(Foreign)
>> Gentlemen, you can't fight in here.
This is the war room.
(Sound)
>> Nuclear war.
Hilarious, right?
When Stanley Kubrick got a hold of it
in 1964's Doctor's Strangelove, or
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love
the Bomb, it was literally never funnier.
The dark comedy about mutually assured
destruction has become widely regarded as
one of the greatest satires of all time.
>> The novel it's based on however,
Red Alert by Peter George is not funny.
Not even a little bit.
So how did a grim look at Cold War-era
nuclear politics end up being such a riot?
>> Isn't that what this show is?
Isn't that what we're doing here?
>> Yeah, I was just setting up, you get-
>> Right, right, right, right.
So I'm Clint Gage.
>> I'm Casey Redman, and without further
ado and no restraint on spoilers,
it's time to ask, what's the difference?
Well, I guess we already got
the big one out of the way.
The book is not funny and the movie is.
In the most general terms, the book and
the movie are about an Air Force
commander launching a full
nuclear assault on Russia, and
the resulting race to
call back the bombers.
Most of that story makes
it onto the screen.
>> The details however are almost all
different, which makes this
a fascinating study in satire.
How similar elements get a little nudge
one way or the other, and all of a sudden,
a terrifying story about nuclear war
becomes a political satire for the ages.
>> To start with, the book and
the movie both open with
airplanes refueling.
In the book,
the B-52's mid-air refueling process
is described with military precision.
Its cold and mechanical detail meant
to convey the cutting-edge technology
available to the Air Force at the time.
>> In the movie,
it's this super phallic love
scene set to romantic music.
So right away from the opening credits,
the adaptation sets a much funnier tone.
The rest of the story's told with
the same structure in both mediums,
cutting between the same three tracks.
There's the Air Force base,
inside one of the B-52 bombers and
in the war room with the president.
In the book we're at Sonora Air Force Base
under the command of General Quinten.
>> Meanwhile,
the events of the movie are set in
motion when General Jack D Ripper of
Burpleson Air Force Base,
gives the order to attack.
On top of getting a silly, satirical name,
the general's motivation changes
slightly as well.
>> General Quinten is a terminally
ill man.
He knows he hasn't got much longer.
He's also convinced that Russia has just
been biding their time since World War II,
waiting for a confluence of their
own advancing weapons technology and
the relaxation of American
foreign policy to strike.
That time is rapidly approaching according
to Clinton, so he figures a preemptive
strike against the Russians is the only
way to actually achieve peace on earth.
General Ripper uses most
of that same reasoning.
He even uses the same quote by
Clemenceau as his novel counterpart,
about war being too important
to be left to politicians.
But Ripper adds a paranoia about
a Russian thought to sap and
impurify our precious bodily fluids.
So there's a bit of the realistic zeal
from the novel still present, but
tempered and made funny with
the addition of a crazy person's
fluid-based conspiracy theory
that he developed when he
felt tired after sex.
>> Next we meet the crew of
the Alabama Angel,
one of the B-52 bombers sent into Russia.
On board is Captain Brown and
a handful of other crewmen
with completely normal names.
They're young, in their early 20s and
portrayed as loyal and brave airmen,
admirably performing their duty.
In the movie the bomber is captained by
a perfect Slim Pickens performance as
Major Kong.
As opposed Captain Brown,
he's a middle-aged man with a delightfully
stereotypical Western accent.
That coupled with the use of When Johnny
Comes Marching Home the crew of the bomber
feels more like they're exercising
some sort of aw shucks,
blind allegiance.
>> Meanwhile as the president assembles
the Chiefs of Staff in
the War Room at the Pentagon,
the real gravity of the situation General
Quinten has put them in becomes apparent.
At first the joint chiefs feel the best
course of action is to go all in,
to follow the initial attack authorized by
Quinten with a secondary group of bombers
to take out the rest of
the Russian targets.
Then the president reveals
the doomsday weapon,
a series of bombs buried in the Ural
Mountains that would literally kill every
living thing on the planet
inside of ten months.
(Sound) All the Soviet leader
would have to do is set it off.
>> First you push this button,
then you flip the switch and
bada bing, bada boom.
(Sound) Cocktails all around.
>> In the film,
the Russian ambassador is the one to tell
everybody about the doomsday machine.
As soon as, and
here comes another great list of names,
General Turgidson tells
President Merkin Muffley,
played hilariously timid by Peter Sellers,
about General Ripper's actions.
They get Russian premier Kissof who
is of course drunk on the hotline.
In this case however, the human element
has been removed from the doomsday device,
so it will detonate automatically
if Russia is attached.
The titular Dr. Strangelove himself
points out himself the whole idea behind
the doomsday device is pointless
if they don't tell anybody.
>> Why didn't you tell the world,
eh?
>> And a quick note about Dr. Strangelove,
not only is he a second Peter Sellers
character, he's not in the book at all.
There are some nuclear
experts in the room, but
none are a significant character, much
less a wheelchair-bound German defector,
who's right arm is still a Nazi.
>> Heil Hitler!
>> But once again we see a disturbing
scenario made funny, simply by the fact
that a world leader just hadn't mentioned
his globe destroying new weapon yet.
>> As you
know the Premier loves surprises.
>> Once everyone agrees an attack
on Russia cannot be allowed,
the race is on to find the recall code,
a three-letter prefix that must be in
front of any transmission sent in order
for the bombers to even receive it.
In the book, only General Quinten and
two other officers know the code.
But Quinten sent them both on
a hunting trip ahead of his attack.
In the movie, it's literally just
General Ripper that knows the code.
Like his book Counterpart, he puts the
base on complete lockdown, cutting off all
communications and ordering his men to
fire on anybody who approaches the base.
Also in both mediums, the President orders
an attack on the base in an attempt to
retrieve the recall code prefix.
>> As the base is attacked,
Quentin remains locked in his office,
holding his second in command,
Major Howard, at gunpoint.
The fighting outside on
the base is brutal, and
many men die on each side of the attack.
But for Quentin, the defense of
Senora Air Force Base is just to buy time.
Once the bombers are close enough to their
targets, Quentin calls for a ceasefire,
thinking it's too late for
anyone to stop his plans.
Confident he's succeeded, and equally
confident he'd go insane living with
the knowledge that he'd killed tens of
millions of people, Quentin kills himself.
Sitting quietly at his desk,
secure in his belief in the afterlife and
that he can answer for things he's done,
he takes a last look at some photos in
his wallet, presumably his family, and
he shoots himself in the head.
>> Ripper is much more active in
the defense of the base.
Firing a machine gun from his window,
enlisting help from his second-in-command,
yet another Peter Sellers character,
a British exchange officer named
Group Captain Lionel Mandrake.
Ultimately, Ripper is devastated
by his troop's surrender.
It's in this moment, knowing he
couldn't hold up being tortured for
the recall code, that he calmly walks
into the bathroom and shoots himself.
>> But while the base is being attacked,
the men on the Alabama Angel are
performing acts of wartime bravery that
rank right up there with
any fictional soldiers.
B-52 is attacked by radar guided rockets,
fighter jets and missiles,
each time sustaining damage and
casualties.
Their CRM 114 transmitter, the device that
would receive the recall code, is damaged,
and they're leaking fuel.
But Brown continues
stoically on the mission.
>> In the film though the bomber crew has
only one missile to deal with.
While the plane sustains damage to
its CRM 114 transmitter, Kong and
his crew survive.
They quickly discover they
can't make it to their primary
target however so
they decide yo go to an alternate target
they actually can make it to.
>> Ultimately the recall code
is deciphered from scrolling
notes made by the base general.
In the book it was Quentin's
obsession with Peace On Earth.
So Major Howard figures the code
would be some combination of POE.
In the film Mandrake finds
notes about Peace On Earth and
Purity of essence because the fluid
stuff that Ripper was into.
For security reasons,
Howard boldly demands to talk
directly to the President himself.
While Mandrake has to convince a guy named
Bat Guano to let him make a phone call to
the Pentagon.
Another silly name and another satirical
nod of bureaucracy that will probably end
up killing us all.
>> While the recall code worked for most
of the planes, President Merkin Muffley
discovers one bomber made it through.
While they are able to tell
the Russians where the plane is headed,
they don't know that Kong diverted the
bomber because of the damage sustained.
And so Kong and his crew easily make it to
the target and drop the bomb in what has
become the most iconic guy rides a nuc
like a cowboy shot in film history.
(Noise)
>> Captain Brown, however,
does not divert, and
the Russians put every obstacle
they can in the way of the plane.
Ultimately, again, because these guys
are doing some epic heroism here,
they made it through the flack,
and literally as he's dying,
Brown releases the bomb.
>> Dun dun dun!
(Sound)
>> But Like the film,
it doesn't actually release.
Unlike the film though, the reader is
meant to think it was released for a time.
There's even a whole chapter
where the President offers up
Atlantic City as a target for
Russia to destroy as recompense to
avoid the use of the Doomsday Device.
It isn't until the Alabama Angel crashes,
having overshot its target,
that we discover the bomb
was still on the plane.
The bomber's target remains unharmed, so
the attack on Atlantic City is called off
with minutes to spare.
>> In the movie though,
because the Doomsday Device is automated,
there's no such luck.
The film wraps up with Dr.
Strangelove presenting a plan for
surviving the pending nuclear holocaust as
his Nazi arm gets excited at the thought.
The plan includes ten gorgeous women for
every man, hiding in mine shafts and
breeding prodigiously for the next 100
years until it's safe to come back out.
But bickering about weapons and mine shaft
gaps continue until the bombs go off to
the pleasant sounds of We'll Meet Again.
>> So
in the end these stories
really are basically the same.
Red Alert portrays just how close we
are to disaster, how the systems in place
require the slightest defect to
send the whole thing tumbling down.
Dr. Strangelove, though,
portrays how ridiculous the men who
put that system into place really are.
In the same way Generals Quinten and
Ripper nudged the defense
strategy over the edge.
Stanley Kubrick and company took
a cautionary tale of nuclear horror,
simply made the names and the motives
sillier, and it became one of the best
comedies ever made.
>> That's it for this episode.
We'll meet again.
Don't know how, don't know when.
But I know we'll meet
again some sunny day.
As long as you subscribe to Cinefix,
which is exactly how the song went.
(Music)
