The Scoop on Oliver Stone's 9/11 Film

By David Helwig Soo

Oliver Stone on his 9/11 filmNEW YORK, July 30 - "The consequences of 9/11 are enormous to this world, not just to America," says World Trade Center director Oliver Stone in the current issue of Newsweek. "This movie is made for the world, and if it's what I hope it to be, it transcends 9/11. It's about anybody, anywhere, who feels the taste of death, whether it was a bombing in Madrid or an earthquake or a tsunami. It's the same theme of being trapped. And you are dependent on others for rescue ... It is all these things you're aware of at the last moment. I appreciated the chance to illustrate it," says Stone. As part of Newsweek's August 7 cover story, "Oliver Stone's 9/11" (on newsstands Monday, July 31), senior editor and film critic David Ansen speaks to Stone in an exclusive interview about his thoughts on his controversial film, and also looks at other 9/11-inspired art.Piercingly moving and utterly unpolitical, World Trade Center holds us in a fierce grip, writes Ansen. At the simplest level, it's a rescue movie. Port Authority cops Will Jimeno and Sgt. John McLoughlin were on a rescue mission themselves when the building collapsed around them. World Trade Center celebrates the ties that bind us, the bonds that keep us going, the goodness that stands as a rebuke to the horror of that day, writes Ansen."A lot of the conversation about 9/11 in the five years since it's happened has been motivated by a political agenda. From all sides," World Trade Center actress Maggie Gyllenhaal tells Newsweek. "What that's done is make everyone really wary of talking about it and thinking about it. Which is why I think World Trade Center is so special. Somehow, in the midst of all this, Oliver has made a movie that doesn't seem to have an agenda, either political or personal. It really is about honoring people."Also as part of the cover package, Senior Editor Jeff Giles speaks with officers Jimeno and McLoughlin who, although they inspired the film, would rather shine the spotlight on everyone else. Giles asks officer Jimeno about one of his fellow policemen, Dom Pezzullo, who died right next to him. His widow has said she's upset that her husband's death is being portrayed and that the officers are consultants on the movie. Officer Jimeno responds, "Would you rather have a story be told incorrectly or correctly? I don't think there's any easy getting around this issue. John and I respect the [Pezzullo] family. But as police officers, our first lineis to remember our fallen comrades. When Dom was dying, he said, 'Willie, don't forget I died trying to save you guys.' And I said, 'Dom, I would never let that happen.' This film is a way to honor him. We're not the heroes of the film. I want America to know this: Dominick's for real, he was a real person. He was a schoolteacher who became a cop, and his heart was big, and he ran into those buildings. If you don't show what actually happened that day, what's the use of making this film? In America, we need to be honest with ourselves. People died that day. And many people in uniform and in civilian clothes died doing the right thing. We're just one small slice of thousands of stories."After seeing the movie, Officer Jimeno tells Newsweek, "When I walked out, I gave Oliver a big hug and a kiss, and I said, 'You kept to your word. You told the story as accurate and as true as you could.' The main thing is that when you leave the theater, you leave with a sense of hope and love. I went to see United 93 the night it came out. When I walked out, I walked out empty."When the Twin Towers came down, they brought with them more than a million tons of concrete, steel - and 2,769 human beings. Oliver Stone's new movie ends with a chilling reminder: just 20 made it out. As part of the cover package, Newsweek includes a photo of 14 of the survivors.Elsewhere in the cover package, assistant managing editor Evan Thomas and reporter Andrew Romano report that nations need a good storyline to learn how to cope with their national tragedies. All nations need myths to understand crises that shock, the wars and riots, assassinations and natural disasters that wrench history, writes Newsweek. The story of workaday men and women rising to greatness is one of America's most cherished myths. As a term, myth is much misunderstood; hearing it, manypeople take the word to mean "lie," when in fact a myth is a story, a narrative, that explains individual and national realities - how a person or a country came to be, why certain things happen in the course of a life or of history, and what fate may have in store for us. Myths are a peculiar hybrid of truth and falsehood, resentments and ambitions, dreams and dread.Another, less admirable myth that Americans concoct to explain crises and disasters is rooted in the paranoid streak that runs through pop culture, the conspiracy theories that blame some sinister (and usually make-believe) Other for whatever went wrong. One might expect Hollywood's Oliver Stone to drum up a conspiracy theory to explain 9/11. He is, after all, known as the director of a movie, JFK, that essentially accused Lyndon Johnson, the CIA, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff of killing President Kennedy. That Stone did not go to the dark side to explain the attacks of September 11 tells us something about the American sensibility towards that day. True, Stone was under pressure from the studio not to make the story political or conspiratorial. It is also true, though, that public-opinion surveys show that many Americans (42 percent in a recent Zogby poll)believe the government must be covering up something about 9/11, and many blame Bush for using the attacks to justify invading Iraq.Nonetheless, 9/11 has become a kind of sacred day in American life.Stone's movie will stand as a civic elegy, a statement that the events of 9/11, and the memories of the nearly 3,000 people who died that day, should not be degraded or sullied by politics or the fevered imaginings of people who see tragedy and assume scheming and betrayal.