(3 of 5)
The scenario is not too elaborate or cynical for the byzantine world of show biz: sponsor recalcitrance triggers stress. Tapes are leaked, positions taken, battle lines drawn, articles written. No movie since CBS's 1980 Holocaust film Playing for Time has stirred such a dust devil of ideological p.r., but the stakes are even larger here. The Day After cost an opulent $7 million, and its promotion budget may ultimately equal that fig ure. ABC, gambling that it will make up in ratings what it misses in ad dollars, schedules the film for sweeps week, when the three networks all go for broke in the ratings. The timing is perfect: Nov. 20 is not only a Nielsen trifecta, it is less than two weeks before the Pershing Us are due to be installed in West Germany. More controversy, more publicity. Is the timing a reflection of political intent as well as business expediency? The network firmly denies it. The National Review editorializes that ABC is making "a $7 million contribution to the faltering campaign against the deployment of the Pershing II." So The Day After lumbers in carting more weight than Mother Courage.
For all this, the film's beginnings were astonish ingly humble: Brandon Stoddard saw The China Syndrome and wondered what the home-front consequences of nuclear war would be. When Nicholas Meyer met Ja son Robards on an airplane and offered him the lead role of a humanistic surgeon, Robards accepted with elegant simplicity. "It beats signing petitions," he said. Now that The Day After has been temporarily positioned right at the center of the nuclear debate, there is no more room for humility or modesty. The finished film was premiered last week in Lawrence, Kans., where much of it had been made on location, and the townspeople were tearful and shaken. Stoddard reports he wept when he saw the first cut of the film and says the present version "is the most important thing I have ever done." Director Meyer calls the movie "the most valuable thing I've ever done with my life." Mayor David Longhurst has invited Ronald Reagan and Yuri Andropov to Lawrence for a summit. Another Lawrence citizen, Bob Swan, member of the antinuke Let Lawrence Live organization, says he is trying to link up his home town by television or telephone to Leningrad, so that Soviets and Americans can hash things out person to person. After the broadcast, ABC will put on a special 45-min. edition of Viewpoint, anchored by Ted Koppel. The show, intended as both a kind of emotional decompression chamber for viewers and a debating platform between friends and foes of the freeze, has an additional, and certainly not accidental, function. It gives The Day After the weight of a major news event.