Word: minis
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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This jarring mix of Norman Rockwell and Red Nightmare is one of the more alarming scenes in ABC's upcoming mini-series Amerika. Three years and nearly $40 million in the making, the 14 1/4-hr. epic, which will run for seven installments starting Sunday, Feb. 15, imagines what the U.S. might be like under the domination of the Soviet Union. The fictional takeover has been bloodless (just how it took place is purposely kept hazy), but the consequences are drastic. A puppet President sits in the White House while Soviet officials pull the strings and plot to dismantle the Republic...
...storm over Amerika has all but demolished any chance that the mini- series, when it finally reaches the screen, will be judged on its own merits. Which is too bad, because the segments that have been completed (six hours so far) reveal a far more subtle, challenging and skillfully woven drama than the advance brouhaha would suggest. Its political implications aside, Amerika is the sort of project that network TV seldom tries and even more seldom achieves: a thought-provoking epic...
...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 chief, hired Wrye to develop the idea. Envisioned as a three- hour TV movie, the project grew into a 1,350-page script, which was eventually pruned to a more manageable 570 pages...
...Soviets in black hats and Americans in white hats," says Jonathan Halperin, program director of the Committee for National Security, a liberal institute chaired by former Arms Negotiator Paul Warnke. "It reinforces stereotypes and hinders public awareness." Yet some right-wing groups are unhappy too, claiming that the mini-series is too soft on the Soviets. Says Reed Irvine, head of Accuracy in Media: "There is a total lack of realism about what a Soviet occupation is really like, no evidence of a reign of terror...
Following the McDonald's formula, Ackerly eventually distilled her knowledge of "team cleaning" into a 300-page manual of dos and don'ts. The book serves as the basis for training new Mini Maid personnel. Among its teachings: pick up statuary in the middle, rather than at the top and bottom, and clean animal-skin rugs with a whisk broom rather than a vacuum cleaner. Sums up Ackerly: "The homeowner does not have to feed us, pick us up, give directions. We don't give a song and dance about our car breaking down as a reason for not showing...