Telling The Story Of Sept. 11
Minutes after American Airlines Flight 11 hit the north tower of New York's World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, television news cameras were on the scene and the world tuned in.
Round-the-clock coverage of the events continued for days on television, radio and on the Internet. Journalists worked tirelessly to tell the story as the country came to terms with what had happened.
Filmmakers, writers and songwriters are storytellers, too, but they continue telling their stories long after the events they depict are over.
In the past five years, artists have voiced the feelings of many Americans, explored the personal stories of victims and survivors, and attempted to soothe and inspire through their work.
On Sept. 11, French filmmakers Jules and Gédéon Naudet were making a documentary of a rookie firefighter in lower Manhattan when Jules noticed an airplane flying extremely low overhead. Instinctively he turned his camera toward it and filmed a rare shot of the first plane to hit the World Trade Center.
Jules rushed to the North tower with members of the FDNY, and filmed them in the lobby as they began to organize the evacuation of the building.
The resulting documentary, "9/11," aired in the United States on March 10, 2002, to mark the six month anniversary of the attacks.
It was one of the few films released about the subject that year.
A collection of 11 shorts by 11 filmmakers including Ken Loach, Mira Nair and Sean Penn titled "11'09"01 — September 11" was released in September 2002. Some of the shorts were considered controversial, but overall the film received good reviews.
In the last year, several narrative feature films about Sept. 11 debuted, and there are more in the works.
"United 93" directed by Paul Greengrass premiered at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival, only blocks away from the site of the fallen towers. The film depicts the events in real-time as the passengers join together to wrest control of the plane from the hijackers.
The ill-fated flight was also the subject of two Emmy-nominated docudramas, "The Flight That Fought Back" which aired on the Discovery Channel and "Flight 93," which aired on A&E.
Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center," about two police officers who were pulled from the rubble of the towers, premiered at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival and opened in theaters Aug. 9.
Several of the people portrayed in "United 93" and "World Trade Center" as well as family members of the victims worked as advisors on both films. Some even walked the red carpet at the films' premieres.
The World Trade Center attacks are central to the plot of Dennis Leary's F/X television drama, "Rescue Me," which is about a group of firefighters in New York. The Emmy-nominated series was the first to use Sept. 11 and its emotional aftermath as a central theme.
Leary's character, Tommy Gavin, is a troubled firefighter dealing with survivor's guilt and the loss of friends and family members in the FDNY. Tommy's inner rage reflects the feelings of many New Yorkers directly affected by the attacks.
Bruce Springsteen's 2002 album "The Rising" was inspired by Sept. 11. Some of the songs, like "My City of Ruins," were written before the attacks, but fit the theme perfectly. Other songs were inspired by the New Jersey native's personal conversations with family members.
Fellow Jersey boy Jon Bon Jovi told New York magazine that the songs on his 2002 album "Bounce" were not "so much about the day itself but about how we felt afterward."
Five For Fighting's "Superman (It's Not Easy)" became an anthem for 9/11 after they performed it for "The Concert For New York City" in October 2001.
Paul McCartney wrote a 9/11-themed single titled "Freedom," which he performed at the same concert, but it wasn't received as warmly.
Country singer Toby Keith's fan base loved "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (Angry American)" and "The Taliban Song," but his critics accused him of being racist. The first song kicked off a feud with Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks who told the Los Angeles Times, "I hate it. It's ignorant, and it makes country music sound ignorant."
Keith laughed all the way to the bank, personally grossing more than $45 million in 2003.
Published in 2005, "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" by New York writer Jonathan Safran Foer, is about Oskar, a 9-year-old boy whose father was killed in the World Trade Center. After finding a key that belonged to his father, he embarks on a quest to find the lock it fits.
"Windows on the World: A Novel," also published in 2005, by author Frederic Beigbeder is a fictionalized minute-by-minute account of what the last two hours of life were like for a group of patrons in the restaurant on the top floors of the World Trade Center's north tower.
At a time when most Americans wanted heroes, comic book artists delivered.
Soon after the attacks, Marvel Comics came out with a series of books and comics about firefighters and other emergency workers. In the comic "Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 2) #36" Captain America, Daredevil, Spider-Man and others were shown helping out in the aftermath of the towers' collapse. The comic became known as the Black Issue because of its solid black cover.
A variety of comic book artists and writers at DC Comics contributed to the two-part anthology "9-11: Artists Respond, Volumes 1 & 2."
Money from the sale of the works inspired by Sept. 11 was often given to charity.
The producers of "World Trade Center" donated $2.6 million from box office receipts to a group of 9/11 charities and to the World Trade Center memorial fund. Universal Pictures, producers of "United 93," is donating to the United 93 Memorial Fund.
Most recently, ABC marked the five-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks with the miniseries, "Path to 9/11," which began airing Sunday. The $40 million production came under fire by the Clinton administration for scenes that reportedly depict a failed effort to capture Osama bin Laden before the 9/11 attacks. Even though there were doubts beforehand, ABC made several editing changes and aired the movie as scheduled.
By Judy Faber