quote: Face it, if this were a healthy society, we'd have gotten over it long ago.

Kinda hard to get over it when the smell of burning bodies hung in the air for weeks afterward, and some of those bodies were your friends.

But, I guess out on Old 66, near the intersection of I-40 and I-25, it was always just another image on TV. Why not rip off the very specific image of the buildings collapsing for a cheap low-grade sci-fi flick? It seems for a lot of Americans outside of New York and Washington, it was never real anyway.

You are callous and lacking in basic human decency.

Hollywood movies derive between 30-50 percent of their revenue from overseas markets. New York is one of the most recognized cities in the world.

So if you want a movie that audiences around the world will connect to are you going to set your movie in Cleveland or New York? Remember you’re betting (in this case) $30 million on this movie (in the case of I Am Legend closer to $200 million).

Movie makers have been picking on New York forever (Escape from New York anyone, the remade US version of Godzilla?) not because of 9/11 but because they want foreign audiences to be able to connect to the movie.

Granted cities like London, Paris, Berlin, Singapore, Tokyo and others are equally recognizable to international audiences but the US public (who make up 50-70 percent of revenue) doesn’t really care what happens outside the US so few Hollywood moves get set in those cities.

Initially, I thought it was interesting that a giant monster movie would be made about 9-11. After all, the original Godzilla is not cartoonish at all. It's about the experience of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the bombing of Tokyo. I've often wondered what it was about those experiences that are like disaster but human-created that led to processing through a giant monster. Some of it is undoubtedly military/government censorship at the time. But we can process the tragic experience of 9-11 itself--till it almost becomes meaningless in the case of Rudy Giuliani. So the whole idea of borrowing 9-11 to try to make an American Godzilla like the 1954 Godzilla, or a geniunely frightening social satire like The Host just comes off as cold, calculating and, frankly, annoying.

I think saying "this is another 9/11 movie" is, um... dwelling. Is any movie that has a boom-boom theme anywhere near NY going to be a 9/11 themed film? Does everyone who looks at me in a way I don't like anti-semitic or homophobic?

I kind of think of it as a homage, and a revisit, to something more akin to the original Godzilla. You know, the one that had him/it as an analog to an environmental effect - and not some monster mash, however fun that might be. The success for me of the original Godzilla was the focus on the effect on people. The nuclear attack on Japan was the kernel for the movie, but it addressed that kind of thing in a less specific way.

This could just as easily be any city; New York was just chosen as it has a lot of iconic bits that work better for cinematic purposes (and people don't care as much if LA or SF gets stomped). If there is a lesson at all in this I don't see it as 9/11 so much as when a place is trashed - New Orleans, Baghdad, Kabul, or New York - there are humans on the other side suffering.

Ridiculously naive and wishful thinking, but the next time someone thinks "we'll bomb them back to the stone age" I'd like them to consider what that really means.

9/11s happen frequently, the world over. They just don't get catchy titles. I guess you must feel for all these victims as much as you felt for your friends who perished on 9/11, as you think Zandru should. You must. Anything less would be callous and lacking in basic human decency, surely?

I guess that means you think we should let the 9/11 terrorists off because they were performing a public service by destroying NYC? Yes, that's how stupid your statement was. Not funny--stupid. You have shown yourself to be a smart guy. So before you make an ass of yourself about destroying NYC, think before you type.

Now that you've so masterfully put things into perspective, I will never bother feeling sympathy for anyone who dies in any other country. After all, shit happens. Live with it.

I'm glad you've been able to point out the folly of us wittering American to us so we can truly understand ourselves. Thank you so very much.

However, as a matter of fact, on 9/11, sitting in a bar in midtown Manhattan, bunched around a television screen with a crowd of other people trying to figure out what the fuck was going on, I remember distinctly thinking to myself, "Well, I guess America has finally joined the rest of the world."

At other times I've said that whenever something tragic happens in America we want to turn the site into a museum, whereas if Europe had taken the same approach after the first two World Wars the whole continent would be nothing but a museum.

Do you know what, though? New Yorkers aren't walking around all the time talking about 9/11. Most of us have made whatever fitful peace we can with the fact that we live in a city that is a likely target for future terrorist attacks, and we're getting on with our lives.

I would venture to guess, however, that the real trauma for most people who live in New York is the death of 3000 or so of its fellow citizens and the destruction of a major defining landmark. That's just a guess. I'm also just guessing that that would have been traumatic even if we lived in a country that had seen that sort of thing happen to them before.

Ah, yes, and here come the hand-wringing liberals. Everyone's favorite cliche - alongside the ugly American. You see, you can't take exception with a movie that exploits a tragedy that took place to your city without being some nattering, pathetic, wimpy, hand-wringing liberal. We're supposed to revel in the regurgitated images of the violence inflicted on you, because, after all, it's just a monster movie. Indeed, I'm sure a burgeoning Iraqi movie industry is already churning out delightful sci-fi action-adventure flicks that are metaphors for Operation Shock and Awe. I just hope there are no hand-wringing liberals in Iraq.

I guess you're absolutely right. I should just remember that 9/11 was no big deal, that the only thing traumatic about it was a bunch of self-deluded Americans getting their comeuppance, and I should buy a ticket and settle down with a bag of popcorn to what looks like a truly crappy flick by J.J. Abrams.

It's my duty as a citizen of the world.

Oh yeah, and did I forget to say fuck you?