United 93: My Nightmares Suffice, Thank You Very Much
Associated Press
Theater Pulls Trailer for ‘United 93′
NEW YORK - A New York City movie theater has pulled the trailer for “United 93,” which chronicles in real time the hijacked United Airlines flight that crashed into a Western Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11.
The AMC Loews Lincoln Square 12 theater in Manhattan said it made the decision after viewers complained they found it too upsetting.
“I don’t think people are ready for this,” theater manager Kevin Adjodha said.
“One lady was crying,” Adjodha told Newsweek. “She was saying that we shouldn’t have played the trailer. That this was wrong.”
Universal Studios in Los Angeles, meanwhile, said it would go ahead with plans to show the trailer for the thriller, which is scheduled to open in theaters on April 28.
Adam Fogelson, Universal’s president of marketing, said the trailer would be shown only before R-rated movies or “grown-up” PG-13 ones.
“The film is not sanitized or softened, it’s an honest and real look” at the events of Flight 93, Fogelson told The New York Times in Tuesday editions. “If I sanitized the trailer beyond what’s there, am I suggesting that the experience will be less real than what the movie itself is? We as a company feel comfortable that it is a responsible and fair way to show what’s coming.”
“United 93″ is scheduled to make its world premiere on opening night at the Tribeca Film Festival in Manhattan.
The festival, which was created to help lower Manhattan recover economically from the attacks, begins April 25 and runs through May 7.
The trailer begins with images of passengers boarding the plane on a sunny morning, and builds to a disturbing scene that includes actual news video of a plane about to hit one of the World Trade Center towers. It then returns inside Flight 93 as terrorists begin hijacking it and a passenger calls his family to tell them of the impending disaster.
The Families of Flight 93 have said that Universal Pictures will donate 10 percent of the first three days’ grosses to the memorial.
Where to begin? I guess I could start with my absolute disdain for the philathropic smokescreen Universal is attempting with their pathetic 10% donation of the first three days gross (that makes my last 401k plan of a 25% match up to 6% look charitable), but that’s not my major issue.
What fucking asshole decided to make this film? If you’re someone that considers 9/11 to be historically synonymous to Pearl Harbor, how ready do you think America circa 1946 would’ve been for a similar flick? America had already wrapped up WWII (while bombing Japan to hell in the process) yet I’d bet that the raw nerve of December 7, 1941 would’ve been wide open.
Almost five years beyond 9/11 we still (supposedly) can’t even find bin Laden, yet we’ve succeeded in destablizing an entire region — murdering tens of thousands of innocent people in the process while mobilizing the recruitment efforts of the very fundamentalist fervor we’re attempting to “battle.”
We’ve done everything except make a complex global situation less complex, and now the first 9/11 movie is on the horizon for release. We all know what happened on that horrific day, but know absolutely nothing about the seeds that led up to that day. I guess in this world of reality tv and goverment positioning, that doesn’t mean anything.
Personally speaking, I don’t appreciate the attempt to capitalize on my raw nerves and emotions surrounding the event. Then again, it took me more than a year to simply sit through the news footage of the planes crashing into the WTC due to being forced to walk though the rubble of Ground Zero for over a year on my daily commute from Brooklyn to Jersey City…
I might not have the average American’s perspective on this one.
What do you think?
Tags: 9 11, America, Brooklyn, film, Jersey City, Middle East, Osama bin Laden, Pearl Harbor, politics, World Trade Center, WWII.
Search
No Tweets RSS feedLatest Posts
- grateful for the silence while…
- getting back to the basics: me…
- can’t sleep. in a bad way…
- singing words of wisdom… let…
- i finally understand the conce…
- thinking about painting my bed…
- getting to know the morning ci…
- getting to know the morning ci…
- what a ride this week has been…
- 37 years is what it took for m…
What I Write About (see all)
- 9 11 accountability activism Adam Smith Problem advertising America antiwar artsy fartsy blogging business capitalism change citizen media community Congress corporation corruption creativity disturbing experience design film funny George Bush government graffiti Greensboro Hip hop humanity information architecture innovation inspiration internet Iraq War journalism lyrics media music New World Order New York City North Carolina personal philosophy photography poetry politics reality Republican Party terrorism video World 2.0
well if it’s not on a movie then it didn’t really happen.
Did Oliver Stone do it?
Interesting case, this Flight 93. Putting aside all conspiracies that could possibly be behind this, or at least trying to, I would like to share my experiences on this specific story taking place on that day.
When 9/11 occured, quite quickly all types of ‘channels’ were set up so people could share what facts they knew about what happened. Specifically, one of these was initiatives was by Kuro5hin.org which had set up a channel on an IRC server in which information pertaining the disaster was shared.
I remember it being the same day, or the day after definately not longer that this story was posted in that IRC channel, if I remember correctly, it was supposed to be written down by an aquaintance of the person that was called.
Keep in mind that this story was only in main stream media 3 or 4 days later.
I never thought much of that. I even was feeling erie when this story was on TV couple days later — I had known about this about the same day that the disaster occured! I read something as good as a first-hand witness report in that IRC channel.
I never thought that much of it until I read about certain ‘coincidences’ occuring on 9/11 — namely the suggestion that there is a bigger picture here that we all get prevented to see (lack of proper investigations into certain people etc.). Intelligence failed that day, that is the official story, but in my humble marxist leftish conspracy-theorist madman opinion it seems it didn’t fail to plant that story, I have ever since thought. Only then I thought, how could this story be pasted into IRC, so eloquently written so terribly soon after it occured? Feel what I mean? Of course somebody can horribly prove me wrong but even then I would still find it all too fishy — it could still be a set-up.
I’m glad it got pulled. It’s too soon for such a movie. Indeed, Schindlers List wouldn’t have gone down really well if that was released only a few years after the war.
And I’ve seen enough Hollywood-produced propaganda that generalises race and culture so I wouldn’t actually go and see it, the plot doesn’t really entice me to think that it really does portray the real events that occured. But definately not if only a mere 10 percent of the first three days gross is donated.
The first three days?
I bet that’s just a ploy to get a more people to go to the movie in its opening week(end), for sure! That has nothing to do with charity, all the more with PR and economics. :(
i’d much rather see an auteur’s vision of what could have led up to 9/11. explore global complexities like fundamentalist islam clashing with both moderate islam and the modern world. dive into the connections between the US and bin laden over the years, going all the way back to reagan supplying him with weapons and training to fight the russians in afghanistan.
this film does nothing but try to capitalize on our emotions of a plane full of innocent people fighting back and dying in the process. i don’t know how i’d react if i were in the audience and this appeared as a trailer…
For a sense of scale, “From Here to Eternity” was 1953, 12 years later. I guess time goes faster in our era.
I too think this movie idea is sick. I think the idea of making it glorifies American victimhood, it satisfies many American’s strange need to feel like we’re each personally deeply affected by terrorism, when the reality is that 99% of us haven’t been affected at all. I think a lot of Americans’ experience of and thirst for war right now is driven by a perception of it as some kind of game or entertainment, a vicarious experience or thrill. This is why support for the war has dropped: because millions of Americans who thought that a war would be easy, uplifting, and even entertaining have come to realize that it is none of the above. My distaste for this film is the same feeling I get whenever I hear someone who’s not from New York say that they wish they were here on September 11, or when those same people use that experience to justify, say, invading Iraq. From the comfort of your living room, or a movie theater seat, most violence becomes a mere opportunity for enterainment, it seems.
spot on, chris.
it does seem that americans grasp onto the idea of victimhood — as if we have the market on suffering — while completely turning a blind eye to the terrorism that has been and continues to occur all around the world. over the past ten years, i wonder how many of us have paused to reflect on the numerous complicit angles when a bus blew up in israel or when children were murdered in palestine by israeli missiles? or the thousands of african kids who were either mutilated in the diamond trade or turned into executioners themselves by the age of 9? or the ecosystem of terrorism in sri lanka?
do we win a suffering prize because it all happened on one day? or in the case of flight 93, because people valiantly fought back and became martyrs for a “don’t even think of fucking with americans” mantra?
it is sick.
Enough of this playing with peoples emotions. It sickens me that the potential for profit is gi-nourmous on behalf of the victims and the families of these people. There is no way I could or would watch this film if I knew a person that perished in any of those planes or buildings or even the war itself. This is a recruiting tool to help get more emotional driven Americans to join some faction of the military. Let’s see if this will be PG-13 so that the youth will have a chance to see this. Rating it R would be even better because more kids would make an attempt to see it with it’s R rating.
I’m curious to know how they end it. Will they end it on a patriotic feel good note by showing the passengers rising up and taking over the control of the plane or will they end it with the bombing of bagdad. Either way i will never know, i won’t watch it.
check out some of the reports of that plane on that day.
http://www.911inplanesite.com/bomb_threat.html
Amen, brother. Just the Times reporting some of the 911 calls from the WTC upset me last week. I can’t imagine going to see a movie about these events. I was there. I watched the Towers fall live. I don’t need to see it again.
well, this is interesting.
Former Head Of Star Wars Program Says Cheney Main 9/11 Suspect
Ever since I’ve heard about this movie, and without factoring that it shouldn’t have been made in the first place, I have felt that they should pay the film crews and actors whatever their base is for working on this, and then give the rest of the money grossed off this to specific charities, and most importantly, the families. 10% of the first 3 days gross is an embarrassment.
Aside from that, I feel my imagination is good enough for the last few hours of United Flight 93. I don’t need someone’s vision for this, no matter how straight-forward it is.
Just my 2 cents.
Anyone have similar views on the Oliver Stone movie coming out as well?
what oliver stone movie?
This joke
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0469641/
you’re kidding me… who in their right mind would pay to see this movie, let alone watch it on TBS?
Hi Sean….when I saw the posters for this, I became ill. I agree with the false philanthropy on the part of Universal. What a ploy! And even though I wasn’t anywhere near New York at the time, I watched the whole thing happen, in the UMass student center, and had so many memories of that part of town and those buildings go thru my head at the same time I watched all that death. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to sit thru a movie like this. As it is now, we can hear the tapes of the emergency calls. do we really need some slick hollywood re-enactment? Not *now,* and perhaps, not until we come to some sort of resolution with the whole Mid-East situation…in other words, what appears to be a very long time.
THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!
FOREVER HEROES. FOREVER. OUR COUNTRY THANKS YOU.