In 1985, a Beverly Hills production company filmed the TV movie "Under Siege" in Pulaski and Saline counties. Directed by Roger Young, the 2 hour, 16 minute movie aired on NBC in 1986 leavened by sufficient ads to make it last three hours.
In this movie, terrorists take over the nation's Capitol. Stars include Peter Strauss, Mason Adams, Lew Ayres, Hal Holbrook ... E.G. Marshall ... Victoria Tennant ... and a bunch of Arkansans, including Bob Ginnaven, Steve Stephens, Bill Russell, Ron Woodson ... (see arkansasonline.com/627cast).
Camera crews set up all over the place, even inside the Arkansas Gazette newsroom, where George Grizzard played an editor. A bus chase was shot along West Markham Street between the Excelsior and Capital hotels. State Police headquarters became FBI headquarters.
Most memorably, the state Capitol portrayed the U.S. Capitol.
A crew strung a zip line between the National Old Line building and the dome and zipped a prop missile over to the dome. That wire broke twice, but the shot eventually worked. About 6 p.m. Oct. 17, flares in the prop ignited 20 gallons of gas, creating a remarkable fireball on the dome.
Producer Karen Danaher-Dorr had promised then-Secretary of State Bill McCuen that the explosion would leave a teeny smudge. But the wind shifted. The smudge was visible for miles.
McCuen felt some heat before the film crew cleaned up. A concerned caller whose relative had helped lay marble in the Capitol suggested the movie be re-titled "Under Smudge." But on Oct. 18, Wayne Walser of Utah, the moviemakers' construction coordinator, rappelled along the dome with a large brush, scrubbing soot while his teammates in the cupola fed cleaning fluid down a hose.
In other mock explosions inside the Capitol, the then 80-year-old Tiffany fixture was dirtied. The production crew lowered the chandelier and gave it a bath — its second cleaning since 1954.
"Under Siege" won a Primetime Emmy for ... sound editing. In 1990, the state Motion Picture Office reported that the crew spent $700,000 in the state.