A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

When Universal Pictures rolled out writer-director Paul Greengrass’  United 93  in 2006, I was not sure if I would ever see it.  I certainly didn’t see it in theaters that year, and I did not rush to order it from Amazon when it was available on DVD a few months later.  Like millions of my fellow Americans, I was apprehensive about seeing a recreation of the events of September 11, 2001, and specifically about the efforts of 40 passengers and crewmembers to wrest back control of the hijacked airliner from four Al Qaeda terrorists before it hits its intended target in Washington, DC.  While I did not – and still do not – think my own reluctance came from the movie being released only five years after the events of 9-11, I didn’t want to have nightmares about United 93 the way I did back in the fall of 2001.  I was watching  Good Morning America  on that day (having tuned in a few minutes after the first plane hit the Twin Towers) and I st...

If you were to ask me if I remember what happened on Monday, September 10, 2001, I would have to be honest and say "Nothing, really." I surely must have walked my six-year-old Labrador retriever, done some ghostwriting work for a (now former) client and chatted online with friends and my (now ex-) girlfriend. It was quite an ordinary day, and September 11, 2001 promised to be just one more ordinary day, not just for me, but for nearly 300 million Americans and the rest of the world. As it turned out, however, a man named Osama Bin Laden and his followers in a terrorist organization named Al Qaeda (The Base) had other ideas, and September 11, 2001 turned out to be our generation's Day of Infamy. On that Tuesday morning 10 years ago, I woke up a bit after 8:30 AM; I made my way downstairs and went through the usual routine of serving myself a bowl of cold cereal and making two cups of coffee in a Mr. Coffee brewer. As the coffee brewed (making those weird gurgling...