Countdown to Chaos

Despite the premise of NBC’s Sunday suspense thriller, “Y2K,” the creators and star don’t seem too worried that the world is going to erupt into chaos and confusion at the stroke of midnight on Dec. 31, 1999.

Still, offers executive producer David Israel, “I’m going to make sure I have plenty of dog food.”

“We’ve got a bunker in Montana, do you want to come?” screenwriter Jonathan Fernandez says with a laugh. “I’m actually planning to go to San Francisco.”

“I’m going to be in Canada,” adds his writing partner, Thomas Hines. “If people are going to riot, Canadians will riot nicely.”

Star Ken Olin acknowledges he didn’t know about the potential worldwide computer problems until he read the script. Even after doing the movie, Olin doubts he and his wife, actress Patricia Wettig, and their two children will do much special preparation for YK2. “We never fly on New Year’s Eve and we certainly aren’t this year,” he says.

Israel and his partner, Pat Caddell, came up with the idea of doing a Y2K disaster movie the summer of 1998. “We were sitting at my kitchen table and concocted this thing and went and pitched it,” says Israel. “Frankly, I was astonished that nobody else pitched it. When we were able to clear the title ‘Y2K,’ I was flabbergasted. I was surprised we are the only fictional thing that got made.”

In “Y2K,” Olin plays Nick Cromwell, a complex-systems failures expert who is working on a government project to ensure the country is Y2K compliant. As the minutes count down to midnight, Cromwell persuades his boss (Joe Morton) to ground all planes. As the new millennium arrives, the Eastern seaboard suffers a major power outage. But that is just the tip of the iceberg, and Cromwell finds himself relying on old-fashioned methods to save the world from catastrophe.

“It’s so clearly intended as entertainment,” says Olin of the film that also stars Lauren Tom and Kate Vernon. “I don’t think it’s really intended as a cautionary tale. I think people take it for what it is--fiction. I don’t even know how they could take it seriously.”

Israel (“Pandora’s Clock”) believes that if viewers take the film too seriously, “they deserve whatever anxiety they cause themselves.”

Still, Israel admits Y2K concerns are very legitimate. “That doesn’t mean the things in the movie might happen, but they are possible and plausible. But it isn’t a documentary.”

When Hines and Fernandez came on board, Israel only gave them the title to work as a guide.

“We came up with the story,” says Fernandez.

“We looked at the whole range of scenarios,” adds Hines. “There are a lot of scenarios--from, frankly, the crazy to the more likely. We tried to take what were the most reasonable, middle-of-the-road bad case scenarios. The power grid is a major worry and a lot of testing has gone into it. Nuclear power plants are a major worry because they are [made from] ‘60s technology. So we tried to take the most realistic problem areas and then took the worst-case scenario.”

Israel says that “Y2K” had to have a doomsday theme because it would have been a bore to do a film about inconveniences. “But what you can make a movie about is the thing that scares people, that hits your emotional core,” he explains.

“We wanted to make a movie about basically that the ball drops, and what if some of these things happen. Ken Olin, who is an actor who conveys both real intelligence and a certain kind of physical intelligence, was the right kind of guy to play this character.”

Olin got involved in the project because it seemed like fun. “I had never done an action-adventure,” he says. “Physically, it is very demanding to do this kind of movie. It is such a different kind of job than acting in stories that are more based on human interaction in longer scenes that deal with intimacy and psychology. This is all based on very short segments of behavior and action. Nothing is sustained over a long period of time.”

Olin believes audiences will share in the fun of watching: “It’s so rare to have a community, or a country, or the world that is going to share an event.”

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“Y2K” airs Sunday at 9 p.m. on NBC. The network has rated it TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children younger than 14).