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Monday, Mar. 11, 2002 / 11:44 a.m. ~Revisiting For Ratings~ The thing is, we all watched it. Sure, we watched it, we wanted to see, and how sick is that? But we think it was too soon. Yeah, it was too soon. Six months? Who decided six months was good? The tape would�ve waited. A year. Ten years. Never? Just like that day, and the days after, it was there, how could we not watch? I�m haunted today. By the footage of the firefighters in the Lobby of the Tower. Which one? Tower One, he wrote it on the desk so they�d all know. I keep seeing them standing around, trying to get organized, trying to figure out what to do, thinking they could put out the fire, thinking they could do something, but knowing that it was bad, this was really bad. And the sound of the bodies falling, hitting, whatever they were hitting, roofs, the ground. The BAM!, the jerking of shoulders, the looks in the eyes of those men, the camera rolling. I wanted to see, I wanted to know, and I sat on the edge of my seat, I couldn�t move, I had to get my clothes from the dryer and I ran back into the room to see it. To hear it. To watch those French brothers reconnect, hold on to each other, to watch all those men hugging and holding, dazed, dirty, confused. It was totally captivating, it sucked me in, every moment of it, but it brought it all back, didn�t it? It was like that day, all over again, but different, a different view, a �you are there� view. Six months? Is that why they showed it? And that little bit (what WAS that?!) with Tom Ridge made me want to puke� I�m exhausted. I stayed up �til around 3:00, watching �Short Cuts� on Sundance. Am I crazy? I couldn�t have slept anyway. I wasn�t tired, I slept late yesterday. And it�s a great movie, the way all those characters keep intersecting, every scene a revelation of sorts. I�d only seen it once, when it was first released in theatres. All I really remembered were the scenes of unabashed nudity, of a certain natural nudity. Julianne Moore standing with nothing on below her waist, cleaning her skirt after she�s spilled wine on it, confessing to her husband of an affair she�d had three years prior. Anne Archer rinsing her vulva in the bathtub after sex with her husband. Few bidets in this country, even in Los Angeles, she�s stepped in to rinse, hearing her husband confess to finding a dead body in the river where he�s just gone fishing with friends. Huey Lewis, removing his penis from his jeans to urinate in the river, before he sees the body of the dead woman in the water below. Madeline Stowe, posing totally nude for her sister while she paints her portrait. Those are the scenes I remembered, but obviously, at over three hours, there is so much more, there were so many layers to this film. I tried to go to sleep at certain points, but I wasn�t going to turn it off, and if it was on I was going to watch. Thusly, I�m exhausted. Totally. I couldn�t believe I drove here to work. I can�t believe I�m typing this right now. Every time the phone rings I can�t believe I know what to say, that I can answer questions, request the appropriate information. It�s mind boggling. But in quiet moments I�m seeing those men in their firefighting uniforms, standing there in that Lobby, wondering what to do next. And I�m seeing those two Frenchmen, those brothers, filmmakers, holding on to each other, kissing, crying. I see that man throw up into that trashcan, and I think of myself, coughing as I watched all that dust. Just watching it all billow around them, the one Frenchman cleaning his lens over and over, made me cough. And I�m thinking of how it felt to watch it all happen again, how this time I thought maybe it won�t happen. Like when you watch a movie where things only go downhill, and this time, when you see it again, you root for it all to work out right. You think this time she won�t go in the basement, this time he won�t get the axe in his skull, but it happens anyway, because it�s already on film, and you can�t change it. So, we can watch from any number of angles, any number of viewpoints, any number of locales, on video, or film, shot by a Frenchman, or an American, or anyone really, and it is still going to have the same horrible ending. Death and dust. Bodies slamming to the ground, and feet and hands and other parts that we only hear about and are so thankful they haven�t shown us. We don�t need to see that part, thank you, and isn�t it bad enough that you are not bleeping all the �FUCK�s and the �SHIT�s on Network TV?? Is nothing sacred anymore? Cost of the War in Iraq
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