Television Event–a documentary about the 1983 nuclear holocaust film The Day After
I walked into the lobby of a nearly deserted Film Forum yesterday at noon here in NYC to purchase a ticket to a screening of the documentary Television Event, concerning the watershed anti-nuclear war made-for-TV film The Day After.
I say watershed because this film, which depicts the hyper-realistic effects of a nuclear attack on the American populace and its hideous aftermath (and actually pulls its punches in that regard, avoiding any mention of “nuclear winter,” which pretty much would spell the end of all life on earth) was seen by a record 100 million horrified people on Nov. 20th 1983 when it was first televised on ABC as a two-hour special.. Using state-of-the-art for the day non-CGI effects, audiences bonded closely with the humdrum quotidian life of the appealing cross-section of characters in the first hour and then were pummeled into shocked and awed submission in the devastating second hour, which details the actual attack (who started the war is never made clear) and its ghastly denouement. Never before had the total devastation of nuclear warfare ever been brought so graphically into the living rooms of America. It was an especially traumatizing television event, as the film is set in a typical American town, Everytown, USA, the heartland city of Lawrence, Kansas (so placid and normalized that William Burroughs eventually retired there in 1981 after his tumultuous years in Manhattan).
The brainchild of visionary ABC network exec Brandon Stoddard in 1981, the film was realized over several years with director Nicholas Meyer (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan) at the helm, a script by veteran tv writer Edward Hume, and outstanding performances by Jason Robards and then relative unknowns Steve Guttenberg, John Lithgow, Amy Madigan, John Cullum and JoBeth Williams. The film still packs a tremendous wallop today (oy) and caused such a publicity furor in the run-up to its broadcast that a special warning was given at the outset for parents to consider not allowing their children to watch the two-hour broadcast. This is nothing next to the public hue-and-cry in the wake of the actual broadcast itself.
Lithgow is especially effective as Professor Joe Huxley, his last name most likely screenwriter Humes’s nod to Aldous Huxley’s bleak 1948 anti-nuclear war book, Ape and Essence. At the conclusion of the final hour of The Day After’s bruising no-redemption narrative where many poignant story lines and characters have either been terminated, cut short, or trailed off into oblivion in the glare of atomic annihilation, the film fades to black with Huxley's urgent, plaintive appeal over his makeshift short-wave radio (a device possibly inspired by Steely Dan's memorable 1973 song "King of the World"):
“Hello? Is anybody there?? Anybody at all???”
To which there is no response.
This 126-minute film—probably the most shocking film to come out of Lawrence, Kansas, since Herk Harvey’s immortal Carnival of Souls (1962)—was brought to you by Orville Redenbacher’s Popcorn. The Day After was not exactly a “popcorn movie,” but what the hey—ABC had great difficulty finding any commercial sponsors at all for their broadcast. Popcorn abounded, though, except for the last hour when the missiles began to fall, which was tactfully shown without commercials.
This was followed by a statement from then-Secretary of State George Shultz, who gamely attempted to reassure the nation that the current US nuclear policy of deterrence would sensibly prevent such a nightmare scenario from ever unfolding. This attempt at a rebuttal was aimed at the very crux of the film (whose message is basically "No More Nukes”)–and was followed by a special discussion panel chaired by Ted Koppel featuring a shaken and clearly disturbed panel of worthies including Eli Wiesel, Carl Sagan, William F. Buckley Jr., Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, and Robert McNamara, who look liked they’d all just peered into the Abyss.
A scowling Buckley typically denounced the film as “debilitating propaganda” and essentially anti-American, and called into question screenwriter Humes’s motives and ABC’s 7 million dollar investment in the film (a pretty big Bang for the Buck back in the day, come to think of it–mere peanuts by today’s scale of economy—7 million being the cost now of booking a 30 second spot on the Super Bowl). Planetary scientist and astronomer Sagan sagely pointed out that an actual nuclear war would have much more severe and catastrophic consequences worldwide than those depicted in the film (hard to imagine, as the movie pretty much ends with everyone dead or dying). Author Elie Wiesel, having lived through the actual Holocaust, sounds the most effective and heart-breaking note as to the film’s potential to bring humanity together once and for all.
The film went on to be not only the biggest “water-cooler” television event of the year. I duly watched it when it aired—and like everybody else was thoroughly terrified by its (literally) ashen-faced denouement. I recall how intensely the film was discussed and debated not only in the media but by my immediate circle of friends. It was eventually shown in 40 countries, and in 1987 was actually broadcast in the then-Soviet Union, the producers demanding it be translated into Russian exactly according to its script and be shown uninterrupted without commentary. In any case, The Day After so disturbed and depressed then President Ronald Reagan at a White House screening the month before ABC's broadcast that he began to re-think his support for the concept of nuclear deterrence–which eventually led to the 1987 INF Treaty (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty) co-signed by Mikhail Gorbachev, which banned all ground-launched ballistic missiles and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers.
I have not revisited The Day After since it first aired in 1983, but this Australian-American doc Television Event, produced and directed by Jeff Daniels, pretty much brings it all back home, with out-takes, production drawings, interviews with many of the principals involved, and snippets of scenes from the film in question. What is thoroughly striking is the fact that no matter what pressures came to bear on the network to edit the film and basically tone things down, the film still resonates as a mass-bummer experience. The passion and righteous conviction of the production team to pull the curtain back and reveal the terrifying outcome of a nuclear war in living color is pretty strong meat still. Some of the production drawings on view look like nothing so much as the explicitly gory and insanely violent 1962 Mars Attacks trading card series inked by Wally Wood and Norman Saunders, which amongst other things depict humans (and cattle and dogs) being rendered into fiery skeletons by the death rays of the atomic weapon-wielding Martians. (Check out those cards here.)
Over the years, the spirit-destroying reality of atomic warfare has been shoved conveniently onto the back burner of consciousness. It is just too much for the human mind to comprehend the sheer finality of it for very long.
There had been warnings from Hollywood previously, of course. The whole grim business, but with an optimistic twist at the end, had been depicted on the big screen in 1962’s Panic in Year Zero!—A survivalist punch to the gut directed by and starring the great Ray Milland. Before that, there was the cheesy red-scare optics of Alfred E. Green’s 1962 Invasion, U.S.A. Most recently, Christopher Nolan’s 2023 70mm epic Oppenheimer posited the concept of “reaping the whirlwind,” ie, Oppenheimer supposedly quoting the Sanskrit aphorism “Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds” when the Trinity test blast he has successfully masterminded finally goes off.
And, of course, there was the singular jape of Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 Dr. Strangelove, referred to in Television Event, which burlesqued the entire concept of Cold War atomic paranoia courtesy of Kubrick collaborator screenwriter Terry Southern. What could be more cartoonishly ridiculous AND chilling than the indelible image of rodeo cowboy Slim Pickens waving his ten-gallon hat, whooping it up all his yee-hawing glory astride the Bomb as it plummets downwards? This staggering shot, followed by a montage of possibly every atomic bomb test blast ever registered to film, set to the tune of Vera Lynn’s wartime anthem "We’ll Meet Again," renders the whole notion of atomic warfare and arms race militarism absurd. Absurdity is our default mode whenever we ponder the concept of nuclear annihilation. An ironic chuckle is how we deal with it.
"Immediately in the event of a nuclear attack, bend over...
Put your head between your legs…
And then kiss your ass goodbye!"
And so we laugh and move on. Because buried deep inside us is the knowledge that if we dwell upon this subject too long, and truly think through all of its implications, it will probably drive us mad (“mutually assured destruction” a.k.a. MAD).
But The Day After—as glimpsed in the rear view mirror of Television Event—is no joke.
The mood in the Film Forum lobby last Friday was somber. News of Israeli bombs falling on Tehran had been broadcast that morning, and the inevitable retaliation from Iran was heading Israel’s way.
A close friend blurted out to me yesterday: “I can’t believe this war has started. We’re sitting ducks here in New York!” NYC is most likely Ground Zero in the event of a nuclear attack.
An article in the NY Times Magazine, April 10th, 2025, claims that 1/3 of all adult Americans are currently prepping for a Doomsday scenario involving the construction of fortified bunkers—basically, fall-out shelters.
POST SCRIPT:
About a week ago, I had a very vivid dream.
It’s a sunny summer day in NYC, and I’m walking up the west side of 6th Avenue towards 11th Street with CultureCatch founder, Dusty Wright.
We arrive at that corner, and I point to a grocery store across the street.
“Wait, let’s ask Jima (pronounced Jeema, as in Iwo Jima, don’t ask me why this particular name came to mind, it was only a dream) to go across the street and get supplies for us at the market.
Suddenly, I hear a roar behind me.
I wheel around and look up into the cloudless blue sky over the treetops of leafy 11th Street.
In the center of the empty sky is a huge yellow fireball—a star burning brighter than a thousand blazing suns.
The realization of what’s going down–instant karma, if you will–hits me hard.
And in our last moments together, I shout to Dusty:
“SNEAK ATTACK ON NEW YORK!!”
And then I wake up.
“All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.”
—Edgar Allan Poe
Call it an unpleasant premonition.
But the dream was too real—and given the events of recent days, I just cannot shake it.
In conclusion, this doc should be required viewing by every person on planet Earth who has ever seriously contemplated the fantasy of “nuking” the Other.