Some interesting notes on the Actors and Actresses .
But ''Amerika'' asks us to believe that our country was taken over by the Soviets in 1986 in a bloodless coup - the few revealed details are bewildering - primarily because the bulk of the American population had lost its moral fiber, its will to fight for freedom. Rubbish. This is the kind of Armageddon vision nurtured by those who find men in long hair or women in short skirts threatening. Also living in Milford is (2.1)>>Peter Bradford (Robert Urich), Devin's boyhood friend from more humble social circumstances. Practical Peter collaborates with the new authorities in an effort to make the best of things. Meanwhile, his wife Amanda (Cindy Pickett) becomes increasingly more dubious about her husband's strategy and begins to think fondly once again about her first love, (2.2)>>Devin Milford. Weaving in and out of these lives periodically is the elegant, sophisticated (3)>>Russian Col. Andrei Denisov (Sam Neill), who, when not ruminating endlessly on the admirable ramifications of the American dream, is engaging in a torrid love affair with the young actress Kimberly (Mariel Hemingway), who is committed to what has become underground theater. Eugene O'Neill? Tennessee
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| (Sam Neill) Damian Omen III portrait as the Anti- Christ influenced his Russian Col. Denisov vary well in Amerika . |
Trump and Russia .
Crossing from Fiction to reality .
After the collapse of the Soviet Union a quarter-century ago, the jokes petered out for a while after authorities lost their grip on power. Honestly I don't think many Americans believe as they do about a Russian take over of our political system . Meanwhile, as "normal” Americans, they manage to cast a rather bright spotlight on the rather absurdist new “normal” that is on display for a posse of Trump Administration appointees and insiders, so many of which just coincidentally have some Russian connection or other. The post offers
The "end" of Amerika . Fast forward "fiction".
Rebellious Devin Milford (Kristofferson) is the ex-presidential candidate who doesn't want 1990s America to be Balkanized; Peter Bradford (Robert Urich) is a regional puppet-governor who wants everybody to remain orderly and cooperate with the Soviets. Devin decides to tap into the Natnet TV communications satellite and deliver a rousing keep-America-united message to the whole nation.To get to the communications center, Devin's troops take on the hated occupation forces at the barracks outside their Nebraska town. Devin fights his way to the communications center. The madman barracks commander gets drilled just in the nick of time by his former lover, Althea (Christine Lahti). But, just as Devin is ready to deliver his speech, Peter shows up with his troops. When Devin won't be put off, Peter's right-hand general shoots him dead. Cut to Devin's well-attended funeral. Cut to the conveniently unguarded barracks, where Devin's son Billy is talking to America via Natnet: "My father died because he believed that what he stood for was more important than life. . . . He lived for himself. He lived for his ideals, for the America he loved. He lived for me--and for you."
Ends the book: "Devin Milford . . . left a legacy that his son and his son's children would inherit. A legacy of American spirit that was priceless."
NOTES AND COMMENTS:
(1.1)>>Amerika. – suggesting a Russified name for the United States –Described in promotional materials as "the most ambitious American miniseries ever created," Amerika aired for 14½ hours (including commercials) over seven nights (beginning February 8, 1987), and reportedly cost US$40 million to produce. The program was filmed in Toronto, London, and Hamilton, Ontario,[1] as well as various locations in Nebraska – most notably the small town of Tecumseh and Milford, the setting for most of the action of the series. Donald Wrye was the executive producer, director, and sole writer of Amerika, while composer Basil Poledouris was hired to score the miniseries, ultimately recording (with the Hollywood Symphony Orchestra) eight hours of music – the equivalent of four feature films.(1)>>ABC aired a seven-night. As the brainchild of writer-director-producer Donald Wrye, the 14 1/2 hour ABC movie event Amerika marked one of the most expensive and controversial miniseries in the history of prime time television when it bowed over the course of seven nights in February of 1987. Regarded as something of a conservative counterpoint to Nicholas Meyer's The Day After (which screened on ABC, four years prior and allegedly demonstrated leftwing bias - prompting very outspoken criticisms from Republican pundit Ben Stein), this $40 million production imagines a dystopian future set in the late 1990s. When the drama opens in May of 1997, the Russians have effectively won the Cold War by wresting control over the United States, with the backing of a U.N. Peacekeeping Force. Although the initial takeover was not annihilative or even apparently violent, the consequences are overwhelming; a puppet leader holds court in the Oval Office, the American economy has fallen to pieces with Midwesterners lining up for vegetables, and gulag prisons are scattered across the land; meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of refugees have hit the countryside and wander aimlessly. The majority of the action unfurls in a rural Nebraska community, where onetime antiwar protester and presidential candidate Devin Milford (Kris Kristofferson) has just been released from a gulag, and now discovers his family farm being whittled away by the Russians. Meanwhile, his childhood friend Peter Bradford has somehow landed a position in the government hierarchy and finds himself being drawn in more deeply. Across the land, Russian stormtroopers engage in acts of violent intimidation, such as burning farmhouses and brainwashing abductees, while the Russian occupiers systematically maneuver on the political front to bring the once-powerful republic tumbling down. The supporting cast includes Christine Lahti, Wendy Hughes, Sam Neill, Armin Mueller-Stahl and many others; the title, of course, was intended to reflect "America" as modified to a slightly more Russian spelling. (2)>>''The Day After,''. Another "crazy" film of the cold war times . ABC’s TV movie The Day After runs a mere two hours—edited, clumsily at times, down from a sprawling four. But as a cultural touchstone, whose reputation for leaving an entire generation traumatized and jaded, it’s endured far longer. President Ronald Reagan watched the film several days before its screening, on November 5, 1983. He wrote in his diary that the film was "very effective and left me greatly depressed," and that it changed his mind on the prevailing policy on a "nuclear war". The film was also screened for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A government advisor who attended the screening, a friend of Meyer's, told him "If you wanted to draw blood, you did it. Those guys sat there like they were turned to stone." Four years later, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was signed and in Reagan's memoirs he drew a direct line from the film to the signing. Reagan supposedly later sent Meyer a telegram after the summit, saying, "Don't think your movie didn't have any part of this, because it did." However, in a 2010 interview, Meyer said that this telegram was a myth, and that the sentiment stemmed from a friend's letter to Meyer; he suggested the story had origins in editing notes received from the White House during the production, which "...may have been a joke, but it wouldn't surprise me, him being an old Hollywood guy."The film also had impact outside the U.S. In 1987, during the era of Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika reforms, the film was shown on Soviet television. Four years earlier, Georgia Rep. Elliott Levitas and 91 co-sponsors introduced a resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives "[expressing] the sense of the Congress that the American Broadcasting Company, the Department of State, and the U.S. Information Agency should work to have the television movie The Day After aired to the Soviet public. (2.1)>>Peter Bradford (Robert Urich). Peter Bradford (Robert Urich) is Milford`s former roommate, a politician caught up in the occupation, a pragmatist or a collaborator, depending on your perspective. His wife, Amanda (Cindy Pickett), is Devin Milford`s former lover, a woman who grows to hate the occupation and her husband`s role in it. Set down in this community is Col. Andrei Denisov (Sam Neill), a soldier destined to take control of the five-state ``Heartland`` region but a man torn by his own fascination with and love for the America he knew before the occupation. (2.2)>>Devin Milford. Devin Milford, meanwhile, has had enough of the communists and escapes his exile, traveling the revived underground railroad to Chicago, where he attempts to kidnap his two children, Billy and Caleb. Billy knows how his mother got where she is and wants to know more about his father, whom he hasn`t seen in six years. Caleb, meanwhile, turns Devin into the police. When Devin is arrested, Billy returns to his grandfather and uncle in Milford County.Peter Bradford accepts Denisov`s invitation to share a national political office with Devin`s ex-wife. As a result, Amanda Bradford leaves him. (``You just neglected to tell me that you and the Russians were starting another country?`` she asks.) Devin escapes his captors and disappears into the underground and the stage is set for the final confrontation, a full-scale national revolution to regain control of the country.Will Devin Milford succeed in leading the revolution, or will he be stopped by the communists and his old pal Peter Bradford? Is there a happy ending? Or will ``Amerika`` become a weekly series, much like NBC`s space alien/Nazi allegory, ``V`` was? (Two characters, Devin Milford`s sons, could carry on the fight each week, if it does become a series.) Do the Russians win? Or is the audience, after more than 14 hours, left holding the bag? ABC`s 82-minute condensation doesn`t say. (3)>>Russian Col. Andrei Denisov (Sam Neill). Seeing Sam Neill in this film as Andrei Denisov was the complex one, the enemy and not the enemy, the KGB colonel who harbored a love for America that the Americans themselves had lost. Neill is known for his Damian Omen III portrait as the Anti- Christ . I can see that he never quit the same smirk on his face as in the Omen . Neill's cultural infamy as a character is better played by his Col . Denisov . Who is struggling a thin line with his Soviet bosses , though he tells Peter Bradford -Urich that he can best "preserve" what was left of America since the Soviet occupiers desire to leave , make a America into separate nations . Neill's character is the only redeeming part of the Soviet occupiers .
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