The Day After is the first American television show aired on November 20, 1983, on the ABC television network. Over 100 million people, in nearly 39 million households, watched the program during its initial broadcast. With a 46 rating and a 62% share of viewers who watched during the initial broadcast, it was the seventh highest non-sport event shown up to that time and set a record for the highest-rated television movie in history - a record still held recently as a report the year 2009.
The film postulated a fictional war between NATO forces and the Warsaw Pact countries that rapidly escalated into full-scale nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union. The action itself focuses on residents of Lawrence, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri, as well as several family farms located near nuclear missile missiles.
The players include JoBeth Williams, Steve Guttenberg, John Cullum, Jason Robards, and John Lithgow. The film was written by Edward Hume, produced by Robert Papazian, and directed by Nicholas Meyer. It was released on DVD on May 18, 2004, by MGM.
Video The Day After
Plot
The story follows some residents - and the people they meet - in and around Kansas City, Missouri and the college town of Lawrence, Kansas, 40 miles (64 km) west.
The narrative of this film is structured as a pre-after-during-nuclear attack scenario: the first segment introduces their various characters and stories; the second indicates the nuclear disaster itself; and details the three effects of the fall on the characters.
During the first segment, when characters are introduced, the chronology of events leading to war is described entirely through television and radio news and communications among US military personnel and rumors, enhanced by the reaction and character analysis of those events..
Chronology of war
The Soviet Union proved to have begun a military buildup in East Germany (which the Soviet Union asserts is a Warsaw Pact exercise) with the intention of intimidating the United States, Britain and France to withdraw from West Berlin. When the United States did not retreat, the Soviet armored division was sent to the border between East and West Germany.
During the final hours of Friday, September 15, news reports reported "a widespread revolt among some divisions of the East German Army." As a result, the Soviets blocked West Berlin. Tensions increased, and the United States issued an ultimatum that the Soviets withdrew from the blockade at 6:00 am the next day, and disobedience would be interpreted as an act of war. The Soviets refused, and the President of the United States ordered all US military forces around the world with the warning of DEFCON 2.
On Saturday, September 16, NATO forces in West Germany invaded East Germany via a Helmstedt checkpoint to free Berlin. The Soviets held the Marienborn corridor and inflicted heavy casualties on NATO forces. Two Soviet MiG-25s crossed into the West German airspace and bombed the NATO ammunition storage facility, as well as attacking schools and hospitals. The next radio broadcast stated that Moscow was being evacuated. At this point, major US cities started mass evacuations as well. Immediately following unconfirmed reports that nuclear weapons were used in Wiesbaden and Frankfurt. Meanwhile, in the Persian Gulf, a marine war erupted, like a radio report telling of the sinking of ships on both sides.
Finally, the Soviet Army reached the Rhine. Seeking to prevent Soviet troops from attacking France and causing the rest of Western Europe to fall, NATO halted Soviet progress by launching three low-tactical nuclear weapons against advanced Soviet troops. Soviet troops fight by launching a nuclear strike at NATO headquarters in Brussels. In response, the US Strategic Air Command began randomizing the B-52 bomber.
The Soviet Air Force then destroyed a BMEWS station at RAF Fylingdales, England and others at Beale Air Force Base in California. Meanwhile, on the Looking Glass EC-135 plane, orders came from the President for a full nuclear strike against the Soviet Union. Almost simultaneously, an Air Force officer received a report that a massive Soviet nuclear strike on the United States was launched, further updated with reports that more than 300 Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) entered. It is intentionally not clear in the film whether the Soviet Union or the United States launched a major nuclear attack first.
The first Salvo of the Soviet nuclear strike in the central United States (as pointed out from the point of view of Central Kansas and western Missouri residents) occurred at 3:38 pm. Central Summer Time, when a large-scale explosion of nuclear weapons exploded at an altitude above Kansas City , Missouri. This produces an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that closes the power grid to the operable Minuteman II Whiteman missile pad and the surrounding area. Thirty seconds later, the emerging Soviet ICBM began to attack military and population targets. Higginsville, Kansas City, Sedalia, Missouri, and all the way south to El Dorado Springs, Missouri are enveloped with nuclear weapons that explode on the ground. Although the story does not specify it, it strongly suggests that US industrial cities, military and bases are heavily damaged or destroyed. The tail describes the central and northwest United States as a desert that blackens burnt-out cities filled with fire, explosion, and radiation victims. Finally, the US president gave the radio address where he stated there was now a truce between the United States and the Soviet Union (which, though not shown, had suffered the same devastating effect) and declared no surrender by the United States.
Storyline
Russell Oakes lives in an upscale Brookside neighborhood with his wife and works in a hospital in downtown Kansas City. She was scheduled to teach a class of hematology at the University of Kansas (KU) hospital in Lawrence, Kansas, and was near on her way when she heard the alarming alarm system alert on her car radio. The attention signal of the sine wave vibrates and then a woman announces the advisory message. He got out of the crowded highway and tried to call his wife but gave up because of the long queue in a telephone booth. Oakes tries to return to his home via the K-10 freeway and is the only rider heading east. The nuclear attack begins, and Kansas City is gripped by panic as the air-raid siren wails. Oakes cars are permanently disabled by EMP from the first high-altitude detonation, such as all motor vehicles and electricity. Oakes is about 30 miles (48 km) from the city center when missiles hit. His family, many colleagues, and almost all the inhabitants of Kansas City were killed. He walked 10 miles (16 km) to Lawrence, who had been badly damaged by the explosion, and, at the university hospital, treating the wounded with Dr. Sam Hachiya and Nurse Nancy Bauer. Also at the university, Professor Joe Huxley's science and students used Geiger counters to monitor the level of nuclear fall outside. They built an emergency radio to maintain contact with Dr. Oakes in hospitals and also to find survivors of other broadcasters outside their territory.
Airman Billy McCoy was stationed at a Minuteman missile shield near Whiteman Air Force Base, 70 miles (110 km) east-southeast of Kansas City, and called to serve during the warnings of DEFCON 1. His crew included the first witnessed launch of the initial missile, showing full-scale nuclear war. After it became clear that the Soviet counterStrike was near, the pilots panicked. Some stubbornly insist that they should stay at their post and take refuge in the silos, while others, including McCoy, point out that it is pointless because the silos will not withstand a direct attack. McCoy told them that they had done their work and speeded up in an Air Force truck to take his wife and son in Sedalia (20 miles (32 km) east of Whiteman AFB), but the truck was permanently disabled by the EMP from the explosion.. McCoy left the truck and took refuge in an overturned trailer truck, barely escaping from a nuclear explosion. After the attack, McCoy walks into town and finds an abandoned shop, where he picks up candy and other provisions, while shots are heard in the distance. Standing in line to drink water from the well pump, McCoy befriended a mute man and shared his supplies. McCoy asks other men along the way about Sedalia, and he shows that Sedalia and Windsor are gone. When McCoy and his colleagues began to suffer the effects of radiation sickness, they left the refugee camp and headed to the hospital in Lawrence, where McCoy finally succumbed to radiation sickness.
Farmer Jim Dahlberg and his family live in rural Harrisonville, Missouri, very close to a missile missile field about 37 miles (60 km) south-southeast of Kansas City. While the family is preparing for the wedding of their eldest daughter, Denise, to senior KU Bruce Gallatin, Jim prepares for an impending attack by turning their basement into a temporary shelter. When the missile was launched, he forcibly took his wife, Eve, who refused to accept the reality of the escalating crisis and continued to make preparations for the marriage, down into the crypt. As he ran to the shelter, Dahlberg's son Danny accidentally spotted behind him just as a missile exploded in the distance and was instantly blinded and taken back to the shelter by Dahlberg.
A KU student, Stephen Klein, while riding home Joplin, Missouri, stumbled on the farm and persuaded Dahlberg to take him. After a few days in the basement, Denise, despairing of Bruce's unknown situation and whereabouts, unbeknownst to him. he, was killed in the attack, escaped from the basement and ran around a field full of dead animals. He sees a clear blue sky and thinks the worst is over. However, this field is actually covered by radioactivity. Klein pursued him, trying to warn him about the effects of invisible nuclear radiation passing through his cells like X-rays, but Denise, ignoring this warning, tried to run away from him. Finally, Klein was able to pursue Denise back to a safe in the basement, but not before Denise ran to the stairs to find her wedding dress. During the temporary church worship, while the minister tries to state how lucky they can survive, Denise starts to bleed from her crotch due to radiation sickness from her running through the field.
Klein took Danny and Denise to Lawrence for treatment. Dr. Hachiya tries to treat Danny, and Klein also develops radiation sickness. Dahlberg, returning from an emergency farmer meeting, confronts a group of silent people crouched squatting on his farm and trying to persuade them to move elsewhere, only to be shot and killed in the middle of a sentence by one of the silent.
In the end, the situation in the hospital became bleak. Dr. Oakes fainted from exhaustion and, after waking up a few days later, learned that Nurse Bauer had died of meningitis. Oakes, suffering from a terminal radiation illness, decided to return to Kansas City to see his home for the last time. Hachiya stay behind. Oakes installed a ride on the Army National Guard truck, where he watched US military personnel close their eyes and execute looters. After somehow finding out where his home was, he found the remains of his scorched wife's wrist and a family crammed in the rubble. Oakes angrily ordered them to leave his home. The family quietly offered Oakes food, causing him to fall in despair, as family members comforted him.
As the scene faded into black, Professor Huxley called his emergency radio: "Hello? Is anyone there? Anybody?" No answer.
Maps The Day After
Cast
Production
The Day After is the idea of ​​ABC Division president Motion Picture Division Brandon Stoddard, who, after watching The China Syndrome, was so impressed that he imagined creating films exploring the effects of nuclear war on United States of America. Stoddard asked his executive vice president for television and miniseries Stu Samuels to develop the script. Samuels created the title The Day After to emphasize that the story was not about nuclear war itself, but the result. Samuels suggested several authors and eventually Stoddard commissioned veteran television writer Edward Hume to write the manuscript in 1981. ABC, which financed production, was concerned about the graphic nature of the film and how to accurately depict the subject on a family-oriented television channel.. Hume did a great deal of research on nuclear war and did some drafts until finally ABC considered his plot and character acceptable.
Initially, the film was more outstanding and in Kansas City, Missouri. Kansas City was not bombed in the original script, although Whiteman Air Force Base is, making Kansas City suffer shock waves and shocking survivors to the city. There is no Lawrence, Kansas in the story, although there is a small Kansas town called "Hampton". While Hume was writing the script, he and producer Robert Papazian, who had great experience in on-site shootings, took several trips to Kansas City to locate and meet with officials from the Kansas film commission and from the Kansas tourism office to find a suitable location for "Hampton." It comes to a choice of both Warrensburg, Missouri and Lawrence, Kansas, the two college towns - Warrensburg is the home of the Central Missouri State University and near the Whiteman Air Force Base and Lawrence is the home of the University of Kansas and near Kansas City. Hume and Papazian finally chose Lawrence, because of access to a number of good locations: universities, hospitals, football and basketball, agriculture, and rural areas. Lawrence also agreed as a "geographical center" of the United States. The Lawrence people urged ABC to change the name "Hampton" to "Lawrence" in the script.
Back in Los Angeles, the idea of ​​making a TV movie that shows the true effects of nuclear war on Americans on average still sparked controversy. ABC, Hume, and Papazian realized that for scenes depicting nuclear explosions, they had to use state-of-the-art special effects and they took the first step by hiring some of the best special effects people in the business had to pull some storyboards for a complicated explosion scene. Later, ABC hired Robert Butler to direct the project. For several months, the group worked on drawing the storyboard and revising the script again and again; then, in early 1982, Butler was forced to leave The Day After due to other contractual commitments. ABC then offered the project to two other directors, both of which rejected it. Finally, in May, ABC hired feature film director Nicholas Meyer, who recently completed the Star Trek II blockbuster: The Wrath of Khan. Meyer was very worried at first and doubted ABC would get away with making a television movie about an uncensored nuclear war reducing its influence. However, after reading the script, Meyer agreed to direct The Day After.
However, Meyer wants to make sure he will film the script he is offering. He does not want censorship censoring movies, or movies to be a Hollywood disaster movie from the beginning. Meyer estimates more of The Day After like the film, the less effective, and prefers to present the facts of nuclear war to the viewers. He explained to ABC that no TV star or big movie should be in The Day After. ABC agrees, though they want to have one star to help attract European audiences to the movie when it will be shown. theatrical there. Later, while flying to visit his parents in New York City, Meyer happened to be on the same plane as Jason Robards and asked him to join the cast.
Meyer plunged into several months of nuclear research, which made him very pessimistic about the future, to becoming sick every night when he came home from work. Meyer and Papazian also traveled to ABC sensors, and to the US Department of Defense during their research phase, and experienced conflict with both. Meyer has many hot arguments over the elements in the script, that the network sensor wants to cut the movie. The Defense Ministry said it would work with ABC if the manuscript explained that the Soviet Union launched their missiles first - something that Meyer and Papazian did not have to do.
In any case, Meyer, Papazian, Hume, and some casting directors spent much of July 1982 taking many trips to Kansas City. Among the casting in Los Angeles, where they are heavily dependent on the unknown, they will fly to the Kansas City area to interview actors and local sights. They hope to find some real Midwestern people for smaller roles. Hollywood casting directors strolled through shopping centers in Kansas City, looking for local people to fill small and supportive roles, while the daily newspaper at Lawrence posted advertisements calling on locals of all ages to sign up for work as a large number of additions in film and a professor of theater and film at the University of Kansas were hired to head the local casting of the film. Of the eighty parts that speak, only fifteen are cast in Los Angeles. The remaining roles are filled in Kansas City and Lawrence.
While in Kansas City, Meyer and Papazian toured the office of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Kansas City. When asked what their plan was to survive the nuclear war, a FEMA official replied that they were experimenting with placing evacuation instructions in a phone book in New England. "About six years, everyone has to have it." This meeting led Meyer to then refer FEMA as "a complete joke." It was during this time that the decision was made to change "Hampton" in a script for "Lawrence." Meyer and Hume assume because Lawrence is a real city, that would be more trustworthy and besides, Lawrence is the perfect choice to play a Central American representative. The city boasts a "socio-cultural mix," sitting near the geographical center of the US continent, and Hume and Meyer's research tells them that Lawrence is the target of a major missile, because 150 Minuteman missile silos stand nearby. Lawrence has some good locations, and the people there are more supportive of the project. Suddenly, the less emphasis placed in Kansas City, the decision was made to make the city completely destroyed in the script, and Lawrence made the main location in the film.
Filming
Production began on Monday, August 16, 1982, on a farm west of Lawrence. Sunshine is needed but it turns out overcast. This set requires a spotlight. The crew burned a red farm barn fire for one scene during the explosion sequence, although the shot was eventually cut. The owner of the farm was not paid, but ABC compensated him by building a new barn. A set in rural Lawrence, depicting the schoolhouse, was made within six days of fiberglass "leather." On Monday, August 30, 1982, ABC closed Rusty IGA supermarket at Lawrence's Hillcrest Shopping Center from 7 am to 2 pm. to take pictures representing panic purchases. A local man and his baby son came to the market, apparently unaware that ABC was filming the movie. The man reportedly saw the chaos and ran back to his car in fear.
Local extras are paid $ 75 to shave bald heads, have scarred prosthetic latex and burn marks taped to their faces, plastered with an artificial mud layer, and wear rags for scenes of radiation sickness. They were asked not to bathe or bathe until the filming was over. In Little Lawrence Park, ABC built a dingy slum to house survivors. It's known as the "City of Tent." On Friday, September 3, 1982, the camera was rolled up with many students in addition. The next day, Jason Robards, the movie's most famous "star", arrived and the production was transferred to Lawrence Memorial Hospital.
Many individuals and local businesses benefit. It is estimated in a newspaper account that ABC spends $ 1 million in Lawrence, not all on production.
On September 6, in downtown Lawrence, the filmmakers were repainted, changing store names, staining the facade with soot. Large windows were crushed into sharp teeth, scattered bricks and dumped cars painted with black spray clouds. Two industrial-sized yellow fans darted into a flatbed trailer blowing clouds of white flakes into the air. The fall is actually a white-painted Cornflakes.
On September 7, the students poured into Allen Fieldhouse, the basketball arena, the only place on campus large enough to hold so many wounded. The scene was filmed with thousands of radiation victims stretched across the court floor.
On September 8, a four-mile stretch of K-10 between the Edgerton Road exit and the DeSoto junction at the former K-285 (now Lexington Avenue) was closed for a highway scene shoot that represented the mass exodus on Interstate 70. On September 10, Character Robards filmed back to what's left of Kansas City to find his home.
ABC uses a demolition site from the former St. Joseph is located on Linwood Boulevard and Prospect Avenue in downtown Kansas City as a shooting location. The network pays the city to stop the demolition for a month so it can film the scene of destruction there. However, when the crew arrived, more demolition had occurred. Meyer is angry, but then realizes that he can fill the area with fake bodies and garbage cars "and then I'm really happy." Robards are in makeup at 6 am to look like a victim of radiation poisoning. Makeup takes three hours to apply. The passer-by tensed to take a closer look as Robards raised his arm held in the fallen debris - just the arm, cut off on the shoulder. This is where the last scene moves where Dr. Oakes facing the squatters' families were filmed.
There was more trouble on September 11th. Meyer desperately wanted the Liberty Memorial, a high war memorial at Penn Valley Park overlooking downtown Kansas City, for two scenes: the perfect Kansas City postcard image near the beginning and the Robards scene tripping through the ruins. However, one of the local park department directors was opposed to allowing it to be used for commercial purposes and expressed concern that ABC would damage the Memorial. Resolution achieved. By using fiberglass, the filmmakers make it seem as if Warning has been reduced to rubble. The robot stumbles through the debris once more. That night, the cast and crew flew to Los Angeles.
Interior scene hospital with Robards and JoBeth Williams shot in Los Angeles. Many scientific advisors from different fields are set up to ensure the accuracy of the explosion, its impact and its victims. The government, nervous about how it would be depicted, insisted that the Soviets instigated the attack, and disagreed with producers who wanted it to be confused and unclear about who was responsible for the first launch, not allowing production to be used. recordings of nuclear explosive stocks in the film, so ABC hired a special effects creator. The result is an authentic visual explosion and an iconic "mushroom cloud" created by injecting paint and oil-based ink down into a water tank with a piston, filmed at high speed with the camera mounted upside down. The image is then optically colored and the contrast is reversed. The water tank used for the "mushroom cloud" is the same water tank used to create the special effects of "Mutara Nebula" in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
The Day After depends heavily on recordings from other films and from unclassified government films. The widespread use of stock recordings is interspersed with the special effects of mushroom clouds. While most missile launches come from US Department of Defense records from ICBM missile tests (especially Minuteman IIIs from Vandenberg Air Force Base adjacent to Lompoc, California), all tape missile launch stocks were obtained from the library of undocumented DoD films.. Airborne personnel scene above the Airborne Command Post received the news of the incoming attack being a tape of actual military personnel during the rehearsals and was aired several years earlier in a 1979 PBS documentary, First Strike . In the original recording, the silo was "destroyed" by the "attack" that came in moments before launching its missile, which is why the last seconds of the launch countdown are not seen in this movie.
Further stock recordings were taken from news events (fires and explosions) and 1979 theatrical films Meteor (such as collapsed bridges and high office demolitions originally used to describe the destruction of World Trade) in the film). The short scene of the people who trample was also borrowed from the disaster movie Two Minute Warning (1976). Other recordings have previously been used in theatrical movies such as Superman and Damnation Alley .
Editing The Day After is one of the most stressful processes ABC has ever encountered in post-production of one of their movies. There were many encounters with censorship and Nicholas Meyer was very angry and confused because the network cut many scenes that seemed to slow the pace of the film, and not because it was too controversial or too graphic.
Broadcast
The network was originally planned to broadcast the movie as a four-hour "show" spread over two nights for a total of 180 minutes of walking time without ads. Meyer felt the script was already soft, and suggested cutting an hour of material and presenting the entire movie in one night. The network disagrees, and Meyer has filed the entire script. Furthermore, the network found that it was difficult to find advertisers, consider the subject matter, and told Meyer he could edit the movie for a one-night version. Meyer's original cuts lasted two hours and twenty minutes, which he presented to the network. After the screening, the executives sobbed and seemed to be severely affected, making Meyer believe they were agreeing to his release. However, the six-month long struggle begins with the final form of the film. The network now wants to trim the film to the bone, but Meyer and his editor, Bill Dornisch refuse to cooperate. Dornisch was fired, and Meyer walked away. Networks bring other editors, but networks are ultimately unhappy with their version. They finally bring Meyer back and reach a compromise, with a final running time of 120 minutes.
The Day After was originally scheduled to premiere on ABC in May 1983, but post-production work to reduce film length pushed back early airdate into November. The sensors forced ABC to cut across the scene of a child who had nightmares about nuclear disasters and then sat down, yelling. A psychiatrist told ABC that this would upset the children. "This seems to me very ridiculous," Meyer said in the TV Guide at the time, "not only in relation to the rest of the film, but also when compared to the large amounts of violence that can be found on every average night watching TV. "Anyway, they made a few more pieces, including the scene where Denise has a diaphragm. Another scene, in which a hospital patient suddenly shouted, was expelled from the original television broadcast but returned for home video broadcast. Meyer persuaded ABC to dedicate the film to Lawrence residents, as well as to place a disclaimer at the end of the film, following the credits, letting viewers know that The Day After is underestimating the true effects of nuclear war so they can have stories. Disclaimers also include lists of books that provide more information about the subject.
The Day After received a large promotional campaign before it aired. Advertisements aired months before, ABC distributed half a million "guide guides" discussing the dangers of nuclear war and setting up viewers for graphic scenes of fungus clouds and radiation fire victims. Discussion groups are also formed nationally.
Music
Composer David Raksin wrote original music and adapted music from The River (a documentary created by concert composer Virgil Thomson), featuring an adaptation of the "How Firm a Foundation" hymn. Although he recorded just under 30 minutes of music, many were edited from the last piece.
Deleted and alternate scenes
Because the movie is shortened from three start-up hours into two, some special-effects scenes are planned to be canceled, even though the storyboard is built to anticipate the possibility of an "expanded" version. They included a "bird-eye" view of Kansas City as two nuclear explosions were visible from Boeing 737 aircraft on approach to the city airport, as well as US simulated newsreel footage in West Germany taking positions in preparations for advancing Soviet armored units, and tactical nuclear exchanges in Germany between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, which followed after Warsaw Pact troops attacked and broke through NATO lines.
The ABC sensor greatly reduces the scene to reduce the number of bodies or the victims of severe burns. Meyer refused to remove the main scenes but reportedly about eight and a half minutes of cut footage still existed, significantly more graphically. Some snippets are restored for movie releases on home videos. In addition, the nuclear attack scene is longer and should display very graphic and very accurate images of what happened to the human body during the nuclear explosion. Examples include burned people, carbonizing their meat, burning to bones, melting eyes, faceless heads, hanging skins, glass and debris deaths, torn legs, crushed, blown from buildings by shock waves, people in the shelter falling suffocated during a firestorm. Also cut off are images of radiation sickness, as well as post-graphic violence from survivors such as food riots, looting, and common law offenses as authorities attempt to restore order.
One cut scene shows surviving students struggling with food. Both parties must be athletes versus science students under Professor Huxley's guidance. Another short scene was then cut linked to a firing squad, in which two US soldiers were blindfolded and executed. An officer reads the indictment, verdict and punishment, when a clad priest reads the Last Ritual. A similar sequence took place in the 1965 British faux documentary film, The Game War . In the original broadcast The Day After , when the US president spoke of the country, the vote was a replica of Ronald Reagan. In the next broadcast, the voice was exaggerated by a stock actor.
US and international home video releases are present at various runs, many of which are listed in 126 or 127 minutes; full screen (4: 3 aspect ratio) seems to be more common than widescreen. Videodiska RCA in the early 1980s was limited to 2 hours per disc, so the full screen release seemed closest to what was originally aired on ABC in the US. The 2001 US VHS version (Anchor Bay Entertainment, Troy, Michigan) included a 122 minute walk time. The 1995 version of the "laser-cut" version of the 1995 laser version (Entertainment Picture) runs 127 minutes, including comments by director Nicholas Meyer and "presented in the theater aspect ratio of Europe 1.75: 1" (according to the LD jacket).
Two different German DVD releases running 122 and 115 minutes; edits reportedly downplay the role of the Soviet Union.
Reception
On the original broadcast (Sunday, November 20, 1983), John Cullum warned viewers before the movie aired that the film contained graphic and annoying scenes, and encouraged parents who had young children watching, to watch together and discuss issues. issue of nuclear war.. ABC and local TV affiliates open 1-800 phone lines with standing counselors. There was no commercial break after the nuclear attack. ABC then broadcast a live debate on Viewpoint, hosted by Ted Koppel, featuring scientist Carl Sagan, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Elie Wiesel, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, General Brent Scowcroft and conservative commentator William F. Buckley, Jr. Sagan opposes nuclear proliferation, while Buckley promotes the concept of nuclear deterrence. Sagan describes the arms race in the following terms: "Imagine a room full of gasoline, and there are two bitter enemies in the room, one of which has nine thousand matches, seven thousand other games, each concerned about who is ahead. " , who is stronger. "
A psychotherapist counseled viewers at Shawnee Mission East High School in the suburbs of Kansas City, and another 1,000 held candles at a peaceful spot in Penn Valley Park. A discussion group called Let Lawrence Live was formed by the English Department at the university and tens of the Humanities Department gathered on campus in front of the Memorial Campanile and lit candles in peacekeeping. At Baker University, a private school in Baldwin City, Kansas, about 10 miles south of Lawrence, students toured the city, seeing the sites depicted in the film have been destroyed.
Boys' servant Mr. Rogers has filmed five episodes of his television program (titled "Conflict") in the summer of 1983, in response to events in Grenada, and the terrorist suicide bombing of the US Marine Corps barracks in Lebanon. It aired on November 7-11, 1983, one week before the broadcast of The Day After.
A week before the film aired, American Conservative groups issued "Call for Action" to "local leaders", including background material on the Reagan administration's position on strategic defense, along with instructions on how to hold press conferences and guest editorial samples. In his cover letter on November 15, 1983, Lew Lehrman (Lewis Lehrman) wrote, "Our response to this nuclear freeze propaganda must be swift and convincing.President Reagan has presented this country with the only option for a nuclear disaster: the development of a strategic defense system that can protecting the free world from aggression without resorting to the threat of extermination as a deterrent. "
Movies and key material are clearly displayed in the news media before and after the broadcast. On covers like TIME , Newsweek, and US magazines. News & amp; World Reports, and TV Guide.
Critics tend to claim the film was sensationalizing a nuclear war or too tame. The special effects and depiction of a realistic nuclear war received praise. The film received 12 Emmy nominations and won two Emmy awards. It's rated "well above average" in the Film Guide of Leonard Maltin , until all the reviews for exclusive movies for TV are removed from the guide.
In the United States, nearly 100 million people watch The Day After on their first broadcast, a recording audience for a movie made for TV. Producers' organizations are releasing movies theatrically worldwide, in the Eastern Bloc, China, North Korea, and Cuba (this international version contains a six-minute recording not in broadcast edition). Since advertising is not being sold in these markets, the Producer Sales Organization fails to generate an undisclosed amount of revenue. Years later the international version was released to tape by Embassy Home Entertainment.
Commentator Ben Stein, criticizing the film's message (ie that the Mutual Assured Destruction strategy would lead to war), wrote in Los Angeles Herald-Examiner what life was like in America under the occupation of the Soviets. The idea of ​​Stein was finally dramatized in the American miniseries, also broadcast by ABC.
The New York Post accused Meyer of being a traitor, writing, "Why does Nicholas Meyer do Yuri Andropov's work for him?" Many press releases focused on unanswered questions in the movie about who started the war. Richard Grenier in National Review accuses The Day After promoting "non-patriotic" and pro-Soviet attitudes.
Television critic Matt Zoller Seitz in his 2016 book Alan Sepinwall titled TV (The Book) is named The Day After as the 4th largest American TV movie of all time. , wrote: "Quite possibly the most dismal TV movie ever broadcast, The Day After is an explicitly anti-war declaration dedicated entirely to show the audience what would happen if nuclear weapons were used on the population civilians in the United States. "
Effects on policy makers
President Ronald Reagan watched the film a few days before his broadcast, on November 5, 1983. He wrote in his diary that the film was "very effective and depressing to me," and that changed his mind about the policies that prevailed on "nuclear war." The film is also screened for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A government advisor who attended the screening, a friend of Meyer, told him, "If you want to draw blood, you succeed, the people sit there as they turn to stone." Four years later, the Treaty of Medium-Level Nuclear Forces was signed and in Reagan's memoir he drew a direct line from the film to the signing. Reagan reportedly later sent Meyer telegram after the summit, saying, "Do not think your movie has no part of it, because it's true." However, in a 2010 interview, Meyer said that this telegram was a myth, and that sentiment came from a friend's letter to Meyer; he suggested the story had its origins in the editing notes received from the White House during production, which "... may be a joke, but that would not surprise me, he became a Hollywood parent."
The film also has an impact outside the US. In 1987, during the reform era of Mikhail Gorbachev glasnost and perestroika , the film was aired on Soviet television. Four years earlier, Georgia Rep. Elliott Levitas and 91 co-sponsors introduced the resolution in the US House of Representatives "[declares] a sense of Congress that the American Broadcasting Company, the Department of Foreign Affairs and the US Information Agency should work to have the film The Day After aired to the Soviet public. "
Accolades
Emmy Awards win:
- Extraordinary Movie Sound Editing for Limited or Special Serial
- Extraordinary Achievement In Special Visual Effects
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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