`The '60S' Come Alive Again In NBC Series

It was a decade packed with such social upheaval and landmark events, it could be a miniseries.

Now it is.

The hippie movement, the Vietnam War and many other elements of modern American history are recalled in "The '60s," a compelling new NBC saga airing Sunday and Monday at 9 p.m. on KING-TV. Real aspects of 1960s life are mirrored through the experiences of two fictional families, with nostalgia guaranteed for many viewers sure to remember how the same situations affected them.

Among the pivotal characters:

Katie Herlihy (played by Julia Stiles), unwed and pregnant when she leaves Chicago for San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district with her child's father, rock musician Neal (Donovan Leitch).

Katie's brother Brian (Jerry O'Connell), who joins the Marines and goes to Vietnam after he doesn't receive the Notre Dame scholarship his father (Bill Smitrovich) wanted for him.

Brian and Katie's sibling Michael (Josh Hamilton), a peace-rally participant who later works on the campaigns of politicians Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy.

Sarah Weinstock (Jordana Brewster), an activist who attracts Michael, though her heart belongs to fellow revolution-seeker Kenny (Jeremy Sisto).

Emmet Taylor (Leonard Roberts), a minister's son who becomes a Black Panther and clashes with Chicago police during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

Also featuring David Alan Grier, Charles Dutton and Carnie Wilson, "The '60s" is underscored by music of the period. Joined by Joan Osborne, Bob Dylan recorded a new version of his classic "Chimes of Freedom" for the soundtrack. Other artists heard include Jefferson Airplane, Cream, the Byrds, the Beach Boys, Marvin Gaye, Eric Burdon & the Animals, Traffic, James Brown, the Temptations and the Band.

"The '60s" is the first television project by executive producer Lynda Obst, who has made such movies as "Sleepless in Seattle," "Contact" and "The Siege." A child of the 1960s herself, she says, "The network came to me for this. My brother is a television agent, and NBC asked him, `Do you think she would do this?' He said, `That, she would do."' Obst got permission from 20th Century Fox, where her company is based, to work with NBC Studios.

Since the network pitched "The '60s" as a concept, Obst had to determine its exact direction. "Having worked previously in news," she says, "my inclination was to do it as a documentary. (NBC miniseries chief) Lindy DeKoven wanted to do it as a big melodrama, so we had a brainstorming session and tried to imagine what the merging of those two forms would be like. To her credit, she said, `Mix it all up and have fun. Be ambitious with the medium.' "

Ultimately, Obst aimed to "give historical validity to this, and to also present a slice of the human story. We can't tell all the stories of the 1960s, because so many people have one. It's an amazing combination of the profoundly personal and the profoundly public, so we came up with a couple of families that would be symbolic. The children would be like fingers that spread out through the culture, getting involved in life-changing events as they were taking place."

As the writer of "The Rolling Stone History of the Sixties," Obst was immersed in that era before she entered the movie business. "We used that book for a notion of the kinds of big events we wanted our characters to travel to," she adds. "From there, we just sort of vamped. It was like a huge improvisation, trying to figure out how you'd get someone to the Newport Folk Festival, someone else to Watts and, ultimately, all of them to Woodstock."

While the drama's four-hour length proved comfortable for her, Obst adds, "This could have easily been six hours, I think, with more events. My original budget was $7 million more than NBC has ever paid for a miniseries. Part of movie making is making lemonade from lemons, so when I had to condense this, some characters were lost. None of the principal events were."

Obst's own 1960s background led her to be "psychotic" about re-creating New York's Greenwich Village on the back lot of Hollywood's Paramount Studios. "Michael and Sarah go looking for Bob Dylan in various clubs, which I did when I was in high school. Bohemia was at its peak, and that informed my consciousness more than any other moment in American pop culture. We shot that sequence on the last night, and it was very emotional for me. I even had authentic signs in the windows that the cameras would never pick up."

Obst is satisfied that she's fulfilled her mission. "We know we can't be all things to all people," she concludes. "We felt if we weren't corny and just tried to get the detail right, and tried to recapture what that time felt like, the story would tell itself. Everyone could bring their own personal baggage to it."