. Surrounded by people who love and support film. A lot gets written about the economics of the theatrical experience, but as a devoted film lover, the act of seeing a movie in a crowded theater with other people, never felt so important and life affirming as it did that week.”“I was in Toronto, and had a flight back to New York 9 a.m. on September 11. I still have the ticket somewhere. I woke up and an inner voice said, don’t get on that plane and I canceled my flight.
We were all staying at the Four Seasons. They cleared the foyer, entranceway, and they set up tables with seven televisions with live feeds. Literally, you would just hang out in the lobby because everyone was in such a stunned state, watching this endless loop of the towers coming down. It was just unbelievable.
I got back to Los Angeles and a colleague of mine, Ben Silverman, you know, who went on to be a big television guy, called me up and said, there’s these two young filmmakers called Jules and Geodeon Naudet, and they’d been calling the agency in London because they didn’t know anybody in California. They knew a friend of a friend, and they’d been calling saying they needed to talk to you.
I drove around Lake Ontario and there were a million trucks lined up, but the car lane was just me, and I drove to the border and the guy looked at me and he saw the stick, and I just said, go Leafs, and the guy just waved me through, and I start driving home. It got really late and I crashed in Syracuse, and I got into the Avis rent-a-car place in Newark airport, and people were pulling in from all over the country in rent-a-cars. I’d left my car there when I flew there, and went home.