January 14, 2002

9:25 AM

A 90 minute uncut video of Sept 11We've all seen parts of it. However, we will probably never see the whole thing. Personally, that ticks me off. Why do only firefighters and family of victims get to see this? I don't like censorship in any form (meaning by the video company.) Especially in this event. Praises to anyone who can find the video. I wonder if it's out there on the net somewhere...lurking...waiting to be discovered....
posted by aacheson (42 comments total)

What a sobering experience it would be to see it. I'm sure it'll be released some day.
posted by Modem Ovary at 9:42 AM on January 14, 2002

Perhaps...but unedited?
posted by aacheson at 9:44 AM on January 14, 2002

Not anytime soon. But eventually.
posted by Modem Ovary at 9:48 AM on January 14, 2002

What is the value in seeing the raw unedited footage? Is it accuracy you're looking for? Do you want to try and experience that day again? Is that possible? When does it become entertainment?
posted by amanda at 9:52 AM on January 14, 2002

Yes, it should be released to the public...how else will we ever be blessed with a second version of this?
posted by HTuttle at 9:58 AM on January 14, 2002

This reminds me of the McVeigh execution broadcast. Why was it only for the victims? Are we not all, as fellow Americans entitled to see a function of our government carried out? Isn't it our business? It seemed showing the execution to only the victims pandered to the most vulgar motivation for execution, rather than one of public protection.

Similarly, the 9/11 attacks are obviously matters of public interest, whether you were related to a victim or not. How many of us felt like victims of terror, crying as we watched CNN? If it becomes entertainment for some people, that is their own problem to live with.
posted by McBain at 10:00 AM on January 14, 2002

Amanda, because I think I'm grown up enough to deal with it. People in Europe got more of the full story of what it was like than we did because our news self-censored what we saw and sanitized it. I would like to see it to grasp the full horror of it. All of it. It cathartic for me. It's surely not entertainment (I don't dig violent movies or TV shows) for me, it's information. And it ticks me off that it appears that someone has decided that I can't handle seeing it.
posted by aacheson at 10:01 AM on January 14, 2002

You can rest assured that if the tape is given to even a few families of the victims, somehow it will make its way into the public realm. Just the fact that this has had enough circulation to get a wire service news story written about it means that this will be everywhere faster than you can say "All your base are belong to us".
posted by briank at 10:04 AM on January 14, 2002

I, too, would like to see it. I remember the first time I saw this filmmaker's footage of the first plane striking Tower 1. It was late on Sept. 11th and CNN was interviewing somebody (sorry I don't remember who), and the anchor cut off the interviewee mid-sentence to introduce the footage. It was eerie to see the last few moments of 'normal' NYC life & intact WTC before all hell broke loose, starting with the roar of a low-flying jet. Heck, yeah, I want to see this, to relive the horror, drama and heroism of the most astonishing day in my life.
posted by msacheson at 10:05 AM on January 14, 2002

Aacheson, my roommate and I watched a lot of the Spanish station on our cable system on 9/11. They were showing everything they could. I saw some pretty horrible things that weren't really hinted at on CNN.
posted by McBain at 10:06 AM on January 14, 2002

Not anytime soon. But eventually.
posted by Modem Ovary at 10:13 AM on January 14, 2002

McBain, there's a Spanish station in MN? ;-)

Would you tell us (or me offline at [e-mail]) what some of those things were?
posted by msacheson at 10:15 AM on January 14, 2002

Curses. Sorry for the double post. My bad.
posted by Modem Ovary at 10:17 AM on January 14, 2002

i saw a few seconds of this late on september 11. you see a smiling fireman. you hear a roaring jet. you see the camera pan up and find the jet, you see it penetrate the structure, you hear the cameraman exclaim "holy fuck".
sountrack aside, i've often wondered why i've never seen that footage on tv since.
posted by quonsar at 10:21 AM on January 14, 2002

Would you tell us ... what some of those things were?
most of the us television coverage consisted of long shots of smoking towers. this was actually discussed in the WTC thread from 9/11 - for a time, it rained body parts. then entire bodies, as people leaped to escape smoke and heat. on the web is an account of an NYC resident who watched through binoculars as people joined hands and leapt from the roof. most of the grizzly horror at the scene never made it onto us television screens, and i assert that is the reason a lot of people just didn't get it like new yorkers get it. one NYC blogger recently visited the west coast and remarked that for people there, the WTC attack was already spoken of almost as an abstraction.
posted by quonsar at 10:32 AM on January 14, 2002

There was an article in the Seattle Times a while back (just found it here) about a woman who was nearby (in a hotel room) during the attacks, and got quite a bit of the event on tape - including pretty explicit shots of the many people jumping before the collapse. She has said she will never release the tape publicly, mostly for fear that it would end up being sold for grisly entertainment. As curious as I am, I think I might agree with her decision.
posted by kokogiak at 10:35 AM on January 14, 2002

But kokogiak, like quonsar said, for people out here (I'm in Cali.), it really is an abstraction. They don't really *get* it. If it rained body parts on someone in Berkeley or say, Barbara Lee, they would probably feel a little different about the "poor Taliban" than they do now. I agree that it would be disturbing for people to use it as entertainment, but I still feel it's important that we get the whole story.
I'll shut up now...

BTW-I bet she'd release it for enough $$$$.
posted by aacheson at 10:43 AM on January 14, 2002

Not anytime soon. But eventually.
posted by internook at 10:46 AM on January 14, 2002

If the material is out there, it will be available eventually, one way or the other.

I have no interest in watching it myself, I 've seen enough suffering already.I certainly can understand why people directly involved with it might want to watch some of it, but an hour and a half?Why would you want to put yourself through that?It would be like watching a video of a car accident, that killed someone you know, over and over again.

This material sounds like entertainment for the Faces Of Death crowd.I don't need or want to see footage of flying body parts or people jumping from buildings.I understand the curiosity of maybe wanting to take a peek at it, though.

The material should be available to those that want it, though, and it will be eventually.
posted by BarneyFifesBullet at 11:01 AM on January 14, 2002

This footage show be played on a major network, unedited with no commercial breaks, just like Saving Private Ryan or Schindler's List ( /announcer-voice The WTC Disaster Tape, brought to you by Ford! /announcer-voice).
posted by internal at 11:07 AM on January 14, 2002

Perhaps we can buy it on video like the Girls Gone Wild series.
posted by turbanhead at 11:09 AM on January 14, 2002

Perhaps we can buy it on video like the Girls Gone Wild series.

i am physically sickened, reading this.

while i do think there might be some validity to showing the footage to make the unreal more real to some, it is precisely this reaction, the nearly pornographic delight people will take in seeing that tape, that makes me think twice about it.

my friend david is dead. he's probably not on the tape. he was probably incinerated in seconds.

fuck you if you want to equate that in any way to the "girls gone wild" series.
posted by judith at 11:30 AM on January 14, 2002

Ya know, there was once a time when there was no videotape, and people had to actually try to grasp the severity of a situation without viewing it up close. From the article, there doesn't seem to be much on these tapes we don't already know. So why, exactly, do people feel it is so important to see them? Will seeing frieghtened people moments before they die help us in any way?
posted by Doug at 11:49 AM on January 14, 2002

Perhaps we can buy it on video like the Girls Gone Wild series.

I think somebody who views the deaths of 3000 as a mere abstraction just raised his hand.
posted by dhartung at 11:56 AM on January 14, 2002

Sundance is screening 5 documentaries this year which pertain to Sept. 11th.
posted by msacheson at 11:57 AM on January 14, 2002

In Stan's (turbanhead's) defense, he lives in Brooklyn and I think he was trying to make the same point that judith and dan are.

That being said, there are probably thousands of people who would view the tapes that way, without being ironic or facetious. It would be impossible to discern who falls into which category if (when, really) the tapes come out.

Let alone the people who fall into both categories, since there are probably many who are both voyeurs and who would want to see the tapes to help them understand what happened.
posted by anildash at 12:02 PM on January 14, 2002

I don't like censorship in any form

so every piece of documentation of Our American Experience needs to be available to all Americans? Really? You have been swallowing too much Internet hype.

The year before I went away to college, a kid killed himself by drinking cyanide on camera at the college cable station. It was a huge freaking mess. The tape of that show made its way into the bizarre underground circles of the school and there was definitely some sort of "did you see it?" buzz going around. Sickening, but not super-surprising. The parents of the kid sued [and won?] to get copies of the tape back. Of course, once it's out it's never truly back.

I would not want the last images of my spouse or family member alive turning up in something like this.
posted by jessamyn at 12:21 PM on January 14, 2002

Not anytime soon. But eventually.

Internook. I completely agree.
posted by Modem Ovary at 12:23 PM on January 14, 2002

Amanda, I don't think this would ever become entertainment, in the same way that footage of holocaust horrors have not become entertainment. I would welcome the release of the footage, unedited, after maybe a year or two had passed. I think it's important to remember those images rather than rush to erase the WTC from movies and to commemorate statues of flag-raising firemen.
posted by holycola at 12:28 PM on January 14, 2002

>so every piece of documentation of Our American Experience needs to be available to all Americans? Really? You have been swallowing too much
Internet hype.

I don't think either of the examples I gave compare (I know your comment was not necessarily directed at me).

The McVeigh execution is an act of our government, carried out at our behest.

The WTC is often called an act of war, and we have subsequently toppled a nation directly.

The kid killing himself was obviously a "stunt", however morbid, not an issue of public interest.
posted by McBain at 12:33 PM on January 14, 2002

"holy fuck".

Not anytime soon. But eventually.

New MeFi taglines, anyone?
posted by adampsyche at 12:37 PM on January 14, 2002

Ah yes, sarcasm does not translate well in the electronic medium. Let me clarify my original post.

I was merely stating that this so called "new" footage will be packaged and shoved down our throat in one of many ways - 1) an very special look at September 11th with the every sexy Paula Zahn or 2) now available on tape, unseen footage of September 11th etc.

How many times have you watched the playing and replaying of the existing footage? For the first two months you couldn't flip through a station showing the crashes in reverse angle, slow motion or EXTREME CLOSEUP.

I know personally of people who were affected by what happened in NYC on September 11th. While I do not personally know of anyone who perished, I do not take the events that took place on 9/11 and thereafter lightly.

The deaths of the 3000 or so in the WTC disaster is no more or less appalling that the raw footage of Nazi atrocities, the raw footage of Khmer Rouge or what took place in Rwanda. being incinerated in an instant seems a much less terrible way to die than being hacked to death by a rusty, dull machete as were so many in Central Africa.

We American's don't have a monopoly on grief or shock. Sometimes being a superpower numbs us to the fact such things have taken place in more extreme forms elsewhere in the world.

Remeber judith, dhartung et. al., - attack the argument not the person, unless you don't have something valid to argue about in the first place.
posted by turbanhead at 12:42 PM on January 14, 2002

New MeFi taglines, anyone?

Not anytime soon. But eventually.
posted by msacheson at 12:44 PM on January 14, 2002

We American's don't have a monopoly on grief or shock. Sometimes being a superpower numbs us to the fact such things have taken place in more extreme forms elsewhere in the world.

clearly. but that's not what this is about at all. i wouldn't want to see slickly marketed videos of rwandan massacres either.

Remeber judith, dhartung et. al., - attack the argument not the person...

you'll note that i said "fuck you if...", leaving open the possibility that you might have been attempting sarcasm. while that specific comment struck me most vividly, certainly there were others in the thread that came close.
posted by judith at 12:52 PM on January 14, 2002

i'll wait for the movie of the week. i prefer my disasters with hollywood actors. hhhmnnn, maybe leanardo dicaprio as a firefighter, and julia roberts as an ad exec in distress. could be worth watching.
posted by billybob at 2:25 PM on January 14, 2002

i'll wait for the movie of the week.

Not anytime soon. But eventually.
posted by laz-e-boy at 3:19 PM on January 14, 2002

well done, laz-e-boy!
posted by msacheson at 3:44 PM on January 14, 2002

I saw raw footage of the WTC area taped on the the 11th on MSNBC a few days after the attack. I am refering to an amateur video tape with sound, not a professional job. The program lasted about 90 minutes, and the firemen were all on radios and I could hear the dispatcher. It was horrifying, they didn't seem to understand what was happening.

I wonder if that was the same footage. Did anyone else see that?
posted by culberjo at 3:56 PM on January 14, 2002

"holy fuck".
Not anytime soon. But eventually.
New MeFi taglines, anyone?

Word.
You rock.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 5:20 PM on January 14, 2002

The footage on MSNBC was not the same footage described in the NY Times article. A lot of that was shot by a filmmaker from the Village... She nearly got blown away in the collapse and there is dramatic footage of the dust storm blasting by the store where she took refuge. This footage
is from a documentary in progress about Ny Firefighters.

As for the coastal divide, just returned to NYC from west coast and can attest that people there have already put the attack in the past, like a bit of history, even some who have visted here and gone to ground zero like tourists. But I was similarly blase when they had their earthquakes, so no hard feelings.
posted by Slagman at 5:32 PM on January 14, 2002

People don't always need to see something close up to take in the horror of the event.

Here in Australia, I saw the television footage and was shocked and stunned.

I read Metafilter comments for September 11th and cried.
posted by Tarrama at 6:38 PM on January 14, 2002

I have a strange feeling this footage may become the new centuries equivalant of the Zapruder film; rumored to exist, clandestinely traded, seen by few but nonetheless dissected by many.
As to whether I actually need to see the footage ...msachesons comment about the last few moments of "normal" strikes an emotional chord in me. Beyond that, however, I don't know if I really feel like turning the horror of that day into some kind of terrorist porn snuff film. Although, i don't believe it's content should be suppressed if someone feels the need to view it.
My best freind is an NYFD paramedic who has done several long shifts in the WTC wreckage. The grim details of the stories, that he and others have told me of that day, combined with the ruined NYC skyline I saw driving into the city recently tell me all I need to know about the horror of that day.
posted by jonmc at 9:12 PM on January 14, 2002