according to art miller, an independent producer who hired southern to write the screenplay for a never-completed comic film about the bumbling watergate burglars, southern told him that the best example of his writing in "dr. strangelove" was the scene in which b-52 pilot t.j. "king" kong, played by slim pickens, reads off a list of the contents of a survival kit to his crew, concluding that a man could have "a pretty nice weekend in vegas" with some of the items. when the scene was shot, pickens spoke the scripted line ("dallas"), but the word "vegas" was overdubbed during post-production because the film was released not long after the assassination of president john f. kennedy in dallas in november 1963.