SALON

Saturday, Jan 7, 2012 6:12 PM UTC

An “incredibly close” screening

A preview of “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” turns into group therapy for post-9/11 New Yorkers

By

Topics: 9/11, Movies, ,

An A movie that asks are we ready to talk about 9/11?

I knew all those years of sitting in darkened theaters on sunny afternoons, awash in movies new and old, stale popcorn and gallons of diet soda, would pay off some day. For one, there was the woman I met in 1975 at the late, lamented Carnegie Hall Cinema during a Mel Brooks double feature. She came and sat next to me when a guy kept bothering her during “Blazing Saddles” and we wound up dating — until she lit out for a career in the hinterlands, acting in summer stock.

But as lovely as she was, that’s not the payoff I mean. All that time reading about and watching movies didn’t just prepare me for romance, or Jeopardy and Trivial Pursuit, if it comes to that. (Quick—the address of Charles Foster Kane’s love nest with Susan Alexander? 185 West 74th Street.)

What it did ready me for is one of my favorite things, interviewing screenwriters about their work. In my various capacities at the Writers Guild of America, East, I’ve had the opportunity over the last decade and a half to talk with many of them, in private for articles or video archives, and in public, in front of an audience, at screenings of their films. Sometimes the director and one or two of the actors come, too.

This has led to some odd experiences: like dealing with the emotionally fragile starlet who recently had gone through a very public break-up. I had to gently coax her out of her limo and into the screening because she was afraid of the paparazzi, who were covering a premiere at the theater next door. They didn’t notice.

Or the time the writer knelt next to me during his film and frantically whispered that an entire reel had been skipped, the next to last one. We let everyone see it when the movie was over but discovered that the hapless projectionist had been showing it that way – to critics – for weeks.  The film opened and closed very quickly.

There was the incomprehensible interview with Jean-Luc Godard, which was not because my French was worse than his English, or vice versa, but simply because he’s Jean-Luc Godard; and the Q & A with British writer and director Mike Leigh – my first question triggered a rapid-fire, twenty-minute monologue that was impossible to interrupt. Because he covered virtually every one of my prepared questions, it wasn’t so bad. By the time he had worn himself out, we were ready for questions from the audience.

But one of the most unusual interviews took place just last month, a week or so before Christmas. I was scheduled to introduce a screening of “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” and talk afterwards with the author of its screenplay, Eric Roth, whose other credits include “Forrest Gump” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”

When I arrived at the theater, a representative from Warner Brothers let me know that the film’s director, Stephen Daldry, would be joining us as well. I had to pretty much toss the interview I’d prepared – most of my questions were about Eric’s work and screenwriting in general – but it would be okay. Stephen and I had met several years ago when he was promoting his movie “The Hours” and I was interviewing its screenwriter, David Hare.

If you haven’t heard by now, “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close,” adapted from the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, is a tough movie to watch, especially if you’re a New Yorker who was here on 9/11. But in my opinion, it’s well worth it; the engaging, entertaining and powerful story of an emotionally troubled Asperger’s kid who seeks to reconnect with the father he lost at the World Trade Center. The boy travels across the city trying to solve the riddle of a mysterious key he finds in his father’s closet a year after the attacks.

The film ended and there was applause, which doesn’t always happen at these things; we are, after all, jaded, Manhattan media sophisticates. The lights came up, I introduced Eric and Stephen and started to ask my first question.

Stephen interrupted (he’s a director). “I’d like to know what people think about the film. We’ve only just finished it and only shown it to a handful of audiences, so I’d like to know what you think.”

Silence.

I think we’re all experiencing a bit of shellshock, I said. Most of us were here on 9/11. Ten years later, it’s still kind of raw. Stephen repeated his question – what did you think?

Slowly, people began to respond, positively for the most part but in each of us the film triggered memories. People had friends in the buildings. A man who worked as an extra in the film – you see a split-second shot of him in a Batman costume – had a job in wire transfers at Bank of America. He worked the night shift at the Trade Center and left just minutes before American Airlines Flight 11 hit the North Tower. He’s still suffering from survivor guilt.

For me, it was a moment toward the end of the film when the boy, Oskar (an incredible performance by young, first-time actor Thomas Horn), visits an office downtown in the middle of the night. Security takes his photo and prints out a building ID. That would seem innocuous to most, but I remembered an evening about a week and a half after what Oskar calls “the worst day.” George Bush was addressing a joint session of Congress.

My then wife and I were burning candles to cover the smell from Ground Zero, which had shifted that rainy night from an odor of burning electrical cables and melted metal to something more feral and decaying. As we listened to Bush and I made dinner, she sat and sorted through a basket of odds and ends, then handed me something: a security ID with my picture — like Oskar’s — but taken the last time I had gone to the World Trade Center for a meeting.

The rest of my interview with Stephen and Eric went like that. I got a couple of my original questions in, but the evening had turned into a group therapy session, and that was fine. As Daldry recently said in the Los Angeles Times, “It’s a loss that’s very public and one that everyone has very rich stories about. One has to be responsible to the original author’s book … and you have to be aware of the truth of the reality of what happened to thousands of people who lost loved ones.

I heard a new ad for ”Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” on the radio this morning, its pitch apparently readjusted, aimed at those averse to a movie about the Trade Center calamity. It’s “not about 9/11,” the spot’s announcer declared, “but every day after.”

Nice try. The question is, as Stephen told the Times, “Is it time? Can we start to tell these stories yet or is it too early?” The film opens nationally on January 20. Spend a couple of hours in a darkened movie theater and find out what you think.

Michael Winship is senior writing fellow at Demos and a senior writer of the new series, Moyers & Company, airing on public television. More Michael Winship.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 16 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations