In 1964 when Dr. Strangelove was released, the national policy of the United States was MAD; Mutually Assured Destruction.  Stanley Kubrick's black and white film draws an unambiguous world of an insane arms race and drops a bomb at ground zero on the xenophobic MADness. 

A dark satire, Dr. Strangelove created several signature roles.  Peter Sellers leads the cast as three characters; the President of the United States, his strategic science advisor, Dr. Strangelove, and Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, the British attaché who doesn't have the small change to call the White House and save the world.  General Jack D. Ripper, played by Sterling Hayden, is the paranoid psychopath who unleashes the destruction of civilization because he is worried about the commies polluting our "precious bodily fluids."  In one of the great moments of movie history, Slim Pickens as Maj. King Kong rides his bronco bomb through the clouds.  The recently deceased George C. Scott claimed that his portrayal of General Buck Turgidson, the over-the-top patriot, was the favorite roll of his career. 

Religious apocalyptic literature is about morality; the bad are destroyed and the innocent are saved for life in a new world.  In Kubrick's apocalyptic comedy, amoral men bring on an Armageddon where no one is safe.

Ordained in 1982, Fr. Frank Desiderio, csp has served as a parish priest in Los Angeles, a campus minister at UCLA and as a radio producer.  He holds Masters degrees from Catholic University in theology and from the USC Annenberg School of Communications.  For the past seven years, he was rector of St. Paul’s College, the Paulist Fathers seminary in Washington DC.  He also taught preaching at CU and communications at Washington Theological Union.  In January of 1999 he returned to Los Angeles to serve as Vice President of Paulist Productions. 

Discussion Panelists: Coleman Luck, Sr. Rose Pacatte, fsp