xtcian

9/10/02 Everyone reading this on

9/10/02

Everyone reading this on September 11th will no doubt be having a weird day; we're pretty resourceful, Tessa and I, and damned if we knew exactly what to do with the day. Fortunately, that decision has been largely made for us: we're on re-shoots, and therefore recreating Chapel Hill in 1929. However, if we had the choice, I think our positions would be very different. Tessa wanted to observe the day in some way, commemorate it somehow and I feel like I live it so often, and I'm taking so much Celexa to drive away the worst things it brought, that it reminds me of that old, tired fucking joke reprinted every year in Reader's Digest. The kid says to his mom, "There's a father's day and a mother's day, but no children's day!" and the mother replies wearily, "Every day is children's day!"

Which is to say, the gloom of that time has never left me. Anymore, I'm not interested in analyzing how our country is different, I just want to find solutions. To me, it comes down to this: in the long run, we can't stop terrorists, so let's take away the reasons terrorists hate us. It's as fucking simple as that. Unfortunately, we're saddled with an administration that seems to have no long-range thinking ability at all, as well as a toxic dose of pride, so I just have to remain hopeful that we'll eventually elect somebody with some Vision. You know, with a capital V.

Chances are I'd be stuck in "anniversary reflection" mode anyway, since today we revisited many of the locations we shot the movie almost exactly a year ago. The worst of them was Starpoint, which is now populated with what I can only describe as a non-racist skinhead metal groove band, an affable crew that let us fill their house with smoke that probably lingers there now, nine hours after the shot. The residents weren't the problem, it was just the peculiar smell and environment of the house, never a place to sit, the site of so many setbacks and awful Movie Moments that damn near had me convinced we were rudderless and adrift in the icy Atlantic.

We had barely recovered from the emotional toll of making the Pink House movie when we got back to New York and spent the 11th of September carrying soot-encrusted suitcases for refugees streaming up the West Side Highway. The words written those few days seem as visceral to me as they do now, and time has not melted those moments into anything more coherent. My thoughts don't feel any more finished now than they did then.

Maybe we were too close to it. Perhaps 40 blocks isn't far enough. The folks in Midtown seemed stunned but managed to eat; by the time you got to the Upper West Side, couples were flirting at Starbucks. Frankly, I don't see how the rest of the country mustered as much care as they did, and I wouldn't be surprised if they spent this September 11th feeling a little guilty that they don't care as much as they should. I wish I could care a little less, I really do. I wish I could stop reading news reports and macabre re-enactments of disaster and I wish various unsavory contingencies would stop pure-ing through my brain. I wish I'd stop looking at maps of how far we would be from potential targets, and how I'd get my family out of Brooklyn, and where we could move to grow our own corn. These thoughts don't paralyze me the way they did in January, but they follow me along like a crazy man stalking; always a block away, always just out of view, impossible to give professionals a description.

So I'll try to leave myself this day with a few positive things, since good can be found in the darkest of chasms. I think the tragedy cured me of my relationship fears, something that had plagued me for at least 15 years. After September 11, asking Tessa to marry me seemed so natural and wonderful and obvious. Something about the event acted as a polarizer: either you broke up with your significant other, or else you married them. For us, hardship bred intimacy, and that's a rarity to be celebrated.

And to a lesser extent, I've learned to celebrate innocence, if not in me, then in others. I've jettisoned a lot of my critical eye in favor of appreciating those people who give anything a fair shake no matter how misinformed. Even bad style is style tried, and that's such a brave thing to do in this increasingly boxed-in world. Being sarcastic and talking shit is as easy as eating candy, and believe me, I'll continue to do a lot of both. But when a handful of extras show up to the movie set like they did tonight, having driven hours through the North Carolina countryside for a non-speaking part in an independent movie with no money for three hours and still coming up afterwards, beaming, thanking me for putting them in my movie you understand such spirit is left in the world. These people all want to move to New York, for god's sake! If that kind of innocence in the face of terror doesn't give you some kind of hope, then you're not paying enough attention.

extras for the exterior "party shots" for the Pink House movie