Anthony Harvey, editor of Stanley Kubrick’s still great—and still pretty damn funny—Dr. Strangelove, recalls screening the version of the film that still had the pie-fight ending on one very fateful day. In an interview here, at The Auteurs’. Enjoy!
A small historical correction for the very enjoyable Auteurs’ piece: Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963 (not November 21).
Well, Gareth, as anybody who’s seen Oliver Stone’s “JFK” knows, in AUSTRALIA it was November 21…
Date is now fixed on the piece.
I assume the Auteurs self-corrects for the Antipodean audience…
As long as we’re correcting errors, that’s Katharine Hepburn.
I’m actually sort of amazed that the film’s release wasn’t shelved for over a year, given what happened to Kennedy.
@Michael Adams: FIxed that too. There’s a reason that editorial types, particularly copy editors, carry a grudge against the first Ms. Hepburn…
For what it’s worth, Terry Southern was less enthusiastic about the pie fight sequence than Harvey, feeling that, while it was a fun sequence in high spirits, it failed to capture the specific rivalries between branches of the military that it was supposed to be about. See http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0081.html
I watched STANLEY KUBRICK: A LIFE IN PICTURES last night on TCM and actually got weepy from the sheer bombardment of all the facets of his greatness. It’s hard to believe he’s been gone ten years now.
I would pay thousands of dollars for a disc set of Kubrick cut scenes. Can you imagine the footage of Sellers as Major Kong? Or the 2001 aliens? Or all those CLOCKWORK ORANGE scenes? Or THE SHINING spfx test footage with animation and gore effects?
Kubrick controls even from the hereafter!