40 Years Ago: Special Bulletin

Many folks of my generation still vividly recall the first prime-time broadcast of the grim TV movie, The Day After (1983). That landmark tele-film, directed by Nicholas Meyer, gazed at life in the American heartland immediately following a devastating nuclear exchange. 

So powerful in imagery and so bleak in narrative, The Day After actually altered the course of real-life international politics. After watching the TV-movie, President Reagan re-committed himself to peace with the Soviet Union, a strong shift away from the "we start bombing in five minutes"/"Evil Empire"-rhetoric of his young administration.

Although not as widely remembered as The Day After, another TV-movie of 1983 also dealt powerfully with the issue of nuclear annihilation.

On March 20, 1983, NBC aired a startling program from director Edward Zwick titled Special Bulletin that -- despite a disclaimer -- presented itself as an authentic news broadcast. In other words, Special Bulletin was the TV equivalent of Orson Welles' notorious 1938 War of the Worlds radio presentation.

Special Bulletin commences innocuously with an advertisement for the (fictional) RBS Network, replete with its catch-phrase, "we're moving up!" In the middle of the advertisement for game shows and soap operas, the screen goes to static and the title "Special Bulletin" pops up. Suddenly, we're in a bustling network news room following a breaking story in Charleston, South Carolina.

Specifically, a small tug boat has pulled into the Port of Charleston and is carrying aboard her a group of American terrorists.

After a shoot-out with dock security, a reporter and his cameraman are captured by the terrorists and taken hostages aboard the ship, the Liberty May. The terrorists promptly request a direct feed to RBS, so they can make their demands known to the world at large.

After very little discussion, RBS agrees to the terrorists' terms and soon the leader of the group, Bruce Limon (The Thing's David Clennon) speaks.  

According to his wishes, the U.S. will turn over 968 warhead detonators in its nuclear arsenal, or the terrorists will explode a home-made nuclear bomb in Charleston, effectively destroying the city and all of its people.  

Limon, we soon learn from the news reporters,  is a former Pentagon official who is upset at the hard-right shift in American policy to the belief that nuclear war is winnable.

Along with a brilliant physicist, Dr. McKeeson (David Rasche), Limon believes that nuclear blackmail is the only option left to save the planet from itself. He plans to illustrate "what we all have to fear," should his attempt at unilateral disarmament be rejected.

Without even the smallest hint of artifice, Special Bulletin structures itself as a real news program of the epoch, right down to communication glitches, infrequent bursts of static, shaky-images and the occasional dopey remark from a reporter or anchor-person.  

As RBS news anchors John Woodley (Ed Flanders) and Susan Miles (Kathryn Walker) monitor the crisis, as nuclear terrorism becomes "stark reality," we are asked to follow the story down blind alleys, countenance talking-head blowhard pundits, and detect truth in a multitude of conflicting images, all rendered on (appropriately) cheap-looking video.

The presentation of the story is pitch-perfect, in large part due to excellent supporting performances by the likes of Christopher Allport, Lane Smith and a very young Michael Madsen. Nobody show-boats and no one has a really substantive role, either. These are just "reporters on the street" and interviewees, reacting to events as they unfold. A perfect ensemble piece.

Occasionally the news anchors in Special Bulletin cut back to the live feed to watch events spiral out of control aboard Limon's ship, but they also consult experts on nuclear technology, and check in with reporters at the F.B.I Headquarters, the Pentagon, and on Capitol Hill. It's an effective, whip-smart presentation in a mock-documentary-style, and one that reportedly had quite a few Americans (especially in the South) wondering if the film could possibly be the real thing. I remember that at school the day after Special Bulletin first aired, all of my friends were talking about it and also the film's absolutely take-no-prisoners approach to storytelling.

As Special Bulletin continues into the story's second day and it is confirmed that McKeeson and Limon indeed have an operational nuclear bomb, an evacuation of Charleston commences. A countdown clock ticks down the minutes till 6:00 pm, the time when the terrorists have threatened to detonate their weapon. Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, politicians dither about "negotiating with terrorists" and argue about whether an accommodation can or should be reached.

The last fifteen minutes of the film involve a government ruse to appease the terrorists, and a bloody assault by U.S. soldiers on the Liberty May. The terrorists are put down effectively, but the bomb still ticks down towards destruction. Then, terror follows short-lived relief. In the last few moments of the film, something truly unthinkable occurs, and in a weird, unsettling way, Limon's point about the hazards of nuclear weapons is made.

We see exactly what we have to fear in the event of a nuclear exchange.

Today, it's almost impossible to watch Special Bulletin without thinking of the harrowing events we've seen on the nightly news since 2001 and the 9/11 attacks. For instance, the evacuation of Charleston goes poorly, and one local reporter explains in detail about how the city's plans were not detailed enough, and did not take into account traffic congestion and other problems. This seems very much reminiscent of what our country witnessed during and after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in the mid-2000s.

But in general, what Special Bulletin gets so dead-on accurate is the horrifying sense of chaotic life spontaneously unfolding before our eyes, out-of-control, on the TV as our journalists and "experts" try to play catch-up in a game of TV ping-pong. I suppose the feeling here is roughly analogous to what seem people call the"fog of war:" False reports come to light, and even though we're watching events unfold live, we hesitate to believe our eyes that such a thing can happen here, in the United States.

I still remember listening to radio reports on 9/11 that the National Mall was on fire, and that Air Force One was imperiled. Neither of those things were actually true, but in the heat of the moment, reporters (and listeners and viewers) believed the reports.  Facts only became plain much, much later.

Thematically, Special Bulletin boasts two primary themes.

The first involves the media itself. How complicit is the media, the film asks, in creating and extending situations like the one depicted here?  In the film, RBS gives over a live feed to the terrorists, an act which gives their demands a national audience, and which spurs panic in the citizenry.  There's something to be said for the argument that had Limon and McKeeson not been given access to television, their plan would have failed rather dramatically. Or at the very least, the situation would have developed far more slowly, and allowed for a more reasoned response by the government. The movie explicitly raises a question about the role of the press: is it a witness to this story, or part of the story, or both?

More than that even, the film looks at the way TV networks package and "sell" crises for higher ratings. Here, a colorful logo -- wrapped in stars and stripes -- pops up that reads "Flashpoint: America Under Siege." The logo even comes with its own dramatic theme song. Although the news people are undeniably presented as heroic and straightforward in the film itself, there's also an undercurrent here; the uncomfortable feeling that RBS is riding this crisis all the way to the bank, with "exclusive" control of the live feed and a direct line to the action. At one point, McKeeson points this out to John Woodley, asking why RBS hasn't shared the feed with the other networks.

The end of Special Bulletin delivers a one-two punch that is hard to shake. After the nuclear bomb detonates and Charleston is no more, there is a period of mourning -- 3 days to be exact -- on RBS before the media begins to seek news stories elsewhere. 

This is, perhaps, the tele-film's sharpest and most incendiary insight.  

There's always more grist needed for the mill, and that fact is even more true today, in the age of cable television and the 24-hour news cycle than it was in the 1980s. We move willy-nilly from crisis to crisis without taking a breath because we have to be worried about something -- anything -- all the time.  

Don't touch that dial!  America Under Siege, indeed.

The second thematic concern of Special Bulletin involves, pretty clearly, the colossal danger of nuclear weapons.  

The "terrorists" in the film are actually concerned citizens who nonetheless cross the line and can't see how they have let their ideology blind them.  hey are hypocrites, threatening to destroy innocent people with nukes because the government can't see how dangerous nukes are to innocent people.  

Long story short, you can't preach peace by threatening force.  

And the government is culpable in all of this too. Attempting to look strong and resolute, the President and his people first attempt to dismiss the terrorists as hoaxers, and then seek to trick and manipulate them, finally overtaking them by force. The government experts never acknowledge or seem to believe Dr. McKeeson's all-too-sincere testimony that he has protected the bomb with an "anti-tamper" device. The government, essentially, plays a high-stakes game with the city of Charleston...and loses the gamble.

The message encoded in Special Bulletin is that nukes as deterrents or nukes as weapons are much too dangerous to trifle with, for ideologues in any party.  Why?  Purely and simply because the destruction caused by nuclear weapons is immense, beyond our worst imagining.

In Special Bulletin, Charleston is destroyed -- rendered a desert -- and a whole swath of South Carolina will remain uninhabitable for years to come following the detonation. And that's just the result of one nuke.  Imagine America's arsenal of 968 warheads in action, and the kind of devastation it could render.  This is destruction on a Biblical scale, and we would be fools to forget that fact. The final scenes of the film, set in a burning Charleston, with reports of "people burned beyond recognition" are the stuff or real nightmares.

One part a critique of the news business as show business, and one part a blunt-faced look at the terrifying power of nuclear weapons, Special Bulletin remains a blazing, unforgettable viewing experience. As far as mock-documentary films go, it's deftly-presented, and will leave you pondering, among other things, our strange, self-destructive nature.    

Not only are we fully capable of destroying ourselves, it seems. We actually want front row seats to the show.