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Film

Director Paul Greengrass Flies United 93  E-mail
Written by Brad Balfour   
Monday, 19 February 2007 09:42
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If you have seen director Paul Greengrass's earlier docu-fiction feature, "Bloody Sunday"--which captures that fateful day in Derry, Northern Ireland, when 13 unarmed protestors were gunned down by British troops sparking "The Troubles" there--you would know that he can handle this assignment. 

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Paul Greengrass at the South Bank Show Awards in London, where he received the award for best film

 

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Greengrass on the set of "United 93"

 

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A still from "United 93"

 

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FAA Operations Manager Ben Sliney portrayed himself in the film

So despite all the trepidation about making a film about 9/11, the producers of "United 93" did the right thing by putting this most controversial film in the hands of a man who knows the fine balance between drama and sensationalism. Loaded up with generally unknown actors to add to the authenticity, the film also utilizes real military air traffic controllers, FAA air traffic controllers, and actual United flight crews in some scenes. The film was shot with basic portable cameras rather than more expensive equipment for the immediacy. Families of the 40 passengers and crew members killed on Flight 93 cooperated in the production, offering Greengrass detailed background about their loved ones. The actors who played the terrorist hijackers and the passengers and crew on the flight were kept separated so that the director could capture the fear and hostility; once they had the background of their characters in mind they improvised a good part of their scenes.

So it was most fitting that this, the first serious feature film about such a sensitive subject, would open the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival--five years after 9/11. The filmmakers donated a percentage of the opening weekend proceeds to the Flight 93 memorial near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Even though Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center" [read our interview with Maria Bello] was the higher-profile film with more established actors, "United 93" garnered Greengrass and the film a Best Directing and Best Editing Oscar nom this year.

Q: How did you feel making the first major studio project about that day?

PG: The stakes were high. It's an important subject. It affects many people's lives. There's a responsibility to be mature and not cause offense but to tell the truth as you see it. We made some decisions on what kind of a film would stand the best chance for fulfilling that criteria. This was a small film. It wasn't a big blockbuster filled with movie stars. You have to look at the stakes before you start and you have to be clear about what you want to do, what you want to say.

Q: What did you want to say then?

PG: Well, that it seems to me that in my country and yours, we're not agreeing about what's happened since 9/11. But I wanted to reach back to the common ground, and the common ground is whatever it is that happened that morning. I think we all agree with that so lets go back and look at it.

Let's try and examine in detail, and see what it can tell us about what happened and where we've come from. And I think, I hope, that it does that. There will be many other films to be made about this subject, believe me but I thought that that was a responsible and a reasonable place to start.

Q: There are the recent cockpit flight recordings that were released, okay, but how did you gather all the information this film was based on?

PG: We subsequently got some tapes from N.E.A.D.S, the military recordings and we were pretty close, you know?

When I made this film, bear in mind, I spent a good deal of my career making films about these kinds of subjects. A lot in Northern Ireland, but not just Northern Ireland, but in the Middle East and elsewhere, not everything I've ever made has been on the subject of terrorism, but I've returned to it numerous times and I suppose over the years that there is a place for films that tell you what happened.

Now, you have to gather your material as comprehensively and as reasonably as you can within a period of time that you've got to make the film. You need, from my view, to gather together people who can help you,who are willing to recreate that from a position of expertise. You can't just do it with actors, although actors are important.

You need to get the cross fertilization between actor and professional people, so that you gather together in a place for a couple of months, and together you say let's try to explore a believable truth based on what we can know. You gather together a group of actors, the families, real pilots, real stewardesses, real military, from that day real air traffic controllers, various people; and you have a conversation. You don't all agree with each other--on the contrary, you try and synthesize this thing.

Would you really have picked up a trolley and run it from the back of the plane? The mythology is I believe, that the passengers ran the trolley from the back of the plane. Well, when you sit in a real airplane with real stewardesses, they will tell you that that could not have happened because they have a hard enough time walking the trolley up and down the aisle; secondly you're sitting there, 40 feet or less from a person with a bomb... would you really advance on a person from behind a trolley? Or would you choose your biggest fastest person and run because speed would be of the essence. Forgive thoughts of judgment on an attempt to time to create something that feels truthful.

 



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