Southern, Terry

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Shepperton: [printed by Scripts Limited for Columbia Pictures, November, 1962]

122 pp. brad-bound screenplay (11 x 8 1/2 ins; 280 x 220 mm).  Pen and pencil manuscript edits by Southern; first and last pages chipped at corners with slight soiling; housed in vinyl cover. [Witjh:] 1 page typed manuscript withe extensive holograph edits of Southern's first encounter with Kubrick on set.

Southern's early manuscript  edits to the film classic.  represent the first stages of the collaboration of director Stanley Kubrick and arch-satirist Terry Southern in transforming Strangelove from the tense and serious drama as originally planned, to the classic dark comedic nightmare it was to become. The present is evidently an early version of the film, containing scenes later cut (the pie fight and alien voice-over) and with the characters with names very different from those in the final realease.

Kubrick's deep research (he reportedly read over 60 books on nuclear war) and late nights with writer Peter George eventually convinced him  that drama would fail the subject. In an unpublished interview of Kubrick by Southern, the filmmaker remarked:  “The present nuclear situation is so totally new and unique that it is beyond the realm of current semantics; in its actual implications, and its infinite horror, it cannot be clearly or satisfactorily expressed by any ordinary scheme of aesthetics. What we do know is that its one salient and undeniable characteristic is that of the absurd” (http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/archives/issues/fall2004/line_items/strangelove.php).

The director met Terry Southern during the interviews for  Lolita and received a further introduction to the Texan's potential for absurdity from Peter Sellers.  The actor was so enthused by Southern 's novel, The Magic Christian, that he bought 100 copies for gifts to friends including Kubrick. In Southern Kubrick felt he had found the writer able to help convey the lunacy of the arms race.

According to the consignor, the present copy is the one thrust into Southern's hands when he arrived at England's Shepperton Studios in November 1962. (In the accompanying account of his arrival, Southern notes Kubrick's "eyes burning like Picasso's in his hydroceph mad scientist chess-player's head..." )  Working at breakneck speed for over the next month, one can see in the present copy the beginning of Southern's influence on the project, for instance editing George C. Scott's character from General Schmuck to General Turgidson and changing Seller's Von Klutz character. While this version lacks some of the film's key lines from General Ripper (his extended riff on "precious bodily fluids" that was pure Southern) and the dialogue befitting a Texan given to bomber pilot Major Kong also from Southern. his penned "Commies" replaces "enemy" in the script and the initial awkward scene of an alien finding the film he cuts completely. 

The infamous pie fight in the war room scene as originally set to end the film is present in this version as is a more extended riff on the Russian ambassador sneaking a camera into the War Room. . Strangelove went on to win four Academy Awards and commercial success; and it was selected by the Smithsonian for permanent preservation in the National Film Registry. The present is a rare document of the work in progress for a truly landmark film.  No full version of the script is present in the Southern papers at NYPL. "Mein Führer! I can walk!"