French filmmakers Gedeon and Jules Naudet could have made a lot of money by selling their film footage of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Instead, they've made "9/11," a documentary produced as a "tribute" to the firefighters who rushed to the scene to save lives — many of whom lost their own in the effort.
"There was really no choice," Jules Naudet said of the project, which airs Sunday at 8 p.m. on CBS/Ch. 2. "We were approached by a lot of different television stations and cable, offering millions and millions of dollars for the footage. And from the beginning, it was never what it was about for us. We wanted to do, really, a tribute to the firefighters. . . . It was very important that this footage does not fall in the hands of people who would exploit or repeat it over and over and over again."
On Sept. 11, the Naudet brothers were 18 months into working on a documentary about New York City firefighters in lower Manhattan. It was Jules who accompanied firefighters on a routine call on Sept. 11 when he heard the roar of a plane, turned his camera up and captured the only known footage of the first plane to hit the WTC.
He then accompanied the firefighters to Tower 1, arriving within two minutes of impact to discover a horrific scene — not all of which appears in the documentary.
"People were on fire in the lobby," he said. "What we discovered later on was that the jet fuel had come down through the elevator shaft and created a fireball in the lobby. I remember as I entered, I glanced to my right and I saw that people were burning and decided right there that it was not something to show or to film. And for the rest of the day, I never filmed anything graphic in that sense."
And that's the word CBS is trying to get out to quiet some scattered protests by the families of victims and some politicians — that "9/11" is neither graphic nor exploitative. That both Jules Naudet, who was still in Tower 1 when Tower 2 was attacked and collapsed, and Gedeon Naudet, who rushed to the scene with firefighters and filmed from outside, self-censored even while filming.
"There are no gruesome or graphic pictures. . . . There isn't a frame that Gedeon and Jules shot that we can't put on television," said co-executive producer Susan Zirinsky. "Their focus was the determination and the incredible heroics of men being tested that did great things."
Not that the two-hour program isn't tough to watch. The language is raw and uncensored (host Robert De Niro warns viewers of that in his introduction), and there are the horrific sounds of people hitting the glass and metal awning outside Tower 1's lobby as they leaped to their deaths.
"You need to know the reality existed," Zirinsky said. "Believe me, we edited a lot of it because, to have that incredible crush of sound every 20, 30 seconds, would have been very difficult for the audience."
The documentary is being aired as a fund-raiser for the Uniformed Firefighters Association Scholarship Fund for family members of firefighters. After expenses, the Naudets are donating all the money they've received, and CBS is making a donation to the fund. (CBS executive in charge Betsy West said it's too early to determine if the network will make anything on the project.) Nextel is sponsoring the broadcast, which will have limited interruptions for public service announcements only — no network or local commercials or promos.
And "9/11" isn't just about the terrorist attack. It puts that day in the context of the Naudet's Naudets' original project. "The story was about how a young kid becomes a man," Gedeon Naudet said. "And this is not so much a film about what happened on Sept. 11. . . . It's really the story of a firehouse and the guys in the firehouse going through their daily lives, and after what happened on Sept. 11, surviving this. It's truly a story about courage, and, in a way, sacrifice.
"But it's, in a strange way, inspiring. It's a story that should inspire people. It's not a story about death or so much what happened. It's a tribute."
E-MAIL: pierce@desnews.com