Ten years ago, two French brothers, Jules and Gedeon Naudet, and firefighter/filmmaker James Hanlon, set about to make a film on the making of a NYC firefighter.
They wanted to document how a boy would become a man in nine months as a “probie” — a probationary firefighter.
Instead, they ended up filming how a boy became a man in nine hours — the amount of time probie Tony Benatatos spent on 9/11 at Ground Zero.
The Naudets were filming that Tuesday morning in September when they heard a roar overhead and pointed their camera upward. What they captured was the only known footage of the first plane hitting the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
The brothers never stopped filming as they followed the men of Engine 7, Ladder 1 (the house whose territory included the World Trade Center and were in fact the first first responders) into the towers.
When the film aired in March 2002, 35 million people tuned in. It remains the most extraordinary chronicle of that day that exists.
Now, 10 years later, the brothers, who have become New Yorkers through and through, have done something else extraordinary with their film: They’ve gone back and visited all the firefighters with whom they lived, worked and nearly died.
It’s a masterpiece of before, after and aftermath.
Frankly, if it wasn’t my job, I would not have watched this documentary — or, in fact, any of the other 40-odd 9/11 documentaries airing through this weekend. The only post-9/11 television event that made me personally feel better was President Obama’s announcement that they’d killed bin Laden, the son of a bitch behind the attack.
That said, if you are going to watch one documentary, make it this one, “9/11: Ten Years Later.”
The film had begun — and ended at the Duane Street firehouse, renamed the “Miracle House,” because even though they were the first firefighters on the scene that day, they did not lose a single man. Until now.
Several months ago, Randy Wiebacke, 56, and John O’Neil, 60, both died of diseases their doctors believe were caused by exposure to toxins from Ground Zero — the place that Mayor Giuliani and EPA Chief Christie Todd Whitman declared “healthy.”
Since you’re probably one of the 35 million who tuned into the first cut of the film nine years ago, I won’t retell the brilliance of it all — and the incredible bravery of the firefighters, and the filmmakers, who wouldn’t quit despite the world collapsing around them.
It’s the second part of the film, the new part — the tales of what happened to each of the members of the company — that will make you realize that — even though they didn’t pay with their lives that day — in fact, many did.
For many of them, life has been a hell of flashbacks, depression and, in some cases, fatal illnesses.
For others, it has been a life-affirming time. As Benatatos says at the end of the film, “The legacy of the Trade Center should be life. And humanity.”