Damn You Oliver Stone!

I knew it was due out, but the commercial still took me off guard.

Oliver Stone's World Trade Center is coming out on August 9th.

Nick Cage is in it as a Port Authority Police Officer. For those of you who are completely ignorant, the PAPD suffered the greatest losses of all first responders on the scene when the Towers went down. I don't mean to diminish the contributions of the NYPD and NYFD, because those men and women suffered too and I can't remember the exact statistic for PAPD, but I think it was close to 80% of the force. I usually avoid all mentions of September 11th in newscasts, the 'net and elsewhere and I still have a packet of articles I collected about the structural collapse, the air quality and the chaos that led to the biggest losses of life for folks trapped inside as well as the valiant crews who went in to save them and never came home.

Nick Cage is often one of my favorite actors.
Oliver Stone is often one of my most loathed directors. He's got a habit of bloating things that don't need to be bloated.

I have a LOT of curiosity about the two big-screen September 11th films, but have a weird mix of "voyeur's guilt" from my fascination with the science behind the destruction (the way the Towers pancaked when they fell, the way the "bathtub wall" was constructed in the '70's, why the PATH tunnels didn't flood, etc.) and revulsion at the voyeurism promoted by the viewing fences, TV movies and, of course, Hollywood blockbusters.

That's not to say that I didn't find anything redeeming in either of them.

After all, United 93 premiered at this year's TriBeCa Film Festival. Which was created by Robert DeNiro to help the rebuilding and recovery efforts of Lower Manhattan. I repeatedly said that if a film like this was going to premiere anywhere, the most appropriate place would HAVE TO be TriBeCa.

Is it too soon? Are the emotions too raw? For those of us who've had trouble dealing with that day, yes and no. These are stories we need to hear again and again. They touch our darkest fears, while at the same time play to our vanity - if we were in their shoes, we'd do this, this or that because we're brave/bold/daring.

I'd like to think that, should I ever be in a situation like those passengers on ANY flight, I'd not only fight back like I was going to die anyway, but I'd try and take as many of the bastards out with me as I could.

On September 11th this year, I'll be at my local blood bank, making a donation in memory of two people I knew who didn't come home that Tuesday night.

As for the flicks. . .I'll wait for them to come out on TV. Paying for them still feels like blood money.