Word: abc
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...portraying a U.S. turned into a wasteland by repressive Soviet invaders, Amerika will undoubtedly provide support for conservatives who advocate constant vigilance against the Soviet threat. Indeed, the project was spurred by complaints about ABC's controversial antinuclear drama The Day After. In a 1983 newspaper column, Author and Critic Ben Stein (The View from Sunset Boulevard) proposed that to balance that film's allegedly liberal tilt the network ought to make a movie about what life in the U.S. would be like under a Soviet regime. Brandon Stoddard, then head of ABC movies and mini-series and now programming...
...show started drawing fire even before it went into production. In December 1985, Soviet officials attacked the movie as another example of Hollywood Red-bashing and hinted at possible repercussions for ABC News' Moscow bureau. The project was put on hold temporarily (only to make budget revisions, Stoddard now says), but shooting went ahead last March. Soviet officials have since expressed interest in buying the show for telecast in their country. "It would be useful if Soviet TV viewers were shown how public opinion in the U.S.A. is formed," says Leonid Kravchenko, deputy chairman of Gosteleradio, the Soviet agency...
Perhaps the loudest outcry has come from the United Nations, which has objected that the military troops in the movie are dubbed the United Nations Special Service Unit. A letter signed by, among others, three former Secretaries of State, Alexander Haig, Edmund Muskie and Dean Rusk, protested to ABC that the "portrayal of the U.N. peacekeeping forces as brutal oppressors . . . will undermine public support for one of the most valuable aspects of the U.N.'s work." The organization has hired Theodore Sorensen, John F. Kennedy's former speechwriter, to act as its attorney vis-a-vis ABC. Among his requests...
...second ads his company had planned to run on the mini-series, at a cost of more than $6 million. A company statement said the commercials, which have an upbeat "born in America" theme, would be "both inappropriate and of diminished effectiveness" in the context of the program. ABC is trying to sell the time elsewhere, but will force Chrysler to make up the difference for any lost ad revenue. Two other advertisers, General Foods Corp. and Northwestern Mutual ! Life Insurance Co., have said they will keep their ads in the show. But commercial time is not yet sold...
...ABC Program Chief Stoddard charges that the onslaught of protest against Amerika before the show is even finished is an attempt at "precensorship of ideas." The movie, he insists, is not an anti-Soviet tract but a rumination on what it means to be American: "I think it can make people ask some questions about their behavior as citizens. It might even make them think about the responsibility part of freedom." Wrye, who describes himself as a Kennedy Democrat, says he "wasn't remotely interested in doing something anti-Soviet" and charges that opponents of the movie have a double...