TELEVISION EVENT
****
Director: Jeff Daniels
Principal cast:
Brandon Stoddard
Stu Samuels
Robert A. Papazian
Edward Hume
Nicholas Meyer
Stephanie Austin
Ted Koppel
Country: Australia
Classification: CTC
Runtime: 91 mins.
Australian release date: Sydney Film Festival from 8 November 2021; streaming on SFF On Demand from Friday 12 November 2021.
Television Event relates the fascinating story of the making and broadcast of The Day After, a made-for-TV movie that was transmitted on ABC America on 20 November 1983 to an audience of more than 100 million people, 60% of the US television audience at that time. It was an incredible programming coup, all the more gratifying to its makers because its gestation had been so troubled. Why? Because it was the first telemovie to squarely confront the horrors that would result from nuclear war and show them in graphic detail. Well, in the USA at least – Peter Watkins’ The War Game had had a similar effect on British TV viewers in 1966 when it was shown on the BBC.
Jeff Daniels’ documentary interviews all the key players responsible for getting The Day After to air and, despite the passage of time, their recollections remain crystal clear, presumably because the production and transmission were so fraught and, thus, memorable. Brandon Stoddard was the President of the ABC Motion Picture Division back then and he’d been impressed by the power of the Jack Lemmon/Jane Fonda starring film The China Syndrome and wanted to make something similar for his network. He and his vice president, Stu Samuels, approached veteran screenwriter Ed Hume to write the script and, when that was done, starting seeking out a suitable director for the project. Eventually, they asked Nick Meyers, who’d just finished making Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and he threw himself into the task. He had one proviso, however – that he would make the film as it was written in Hume’s screenplay. This was an important demand because the ‘suits’ in ABC management were already getting cold feet, claiming that you couldn’t possibly show anything so graphic on primetime TV. Each time they submitted changes to Meyers, he refused to make them and got his way. This kept happening right to the very end of production; ultimately, though, some cuts had to be made because the network’s advertisers shied away from the controversy, so it was decided to edit it down to a little over two hours and transmit it on one night, rather than stick to the original plan of showing it over two nights of 90 minutes each. Even the Reagan White House tried to stop The Day After from going to air but Stoddard told them, in his words, “to f*** off!” In the end, Ron and Nancy had a private screening at home before the national broadcast.
Television Event covers all these details at length and in detail. Jeff Daniels, not to be confused with the US actor of the same name, is an American who has lived in Melbourne for the last 20 years, which explains why his documentary has been backed by Screen Australia. He has succeeded in making a movie that is almost as frightening as The Day After was when first shown. As we learn in the film, that initial transmission had a profound effect in the real world and it influenced President Reagan a few years later when he and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev negotiated a nuclear non-proliferation treaty in 1987. Given the state of the world now, with the rise of nuclear-armed autocrats in some countries, it might be time for someone, somewhere to make another movie showing in no uncertain terms that, in a nuclear war, there are no winners.
Principal cast:
Brandon Stoddard
Stu Samuels
Robert A. Papazian
Edward Hume
Nicholas Meyer
Stephanie Austin
Ted Koppel
Country: Australia
Classification: CTC
Runtime: 91 mins.
Australian release date: Sydney Film Festival from 8 November 2021; streaming on SFF On Demand from Friday 12 November 2021.
Television Event relates the fascinating story of the making and broadcast of The Day After, a made-for-TV movie that was transmitted on ABC America on 20 November 1983 to an audience of more than 100 million people, 60% of the US television audience at that time. It was an incredible programming coup, all the more gratifying to its makers because its gestation had been so troubled. Why? Because it was the first telemovie to squarely confront the horrors that would result from nuclear war and show them in graphic detail. Well, in the USA at least – Peter Watkins’ The War Game had had a similar effect on British TV viewers in 1966 when it was shown on the BBC.
Jeff Daniels’ documentary interviews all the key players responsible for getting The Day After to air and, despite the passage of time, their recollections remain crystal clear, presumably because the production and transmission were so fraught and, thus, memorable. Brandon Stoddard was the President of the ABC Motion Picture Division back then and he’d been impressed by the power of the Jack Lemmon/Jane Fonda starring film The China Syndrome and wanted to make something similar for his network. He and his vice president, Stu Samuels, approached veteran screenwriter Ed Hume to write the script and, when that was done, starting seeking out a suitable director for the project. Eventually, they asked Nick Meyers, who’d just finished making Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and he threw himself into the task. He had one proviso, however – that he would make the film as it was written in Hume’s screenplay. This was an important demand because the ‘suits’ in ABC management were already getting cold feet, claiming that you couldn’t possibly show anything so graphic on primetime TV. Each time they submitted changes to Meyers, he refused to make them and got his way. This kept happening right to the very end of production; ultimately, though, some cuts had to be made because the network’s advertisers shied away from the controversy, so it was decided to edit it down to a little over two hours and transmit it on one night, rather than stick to the original plan of showing it over two nights of 90 minutes each. Even the Reagan White House tried to stop The Day After from going to air but Stoddard told them, in his words, “to f*** off!” In the end, Ron and Nancy had a private screening at home before the national broadcast.
Television Event covers all these details at length and in detail. Jeff Daniels, not to be confused with the US actor of the same name, is an American who has lived in Melbourne for the last 20 years, which explains why his documentary has been backed by Screen Australia. He has succeeded in making a movie that is almost as frightening as The Day After was when first shown. As we learn in the film, that initial transmission had a profound effect in the real world and it influenced President Reagan a few years later when he and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev negotiated a nuclear non-proliferation treaty in 1987. Given the state of the world now, with the rise of nuclear-armed autocrats in some countries, it might be time for someone, somewhere to make another movie showing in no uncertain terms that, in a nuclear war, there are no winners.