This past week, Q-line asked: “Do you feel it’s a good time for Hollywood to dramatize the attacks, still fresh in our collective memories? Do plan on seeing United 93? Why or why not?” Here are your responses: ✆ “The making and release of these kinds of movies is sheer tasteless exploitation by the Hollywood moguls. But then there hasn’t been anything resembling good taste in movie-making for a long time. I don’t go to the movies anymore, along with a lot of my friends. We just rent videos and DVDs of the good old movies.” ✆ “No, I will not see the film. The only factual accounting of Flight 93 will be from where the aircraft ascended from, who was aboard and where the flight crashed terra firma. The rest will be a montage of trick photography and a story based on a film writer’s conjecture compounded by conjecture. It should be understood that there are people in New York City who believe that the United States Air Force, sensing the flight’s hijacked destination, shot the plane down.” ✆ “There are some people who need to be reminded about what happened on 9-11, such as (President) Bush. He spends all of his time on Iraq with his oil pals instead of trying to find Osama (bin Laden), and invades Iraq when he should have invaded Pakistan because that is where all of these terrorists are hiding out, because the so-called government of Pakistan doesn’t do anything about it and they claim to be our friends, but then with friends like that you don’t need enemies. Bush should be forced to see that movie. People on the ground knew more about what was going on than what he bothered to do because he spent several minutes in a classroom with a kid’s book when our nation was being attacked instead of getting out of there and doing something about it. It shows what kind of leadership we have in this country — a fool.” ✆ “No, I will not be seeing the movie Flight 93. Although my prayers are with the families, I don’t feel that this flight was any more or any less tragic than the other three flights on that very sad day of 9-11.” ✆ “Hollywood is a trash barrel. It has been for the past 20 years. They don’t make good movies because they got a lot of trash hags that can’t act. But Hollywood would make a movie out of your mother dropping the turkey on Thanksgiving. It’s just a shame that they would do something like this. I think they should take the residuals they get back from this movie and give it back to the families who were killed in this terrible tragedy, but then they won’t because the studios are controlled by a bunch of you-know-whos. Least I say any more? In regards to you and your paper, thank God you are on the line.” ✆ “During WWII, the movie studios filmed one war movie after another. Disney put aside their projects to churn out training films. Hitler and Hirohito were the wicked joke in many a cartoon and movie. The Nazis and Japanese were lurking everywhere while the eastside gang — Bogart, Cagney and all of Hollywood were chasing them. John Wayne kicked Vietnamese butt with green berets, so what’s wrong now with Hollywood filming the American flag over the evil al-Qaida? ✆ “Yes, I will see the movie on Flight 93. It’s time to see the heroes of that day. The movie, according to all the reviewers I have read, is one of the most excellent movies that is going to come out this year and it’s not manipulating with any sappy side stories. It’s just the camera being another passenger on that plane and they also show what the people on the ground were doing or not doing. They also make no comment on the president’s total lack of response. They just present the facts that speak for themselves. It’s a chilling movie and probably one very much worth seeing.” ✆ “I have little or no interest in seeing the government-backed version of what happened on 93 — I’m subjected to enough propoganda in the media without paying to sit for hours facing forward in a stranger-filled darkened room. Armed forces recruiters should find ‘lucrative targets’ among the well-qualified gullible streaming out of the theaters.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on May 6, 2006. Read the original PDF.