Daily Dialogue — October 15, 2013
Ripper: Mandrake.
Mandrake: Yes, Jack?
Ripper: Have you ever seen a commie drink a glass of water?
Mandrake: Well, no I… I can’t say I have, Jack.
Ripper: Vodka. That’s what they drink, isn’t it? Never water?
Mandrake: Well I… I believe that’s what they drink, Jack. Yes.
Ripper: On no account will a commie ever drink water, and not without good reason.
Mandrake: Oh, ah, yes. I don’t quite.. see what you’re getting at, Jack.
Ripper: Water. That’s what I’m getting at. Water. Mandrake, water is the source of all life. Seven tenths of this earth’s surface is water. Why, you realize that.. seventy percent of you is water.
Mandrake: Uhhh God…
Ripper: And as human beings, you and I need fresh, pure water to replenish our precious bodily fluids.
Mandrake: Yes.
Ripper: You beginning to understand?
Mandrake: Yes.
Ripper: Mandrake. Mandrake, have you never wondered why I drink only distilled water, or rain water, and only pure grain alcohol?
Mandrake: Well it did occur to me, Jack, yes.
Ripper: Have you ever heard of a thing called fluoridation? Fluoridation of water?
Mandrake: Ah, yes, I have heard of that, Jack. Yes.
Ripper: Well do you know what it is?
Mandrake: No. No, I don’t know what it is. No.
Ripper: Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face?
Window in the office is shot through by automatic weapons fire.
Ripper: Two can play at this game soldier!
More rounds ricochet through the office, cutting down the overhead desk lamp.
Ripper: That’s nice shooting, soldier!
Ripper produces a machine gun from a golf bag in his closet. He turns off the lights, then sweeps his desk clear with the gun barrel, placing the gun squarely on the desk.
Ripper: Mandrake! Come here!
Mandrake: You calling me, Jack?
Ripper: Just come over here and help me with this belt.
Mandrake: I ah, I haven’t had very much experience, you know, with those… sort of machines, Jack. I only ever pressed a button in my old Spitfire.
Ripper: Mandrake, in the name of Her Majesty and the Continental Congress come here and feed me this belt, boy!
Mandrake: Jack, I’d love to come. But, what’s happened, you see, is the string in my leg’s gone.
Ripper: The what?
Mandrake: The string. I never told you, but, you see, I’ve got a gammy leg. Oh dear. Gone. Shot off.
Ripper: Mandrake, come over here. The Red Coats are coming. Come on!
— Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), screenplay by Stanley Kubrick & Terry Southern & Peter George, book by Peter George
The Daily Dialogue theme for the week is psychotic, suggested by JasperLamarCrab who also proposed Dr. Strangelove.
Trivia: The character of General Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott) was patterned after Chief of Staff of the Air Force, Gen. Curtis LeMay, who was renowned for his extreme anti-Communist views and who once stated that he would not be afraid to start a nuclear war with the Soviet Union if he was elected president. Similarly, Brigadier General Jack Ripper (Sterling Hayden) was patterned after General Thomas S. Power, LeMay’s protégé and successor as Commander in Chief of Strategic Air Command. When briefed on a RAND proposal to limit U.S. nuclear strikes on Soviet cities at the beginning of a war, Power responded, “Restraint! Why are you so concerned with saving their lives! The whole idea is to kill the bastards!…At the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian, we win!”
Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary by JasperLamarCrab: “The calm, rational, persuasive tone of Ripper’s dialogue brings the utterly paranoid insanity of his message into sharp relief. Playing the tone against the content makes for effective — and blackly hilarious — dialogue as well as embodying an ongoing Kubrick theme — how rationality often cloaks violent and psychotic impulses.”
Note: We could use more suggestions with this week’s theme — psychotic.
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