Picture this. It is early May, two or three years from now and the start of the summer movie season. You've just paid your $6.50 ticket and are sitting amidst several others in the dark auditorium opening day to watch what is certain to be one of the most talked about films of the year.
After 30 minutes’ worth of trailers and commercials, the big event finally begins.
The camera pans in on the twin towers of Manhattan's World Trade Center. There is a little ticking clock posted in the bottom right-hand corner reading 8:35 a.m. It is the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.
The camera then pans in on several scenes of activity inside the top floors of the North Tower. We see more than a hundred patrons having breakfast at the Windows on the World restaurant, while five hundred or more employees are at their desks of the brokerage offices of Cantor Fitzgerald.
We see a woman checking e-mail in her office on the 89th floor of the North Tower. The ticking clock now reads 8:46 a.m. As she sips her morning coffee, we hear the roar of two turbine jet engines, followed by what some think is an exploding transformer, that knocks the woman to the floor as the 110 story building reels from the impact of a Boeing 767 flying in at 450 miles per hour.
Then all hell breaks loose.
I have always known Hollywood would sooner or later plan a film about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, but I personally would have preferred later, as in decades from now, as opposed to sooner.
A couple of dramas about 9/11 have already been made like “The Guys” (2002), which starred Anthony LaPaglia as a fire chief enlisting the aid of a psychiatrist (Sigourney Weaver) to come up with several eulogies for the men he lost at the World Trade Center.
The Showtime original made-for-cable movie, “D.C. 9/11: Time of Crisis” (2003), could most likely be referred to as the film Michael Moore doesn't want you to see. Unlike Moore's “Fahrenheit 9/11” (2004), President Bush, as played by Timothy Bottoms, is portrayed as a real commander-in-chief the moment he learns America is under attack.
The closest we've seen of what went on inside the twin towers was the television documentary “9/11”, shot by Jules and Gedeon Naudet who were making a film about a newcomer firefighter. It was luck that they happened to have their cameras rolling when American Airlines Flight 11 hit the North Tower.
It is Hollywood's latest venture, though, that will likely show us the horror of what went on inside both towers from the time the first plane hit to the moment the North Tower collapsed at 10:28 a.m. This is all thanks to a newly published hardcover book called “102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers” (2006 - Henry Holt & Company Inc., 352 pages, $26) by New York Times reporters Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn.
The book, however, is now getting publicity, thanks to Columbia Pictures, which, according to an article in Variety, is in the process of buying the rights and appears to be the latest in a series of projects set to go before cameras in the coming years. According to the same article, producer Brian Grazer has plans to make an eight-hour mini-series about 9/11 based on the Commission Report published last year.
The fact such films are being planned begs me to ask a slew of questions. Is America ready for a big screen recreation of the horrors we saw live on television that unseasonably warm September morning, which will no doubt be released either during the summer movie season or late fall to be a contender for Oscar nominations, if promoted right?
Are we ready to see highly paid stars portray real life victims as he or she make their final heart-breaking phone calls to loved ones to cancel unexpected birthday trips and to say good-bye?
Perhaps the only way to answer the question if the time is right for a film about Sept. 11 is the notion that time eventually heals all wounds.
There was a moment when I was surprised at how quick one year had gone by since the terrorist attacks and I felt the same way on the second anniversary. I asked myself where the time went. Now 9/11 feels like it happened decades ago.
Our attitudes are different from what they were in the weeks and months after the attacks. We have accepted we must now show up two hours early before boarding time at airports for check-in. We have accepted that there will always be a police/military style presence at such events like the Super Bowl, the World Series and at New York's Times Square on New Year's Eve.
American patriotism is back to what it was before 9/11. There are no flags flying outside many homes on national holidays and support for our armed forces abroad seems split down the middle, depending on who you talk to. Today, we laugh when late night talk show hosts like Jimmy Kimmel make jokes about Homeland Security and the never-ending terror alerts.
The question studio executives should ask themselves when it comes to green lighting movies about 9/11 is, are they doing this so Americans will never forget? Is it all for the sake of macabre entertainment as we sit gulping down our large cokes and chow down on the large, buttered popcorn and Milk Duds in awe of the terrifying special effects that will most likely be supplied by the digital gurus working at George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic?
I won't deny such a film will have all the winning ingredients of a tragic tearjerker as we learn of various tales of heroism, if it's done right. We will no doubt meet characters who got out in time before the towers' collapse as well as feel for those who did not. But not everyone's wounds have healed, in particular the people who lost loved ones that morning which will likely never heal.
This year will mark the fourth anniversary of Sept. 11.
The idea of making a film dramatizing those tragic events is too soon to be considering, but then again, has Hollywood ever pondered how audiences, not to mention, the families of loved ones, would feel about such a project being adapted for the big screen?
©2/23/05
