A Ground Zero Grows in Los Angeles

Ah, but will Oliver Stone gloss over who conducted the terrorist attacks that killed 2,749 at the WTC complex on 9/11? Stone wasn't able to shoot on location because of the need to dress the sets to mimic what happened on 9/11 would have thrown so much debris into the streets that it would have closed them for significant periods of time. Instead, Stone had to build the sets back in California:

The producers of the movie, which is scheduled for release in August, had hoped to shoot extensively in Lower Manhattan, said Mr. Lee, the executive producer, who said he lost five friends in the attack. "I wanted to shoot toward St. Paul's," he said. "I wanted to shoot towards the Woolworth Building." But city officials refused to allow anything below Canal Street, he said.

Eventually, he said, officials relented for two scenes: Mr. Stone was able to film a volunteer rescuer crossing a barricade to get to ground zero. And he was able to shoot cast members in a city bus and a police S.U.V., driving down West Broadway toward the trade center complex.

With those exceptions, whatever verisimilitude the movie achieves will come from digital renderings of the Lower Manhattan streetscape, and from carefully chosen substitute locations. A street in downtown Los Angeles stood in for Manhattan's Barclay Street, with crew members tossing debris in the air.

If sensitivity and accuracy were somewhat in tension in New York, they seem not to be in Los Angeles: an earthen berm and an adjacent construction project conceal or camouflage the set in every direction except for a few houses that overlook it from the top of the Westchester bluffs.

The palm trees in the distance, Mr. Roelfs promised, would never make it into the frame.

The designer of the model for Ground Zero in California summed up his brutal recreation thusly:

"It's kind of odd," Mr. Roelfs said, surveying his brutal sculpture. "You know it so well, suddenly you stand in the middle of it, and God - it's awful."

Yes, and we'll see whether Stone strays from the facts and the truth in his recounting of the terrorist attacks. In fact, one has to wonder whether the genesis of the attacks will even be mentioned or will the movie simply focus on the Port Authority police officers instead - such that the movie will show planes hitting towers, their collapse, and their subsequent rescue.

Muslim terrorism behind the 9/11 attacks will not fit the flow of the movie dialogue since the folks involved had no way to know who did this. That's my best guess.

The movie is due out August 2006 - and is currently named World Trade Center.