30 Rock star Alex Baldwin has been blasted by a 9/11 widow after he claimed airlines use the tragedy as an excuse to hassle passengers.

He made the claim during a defence of his actions after he was kicked off an American Airlines flight earlier this week.

His eviction followed following a hot-tempered bust-up with a flight steward who had asked him to switch of his mobile phone.

Angry Cheryl McGuinness Hutchins has branded the Thomas and the Magic Railroad actor’s words ‘inappropriate
Mrs McGuinness Hutchins is the widow of an American Airlines co-pilot who was in the cockpit of the first plane to hit the World Trade Centre.

She said: ‘I absolutely think [Baldwin's statement] was an inappropriate comment to make.

‘I believe airlines used what happened on 9/11 to increase security and protect passengers as much as possible – not to make travelling inelegant.’

And she criticised the staunch Democrat, who has frequently boasted of his intention to run for political office, for not accepting he was in the wrong after allegedly being abusive towards staff on the flight.

She said: ‘He should just take responsibility for his actions and admit he should have gotten off the phone.’

She is responding to a post the actor wrote on his blog defending his bad behaviour.

Full story here.

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IMBD description:

A nine-year-old amateur inventor, jewelry designer, astrophysicist, tambourine player and pacifist, searches New York for the lock that matches a mysterious key left by his father when he was killed in the September 11 attacks.

But of course he’s a nine-year-old pacifist. And according to Wikipedia, he’s also a nine-year-old vegan. Why would he be anything else? So precious.

Hard to get behind a protagonist in desperate need of a good slap.

But maybe by the end of the flick, the kid sees the light…

… He joins the Marines, heads off to Afghanistan, and mows down jihadists with a fully automatic machine gun while chomping on a chicken leg.

Could happen.

We’ll find out January 20th. Or after it hits Redbox.

Man alive, you spend 70 years building a legacy and then do something like this.

ABC News:

One day later, the 85-year-old singer took to his latest stage, Facebook, and wrote, ” There is simply no excuse for terrorism and the murder of the nearly 3,000 innocent victims of the 9/11 attacks on our country.”

Bennett also cited his World War II experience as shaping his position that “war is the lowest form of human behavior.

“I am sorry if my statements suggested anything other than an expression of my love for my country, my hope for humanity and my desire for peace throughout the world,” he said.

Full piece here.

One comment I read put it best: Too bad Frank Sinatra isn’t alive to kick his ass.

ABC News:

[On his radio show, Howard] Stern then asked Bennett about how America should deal with terrorists, specifically those responsible for the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.

“But who are the terrorists? Are we the terrorists or are they the terrorists? Two wrongs don’t make a right,” Bennett said.

In a soft-spoken voice, the singer disagreed with Stern’s premise that 9/11 terrorists’ actions led to U.S. military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“They flew the plane in, but we caused it,” Bennett responded. “Because we were bombing them and they told us to stop.”

Following seconds of silence, Stern said that his guest was “making some good points.”

Before leaving, Bennett recalled an evening in 2005 when he was honored at the Kennedy Center. Meeting President George W. Bush at the event, the singer said that the commander-in-chief shared his opinion about the Iraq War.

“He told me personally that night that, he said, ‘I think I made a mistake,’” Bennett said.

Bennett believed that the president made this revelation because “he had a special liking to me.”

Bush told a lib crooner he made a mistake in Iraq?

Looks like Bennett also left his credibility in San Francisco.

Yeah, this will sell albums.

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On a couple of occasions, I’ve had the privilege of seeing Ondrasik play live and his ability to mesmerize a crowd using nothing but a piano and his voice is something you never forget.

There are more tribute performances at the Five for Fighting website and for those of you who don’t know, Ondrasik is a tireless supporter of our military men and women.

Hell, you not only have a right to do it, but you have a right to have it federally funded through the NEA by the very taxpayers whose collective mind you intend to blow by getting so darn real.   It’s right there in the Constitution, amid the emanations and adjacent to the penumbras.  Oh, but if you accurately depict the acts leading up to the murder of nearly 3000 Americans, you’ve got to be stopped.  After all, the artistic elite can’t let you upset the Krugman-esque party line that 9/11 was really about Bu$Hitler and Company’s wars for oil or something.

The artistic community is anti-censorship right up until the second it decides it wants something censored.  Then it piles on.

A little background.

Steve Reich is a Pulitzer-winning composer who lived a few blocks away from the World Trade Center when the planes hit on September 11, 2001.  He was out of town at the time, but his family was home.  They barely escaped, but the experience was so emotionally traumatic that it was only as the 10th anniversary of this monstrous crime approached that he was able to finally express his feelings through his art.  You would think the artistic community would praise him – well, you would think that if you had not been paying attention and still believe that it possessed the capacity for shame at its own rank hypocrisy.

Reich’s composition was called “WTC 9/11.”  As described by Terry Ponick at the Washington Times, it “is a short, three-part work that blends live music with the actual recorded sounds of the day’s events playing in background and foreground.”  The CD was originally scheduled to be released on 9/11/11, but a completely unexpected (if you don’t understand the Left) uproar occurred.

The uproar?  Take a look at the original cover photo above.

Kind of makes you think, doesn’t it?  The sight of that jet being guided straight into the South Tower as hundreds burn alive in the North Tower makes you think about how 9/11 was not just some random tragedy that befell us, as if by mere misfortune or a twist of fate.

It makes you think about how it was a calculated act of murder by people who wanted to enslave or kill us, and who still want to enslave or kill us.  And the artistic elite can’t let that thought cross your mind.

Slate’s Seth Colter Walls is suitably mortified that the simple image is so…simple:

Given the piece’s complexity, it is surprising to see that the first studio recording of WTC 9/11, due to be released by the esteemed label Nonesuch Records just days before the 10^th anniversary of the attacks, is being marketed with cover art that looks like something swiped from Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign press shop circa January 2008.

Yeah, it’s surprising that was piece called “WTC 9/11” and inspired by the events at the World Trade Center on 9/11 might have a cover that actually depicts the World Trade Center on 9/11.  Sorry, Seth, if it’s a little on-the-nose for you.  Now go complain about poetry that rhymes.

The “controversy” – to the extent rank censorship by self-appointed guardians of the public consciousness constitutes a “controversy” – over Reich’s chosen cover art has delayed the CD’s release until the 20th.  That will give the informal Ministry of Truth time to scrub away the cover image that might give rise to unapproved thoughts.

Here is the new cover:

Wow.  Wispy grey clouds – it could be a thunderstorm or perhaps some other act of nature.  Maybe smoke billowing from the factories of one of those corporate polluters we hear so much about.  It could be anything.

Anything except the Twin Towers and the plane piloted by jihadi cowards intent on murdering us.

Ponick of the Washington Times does an excellent job of explaining why the Left demanded this ritual sacrifice:

The grievance was almost certainly generated by hyper-touchy liberal New Yorkers who’ve appointed themselves guardians of 9/11 imagery, aided and abetted by the media coverage (notably Slate and NPR) of reflexively leftist scolds who don’t want to be reminded that the U.S. is not always the bad guy in the arena of human events.  And it’s this latter group that really made the album cover an issue.

Yes, it’s the Left being the Left being the Left. Of course their reaction to 9/11 is just the opposite of “never forget.”  They want us to forget the truth and instead impose a false memory more conducive to their agenda.  They prefer, “always remember America is the villain.”  And the original cover reminds us that America is not.  So it must be suppressed.

In the Los Angeles Times, August Brown fretted, wondering if “the subtlety of the piece accurately conveyed by this incredibly blunt and literal cover?”  Not surprisingly, the Washington Post’s Anne Midgette agrees that the cover should be changed:

It’s the right decision. But the debate is, for me, a red flag that, in the well-meaning wish to guard everyone’s feelings, we risk losing sight of the inherent transformative process of a work of art.

Of course, the “transformative process” the truth might initiate is to transform people from couch-bound lumps thinking in the passive voice about “the tragedy that happened” into furious citizens roused to righteous anger – and their own defense – against the threat that still faces us.

Is one album cover going to turn American culture 180 degrees from the weepy, passivity our liberal elite, spearheaded by the artistic community, wants to keep us trapped in?  Of course not.  And is Reich himself a fire-breathing warrior urging on the American people for further feats of martial achievement?  Probably not.  According to Midgette, his statement read:

As a composer I want people to listen to my music without something distracting them. The present cover of WTC 9/11 will, for many, act as a distraction from listening and so  . . . the cover is being changed.

Regardless, it’s sad that Reich feels forced to constrain his artistic vision not because it is wrong but precisely because it is right.  The elite is not trying to suppress lies but to hide the truth – that a gang of fundamentalist Muslim jihadis murdered 3000 Americans and would do so again, and that we either fight and win, or choose enslavement and/or death.  The latter is what the original cover says, and what it says is the truth, and the truth is precisely what they want to censor.

The artistic community doesn’t stand against censorship – it embraces censorship.  Crying “wolf” about censorship is a useful weapon to protect its untalented hack members who make crappy art off the largess of Uncle Sucker.  And it will not hesitate for even a second to use censorship against its own members when they cross the party line.

Next, maybe Reich can write an album about this incident and the community or artists that has abandoned him.  His only problem will be finding a cover art image that suitably evokes the concept of hypocrisy.

Perhaps the most direct TV reaction to 9/11 was the FX drama “Rescue Me,” starring Denis Leary as Tommy Gavin, an out-of-control member of the FDNY’s fictitious Ladder 62/Engine 99. It aired its finale on Sept. 7, but I wasn’t there.

I was there when the show began strong in 2004, with Tommy dealing with stress of 9/11, both the horror of the event and the guilt over surviving when his cousin and best friend, Jimmy Keefe, didn’t. It was irreverent, often profane (as much as ad-supported basic cable could bear), raucous and full of moments of dark humor and heroism. I once asked some Los Angeles firefighters about it, and they said it was tame – so I never doubted its veracity in portraying the secret lives of the FDNY.

But, as many Hollywood things do, it went too far, too weird, too vicious, too strange – especially in its portrayal of Tommy’s faith, which vacillated between “Father Ted” and “The Omen.” And it was way too hard to believe that women would fall that hard for Tommy Gavin, over and over again (they may fall for Leary, but he doesn’t just wear Denis Leary’s face, he IS Denis Leary, famous comic and actor).

Having been in New York in Oct. 2001 and seeing the memorials everywhere to the fallen firefighters and police, and then joining them again in Manhattan for the first St. Patrick’s Day Parade since the Towers fell, I wanted so badly to keep loving “Rescue Me.”

But brave acts fighting fire cannot alone balance the bizarre and the sick and the outrageous. There must also be heart, and by the time I dropped out midway through the show’s run, there was none to be found. I hope it came back by the end. I hope it paid off for all those who stuck around. Mostly, I hope firefighters found it a worthy portrayal of their lives.

While firefighters are real people with all the flaws and foibles anyone else has – maybe more so, since they walk into burning buildings for a living – there is a mythology, a romance, about them. Denis Leary knows that as well as anyone. His affection for firefighters predates the show. He established the Leary Firefighters Foundation in 2000, after a blaze in Worcester, Mass., claimed the lives of his cousin, a childhood friend and four other firefighters. The foundation’s goal is to provide funding and resources for fire departments, so they can have the best equipment and training.

But along the way, “Rescue Me” lost the romance for me, failed to give me a little something uplifting along with the pain and pathos and perversity. TV can always show us as we are – or even a little worse — but every now and then, it can also show us what we could be, if we were just a bit better than we are.

My personal favorite was President George W. Bush’s interview on NatGeo. It was handled beautifully. We couldn’t hear the questions, but I’m going to safely assume National Geographic just asked him vague questions to allow him to tell us what he went through — his thoughts on 9/11 and the days after. It also gave gave Bush an opportunity to explain why he stayed with the kids that day in the classroom. He explained that as a leader he needed to show calm and strength during the crisis.

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Another great special aired on the Discovery Channel and covered the building of the new towers and the memorial. This special took us behind the scenes. The most significant part would be the tridents from the original building going into the new building. It just slipped right into place and one of the men said, “It wanted to be home.” We also learned that vehicles damaged on 9/11 have been inside a hangar at JFK for the past 10 years and they’ll finally see the sun again when unveiled at the memorial.

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The only special that caused a commotion with me was “Children of 9/11″ on NBC. Everyone knows NBC is completely on Obama’s side and a very liberal network. I question everything they do. One of the families they picked was a Muslim family and they made sure to mention how they had to move to Oklahoma in 2002 because of the rampant Islamophobia in New York. If this had been on any other channel it wouldn’t bother me so much, but I can’t help but think NBC did this to further a political agenda. I can’t help but think they took this family and exploited them. It really disgusts me they did this in a special “about the children” almost as if they knew people wouldn’t criticize them because no one would criticize a special “about the children.” Well, I am and I think they did this on purpose. If it wasn’t for that I’d consider this the best special of them all.

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The Biography Channel aired “How Pop Culture Saved The World.” This special was excellent because it showed how the whole entertainment industry handled 9/11 and how they coped with it themselves. It was a relief to see most of these liberal (except Patricia Heaton) put aside their politics and celebrate America. It was an excellent show of patriotism and the true American spirit: helping others out in a time of need. Robert DeNiro started the Tribeca Film Festival to bring people back to lower Manhattan. The concert “America Tribute to Heroes”  raised over $200 million for victims’ families and survivors. It was refreshing to see these celebrities embrace America and be so eager to help.

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The Smithsonian Channel’s “9/11: The Day That Changed The World” interviewed politicians and members of the Bush administration. This one let others besides George Bush tell their stories of 9/11, including Laura Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. Mr. Rumsfeld explained that when he got outside the Pentagon that day he saw paramedics were short handed and he immediately stepped in to help. Mrs. Bush talked about how she and President Bush kept calling each other to say I love you because neither knew what would happen next.

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Again, thank you Hollywood, for treating 9/11 with the respect it deserves. Thank you for ignoring the politics. Thank you for concentrating on the people of 9/11.

Thank you so much for doing this right.

But it wasn’t an average day, as we all know, and the movie communicates this by interweaving clips of terrorists as they prepared to board flight 93, as well.

Emotions are stirred as the viewer watches names on plane tickets being checked at the gate. Interspersed with names like Tom Burnett and Todd Beamer are others like Ahmed Al Haznawi and Ziad Jarrah.

Right before flight 93 lifts off, viewers are informed that American Airlines flight 11 has been hijacked. Following takeoff, while flight 93 is still climbing, the viewer hears flight attendant Amy Sweeney (flight 11) on a cell phone describing where the terrorists aboard her plane had been sitting before they attacked. She talks hurriedly, and then is cut off by the impact of her airplane slamming into the World Trade Center.

News coverage of the second tower being hit is then worked into the film, and the tension is palpable.

The movie shows family members at home, who have been watching the news, wondering if their loved ones were on the planes that slammed into the World Trade Center.

With the gravity of the situation clearly established, and the real-life events of 9/11 still on our minds these ten years later, the movie shifts and returns to the flight attendants aboard flight 93 politely serving drinks and food to the passengers on the plane. Meanwhile the four terrorists, all of whom were sitting in first class, check their watches, check with each other, and finally attack.

The viewer watches as the animals the terrorists use box cutters and the element of surprise to take over the plane. Terror fills the faces of those in first class, because everything unfolds before their eyes.

The movie does a fantastic job of communicating how the passengers in the rest of the plane eventually learn they’ve been hijacked via cell phone calls to home. Through these same calls they also learn of the attacks on New York City and the Pentagon.

Then comes the point in time that still makes my heart pound with pride – literally. It’s the moment when the passengers decide they’re going to take the plane back from the hijackers.

Raw courage is on display as the passengers call their loved ones to tell them goodbye and then end their calls to do what has to be done.

Resolute, Todd Beamer says the words, “Let’s roll,” and together, the passengers storm the cockpit.

Like the cowards they were, the terrorists are then seen flying the plane into the ground with shouts of “Allaha Akbar.”

While the passengers aboard flight 93 are correctly identified as victims of Islamic terrorism, they should also be honored as heroes. (I believe that is the overarching message of this movie.)

Even now, on the tenth anniversary of flight 93’s hijacking, Beamer’s words still ring true – “Let’s roll”

We must NEVER forget.

MANY THANKS TO OUR 9/11 CONTRIBUTORS

As always, Big Hollywood’s contributors came through in a big way. We can’t thank those who contributed to yesterday’s series of posts commemorating the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 atrocity enough. In fact, we received so many excellent pieces that we decided to extend the series into this week rather than pile them all into a single day.

So stay tuned for more.

ANALYSIS: WEEKEND BOX OFFICE

#1. Contagion $23.1 Million Opening

On almost 4000 screens with an Oscar-winning director and four Oscar winners in the cast (Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Marion Cotillard, and Kate Winslet), “Contagion” was only able to scrounge up $23 million.  With a $60 million budget (which doesn’t include advertising costs), director Steven  Soderbergh’s star-studded thriller will have to gross somewhere around $150 million just to break even

Now can we declare the movie star dead?

And when will Hollywood wake up and realize that Matt Damon insulting half the country on a regular basis effectively destroys the most important quality a movie star can acquire: audience goodwill.

#2. The Help $8.6 Million, Total Domestic $137 Million

This $25 million adult drama with no “sure-fire” bankable stars has thus far grossed a whopping $137 million.

This not only proves that a good story that’s well executed and acted can find an audience, but also how hungry people are for this kind of theatre experience.

#3 Warrior $5.6 Million Opening

Though I’ve heard nothing but great things about the film itself, there just isn’t a wide enough audience for mixed martial arts. Personally, I thought the trailer was terrific, but people probably thought they’d seen the story a hundred times before.

I suspect there’s life in this one yet. Between the positive reviews and what’s sure to be positive word-of-mouth, this has the makings of a DVD hit — the kind that can generate a sequel.

Furthermore, Hollywood loves a comeback and come Oscar season “Warrior” could benefit from the hoopla surrounding Nick Nolte’s performance.

#4 The Debt $4.9 Million, Total Domestic $22 Million

This $20 million drama has already brought in $24 million worldwide. Obviously, that’s not much in comparison to “The Help,” but profit is profit and this one will surely do well enough to do better than break even. And again you have another well-reviewed adult drama bringing in a sizable audience.

For years we heard how the adult drama was dead. No, the lousy, depressing, nihilistic adult drama was dead.

There’s a difference.

Another Woody Allen Documentary?

Whatever you might think of Woody Allen as a person (and I don’t think much), he is an undeniably fascinating character. But it’s only been 14 years since “Wild Man Blues” was released in 1997 and it’s hard to see how that can be improved upon. Moreover, other than his recent comeback, nothing new or seismic has happened in the man’s life.

If you haven’t seen it, “Wild Man Blues” does a marvelous job of showing us the side of Woody Allen Woody Allen doesn’t want you to see. Posing as a documentary about Allen’s love of music and using only subtext to dig into his psychology, Allen cooperated and revealed much about himself and his family — all of it a few years after his bitter break up with Mia Farrow and his subsequent marriage to Soon-Yi.

There’s really not much left to tell and certainly no better way to tell it. And if it’s nothing more than a career retrospective, Turner Classic movies can do that.

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LAST NIGHT’S SCREENING

Down to the final two episodes of “Damages” Season Two. This is perfect escapist television after a long work day. Triple-A trash, and I say that as the finest of compliments. 

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QUICK HITS

THE BEST SITCOM CHARACTER ON TV IS A LIBERTARIAN

‘REVENGE OF THE SITH’ CAME TOO LATE TO SAVE TRILOGY

FILM CAMEOS OF THE TWIN TOWERS

WHAT IF MARTY AND DOC WENT BACK TO 1967?

SCHWARZENEGGER MIGHT STAR IN INDIE THRILLER ‘CAPTIVE’

ROBERT ZEMECKIS OFFICIALLY DONE PLAYING WITH HIS COMPUTER

WHAT THE NOW-CANCELLED ‘HELLRAISER’ REMAKE MIGHT’VE LOOKED LIKE

BRENDAN FRASER AS WILLIAM TELL IN 3D

IS THIS THE MOST ACTION-PACKED (NSFW) TRAILER EVER?

 IS ‘BEAUTY AND THE BEAST’ COMING BACK TO TV?

‘KING’S SPEECH’ DIRECTOR SET TO REMAKE ‘LES MISÉRABLES’ WITH HUGH JACKMAN 

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CLASSIC PICK FOR TUESDAY, SEPT 13

FMC:

10:00 PM EST:  Ace In the Hole (1951) –  A small-town reporter milks a local disaster to get back into the big time. Dir: Billy Wilder Cast:  Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling, Bob Arthur. BW-111 mins, TV-14, CC.

Director Billy Wilder truly had stunning range as a director and writer. You would never guess that the man who made “Some Like It Hot” also directed this deep, dark piece of noirish cynicism.

Kirk Douglas — who never won a performance Oscar! — plays a cold-hearted reporter who exploits a human tragedy in the most craven way imaginable. He’s absolutely perfect in the lead role and if you think for a moment that members of our esteemed media aren’t capable of such things, you haven’t been paying attention.

The present-day MSM might not leave a man to die in a deep hole, but they’re mercenary character assassins in every sense of the word.

If “Ace In the Hole” is allegory, it’s only just barely. 

–Please send tips/suggestions/requests to jnolte@breitbart.com

–Please thank ScottDS for today’s awesome quick hits…