Good and bad art (music, movies, fiction, etc) inspired by 9/11

That movie is amazing. Just a fantastic piece of work.

I wanna read the book, you know if it is as good as the film?

 

Didn't even realize there was a book.

 

"Let the Great World Spin" was the first thing I thought of when I saw this thread.

 

If 9/11-related trends count, the revival of Lee Greenwood's cornpone Proud To Be An American song was/is an annoyance.

Toby Keith probably owes much of his career to pandering bullshit that was de rigeur post-9/11.

 

Letterman's monologue in his first show back after the attacks was masterful. I also loved how he began making fun of bin Laden and the videos he would periodically release.

I have the Sept. 12, 2001, edition of The New York Times stashed away in a box somewhere. Just thinking about it can give me the shivers. I remember it being an extraordinary piece of journalism, and I can still see the front page quite vividly in my head. I've never gone back and read it again, but I don't think I'll ever be able to throw it away, either.

 

From the original article:

"But we all know the low-grade fear, the numbness, the confusion, the small heartbreaks. That's the territory that The Rising—or any album that seeks to do justice to that day as it was lived, as opposed to how it was televised—should have inhabited.

One record that did live there is the criminally overlooked Summer of the Shark, by Portastatic—Superchunk frontman Mac McCaughan's other band. Released in 2003 to little fanfare, Summer of the Shark catalogs the small moments, the mundane calamities that reverberated out from Ground Zero.

Full disclosure: I co-wrote a book with McCaughan."

 

What the hell's a Superchunk? I feel like I took a detour down Hipster Road and Music Snob Lane reading that paragraph.

 

9/11 inspired one of the iconic scenes from The Hangover.

 

TV division: I liked FX's "Over There," Really thought "Generation Kill" was great. "Rescue Me" was masterful in how it was able to throw drama and comedy together.
Hated the West Wing's 9/11 episode but thought the show did a really good job bringing thematic elements into some of its other story-telling,

 

25th Hour is a great movie, but I feel like some of the 9/11 stuff is the worst part of it. Everyone remembers the "Fuck the Russians, the Koreans, the Hassids, the Italians... " rant that Ed Norris goes on in the bathroom, where he lists all the things he hates about New York, but what makes that scene powerful is that those are really things he loves about New York.

Except for the bin Laden shit. That feels shoehorned in there. Because Ed Norton's character doesn't really feel like bin Laden is part of the fabric of New York. He's just an asshole terrorist.

The Onion stuff was absolutely inspired. I still feel like it almost should have won a Pulitzer for public service. People forget it now, but they were the first comedians in the entire country to attempt comedy, before any of the late night stuff came back, or SNL. And it still holds up as funny shit.

Letterman's monologue is one of my favorite things ever, especially the part where he's talking about Choteau High School in Montana. I always get choked up when he says "Home of the Bulldogs, by the way."

"I'll tell you about a thing that happened last night. There's a town in Montana
by the name of Choteau. It's about a hundred miles south of the Canadian border.
And I know a little something about this town. It's 1,600 people. 1,600 people.
And it's an ag-business community, which means farming and ranching. And
Montana's been in the middle of a drought for... I don't know... three years?
And if you've got no rain, you can't grow anything. And if you can't grow
anything, you can't farm, and if you can't grow anything, you can't ranch,
because the cattle don't have anything to eat, and that's the way life is in this
small town. 1,600 people.

"Last night at the high school auditorium in Choteau, Montana, they had a rally
(home of the Bulldogs, by the way)... they had a rally for New York City. And
not just a rally for New York City, but a rally to raise money... to raise money
for New York City. And if that doesn't tell you everything you need to know
about the... the spirit of the United States, then I can't help you. I'm sorry.

 

GOOD
-Amazing Spider-Man No. 36. All black cover. Pretty much came out right after the attacks.
-The Who's performance on the Concert for New York City CD. They played like a band 20 or 30 years younger that night.
-Man on Wire.
-Battlestar Galactica's first season.

 

Really bad: Clint Black "Iraq And I Roll"