TV Flashback to The Day After
posted by on October 9 at 16:28 PM
Thanks to our own misguided, idiotic leader and the explosive ambitions of North Korea, my childhood nightmares about nuclear war have re-entered my dreams. Fittingly enough, I turned on the television yesterday just as the opening credits to The Day After began rolling.
I hadn’t viewed the movie since it originally aired, so I was stunned by how vividly I remembered certain elements (a young soldier wandering the countryside around Lawrence, Kansas wrapped in a quilt, John Lithgow quoting Einstein’s observations about World War IV being fought with sticks and stones). I must say, for a made-for-TV movie shot in 1983, I was unnerved by how creepy and moving it remained. Should you care to have your own flashback, check out this clip of Jason Robards, fatally ill with radiation sickness and wandering around the bombed-out streets while Lithgow futilely tries to make contact with the outside world (and yes, that is Stephen Furst from Animal House at the end).
Looking into the production back story, I found this interesting piece reflecting on the making and impact of the film. Among the events surrounding the original airing that I didn’t remember: ABC set up 1-800 phone lines for viewers that might freak out during the broadcast and Ted Koppel hosted a live panel discussion afterwards featuring Dr. Carl Sagan, Henry Kissinger, Robert McNamara, William F. Buckley and George Shultz. Now if only I could find that on Youtube.
Look! It's downtown Seattle, at the unscreened ports where they detect radiation two weeks AFTER the containers are unloaded onto the dock!
The only scene I remember from that movie is of a traffic jam on the freeway. Everyone's trying to get the hell out of town, yet the opposite-bound lanes are totally empty. It was so nice of people to obey traffic laws during pending nuclear doom.
That's GTube to you.
That's GTube to you.
And who better to convey the gravity of the issue than Steve Gutenberg?
in case anyone wants to know, you can usually find this movie at your local QFC for 9.99
:D
I vividly remember watching The Day After during my junior high years. I mostly recall being happy that I wasn't going to be one of those sorry-ass schmucks wandering around in post-apocalyptic Kansas with radiation sickness. Look at the pathetic yokels running away from the mushroom clouds!
I, on the other hand, would end up as a small discoloration on the 20 square mile piece of glass that used to be the Washington metro region. Growing up in DC during the Reagan administration nurtured the most wonderfully comforting sense of nihilism...
I was *young* when I first saw this movie, but it's haunted me my entire life. I found a used VHS a few years ago, and now I make all of my friends watch it. Best movie ever.
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