-Funding for this program provided in part by... [ Dogs barking in distance ] [ Woman wailing ] [ Explosion ] -[ Neighs ] -I, for one, felt that it was just devastating.

Um, the bleakness and the...

It was an eerie quality, you know?

It was sort of like every horror story you've ever read rolled into one story.

♪♪ [ Explosion ] -If there was a nuclear war, I mean, more than half of the people will probably just die right away, and that's what I want to happen.

I don't want to survive.

[ Woman screaming ] -Can't see it, but it's here -- all around us!

♪♪ -I feel rather nauseous now.

Had to leave the room.

♪♪ -For those who haven't seen it, it's just all about a bunch of people in the Midwest going about their business until they get nuked.

♪♪ Nuclear war, the most devastating possibility that has ever confronted the human race, short of climate change, and yet so terrifying that no one can bear to think about it.

So how do you get regular people to watch?

And I thought, well, maybe this is like a back door into people's consciousness -- the fact that it was a TV movie.

♪♪ ♪♪ This was unprecedented.

Nobody had ever seen anything close to this on network television.

♪♪ -♪ Ooh!

♪ ♪♪ ♪ We're gonna make this ♪ ♪♪ ♪ A special year ♪ ♪♪ ♪ A time for laughter ♪ ♪♪ ♪ A time for cheer ♪ ♪ Come on and join us ♪ ♪♪ ♪ We're makin' friends across the whole land ♪ ♪ Let's join hands ♪ ♪ We're one big family ♪ ♪ In perfect harmony, sing out ♪ ♪ It's you and me and ABC ♪ [ Cheering and rhythmic clapping ] ♪♪ [ Telephone rings ] [ Indistinct conversations ] -In my early days at ABC, I was in charge of their movie department, but I had never made a movie in my life.

We'll try this.

We'll try a movie of the week.

We'll try this, and we'll try that.

and -- and we -- not a clue what we were doing.

♪♪ -A world of sights and sounds.

Each week, ABC will present the world premiere of an original motion picture, produced especially for the movie of the week.

♪♪ Herschel Bernardi is a recently widowed accountant.

-I'm not gonna marry any woman.

-What's so bad about getting married?

-"But I Don't Want to Get Married!"

♪♪ -My son's not a freak!

-I just want to be like a man.

♪♪ -[ Snarling ] -I've probably have done 200 television movies and -- I don't know -- 25 miniseries.

But I felt that if you're privileged enough to be involved with a medium that's capable of reaching millions of people, you have a responsibility to the audience, but also to yourself, because eventually you're gonna wake up at 40 years old, and if it's all been [bleep] and nothing and crap, you're gonna be a very upset human being.

♪♪ I wanted to do new, unique stuff that was about something, that has meaning, that has import.

♪♪ [ Alarms blaring ] ♪♪ It's very hard to understand now what that period was like.

♪♪ -Hi, hold out your arms now.

That's a good girl.

-They check the children for radioactivity, contamination that could lead to horrors not meant for children -- loss of hair, ulcers, hemorrhages, death.

It was a nuclear evacuation drill.

-At the time, 75% of people in the United States thought there would be nuclear war within the next ten years.

They were scared -- very, very scared.

-During the '80s, we had enough nuclear weapons between America and Russia, to kill every man, woman, and child on the face of the earth 54 times over.

54 times over.

-The fear paralyzed people.

They'd taken the fear and shoved it back on a shelf in the back of their minds because they simply didn't want to worry about it.

I thought, "How do you bring this forward and make people decide for themselves what they were gonna do about it?"

-There are all sorts of movies that are made which are called "what if" movies.

-So I talked to a guy who worked for me.

I said, "You know, I got an idea, you know.

How about, like, nuclear bomb?

Like, story of a bunch of people in the middle Midwest of the United States before, after, and during a nuclear attack."

And he said, "What?

Are you out of your mind?"

And I said, "No, no, I mean, we could do it."

And he said, "Brandon, no one's gonna watch that."

-"The Day After" was in a category all by itself, because when you're going out on a limb with something like that...

When you put a show like this into someone's home, you're gonna hurt some people.

You're going to hurt some people.

You're going to make people distraught.

You're going to do it to young people.

You're going to do it to older people who have medical conditions.

It's a very dangerous prospect to put something like this on the air.

You know, our business was dependent upon advertising revenue, and advertisers hate controversy.

So if it was controversial, that was an additional element which gave you pause.

"Well, do we really want to develop that script?"

-"The Day After" would be extraordinarily controversial, but I thought, "We should do this."

-What we didn't know was whether we could get it made, and then we didn't know if we could get it on the air.

But we knew that if we could get it on the air, we would absolutely have a major television event.

What he wanted from me was find us a writer.

♪♪ -Uh, I was approached by ABC -- very straightforward fashion.

They asked if I'd be interested in doing this project.

-They said, "Would you be interested in writing a piece about nuclear war?"

[ Chuckles ] It was that simple, that direct.

And I said, "Yes."

It was like the dream assignment for me.

-I had a long sympathy with disarmament movement, which I don't think ABC was aware of, but I saw it as a very fortunate coincidence of the right person at the right time.

-You -- Did you make them aware of your thinking?

-No.

-I did expect that they'd have a distinct point of view, but they threw it right back at me -- How would I do it?

♪♪ I said I would not make it a political film -- not about the Soviets and the Americans.

We will not know who to blame.

It's not a question of blaming one side or the other, but it's the nuclear arsenal itself that's the problem.

No one had made a film like that before.

I was very excited about writing this script.

I don't think I've ever written anything faster.

[ Typewriter keys clacking ] [ Typewriter dings ] -I only remember one draft, and it was killer.

But the title that Ed Hume put on his script was "A Silence in Heaven."

You know.

I'm in Brandon's office, and he said to me, "We're gonna need a title."

I said, "No Kidding."

'A Silence in Heaven' -- it could have meant anything.

It's poetic, but it doesn't give you a universal metaphor.

I was in the hallway, going from his office to my office, when I thought, most of this thing is about the aftermath of a nuclear war, and I just suddenly thought of the words "the day after," did a U-turn -- "How about 'The Day After'?"

He lit up.

That was it.

Everybody just loved it.

-No.

-I was very hurt.

I wasn't even told about it.

It simply appeared on a later draft -- "The Day After."

I don't even know what that means.

-We're doing a nuclear war movie called "The Day After."

You know what it's about.

You don't have to see a trailer.

All I have to do is tell you it's a nuclear war movie.

It's called "The Day After."

That's how you sell a television movie.

[ Explosions and shouting ] -Brandon and I had both had our own joyful experiences with Bob Papazian.

I honestly don't remember ever discussing another producer.

-I read the script as fast as I could, so I called Brandon up immediately.

I said, "Are you sure you're going to make this movie?"

At that point in time, I was producing one movie after the next for the networks.

We were going along like gangbusters.

♪♪ The producers in those days controlled their own destiny.

So they were the boss.

Television was the producer's medium.

Brandon Stoddard said, "Now I'd like to have you produce 'The Day After.'"

And I said I didn't want to waste a good two and a half years on this project.

I didn't think "The Day After" was gonna be aired.

He said... -It's gonna go on the air.

-So then I said, "Great, then let's get started."

Brandon wanted prestige, quality, a step above the norm.

You know, "Bring me a really high-end director."

♪♪ -There she is.

There she is.

-Rolling.

[ Bell rings ] Mark.

♪♪ And cut.

-I was a successful Hollywood director -- Oscar nomination, lots of girls.

It was all good.

I have to emphasize, I'm not a person who walked around thinking about nuclear war all the time.

Who wants to do that?

-We were going for the biggest ratings we could possibly get.

Our primary goal was not to save the world.

At least mine wasn't.

♪♪ -Ronald Reagan came to power, and I was appalled 'cause I thought he was a jerk.

♪♪ What Reagan brought to the table was the notion of a winnable nuclear war.

It was survivable.

He thought that.

He thought a lot of nutty things.

♪♪ [ Crowd shouting indistinctly ] I was thinking, if I just made a movie showing what nuclear war was, I could unseat Ronald Reagan when he ran for reelection.

And here was Hollywood, giving me a chance to put my work in the service of my beliefs.

I also was being psychoanalyzed at the time.

So I'm lying on the couch and trying to rationalize my way out of doing this very grim, depressing movie.

And my analyst said very quietly, "Well, I think this is where we find out who you really are."

And I think, "[Bleep], now I'm gonna have to do this movie."

♪♪ ♪♪ -In the Midwest, there are many missile silos planted in the ground in beautiful farmland.

There would be a missile silo.

That's a very ironic combination.

Farmers and nukes.

-Alpha.

-Bravo.

-Bravo.

-Charlie.

-Charlie.

-What we identify as pure and wholesome and American have the seeds of death in it.

It sounds horrible, but that's the reality.

And it still is.

-We scouted all of Kansas, and we zeroed in on Lawrence, which is only a few miles outside of Kansas City.

And it happens to be the crosshairs of the United States.

And that's why Ed put it in the script.

-Bob asked me if I would come on board as -- I don't know what my title was.

I don't even know if I had one, but anything that came up was my job.

I started doing research, and it was shocking to me that in between Kansas City and Lawrence, you couldn't fly over any of that without seeing dozens of these missile silos.

And I thought, "It wouldn't be a good idea to be around here if there was ever an event.

Like, this is a target."

I went to several Air Force bases and got access to their libraries.

I believe I was one of the first people to get access to all of the nuclear test footage.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ The truth is so brutal.

So how can we do this for family audiences?

♪♪ -And Brandon -- he kept insisting, "Make the movie real.

Make it as real as possible."

♪♪ -This is a normal soybean crop, but on this farm near Lawrence, it's about the only normal thing you'll see.

The reason?

Hollywood came to the country.

♪♪ ABC television is filming a four-hour special on the effects of a nuclear war.

The Hollywood folks will require 24 days of shooting near Lawrence, and it should add over $1 million to the Lawrence economy.

♪♪ [ All screaming ] -A peaceful and prosperous community of 50,000 was forced to contemplate the idea of nuclear destruction when television staged its tragedy here.

It was perfect casting -- Main Street America, local farmers, and people from the university -- all that's decent in the American dream.

-The producers of "The Day After" have called upon the people in the Kansas City area to participate in the film.

-At Kansas University, I was Director of Theater, and they came to me and asked me if I would be willing to consider being a local casting director for the movie.

And I said, "Okay," naively.

-About 40% of the speaking parts are cast with local men, women, and children.

-I remember seeing all these huge trucks.

They showed me my trailer and I thought, "There's a trailer with my name on it, you know?

That's incredible."

Lawrence is a friendly, warm place, and all of a sudden, there was a shift in tone that was very palpable.

We surrendered our innocence.

We surrendered that to this larger goal.

We were gonna do something very serious.

♪♪ -Well, we wanted to have everyday people.

We didn't want to have recognizable stars because the story really is the star, and we didn't want to neutralize that at all.

♪♪ -The most recognizable member of the cast is Academy Award-winning actor Jason Robards.

-You know, I bumped into him on an airplane.

And so, you know, trade chit-chat -- "What are you doing?"

I said, "Well, I'm making a movie about nuclear war."

And I thought, "There's no agents around.

We're at 36,000 feet."

So I said, "You want to be in it?"

And he said, "Beats signing petitions."

You know, luckily for me, no one had a conniption fit when I told them I had just hired the leading man on a TWA flight.

-There is no yesterday or tomorrow to worry about.

You won't give a damn what you are anymore, -but I didn't want Jason Robards doing "Iceman Cometh."

I didn't want that.

I just wanted invisible actors.

I didn't want people talking about how well executed it was or how cool the special effects were.

These were all cop outs.

I wanted to make it like a public service announcement.

-Only you can prevent forest fires.

-"Only you can prevent forest fires."

And I didn't want you talking about how cute Smokey the Bear was.

-Only you.

-You had to get around the paradox, which is no one wants to think about nuclear war.

They'd rather think about anything than think about it.

I just wanted the it.

[ Indistinct conversations ] -Nick had no idea what it's like to work for a network.

I mean, soon enough, he did, because, you know, they slam you right away.

It's like, notes, notes, notes, notes, notes, notes, notes.

[ Television playing indistinctly ] -We shot the scene that was a little bit risque, in which I steal the diaphragm of my older sister.

-Joleen!

Joleen, you give that back to me!

-But I don't know what that is.

-Joleen!

-I knew that the idea was she wanted to get this object from me that I was keeping from her.

[ Telephone rings ] -I got a phone call from ABC.

-Bob taps me on the shoulder at dailies and says, "They want to talk to you."

-Joleen!

-And an executive goes, "Nick, Nick, what are you doing?"

-Joleen!

-And I go, "What do you mean?"

And he says, "Well, you filmed the scene with the diaphragm and the birth control and the this and the that."

-"Watch this.

Don't do that.

Why -- Make sure he does this."

"Okay, okay."

I had a ton of phone calls.

[ Telephone rings ] -The next day, I'm called to the phone again, and it's like, "Nick, Nick, listen, this is your movie.

You make it the way you want, but I have to tell you, as a fiduciary executive of the corporation, that those scenes are not going to be in the finished film."

And I said, "Fine, you've -- you've told me."

P.S.

-- they're all in the finished film.

♪♪ -We filmed a big scene in the Fieldhouse.

That was born out of walking around the university.

I said, "Nick, Nick, come here, I want to show you."

And I said, "Remember, 'Gone With the Wind,' where the camera lifts up and we see thousands of people."

And he says, "Done."

♪♪ -You're the first group to go on this side.

-With local casting, they said "Now, we'll probably need 1,500 people and maybe 200 people the next day."

And I'm thinking, "Whoa!"

♪♪ -It was just like, "My God, look at this.

Look at that makeup.

Look at those people.

Wow, that's pretty cool."

-Well, it's not my most glamorous role.

[ Laughs ] -Just thought it would be once in a lifetime deal, that, in ten years, we'd tell all our friends that we were in a movie.

-I'm just real excited about it.

I just think it's fun.

-We missed school today and came down here at 6:00 this morning, and here I am.

-Cut.

Print.

-We'd have a raffle after the filming was over for 1,500 people, and they would give away televisions and things like that to not only draw them to the film, but we had to keep people.

My wife said that she'd never seen me quite so happy.

-Why are you doing this?

-'Cause I wanted to see what it -- what -- what things would look like if something like this actually happened... and just to get an idea of how it would actually go.

It really scares me.

♪♪ -Many Americans have become frightened.

And let me say, fear of the unknown is entirely understandable.

-The director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency said Mr. Reagan needs no reminders of the consequences of war.

-The President realizes very well the horrors of nuclear war.

-When I was in the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, I don't remember spending lots of times on the horror of nuclear weapons.

-Much of the time... -I knew that, logically, I didn't have to be convinced of it emotionally, and my job was to do everything I could to make sure that "The Day After" never happened.

-The most threatening of these forces are the land-based missiles, which the Soviet Union now has aimed at Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

If my defense proposals are passed, the Blue line is the United States.

-It was always important for Ronald Reagan to communicate with the American people.

But the fact was, the anti-nuclear approach had far more appeal than his approach of peace through strength.

-In June of 1982, there was an enormous protest in Central Park.

I think it was bigger than any protest during the Vietnam War.

-What would you guess?

-I have no idea.

A lot of people.

I say, so far, about 178,000.

-Oh!

Oh, come on, 178,000.

-Are you -- you calling me a liar?

-1 million people, the largest single demonstration in the history of this country.

Do you think that Ronald Reagan is gonna freeze the arms race?

-No!

-No!

-There was fear of Ronald Reagan -- that he was the cowboy from the West, that he was shooting his pistols in the air and would use a nuclear weapons to show that he was tough.

-Whoo!

Whoo-hoo!

Whoo-hoo!

♪♪ -Will the Russians advance straight for the Rhine and defy NATO's declared policy of defense by all means, including the use of tactical nuclear weapons?

-The project reflects what was going on in the country.

-The President tonight, declared all United States military personnel on worldwide stage 2 alert.

-Even though there was a lot of stuff on the news, I think, for many people -- "I got to go to work tomorrow.

I got to go there.

I got to get gas for my car.

I need a babysitter."

You know, the normal things of life can be used as a shield when one has to face tremendous conflict going on.

-...aimed at finding ways to defuse the heightening crisis in Berlin.

-Oh, my God.

It's 1962 all over again.

♪♪ -I knew early on that this was going to be a good film.

♪♪ [ Horn honking ] Everybody was working so hard every single day.

Every scene had such integrity to it.

And that's what gave me pride, was the feeling that, yeah, we're doing good work here.

♪♪ ♪♪ The debris was brought in in trucks, making downtown Lawrence look like the Holocaust that happened.

♪♪ -[ Sighs ] -It was a powderous kind of ash that was all over everything.

What was once a side of a building is now ash, and -- and everybody had it all over them.

You could taste it in your mouth.

You could feel it.

It was -- It was very powerful.

♪♪ We moved right from this scene -- It was just a couple of days later -- Down under the bridge, we had Tent City.

♪♪ -The production designer was on a bridge, and he was sketching.

A Japanese woman walked up and looked at a sketch, and she said, "That's how it was"... meaning that's how it was in Hiroshima.

♪♪ -Can you give me a hand?

-We're running out of body bags.

Can we use the trash-can liners instead?

-I look at that, and I feel almost sick to my stomach, you know?

It's just hopeless.

It's hopeless.

[ Indistinct conversations ] ♪♪ -That's it.

No more.

-It's gone.

-What do you mean, no more?

[ Crowd shouting indistinctly ] -I think the only way that I got through this movie was to concentrate on the task of making the movie, and not to think about nuclear stuff.

There was a lot of sick humor.

But it was like, "Well, what if we had a real nuclear war while we were making the movie?

Would that be cool or what?

I mean, just think of the footage."

-And cut.

-Okay, we still didn't get the whole line.

The three-shot was a different configuration.

-But otherwise, how was it?

-Perfect.

♪♪ -For someone who's 11 years old, it was deeply emotional.

My mom had to tell me that, if there was a nuclear war, it wasn't just unfortunate.

It was the end.

-There's nothing wrong out here!

It's a beautiful day!

-No.

It only looks that way.

-It was hard for me as a young person to understand that we had the ability to destroy ourselves totally.

It takes away your faith in adults, frankly.

That's why we decided to tell the story, with hopes of getting the attention of the world.

♪♪ -Everybody -- people in the network, people outside the network, the other networks -- everybody was saying, "Are you seriously gonna do this?

You're gonna put a nuclear war on television?

: We knew that it was going to absolutely shake the -- the rafters.

It had to.

How could it not?

-The living may be better off dead the day after.

We were going into post-production, which is far more, you know, complicated.

I mean, all our special effects were handmade.

There wasn't any CGI then.

♪♪ -I think sometimes that movies are like soufflés.

They either rise or they don't.

My editor, William Dornisch, who had also cut "Star Trek II," he had a company called Miracle Pictures, and their soubriquet was, "If it's a good picture, it's a miracle."

-There wasn't a frame in between the time when Nick asked, "Would you do 'The Day After' and my father saying yes.

My father was mythic in my life, so I adored the idea of working with him.

♪♪ -No one.... -Scene three, take one.

-I had never edited a movie for television before.

-Scene three, take one.

-The network hands you a format.

Your first commercial break is gonna be at 20 minutes.

Your next break is on the half hour.

-How do I feel?

-Just like a chocolate shake.

-And the taste... -Miserable.

-If the thing was too terrible, people were gonna click it off, so you had to sort of walk a fine line.

-Joleen, what are you doing out here?

-It was, how do we make this the most gut-wrenching thing it can be, and then let's go to lunch?

And we come back, and we do it for another five hours.

It was just great.

♪♪ -But the time was shortening up.

One of the things that Stephanie was responsible for was the coordination of the visual effects.

And she did a ton of research, and I kept hammering -- "The mushroom.

We need the mushroom cloud."

♪♪ -We were trying lots and lots and lots of different things every single day.

♪♪ -And we weren't getting anything that really worked.

So one day, the visual-effects guy called me up.

He says, "I think we came up with something."

And he had a roll, and we put on the Moviola, and I went, "Ah!"

♪♪ "That's beautiful."

I said, "How'd you do that?"

He says, "Well, we were sitting in the lunchroom and saw somebody drinking some iced tea, and they put some cream in it, and the cream went to the bottom and it exploded and came back up."

He says, "So we filmed it."

♪♪ Then we flipped it upside down.

I said, "Son of a gun.

Now, that's brilliant."

We just needed to add a little bit of fire into it... you know, the crazy stuff that makes it real.

♪♪ -The national television press came to Los Angeles for a screening.

Brandon asked me to do the press conference with him.

We did not sell the film.

We were on defense the whole time.

"What are you people doing?

Why are you scaring the hell out of America?"

Just one after another.

-Does the film take a political stand?

-Um, yeah.

The film says that nuclear war is bad for you and that if a nuclear bomb goes off, it's going to ruin your entire day.

-Before the movie got on the air, the "New York Post" was asking, "Why is Nicholas Meyer doing Yuri Andropov's job?"

Yuri Andropov, at that point, being the Soviet premier.

At that time, it was like a big deal to be called a traitor.

-There is sin and evil in the world, and we're enjoined by Scripture and the Lord Jesus to oppose it with all our might.

I urge you to beware the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.

♪♪ -1983 was the coldest part of the Cold War -- at least since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

-I'm coming before you tonight about the attack by the Soviet Union against 269 innocent men, women, and children aboard an unarmed Korean passenger plane.

-Four months after I took office, the Soviets walked out of the arms-control talks, protesting the deployment of missiles by NATO countries, especially the United States.

And so, with all this real tension going on in the world, I was very dismissive of "The Day After."

♪♪ But then as time went on, it seemed like it was gonna be a bigger and bigger deal.

-Rarely has a television program made by the entertainment division of any company caused such a controversy, even before being shown in public.

-Then the controversy surrounding the film spread across the country like a nuclear reaction.

-This is human blood upon the pillars of the White House, representing the blood of the children that is being spilled as we pursue an insane nuclear arms policy.

-The left thought "The Day After" was the greatest thing that ever happened in the history of the world.

They would come up and drop to their knees and go, "Oh, you're the most wonderful person.

You're gonna save the world."

And that was as wacky as the right.

-And it's our right as Americans to stand up for America and for the free world against communism.

-They came unbelievably strong in doing everything they could to stop it from going on the air.

That was a living terror in terms of all the problems from the business standpoint, but also, I mean, I was getting threats on my life.

There would be a piece of paper on my car, and I'd pick it up, and they would say, "This could have been a bomb."

-We've tried to keep all discussion on the left, right, out of this movie.

The only thing that we really deal with in this movie is what it's like.

-One can think of no other subject, from foreign policy to the economy, that a network would dare to present in such a one-dimensional manner.

-[Chanting] ...must be strong!

-ABC wouldn't tell us what major companies, if any, bought time in "The Day After."

-You know, it's not exactly a perfect advertising climate for Pepsi-Cola.

We're selling it to Orville Redenbacher.

He bought some stuff for popcorn.

-It's delicious.

-That fits our budget.

-But we did not remotely sell out.

-Not only could they not sell two nights, they weren't gonna be able to sell one night.

-ABC took a big step and said, "Okay, let's just do it in one night from 8:00 to 11:00.

Right there, that was a first.

That's three hours of prime time that they weren't gonna get paid for.

♪♪ -If there was not a spot sold on this, would you go ahead and air it?

-Absolutely.

Absolutely.

It's gonna go on the air.

-Swallow the $7 million?

-It's going to go on the air.

-It was panic everywhere.

-The picture's almost ready.

I got a phone call telling me to send it to the white House.

And I said, "Excuse me?"

-And I was called by the head of legal department.

He said, "Brandon, listen, I just took one of the copies of "The Day After," and I sat down with some friends in Washington.

But don't worry about it."

♪♪ [ Indistinct conversation ] -The Reagans saw a variety of films at Camp David.

-They liked a lot of films, but none more than those that were entertaining and fun and maybe a little bit humorous.

[ Electronic whining, buzzing ] -I'm gonna read your thoughts.

-If you're gonna be the President of the United States, you need to know what the people are seeing and thinking and reacting to.

Once the movie began, the Reagans' eyes stayed on that screen until the movie ended because they would really study that movie.

[ Laughter ] They also liked big, fat, red-blooded American stories like "Top Gun," where the military was glamorized and the Americans won and the good guys triumphed.

♪♪ And so when he saw "The Day After," it was a little too real.

-Start decontaminating the soil and plan next spring's planting.

-Can you explain what you mean by, "scraping off the top layers of my topsoil"?

-Exactly that, Jim.

You just take the top 4 or 5 inches of your topsoil.

-Yeah?

And do what with it?

We're talking 150, maybe 200 acres a man in here.

That's right.

-Suppose you find a hole where you can drop all this dead dirt.

What kind of topsoil is that gonna leave you for growing anything?

Where'd you find out all this information, John, all this good advice -- out of some government pamphlet?

♪♪ -Though there was no immediate response from the President, White House aides acknowledge the film will have a devastating impact on the American public.

The movie includes a scene with a Reagan-like Presidential radio address to the nation.

-My fellow Americans... -And what worries officials here is that the American people might identify the horrors of nuclear war with President Reagan himself -- a lasting image that would be difficult to erase.

-God bless you all.

-That's it?

That's all he's gonna say?

[ Siren wailing ] -We were summoned to the white House.

There were representatives of the Pentagon, the CIA, the State Department, the Arms Control Agency, USIA, National Security Council, there were general White House staff.

I think that was about it.

As I remember, our whole focus was how to react to the film and not how to reform the film.

The point of it was, "What do we do before the movie comes out to minimize the damage?"

So our message was, "Look at all that we in the Reagan administration were doing to make sure that what you see on the screen tonight doesn't happen.

-Although the White House denies it's launched a formal campaign to counteract the effect of the movie, late Friday, it released a hastily compiled White House digest on the President's plan for nuclear arms control.

-The head of legal department said, "I think we've got to pull this.

I think we got to take it off."

And I was totally isolated.

The sales department didn't want it to go on the air.

The legal department didn't want to go on the air.

The program department didn't want it to go on the air.

Management didn't talk to me.

My staff didn't talk to me.

And Friday night before we air on Sunday, the White House issued instructions to ABC.

We want the following edits.

-Did the Reagan administration or anybody in that administration contact you about the film at all?

-We're going on the air.

-And I said, "Tell them [bleep].

We're not touching the film."

♪♪ -Before the movie begins, we would like to caution parents about the graphic depiction of nuclear explosions and their devastating effects.

The emotional impact of these scenes may be unusually disturbing, and we are therefore recommending that very young children not be permitted to watch.

[ Sirens wailing in distance ] [ Explosion ] [ Beeping ] [ Indistinct conversations, shouting ] [ Explosion ] ♪♪ [ Movie playing indistinctly ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -Danny!

Don't look up!

[ Movie continues playing indistinctly ] -[ Sniffles ] -It's all right, I got you!

-That's really hard for me to watch.

♪♪ Because that's... ♪♪ It's really hard for me to watch because that's my town.

That's in my childhood.

I'm sorry.

I can't see it right now.

♪♪ [ Movie playing indistinctly ] -The first time I saw the completed film was when everybody else saw it.

It was that evening.

Everything that led up to that -- the filming, the -- you know, all those kinds of things, you didn't really feel it until you saw that movie.

[ Indistinct shouting ] [ Horns blaring ] -Those locations were the locations of my childhood.

-Late at night, after seeing that movie, as mayor, I was asked to address the crowd in Lawrence.

I'm looking down the hill, and there are what seem to be thousands of people holding candles, all looking at me, and it is dead silent.

And they hand me the microphone, and I....

I don't know what to say.

-We saw our community destroyed this evening.

We saw all the nightmares come true and the despair and hopelessness that followed.

-There wasn't anything I could do.

I mean, I just felt like everybody else did.

♪♪ -It was sort of necessary to pick up a glass of water and say, "Wshht!

Okay, wake up now.

We're gonna talk about this, but that movie -- you know it was a movie, right?

It didn't happen, and everything is okay for the time being."

-This is an ABC news special edition of "Viewpoint."

-There is, and you probably need it about now -- There is some good news.

If you can, take a quick look out the window.

It's all still there.

Your neighborhood is still there.

So is Kansas City and Lawrence.

The very question that many of us may be asking ourselves right now is whether the vision that we've just seen is the future as it will be, or only as it may be.

Is there still time?

To discuss, and I do mean discuss, not debate... -The Secretary of State opened it up, and he talked about the administration's position, and he was very uncomfortable.

-And Ted Koppel said to him, "Mr. Secretary, is this the way it's going to be?"

And he said... -That is not the future at all.

-You know, they had to calm down the whole country by having somebody in the government tell us to all chill.

-Tonight, we are joined here in Washington by a live audience and a distinguished panel of guests.

-I remember feeling slightly awed by the fact that this film had drawn important people together.

Henry Kissinger and -- was that Carl Sagan?

-You know, who the hell else was on?

-Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara... Elie Wiesel, philosopher, theologian, and author on the subject of the Holocaust... William F. Buckley Jr., publisher of the "National Review"... -These were the top people.

And this was one of those occasions when pretty much everyone said, "Yes, I'll be there."

-...demonstrating how terrible the casualties of a nuclear war are and translating into pictures -- what are we to do about this?

Is it -- Are we supposed to make policy by scaring ourselves to death?

-And I remember shouting back at the television, "That's exactly the way I think you should make nuclear policy!"

-The whole point of this movie is to launch an enterprise that seeks to debilitate the United States.

-Buckley was insisting that this was a movie that aided the Russians.

-You think that there is a deliberate political effort behind this film?

-Well, it's certainly deliberate on the part of the writer.

He says that was his motives.

Now, if you say, "Was it deliberate on the part of the shareholders of ABC?"

I don't think they were consulted.

-Categorizing "The Day After" as a political film, I think is a little silly.

What I say doesn't really mean anything, but the film's supposed to speak for itself.

-The reality is much worse than what it has been portrayed in this movie.

-By the way, this is the optimists' view.

You know, we did not depict nuclear winter.

-Nuclear winter would reduce the temperatures globally to subfreezing temperatures for months.

Agriculture will be wiped out.

-Let me stop you on that point, because if our viewers were not depressed enough after seeing the movie, I suspect you've brought them to an even greater nadir.

-We've just had three hours of the emotional side.

I was trying to get us away from the emotional and toward the rational.

-I do not believe the American people understand the world we live in.

I do not believe they understand the full risk that we face.

That's what that film shows.

It's stimulating discussion on exactly the issue we ought to be discussing.

There is a million times the Hiroshima destruction power out there.

We must ensure it not be used.

-Before we slide too far into the technical, Elie Wiesel, we deliberately invited you here so that you would bring a humanistic touch to what otherwise threatens to become a very theoretical kind of discussion.

-Elie had seen bodies piled up like cordwood when the number of dead were counted in the millions.

-Not being a nuclear specialist in any way, I'm scared.

I'm scared because I know that what is imaginable can happen.

I know that the impossible is possible.

I've seen the film, and while I was watching it, I had a strange feeling that I had seen it before, except once upon a time, it happened to my people.

And now it happened to all people.

When I hear about 1,000 bombs, megatons, I don't have that kind of imagination.

To me, it's an abstraction.

But to me, all this means is that the human species may come to an end.

-That may have been the first and last time a serious conversation about the danger of nuclear war happened in front of as close as you ever get to reaching the entire American public.

♪♪ -The ABC television movie about the aftermath of nuclear war was seen last night by about 100 million Americans, more than half the adult population.

-We got 67% of the eyeballs watching television that night in the United States of America.

I mean, that's a number.

♪♪ -The advertisers were beside themselves with joy.

[Laughing] Oh, my God!

Orville Redenbacher or whatever his name is... -I'm Orville Redenbacher.

-I'm Orville Redenbacher.

-...the happiest man ever because he reached 100 million people for $11,000.

-Orville Redenbacher.

-Orville Redenbacher.

-100 million people saw the movie all at the same time.

That in itself is powerful.

I mean, that's communication at its finest.

-I thought that we stopped short of telling the real truth, but watching something at the same time, you had a shared bond and people really wanted to talk about this.

-Let's go on to the next question.

The -- The lady in the back.

-The public reaction was fabulous.

Where they ended up was, "I, viewer, have to do something about it."

-Is it time for us to question our policies in the Middle East?

-How do you accomplish a verifiable reduction in nuclear arms?

-You?

-How do you think this next generation should be educated about these issues so that they can engage in planning for their own future with a sense of hope?

-[Chanting] We want to live!

We want to live!

-It was distributed theatrically and went to 35 countries in 17 languages.

-[ Speaking Russian ] -The first American film ever broadcast in Russia.

I said, "When you show it in Russia, you hand carry the film to the station, and you sit there the entire time, because I don't want anybody touching that film."

♪♪ -[ Speaking Russian ] -I vastly underestimated the importance of "The Day After."

I could not believe any movie could have a following like that and a reception like it did.

[ Applause ] -I was thinking that, "Oh, yes, I could unseat Ronald Reagan if I just made a movie showing what nuclear war was.

And of course, I didn't succeed in doing that, but I succeeded in something weirder.

-To preserve our civilization in this modern age, a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.

[ Applause ] ♪♪ -Ronald Reagan says in his memoir that "The Day After" left him upset and depressed.

♪♪ -So I think this film is important because it led to something else.

It led to the biggest decline in nuclear weapons in history.

♪♪ -Reagan eventually went to Reykjavik, met with Gorbachev, and signed the Intermediate Range Weapons Treaty.

[ Indistinct conversations, camera shutters clicking ] -On our side, our entire complement of Pershing II and ground-launch cruise missiles, with some 400 deployed warheads, will all be destroyed.

-Seeing that this was... -I can only tell you that we have both agreed that talking to each other instead of about each other is the way to keep out of trouble.

-"The Day After" was an important thing, and people realize in retrospect just how important it was.

It's certainly the most valuable thing I've gotten to do with my life to date.

-Today, "The Day After" was shown for the first time in Hiroshima.

It was seen by some who were there on the real day after.

-[ Speaking Japanese ] -Yes, the movie did bring back painful memories, but she's pleased that this movie was made.

It could carry on her attempts to warn others... if they listen.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Hello?

Is anybody there?

Anybody at all?

-"This is Lawrence, Kansas.

Is anybody out there?"

[ Chuckles ] [ Film reel clicking ] ♪♪ -And cut.

♪♪ Print.

[ Beep ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -♪ Shout, shout ♪ ♪ Let it all out ♪ ♪ These are the things I can do without ♪ ♪ Come on ♪ ♪ I'm talking to you ♪ ♪ Come on ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Shout, shout ♪ ♪ Let it all out ♪ ♪ These are the things I can do without ♪ ♪ Come on ♪ ♪ I'm talking to you ♪ ♪ Come on ♪ ♪♪ ♪ In violent times ♪ ♪ You shouldn't have to sell your soul ♪ ♪ In black and white ♪ ♪ They really, really ought to know ♪ ♪ Those one-track minds ♪ ♪ They took you for a workin' boy ♪ ♪ Kiss them goodbye ♪ ♪ You shouldn't have to jump for joy ♪ ♪ You shouldn't have to jump for joy ♪ -♪ Shout, shout ♪ ♪ Let it all out ♪ ♪ These are the things I can do without ♪ ♪ Come on ♪ ♪ I'm talking to you ♪ ♪ Come on ♪ ♪♪ ♪ They gave you life ♪ ♪ And in return, you gave them hell ♪ ♪ As cold as ice ♪ ♪ I hope we live to tell the tale ♪ -Funding for this program provided in part by...