A ComingSoon.net editor remembers his experiences during 9/11 at the 2001 Toronto International Film Festival
As this writer makes plans to watch movies at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival on this, the most somber of days, September 11th, I can’t help but remember the young man I was 15 years ago. Back then I was in my mid-twenties and I was a junior publicist at Warner Bros. Canada, the Northern distribution wing for the venerable studio and I was in the thick of working my first TIFF. I had never been to the festival. I was a cineaste my entire life, but I was always on the outside, looking in. Suddenly, there I was, on the front lines of the business. It was exciting and surreal. WB publicists from LA and New York descended on the city, joining forces with our office to screen and junket three movies: Hearts in Atlantis, Training Day and Heist. Among my many jobs was to hustle one of my heroes, the great Sir Anthony Hopkins, from his hotel to his limo to Roy Thompson Hall for the Hearts in Atlantis premiere. When he shook my hand and said, “ Hi Chris, I’m Tony,” I almost passed out. Then another woman in the lobby DID actually pass out and Hopkins and I had to pick her up and get her help. Among the cast of that film I also had to assist was a very, very young Anton Yelchin, who we sadly lost mere weeks ago and then was just a sweet, curly-headed little boy, happy and healthy and excited about his big premiere. I also remember hustling around making sure Training Day director Antoine Fuqua was at his screenings to introduce his movie, a film that Warners were grooming to be their big fourth quarter hit (and it was). I remember sitting with him for extended periods of time and just talking about movies. I liked him very much.
All that running around. All that partying. All those artists and that peripheral taste of the illusion of the kind of “high life” I had only read about and dreamed of. I was in my element, alive and plugged in and – since I worked my way up at Warners from the mail-room – I was also very proud of my hard work and undying love of film that had finally seemed to pay off.
But on the morning of September 11th, all that changed.
I remember taking the train to work as usual. Only myself and the VP’s personal assistant – Karen – were in the office as the rest of the team were at the Four Seasons hotel, getting things ready for a day of press activity. Karen was in distress as I walked in. She had CNN on (who didn’t?) and an airplane had smashed into one of the Twin Towers. Presumably, it was an accident, a horrific error. The other Warner Bros. departments on our floor scrambled around, making calls and sharing their confusion. We were on the phone to our team at the hotel, endlessly, gauging the situation and determining our plan of action. One of the NYC PR team members was hysterical as her boyfriend worked in one of the towers and suddenly, she was unable to reach him.
And then another plane hit. This was no accident.
Karen and I watched in horror along with the world as this routine day in the world of glitz, glamor and celebrity worship was rapidly turning into a living, breathing nightmare. There was another plane crash. And then people started jumping to their deaths from the towers, black dots forced to burn to death or attempt to fly. And then the first tower fell to the ground. And the next tower then fell to the ground. The smoke. The screams. The absolute anarchy. The word “terror” was being thrown about. It felt like the end of the world. It was overwhelming and I was in shock. I was terrified.
With Karen manning the fort, I was dispatched back downtown to our hotel and as soon as I entered the lobby, it was like something out of an apocalyptic movie. TV’s were set up everywhere so guests and employees alike could watch the horror unfold moment to moment. I took the elevator up to our hospitality floor with Heist actor Gene Hackman, who was quietly crying. Our American team was alternately ashen and still and weeping freely, hugging each other, looking for some kind of comfort. I tried to help in any way I could, but what could I do? I had spent plenty of time with this team over the last couple of days and nothing but laughter, lewd jokes and good times were had. These people were echoes of the people I had come to know. One of my jobs was to help locate Heist director David Mamet who, after airplanes everywhere were grounded, had apparently chartered a private plane to flee the country. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I was in so far over my head. But then again, no one knew what the hell they were doing. These were movie stars and the people assigned to make them look good. They were showman suddenly in the grip of chaos. They were helpless. Powerless. Health and wealth and status were meaningless. I walked the streets of Yorkville, then the center of the TIFF experience, and people sat on patios, drinking; inside bars, they did the same and watched CNN, some wandered the streets, confused. The festival was not festive and was effectively grinding to halt. I did indeed feel like H.G Wells’ lonesome journalist protagonist in War of the Worlds, an observer, watching and documenting while trying to navigate this new version of the experience I was previously enjoying. It truly was the end of the innocence.
As the days followed and slowly, surely, the business of business went forward, my time at Warner Bros. was spent in a state of unease. Talks of the disease Anthrax being laced in mail en route to Hollywood offices forced us all to wear gloves. Anxiety over threats that the “terrorists” would decimate the Academy Awards trickled down to us, as we suspected that studio offices might also be a target. No one knew who or what would be attacked next. Movies we had on our slate, like the Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle Collateral Damage, were pulled from the schedule. The horror film Thirteen Ghosts had all its marketing material pulled and destroyed, the word “terror” on the poster replaced with the word “horror,” so as not to upset people and deter box-office success. Training Day opened as planned as was as big of a hit as it was because, I believe, the nation was starved for a stronger entertainment that tapped into the palpable emotions they were feeling. You will see this trend echoed throughout history, as war and political and social unease end up organically creating a need for the people to exorcize their anxieties through entertainment. It’s a strange byproduct of the human condition.
So now it’s 15 years later. Terrorism and concerns over it are omnipresent, part of our daily dialect. New Yorkers did what they do best, stood up and defiantly rebuilt and soldiered on. The world kept spinning. And though horror and mass-murder and atrocity happen globally, daily, everywhere, all the time, for me personally, as a lover of cinema and as someone who has been documenting that love here and in a myriad of mediums for the past 15 years, I will never, ever forget 9/11. It was the day when the wizard behind the curtain was violently revealed, when people who had seemed invulnerable and supernatural weren’t anymore. It was the day I realized that we were all just scared children and that movies and the myths built around them, God love them, are just glorious distractions.
And it was the day I learned that no matter what, life continues.
The show goes on.
It must.
(Photo Credit: Getty Images)