Tag: Stanley Kubrick

53 years ago, ‘Dr. Stranglove’ premiere was postponed

Dr. Stranglove ticket

When asked about the nuclear-mad antics of Dr. Strangelove, Pentagon whistleblower Dan Ellsberg said, “For those of us who worked in the Pentagon, the movie was a documentary.” As nuclear historian Eric Schlosser has written, “almost everything” in the movie was true.  JFK was disturbed at the laxity of U.S. nuclear control regime, and sought to tighten command and control and dissolve the Cold War, especially in 1963.

How I learned to stop worrying and love the secrecy system

From Eric Schlosser, The Truths Behind ‘Dr. Strangelove’  in The New Yorker.

“Although ‘Strangelove’ was clearly a farce, with the comedian Peter Sellers playing three roles, it was criticized for being implausible. An expert at the Institute for Strategic Studies called the events in the film ‘impossible on a dozen counts.’ ….The first casualty of every war is the truth — and the Cold War was no exception to that dictum. Half a century after [Director Stanley] Kubrick’s mad general, Jack D. Ripper, launched a nuclear strike on the Soviets to defend the purity of ‘our precious bodily fluids’ from Communist subversion, we now know that American officers did indeed have the ability to start a Third World War on their own.”

Secrecy spared us all that terrifying knowledge. Are you grateful?

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