Networks Struggle With 9/11 Programs

As the six-month anniversary of Sept. 11 approaches, the first of many documentaries about the brutal events of the day are about to appear on America’s television sets. Hunched over video editing machines in darkened rooms, network executives and filmmakers are sifting through hours of disturbing video and grappling with just how graphic to be.

Producers are walking a fine line between portraying the events honestly without being insensitive to viewers and victims’ families. But even the decisions to broadcast any footage of the events has angered some victims, who say the films, which are being done largely without profits for anyone involved, are coming too soon.

In CBS’ two-hour “9/11,” which is set to air Sunday night, cameraman Jules Naudet enters New York’s chaotic World Trade Center and sees two people on fire but doesn’t film it. “No one should see this,” Naudet is heard to say. The filmmaker, with his brother Gedeon, got dramatic footage of the day, including the only known image of the first plane to hit the towers, because they were already at work on a film about a probationary New York firefighter.

“We gave our word to the firefighters that this would be something good and positive,” he said.

But in an unfinished version of HBO’s May 26 “In Memoriam,” still frames taken from video show victims plunging to their deaths, their bodies caught against the familiar World Trade Center facade in eerily balletic poses. Subsequent pictures show the aftermath when someone hit the ground: a pool of blood, a mangled hand.

Sheila Nevins, HBO’s executive vice president for original programming, said the images will be “diffused,” some may be removed from the final version, and no one will be recognizable. “I don’t think any kid is going to look at this film and say, ‘That’s my father.’ It’s just not going to happen,” she said.

Nonetheless, Nevins said: “I think that you certainly don’t want to offend or cause trauma to any individual, [but] at the same time, you don’t want to euphemize history, so that the reaction is ameliorated by the extensive editing of what is a horrible, visceral, disgusting event.”

“I think it would be irresponsible for educational purposes for generations to come, to not see the reality of what happened and to learn from it,” said Brad Grey, the producer of such series as “The Sopranos,” who brought the project to HBO.

The filmmakers say their projects are meant to pay tribute to the rescue workers, raise money for the families of victims or, at the least, serve as historical documents.

HBO’s film, which follows New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani through the day and incorporates video from more than 100 mostly amateur sources, is headed for the Museum of the City of New York.

Peter Schnall embarked on “New York Firefighters: The Brotherhood of September 11th” for the Discovery Channel just two days after the attacks, “because we live here, this is our city, this is where the attack happened, and we all felt very overwhelmed. This is the best way we could do something, to help people understand.”

But representatives of some victims’ families say noble motives aren’t enough. “The timing will be good in some period of time, just as it’s fine now to talk and view footage of the Holocaust,” said Roderick MacLeish Jr., president of the Massachusetts 9/11 Fund. “But the public’s interest in knowing needs to be weighed against the traumatic impact on those affected. For these victims of trauma, who are just starting to get into therapy and treatment, it is enormously upsetting and disturbing.”

Families already have searing images of the planes and crashing towers “indelibly etched into their memories,” MacLeish said, “and they just don’t want to see any more visions of this again right now.”

Susan Zirinsky, an executive producer of CBS’ film, counters that the timing is right. “We can’t forget what drove this country to be at war, which we are in right now,” she said, suggesting that the “9/11” broadcast “is about strength and courage, as well as about remembering the pain.”

For HBO, “Memorial Day seemed an appropriate commemorative day,” Nevins said, adding that “history needs to be recorded at the moment of impact and what lives on tells the truest story. If you wait 10 years to tell the story, it’s not going to work.”

Audience reaction to the first projects--Discovery’s can be seen Friday--could determine how later projects evolve. Sept. 11 was so unprecedented, “They haven’t written books about [people’s ability to deal with] this stuff; everything we do, we wing it,” said Lt. Gerard Murtha, whose Rescue 3 squad, which lost eight men, allowed Schnall’s cameras in its firehouse just weeks after the attacks. He said the firefighters and the victims’ families are pleased with the result.

There will be many more projects. Showtime has given grants to New York University student filmmakers to create short films about the events. In the last two weeks, a firefighter has been offering networks previously unseen footage. Schnall is contemplating a new project about the city’s police force. Networks are already debating how to mark the one-year anniversary, with one floating a plan to air a full 24 hours of programming.

For CBS, language was one issue, as the Naudets’ cameras captured firefighters using blunt words not allowed by CBS’ standards and practices department. Some profanity not normally permitted will be included, as actor Robert De Niro notes in the introduction.

But much of the internal debate has been about the images. Schnall’s film interviews survivors about their trek down the stairs and documents the emotional return of children to the firehouse where their fathers had been based. But it includes no pictures of the planes entering the trade center.

“We didn’t want to punctuate the horror in a manner that felt cheap,” he said. “The plane felt a little too much.”

By contrast, HBO’s documentary, as currently constructed, has video after video of the second plane hitting the trade center’s Tower 2, from several angles. Nevins said the final film will probably include three such versions. “This is what New Yorkers saw,” she said.

The Naudets’ CBS film is unique in that it captures the chaotic scene inside the trade center as the Fire Department responds. Many firefighters are shown heading up the towers, where some eventually died. Chaplain Father Mychal Judge is seen praying, followed later by firefighters retrieving his lifeless body.

James Hanlon, a firefighter who narrates the film, painstakingly tracked down families of all the men shown in the lobby who later died and offered them video of their loved ones. The film will also include a homage with names and pictures of all 343 firefighters who died, CBS said.

The victims who jumped or fell from the top floors of the trade center are to some extent the untold story of the day. Many witnesses recall them as providing the most disturbing images, but U.S. television largely cut the pictures from their broadcasts almost immediately. (Some European television channels aired the footage repeatedly.)

Schnall avoided those images altogether. “It felt insensitive and would be television at its worst,” he said. At some point, he said, “we have to come to terms with it, to understand it so we can move on,” but not now.

CBS’ film deals with the subject in a roundabout way. Early on, in a version screened for reporters Monday night, a firefighter is heard saying, “Those are jumpers.” Later, the film includes loud “thunks” that cause firefighters inside the trade center to flinch, the noise caused by bodies hitting a canopy. CBS chose to edit out some of those sounds.