SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 (not a review)
There is not much I can say that hasn’t been said by others more eloquent than myself, and there is not much I can express emotionally that hasn’t been felt more deeply by the survivors and the families of the victims of the attack on America since the zealots of terrorism ripped a hole in the fabric of our country on what should have been just another uneventful Tuesday - September 11, 2001.
Even though I write for Video Kraftwerks in Nutley, New Jersey, I live on the Upper West Side in New York City. At 9:30 AM, I was at home watching "Stanley and Livingston" with Spencer Tracy on American Movie Classics while getting dressed to go out and vote in the Primary. My wife Kathy was at work at NYU and my daughter Christine was at school. She’s a Sophomore at Beacon High .
Before leaving home, I channel surfed toward New York 1 to check the temperature and catch the latest news on the mayoral candidates. Images of the World Trade Center in a ball of flames flashed across the screen from one channel to the next. The phone rang. I picked up the receiver. It was Rachel, my oldest daughter. She was watching the news in horror at home on Long Island. "Mom’s fine," she said. "But Mom can’t call out," she finished. I hung up, then called Kathy immediately. She was fine but others in her office were not. They had friends and relatives who worked at the World Trade Center and were not so assured.
I rushed out of the apartment. Radios on Broadway blared the latest news about the bombing of the Pentagon and the collapse of the Trade Towers to the dozens of people who stopped to listen in disbelief. Others watched on TV screens in the electronic stores that dot the West Side. It was like a scene out of some WWII war film that shows ordinary people glued to their radios listening to the news about the bombing of Pearl harbor on December 7th, 1941. "The Sullivans" came immediately to mind. The further you went downtown toward Sixtieth St., the more crowded the streets became with people heading north to get home even though we were miles from the Towers. Firemen in full gear were heading toward their firehouses. Some streets were cleared to make way for the fire trucks and emergency vehicles rushing downtown. The sound of sirens drowned out my thoughts. There were no children to be seen.
Schools were not releasing their students. It seemed a good move. Parents may not have been home, or stuck on subways or worse. Soon, almost unconsciously, I found myself at the front doors of the Beacon School. I was greeted by Christine with a welcome smile.
I tried calling the few friends I have who work in the Wall Street area. Eventually I heard from them all. Luckily they got away but not without some cost to their psyches. One was evacuated from the Financial Center behind the Towers to a ferry. Another just missed getting killed by falling debris in the street while others running behind him were not so lucky. A few were covered with the ash and soot that blew through the cavernous streets of downtown Manhattan. One friend, a gaffer in the film business, who lives just north of where the Towers stood, helped set up a triage unit near the Chelsea Piers.
Over the next few weeks I was obsessed with the news on TV and in print, watching and reading with moist eyes. As an obsessive movie fan, I could not help but think that the real life moments shown on every news channel with their tales of heartbreak and the heroics of the Firemen, Policemen and others who lent themselves to the preservation of life, and the many who gave their all to save people they never met, were like an unending film loop of cathartic scenes designed to make us cry every second of every minute of every hour of every day. Memories of my own survivor’s guilt after the Viet Nam War crept up on me and I wondered how the survivors from the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon would hold up. And what of the relatives and friends of those who gave their lives fighting in the cockpit of the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania? Many will inevitably suffer the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. They will need time to decompress. May God grant them that time. My prayers go out to each and every one of them.
In the wake of all that has happened, my small review section here at Video Krafwerks seems trivial in comparison, but sharing my passion for film still brings a touch of normalcy to my life. For that I am grateful. For the well being of my family, I am grateful. For the well being of my friends, I am grateful. For being an American - I am grateful
Copyright 2001