| As TV audiences gathered to watch Sunday’s all-star cast perform a remake of the 1962 Cold War film Fail-Safe, some were drawn to the project’s star power (George Clooney and an A-list of supporting actors including Richard Dreyfuss, Harvey Keitel and Brian Dennehy), and others to the excitement of seeing a live theatrical event beamed into their living rooms.
But still others see the new Fail Safe as a chance to send a political message.
Project Abolition, a coalition seeking mainstream support for nuclear disarmament, organized Fail Safe viewing parties to draw attention to its cause. “Our estimate is there will be at least 200 of these watch parties, some at people’s homes, but others at churches or colleges” around the country and in Canada and Argentina, says Kevin Martin, the project’s Goshen, Ind.-based director.
“Young people haven’t grown up knowing about the threat of nuclear weapons, with the Cold War having been over,” Martin says. “I think it’s important they’re exposed to it. If it takes TV to do this, that’s fine with me.” But Martin, stressing that thousands of nuclear weapons remain deployed around the world, hopes viewers don’t perceive the Fail Safe remake – still set in the early 1960s – as an anachronism.
In Fail Safe, Clooney plays a bomber pilot mistakenly ordered to drop a nuclear warhead on Moscow while the U.S. president and the Soviet premier attempt to avoid World War III.
Organizers of the watch parties believe that the numerous nuclear weapons accidents that have occurred in the past 50 years are proof that leaving Russian and U.S. nuclear warheads on permanent alert poses an unnecessary risk to global security.
“Ten years after the end of the Cold War, we have the opportunity to eliminate the scourge of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth, if enough people demand it,” Martin says.
For Clooney and CBS, Fail Safe represents a gamble of another kind.
The network already is gearing up for its next live event, On Golden Pond, starring Julie Andrews.
And if a live Cold War drama can bring audiences to the TV set Sunday night, other networks will follow the lead of Clooney and CBS and take chances on similar events in a crowded TV landscape.
Veteran actor Norman Lloyd, 85, who appeared in Sunday’s production as the secretary of Defense, distills the draw of live TV.
“You’ve got to know your lines, because you can’t fumble, turn and say, ‘Line, please.’ You have to listen very carefully, because your cues will come up and not stop for anybody,” Lloyd says. “Actors love this, and that’s why so many name actors have signed on for this project.”
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