From a 1967 Paris Review interview conducted by Maggie Paley, Terry Southern discussing his first screenwriting job, on a little film called Dr. Strangelove:

“Terry Southern

It was the first time in my life that I’d gone anywhere with a sense of purpose. I mean, I’d always traveled, I’d made about ten trips back and forth, but just aimless, with no justification except having the G.I. Bill and using it as a means to be there. It was the first time I’d gone anywhere and been paid for it. It was very satisfying, very interesting, and almost unbelievable to be moving about like that.

Stanley himself is a strange kind of genius. I’d always had a notion that people in power positions in movies must be hacks and fools, and it was very impressive to meet someone who wasn’t. He thinks of himself as a ‘filmmaker’—his idol is Chaplin—and so he’s down on the idea of ‘director.’ He would like, and it’s understandable, to have his films just say, ‘A Film by Stanley Kubrick.’ He tries to cover the whole thing from beginning to end. Including the designing of the ads. He’s probably the only American director who works on big-budget pictures who has complete control of his movies.

Interviewer:

Strangelove was originally conceived as a melodrama, not a comedy. Did you work with Kubrick to restructure the whole thing, or were you able to just insert the jokes?

Terry Southern:

I knew what he wanted. It was a question of working together, rewriting each line, and changing the tone.

Interviewer:

When you started the project, you’d never written movie dialogue. You presumably didn’t know anything about how to write a screenplay.

Terry Southern:

Yes, I knew, because I like movies. And writing dialogue has always been easy for me.”