The film writers Robert Rubsam and Corey Atad join the show for a discussion of two apocalyptic nuclear thrillers, Sidney Lumet’s Fail-Safe (1964) and Kathryn Bigelow’s brand new Netflix production A House of Dynamite.
Both Dr. Strangelove and Fail-Safe were released by Columbia Pictures within months of each other in 1964 (as the result of a lawsuit stemming from the respective novels the films were based on). The two films depict an accidental nuclear crisis from the perspective of command-and-control rooms helpless to prevent the impending bombing but Lumet’s version is a serious critique of Game Theory from a humanist perspective, with the participation of creatives who had been caught up in the Hollywood Blacklist during the Cold War.
Bigelow’s modern version of such a tale of nuclear crisis, by contrast, has a lot less to say about the subject. We compare its structural shortcomings to Lumet’s stark masterpiece, a film more plugged in to its zeitgeist than this new Netflix production is.
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Follow Corey Atad on Twitter and Bluesky and visit coreyatad.com
Follow Robert Rubsam on Twitter and Bluesky and visit robertrubsam.com
Tony Schwartz’s “Daisy” commercial for LBJ’s 1964 Presidential election campaign
Trailer for Fail-Safe (Sidney Lumet, 1964)
Promo for the live tv broadcast on CBS of Fail-Safe (Stephen Frears, 2000)
Trailer for Henry Fonda for President (Alexander Horwath, 2024)
Trailer for A House of Dynamite (Kathryn Bigelow, 2025)