After 9/11, New York movies like ‘Men in Black II’ were never the same

(CNN) — Barry Sonnenfeld was on the Sony studio lot in Los Angeles when planes hit the Twin Towers on September 11. In the midst of trying to absorb the scale of the tragedy and check on friends and loved ones — the director grew up in Washington Heights and his daughter was living in Chinatown — he soon realized he had a delicate problem on his hands.

Filming was underway on “Men in Black II,” the sequel to the wildly successful 1997 Will Smith-led mega blockbuster that, in Sonnenfeld’s words, was “really a love letter to New York.” The sequel filmed in the city during the summer of 2001 before continuing production in Los Angeles.

As he stood shocked alongside the rest of the world, Sonnenfeld thought about the ending of his movie. It was set to take place on the roof of one of the towers, where the agents played by Smith and Tommy Lee Jones were to face off against an alien villain and use the top of the tower to send a space princess, revealed to be the character played by Rosario Dawson, back to her home planet. But that was no longer an option.

“I picked the World Trade Center on purpose because they almost looked like a magnet,” Sonnenfeld said. “As soon as the first one fell, I knew.”

Every aspect of American life was affected in the days, weeks and months following the attack, including in the entertainment industry and culture more broadly.

The 1969 comedy “The Putney Swope” was one of the first films to feature the Twin Towers on the big screen, seen during the very early stages of their construction. They also appeared in movies like “The French Connection” and Robert Redford’s “The Hot Rock” mid-build. When they were completed in 1973, they were instant icons in a city full of them, quickly becoming favored among visual storytellers because they accomplished so much with no words at all. Then they were gone, suddenly reminders of a nightmare that had changed the world so drastically that even fictional characters couldn’t live in a world that hadn’t.

Sonnenfeld embarked on a journey to rethink the ending of his sequel — and he was not alone. In the months following the attack, the towers were removed from everything from “Friends” and “Sex and the City” to “Zoolander” and the first teaser trailer for “Spider-Man.”

The towers were meant to appear in scenes throughout “Men in Black II.” “We had definitely set up that the World Trade Center was going to be not only the big surprise but also make you think, oh, of course, where else could it be?” Sonnenfeld said.

“It was all a plan and it was part of the sort of ‘MIB’ folklore,” he said, nodding to how the first “Men in Black” ended at another iconic New York location — the World’s Fair pavilion in Queens.

A reshot ending that ‘never worked’

Sonnenfeld was with his good friend and co-producer on the sequel, Graham Place, when the towers fell.

As the country came to a standstill, all filming at the studio was canceled. Not knowing what to do with themselves, Sonnenfeld and Place decamped for the Ivy, ordering gimlets despite the early hour.

Ultimately, the script’s climax was rewritten. The final scene still took place on a roof, albeit a nondescript one, and they were even able to use a lot of the same storyboards, Sonnenfeld said.

“We almost wished we had come up with a totally different solution than putting it on the roof of a different building,” he continued. “It is what it is, but it never worked.”

“It’s a really terrible scene in part, I think, because we kind of didn’t have our hearts in it,” he said.

It wasn’t just the ending of the film — the towers were erased from eight to 12 shots throughout the film, Sonnenfeld said.

“I so didn’t like doing ‘Men in Black II,’” he said. “No one wants to remember that production.”

He said they “probably did have a wrap party,” but “I don’t think I went to it. A lot of people didn’t go.”

“I can’t keep stressing enough,” the director added, “ours was a small sadness compared to the big sadness.”

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