I was 15 when 9/11 happened. I remember being in 9th grade and everyone talking about how the World Trade Center had come down. It wasn't until I got home when I found out the WTC was the Twin Towers.... I'd heard of the towers but didn't know they had this more "official" title.
Instead of Pokémon being on WB (now the CW channel) on every afternoon when I got home from school, they had nothing but coverage of Ground Zero. At the time, I was just frustrated because my TV routine was disrupted for the rest of the week.
Meanwhile, New York City picking up the pieces, trying to make sense of what's happened while first responders searched the rubble for survivors. America came together with renewed love for their country. American flags were everywhere. And "God Bless the U.S.A." showed up in various capacities for years to come. Kristy Lee Cook did it one night on American Idol and Simon Cowell said it was a brilliant move. (She'd been in the bottom 3 every week leading up to that and because of that performance, she survived three more weeks before her top 7 finish).
It sounds completely ridiculous and selfish, but it wasn't until I saw this day depicted in a Robert Pattinson movie that I felt any emotional impact from it. Then over the years as I saw 9/11 depicted in other movies and TV series, I grew to appreciate it a lot more.
I'd be remiss to not mention the attacks in Shanksville, PA and the Pentagon in D.C. but almost all of the instances in this post derive from the WTC tragedy. I know the film "United 93" focused specifically on the passengers who fought against the hi-jackers before their plane crashed in Shanksville, but I thought it'd be a little too close to the real thing to watch.
And to get technical, none of these movies really talk about the day itself so much as showing the impact it left behind. How it changed people's lives and various issues it created in its aftermath. Issues some people still struggle with in real life.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
I only saw this film the one time because it was an Oscar nomination so I'm basing my comments on the Wikipedia page.
In the movie, Tom Hanks is the dad who perished in the attacks. Meanwhile, his autistic son is struggling to cope with the loss. He finds a key in a vase and goes on a scavenger hunt, thinking it's just another of the scavenger hunts his dad used to play with him. In doing so, he befriends several strangers in the city and in a turnabout way, he's able to find peace and move forward.
I don't remember much about seeing the movie. It's the sort of thing I'd only watch the one time. Mostly because he goes on this scavenger hunt and he doesn't find a hidden message at the end of it. Instead, it's about the journey more than the destination. And because he's autistic, he has a few mental breakdowns that were uncomfortable to watch.
Reading about it, it sounded like there were a lot of mixed reviews. The term "Oscar bait" got thrown around a bunch.
Before moving onto the next one, one final tidbit:
Evgenia Medvedeva from Russia had a free skate program to the score from this movie. It's mostly a dramatic string arrangement with some city noise and audio talking about one of the towers being hit. She's skating around unaffected until the end when the phone rings, she picks it up and is frozen with shock. It was a really good routine, but it was a bizarre choice. Especially since I'm not sure how much she understood the context of the music, not being American. It was also one of those routines where some would argue that if the commentators have to explain what's happening, it's not designed very well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oheKfyZEroA
(I found a clip with no commentary so you can decide for yourself if you got anything out of it)
Remember Me
This was the movie that started all this for me. Because I was a huge Twi-Hard, this movie came across my radar and of course I had to see it.
Tyler Hawkins is a flawed character, a college student who's undecided about everything. He gets into a relationship with the daughter of a cop who gave him a hard time one night. Meanwhile, he and his father aren't on the best terms and his little sister, who feels invisible to their dad, is being bullied at school for being quriky and different. On the surface, the movie has nothing super extraordinary about it, but I personally enjoyed all of the characters.
Then the gut punch came and I never forgot it.
Tyler caused a disturbance at his sister's school after she was bullied at a sleepover. He's meeting his dad at his office while they work to patch things over. But his dad takes his sister to school and he's there waiting for him... cut to the classroom and the blackboard reads "Tuesday, September 11, 2001." We see Tyler and the camera pans back until we see him in one of the towers.
Yeah... I cried out "oh, no!!" as soon as I realized what was happening. And just like that, a movie I thoroughly enjoyed was completely destroyed.
The craziest part is that I really wanted to find out what happened to the other characters. His girlfriend and his best friend in paticular. Did his sister and dad get close and she overcome getting bullied in school? To this day, I still think about that.
In the trailer, Robert Pattinson starts by quoting Gandhi, saying "Whatever you do in life will be insignificant but it is very important that you do it."
And yeah, it's really cool how his actions impacted so much in the end of the movie. It's just too bad he wasn't alive to see it.
Then there are two TV shows that have 9/11 as part of the character's backgrounds.
9-11: Lone Star
It's been so long that I'm going to need an Internet search to do justice to this.
Rob Lowe's character, Owen, was a firefighter in the Twin Towers. Before moving to Austin, he was part of a firehouse in New York. While responding to 9/11, he was one of the few members of his squad to make it out alive. (If I remember right, there was one episode dedicated to this day- he was in the tower, surrounded by fire and he made it out and someone else in the direct vicinity didn't). He remained supportive of his squad following 9/11 and would later move to Austin to begin a firehouse there.
But as a result of his service, he developed lung cancer. This was something he ultimately overcome. Sadly, not all first responders in real life were that lucky.
Jon Stewart from the Daily Show has spent years campaigning for proper medical compensation for the first responders who developed ilness for simply doing their job that day. Just one of many instances in our history where our heroes are underserved and underappreciated.
Occasionally on FOX during the show, they'll show commercials for the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, founded in tribute to Stephen Siller, one of the many firefighters who lost their lives that day, and Rob Lowe is the celebrity spokesperson promoting it.
A Million Little Things
This was the inclusion that ultimately inspired this whole post.
This series begins with family patriarch, Jon Dixon, committing suicide. And the rest of it shows how his family and their group of friends cope with his loss as well as various problems of their own. All of which they're able to overcome because they have each other.
The first season reveals around the mystery behind Jon's suicide. And while we might never get the full story, we at least have some clues.
The biggest one was the 9/11 connection. Not unlike some famous names like Seth MacFarlane (something I found out just now), John was scheduled to be on one of the planes that crashed into the Twin Towers and he missed his flight. He and his roommate were both scheduled to be on the flight, but he was late getting to the gate. So his friend died and he was left with survivor's guilt. While this twist of fortune changed his perspective on life and made him a generous individual to those around him, a combination of this guilt and his work finances resulted in his decision to take his own life. His friend's girlfriend, Barbara Morgan, had also received money from Jon's will and it wasn't until several episodes into the arc we found out who she was and her past connection to him.
...I had a lot more in mind to talk about but now that I'm here, I realize I don't have as much. it does bring up an interesting point, though. I'm sure there are several hundred, if not thousands, of people who missed out on being among the 3,000+ who died that day because of some crazy circumstance. A random encounter or an ill-fated decision that caused you to be late for where you needed to be that day. It's one of those instances where you see the butterfly effect at its most apparent. How one or multiple decisions changed your life's trajectory or that of others.
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