Quote:
Originally Posted by razark
I should know this. Wasn't he ill?
Or was it that no one could replace Slim Pickens for that part?  |
Apparently Sellers thought almost from the get-go that the fourth part was pushing it too far. He wasn't sure he could get the Texas accent right, but according to interviews on the disc he did finally manage it. He still wasn't sold on playing the part, however, and there was friction between him and Kubrick over it.
They actually did start filming, or at least rehearsing, some of his scenes in the mockup cockpit of the plane... which was suspended 12 feet or so off the ground of the soundstage. At one point he had an accident - or an "accident," depending on who's telling the story - and fell off the thing (IIRC, one interviewee said it was in the middle of a row with Kubrick over having to play that role). He broke or twisted or sprained his ankle, anyway, he was injured to the point where he could no longer crawl up inside the mockup bomber to film his scenes as Major Kong. That's when they went looking for someone else and got Slim Pickens.
I'm pretty sure the accident was also the reason Dr. Strangelove was in a wheelchair. The character wasn't written that way, it was to accomodate Sellers' injury.
Another bit of trivia: if you watch Pickens in the scene where he goes over the contents of his "emergency kit" or whatever it's called, he says something to the effect of "a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas" with all the stuff in the kit and you can tell that "Vegas" was dubbed in later. The original line was "good weekend in Dallas" (the character was a Texan) but the film was scheduled for release in early 1964 and after the Kennedy assassination the dialogue was rerecorded with "Vegas" in place of "Dallas."