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CNN Sunday Morning

Interview With Steven Rosenbaum

Aired September 01, 2002 - 09:13   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People started emerging from a subway exit.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where the hell am I? Which way is uptown?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What the [expletive deleted]?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And they were looking around like, what happened? They didn't know.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What happened?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CATHERINE CALLAWAY, CNN ANCHOR: The images of the World Trade Center on September 11 are etched in our minds. But a new documentary focuses on life in New York in the days following the attacks, and Steven Rosenbaum, CEO of CameraPlanet, directed that project. He looks at the city's traumas through the eyes and cameras of 27 New Yorkers. He is joining us, of course, from New York this morning. Thank you for being with us, Mr. -- I want to say this right, Rosenbaum.

STEVEN ROSENBAUM, CAMERAPLANET PICTURES: Rosenbaum, that's right.

CALLAWAY: Make sure I say that correctly.

ROSENBAUM: Thanks for having me.

CALLAWAY: Thanks for being with us. A little surprised about this documentary. I was expecting it to largely focus on the day of September 11, but the view that we just saw may be a bit misleading, because you really don't focus at all on the day that it all happened. You're really the eyes and ears of what was going on in New York in the days following September 11.

ROSENBAUM: Well, what happened for me personally was after we survived September 11 and woke up on Wednesday morning, I started seeing this videotape footage of extraordinary stories of human kindness. These little emblems of what it was like to be here and what it was like to be an American. And I said, where is that going? Who is protecting these images? As we'll see in the clips -- I mean, each one of them in their own way is very tiny and special. When you wind them all together, there is a picture of America that really I think we deserve to be very proud of.

CALLAWAY: Right, and one we hope to never see again, but one that certainly left an impression.

Before we get to one of the bites I want to roll, I was interested in who your filmmakers were in this, because it wasn't your average videographer -- although you did have a few. I was looking here, you have a professional firefighter, a bakery delivery man, a construction worker. You had a filmmaker from South Africa, an electrician, a caterer, even a middle school student. You basically took video from all types of people and put this together, right?

ROSENBAUM: We made up some rules and they kind of got made up on the fly. And one of them was we would use videotape only if people would do an interview with us and tell us their personal story, because we didn't want it to be footage. And so, as I always say to people, if you tell me your film has great footage in it, that's an insult, because to me these are about stories and they're about individuals.

And for example, the postal worker in New Jersey has this wonderful moment when he talks about what it's like to stand in New Jersey and watch the New York skyline, which to me is so poetic and so beautiful. And these things need to be protected, because we're living through a moment -- a very important moment in history, I believe.

CALLAWAY: Right. And the narrators of the story tell us in this. We have one of the -- ones that we were really moved by was how many debates were actually going on on the streets in New York on what we should do, where we were. You shot a lot of stuff in Union Square. Let's listen in to some of that debate, some of that discussion.

ROSENBAUM: Terrific.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I mean, every person was out there with an opinion.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're superior to the values that have been propagated throughout the rest of the world.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Looking at those World Trade Centers, now they're gone.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If they want to wage war in their country, let them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Somehow I became engulfed by all these people that were fighting each other, and they were at every corner of me. And it wasn't just one argument that happened in Union Square. It was argument after argument after argument, breaking out between people who wouldn't even talk to each other on the street. (END VIDEO CLIP)

CALLAWAY: Steven, these were the types of discussions that were going on all across the city.

ROSENBAUM: It just makes you proud to be an American. That's what it's about. It's about terrible times and pulling together as a country and saying, all right, what are we going to do? And there's no right and wrong in that as the debate goes on.

CALLAWAY: And it was very heated debate. People in the face, you know, using arms, never came to blows, and when it did get too aggressive, someone always stepped in and said, hey, you know, we're all in this together, which I thought was so interesting.

ROSENBAUM: As that moment ends, those two people who are really going at it, you think there is some chance they're going to actually be, you know, fighting, end up hugging and crying. And it is really a beautiful moment.

CALLAWAY: That is a good moment. One of the other things that you have in this documentary is just how much life has changed. Our life changed especially in that first week after. I think we have some video of -- you mentioned the firefighter looking back on the skyline from New Jersey, on how just the whole atmosphere, how industry, how everyone went about their day-to-day business was different, and you can talk over this.

ROSENBAUM: Yeah, I mean, I guess I would say this: I think we now all know that we're all New Yorkers and that we're all Americans, and you know, there's that moment in the park where you see that sea of faces and you realize that we're all in this together. This is a moment now you're looking at basically Gary Pollard (ph), who is a documentary filmmaker, lives right here. This out his bedroom window.

CALLAWAY: Is it really?

ROSENBAUM: And this is a number of days later. The other thing that I think we need to remember historically is that the fear didn't go away after Tuesday. That every day there was another terrible thing that could happen at any moment. And so there was just a sense of both community and fear that was in the air constantly.

CALLAWAY: And you spoke with a good number of children, very interesting, their take on what was going on. In some cases, almost more a mature reaction than some of the adults that you spoke with. Let's run a sot from this one particular child who was wide beyond his years. Let's listen in.

ROSENBAUM: Shane (ph), yes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He wasn't like a child. He was like a grown- up in a child's body, and that kind of felt strange. Even though a bit disturbing. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I also think Osama bin Laden and it hasn't been confirmed yet, but if Saddam Hussein has been a suspect in supplying him with the resources and things, so I think, you know, those two should be, you know, quote, "brought to justice," unquote, as many of our leaders, but you know, in reality, I think we should kill them. I think we should go and we should kill them, make them die. I think that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CALLAWAY: To see -- to hear this out of a child's mouth, we should kill them. And he understood that the -- you know, how strong those words were when he said them.

ROSENBAUM: Yeah, it was -- you know, I will tell you, I really -- I made the film for my two sons and I made it because I wanted to protect these stories, and I think that they deserve to be protected. It is in theaters in New York beginning this Friday, but we've also put it up on a Web site because we wanted everyone in America to be able to basically log on and tell their own stories. It's cameraplanet.com/7days is the Web site.

CALLAWAY: Yeah, I think we're on it right now.

ROSENBAUM: And you're welcome to tell your own stories. The most important thing I want to get across is, there's this idea that people that weren't in New York or weren't in Washington don't have the right to be as emotionally troubled by what happened, and I feel really strongly that the message of this film says we're all in this together, we're all affected by it, and we all have the right to feel troubled, concerned, scared, angry, and the sooner that we sit in a theater and bring our loved ones and hold hands and focus on what happened and move forward, the quicker we'll heal as a nation.

CALLAWAY: And we were also focusing on what was going on in the ground zero area in the days after. It's nice to be able to see what was going on in the rest of the city.

ROSENBAUM: It was an amazing -- it was an amazing experience, I have to tell you. It made me very, very proud to be here.

CALLAWAY: Steven Rosenbaum, thank you very much for being with us. We'll be watching your documentary and appreciate all the work you've done.

ROSENBAUM: Thanks very much.

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