The role of T.J. Kong was originally written for John Wayne, but the studio insisted that Sellers play four roles, so the part was given to Sellers. But Sellers sprained his ankle during filming, and was unable to get around in the crowded B-52 cockpit set. So they asked John Wayne to play the role, and he turned it down. Then they asked Slim Pickens.Pickens had never been outside the U.S. before the filming of Dr. Strangelove, so he had to get a passport in order to get to the filming in England. When he first got to the set, people thought he had dressed for the part -- but that’s how he always dressed, with a cowboy hat and fringed jacket and cowboy boots. And people also thought that he was trying to stay in character between takes and before and after filming, but that’s just because he wasn’t playing a character -- he was just being himself.
What did you think of Pickens as Kong?
8 comments:
He's amusing. More over the top than I remembered.
Actually all the characters were more over the top than I remembered.
Maybe with age we need satire — even that which is meant to ridicule an absolutely absurd state of affairs — to be a little more nuanced...
Again, though, this movie is more than 40 years old, and a mode of satire that we might find belabored and lacking in subtlety was just the right thing for the time.
I enjoyed Slim. He's likeable, and I think you can kind of tell that he's really like that. He is over the top, but it fits since everybody is. I enjoyed George C. Scott in that regard also.
Not in general, kc. I love Kusturica’s 1995 movie, “Underground” which I saw a year ago. It is an insanely brilliant satire without a hint of nuance and is very noisy, that is loud, er, LOUD. Whether subtlety is an advantage would be more a question of the filmmakers style and the subject at hand. But I don’t think it has anything to do with “the times”. You wouldn’t argue that we live in a subtle age, would you?
I would argue only that I'm at a subtle age.
Interesting trivia, Ben. This is being discussed elsewhere, but I also expected that memorable shot of him straddling a bomb to be the film's closing scene.
He co-starred with some larger-than-life characters played by big names (Sellers, Scott) and still held his own.
Perhaps he actually would have done fine with the part, but I somehow imagine that John Wayne would come off as hamming it up. Pickens seemed natural even playing it over-the-top. I agree that he matched well with Sellers and Scott.
Good point. John Wayne is too familiar. We would have recognized the unnatural hamming right away.
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