I watched “Failsafe” – the live B&W version on CBS, not the 1964 movie. My main motivation, like a lot of people, was to see if any of the actors screwed up. Somewhat surprisingly, nobody did.
Some of my random thoughts on the show:
Airing it live seemed an appropriate means of building the tension that the plot calls for. But airing it in black-and-white seemed merely gimmicky. They DID have color television in the early 1960s, when the show was set.
Richard Dreyfuss was great as the President. Noah Wylie was pretty good, too.
As the crew of the bomber, George Clooney and (what’s his first name?) Cheadle had relatively little airtime.
Conceding New York City right off the bat? Why not start with a smaller city, like Philadelphia or Boston, and bid your way up to L.A., Chicago, or New York if you have to. Someone who became President should be a better negotiator.
It’s understandable why they would order the pilots not to accept verbal recall orders. But surely a system with an electronic code authorizing attack would also have an electronic code for recall? I realize the bombers were being jammed for most of the show, but the jamming was lifted towards the end (when they tried to authenticate the verbal recall with the son of Clooney’s character).
One of the most powerful moments, that you would have almost missed if you blinked: General “Blackie” stabbing himself with a vial of fast-acting poison just after dropping the H-bombs.
Beyond the fact that the hawkish professor (Hank Azaria’s character) was totally heartless, would any scientist, even a pro-atomic-war scientist, really believe that a significant portion of (unprotected) paper records would survive an H-bombing of midtown Manhattan? The dumbfounded and shocked looks on the generals’ faces when he proposed this were priceless.
The show didn’t fall into the easy stereotype that military people, and especially generals, are mindlessly pro-war. The hawk scientist seemed to have no support from the assembled generals for any of his peculiar proposals.
I saw it. Reminded me of that tv movie about nuke war in the early 1980’s: “The Day After”.
I’m glad NYC was the city they blew up…heh heh. NYC usually gets chosen, like in that Will Smith movie, “Independence Day”. Shows that a lot of Americans don’t like NYC.
Like Spoke said, the timing of this movie seems strange. However, when you consider the US and Russia still have a nuclear arsenal pointed at each other, maybe it isn’t so strange. Nuclear politics is still alive.
China Rejects U.S. Explanation for Bombing
(Reuters) - China rejected Monday a formal explanation
by the United States on how Beijing’s embassy in
Yugoslavia was targeted and bombed by NATO
warplanes in May, saying it was ``hard to believe’’ the
bombing was a mistake.
I enjoyed the movie. Some musings (remember these come from someone who has worked extensively in live theatre):
While I thought that the ‘live’ nature of the program would just be used as a gimmick, I was rather pleased. There were some minor miscues, and a few obvious (to me, anyway) dropped lines. Cascio (I’m not sure who played him, the IMDB says it’s Miguel Ferrer, and it obviously wasn’t) was weak, until his conversation with his mother at the end. Dreyfuss wasn’t commanding enough, though he did a respectable job. The mics in the masks of the bomber crews were muffled, and difficult to understand some times.
One thing that (pre-recorded and edited) TV and movies misses out on is the intensity that a live performance has, whether on stage or on screen, and to a large extent that came through last night.
I think this show also brought attention to the dreadful state of acting. While no one was horrible, at the same time no one gave the caliber performance that they are usually capable of. A good example is Harvey Keitel. He did a fine job, but not nearly as good as he usually does. I think actors have become on reliant on editing and repeated takes to make sure they do a good job. Almost anyone could be a movie performer (the word ‘actor’ deliberately not used here), as long as the director has the patience to let them keep trying until they get it right.
I’ve heard some rumors about someone bringing back the weekly or bi-weekly live movie broadcast (like “Failsafe”). I think it’s a good idea. The novelty will draw in audiences, and hopefully when those watching realize that live is almost always better the pre-recorded, the audiences will stay.
I saw most of it. It was a very good adaptaion of the novel (most of the plot points people mentioned were taken directly from the book). I was surprised as to the style; live TV usually stuck with medium shots and a few close-up. This used close-up to good use (especially with such things as Keitel’s poison vial).
I don’t think there was any real drop off in acting with Keitel; he just had less to do than in a movie.
“What we have here is failure to communicate.” – Strother Martin, anticipating the Internet.
I went to see a play that my best friend was in, so I trudged through half an hour of figuring out how to operate the VCR timer (after spending time getting the 12:00 to stop blinking) only to get home and discover that I HADN’T REWOUND THE DAMN TAPE!
I enjoyed it, I have never read the book, nor seen any other adaptations, but I enjoyed the movie. I’m a little unsure about the use of black and white, but it was fine. I didn’t think the casting of Cascio or Araria’s character was very good. As much as I like Azaria, that role just didn’t suit him. And the war like Cascio should have been played by a harder, more coarse actor. Other than that I liked the film.
I liked the CBS production, but it was so close to the original movie that I had to wonder, “What’s the point?” Still, I thought it was a very good show and I was not disappointed.
I agree that airing it live added to the tension. I don’t think the B&W was “gimmicky”. The intention was to recreate as nearly as possible the 1964 theatrical film, which was B&W. Also, audiences tend not to be very sophisticated. Were it broadcast in colour, many people might have “missed” that it depicted a story that was set three and a half decades ago.
He was all right, but not as good as Henry Fonda.
So? They had as much airtime as was needed for the story.
This was the only way the Soviets would have been satisfied. Moscow is a large city. The Soviets would not have accepted the mere bombing of Daggett, CA or some such place. The choice of NYC was a major dramatic point in the film.
Hmm. I hadn’t thought of that. Once the jamming was lifted, why didn’t they send a recall code? By the time the pilot’s son got on the radio, the co-pilot was already too-far gone and the pilot was on the edge, psychologically. They had convinced themselves (because of their training) that any voice communication would be fake. (Cold War paranoia)
It wasn’t that quick. It seemed more powerful to me in the 1964 film though.
His character was better-developed in the original.
Most of the military people in positions of authority know very well the horrors of war. They are generally not inclined to launch into an aggrressive war, although they are quite prepared to protect their country. If you recall, all of the military leaders in this country were opposed to bombing Yugoslavia, and reports I read after the attacks had ended said that the “ethnic cleansing” was largely a reaction to the NATO bombing. IMO, it’s the politicians we have to watch out for.
“I must leave this planet, if only for an hour.” – Antoine de St. Exupéry
I think New York was chosen because that’s where the Soviet U.N. delegate was, and that’s the only way it could be quickly proven to the Soviet leaders that the U.S. had really blown up one of its own cities.
IIRC, In the original movie (which I haven’t seen in 30 years) either the failsafe device was damaged in the fighter attack (or was that Dr. Strangelove?), or they arrogantly assumed an order to proceed could never be issued by mistake. The latter seems more in keeping with the tone of the show.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
“…they arrogantly assumed an order to proceed could never be issued by mistake”
Of course, one of the movie’s points is that an erroneous attack code was never even considered when laying out the system. But there are other reasons to have a recall order than that the attack order was sent by mistake. Like one of the characters at the Pentagon meeting (the pro-war professor?) said, the whole reason you still keep bombers when you have missiles is to be able to recall them.
A broken “fail-safe” device is a much better explanation, but the writers didn’t do it that way, or at least they didn’t include any dialogue establishing that the device broke sometime after the attack code was received.
