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Samizdata quote for the day

“You can’t fight in here – this is the War Room!”
– Peter Sellers, playing the President of the United States in Dr Strangelove.

15 comments to Samizdata quote for the day

  • Verity

    Well, yeah, but he was a prevert.

  • “I’d like to hold off judgement on a thing like that, sir, until all the facts are in.”

  • permanent expat

    Any relation to Jacques Prévert?
    No wittering here; this is a wittering blog.

  • Julian Taylor

    Is that as prevert as in …

    POV Mandrake to Guano:
    Colonel “Bat” Guano: I think you’re some kind of deviated prevert. I think General Ripper found out about your preversion, and that you were organizing some kind of mutiny of preverts. Now MOVE!

  • Verity

    As in Sterling Hayden as a US military man who is baffled by Peter Sellers’s English accent and asks, “Are you some kind of a prevert?”

  • permanent expat

    Thank you, Verity, for reminding me of the estimable Hayden who, in his part, was afeared of being burgled of his bodily juices………………..we had forgot.

  • veryretired

    Hayden’s character was concerned with protecting the “Purity of Essence” of our “precious bodily fluids”.

    This reference is nonsensical nowadays, but would have been understood back in the ’50’s and ’60’s as a fear of the fluoridation of water program which caused complete hysteria among the delusional “commie conspiracy” types.

    Oddly enough, I was just talking about Stranglove this morning with a friend who is also a movie buff. We were having lunch, accompanied by my teenage son who was totally baffled when we started talking about several old movies.

    It is one of the best things in the world to realize both my younger children literally have no idea what the concept of MAD means. To them, it’s all bat guano.

  • Verity

    permanent expat – sorry. I forgot the bit about being robbed of his bodily juices

  • As for myself, I have worked my way past the prevert stage and am now a full-fledged vert.

  • Verity

    triticale – That was funny!

  • chuck

    This reference is nonsensical nowadays, but would have been understood back in the ’50’s and ’60’s as a fear of the fluoridation of water program which caused complete hysteria among the delusional “commie conspiracy” types.

    Oddly enough, the anti-flouridation hysteria is making a comeback, but this time on the delusional left. We’re not using organic flourine or something o_O Must be all that mercury from their silver amalgam fillings. Then there’s the climate change hysteria afflicting Europe, sort of a latter day St. Vitus dance…

  • Luniversal

    deleted by admin: just noticed this banned jackass is back… and so will be deleting him on sights again

  • Julian Taylor

    No wonder he could not bear to live or work in the America of the military industrial complex

    Well, Kubrick left the USA not for those reasons but simply, following the spectacular falling out with Kirk Douglas on Spartacus, that he needed to be in complete creative and editorial control of the film and it’s screenplay and he believed that the further he moved away from Hollywood the more control he would have. Certainly he had no dislike of the USA at all – you might say that since he only went out of his Hertfordshire home to direct a movie, to visit the dentist in London or to do the shopping that he didn’t hold the UK in too much regard either.

    Nevertheless there are some things I cherish about having met the man, namely his dislike of actors, especially Cruise and Kidman (it’s rumoured that he would only hold castings by intercom at his house so that he never had to actually meet actors until going on-set) and his absolute attention to the very slightest details. I can recall some very late nights on Eyes Wide Shut in a cold January 1998 at Hamley’s in London (substituting for FAO Schwarz), simply because of continuity re-shoots of a few background extras – and this was done some years after the main shooting had finished.

  • “Mein Fuhrer! I’m walking!!!”

  • Veryretired: I make a point of watching old movies with my 12 year old. He is a huge fan of Sellers, BTW.