Haywire (1980)

It can be argued that Lee Remick never gave a bad performance.  We have already seen her in Nutcracker: Money, Madness, Murder, where she gave one of the greatest miniseries performances of all time in a true story.

That may have been Lee's best work, but wait until you see "Haywire," where Lee plays actress Margaret Sullavan, alongside Jason Robards as her husband Leland Hayward.  "Haywire," technically the name of a Hayward estate, is a metaphor for what this family went through.  This is a character so full of knotty quirks that she defies any simple description.  It takes an actress like Lee Remick to make that believable, and, more importantly for a television audience, likable.

"Haywire" is based on a book by daughter Brooke Hayward from 1977.  Stop!  I know what you're thinking.  Don't even put this in a category with "Mommie Dearest" because bashing mom is not the point of the story.  Brooke states up front in her book that she owes it to her siblings to have their full stories told and it's really more about them than her parents, but what has made "Haywire" endure as a book where "Mommie Dearest" is trashy fun, is Brooke's penetrating ability to dissect her family members with staggering objectivity, not turning them into ghouls, in order to understand the tragedy that befell nearly all of them.  Basically, her parents married and loved each other and producing three kids.  However, after they divorced and the kids got older, problems really started to appear.  Brooke's sister and brother were both sent to mental institutions, Margaret killed herself, as did Brooke's sister and her brother did as well, but in 2008, long after the book was written and the miniseries made.  Leland spent the last months of his life as a shell of a human being after a series of strokes.

What makes the book "Haywire" so compelling is how three kids coped with what went on around them, all so differently.  Leland was a father typical of the times, putting business first and admitting he didn't understand fatherhood.  Margaret all but retired once she had kids, which led to some peculiar rules and typical teenager-parent battles, but this is not "Mommie Dearest" or "Detour" or any celeb's kid trying to make bank off a crazy parent.  It is about the children and how they ended up the way they did.  Both parents were loving, but their brands of love could be frustrating.  There are no midnight rampages, no cutting down of shrubbery, no heavy drinking or drugs, no abuse (in fact, the book has a very touching moment where Leland is forced to spank Brooke and promises while he's doing it never to do so again, a promise he remembers giving on his deathbed).

Brooke Hayward's memoir would be interesting simply because of the tragedy of her family life, especially since she's the ultimate survivor (a fact that she seems uncomfortable noting, but which is amazingly true), and the movie version just as touching.  However, the story is rather esoteric.  This is not Joan Crawford, Lana Turner or Bette Davis.  This is Margaret Sullavan, who made only a handful of movies and by the book's 1977 appearance was pretty much forgotten (outside of a few lovely movies with Jimmy Stewart).  This is also Leland Hayward, who was an entertainment "super agent" before the term exists and a producer of both film and theater, but a behind-the-scenes man, the kind only remembered decades later by those with whom he worked, not the general public.

That puts a lot of pressure on a movie version (produced in part by Brooke's brother Bill), because it means the movie version cannot trade on celebrity name to be noticed, and certainly not on camp (like "Mommie Dearest") because the story has none.  It means that a movie version has to be excellent and stand on its own, and luckily, 30+ years after it first aired on television, "Haywire" is just that.  I encourage everyone to read "Haywire," but if you can't do that, at least see "Haywire," because it is truly that special.  The movie is so faithful to the book that the screenplay often seems to be a dramatic reading of the text, which is not at all problematic as Brooke's writing is magnificent on the page.  Considering the shredding we have seen of other books-to-miniseries affairs, this one is a marvel of tact, taste and dignity.

"This is a story of carelessness and guilt, of people who lived in extremes, a story of one family, my own.  A family that had everything, grace and joy, a fair share of beauty, privilege and power…They seemed to be the fulfillment of the American dream, but something went dreadfully wrong…What distinguishes this particular story is the extraordinary effect my parents had on their children.  They failed as they succeeded, on a massive scale.  How could it have happened to us?  Why?"

That, folks, is the opening narration of this movie!  Daring, wouldn't you say?

The movie actually opens the same was as the book, with tragedy.  As plucky Brooke (Deborah Raffin, before "Lace II" killed off her career) is on her way to the theater where she is performing in an off-Broadway play, New Year's Eve, 1960.  When she calls to wish her mother and stepfather a Happy New Year, she gets the grim news that her mother died, suicide.  As Brooke sits on the train, she remembers snippets of her life, almost cinematic, becoming angrier and angrier that "just as I need her most," Margaret (Lee Remick) could have done such a thing.  Things get worse when she arrives at the theater, where her father's secretary informs her he's had the performance canceled out of respect, which infuriates Brooke.

Papa Leland Hayward (Jason Robards) is making all the arrangements for an ex-wife (one of many) he had barely spoken to in over a decade.  Seeing her father reminds her of a time he took the family to an airstrip (Leland was a licensed pilot and one of his hobbies was flying) where Brooke watched a plane plummet and kill the pilot.  Margaret wants to take Brooke, Bridget and Bill home, but Leland says, "nope, we're going up," intending to fulfill a promise he made to his children and also building them up, as strange as it may seem, to be fearless.

"Haywire" is smart enough to follow Brooke's lead on how it's written, which is a purposeful garble of time periods.  The scene with the children flying is followed by Leland telling Brooke every detail of Margaret's suicide, not sparing her anything.  That might seem callous somewhere else, but it's been established in "Haywire" already (just about 10 minutes in), that it's playing by its own rules (or Brooke's rules).

Brooke's portrait of her family members is always honest and the movie follows that lead too.  Little Brooke is in her mother's dressing rule at one point when Margaret talks about how much she hates acting and would love nothing more than to just be a wife and mother.  "I'd much rather you knew me the way I am at home, or any place but here," she tells her sensitive six-year old daughter as she tries to talk her out of seeing the play.  Margaret continues her rant after the performance, though Brooke was enchanted, saying "actors do not make good mothers and fathers, I see it all the time."  That's an awfully chilling line and the ones that follow are no nicer to the profession.

In fact, Margaret apparently went to great pains to make sure her children had no idea what her job was.  There is a harrowing scene where Margaret takes the children to the park and is followed by an autograph seeker.  Not only does she deny she's Margaret Sullavan, she launches into a blistering tirade at the woman for assuming she can get "a little bit of a person" by having a signature put into a book, but apologizes to her kids for "thoroughly bad manners" in how she treated the woman.  That's a fair and balanced portrait.

Brooke, as a child, was enthralled by her mother.  The kids were not allowed to see her movies, but understood that she would simply disappear for a job and reappear "like a comet," claiming to be "just a working mother."

At the funeral, Brooke narrates that "the two people I loved most in the world were my sister Bridget (Dianne Hull) and my brother Bill (Hart Bochner), though they had not been particularly close in the years leading up to Margaret's death.  Brooke and Bridget had a complicated relationship.  While riding in the hearse, Brooke remembers a time her sister was sleeping and she took the opportunity to tell mom how much she hated her little sister, causing Bridget to pop up from fake sleep and curse at her.  The difference between the sisters, which will manifest itself in increasingly bizarre ways, is evident from the way the view their mother's suicide.  Brooke wonders how someone could be so selfish and not think of her family, but Bridget says, "it was her life, she did what she wanted" without any trace of bitterness.

In truth, Margaret did have a selfish streak, evident on a grand scale when she moved the family to Connecticut from California where Leland's work is.  Without consulting him, she saw a house and bought it, moving the gang 3000 miles away.  Leland tries to reason with her, about his business and the kids friends, but Margaret trumps even that by saying their closest friends, Jane and Peter Fonda, are moving East as well (Henry Fonda being one of Margaret's ex-husbands did not get in the way of the closeness of their children).

In Brooke's book, perhaps the most interesting scene, full of contradictory emotions, is when Margaret insists the kids watch chicken being killed.  "It's part of nature's law," she says.  Leland refuses to watch and they bicker in terms that would frighten any child.  "Don't look," Leland says to Brooke, turning them both around as Margaret explains that the chicken will continue to run around after its head is cut off.  Brooke has her head buried in her father, but the other two watch and cringe in horror.

Leland catches Margaret writing in her journal about an almost venal need to be the perfect mother to her kids, whom she feels are slipping away, yet then dashes off to London for six months to do a play.  Rather than simply being a megabitch, Margaret is a complex woman, confident and assured, yet about what, she herself never quite understands.  Not only does that make for fascinating characterization, but imagine what Brooke must have gone through trying to figure out her mother before, during and after writing her book.

Margaret's three kids are not brought closer by their mother's death.  Bridget notes that the only way she imagined she could end her "struggles with mother" was to "push her in the river…I'd jump in after her and drown."  Bridget s the darkest of the kids, the most like her mother, which made their relationship the most complex in the family.  During their myriad arguments, which go in circles of mutual frustration, Margaret always uses the trump card of sending her to live with Leland, though Bridget sees through that ruse for what it is, a ploy for attention and guilt.

As for brother Bill, he had issues with his mother, but worse ones with his disapproving and distant father.  In a psychiatry session where both are present because Bill was kicked out of school for bringing a loaded guy ("I collect guns" is his defense, and a perfectly natural one to him), even the shrink feels Bill is best left in an institution, where he spent many years.  Bridget also spent her share of time in "nut houses," as Bill calls them, both resenting what they feel is Brooke's normalcy.

When Margaret goes to London to do a play, things crack.  First, she decrees that the kids cannot make a scene or cry as she leaves.  Leland begs her not to go and she chides him, saying, "you're breaking a rule."  In Margaret's desire to maintain order and perfect motherhood, she has a tendency to undermine or belittle emotion, which will have frightening repercussions.  Leland, who indulges the kids rather than parenting them in her absence, stops a drive at one point to reveal that when his parents divorced, "it ruined my whole life…I never understood my mother, never forgave her, cut me in half."  That, as we can all guess, is foreshadowing (in the book, Leland's mother is shown to be a rather charming eccentric who dotes on Leland and the children).  He then tells the kids, "that's one thing you'll never have to go through."

Is it any wonder that Bill would have certain conflicting emotions concerning Leland, who joked with his children at a young age that none of the things they wanted to be when they grow up would net them enough money to support him?  Even as a joke, that sort of things screws with a young mind.

The summer Margaret spent in London is the turning point for everyone.  "Somehow, life was never as bright again," Brooke narrates.  Margaret's return brings on a "family conference," the news that she and Leland are separating.  "You can't let this happen, you made me a promise," Brooke protests to Leland, who can't deny he messed that one up.

Though not in a Crawford-esque way, there is something ghoulish about Brooke's thought pattern regarding what divorce will mean.  For instance, though Margaret is careful to tell Brooke Leland's new woman is attractive and will probably be wonderful to the kids, Brooke says, "if she were dead, then there wouldn't be a divorce."  Margaret doesn't exactly disavow the notion, rather launching into an overdone Southern drawl (she was from the South) for a discourse on pride.

Leland marries socialite Nan "Slim" Hawks (Linda Gray), while Margaret starts to date British Kenneth Wagg (Richard Johnson), and the kids decide their mother will be happiest married again, so they do all they can to help Kenneth win her hand.

As the kids grow up, Margaret's nastiness regarding Leland intensifies.  He is more fun of the two parents because he lavishes them with gifts and let's them be carefree while Margaret is refusing to acknowledge they are growing up and forming impressions of their own.  Margaret sees clothes as "expensive presents," while Leland says they are "necessities" and buys his girls only the best.

Brooke is strong enough to see her parents for what they are, but Bridget's psyche undergoes irreparable damage.  She feels herself constantly living in Brooke's shadow, which is not true.  It's her stepmother who tries to coax her from her shell and be a positive influence.  Nan tells her that when she goes to boarding school in Switzerland, it will be her "chance to fly" and the advice is dead on.  On her own in Switzerland, she becomes both happy and unique.

Brooke does well at boarding school in Virginia, but Bill is having the most trouble, with plummeting grades and mischievous behavior.  Unfortunately for Bridget, "who had discovered a taste for living" while apart from her mother's smothering, Margaret decides that she cannot spend the summer before her senior year in Switzerland, mainly because she's lonely (Kenneth, his sons and Brooke are off in Scotland).

Cleaning up Bridget's room, Margaret finds a trove of stolen items that give her a window in her daughter's blackening soul, but there is worse not so hidden in the room.  According to Brooke's account, Bridget very carefully left a letter to a friend where it could be found.  The letter says, "I don't like mother.  The truth is, I hate her."  Bridget doesn't actually deny any of it.  Margaret sees the stealing as taking "little bits of people you love," but Bridget snaps that, "it's more than I ever had from you."  This scene exists in every Hollywood child's memoir, the part where a child is told, "you have been given everything," but this story has a few twists.  First, it's actually true.  Smothering though she may be, Margaret very clearly loves her children.  They are not props to her.  Second, Bridget has a plan beyond simply goading her mother into an argument (there is no "why did you adopt me?" harangue here); she wants to go live with her father.  It's not self-pity so much as budding self-awareness.

However, Margaret, somewhat understandably, does lapse into dramatics snarling at Bill that she supposed he wants to go live with Leland too.  She writes a lengthy letter to Brooke in Scotland, so Brooke and Kenneth rush home as Kenneth figures Margaret has "gone off the deep end."  When they spot her at the airport, gaunt and lacking in sleep, Brooke whispers to Kenneth that "she looks terrible" and Margaret crumples into their arms, muttering "hold me, hold me."  Brooke does her best to support her mother, who is still baffled by what she sees as the ultimate betrayal of two of her kids.  "Maybe parents shouldn't be an example.  Maybe they should be a warning to their children," Margaret tells Brooke in another of the movie's most frightening moments.

Bill is as adamant about leaving as Bridget.  Brooke finds both of them "stubborn" and "selfish," but Bill has his reasons for leaving, mainly that Margaret is always miserable and "she doesn't want to let us grow up."  "You're deserting me too, you know," Brooke tells him.  "I just assumed you'd come with us," Bill replies, figuring the three siblings share the same feelings.  When Margaret interrupts the conversation to help Bill pack, her self-control is gone almost immediately and turns so pathetic begging Bill to stay that Brooke has to turn away from watching the crumbling woman at the center of the scene.  So out of her mind is Margaret that she chases the car before falling on the grass in a crumpled mess.  "It will never be all right again," Margaret sobs.

"Mother was right, nothing was ever the same again," Brooke narrates, describing how Margaret, Bridget and Bill all ended up in asylums as "goodbye was to become the most common word in our vocabulary."

Fast forward to 1971, where Brooke is two-times divorce with three kids.  Bill calls to urge her back to NYC as Leland has had a stroke and is in the hospital.  The once-vital Leland Hayward, who could manage movies, movie stars and more all at once, is now a "slave to technology," as Brooke sees her helpless father in the bed.

This reminds Brooke of a pact she had with her father.  When she and Bridget were very young, they were singing in their bedroom during a party their parents were hosting.  Margaret repeatedly warned them to stop and threatened spankings.  When they disobeyed one last time, Leland tried to step in, but Margaret snaps, "it is not a parent's job to be popular.  You don't have the guts for it" and forges ahead with the spankings.  Leland has no heart for it and promises her after attempting it once, that he would never do it again, keeping his word as already noted.

Back in the past is the only way we can keep Bridget's story going.  Brooke remembers when Bridget was released from the institution and went to live on her own.  Though seemingly better, lines like "you   can have the clock when I die," anger and worry Brooke.

One of the most shocking scenes in Brooke's book turns into one of the most shocking scenes in "Haywire," if only because it's so utterly ludicrous (and way ahead of its time).  Brooke and Bill want Leland unhooked from all of the medical equipment to die at home with dignity  The doctor is aghast that anyone would willing let someone go, no matter the quality of life.  "Think of him as a pet…a creature you're fond of, that you love, that needs you to look after him," the doctor tells them.  "You know, doc, you're loonier than I ever was," Bill says, for once the voice of reason since Brooke is too shocked to reply.

Back in the past, 11 years earlier to be exact, right after Bill and Bridget left home, Margaret descending into wild self-pity faster than into the bottle, decides to go back to work as an actress.  Playing a nun on a television broadcast.  A misplaced prop causes a huge argument between Margaret and the young director (Christopher Guest), ending only when she storms off the set and refuses to return, all within 24 hours of the broadcast.  She ends up at their old family house in Connecticut, lying in the dirt in a depressed semi-coma.  Brooke visits her, informing Margaret that she's taking acting classes, much to the latter's chagrin.

In 1971, Leland is begging his children to let him die at home.  "Get me out," he says in a rare moment of lucidity.  Back into the past we go, this time following one of Bill's escape attempts from his Midwestern institution.  He and his rather ditzy companion are captured the next day.  Brooke tries to get Leland to free him, but Leland is adamant that Bill stay incarcerated.  Ultimately, Leland caves and rescues his son from jail.  Though not before Jason Robards makes sure to snag a whopper speech for himself (Lee Remick has gotten all of the good tirades so far).  A hissing Leland threatens to cut Bill out of the will, though Bill gets the upper hand quickly when Leland admits he and Nan are kaput.  Bill seems awfully sane, raging that Leland had him committed without a trial or any defense.  Bill works some kind of charm on his father, who gets the institution to keep him only three more months and then free him.

Also back in the past is Bridget, who has gotten a summer internship at the Williamstown Theater Festival after being released from her confinement.  She may even have fallen in love, but rather than enjoy it, she picks a fight with Brooke, only to then turning sugary sweet to end it.  She is quickly quickly slipping into a terrible fight with depression and medication, not to mention alcohol.

In and out of the past with Leland, Brooke and Bill seem to make their peace with him.  After a military stint, Bill even went on to co-produce "Easy Rider."  That leaves only Bridget and the summation of her story.  Sometime in the 60s, around the time she was fighting with Brooke at Williamstown she discovered she had epilepsy, which was still then considered by many to be emotional and not physical.  Apparently, this has been going on since she was in school in Switzerland and declared legally dead at one point!

Bill asks Leland who the top 10 most beautiful women are and sickly Leland has answers ready.  Three he married (twice to Lola, once to Margaret, once to Nan, though his current wife Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman is not mentioned), Kate Hepburn, Garbo, Fay Wray, a shock to all of them, Dietrich, Isak Deniesen, Justine Johnson and Esme O'Brian.  The last two are completely unknown to the kids, but when an attendant comes in to unhook him to take him home, where everyone has agreed he should be when he dies, he asks where Bridget is, a sign of certain confusion, though Brooke lets it pass without correcting him.

It's at this moment, very near the end of the movie, that the miniseries veers from the book, and really only for dramatic purposes.  What happens in the next few scenes with Brooke are actually part of the opening of the book.  There is no judgment to be made here.  The book had a very specific structure that used the past to explain the present, where the movie does have to make sure it keeps the drama going at regular intervals.  The outcome is the same and faithful to Brooke's interpretation.

That causes Brooke to flash back to a night about a decade before when a chipper Bridget called in the middle of the night to tell Brooke she was pregnant and that the next morning, she would cook her big sister a great breakfast.  It's an odd conversation, no matter how you look at it, unless you are Brooke.  From the outside, it's clear Bridget is suffering a manic episode, extreme happiness that slowly mutates into something darker, even if just barely.  Bridget herself even recognizes all is to well and brings up examples from the past to illustrate it.  However, Brooke, though puzzled, just chalks it up to a bit of sisterly strangeness.

Brooke shows up the next morning as planned and as she pounds on the door yelling Bridget's name, it's intercut with Kenneth doing the same to Margaret back in 1960.  Without having to say a word, it's clear what has happened to Bridget.  However, Brooke does have have the door burst down, because she had, in her own words, and "intense" desire to maintain Bridget's beloved privacy.  It's not until after a day of errands that Brooke arrives home to hear the news of her sister's death.

At a memorial service for Bridget, a friend tells Brooke that yes, she had the worst genetics a family can concoct, so "you either go over to that window and jump or you go on."  Back in the present, Leland asks her what is the one time in her life to which she would most eagerly return.  She declines an immediate answer.  He is taken home to die and soon Brooke is summoned to his home, but by the time she arrives, Leland has died.  She insists on seeing him, saying "there's something I have to tell him, I promised."  The theme of promises kept and broken is remaining potent and integral through the final moments.

The moment Brooke wants back?  A time Leland decided to drive to see Margaret, long after the divorce, to discuss Bridget's problems.  After a 12-year separation, Margaret is very nervous, but manages a calmness once she actually shows.  The tension is quickly broken and perhaps some wounds are healed.  In the present, Brooke becomes a mess of tears as she realizes her parents always loved each other, no matter the time spent apart and that was the moment that made it clear to her.  This she relays to her father's corpse.

"I wept for my family, all of us.  For excesses, our delusions, our inconsistencies.  Not that we cared too much or too little, but that we had been careless with the best of our resources, each other.  It's as if we had taken for granted, like our talents and interests and riches, another chance, another summer, another Maggie, another Leland, another Brooke or Bridget or Bill," Brooke narrates to close the miniseries.

What a perfect ending!  Why?  Because nowhere in that sentence is there even a scrap of Hollywood self-pity.  If it hasn't been obvious since the beginning, what makes "Haywire" so interesting is that it's about a typical family.  It may not seems so since there are famous names involved, but the celebrity aspect of these character is rarely even a plot point.  Compare that with most star or child of star autobiographies.  No, "Haywire" is almost a mental health primer for coping with the ups and downs of its various forms.  Most of the time, this family of five got it wrong and the consequences were sadly permanent.  However, that does not make them special as this story is endlessly repeated by hundreds, thousands, of families who lose control to such debilitating conditions.

So "Haywire" exists sui generis as a miniseries.  It's neither romance, history nor adventure.  It's the story of a family full of unique individuals who were like molecules bouncing a million times a minute, trying to get away from each other, when the reasons they were doing so were just what should have been keeping them together: it's the inside of the American dream, what goes on behind the picket fences and manicured lawns, behind the frozen smiles and apple pies.  It's the truths of the Hayward family, unpleasant, forlorn, depressing, yet accessible and understandable.

ESSENTIAL TELEMOVIES: The Day After (1983)

In the period being discussed, roughly 1975-1995, the American miniseries took on some enormous topics, historical pageants and outrageous stories.  But, not everything deserved a multi-episode miniseries.  Some movies only needed one night and one sitting.  They are what we will call "Essential Telemovies."  I've used two previously ("The Woman He Love" to show off Jane Seymour and "Bella Mafia" to show off how trashy and gleeful American television could get), but there are a bunch I would like to slip into the Miniseries Marathon because they play and behave like miniseries.  In fact, their shorter length probably made them classics, and some might have been completely forgotten up against miniseries powerhouses. 

Few telemovies are as famous as "The Day After."  What happens after the nuclear bombs go off?  This movie was endlessly discussed before it aired, it was presented very uniquely and ABC followed it with a round-table panel about nuclear war.  Not every child of the 80s will remember it, but my school actually recommended that parents sit down with their children and watch (and it was taught to me again in college in the early 90s as a demonstration of the world's manic obsession with nuclear war in the early 80s).  There were guides to the movie.  You couldn't miss the hype.  Ultimately, the excitement bagged 100 million viewers!  Roughly half the country watched "The Day After" on one night in November 1983.  I don't know whether or not anyone learned anything profound and maybe it was just entertainment, but it's impossible to ignore it as a watershed of American television in this time period.

Of course, the world-at-large helped stir up controversy on a daily basis.  Hawkish Ronald Reagan was busy denouncing the Soviet Union as "the Evil Empire" and every gunshot in every foreign country seemed to have US versus USSR meaning behind it.  This was before Gorbachev and his reforms; this was the era of the cranky old Soviets leaders, whose names are barely remembered in the West as they came and went so quickly.  Hardliners ruled the world, from Reagan and Thatcher and their NATO allies to the scowls of their opposites in graying Communist Warsaw Pact members (whose names were never forced on us because we were taught there was no news from behind the Iron Curtain--how many Soviet leaders came between 1982 and 1985?  Didn't it seem like they were constantly dying and being replaced?). 

Most schools had given up on air raid drills where kids crouched under their desks, but the Emergency Broadcast System still ran those piercing tests always at the most inconvenient moments of family television time (that was just the point, but we just grumbled).  The threat of nuclear war was still strong, not Cuban Missile Crisis strong, but strong enough that Reagan ordered the largest build-up of military might the world had ever seen.  We were constantly being told that there were enough nuclear missiles to blow up the world many times over.  The world was still scared that someone would press that button.

And though the thought of nuclear fallout was not new, there had never been one that showed what happened after the bombs went off.  No one could know  We had to extrapolate from what atomic bombs did to Japan and what tests showed.  Three Mile Island had leaked, but Chernobyl had not.  Would the world be wiped out?  Would we all die slow horrible deaths from cancer?  Were there underground bunkers build just for the notables? 

"The Day After" aimed to answer those questions, and still wanted to entertain.  This was fiction, but just barely.  Nearly 30 years later, nuclear war seems almost trite.  What the hell were we so worried about?  Why would we start a war that would kill us all?  But, that's history for you.  "The Day After" certainly had the feel of a miniseries (and it was originally filmed as a two-nighter, edited down by nervous network executives to fit into just one night), it has all the hallmarks of one, but it's abbreviated run-time makes it almost scarier, more immediate.  In under 2.5 hours, we would see nuclear devastation.  That certainly seemed far more relevant than yet another celebration of American power masquerading as history (the colossal "Winds of War") or the giddy pleasures of Sidney Sheldon ("Rage of Angels").  "The Day After" was now.  Any day could be the day after.

Paranoia seems absolutely normal to the military when the film begins.  On a base in Omaha, Nebraska of all places, there is a briefing that says where all important US leaders are and then where any suspicious nuclear warhead movement might be.  "Coffee, General?" he's asked after buckling himself in and sitting down after the briefing.  Nothing out of the ordinary today. 

I would like to also propose the movie is meant to be incredibly entertaining in a stupid way, like the disaster movies of the 70s.  Big stars, big natural occurrence (usually), so many people will die if not for the vacationing vet will be able to save everyone.  "Towering Inferno," all four "Airport" movies, and on and on.  This actually does follow similar patterns while also being miniseries-like, all that for the people who did not want to be bothered with the main point. However, those had happy endings.

Then we get to Kansas.  There is a tuneful Copeland-esque score (actually adapted from Virgil Thompson), overhead shots of farms and corn silos and peaceful suburbia, blond kids in music class, cowboys in stockyards, milk production and baseball fields.  In other words, pure Americana.  We've only missed ma in a gingham dress.  Life is idyllic.  Nothing is wrong in Kansas, except for a news report about more Soviet build-ups along Eastern European rivers, though no one is paying attention to that. 

In case you missed that this is strictly the American side of things, good old Jason Robards, as squeaky clean as you can get, is on board as a doctor at a Kansas City hospital.  He's a gosh darn trustworthy as President Reagan!  He teaches a class and then takes a fine upstanding Asian resident on his rounds, where a perky black man tells him he just had a hospital meal of "turkey, yams, beans...nurse says she's getting me some ice cream, but she didn't come back."  "What flavor you like best?" Dr. Jason asks.  Yup, we get it.  Hokum is here and it's not leaving.  This is Middle America, everything worth saving about this great land of ours.  Forget the quirky liberals, celebrities and politicians on the coasts, Dr. Jason Robards and his grinning hospital patients are what we're fighting for.

Even soldiers are smiling.  A nice cultural mix (a white guy who "falls in love every weekend," a guy who reads a newspaper, a redneck and a black guy) is aboard a helicopter, a happy little microcosm, not paying attention the newspaper reader's warning that there might be trouble somewhere.  Sure, there are nuclear warheads in this Eden, but no one is thinking about them.  Heck, Dr. Jason's daughter is moving to Boston and even the folks who live next to the nuclear base simply wave when soldiers come and go.  News is simply background noise. 

When Jason comes home with flowers, an idea to go to the drive-in and "neck" with his wife Georgann Johnson, she knows something is up.  Both are upset over their daughter's impending move.  Just as Georgann is getting started on a rant, there is a "special report" signal on the TV.  "East Germany sealed off the borders to West Berlin," the anchor reads.  This is worrisome.  "I just want to go upstairs and get into bed," Georgann tells Jason, "with you." 

Equally unconcerned about the world around them is the family of John Cullum.  Daughter Lori Lethin, days from marrying Jeff East, who wants some before the wedding, dashes upstairs in curlers to get her diaphragm, which has been snatched by sister Ellen Anthony, all while an annoying brother badly plays a clarinet.  John is thoroughly annoyed by the noise interrupting his television viewing, though he does concentrate when another special report tells of more menace from the Soviets.  We hear that if they don't back down by a certain hour, it will be "regarded as an act of war."  The President has put the military on a "stage two alert."  Mom Bibi Besch has to ref the fight between the sisters, ending the conversation with a demand that one daughter come "help with the casserole."  Only John pays attention.

"God, it's 1962 all over again," Georgann says in bed.  Now we've officially hit a panic button.  In 1983, bringing up the Cuban Missile Crisis was a sure way to rattle the masses.  She and Jason rehash the incident, but only in their own context.  "I swear we made [their daughter] that night," Georgann remembers fondly.  "It's not gonna happen," she chirps.  "People are crazy, but not that crazy," Jason says and they go on to joke about friends that have canceled a vacation.  "What if it does happen?  What do we do?" she wonders at the very end of the scene.

John is puzzled, but the American flag on his lawn waving as his daughter sneaks out with her boyfriend on his motorcycle seems to placate him for the time being.

Not pleased by the turn of events is William Allen Young's wife (this was before he landed in "Sins," mind you).  He's an airman who has his leave schedule disrupted.  He tries to assuage her that "we just have to check things twice instead of once," but they are supposed to go to her mother's with their son.  She immediately regrets her tantrum, so he goes into one.  It starts off happy enough, since he'll be done with his service in "five and a half months," but he's soon snapping, "it's an alert...it's strictly by the book."  Yes, we know, they fight out of fear. 

The next morning, things seem very average.  John and his brood (except possibly slutty Lori, who was out all night) slop the pigs, Jason kisses his wife and goes to work.  Lori is getting married the next day and they are uneasy about change, but sassy sister Ellen listens in before being shooed away.  "The whole world is holding its breath waiting to hear what you two are talking about," she yells at John and Lori.  If only, Ellen.  If only. 

At the hospital, Jason and a fellow doctor wonder what will become of the world.  Rumors are that Moscow has been evacuated.  "Where does one go from Kansas City, the Yukon?" Jason is asked.  He has no answer.  No answer. 

In Lawrence, Kansas, Nurse JoBeth Williams wonders who is in charge of the hospital in case an evacuation is needed.  She can only find Dr. Calvin Jung, who declares, "I'm only a Resident with 150 bodies to examine, most of them unfortunately male!"  He's actually examining potential military recruits, including a very young Steve Guttenberg.  JoBeth goes back to work, taking Amy Madigan to maternity since she's about to have a baby.  Jeff and Steve hear on campus that "the Soviets have just invaded West Germany."  How will NATO respond?  One student is a cynic, saying nothing will happen.  "Did we help the Czechs, the Hungarians, the Afghans or the Poles?  We're not going to nuke the Russians to save the Germans.  I mean, if you were talking oil in Saudi Arabia, then I'd be real worried," she groans, basically summing up every one's understanding of US foreign policy throughout most of the last decade. 

Some people are truly paying attention now, but no one knows quite what to do.  Steve decides to visit his family in Joplin and can't get a ride with anyone, and there are streams of cars evacuating the town.  His tight jeans and fit body do the trick and a man in a truck takes him, though the gun hanging over his head worries Steve a bit.  Jeff goes to the barber to get his pre-wedding cut, and there John Lithgow is hogging the conversation, noting that the President's speech that night won't say much.  "He'll tell us what we want to hear, keep a low sweat stain," John says, before wondering aloud just how much damage could be done. "Well, maybe they'll contain it.  After all, I've still got symphony tickets for tonight," he says, as a way of placating the others.  Jeff is the dopey one, still thinking Kansas is safe.  "There is no 'nowhere' anymore," John schools him, especially since they are so near a military base.

Jason is in the middle of the traffic exodus when the emergency broadcast signal comes on.  Frankly, in the case of an emergency, I never expected to hear a really bored young woman giving instructions, but go figure, that's just what happens.  She tells everyone to go to a shelter, "while there is no immediate danger to the Kansas City area."  John Cullum makes plans to fill up water jugs for the cellar and Jason waits in an interminable line for a pay phone before giving up and driving his Volvo back onto the highway.  The market is a melee, with people fighting for every available item.  Jeff is just trying to buy orange juice when the man in front of him announces the Russians have bombed a US ship in the Persian Gulf, but "we bombed 'em back." 

Here's the con of the movie: we've already seen 45 minutes of the movie and it's just now that the military is leaping to action, juxtaposing their frantic efforts with the rather quiet planning or downright indifference around them.  That's a lot of time spent on character development.  Now, everything is important, but this movie only runs 2 hours and 8 minutes.  Anyway, in one house, only a young boy knows the military has been deployed because his farmer father has taken mom upstairs for a quickie before lunch.  John Cullum wants his wife to get everyone the basement, but Bibi whines, "can't you see how much I have to do?"  "Don't you know there's almost a national emergency out there?" he asks.  "It's just going to have to go on without me because your daughter is getting married and I've got 67 mouths to feed!"  Ellen wonders, "there's not going to be a war, is there?"

Indeed, there is, Ellen.  Indeed, there is.  The General is asked for the all-important keys and the military base is a beehive of activity.  But everywhere else is eerily quiet.  Steve is dropped off by the bear truck driver (doing everything but waving the red hanky in his right pocket, if you know what I mean), and as he walks along the road, he sees only animals and hears nothing.  Inside the base, the keys are inserted and then turned.  Stock footage of a rocket going into the air is used, along with special effects that show the town rocking, the horse bucking and the missile going up and away from the hole it just left among the quiet farms.  More missiles follow as everyone stops to watch them streaming up into the sky. 

John Cullum tries to get his brood into the basement, but Bibi insists on making the beds until he forces her down the stairs and she howls with realization, a big King Lear-like moment.  William and his mates arrive at the base too late for the detonation.  No one knows who fired first, but one of them knows it doesn't matter.  "Either way, we're going to get hit," he announces.  They argue about what to do.  William says, "the war is over" and wants to get home to his family, but others want to follow protocol.  And others want to go underground into the supposedly safe bunkers.  William does not go into the bunker with the rest.  He's taking his chances racing back to his family. 

When everyone is confused as to what the missiles are, John Lithgow knows.  "They are on their way to Russia.  They take about 30 minutes to reach their target," he warns everyone. 

Once the air raid sounds go off, Kansas City goes into panic.  Bells are going off everywhere, cars crashing, people running.  It has the feel of a 70s disaster flick, with the leads constantly intersecting each other, but then a mushroom cloud overs the city.  Everything stops.  Clocks, cars, electricity.  William runs from his car, but Jason is smart enough to stay down in his as a giant mushroom cloud and furious special effects dominate the next few minutes.  Yes, a TV movie with special effects.  Because no one knew exactly what would happen, they kind of assumed, so we see people being radiated down to just their bones, vaporized instantly.  Stock footage of burning buildings and such help, but really it's the special effects of fire and wind that are most dazzling.  For a few minutes, as we cross the halfway point of the movie, it's Armageddon.  It's permanent death and destruction to any living organism.  There are, of course, some inconsistencies.  The lead characters never seem to be affected, no matter how close they got to anything. 

In John Cullum's basement, the family members are safe from the fires and winds above them, though what they will encounter when they inevitably have to leave, no on can say.  John tells his family they will have to relearn a great deal once things are sorted.  "I don't know much about radiation," John says.  "What's radiation?" asks Ellen.  That's an important dialogue.  The government, the military, they gave the American people (and one can assume the Soviets did the same), only the most basic information.  So, no one really knew for sure that radiation can burn a person, what kind of cancers will arise, genetic deformities.  The military people are somewhere else, so it's just going to be the salt-of-the-earth people left to figure it out.  Trial and error won't be easy, but there will be survivors. 

Dr. Jason feels safe enough to wander through the campus, which is covered in ash and plucky students under John Lithgow are trying to figure out what works with the planet now under a completely new law of physics.  Jason Robards, who was closest to the explosion, tries to take charge of the fear and lack of knowledge, but it's too much to harness.

Steve Guttenberg is caught looking for food at John Cullum's house, but John invites him in.  There will no doubt be a lot of that in the coming period, but this time it ended in a friendly way.

At the hospital, Jason and his team are forced to improvise since there is no electricity.  Flashlights guide surgeries.  Jason worries that they may be "the only hospital within 100 mile radius." "Too late to be a dentist," cracks Nurse JoBeth, who never met a line she couldn't deliver without heavy acid.  Jason pauses to wonder what the rest of the US cities look like now. 

For information's sake (and it may be true), Jason and JoBeth see a few roaches and Jason remarks that they are "impervious to radiation."  "Man's legacy," he calls them, which is a bit strange because men didn't create roaches!

Frustrated at being cooped up inside the basement for five days (including the one that would have been her wedding day, Lori starts to go stir crazy.  "It's only been five days and I can't remember what [Jeff] looks like!"  This is just the beginning of her harangue, and it ends with her running out of the house.  Dead animals and a world covered in horrid soot seem like "a beautiful day" to her, but Steve, who has generously offered to follow her as a favor to the family for letting him stay, tells her that "it only looks that way...you can't see it, you can't feel it, and you can't taste it, but it's here, right now, all around us.  It's going through you like an x-ray, right into your cells!  What do you think killed all these animals?" he asks, trying to get her to understand just what has happened.  He is able to chase her back inside, where she finds her wedding dress. 

William is still trying to get home, wherever that may be, having to join the long lines of people wandering around the streets trying to figure out where to go and what to do.  They resemble an army of the dead already. 

Inside the hospital, which has ballooned into every nearby building, the situation is fast becoming untenable.  "Bolt the doors!" Jason tells all of the complaining underlings who rattle off the problems.  He wants to treat the sick, but medications are running low, people are stealing and rats are in danger of spreading cholera.  In the morgue, Dr. Calvin is asked if he's heard about the "firing squads" shooting people who commit crimes.  "Without a trial?  That's crazy!  Go back to work," he orders! 

The movie's most important exchange comes between Jason and Amy Madigan, who feels her baby has not arrived yet because "if you had a choice, would you want to be born into a world like this?"  Amy lays out the political arguments, the social realities and the grimness of possibility all in a concise speech that hammers in nearly everything the movie wants to say, in a simple and concise way.  "I can't argue with you," Jason replies.  "Argue with me, give me a reason, tell me about hope, tell me why you work so hard in here," she begs, asking for a dialogue on why things like "hope" would still possibly matter, and he has no argument for her. 

As William wanders from camp to camp with an odd little hermit he's met, Lori keeps cracking, this time thinking Jeff is in the bunker with them and planting a big kiss on him, which takes Steve by surprise since it's really him she's kissing.  John Cullum starts rattling off the farm losses and Bibi says they are "lucky to be alive."  "We'll see how lucky that is," he groans. 

The radiation count outside goes down to levels that are considered "safe" by the doctors, so people start leaving their hovels, bells ring to announce it.  That doesn't mean it doesn't choke the lungs or hurt the eyes.  John Cullum goes out to survey his farm (the first thing he sees being the American flag, which has survived).  He and his family go and attend a church service in a bombed out church, where the minister can barely get the words out.  The family has to leave when Erin starts to bleed.  Their son is also blind, so Steve volunteers to take them to Lawrence to the hospital, but promises to bring them back.  Using one of the surviving horses, Steve hitches up a carriage and off they go.  The blind son ask, "what do you see?"  "The usual stuff," Steve says, listing a few innocuous items, but none of the dead bodies. 

On the radio, the President says that "there is a cease fire" and that the Soviets have "sustained damage which is equally catastrophic."  The speech is downright bizarre.  It starts off somewhat comforting, but quickly escalates into gloating that "there has been no surrender, no retreat."  What the hell does any of that mean under the horrible conditions into which the idiocies of nuclear war have no plunged the world.  There is nothing calming about what he says, and people barely listen as they go about doing what they need to survive.  "That's it, that's all he's going to say?" a student asks.  He wants details of the war from John Lithgow but another student answers correctly.  "What difference does it make?"  John gets philosophical, quoting Einstein in saying, "he didn't know how they would fight World War III, but he knew how they would fight World War IV, with sticks and stones." 

Jason finally collapses and wakes up as merely one of hundreds of patients.  JoBeth is there when he wakes up, but she has to quickly run over to William, who has lost his hair and is covered with huge slabs of infected skin.  His mind is barely holding on.  Outside the hospital, mass graves are being readied. 

But, just when it seems people might be organizing themselves a little bit, they realize it's only a facade.  John Cullum attends a meeting of other farmers where they are instructed on how to plant crops and deal with soil and such, but no one understands the government mandates and none of it makes practical sense.  Forlorn, John goes home to his house to find a bunch of squatters cooking animals over a fire. He tries to talk to them, but one shoots him dead.  At the hospital, Jason is well enough to get up, only to find that JoBeth has died.  Unwell enough to work, and looking more sickly by the hour, Jason leaves Calvin in charge and goes to find his home, seeing all of the looting, death, firing squads and horror that he's only heard about at the hospital.  Calvin's special patient had been John Cullum's blind son, but he can't cure him, so Steve takes him home.  Steve himself is beginning to show serious signs of decay and he wanders into his school gymnasium, which is filled with bodies, but manages to find Ellen. 

With blood-curdling screams, Amy goes into labor.  The rest of the patients just stare, unmoved.  The baby cries, alive. 

Jason makes it back to Kansas City, which is just a pile of rubble.  Having finally cracked himself, he sees a few people at what used to be the site of his home and yells, "get out of my house!"  As Jason cumbles to the ground, the stranger comes to hold him.  Between the baby and the togetherness, there are signs of civilization.

But the movie ends with a title card: "The catastrophic events you have just witnessed are, in all likelihood, less severe than the destruction that would actually occur in the event of a full nuclear strike against the United States.  It is hoped that the images of this film will inspire the nations of this earth, their peoples and leaders, to find the means to avert that day."

There we have it, American television when it had the power to think.  A decade later, the Soviet Union was gone and world leaders were dispensing with nuclear power (not that it ceased to exist).  The threat of a nuclear war became distant, almost laughable.  The threat of it had been enough to keep the world balanced for 40 years.  When it was no longer a real possibility, we would find warmongers using far less technologically advanced methods to keep the world in a permanent state of fear. 

Can you imagine anything like "The Day After" on television by 1993?  2003?  2013?  Absolutely not.  No one would even attempt it, and if they did, it would be telling a far different story.  It would be about the stars in it, it would be about thrilling special effects, and it would end happily.  There is no happy ending to "The Day After."  That's exactly the point of it.  "The Day After" actually mattered.  It made people think.