THE BOOK OF THE VIP
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Peter Sellers goes ape over the BombHollywood looks beyond nuclear holocaust
Chapter 46
In fact, pictures like this will make so much money that even people who make movies for grownups will notice,
2And they’ll make a bunch of movies along the same lines for the adult audience,
3Which won’t be silly science-fiction productions about a lot of scary monsters created by nuclear tests,
4But serious science-fiction productions about the scary situations created by nuclear weapons.
5Movies like this will be made by even very great directors,
6eSuch as a genius named Stanley K___,
7Who will make a movie called ‘Dr. Failsafe, or How I Learned to Love the Bomb in Seven Days,’
8Which will not only be scary,
9But funny too,
10What with fHenry Fonda playing the president,
11And a Brit named Peter Sellers playing everyone else,
12Including the title role of gDr. Failsafe,
13Who will go completely hinsane when the situation in the war room gets to be too hot a ipotato,
14Which will happen when Peter Sellers kidnaps a nuclear weapons facility and launches a jBig One at the Russians,
15Played by kPeter Sellers,
16Who can’t seem to understand that it’s all just an laccident,
17mWhich means there might be war,
18Since everybody on both sides is descended from the same killer ape,
19Played by nPeter Sellers,
20oWith music by some Kraut composer or other,
21Which is terribly terribly funny,
22In a depressing sort of way,
23Which is the special genius of Stanley K___,
24Who will achieve a similar effect in most of his pictures,
25pIncluding one called ‘A Clockwork Odyssey,’
26qWhich will be all about a violent British punk,
27rPlayed by sPeter Sellers,
28tWith music by some uKraut composer or other,
29vWho is cured of his violence and then has to be uncured because human beings can’t survive without being violent,
30wEspecially in modern life,
31aWhich is also why the president gets so depressed in ‘Dr. Failsafe,’
32bBecause the only way to avoid all-out nuclear war is to drop an H-Bomb on New York City,
33cWhich is kind of a violent way of surviving,
34And makes Henry Fonda put his head in his hands,
35dEspecially when he hears the telephone melt in Moscow,
36eEven though everybody else in the war room is whooping it up in a pretty hilarious way,
37fAnd making plans to survive underground with a lot of beautiful women to reseed the planet,
38gAs long as the women don’t have to be played by Peter Sellers,
39hWhich Stanley will probably agree to,
40iProvided there’s lots of Kraut music playing underground.
41jAnd so they argue back and forth about this kind of stuff for quite a while,
42kWhile Henry orders the bomb dropped on New York,
43lAnd the B-52 takes off with a crazy cowboy pilot and an enormous H-Bomb,
44mPlayed by Peter Sellers,
45nWho is so eager to see the bomb go off that he rides it all the way down,
46oWhile the credits roll up in front of the gigantic mushroom cloud that used to be New York,
47pBecause even popular movies can be art,
48As long as they don’t have a happy ending,
49Since art has to reflect humanity,
50Which isn’t headed for a happy ending either.
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Chapter 46 / 58