On June 20, 2002, Jack Myers Entertainment Report first broke the story about the disturbing parallel between the "Lone Gunmen" pilot and the real life events that would follow six months later.
The release on DVD today of the short-lived Fox series "The Lone Gunmen" will bring with it a chilling reminder of the
horror of September 11, 2001.
The first episode of the series tells a story that is now terrifying in its familiarity: The halting of a terrorist plot to fly a commercial airliner into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. When this episode
first aired on March 4, 2001, it made little impact. Critics had dismissed this series -- a spin-off of "The X-Files" -- as ill conceived and poorly executed, and the dismal ratings for its debut (and subsequent episodes) reflected their condemnations.
On June 20, 2002, when I first broke the story here in the Jack Myers Entertainment Report on the disturbing parallel between the "Lone Gunmen" pilot and the real life events that would follow six
months later, I noted that I had seen the pilot early in 2001, as had several of my friends in and out of the media, and that none of us had recalled its shockingly prescient storyline in the wake of 9/11. How to explain the utter absence of commentary on this circumstance by the traditionally thrill-seeking
media? Was it merely the result of "Lone Gunmen" being an unremarkable and, apparently, easily forgotten show? It seemed to be collective amnesia of the highest order.
Acknowledging the possibility that another media outlet might have written about this coincidence prior to June 20, 2002 and that I had missed such a story, I noted that there had nevertheless been no follow up
coverage from other media -- no repurposing of such timely and controversial content -- marking a startling break from ordinary media behavior.
In keeping with this strange media hush, after my story ran in June 2002 TV Guide Online ran a major feature about it and contacted Frank Spotnitz, one of the three men who wrote the pilot episode, for
comment. Curiously, the follow up coverage ended there. In July 2002, a producer from the syndicated entertainment news program "Extra" contacted me about the story. She told me she wanted to do a follow up but was having trouble obtaining footage from the episode. For some reason she could
not acquire it from Fox or Twentieth Television. Several days later she contacted me once again to tell me that her superiors had killed the story.
I later had a chance to ask Spotnitz about the impact, or lack thereof, of the episode. He told me nobody in the media had
contacted him about it after 9/11. Spotnitz said he and his fellow writers had braced for a firestorm of controversy that never came.
Perhaps more people will view and respond to this controversial "Lone Gunmen" story once the DVD hits the streets. Certainly someone will be moved to write about the final sequence, in which one of the three
title characters (a conspiracy-busting trio who were recurring characters on "The X-Files") is actually aboard a crowded 747 that is under the control of computer savvy terrorists who have accessed the plane's on-board
navigation system from the ground and are steering it toward the towers. We see much of the Manhattan skyline through the cockpit windows, with the towers at dead center. Of course, the Gunmen save the day, restoring control of the airliner to its pilots at the last possible second. In a sequence that
will likely chill many viewers, the airliner is shown curving up the side of one of the towers and then skimming the top of the building, passing so closely that it scrapes a fence on its roof.
The Gunmen determine that the terrorist group responsible was actually a faction of our own government, seeking to stimulate
arms manufacturing in the lean years following the end of the Cold War by bringing down a plane in New York City and fomenting fears of terrorism.
Following the attacks of September 11, our government cobbled together a group of film and television writers and asked them to
create fantastic terrorism scenarios so that thought could be given to possible responses to unthinkable horrors.
