NEW YORK -- If Soviet and American leaders need any help with glasnost, they can tune in 'Free To Be...A Family' and learn how it's done from a bunch of kids.
The program -- the first prime time entertainment show ever co-produced by the two superpowers -- airs on ABC Wednesday, Dec. 14, 8-9 p.m. Eastern time.
If you miss that broadcast, you can catch the Gostelradio translation in the Soviet Union on Dec. 30.
The show is co-hosted by Marlo Thomas at the Hard Rock Cafe in New York and Soviet television star Tatiana Vedeneyeva at the Gostelradio studios in Moscow.
American guest stars include Bon Jovi, Whoopi Goldberg, Robin Williams, Lily Tomlin, Carly Simon, Penn and Teller, and Kermit the Frog aided by Miss Piggy.
The Soviet guest list includes rocker Vladimir Presnyakov and Khriusha the Pig.
But the real stars are the 40 New York school children and their 40 Moscow counterparts, who over a period of 10 months wrote letters, sent photos and gifts and otherwise got to know each other.
Watching these kids meet for the first time on the space bridge - the satellite hookup between the two cities -- offers more warmth, more humanity, more peace on earth and the real spirit of Christmas than any number of hokey specials and three-hankerchief dramas.
Marlo Thomas said the idea for the show began with the publishing of her new 'Free To Be...A Family' book and record.
'The message was that we can no longer look on the planet as 'we' and 'they,' but as us,' she said in an interview. 'Then there was Carly Simon's song 'Turn of the Tide' -- a really thrilling piece that says we can be the turn of the tide.'
She already had a commitment to do a special based on the book and record for ABC when she and husband Phil Donahue went to the Soviet Union for the on-location broadcast of five 'Donahue' shows.
'I thought how great it would be to bring together the kids of the Soviet Union and the United States,' she said.
Gostelradio, the Soviet state committee for radio-television -- when these people talk about an industry czar, they aren't kidding -- liked the idea.
The results are spectacular. The heart of the show is the interaction between the children -- the delight in meeting their pen pals, the shy giggles, the hoots at any suggestion of boy-girl stuff, and the enormous similarity of the children. At first glance, it's hard to tell the kids apart.
'The big difference is that we have so many different races - Asians, whites, blacks -- the Soviets are really going to get a look at America,' Thomas said. 'We look at them and they all look kind of the same -- like an American school before integration. But that's their face, at least in Moscow.'
Rock music was a big part of what these kids have in common.
'Our kids picked Bon Jovi,' Thomas said, 'and their kids picked Vladimir Presnyakov, who dances and sings and looks like an American or English rock star. I guess I thought they still folded their arms and danced kicking their legs out in front.'
She said there were no problems dealing with Gostelradio except the slowness of the bureaucracy.
'There was no reluctance on their part. It just takes a long time to do anything there,' she said. 'I was impressed by how eager they were to exchange satires about what was wrong with each country.'
Each country's team picked the subject about which the other country would produce a puppet satire.
'Homelessness was our black eye and they asked us to do that and we did,' she said. 'The biggest problem we had with their country was that people couldn't leave when they wanted to.
'They made a little film about a Soviet elephant who wants to get out of the Soviet Union and join his girlfriend, a ballerina who has defected. He is not allowed to leave because he is a typist who might give away Soviet typewriter technology.'
It's all done with puppets and quite charming -- but with an edge.
Not all of what these kids have in common is rock music and dance.
'At one point,' Thomas said, 'one of our kids raised her hand to ask a Soviet girl if they have divorce over there or if their families stayed together. It was a sort of maybe-somewhere-over-the-rainbow question. 'My parents are divorced and I live with my mother,' the Russian girl said. Welcome to America.'
Thomas believes glasnost is real, saying: 'I don't believe we could have done this show four years ago. I envy today's kids for having this early in life. I spent my entire childhood jumping under the desk in drills for when the bomb came.'
And consider the American girl who says on the show, 'We're not going to be children that much longer. We're going to be adults -- and then it's our turn.'
