photo by: Shawn Valverde/Special to the Journal-World

Jeff Daniels and Jack Wright attend a panel discussion of "Television Event" at Liberty Hall on Monday, Dec. 4, 2023.

Forty years after its original airing, “The Day After” is still stirring conversation in Lawrence.

Attendees filled the main theater at Liberty Hall in downtown Lawrence on Monday evening for a screening of “Television Event,” the critically acclaimed documentary that chronicles the filming and nationwide reaction to the 1983 made-for-TV movie “The Day After.” The movie depicts what nuclear war would look like in the U.S., and was the most watched made-for-TV movie ever, with 100 million people tuning in, or more than half the adults in the country at the time, according to information in the documentary.

“Television Event” Director Jeff Daniels told the crowd that he wanted to make a movie about how that era in network television and the stark depictions in “The Day After” combined to create a moment of reflection and discourse nationwide.

“I wanted to make a film that looked at how television at one point had a monopoly on our attention and was able to really capture a moment that was hard to understand — this threat of nuclear war,” Daniels said. “And turn it into something emotional so that we’re able to connect with it personally and talk about what that feels like to the person next to us, whether we agree with them or not.”

In “The Day After,” dozens of nuclear missiles hit the U.S., including Kansas City. The story and filming took place largely in Lawrence, and more than 2,000 residents participated. Daniels said he’d been looking forward to the Lawrence screening for that reason.

“This is a city with activism as its origin story,” Daniels said. “It has activism in its soul, so it’s no wonder that there were over 2,000 participants from Lawrence, Kansas, in ‘The Day After’ to build a message about what nuclear war would actually look like at a time when it seemed so real.”

After it aired in 1983, a large crowd gathered near the Campanile on the University of Kansas campus. Then-mayor David Longhurst, who participated in the event virtually, said he was asked to address the crowd. He compared how he felt at that moment to how the father of Jolene Dahlberg in the film is unable to answer her when she asks him if there is going to be a war.

“And I stood at the Campanile, at the top of the hill, and beneath me there were probably over 1,000 people that had watched the film and they were all holding candles,” Longhurst said. “And it was dead silent, and they handed me the microphone.”

“Television Event” include archival footage from both the filming and aftermath of “The Day After,” including the gathering on the hill and some of the remarks that Longhurst ended up making. In the end, his words seemed to reflect the somber mood of those gathered.

“We saw our community destroyed this evening,” Longhurst states in footage included in the documentary. “We saw all the nightmares come true, and the despair and hopelessness that followed.”

Longhurst was among the local residents who were part of the movie — both in front of and behind the camera — that participated in a Q&A following the screening of “Television Event.” Ellen Moore, who played Jolene, and Jack Wright, who was the local casting director, also participated, as did other members of the cast and crew of “The Day After” and “Television Event” director Daniels.

At one point, Moore spoke to what scene was the most difficult for her. She was only 11 at the time, and she said the scene that affected her the most was the one where her father told her they would have to leave the family dog, Rusty, outside amid the nuclear fallout. However, Moore said that the movie as a whole was very impactful for her, and she thinks her reaction and that of others from Lawrence was especially jarring.

“I think I had an experience that was unique to people from Lawrence,” Moore said. “…When you see the sites of disaster and things are blown up or whatever, for those of us who were living there at the time, those were our spaces, our places that we lived, our everyday lives.”

The documentary goes through the inception, shooting and editing of the film, as well as the reaction — locally in Lawrence, nationally and internationally — that the film garnered. Even before it aired, the film caused controversy, with both censors at ABC, the network that made the film, and the White House calling for certain scenes to be cut. The film depicts the lives of ordinary people before, leading up to, and after the outbreak of nuclear war, following survivors suffering radiation sickness and other ailments as they seek treatment in Lawrence.

Nick Meyer, the director of “The Day After,” told the crowd that nuclear war is so awful that no one wants to think about it, and instead they push it to the back of their mind. He said the film, in the television context at the time, was able to bring the topic to the forefront for millions of people, forcing people to talk about it.

“We have what’s called the rubber band effect, where you learn something that’s tremendously upsetting and it freaks you out and it totally shatters you, and then you have to brush your teeth or you have to pick up your kid or you have to go shopping, and bit by bit you’re able to dial back that havoc,” Meyer said. “….That said, what happened with ‘The Day After’ was unique in our sociocultural history.”

Daniels previously told the Journal-World that a deal has been struck for “Television Event” to be aired on PBS stations across the country next year. Daniels said an airing date hasn’t yet been set, but is expected to be in the middle of 2024.

photo by: Shawn Valverde/Special to the Journal-World

“Television Event” Director Jeff Daniels attends a panel at Liberty Hall on Monday, Dec. 4, 2023.

photo by: Shawn Valverde/Special to the Journal-World

View from the balcony of Liberty Hall at screening of “Television Event” on Monday, Dec. 4, 2023.

photo by: Shawn Valverde/Special to the Journal-World

A screening of “Television Event,” a documentary about the 1983 made-for-TV movie “The Day After,” was held on Monday, Dec. 4, 2023, at Liberty Hall, 644 Massachusetts St.

photo by: Shawn Valverde/Special to the Journal-World

Arthur Kanegis and Melanie Bennet attend the screening of “Television Event” at Liberty Hall on Monday, Dec. 4, 2023.