Pronoun Problems: A Novel About Friendship, Transgender and (eventually) Ninjas

29 - Thanks For Nothing, Al Qaeda

September, 2001

One of the lesser-known victims of 9/11 was our very first pilot pitch. It was not, I understand, the biggest tragedy on that day. I was as traumatized as anybody, watching CNN in bed while my five-year old pointed to the TV and asked why that building was on fire. And like parents everywhere, I lacked the words to encompass the enormity of what was unfolding and all I could offer my daughter was a hug and the baseless reassurance that she was safe and everything would be fine.

That all said, though, the pitch that Tom and I had come up with was really good. It was called The Republic of Gary, a scathing piece of social satire about a curmudgeonly armchair quarterback (Gary) who was always criticizing the "idiots" running things and spouting off about all the commonsense things he'd do if he was in charge. And then, thanks to a cartographical error, it turns out that his small neighborhood isn't technically part of the United States, so the residents decide to start their own tiny country, with Gary as their leader. Gary would soon discover that running things wasn't as easy as it looked. Mostly because people were self-centered jerks.

"We would have bought this last week," we were told, "but with all the candlelight vigils and people lining up to donate blood and American flags everywhere, now isn't really the time for a jaundiced take on our country, is it?"

So it was back to the drawing board for us. Thanks for nothing, Al Qaeda.

Of course it wasn't just the rampant patriotism, but the fear of another attack which weighed heavily on our collective minds. Here in the show biz capital of the world we considered ourselves a prime target. There was, in fact, a lot of logic to this. If the terrorists believed that Wall Street represented America's economic imperialism, and the Pentagon its military imperialism, Hollywood surely symbolized America's cultural imperialism, the corrosive western values we were foisting on the world. And I have to say, they had a point. Hell, a colorable case could be made that the films of Adam Sandler alone more than justified a non-nuclear strike on our town.

The fear was rational, but the response was bonkers. All the studios did everything they could think of to beef up their security. Some had cement switchbacks, some had bomb-sniffing dogs and mirrors to examine the wheel wells. All of them looked in the trunks of our cars, although what they were looking for was never entirely clear. For instance, once they opened my trunk and we had this conversation:

What's in the paper bag?

My lunch.

It's a pretty big bag for a lunch.

It's a pretty big lunch.

OK. Go ahead.

They never checked under seats or in consoles or in glove compartments. Nor did it occur to them to check the spare tire compartment which could easily have concealed a terrifying amount of explosives or firearms. On the other hand, they did take trombone cases very seriously. I'm not joking. A friend of mine had the misfortune to bring one through security — her son was in a middle school orchestra — and the security guard not only opened the case, he warily dismantled the trombone, putting lie to the expression, You can't be too careful.

But perhaps the most hilarious thing I heard was from actor Tom Wilson, who had played Biff Tannen, the bully in the Back To The Future movies. He had a meeting on the Universal Studios lot and security didn't have him on the list, so they forced him to get out of his car while they started making phone calls to verify his identity.

"Um... fellas?" He pointed to a massive billboard for the Back To The Future ride which had a ten-foot tall, sneering image of Biff Tannen. "You see that guy? That's me!"