Fictional Flashback: NBC Re-Creates the Disco Decade

“Hail to the Chief” reverberates through the room as a man resembling the late President Nixon flashes a V for victory at the top of the Regal Biltmore Hotel’s elaborately carved staircase; scads of red, white and blue balloons are clustered on the ceiling; and, tellingly, there seems to be more polyester in the room than in a John Waters movie.

Is it a political rally? A time warp? A theme party?

It’s a little of all, actually, as NBC was in the midst of shooting its miniseries, “The ‘70s,” which kicks off Sunday night. At around $13 million dollars, NBC hopes its airing during a sweeps week proves as propitious as its predecessor, “The ‘60s,” in February 1999, when it drew the network’s biggest Sunday audience since televising “Schindler’s List” three years ago.

The producers are making use of the historic Biltmore site to recreate a time and a place that, according to executive producer Denise Di Novi, might best be remembered for scandal (Watergate), mass suicide (Jonestown) and, well, disco and Dacron.

Di Novi, a petite, fit woman in Gucci loafers and a DKNY sweat jacket, exudes authority. She came of age in the ‘70s, before embarking on a film-producing career that includes such diverse motion pictures as “Message in a Bottle,” “Heathers,” “Little Women,” and a number of works produced in association with Tim Burton--”Edward Scissorhands,” “Ed Wood” and “Batman Returns.”

The miniseries is Di Novi’s first foray into television, and it was as simple as NBC asking her if she was interested. “That was my decade,” Di Novi recalls during a break in the shooting. “[One] of the themes that was important was the feminist movement. I feel I owe a great deal to the movement and [without it], I wouldn’t have the career I have, so this was something I wanted to depict.

“Watergate was my political initiation as an adult and formed my perceptions of politics,” Di Novi continues. “Vietnam took off the rose-colored glasses, but Watergate was the loss of innocence.”

When Di Novi agreed to the project last fall, she decided that covering an entire decade would work best through storytelling and characterization. Enter Mitch Brian and Kevin Willmott, who created a group of characters whose lives intertwine during those years, from a story by Jeffrey Fiskin.

Oh, those bell-bottoms, those towering afros, and those lapels fatter than a Yahoo! stock offering. But the ‘70s weren’t all about hair, clothes and Tony Manero strutting his stuff in “Saturday Night Fever.” As Woodstock and the Manson murders of 1969 faded into 1970, Nixon’s White House was still unclouded by scandal. But Vietnam was increasingly dividing the country, and by May, the nation had experienced the wrenching angst of Kent State, where four students were killed by National Guardsmen.

The airing of the miniseries next week coincides with the 30th anniversary of the Kent State shootings, with director Peter Werner taking great pains to re-create that tragic event, intercut with archival footage.

‘MTV Meets the History Channel’

On this production day, however, the mood is anything but somber. The year is 1972, and hordes of synthetically garbed extras cheer on cue to celebrate Nixon’s reelection, and the Biltmore doubles as Washington, D.C.’s Shoreham Hotel. Werner is no stranger to television or political stories, himself, having earned Emmy nominations for “LBJ: the Early Years,” as well as having won an Emmy for the miniseries “Mama Flora’s Family.”

“I had a great time in the ‘70s,” says the 53-year-old Werner, a practicing Buddhist. “I found my direction. I lived in communes, I sailed across the Atlantic on a schooner, and I went to American Film Institute. [Since then] I’ve done a lot of docudramas, but they’re so serious. I want to be entertained, and this is like MTV meets the History Channel.”

Much of the miniseries will be driven by music, as was “The ‘60s.” “We’re using some documentary footage, which brings back so much and, of course, re-creating other scenes. You put in music--Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills and Nash, disco, and it joins everything together,” says Werner. The director, who won an Academy Award in 1977 for his short film, “In the Region of Ice,” says his biggest challenge with “The ‘70s” was not having enough time to prepare, a common beef, certainly, with directors. Thus the quartet of disparate characters--portrayed by Brad Rowe, Vinessa Shaw, Amy Smart and Guy Torry. The story follows these college friends on a journey of self-discovery. Their stories are cast against the major flash points of the decade: Kent State as the catalytic beginning, followed by the women’s movement, Watergate, cult behavior and that good old disco beat.

Youthful Cast and Memories of the Era

The six-week shoot also turned Caravan books (adjacent to the Biltmore) into Sisterhood Bookstore, and the Unocal building became the Committee to Re-Elect the President offices, touchstone for what would bring down the house of Nixon.

When Werner resumes filming, Chet Huntley’s countenance oozes from video monitors, predicting a Nixon landslide, while a Biltmore/Shoreham fountain gurgles, and the omnipresent frosted lip-gloss factor could color the whole of Dodger Stadium.

Playing Byron, the Republican who goes to work for Nixon’s reelection committee, Rowe, at age 29, was born in 1970 and claims his first awareness of the outside world--and that decade--was that he loved Reagan. Looking very much like a young Brad Pitt, Rowe was featured on Us magazine’s 1999 Hot Guy List, and initially came to critical attention with his 1998 starring appearance in the gay-themed, Sundance Film Festival favorite “Billy’s Hollywood Screen Kiss.”

“It was my very first time in front of the camera--except for a few Chinese commercials,” Rowe recalls, “and I was scared. In retrospect, that was fine, though, [but] as far as looking like Brad Pitt--that was the first thing I heard out of Sundance, although I’ve never seen it.”

Rowe admits he is having a blast working on “The ‘70s” along with Shaw (she played the prostitute in Stanley Kubrick’s final film, “Eyes Wide Shut”), Smart (“Felicity”) and Torry (“American History X”).

Shaw, 23, plays Eileen, a gorgeous young woman who attends Barnard College (as did Shaw, for one year) and who eventually becomes a feminist. She is also Rowe’s love interest. Dressed in a purple jumper, knee-high boots and a wide-collared white blouse, the starlet looks very Mary Tyler Moore.

“We [costume designer Catherine Adair and Shaw] looked through the Sears catalog, then had this dress made for me. Sears,” Shaw offers earnestly, “was the Barneys of the ‘70s.”

Di Novi, a hands-on producer who is on the set every day, also went to a woman’s college, but being of that era, she says, she relates to the story on a more personal level than the actors.

“These characters are very real to me from my own life,” the producer notes. “This is fun to watch and it’s pure entertainment. It also reminds people that these things really happened.”

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* Part 1 of “The ‘70s” can been seen on NBC Sunday at 9 p.m. It concludes Monday. The network has rated it TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children younger than 14).