Forty years ago this November, 100 million Americans finished dinner, fed their cat, and sat in front of the television to watch the end of the world.
The film was The Day After, a made-for-TV movie that depicted in unprecedented, grueling detail the course and aftermath of the global thermonuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union.
The film traumatized audiences, remains the most-watched TV movie of all time, and may have influenced then-president Ronald Reagan to pursue a policy of nuclear disarmament with Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
As Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer brings to life the specter of nuclear war, Yahoo UK spoke to director Nicholas Meyer about how, after the success of the franchise reboot Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan, he found himself directing a film that would turn into a nightmare. a generation and why he believes it is more forward-thinking and scary today.
Watching The Day After 40 years after its first release is as harrowing an experience as it was then…
It was intended to be sad. I must point out that there are sadder movies about nuclear war than The Day After. There’s a movie called Threads and there was a Peter Watkins movie called The War Game that they didn’t even put on British television.
So it kind of needs to take its place alongside these very depressing speculative statements about nuclear war.
Do you think we are guilty of putting the threat of a nuclear conflict in the back of our minds?
As sad as these movies are, their impact wears off. There is something I learned called the rubber band effect. When the human mind is confronted with something terrifying, the mind is shaken and this is sad and demoralizing.
Then time goes by and we kind of get back to the status quo. But the truth is, the moment we’re talking about right now is, I think, the most alarming moment in the history of this planet. Right now. While we’re talking. Things are very close to spiraling fatally out of control. So how’s your day going?
How did the movie come about? Why did ABC decide to make a movie about nuclear apocalypse?
ABC definitely didn’t want to make the movie. Everyone hated this idea and was completely against it. The person who got the movie made was Brandon Stoddard, head of the ‘movie of the week’ department.
He achieved great success with the television series Roots. He was looking for a sequel, some sort of event picture, and saw this: [nuclear power-plant disaster] China Syndrome movie.
This gave Brandon Stoddard the idea to make a movie about what would happen if a nuclear war broke out between the United States and the then-Soviet Union. Everyone at ABC hated the idea from the very beginning.
By the way, I’ve been trying to get a new version of the film made intermittently for the last few years. A global version. And I went to all the publishers. And no one wants to do it now any more than they wanted to do it then.
You were having great success on the big screen with The Wrath Of Khan, why return to television? This is an unexpected step.
My steps are always unexpected. I am not Fred Astaire [aughs]. The truth is that I was undergoing psychoanalysis at the time. I started my analysis when I was 30 and finished it when I was 40, and it was probably the most difficult, time-consuming, expensive and valuable thing I’ve ever done for myself.
In formal psychoanalysis the analyst does not talk much, or even at all. All heavy lifting makes you sick. I was lying there trying to find a way out of making a movie about nuclear war. The paradox I realized, the most important dilemma we had ever faced, was that we had the ability to destroy ourselves, and yet it was so terrible that no one could bear to think about it.
So you weren’t enthusiastic at first, were you?
I think I was the third director to be offered this film, and I was coming off a modest run of success. I wrote a bestselling novel. I wrote a screenplay that was nominated for an Oscar. I saved a science fiction series [laughs]. Once you’ve done feature films, you don’t have to make the movie of the week.
At this point my psychologist decided to open his mouth. And he said: ‘I think this is where we’ll find out who you really are.’ Checkmate. That’s how I did it.
How was the shoot? Have you found yourself slipping into depression?
The situation was even more difficult for the players. Directing is very tiring for me. No permission. You do this job 24/7. And you’ve been so busy overcoming logistical challenges and obstacles that I haven’t allowed myself to do that introspection.
There were increasingly political obstacles as the film progressed. To one point, I was fired from the film during the editing process. And I left the movie for three months and then kind of came back through a lot of negotiations.
Have you had or are you having nightmares about this?
No. I have other nightmares too. When I was making the movie called Nuclear Mare, I didn’t have the things my actors got. Steve Guttenberg had nuclear weapons. I’ve never had one.
What was the reaction like after its release?
I remember watching the movie with my fiancée and saying, ‘Honestly, would you put up with this if you weren’t my girlfriend?’ I remember saying. I’m not sure I can get over this. I couldn’t imagine anyone putting up with that.
I was completely astonished to learn the next morning that 100 million people watched this movie in a single night. It became the most watched movie ever made for television, a record that will never be broken by the way because there are so many channels now, I won [laughs].
Did the film have any impact other than the expected television audience?
One man’s mind changed overnight and he became the president of the United States. Ronald Reagan, and this is amply documented both in his own memoirs and by his official biographer, Edmund Morris.
I met Morris and he told me that the only time he ever saw Reagan go crazy was when he watched this movie. He came to power believing in a winnable nuclear war. I think Reagan, a former movie actor, grew up with 100 years of Hollywood endings.
He was completely unprepared for the film and ended up going to Reykjavik, meeting with Gorbachev and signing the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty, the only agreement that resulted in the physical dismantling of nuclear weapons.
Of course, the ‘dirty usurper’ walked away from this agreement, but I may have contributed to world peace for over 30 years.
A beautiful legacy…
This is something.
This and the Wrath of Khan…
Let’s not forget the Seven Percent Solution because Sherlock Holmes was also dying on the vine [laughs].
Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the possibility of nuclear war?
[Pauses] Pessimistic.
I am currently producing a documentary called How to Stop Nuclear War, based on Daniel Ellsberg’s memoir The Doomsday Machine, Confessions Of A Nuclear War Planner.
Ellesberg memorably said: “Luck is not a strategy. Hope is not a strategy.” Have you ever seen signs that say wet paint? Have you ever resisted the urge to touch the paint just to see if it’s actually wet? I think we’re at this point. There are signs saying wet paint everywhere. And you know, someone will touch someone.
They’ll just have to do it.
Next day streaming on YouTube.