Author: Greg Mitchell

Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s Substack Between Rock and a Hard Place.

This week we celebrate the 60th birthday of “Dr. Strangelove,” which debuted on January 29, 1964.  The first preview screening had been set for Nov. 22, 1963, but…. well, you know.  The premiere was then pushed back a bit.   Fortunately, Kubrick’s president, the balding Milton Muffley (one of three roles for Peter Sellers), was more Ike than JFK.

As a callow youth, I saw “Strangelove” in the theater and it instantly became my all-time favorite movie, and retained that position for many years. I would also say that it probably had the most influence on my career, since I went on to serve as editor of Nuclear Times, spent a month in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, wrote about The Bomb for dozens of leading publications and then in three books, and most recently wrote and directed a PBS film titled “Atomic Cover-up.” So that’s…a lot.

Continue reading “Happy Birthday, Dr. Strangelove”

Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s newsletter Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood.

The Atomic Bowl, January 1, 1946

The famed biologist Jacob Bronowski revealed in 1964 that his classic study Science and Human Values was born at the moment he arrived in Nagasaki in November 1945, three months after the atomic bombing (which killed at least 75,000 civilians) with a British military mission sent to study the effects of the new weapon.

Continue reading “The Most Bizarre Football Bowl Game Ever – in the Ruins of Nagasaki”

Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s newsletter Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood.

Decades before I started work on my award-winning documentary “Atomic Cover-up” in 2020, I had heard of the alleged episode: Japanese survivors of the second U.S. atomic bomb gathering in the ruins of the Urakami Cathedral—the largest in the Far East—in Nagasaki at Christmas to celebrate Christmas with songs such as “Silent Night.” I never expected to find a record of it, but ultimately, I did secure it and used it for the haunting opening of my film.

Continue reading “‘Silent Night’ in Nagasaki: Christmas 1945”

Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s newsletter Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood.

News emerged yesterday, via the Hollywood Reporter, that a feature-length doc based on a book by my late friend Daniel Ellsberg is making progress, now with help from actress Kristin Stewart. The film, titled How to Stop a Nuclear War and based on Dan’s book Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner (see my take below), was announced one year ago but still seeking backers via a new “sizzle reel.” Emma Thompson will narrate and Paul Jay directs.

Stewart says in the new promo: “We’ve grown so accustomed to the looming threat of nuclear annihilation, that it barely registers in our daily lives. But when some new crisis or close call startles out of our slumber for just a brief moment, we truly grasp the insanity of living on a hair trigger to what could be a real-life Armageddon.” Stewart, you might say, has gone from “Twilight” to “Doomsday.”

Continue reading “Kristin Stewart Promotes New Film Based on Daniel Ellsberg’s Doomsday Machine“

Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s newsletter Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood.

There’s an important, if scary, opinion piece today at The Washington Post by Jon Wolfsthal, director of global risk at the Federation of American Scientists and former National Security Council senior director under President Barack Obama. He cites the (still) current remnant of Cold War tensions that seemingly allows any U.S. president to start a nuclear war without what you might call checks and balances.

Wolfstahl recalls the dangerous final days of the Nixon and Trump presidency when others did intervene to try to block any nuclear launches ordered from the White House but he insists these roadblocks were not really allowed under present policy. Especially with Trump having a real chance to return to power in January 2025, he calls on President Biden to change policy now. Of course, warning about our “first-use” policy has driven my own writing of three books and hundreds of articles and directing a current PBS movie…

Continue reading “Scary: US Presidents Still Have Unchecked Authority To Launch Nuclear First-Strike”

Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s newsletter Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood.

Despite its global popularity last summer and early fall, including in China and other Asian markets, it was no shock to find that a wide release in Japan was kept on hold. Might have happened anyway, but this was guaranteed after Japanese protested some of the early “Barbenheimer” promotion there, which I wrote about here. Sample of an offending poster:

Some Japanese Twitter users responded with photos of the 1945 bombing victims.

Yesterday we finally got word of a release in Japan, with no fixed date but likely in spring, for Oscar season, which even there gets wide attention. The distributor has the rather too on-the-nose name, Bitters End.

Continue reading “Oppenheimer Finally Gets Release Date in Japan”