Law #2: Strangelove can be shown, not told

There's a scene in Dr. Strangelove where the great George C. Scott, years before his role in Patton, plays a realist General 'Buck' Turgidson, advising a hesitant president to proceed to full committment to a nuclear attack on Russia after one of the U.S. General superceeds his authority and orders the bombers to attack. He progresses to say the president has two choices, "one where you get twenty-million killed, and one where you get a hundred and fifty million people killed." He is talking only about American lives lost while suggesting the U.S. surprise bomb all of Russia.

What makes this scene so powerful is Scott's ability to play off being obsessed with military force and effeciency at all levels. He refuses to say the psychotic General "Jack" D. Ripper (look at the name) is indeed psychotic. There's thrill and fun in his voice when he acts out how a bomber can manage to fly under radar at high speeds. If the bomber succeeds in flying under radar, the world is destroyed by the retailiation of all other nuclear weapons. The bomber is en route to the end of life as we know it, yet Scott gives a speech so passionate and convincing, it doesn't need to be shown.

Grown, educated men acting like boys, hoping for big bombs to brag about, and not one ever willing to refuse they're wrong. Put them in front of a President with an equal love for diplomacy and you get the line, "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here. This is the war room!"

Why is all of this important? The name is Strangelove, obsessions that we understand despite the logic they defy. They wouldn't apply elsewhere, yet we find observing them highly entertaining and the madmen lovable.

This isn't anything old or new, it's timeless. In Heat, a cop and thief, both obsessed with their work of tracking/avoiding the other, sit down for a cup of coffee, and have a chat. They talk about relationships and how they fail because of their love for their job. What isn't said is the cop (played by Pacino in a great role) loves the job for the thrill and satisfaction of stopping criminals like the one before him. On the flip side, the criminal (DeNiro in an equally compelling role) is in the job to show off his skill in performing heists no one else can pull off. Who leaves beautiful women laying in cold beds to chase and shoot at each other? These guys, and they live for it.

Same happened in the Departed. The point of the movie is to show the competing law enforcement against the mob. Yet they talk more about hating the other side and smoking out their moles than they do about their underground deals and deterring crime rates.

Heroes and villians with respect for each other, generals obsessed with the wars that doom them, and cops and robbers that need each other.

There is one vital important part of this amusement that must not be broken. The law is this cannot be said, at least not outright. There is a great fear of gays in Hollywood. Bride of Frankenstein is a great example of this. Directed by the homosexual James Whale, he puts a monster as friends with a sympathic blind man and a manipulative mad scientist. The companionship of each is love, yet Whales is careful not to make it gay. The entire movie is titled and based on finding a mate. The gay mad scientist wants to create a second monster to mate with the first, to obscure the usual mating in yet another way. He is married to his science, and this completes him.

No where in Bride is the love spoken outright. Why? Becasue that would sound gay. Nothing could kill a movie faster than a love we either don't want said or will admit to. General Turgidson would be disregarded as a clown instead of satire if he had admited to loving his bombs. Detective Hanna and convict McCauley would have broken essential tough guy character had either admitted they needed each other or that they loved what the other provides them. Whales would have made a his horror film too obviously a message about gays and it would have lost its audience. Instead, the "strangelove" is kept, although unspoken, and becomes one of the select few great sequels of film history.