September 11, 2001 at the Toronto International Film Festival: A reminiscence.

As some of you who have followed my work over the years may have noticed, not only am I not at the Toronto International Film Festival this year, but this is the first time I haven't been at the Toronto International Film Festival in many years. And hence, it is the first time I've spent September 11 in my home base of Brooklyn, New York since well before September 11, 2001. It's odd. To be perfectly blunt, I would have been happy to spend September 11 of every year until the day I died in Toronto, for reasons that are both complicated and, I will insist, not unpatriotic. I'm not in Toronto now because the trip there just wouldn't have made sense in my current situation—just got back from another trip, too much work at home, and so on—and that's the way it goes. But Toronto has a special place in my heart, or perhaps to be less soppy I should say my consciousness, on account of having been there on September 11, 2001, and for many days after that.

I had seen some pretty fantastic films prior to that day. Claire Denis' cataclysmic mini-apocalypse Trouble Every Day, Eric Rohmer's stately, quirky, acute The Lady and the Duke, and Catherine Breillat's searing Fat Girl particularly stand out in my mind. As does Kiroshi Kurosawa's Pulse, which ended (almost) with the image of an unmanned plane flying head-on into a building. I remember after Fat Girl a bunch of us walking out, utterly shaken, trying to work it out by saying, "Boy, that ending was a little arbitrary, wasn't it?" September 9 was Premiere's party at the popular Italian restaurant Prego. The party had begun as a subdued cocktail hour in an isolated upper room of the place, but my colleagues Jim Meigs and Kathy Heintzelman had help build it up to THE party at the fest. Now Jim was gone; Michael Solomon had taken his slot as editor-in-chief, and I don't think he'll mind me saying that now he was reaping the benefit of the work that had been done before his tenure. David Lynch showed up with his two Mullholland Drive stars, Naomi Watts and Laura Elena Harring. "Thanks for the four-star review, Glenn!" Lynch shouted at me as he took a bite from a slice of Prego's Sicilian pie. "Hey, great pizza!" I actually had the stones to ask Harring about her turn in Lambada:The Forbidden Dance. "That was actually the film that began my love affair with the dance," she said with all sincerity. Even I don't believe how I worked the room that night. I chatted up Harring, then Jennifer Love Hewitt (in town to shoot The Penguin with Jackie Chan), then starlet Zoe Saldana (who had just wrapped Crossroads with Britney Spears); then I met a beauteous young columnist for the Toronto Globe and Mail, one Leah McClaren, who I introduced to Mr. Richard Harris, who was seated on a couch, drawing from a seemingly bottomless glass of red wine, next to none other than Ms. Sissy Spacek. By this time I had sweated right through my shirt. (My boss Mr. Solomon was duly impressed; he later marveled to a colleague, "Glenn really has remarkable confidence with women.") I told Mr. Harris that I had encountered Jimmy Webb, of all people, at the food court of LaGuardia Airport before setting out to Toronto. He said: "Jimmy Webb!!! Hahahahahahah!!!" It was so great. As was the evening of September 10th, when I had a dinner with Lady and the Duke star Lucy Russell, who had been in Christopher Nolan's Following and who, goddammit, should be a major film actress today. Sweet, smart, great company, and the star of what I still consider a great film. I swear to you, then, that on the early morning of September 11, as I flossed my teeth in the well-appointed bathroom of my room at the Toronto Park Hyatt, I actually was telling myself how blessed and happy I was. I was seeing great films, meeting great people; my new boss was getting into the swing of things; it looked to be a beautiful day; God was in his heaven, and so on. It got better. The 8:30 a.m. screening was of Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding, a complex and ultimately buoyant film. I don't think many will argue when I say that everybody coming out of that press screening had a spring in his or her step. My cheeriness hit a glitch when I came out of the screening and saw my friend Maggie Murphy, then of Entertainment Weekly, pretty much sobbing into her cell phone. I swear—again!—to you, my first thought was, "Oh, my. Did an uncle of hers die or something?" I approached her to ask what was wrong and if there was anything I could do. "They bombed the World Trade Center," she said. I grabbed her and we ran downstairs our of the Manulife Center. There was an HMV, or somesuchthing, across Bloor Street, that had lots of TV monitors throughout the store. We rushed in. "Do you have cable?" I shouted at one of the clerks—all the monitors had music videos running on them. "No, we don't," the clerk sputtered. "Do you know why I'm asking?" I shouted. "Yes, I do," he said. We ran back to the Park Hyatt, gathered back in my colleague Kathy's room and watched the television. Pretty much silent, except for an odd "Oh my God." Soon I went upto my room and began frantically calling friends—my Close Personal Friend Ron Goldberg was living on Pearl Street at the time so I was particularly (as Pete Puma would say) worrrrried about him—and getting a busy signal every time out, even when I called relatives in Jersey. You know what worked? Freaking AOL worked. Once I got reassurance via that conduit that most of my nearest and dearest were okay, I slithered from my room. My then-boss Michael Solomon was a real champ throughout. He left it open for everyone at Premiere who was there: Do what you have to do. If you want to go home now and you can, do it. If you want to hang out in Toronto on Premiere's dime, do it, no strings attached, even though the Festival was now suspended. He picked up a very expensive, very somber dinner for the staffers who hadn't yet rented cars and hightailed it out of there that night. I figured I'd stay. I was unattached at the time, except to my cat; and my live-in landlord and his wife were looking after him at the time and they reported that, aside from having been a little freaked by the noise, he was fine. Might as well stick around and do my job, as much as I could, if and when they started up the fest again. Next afternoon festival head Piers Handling announced, respectfully, that the festival would in fact go on. I thought it was, finally, the right decision; by the same token, if I ever see the guy who stood up and started clapping as the announcement was fed through video monitors at the Hyatt, I will break his neck. There had already been some "chickens come home to roost" commentary on Canadian TV; but the Torontonians I met on the streets, in the bars, wherever, were uniformly generous and kind. The aforementioned Leah McClaren treated me to a lavish dinner at Toronto's best seafood restaurant, and we talked the night away. The bar at the Park Hyatt was a scene out of a post-modern Casablanca—a motley crew of internationals waiting to get out, and making the most of it while they couldn't. Particularly conspicuous was the all-star cast of Fred Schepsi's Last Orders. I was talking to a fellow U.S. citizen at the bar when Ray Winstone, recognizing our Yank accents, came up to us, draped his arms over both our shoulders, and said, "We're with you, mates!" Then there was Winstone's costar David Hemmings, a far cry from his sleek Blow-Up days indeed, at the bar doing magic tricks, of all things, an articulating his at the time tonic, hilariously belligerent political philosophy: "I say bomb 'em all...starting with Northern Ireland!" And he'd laugh this obscenely boisterous laugh as he tucked in to another round. I told him how much I loved Profondo Rosso, and he was delighted: "Dario Argento? The maestro? Nobody ever brings him up..." Now I'd always been a fan, but God, I did fall in love with him on those nights. God rest his soul. And then there was the quiet, brilliant, terribly sympathetique Claire Denis, with whom I and another film writer spent many hours, hanging in the back room of the Hyatt's bar, watching CNN on the crappy rear-projection TV.Her film was called Trouble Every Day; that had been a Zappa/Mothers song about Watts; but she had her favorite band, the unearthly Tindersticks, come up with a very differently-toned but equally insinuating song of the same name for her film. And we crawled into our cups together and ruminated that now, yes, there would be trouble every day. By the 16th or so I was able to get on a train from Toronto to New York; Richard and Mary Corliss were on it, and I nodded to them, but mostly I just wanted to smoke and bury myself in the volume of Kingsley Amis' letters that I had bought at Indigo. And when I got home I saw the smoke rising, and smelt the smell, as I got out of Penn Station; and I got home and comforted my pacing cat; and went to my local and found that one of my fellow regulars was only alive because he had been late to work, and that all of his colleagues were dead, and that he had been drunk ever since; and more. I think very often about all the people I mentioned above, and I've always been grateful to them for their fellowship and comfort, and that's, sort of I guess, the reason I'm missing Toronto right now. And, needless to say, I no longer consider the finale of Fat Girl to be arbitrary.

Comments

[Mike De Luca]

This is why I read this blog. With you, Glenn, it comes from the heart.

[Dave]

Tremendously honest and moving.

Thank you.

[Mark]

Great writing Glenn.

On the morning of September 11th I was off work and watching Mark Kermode's documentary about the making of 'The Shawshank Redemption'. Once it finished I switched over and watched the second plane go in. Over the next few hours I felt the gradual realisation that I was watching the world change in front of me.

I pray America has the sense to remove the belligerent Republicans from the White House this November. Can you imagine McCain and Palin's response to a moment like 9/11?

Best wishes from the UK.

[Stephen Whitty]

Thanks Glenn, for this.

I was at that "Monsoon Wedding" screening too, left on a high, and then came out to see everyone standing open-mouthed around TVs. Sort of went on autopilot; went in a daze to a publicist's office to pick up tickets and then as it sunk in watched it, again and again. (With Adrienne Shelley, of all people, rest her. How weird is that?)

What I most remember -- apart from the first day of watching it, over and over, and wondering where the hell the president was -- was how wonderful the Canadians all were. The immediate blood drive at the Manulife Center. They way even waitresses would break off to urge me to take the train home instead of fly -- "It's a lovely ride!" And the final relief when an Air Canada flight came through.

No, I won't forget that day either -- particularly for how, as Ray Winstone expressed, so many people were with us then, and how quickly that good will was squandered.

[bill]

Fantastic piece, Glenn. I was on a bus on the way to work that morning, listening to it all on my walkman. Everyone else on the bus was (or seemed to be) oblivious. At one point, the bus had to stop, so the police could roust a couple of guys who had either snuck on, or were drunk -- can't remember which. Anyway, everyone on the bus had to get off, and I stood there, with this catastrophe ringing in my ears, watching these guys get rousted, and all the while I wanted to stop everyone and say, "Don't any of you know what's going on right now?"

[Tony Dayoub]

I was at my old job, a deadline driven legal firm that shall remain nameless, and we were all crowded around a TV agape. Only the first plane had hit when my boss walks in and says, "Okay, folks, I know this is awful, but let's get back to work. They're just replaying the same stuff here. It's not like there's going to be another one."

Then moments later there was. And for once, do I wish he would have been right.

[Mark Salisbury]

Just echoing the above. A great piece Glenn. I was in Paris seven years ago today having just interviewed Audrey Tautou for Premiere when the WTC was hit. I remember walking around Paris in a daze when I heard the news, desperately looking for a bar with a TV set (rather difficult as it turned out), thinking the world would never be the same again...

[Campaspe]

What a beautiful post. Thank you for it.

I had briefly met two young men who died at Cantor Fitzgerald that day. One of them was the elder son of a professor I had worked for and loved dearly. This son was an amazingly handsome young man with a brilliant talent for derivatives; he had begun working there in August. The other man I had met at a party about a week before when he was eagerly chatting up a beautiful friend of mine.

It's hard for me to think about anything related to that day, or indeed the weeks after. My husband and I went to Beth Israel to donate blood for survivors who never arrived. It was a huge line that snaked out the door, and as I walked out after donating I could hear people in it talking in French, Swedish, Russian, Hebrew and a number of other languages I didn't know. Everyone wanted to do something, anything.

On a perfect fall day a few years ago I was out with a bunch of girlfriends and someone remarked on the weather. Without thinking I replied what had been in my mind all day: "It's 9/11 weather." Every New Yorker at the table immediately said sadly that yes, they'd been thinking of that too. We are probably fated to think of that all our lives.

I fell in love with David Hemmings in Blow Up and it's touching to hear that he provided some cheer for you amid the gloom. I wish his filmography were longer.

[Mary Kay]

I was in my living room in Maumee, Ohio, flipping channels to Sesame Street for my son when I caught a glimpse of the report just minutes after the first plan hit. After I got the TV to PBS, I ran to the back room and turned on the TV there and watched. It was such a beautiful day out, just like today. And I remember thinking that all the violent movies I'd ever seen were so obviously fake, because real violence is unbearable. How all you New Yorkers were able to deal is a mystery to me, because here in my little house in Ohio, far away from New York City, I was in shock. I prayed for all of you as hard as I have ever prayed in my life. It was a very bad day.

[Herman Scobie]

I was lucky enough to get one of the last trains out of Penn Station back to New Jersey, after breathing in ash as I hurriedly left work. Sitting in front of me were two men who had escaped the first tower. One told of stepping over bodies while the other, who never spoke, simply nodded. As we left the tunnel into Secaucus, we could see the second tower in flames. A couple of minutes after we could no longer see it, a man on a cell phone said it too had fallen. The two men remained quiet the rest of the trip, obviously in shock.

[Ed Hulse]

Mark from the U. K. asks, "Can you imagine McCain and Palin's response to a moment like 9/11?" Yes, Mark, I can. That's the main reason I'm voting for them.

[Robert]

Mark from the U. K. asks, "Can you imagine McCain and Palin's response to a moment like 9/11?" Yes, Mark, I can and that's the main reason I'm NOT voting for them.

[Dan]

@ Mark and Ed Hulse

You know, I was wondering how long it would take for a tribute to 9/11 to degrade into election-year flamebait bullshit.

[EOTW]

That morning, I was making love to my fiancee (who I didn't end up marrying) and i realized that it was the morning Bob Dylan's "Love & Theft" came out, so after I showered, I jumped in my car and headed to the store, listnieng to NPR and htey said something abotu a small plane hitting one of towers, before I got into the store, they announced it was an airliner and I knew it was trouble.

I got into the store as it opened, got my Dylan and asked, kinda casually, if they had heard anything else. the guys looked at me with a "What?" expression, clearly not news followers. I told them I had heard someone crashed a plane into the WTC and one of them flipped a TV on and I saw the first image of all the fire and smoke.

That whole day was spent around the tube, as it was for a lot of us Americans, my mouth gaped open, and yet, not as surprised as i thought I'd be. I didn't get my first listen of the Dylan CD until later that night. We had some friends over for dinner and I spun it and it really blew me down. I think I listened to it for months on end. Stil do.

7 years later, that day is still fairly vivid. I never married that girl. I met my wife three years after that day, married her and had the most amazingly, beautiful baby girl the world has ever seen and consider myself lucky to just be alive and happy and not guilty about it.

Life goes on, until it doesn't.