One Last Thing | Film tells a classic American story
By Jonathan Last

For reasons both personal and professional, I may think about Sept. 11, 2001, more often than most people do.

More often than is healthy, I suspect. I work five blocks from the White House and pass the Pentagon every day going to and from the office. We have a lot of fire drills in my building, and when I'm smushed into the yellow cinder-block stairwell, I think about what it must have smelled and sounded like in the World Trade Center buildings as people struggled to escape. A member of my family was there. I think about her often, but I try not to contemplate her final minutes.

A few years ago, I wrote a piece about Shanksville ( go.philly.com/shanksville). I've traveled to the Flight 93 crash site - if you haven't gone yet, I hope you visit soon - and thought too much about that small, deadly space inside the Boeing 757. About how terrible it must have been to charge the aisle. About how much worse it would have been if they hadn't. I think about the passengers of Flight 93 whenever a plane buzzes by my house. I live three miles from an airport.

So I probably won't see Paul Greengrass' new movie, United 93. I think about that day all the time; I do not wish to see it unfold again.

Still, I hope that United 93 does well and that audiences embrace the film.

It was obvious that Flight 93 would some day be a movie. It's one of those moments in American history - like Davy Crockett at the Alamo or Joshua Chamberlain on Little Round Top - that begs to be shown on the silver screen. The story is so tragic, heroic, and important that no screenwriter could better it. But there are two other, less obvious, stories from Sept. 11 that Hollywood needs to tell, too.

First there's the story of Dave Karnes and Charles Sereika. As beautifully told in Slate by Rebecca Liss ( go.philly.com/liss), Karnes, a retired Marine, was working as an accountant in Connecticut on Sept. 11. When he learned the news, he left the office, went to the barber for a buzzcut, put on his old uniform, and made for Ground Zero.

There, Karnes hooked up with another man, one Sgt. Thomas (he never learned his first name), and went into the pile looking for survivors - this was after authorities had called back other rescue workers because the area was unsafe.

"United States Marines, if you can hear us, yell or tap!" Karnes shouted over and over through the smoke. After an hour, he heard something. He and Thomas found two Port Authority officers, Will Jimeno and John McLoughlin, alive under 20 feet of rubble.

Thomas went for backup, which arrived in the form of Charles Sereika, a recovering alcoholic and a former paramedic, who had also put on an old uniform and come to the crater on his own to help in some fashion. Sereika, Karnes and then others, dug for hours to rescue Jimeno and McLoughlin. They were the last survivors.

Oliver Stone is putting the finishing touches on this tale right now. It will be released this summer as World Trade Center.

The third 9/11 story, which no one in Hollywood has stumbled upon yet, is the account of how the Federal Aviation Administration landed 4,452 planes - that's 350,000 passengers and crew - in 180 minutes that morning. It might not sound dramatic. As an accomplishment, it's more Dunkirk than D-Day. But where United 93 tells of doomed heroism, and World Trade Center shows us selflessness giving way to redemption, the story of how the FAA, air-traffic controllers, and flight crews navigated that morning is about the rest of us. It shows how those who were scarred, but safe, first encountered this new world.

Helpfully for Hollywood, Alan Levin, Marilyn Adams and Blake Morrison of USA Today already have written the story in their brilliant series "Clearing the Skies" (go.philly.com/clear). The movie version practically writes itself.

Eventually, many movies will be made about Sept. 11. Someday a director like Michael Bay will make schlock pop-art about it, where a hero who plays by his own rules salvages a shred of victory from the carnage and gets the girl, too. We'll be lucky to have that sort of silly movie because it will signify that the world is safe again, that 9/11 has receded into history.

But that day is still far off. For now, it's good that the first panel of Hollywood's 9/11 triptych has been fashioned.
Contact Jonathan V. Last at jlast@phillynews.com.

Ellie