United 93 and Chicago at Tribeca: No Time Like the Present

By Scott Smith in Arts & Entertainment on Apr 26, 2006 3:00PM

As the Tribeca Film Festival began this week in New York City, it seemed only fitting that the big story dominating the event would be the premiere of United 93, a film that tells one story of September 11th, a day that served as the genesis for the annual festival.

RedEye’s cover story discusses whether some feel the film should have been made now, if ever. Though you won’t hear us taking the tenor part in the Too Soon Chorus, you also won’t see us in the audience for United 93 when it makes its way to Chicago multiplexes. Though the minute-by-minute accounts of the four hijacked flights contained in the 9/11 Commission Report were wrapped in plain, flat govspeak, we still found ourselves getting choked up. We can’t imagine our reaction if we saw it all in living, breathing color.

But since most of the post-9/11 talk has centered on the politics of our nation’s response, there’s been very little discussion about the human stories behind that day. Of the many ways to tell those stories, film is perhaps the medium best suited to tell them in a way that evokes true emotion.

As for the other films at Tribeca, Chicago’s influence is felt in a few screenings throughout the five year-old event.

Comedian Jeff Garlin is the lead in I Want Someone To Eat Cheese With, a film he wrote and directed with a Team Awesome cast including fellow Chicagoan Bonnie Hunt, Sarah Silverman and Amy Sedaris. The (loosely autobiographical?) movie follows an “underappreciated, overweight Chicago actor in search of a soul mate.”

The Architect explores issues of race, class and economics in a story of two Chicago families. Anthony LaPaglia plays a wealthy North Side architect who’s enlisted by a mother (Viola Davis) in a CHA project who begs for his help in tearing down the very project he helped build.

In Street Thief, a documentary crew toes a thin, ethical line as it follows Kaspar Carr, a Chicago burglar, as he eludes both the police and the filmmakers, who seek to discover the man behind the persona.

Lastly, John Malkovich, Steppenwolfer and pride of Christopher, IL, stars in Colour Me Kubrick, a fictionalized story of a man who impersonated Stanley Kubrick during the last few years of the famous director’s life.