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All On That Day
Sep. 11th, 2007 09:43 amJust realized the other day that we're now a few short years away from the end of the 21st century's first decade, so six years after 9/11 shouldn't come as much of a surprise. And yet.
I was at the Toronto International Film Festival on 9/11, unsurprisingly enough. It would be the last year I covered it. Already amped up by the fact that I'd finally allowed the woman then in charge of eye to cycle me out, I'd also just accepted John Foote's offer to leave Trebas for the TFS, so I was desperately trying to rack up as many interviews as I could in order to see me to my next rent-cheque. The next guy on the docket was Don Cheadle, at 3:00 PM. We were going to talk about a low-budget digital indie he'd just done with Joseph Gordon-Leavitt (a very good film, though one which actually ended up getting completely lost in the shuffle and going d2DVD. I sure can pick 'em!).
So...I saw the initial footage as I was getting ready, and came into the Press Office to find everybody and their brother standing around in a knot, straining towards the TV monitors. I'd ended up next to a guy from New York who stood there suffused with rage, saying in a small, tight voice, over and over: "You know what we should do? Just fuckin' bomb Mecca, RIGHT NOW. Get those bombers in the air. Fuckin' BOMB MECCA. RIGHT NOW." And I just wanted to say: Oh my God, just stop, what the Hell is WRONG with you? I get that that's your city, but are you completely unaware that there are other people in this world, and we want to SURVIVE the next few years? But of course, I didn't say anything at all. I just kept watching, like everybody else.
And then the second Tower came down.
Last week, I was in Film History class, saying: "What seems most likely now is that the first decade of the 21st century, like the 1940s, will go down in history as being defined by The War." The War, capitals...you know, the one we haven't bothered to name yet. The one that's supposedly not a war at all, just a series of peacekeeping, pacifying, rescue missions, or whatever. The one we aren't allowed to know about. The one that's blowing the limbs off of a generation of able-bodied young people, orphaning their kids, leaving their support system bewildered--yet not, somehow, ever seeming to disabuse them of the received notion that this is NOT another Vietnam, another Central America. That this, at last, is the New Good War our Boomer masters have all been waiting for--the Just War, the Necessary War. The one their parents fought instead of them, so they could take drugs, have random sex and listen to rock 'n' roll while protesting the undeclared, clandestine, dirty little Cold Wars which came after that. Good to know, eh?
I'm not American, just in case you wondered. Nothing personal/disrespectful meant by any of this to anyone who is. But I continue to be just as glad.
I was at the Toronto International Film Festival on 9/11, unsurprisingly enough. It would be the last year I covered it. Already amped up by the fact that I'd finally allowed the woman then in charge of eye to cycle me out, I'd also just accepted John Foote's offer to leave Trebas for the TFS, so I was desperately trying to rack up as many interviews as I could in order to see me to my next rent-cheque. The next guy on the docket was Don Cheadle, at 3:00 PM. We were going to talk about a low-budget digital indie he'd just done with Joseph Gordon-Leavitt (a very good film, though one which actually ended up getting completely lost in the shuffle and going d2DVD. I sure can pick 'em!).
So...I saw the initial footage as I was getting ready, and came into the Press Office to find everybody and their brother standing around in a knot, straining towards the TV monitors. I'd ended up next to a guy from New York who stood there suffused with rage, saying in a small, tight voice, over and over: "You know what we should do? Just fuckin' bomb Mecca, RIGHT NOW. Get those bombers in the air. Fuckin' BOMB MECCA. RIGHT NOW." And I just wanted to say: Oh my God, just stop, what the Hell is WRONG with you? I get that that's your city, but are you completely unaware that there are other people in this world, and we want to SURVIVE the next few years? But of course, I didn't say anything at all. I just kept watching, like everybody else.
And then the second Tower came down.
Last week, I was in Film History class, saying: "What seems most likely now is that the first decade of the 21st century, like the 1940s, will go down in history as being defined by The War." The War, capitals...you know, the one we haven't bothered to name yet. The one that's supposedly not a war at all, just a series of peacekeeping, pacifying, rescue missions, or whatever. The one we aren't allowed to know about. The one that's blowing the limbs off of a generation of able-bodied young people, orphaning their kids, leaving their support system bewildered--yet not, somehow, ever seeming to disabuse them of the received notion that this is NOT another Vietnam, another Central America. That this, at last, is the New Good War our Boomer masters have all been waiting for--the Just War, the Necessary War. The one their parents fought instead of them, so they could take drugs, have random sex and listen to rock 'n' roll while protesting the undeclared, clandestine, dirty little Cold Wars which came after that. Good to know, eh?
I'm not American, just in case you wondered. Nothing personal/disrespectful meant by any of this to anyone who is. But I continue to be just as glad.
