The Day After - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of The Day After or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to The Day After

[sandra]

The special effects company listed in the end credits is Praxis Filmworks. Praxis is the name given to the Klingon moon that explodes in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), which was also directed by Nicholas Meyer.

[edgar]

In the original script, Nurse Nancy Bauer (JoBeth Williams), who asked whether the living really did envy the dead, died on-camera. The scene was cut, and Bower died off-camera. One of the doctors said she died of meningitis. However, the sound was so garbled in the first viewing, that many viewers couldn't hear the cause of death at all.

[michele]

After watching this, President Ronald Reagan sent a pile of suggestions to Nicholas Meyer how it should be edited.

[charlie]

When production began, the nuclear attack scene was longer and supposed to feature extremely graphic, yet very scientifically accurate, shots of what happens to a human body during a nuclear blast. Examples included people being set on fire, flesh carbonizing, being burned to the bone, eyes melting, faceless heads, skin hanging, deaths from flying glass and debris, limbs torn off, being crushed, blown from buildings by the shockwave, and people in fallout shelters suffocating during the firestorm. Also cut, were images of radiation sickness, as well as graphic post-attack violence from survivors such as food riots, looting, and general lawlessness as authorities attempted to restore order.

[carl]

In an interview, producer-director Nicholas Meyer acknowledges that he had a political agenda for the movie: "My private, grandiose notion was that this movie would unseat Ronald Reagan when he ran for re-election," Meyer says.

[ray]

Some of the scenes were shot on-location in Kansas City, Missouri. During the opening credits, the Kansas City Stockyards, the Truman Sports Complex (with the Chiefs and Royals Stadiums), the Liberty Memorial Monument, the downtown area, and the Country Club Plaza and surrounding neighborhoods and parks can be seen. Scenes of Jason Robards, Jr. and his daughter talking near the Liberty Memorial, glancing over Crown Center, location shots at the Kansas City Board of Trade, and houses in the Brookside neighborhood can all be seen in the film prior to the attack. Hundreds of people can also be seen crowding into a fallout shelter in the basement of the old Fidelity National Bank in downtown Kansas City, just before the bombs hit. At the end of the film, Jason Robards, Jr. can be seen walking through the rubble of the old St. Joseph Hospital, which was being demolished at the time.

[elmer]

The mushroom clouds were created by injecting colored oil plumes into a tank of water (which accounts for the fact that the clouds are dark red, rather than a more realistic hue).

[bernice]

The premiere of this television movie was a major media event. No sponsors bought commercial time after the nuclear war broke out, so the last half was aired without commercials.

[nina]

Nicholas Meyer claims he suffered severe flu-like symptoms throughout the making of this film. When doctors could find no reason for his illness, they eventually determined that Meyer was actually suffering from severe clinical depression, which Meyer attributes to having to face the horrors of nuclear war in such depth.

[charlie]

Before the film even aired, controversy arose over who attacked first: the U.S.S.R. or the United States. Nicholas Meyer wanted the answer to remain ambiguous, to focus on the horrors of nuclear destruction. He wanted the evil to be nuclear weapons in general, not government.

[nicholas]

Two weeks before the movie aired, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood (1968) aired a week of episodes titled "Conflict" that dealt with war and nuclear bombs. Many believed it was a direct response to the movie, to help any children who may have seen it cope with the violence portrayed. The timing was pure coincidence; the episodes were written and produced at least a year before the movie aired.

[kenzi]

This was the next project for Nicholas Meyer and Bibi Besch after completing Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982).

[carl]

In the original telecast, the ending disclaimer had a paragraph that been omitted from all home video version of the film: "In it's [sic] presentation ABC has taken no position as to how such an event can be initiated or avoided."

[sara]

The movie was released theatrically in France in 1984.

[manuel]

The Soviet ambassador is named Anatoli Kuragin, the name of a character from Lev Tolstoy's "War and Peace".

[dustin]

When originally televised, the Presidential speech via radio was delivered by a voice actor who sounded much like Ronald Reagan. This speech was re-voiced by a different actor for the VHS/DVD releases and the version which airs on cable television. Conversely, a startling close-up of a screaming hospital patient was excised from the original ABC telecast, but restored for the home video and cable versions of the film.

[clayton]

A three hour long "work print" of "The Day After" surfaced on YouTube in 2019. This work print features many additional scenes that were cut out of the final version prior to broadcast, along with multiple scene extensions and alternate edits of sequences that were in the final version. Effectively, the additions further round out the stories of most of the characters, and (in one particular case) clarify the fate of a couple of main characters. This "work print" version is missing titles, has incomplete special effects shots, and alternate sound effects and dubbing.

[chris]

One cut scene depicted two groups of students at the University of Kansas fighting each other over remaining food stocks. The first group comprised of student athletes, while the second group comprised of science students led by Professor Huxley (John Lithgow).