A DRAMA.<\/strong> During the writing process, however, the director found himself struggling to escape a persistent comedic overtone because he found the vast majority of the political calamities described in the story to be inherently funny. Eventually, Kubrick abandoned the idea of fighting the adaptation\u2019s dark sense of humor and embraced it wholeheartedly. Tone aside, the plot of Dr. Strangelove<\/em> is strikingly similar to that of George\u2019s novel. There\u2019s one notable exception: Dr. Strangelove doesn\u2019t appear in the novel\u2014Kubrick and writer Terry Southern created the new character.<\/p>\n 3. TWO OTHER FAMOUS COWBOYS WERE APPROACHED TO PLAY KONG.<\/strong> 4. NOBODY TOLD PICKENS ABOUT THE CHANGE IN TONE.<\/strong> Kubrick led Pickens to believe that the film was supposed to be a serious war drama, prompting him to carry himself as he might in any of his Western pictures. Furthermore, according to James Earl Jones (who made his film debut in Dr. Strangelove<\/em>) and Kubrick biographer John Baxter, Pickens behaved, and dressed, identically onscreen and off\u2026not because he was \u201cstaying in character,\u201d but because he apparently always acted like that.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Michael Arbeiter and Mental_Floss present 15 Things You Might Not Know About\u00a0 Dr. Strangelove.\u00a0\u00a0 Here are three of my favorites…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17,54,65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebs","category-movies","category-trivia","comments-off"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12542"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12544,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12542\/revisions\/12544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\nThe international climate of the early 1960s piqued Stanley Kubrick\u2019s interest in writing and directing a nuclear war thriller. Kubrick began consuming piles of literature on the topic until he came across former Royal Air Force office Peter George\u2019s dramatic novel Red Alert<\/em>. Columbia Pictures optioned the book, and Kubrick began translating the bulk of the novel into a script.<\/p>\n
\nBefore landing on Pickens, the production team sought fellow Western mainstays John Wayne and Bonanza<\/em> star Dan Blocker for the part of Major Kong. Wayne never replied to Kubrick\u2019s messages, and Blocker\u2019s agent passed on the project. Co-writer Southern later remembered the agent sending a telegram that read, \u201cThanks a lot, but the material is too pinko for Dan. Or anyone else we know for that matter.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nBefore being cast as Dr. Strangelove<\/em>\u2019s gung-ho bomber pilot Major. T. J. Kong, actor Slim Pickens had starred almost exclusively in Westerns, with nary a comedy part to his name (much less a political satire). This didn\u2019t pose much of a problem, however, as Kubrick deemed the actor\u2019s natural cadence and decorum to be perfect for the cowboy soldier.<\/p>\n