Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone’s new movie on the last two cops rescued at Ground Zero won’t be an exploitative “Towering Inferno,” with filmmakers promising 9/11 families the flick won’t depict horrific images from the terror attack.
At a forum last month at Manhattan’s Essex House, a dozen or so survivors and family members told the famed director of “JFK” and other history-based flicks that they don’t want to see planes crashing into the Trade Center, bodies tumbling or the Twin Towers imploding.
“None of that will be recreated,” Michael Shamberg, co-producer of the film, who attended the meeting and has held several similar forums since August, told The Post.
“Much of the story will be told from the perspective of the main characters’ families, who saw the tragedy unfold on TV while their loved ones were trapped beneath the rubble.”
There may be fleeting images of the buildings burning or collapsing – but only archival newscasts in the background, he said.
The still-untitled film tells the story of Port Authority Police Officers John McLoughlin, played by Nicholas Cage, and William J. Jimeno, played by Michael Pena, who were in the plaza between the towers when the first building collapsed, burying them in the debris.
The movie also follows the story of U.S. Marine Corps Reserve Sgt. David Karnes, an accountant from Stamford, Conn., who’d rushed to Ground Zero when he saw the towers collapse.
Karnes and three other rescue workers crawled into the tiny hole where McLoughlin and Jimeno were trapped.
They finally pulled the PA cops from the rubble at 7:45 a.m. Sept. 12.
Production got underway two weeks ago in Glen Rock, N.J., which doubled for Karnes’ Connecticut hometown.