By Jarrod Jones. Your favorite thing in the whole world, right now. Let’s talk about it. ’10 Things Concerning…’ is the latest DoomRocket interview series, where we discuss your absolute favorite comic book, film, television show, or video game. Think of it as the only stop for your geeky confessional.
This week, I’m talking with Brandy Dykhuizen, contributing writer for DoomRocket.com, concerning ‘Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb’.
1. Describe the first time you watched this movie.
Unfortunately, my movie watching pre-university consisted mostly of James Bond marathons on Spike TV, Labyrinth, and The Shining. Once I got to UNC I checked out as many Kubrick movies from the library as I could, and immediately fell in love with Dr. Strangelove. I watched it probably a half-dozen times during one of my first weekends at UNC because I hadn’t figured out how to make friends yet, and I remember just laughing by myself in my dorm room and being elated at how utterly perfect it was.
2. How many times have you sat through this?
That’s a tough one. I’ve been guilty of media binging long before Netflix and the like made it so easy. I’ll watch or read the same thing over and over again, back-to-back, if it excites me. I’m going to guess around 20 times, excluding any time I’ve fallen asleep or the failed attempts at making a less enthusiastic party watch it with me.
3. Your preferred Peter Sellers performance in ‘Strangelove’, please.
Captain Lionel Mandrake. Sellers and George C. Scott made beautifully absurdist comedy in General Turgidson’s office, with all the existential anxiety of Waiting for Godot. Supposedly Scott was tricked into the over-acting and buffoonery, and was pretty angry about it later. But Sellers’ mixture of polite incredulity and resignation to one’s fate makes Mandrake outshine the movie’s more overt characters.
4. How would you approach the smorgasbord found within the War Room?
With fresh fish and Havana Cigars.
5. What is your favorite conspiracy theory?
Aside from Commies being out to steal our precious bodily fluids, I’ll go with the moon landing being faked. The longer I live in California, the more plausible it seems that it was all shot in a crummy studio in L.A.
6. Describe your ideal fallout shelter.
As much as I’ve fantasized about the end of days, I can usually still live outside in my post-apocalyptic dreams. But if we’re talking true fallout shelter, I guess something akin to The Hive, only minus the T-virus. And cats must be allowed.
7. What’s the best line in the whole movie? Just one, now.
“You’re gonna have to answer to the Coca-Cola company.” – Colonel Bat Guano. The world is ending outside, and the American is occupied with the consequences of destroying private property. From the top down, no one in this movie can see the forest for the trees.
8. You’re stranded behind enemy lines. Describe the contents of your survival kit.
A wire saw, a compass, a few sharp knives, chlorine dioxide tablets, a magnifying glass to make fire and some fishhooks (and a line if I’m lucky). And cyanide capsules, just in case.
9. Your preferred Sellers performance outside of ‘Strangelove’, please.
Clare Quilty in Kubrick’s Lolita. Perhaps a weird choice, but in a film that tilts rather violently between paying proper homage to the novel and rewriting the point entirely, Kubrick’s and Sellers’ portrayal of Quilty as the in-and-out-of-the-shadows Anti-Humbert is cunning. How many times have you laughed out loud during a murder scene — 30 years before Tarantino, that is?
10. As a nuclear-fueled doom opened up around you, what would be your final words?
“I know we’ll meet again, some sunny day.”
Before: 10 Things Concerning Kyle G. King And ‘Punch Drunk Love’
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