On Television
KITMAN, MARVIN
On Television IN DEFENSE OF THE DAYAFTER' BY MARVIN KITMAN The most controversial television show of the year, in case you forgot, ran on ABC on the night of November 20. Herewith a few thoughts...
...Or the miniseries about a psychotic who, over a 40-year period, kills 43 blond boys he picks up hitchhiking to Florida...
...ABC is the quintessential maker of chewing gum for the eyes...
...ABC brought together a group of panelists from various disciplines and establishments to discuss the ramifications of the movie when it finished...
...Our missiles were a thing of beauty as they took off in formation across the Kansas farmland...
...Some out there in TV land probably even saw the mo vie as ending on a positive note...
...When it finally does something good, it is accused of being un-American...
...They weren't going to let us off the hook with an impersonal statistical table of casualties X number of feet or yards or miles from theepicenter...
...I have tickets to the symphony...
...Just when we feel like we've learned to live with the bombs, it's all over...
...I would have appreciated hearing the Chief Executive get up and say: "This is total rot...
...The missilemen first class were vigilant in their silos...
...Stoddard is something of a maverick only because he has learned that it's sometimes possible to make big bucks with quality...
...We saw a simulation of a nuclear device detonated over Omaha on a prime-time documentary, with the weight of CBS News and Dan Rather behind it...
...Heck, I thought, having survived World War III with David Soul last season on NBC, this one would be a piece of cake...
...Instead, the howls of indignation focused on the timing...
...Then the Russian missiles arrived...
...The Day After could be the most emotionally involving show ever to appear on TV...
...The special effects people had a field day, and they left you breathless...
...The highway traffic as folks fled their places of work was also quite a sight, a monumental fenderbender...
...And essentially it did describe what happens after nuclear weapons go off-nothing good...
...To say that thoseof us in New York or LA would be trapped like rats is a gross minimization...
...Is that the bottom line...
...Usually, I feel like cutting my throat after watching TV movies, they're such a waste of time...
...Lots of luck...
...The sun will shine again on Lawrence, Kansas...
...Others will conclude that the bombs are in fact only going to fall on Kansas...
...Munching away, 1 began to review in my mind all the turmoil that had preceded the film's airing...
...Its sole political ideal is money...
...The flashpoint was Europe, with reports of the events there reaching Kansas via television...
...Movies like On The Beach have addressed the subject, too...
...All systems functioned perfectly...
...Our government was functioning...
...It is the network that gives us Dynasty, Hotel, The Love Boat, and Fantasy Island...
...The network, the argument ran, should not be releasing the movie just when we are about to begin deploying medium-range missiles in Europe...
...When the human mind can't handle the hopelessness of the outside world, it tur ns to TV...
...Roots and Friendly Fire are his previous "political" program innovations...
...A devastating movie like The Day After should encouragemore viewing...
...Since we all knew that already, why were the conservative groups going after ABC with such venom...
...thtnk the real source of concern was that the Russian missiles in the film worked as well as ours...
...He told Bradley he thought The Day After was "descriptive," not "political...
...some said the cutoff age should be 12...
...The sequence when the bombs hit was especially grabbing...
...It will be a Garden of Eden...
...This is what it's all about, I told myself...
...In the first half of the two-hour made-for-television film, they established the characters...
...Enough tension filled the air to make Dr...
...Kids bickered...
...That would be a sinful waste of tax dollars...
...The Strategic Air Command crews were very careful as they ran through all the safeguards against accidents...
...The Sunday before, on CBS' 60 Minutes, Ed Bradley-had tried to get Brendan Stoddard, the president of ABC Motion Pictures, to say there was something "political" about thenelwork'sdecision topresent The Day After...
...In other words, it seems to me the critics were criticizing how realistic and powerful the film was...
...Totally ignored was the well-proven fact that barring kids from watching a program will only increase their interest in it...
...Or if the network absolutely had to show what would happen in the event Soviet nukes landed in Kansas, Brandon Stoddard should have come on at the end and said, "We're only kidding, folks...
...Life went on as the international crisis worsened...
...It had the local residents frantically emptying the supermarket shelves in preparation for disaster while the radio urged, "Don't panic...
...Herewith a few thoughts written the day after The Day After...
...TV is always being put down for presenting such garbage...
...That's censorship, and presumably we have missiles in the first place to protect a way of life that includes free speech...
...If the fate of Lawrence in The Day After is what our current defense policies are all about, then I for one don't mind saying I'm upset...
...The movie did not even attack the idea of nuclear deterrence...
...Nobody was on dope...
...Or perhaps the film should have had a laugh track going as Lawrence dug out...
...As for TV, besides NBC's World War III there was CBS Reports' five-part series, The Defense of the United States, shown in June 1981...
...Still, the lengthy portrait of everyday existence in the Midwest had me wondering what all the fuss was about...
...This time I celebrated my continuing existence by walking to the Carnegie Deli and ordering a big pastrami sandwich...
...Other groups were trying to protect our children from seeing the nuclear holocaust...
...Of course deterrence is necessary...
...It made World War III, which I thought was pretty good at the time, look like an incursion...
...They were lambasting ABC for doing good work...
...Nobody lost the key or forgot the combination...
...Yet ABC came under attack for telling a story that was much more unambiguously fictionalized...
...Holy smokes, that was some movie -absolutely riveting, or incinerating...
...America survived without surrendering...
...This was not the first time the end of the world was the subject of either fiction or factual inquiry...
...The network wasn't urging viewers to throw themselves in front of missiles on their way to their sites, or to chain themselves to silo doors so they wouldn't open in a crisis...
...Educators in Oregon wanted the movie to be off-limits to anybody under 16...
...Once again, I wanted to take my hat of f and salute...
...The Right-wingers would have been much happier if ABC had told the American public: "No way Moscow will ever get its missiles off in time...
...One scene in the first hour was a little unnerving...
...Shielding the innocent is a commendable objective...
...The second hour, though, began very encouragingly...
...Besides, this never could have happened if the yellow-bellied liberals had supported my laser program to shoot down the Russian ICBMs in outer space...
...That was one of the good things about The Day After...
...That's what ABC's secret strategy was...
...The anti-nuclear groups, to be sure, were planning to use The Day After for their own purposes...
...But they missed theoneman who could have lifted my spirits, Ronald Reagan...
...Many of the Lawrentians were sitting around watching TV...
...It was too violent, it was liable to give them nightmares...
...This is the meaning of life...
...the show said nothing about San Bernardino or Scarsdale...
...otherwise we wouldn't be here...
...And this was a small city in the boondocks...
...The real value of a program like The Day After'm a democracy is that it promotes discussion...
...To hell with my diet...
...Television, even at its best, promotes apathy...
...It was like a computer X-ray game for real-Implosions, firestorms, ashes to ashes...
...orsomeoth-er assuring words to that effect...
...I would have kissed theearth, if I wasn't worried about contracting hoof-and-mouth disease from the sidewalks of Manhattan...
...it showed our military performing without a hitch...
...For 10 years it ran a show about the 1950s called Happy Days without ever mentioning Senator Joe McCarthy...
...Doctors saved lives in the operating room...
...A cease-fire was declared...
...Many viewers, terminally afflicted with John Wayne syndrome, will still think they can survive a nuclear onslaught...
...There can't be a war," a man in a barber shop explained...
...The Russkies are all on vodka...
...God bless you all...
...Nobody is more loyal to the almighty dollar...
...They showed us some of the families of Lawrence, Kansas, who were going to disappear before our eyes so we would care about them...
...That was chilling-and soon forgotten...
...I got the impression the show's conservative opponents were actually saying there would never be a right time to run it...
...Nothing like the scenes depicted could ever happen...
...Frank Field, who was doing a 317-part series on stress on my local NBC evening news show that week, break out in a cold sweat...
...Producer Robert A. Pa-pazian, writer Edward Hume, director Nicholas Meyer, director of photography Gayne Rescher, and effects wizard Robert Blalack made me acutely aware of the joy of being alive...
...Although the missile systems may seem like total insanity to thinking people, we are dealing here with a television audience...
...The protesters couldn't come out and say the film shouldn't be shown...
...Farmers farmed...
...In my book, this was one of the great war pictures of all time, right up there with Tora, Tora, Tora and Pat ton...
...But maybe we should start with TV movies about mothers being raped and children having their heads cut off by sex maniacs...
...No, the anti-nukers shouldn't count their mushrooms...
...If war movies using conventional bombs are okay, it's a bit absurd to say that a dramatization of the effects of the nuclear weapons we hear about all the time on the news is harmful...
...What an irony...
...I was staggering in my seat...
...This is the fruition of all our sacrifices in the name of national security...
...But we're always deploying something somewhere...
...The President did come over the radio to tell everybody he was still alive...
...It won't be this way, will it...
...This was funny in a way...
...The missiles roaring into the stratosphere one after another reminded me of World War II, when as a child I used to watch the cruisers and destroyers sailing out of the Brooklyn Navy Yard through the Narrows, heading for distant waters, unknown dangers, confrontations with the enemies of freedom...
...Come out from under your beds...
...America's libraries are full of books about the days after...
...The ban-the-bomb-picture forces were unfair in making ABC sound treasonous, too...
...Personally, though I try to keep an open mind, I do find the show depressing me more and more by the hour...
Vol. 66 • November 1983 • No. 22
