Word: failed
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Warner Bros. set in Los Angeles isn't a NORAD bunker. But the similarity is no accident. When executive producer George Clooney and crew re-create Sidney Lumet's 1964 nuclear chiller Fail-Safe, with CBS execs and director Stephen Frears (High Fidelity, Dangerous Liaisons) watching nervously from a trailer outside, they'll be facing another cold war-era specter: live television. Airing at 9 p.m. E.T. (delayed P.T.), this pet project of Clooney, a longtime lover of live TV whose father Nick was a newsman and variety-show host, will be CBS's first theatrical production in 39 years...
...natural for live TV--taut, unfolding largely in real time. But the original drew its charge from the threat of war with an empire that no longer exists (though its weaponry does). So why do it now? Because George Clooney wanted to. He made Fail Safe a priority when he pitched shows to CBS; the network in turn insisted that he act in it (he plays a bomber pilot). "I'm the 800-lb. gorilla that can make this work," he admits. He personally secured the A-list cast, Don Cheadle, Noah Wyle, Harvey Keitel and James Cromwell among them...
...course, you could make Fail Safe without doing it live, but you would lose the "What if they goof?" factor. As with game shows, TV is borrowing from its past here to address 21st century ratings worries. "Television is marked more and more by event programming," says CBS-TV president Leslie Moonves. (CBS recently announced plans for a live version of On Golden Pond.) Says consultant Ethel Winant, who was an associate producer of the 1950s' live-TV anthology Playhouse 90: "The actors are naked in front of millions of people...[and] the audience is part of that experience...
None of which is to say Fail Safe can't rivet viewers, using one advantage of TV: as Clooney says, "Films can't go live." It's certainly more gutsy than the live ER of 1997, whose conceit--a news crew filming in the hospital--excused gaffes as "nerves" on the part of characters. If Fail Safe succeeds, Clooney hopes to do a live A Patch of Blue starring Cheadle. If it bombs (groan), the world will survive. But for live TV, there may be fallout indeed...
...extremely committed," Han said of Schwartz. "What he says that he's going to do, he does without fail...