Long, long ago, when dinosaurs ruled the world and I was a college undergrad, I made an interesting discovery... at least it was interesting to ME.
The discovery was this... unless it personally grabs him by the noogies and gives a sharp yank, John Q. Public doesn't give a rodent's rectum about history. As a History major, I was appalled to discover that my fellow undergrads didn't know about things that happened 5 years ago, and frankly didn't give a damn about them; if you go to 100 or 200 years ago, that's completely off the RADAR screen. We're seeing today that events that far back produce some really garbled, half remembered jingoistic pronouncements from the average person on the street... or even from wannabe political leaders, who should KNOW better, but instead give us fairy tales about Paul Revere ringing church bells to warn the British about not taking our guns away!
In 1974, ABC-TV presented a production called "The Missiles Of October", covering Kennedy's Cuban missile crisis of a decade before. I wasn't aware that it was going to be broadcast.
One evening in October, I went to the Boar's Head... the campus beer bar at my college. I was stunned by what I saw there.
The place was packed, but the jukebox was shut down. Dead silence... except for the sound of a 21 inch TV set over the bar, presenting the ABC broadcast.
EVERYONE... from the bookworms and nerds to the jocks... was absolutely mesmerized by the program.
It connected with them immediately... and I understood immediately WHY it connected.
I still remember the cold, leaden lump of raw, animal instinct fear that formed in my chest as I'd watched and listened to John F. Kennedy on TV a decade earlier while he informed the American people that nuclear weapons were being aimed at us from 90 miles off our southern coast.
As a child of the Duck & Cover generation my first automatic thought wasn't comforting... I'm living in Chicago, and Chicago is a prime target. If this breaks loose, we're gonna get hit first.
I wondered if a week from then I was still going to be alive... it was a 13 year old who was grappling for the first time with the concept of mortality.
Yeah... the audience in the Boar's Head remembered. "The Missiles of October" grabbed 'em by the scrotum on a downhill pull.THIS was history that was up close and personal; they'd lived through it.
"The Missiles of October" was a VERY well constructed bit of stagecraft, and is historically accurate.Over the years I've wanted to see it again. Now, I can; it's been released on DVD.
Playing the part of JFK is William Devane; he did a great job with the role. As Nikita Krushchev we have Howard DaSilva... the irony here is overpowering because DaSilva was named before HUAC as a Communist sympathizer and was subsequently blacklisted. Now, he was playing the part of the most powerful member of the Communist Party who had ever been born.
In an interesting bit of casting... a VERY young Martin Sheen plays Robert Kennedy. And he plays the hell out of it!
Neamiah Persoff is Andre Gromyko, and Ralph Bellamy plays UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson.
ABC sure didn't pinch pennies on the TALENT here. Everyone is top rate.
The material presented is pretty historically accurate; the script is based on Robert Kennedy's book THIRTEEN DAYS.
The DVD release is pretty good, but you have to keep in mind the technical limitations of the time when the production was mounted.
This was done with analog cameras (probably the then state of the art Image Orthicon, or possibly the follow-up Vidicon cameras). Compared to current "chip" cameras, the image presentation is "soft"... but that works well with this material. It imparts a slightly dreamlike quality to the production.
It's clear that they shot this to 2" Ampex videotape; in a very few spots, head switching errors (2 inch machines were fiddly devices and were notorious for head switching glitches)are momentarily present... but all in all, it's a pretty good DVD transfer.
HIGHLY recommended !!! The movie 13 DAYS has better fireworks, and more Bells & Whistles... but "The Missiles of October" does a much better job with the back room diplomacy that brought the world back from the brink of nuclear war.
The discovery was this... unless it personally grabs him by the noogies and gives a sharp yank, John Q. Public doesn't give a rodent's rectum about history. As a History major, I was appalled to discover that my fellow undergrads didn't know about things that happened 5 years ago, and frankly didn't give a damn about them; if you go to 100 or 200 years ago, that's completely off the RADAR screen. We're seeing today that events that far back produce some really garbled, half remembered jingoistic pronouncements from the average person on the street... or even from wannabe political leaders, who should KNOW better, but instead give us fairy tales about Paul Revere ringing church bells to warn the British about not taking our guns away!
In 1974, ABC-TV presented a production called "The Missiles Of October", covering Kennedy's Cuban missile crisis of a decade before. I wasn't aware that it was going to be broadcast.
One evening in October, I went to the Boar's Head... the campus beer bar at my college. I was stunned by what I saw there.
The place was packed, but the jukebox was shut down. Dead silence... except for the sound of a 21 inch TV set over the bar, presenting the ABC broadcast.
EVERYONE... from the bookworms and nerds to the jocks... was absolutely mesmerized by the program.
It connected with them immediately... and I understood immediately WHY it connected.
I still remember the cold, leaden lump of raw, animal instinct fear that formed in my chest as I'd watched and listened to John F. Kennedy on TV a decade earlier while he informed the American people that nuclear weapons were being aimed at us from 90 miles off our southern coast.
As a child of the Duck & Cover generation my first automatic thought wasn't comforting... I'm living in Chicago, and Chicago is a prime target. If this breaks loose, we're gonna get hit first.
I wondered if a week from then I was still going to be alive... it was a 13 year old who was grappling for the first time with the concept of mortality.
Yeah... the audience in the Boar's Head remembered. "The Missiles of October" grabbed 'em by the scrotum on a downhill pull.THIS was history that was up close and personal; they'd lived through it.
"The Missiles of October" was a VERY well constructed bit of stagecraft, and is historically accurate.Over the years I've wanted to see it again. Now, I can; it's been released on DVD.
Playing the part of JFK is William Devane; he did a great job with the role. As Nikita Krushchev we have Howard DaSilva... the irony here is overpowering because DaSilva was named before HUAC as a Communist sympathizer and was subsequently blacklisted. Now, he was playing the part of the most powerful member of the Communist Party who had ever been born.
In an interesting bit of casting... a VERY young Martin Sheen plays Robert Kennedy. And he plays the hell out of it!
Neamiah Persoff is Andre Gromyko, and Ralph Bellamy plays UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson.
ABC sure didn't pinch pennies on the TALENT here. Everyone is top rate.
The material presented is pretty historically accurate; the script is based on Robert Kennedy's book THIRTEEN DAYS.
The DVD release is pretty good, but you have to keep in mind the technical limitations of the time when the production was mounted.
This was done with analog cameras (probably the then state of the art Image Orthicon, or possibly the follow-up Vidicon cameras). Compared to current "chip" cameras, the image presentation is "soft"... but that works well with this material. It imparts a slightly dreamlike quality to the production.
It's clear that they shot this to 2" Ampex videotape; in a very few spots, head switching errors (2 inch machines were fiddly devices and were notorious for head switching glitches)are momentarily present... but all in all, it's a pretty good DVD transfer.
HIGHLY recommended !!! The movie 13 DAYS has better fireworks, and more Bells & Whistles... but "The Missiles of October" does a much better job with the back room diplomacy that brought the world back from the brink of nuclear war.