Al'Rashad

Rather than a trivia tidbit about the world this week, a note –

I first wrote the initial draft of Al’Rashad (as a screenplay, at that time) back in 2000-2002, before and after 9/11, and one of the things I eventually decided I wanted to incorporate in it was Wulf and Alric’s reunion, because if you’ve seen the documentary film 9/11, it’s by two French brothers who were just planning to do a film about firemen and then found themselves in the middle of a disaster. Anyway, part way through the film the brothers get separated, and one of the brothers goes off to cover a platoon of firemen who are planning to maybe enter one of the towers. The platoon doesn’t end up entering the towers, but while the two brothers are separated Tower One collapses, and so the brother who stayed behind has no idea if his brother is alive or dead and suspects he might be dead.

Anyway, when they re-unite they just start hugging and crying, because that is what people do when they get re-united with a loved one who might seriously have been dead, and I liked that and wanted it in the story because action stories so often ignore what really happens in real life, and decided I wanted to incorporate that. (See also Captain Philips, which was a fine movie that happened to come out in a year with many superlative ones and which ends with a remarkable scene of Tom Hanks’ Philips breaking down in a post-traumatic stress situation, with Hanks expertly conveying that not only is Philips losing it and unable to control himself, but that he is completely aware that he is unable to stop himself from breaking down even though he might want to. Which is another real thing that happens in real life when you have super-stressful action sequences happen.)

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