United 93 follow-up and other stuff

Last week I went to a movie (Inside Man, if you care) for the first time in a while, and while there saw the trailer for United 93. And I have to say, whereas watching it on my home computer gave me a vaguely sick-to-my-stomach feeling and a case of the mopes, seeing it in the theatre elicited a quite different response: Total rage. Hatred. Seething animosity.

Well, you get the point.

My feelings about the film itself remain essentially the same (in a nutshell: I personally have no desire to see a film like that yet, even if it's very good which it may well be considering it's from the guy who made "Bloody Sunday." But much as I don't think it's apprpriate I also don't wish to tell peopl what they can and cannot make movies about. Moreover, Oliver Stone has a 9/11 movie coming out later this summer so don't just blame the makers of this film.)

But there's something about the trailer that makes it unforgivable to me. Something I noticed when I watched the thing online but wasn't as strongly affected by. The brief clip from CNN showing the second plane strike the South Tower.

The thing about that video footage is that no matter how many times I watched and rewatched it on that day and in the years since, it's more than just news footage and I've never been able to forget that. It is, quite literally, a video of a murder. I cannot imagine any other film using actual crime scene footage. Not in the movie and especially not in the trailer.

It's one thing if it's your choice, I think. D and I watched Amityville Horror yesterday and actually lamented that in their "documentary" about the real house that they used so few of the actual crime scene photos, instead relying on "re-created" photos. But that was by choice.

Wednesday night I went to the thatre looking for a simple popcorn bank robbery movie that wouldn't make me think too much. And before I got that I was subjected to a video of an attrocious crime.

I'm not one of those who believes that the families of 9/11 victims should have say over any discussion or representation of that day. Nonetheless, what must it be like to go to a movie expecting to see whatever innocuous movie and suddenly on the screen be watching a video clip of how your husband/father/mother/etc died?

I've said before that I don't want to tell any artist what they can or can't make a movie about. And that's fine. But this trailer isn't the movie. It's advertsing. And it's beyond fucked up to use that video in a an advertisement for the film. The trailer wouldn't be any less effective without the clip. Those who were interested in the movie would still be interested, those turned off by the idea would still be turned off. Either way, the film would have been advertised. In fact, the trailer would still be emotionally powerful. So why use that clip?

I can't come up with a valid reason. But it was the wrong choice.

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Granted, this is a story about a simple little online poll. But still.

The thing is, on the face of it, I should applaud the result. U2's "One" is among my very favorite songs and the lyrics as a whole are stunning. Take the song as you will (an embittered love song, a confession from a gay son, an essay on AIDS have all been proposed and all seemingly make sense). The song challenges and gets racy and ... well, basically I just think it's a really good song.

The problem is, the lyrics from "One" that won this competetion were the worst part of the song: "One life with each other, sisters, brothers." I'm sorry but yawn. Why didn't everyone just vote for "We Are the World"?

Then I realized Robbie Williams also made the list and felt slightly better. Clearly, the contest was only open to pre-teen girls.

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Crazy.

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And I realize this is the height of ... being a hypocrite (hypocritciscm? hypocritcalness?) but I really appreciated this blog entry. I know I'm often snarky (again, see above), but it's good to remember you really need to be a fan first.