10 Years Ago…A Family Odyssey (part 4)

This is Part 4 of a series. You can find the other parts at Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

Day Four: Friday September 14, 2001

Bright and early, we piled back into the car for the next leg of our journey. We had a sort of deadline in that Northwestern’s orientation was to begin at 6:00 that evening. I was calculating that the drive from Toronto to Chicago would be about 8 hours, so we would be there in plenty of time.

As we headed toward the border, traffic was getting heavy, and the radio was reporting delays ahead. I remembered the advice I had been given the night before, and we got off the highway and started heading north. It only took about a half hour to get to the border crossing that had been suggested. We passed a few signs and a couple of cute gift shops that confirmed we were on a native Canadian reservation. As we approached the border crossing, we were suddenly in a long line of cars. Even worse, what had not been told to us was that this border crossing required a ferry, which only ran once per hour. So we sat waiting for almost a full hour for the ferry to arrive, then it took another half hour to load the cars aboard, a 15-minute ride across the river, and then some additional time to unload. We had lost significant time. Continue reading “10 Years Ago…A Family Odyssey (part 4)”

10 Years Ago…A Family Odyssey (part 3)

Part 1 of this article can be found here, and part 2 can be found here.

Day Three: Thursday September 13, 2001

When I awoke the next morning, Beth was already out and about. I went off to deliver the 35mm print of “Ball in the House” and to arrange for a tech check later in the day. The streets in Toronto’s Yorkville neighborhood were not bustling the way they usually are in the middle of the festival. Walking back to the hotel, I ran into Paul Cohen, then the head of Manhattan Pictures. He greeted me with “Have you found a way back to New York yet?” I responded, “I just got here last night.” He said “You’re kidding.” I explained that I had driven up to deliver the print and to premiere my film. He informed me that all the Americans at the festival were gone already or were desperately trying to get home, by whatever means necessary. My heart sank as I realized that whatever hopes we had of making a distribution deal on the film at the festival were pretty much over.

I found Beth back in the hotel room with the kids. She told me she had gotten up early and gone into the underground shopping mall that lies beneath the Marriott to get coffee. She bought a local newspaper, sat down with her coffee and as she started reading, she began to cry. That newspaper was to be the beginning of a collection of local newspapers that she began to acquire as we continued our trip. Continue reading “10 Years Ago…A Family Odyssey (part 3)”

10 Years Ago…A Family Odyssey (part 2)

Part 1 of this article can be found here.

Day Two: Wednesday September 12, 2001

When morning arrived, the apartment started to empty out. Subway service had been partially restored, and there was now a way for everyone to get home. Everyone, that is, except for Laura and her kids. Their Tribeca loft was still in a cordoned off zone, and it was unclear how much longer she would be kept from going home.

The phone rang, and it was a perfect stranger. This person wanted to reach out to a New Yorker to express her solidarity, so she dialed 212 and then her own phone number, hoping to reach someone that way. I thanked her for her good wishes, and it crossed my mind that this was the first time I had ever experienced being considered a “victim.” Continue reading “10 Years Ago…A Family Odyssey (part 2)”

10 Years Ago…A Family Odyssey

Day One: Tuesday September 11, 2001

It was one of those glorious mornings that the weathermen on TV refer to as “one of the top 10 days of the year.” There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and there was a hint of autumn in the air. The light was crystalline, with every detail in sharp relief.

Beth and I awoke with a lot on our minds.

It was the first day of school for our daughter Emily, who was entering the 10th grade.  Our son Jeff was already packed in preparation for his first year of college at Northwestern; he was to fly to Chicago with Beth on Friday. I was about to meet up with my producing partner Stephen Dyer to fly to Toronto for the world premiere of our film “Ball in the House.” It was also Election Day.

My bag was packed and sat in the foyer by the front door of our apartment on the Upper West Side, as I headed out to the polling place down the block. As I was leaving the building, the doorman said, “Did you hear? A plane flew into the World Trade Center.” I turned to him and nodded. I didn’t think much of it, since I knew that over the years, a number of planes had flown into the Empire State Building. I pictured a small Cesna crumpled against the building. Continue reading “10 Years Ago…A Family Odyssey”

A Proud Dad

I’m ecstatic to report that my son Jeff’s feature documentary “11/4/08” will have its World Premiere at the SXSW Film Festival in March. The film is what he calls a participatory documentary, in that many people contributed footage from around the world, and the film will exist as an ongoing project in which anyone can still submit footage and create their own personal versions of the film.

Check out the trailer and Jeff’s op-ed piece, both now available exclusively available at Mediaite.com, a highly-trafficked news and media website.

Also, you can still participate in the film… Continue reading “A Proud Dad”

After 3 Months on Twitter, still wondering…

TwikiniAbout 5 or so months ago, David Pogue wrote in the New York Times that he had tried out Twitter and wasn’t sure what it was good for. He wrote “Like the world needs ANOTHER ego-massaging, social-networking time drain? Between e-mail and blogs and Web sites and Facebook and chat and text messages, who on earth has the bandwidth to keep interrupting the day to visit a Web site and type in, “I’m now having lunch”? And to read the same stuff being broadcast by a hundred other people?” But then he had a revelation. He was on a panel and used Twitter to send out a quick request for an answer to a question, and got dozens of immediate responses from his followers.  Continue reading “After 3 Months on Twitter, still wondering…”