October 11, 2025 • 50 mins
On the morning of September 11, 2001, Mr. Peanut waved to tourists, Whoopi Goldberg sold donuts, and Mariah Carey dropped Glitter. Then, the world changed forever. This episode revisits 9/11 through the surreal lens of entertainment — the commercials, concerts, albums, and cultural weirdness that collided with tragedy in real time.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
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Now sit back and enjoy the show.Live from Los Angeles. 911 What
is your emergency? They're in Hollywood.
Now 2 counts of murder. Injury and death.
Oh. My God.
Shocking new details. That has stunned the
(00:43):
entertainment world. This makes me a little nervous.
The hair stood up on my arms just like in the movies.
What? Do you call this thing anyway?
Death. Entertainment.
Greetings, Deto Universe. How the heck are you?
My name is Kyle Plouffe. And I'm Jerry Aquino.
And I'm Ben Kissel. Today we are covering the last
(01:06):
normal minute 9/11 revisited. Oh yeah, we're going back.
We covered it years ago. I love that.
I always like to revisit 911. Yeah.
Exactly. I mean, we're supposed to.
You're the job you never forget.Eggs, right.
Great point. Yeah, great point.
And with that, let's get into it.
Let's go. OK, it's the morning of Tuesday,
(01:48):
September 11th, 2001. I'm.
Already getting emotional? I wake up hungover to a phone
call for my mother in Menominee Wisconsin as I'm currently
missing class and she says Ben are you OK?
And I said I'm fine. I'm too scared I that's why I
missed. Class mom.
Wow, that was it, Yeah. And I said I'm fine because
(02:10):
everyone thought that 911 was coming to Menominee, Wisconsin
next. Yeah, everyone thought that it
was coming to wherever you were next.
Yeah, the South Shore Plaza in Braintree, MA, about 10 miles
outside of Boston. People were like, they're gonna
come for that next as they wanted to get Hot Topic in a
Quiznos, right? They went for the global economy
(02:30):
banks of of the twin towers, yes.
And next thing you know, they'regonna go for Buckle.
Yes. So the morning of September
11th, 2001, the air is crisp, the sun's out.
Jerry is in the 4th grade. That's so.
Hands right, I know it's freshman in fucking college.
Maybe a? Sophomore, I was in 10th grade,
(02:51):
so here we go right down the line.
Crazy. The air is crisp, the sun's out,
and America is waking up to another day of breakfast TV and
pop songs on the radio. And somewhere outside NBC's
Today show, there's a man in a giant Mr. Peanut costume.
Top hat, Kane, Monocle, the whole deal.
Oh wait, we're we're not going to re bearing into anti-Semitic
(03:12):
territory. Oh, peanuts.
Yeah, he's waving a Taurus like a legume themed Mickey Mouse,
surrounded by crowds holding camcorders and glitter poster
boards. He has no idea that within
minutes he's going to witness one of the most darkest mornings
in modern history through the tiny mesh eye holes of a 7 foot
peanut. Oh my God, imagine seeing
(03:35):
something tragic. And he's still smiling.
Just staring at it. I'm just going to remove this
monocle, I don't really want to see this.
Yeah, this is the story of 911 as experienced through the lens
of entertainment. The doughnut commercials that
aired just as the planes were impacting the pop album that
crashed and burned on release day and the stand up album so
(03:56):
morbid it had to be pulled from the shelves.
Oh wow. Really.
And yes, Mr. Peanut, standing helplessly in Rockefeller Plaza
as America's sense of normal flipped upside down.
Wow, that's that is the day Mr. Peanut became almond milk.
Yeah, it really was. He probably shot himself some
peanut butter, milked them. Yeah.
(04:17):
Oh, my God, Mr. Peanut, first you have to wear a peanut
costume all day. Yeah, it's you wake up kind of
sad. Yeah, because you got to do that
all day. And then 911 happens.
Yeah. I'd take off my Peanut costume
and say never again. Never.
That's the day I hung up my peanut.
I can't even look at a peanut tothis day.
(04:38):
Yeah. Why is Wilbur crying?
Somebody threw him a peanut butter sandwich.
Yes. So it's a Tuesday morning in
2001. America is deep in its TRL era.
Pop music is shiny, choreographed and utterly
inescapable. Justin Timberlake still has
ramen noodle hair. With the frosted tips and
everything, I love it. The full denim outfit that he
(04:59):
wore with Britney, which is fucking awesome.
Denim on denim, Come on Canadiantuxedos for the win.
Right. Yes, Britney Spears is on top of
the world. Oh yes.
This is before her Instagram days.
She's still on top of the world,okay?
Definitely still on top of. She's somewhere in the world.
She's just like, she's like, sheused to be like bending over,
sultry like, and now she's like squatting over it.
(05:22):
Juggling knives. I love it.
This is the Brittany I wanted tosee my the whole time.
Yeah. On cable TV, a show called
Jackass is quietly becoming a cultural supernova.
A group of dudes with Johnny Knoxville doing stunts so
painful they made America's Funniest Home Videos look like
Masterpiece Theatre. Yes.
Yeah, it was a simpler time whena guy could become famous for
(05:43):
stapling and scrotum to his thigh.
Yes, the the good old days. And America would say give us
more. Give us.
More in hindsight, I think the scrote staple isn't as painful
as I might think. As a kid I was like Oh my God.
But then I also watched a lot ofhardcore wrestling.
I think I could actually do the scrote to the thigh.
Yeah, as long as it's not a staple penetrating a testicle.
Yeah, yes, Remember, 'cause that's where all the pain is.
(06:04):
Yes, but. One of Our Lady friends, Lois,
she's a female wrestler. She was just doing a bar
wrestling match where they stapled a bunch of dollar bills
to her buttocks. Yeah, and that was really
hardcore. It was hardcore.
It was legit staples too. Yeah, pretty hot.
It's. Pretty it was.
It was so gnarly. It was incredibly attractive
and. Rousing.
Kind of sexy. Yes, we loved it.
Yeah. TV schedules are locked and
(06:24):
loaded for fall premieres. NBC is king with friends.
ER, The West Wing Survivors turning reality TV into a
gladiator sport. Richard Hatch and his small
fucking penis, Yeah. Remember that and his tax
evasions. No.
Richard Hatch, he was the one ofthe first openly gay men on
television and he was the winnerof Survivor season 1.
(06:44):
And he was always naked. And then he ended up, he ended
up going to prison 'cause he didn't claim, he didn't tell the
government on his tax return that he won $1,000,000.
But he was on national television.
Yeah, that's hard so. Then the government was like, I
think you have $1,000,000 and he's like, I don't know what.
Do you think that? How do you know and?
It was like, 'cause you wanted it on national TV.
No, they were. They were just joking.
They don't really give me $1,000,000.
(07:06):
They just give me a pair of pants.
HBO is churning out The Sopranosand redefining premium
television. The world feels stable enough
that the biggest drama on the Morning News involves cooking
segments and weather delays. I.
Remember those? Times I know.
Yeah, CDs are still dominating, Napster's been sued into
oblivion, and iTunes is on the horizon but not there yet.
(07:30):
Hip hop is taking over. New metal is growling from every
teenage bedroom. Oh my God.
And the idea of viral still involves literal viruses.
Yeah, I had a friend who went viral in high school.
He got the he got the clap. Yeah.
And scene. Mariah Mariah Carey's Glitter
soundtrack drops that morning, afilm album combo she's pinned
(07:53):
her entire comeback on. It's supposed to be her
triumphant return. Instead, it becomes one of the
most spectacular commercial faceplants in pop history.
Not because the album is worse than expected, but because
nobody's buying Mariah Carey's records while the world is
ending, right? Maybe that's what we needed.
Maybe we needed Mariah more at that moment than we ever even
thought. Oh.
(08:14):
Man, very true. Yeah.
Was there a song that came out for 911?
Did no one, no one did a Well, we are.
We are the world. No one did anything like that.
It was a different time Toby Keith sang that boot in your ass
song. Bruce Springsteen.
Cried. Come on up for the Roger.
That was. Powerful.
Yeah, that was probably the. No, don't make fun of the boss.
(08:37):
I'm a more of an employee guy. Everybody loves the boss.
Oh my. God, yeah, yeah.
I'm for the working man Ben. Yeah, Oh my God.
Whatever that means, I agree. Alright.
Over in comedy, George Carlin isabout to drop an album with an
Extremely on brand title. It was called.
I kind of Like It When a Lot of People Die.
Oh my God. He recorded that September 9th
(08:57):
and 10th in Vegas and then September 11th happens and he
had to completely shelve it. I mean, he couldn't just change
the title. I don't like it.
Yeah, Correction. He had his pulse on what was
going on in society. I kind of like it when a lot of
people die, except when it comesto terrorist attacks.
I don't like that. I was going to say I wanted them
(09:19):
to drown. I kind of like it when a lot of
people get really close and maybe flatline for two minutes
but then come back and it was because of a small plastic
surgery procedure. Non invasive and not definitely
not on a plane because of terrorist attacks.
Right, I just didn't like that new special of his.
It was too long winded to. Barely get through the title.
(09:42):
Yeah. Speaking of which, drowning
inside the Twin Towers on 9/11 actually has a meaning because
Sylvia Browne, the psychic that would always go on Montel.
Yeah. She told a woman who was asking
about her dead husband, she was like, he drowned.
I can see him. He's drowning.
She's like, actually, he died inthe Twin Towers and on 9/11.
And she goes, well, is it possible he could have drowned
in there? Like, now You're asking
(10:03):
questions. You're just very confident.
I lost my boyfriend tragically afew years ago.
They never found and I've had such a hard time since.
Every time. The reason why you didn't find
him is because he's in water. And find him in water.
It's like the girl that's missing in Aruba.
(10:26):
You can't find somebody. It was September 11th.
There was no He was a fireman, but.
Little Mills, see, I keep seeinghim in water.
Is there any way he could have drowned in water in some way?
They never found a piece of him.Nothing from 9:11.
(10:51):
Because he he says he couldn't breathe and he was filled with
water. Well, if they were trying to put
the fire out, come on town, they.
Could have, you know, I Yeah. No, they won't find him, but
honey, that's OK because it doesn't matter if they find him
or not, he's still over there. That is really, really
(11:12):
offensive. Things to say?
Yes. In the South tower pool, yeah.
So America's entertainment machine is humming like a well
oiled boy band member. Oiled by his manager.
Lou Pearlman, get off of. Me son of a bitch.
And at 8:46 AM, it all stops. Thanks, Boston.
(11:36):
Yeah, so somewhere and and somewhere out there, Robert
Pattinson is getting ready to forgive his father.
Oh God, that's such a weird movie.
God, what a weird movie. That's right, I love the ending
'cause you could literally do that to any movie and it would
be like holy shit Batman was there on 9/11 had.
Nothing to do with the actual plot at all.
I don't think Batman could have stopped 911, no no.
(11:59):
At 8:46 AM, American Airlines Flight 11 slammed into the North
Tower. NB CS Today show was mid
sentence when producers started shouting in their headsets.
Katie Couric and Matt Lahr's faces shifted from polite host
smiles to Oh no, this is real, we're fucked.
They cut from morning banter to a wide shot of the burning
tower. Nobody knew exactly what had
(12:19):
happened just yet. Some said it was a small plane,
others guessed A tragic accident, but the tone had
shifted from up next, pumpkin bread recipes to stay with us.
I heard Al Roker farted. Al Roker was with Mr. Peanut.
Oh, he was was. Yeah, shit.
Lucky the peanut made it out alive.
That was Fat Roker. It was very fat.
It looks like he's wearing a fatsuit like Eddie Murphy.
(12:42):
Yeah. Yeah, that's true.
He was like, like cartoonishly bigger for some reason.
Yeah, well, he was adorable. He was healthy.
We saw one of our friends yesterday who's lost a lot of
weight, but we're of the age nowwhere people get too skinny.
Is it bad or good? Because they could be, could be
the big C. Right, right.
It all depends, cunts. No, no cancer.
Oh. Right, right, right, right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. CNN was the first cable network
(13:06):
to confirm a plane has hit the World Trade Center.
Footage was shaky, zoomed in, confused.
There was no lower third graphic, no theme music, just
anchors talking their way through the unimaginable.
And George W Bush talking to a group of children as they
regurgitated certain words that were quite interesting.
Yeah, what were the words like? Steel plane.
Plane hit steel. Oh my God, wow I thought it was
(13:30):
fake and then me and Ben actually went back and watched
it and I was like holy shit how did we not talk about this
earlier? I've been talking about it my
whole God damn life. Have you been?
I have been. I've ranted a lot.
Yeah. And then nine O 3:00 AM, United
Airlines Flight 175 hit the celltower live on air.
Every network caught it. Yeah, it's insane.
(13:53):
It was just absolutely. Oh man.
Yeah, the last chance before cell phones where they could get
away with this too, because the flip foam footage was all real
grainy and shit. Yeah, but a lot of people, they
said when I know we're not talking about really all that,
but they said they heard explosions.
Almost. Said right.
Little tiny explosions happeningthroughout the building.
Yeah, I don't. Know what's that about?
(14:14):
The camera was trained on the twin towers from the first
impact. Suddenly, another plane appears
on the right of the frame, slamsinto the building and a fireball
bursts on the other side. Oh.
God. This is when everybody watching
realized this was not an accident.
Yeah. I mean, yeah, right.
Fool me once, right? OK guys, this isn't funny
(14:36):
anymore. Right.
Yeah. For TV anchors, this was
uncharted territory. There was no precedent for
covering A coordinated terroristattack on American soil live.
I know, I mean, how could imagine being in that position?
What do you do, especially whileyou're like, panicking on the
inside of yourself? Yeah, if you're in New York.
I mean, there's Redis in Kelly too.
Or Redis in. Regis and Regis and Kelly.
(14:58):
Oh, yeah, Regis and Kelly. I said that, right?
Yeah, you do. Yeah, they were live.
And Regis is so confused. He's like, Oh my God.
They keep showing the replays. He's like a fourth plane.
It's at the tower. How many plates I wanted?
How many? Plates.
I wanna get all my terror news. Regis Feldman.
A confused Regis. That's an amazing voice.
Hamas is bombed the hospital. Right.
(15:21):
And they're like down the street, I mean, in New York
City, in terms of miles, it's not very far.
And they're just sitting there with a studio audience.
If I was in that audience, I'd be like, I'm getting the fuck
out of here. I know.
I mean, if I was anyone in that building and feel like I knew,
listen, I know that I'm like literally the host on the
television show right now, but I'm gonna go ahead and find the
exit. Right there would have been the
cartoon plumes of smoke, 'cause I fucking sprinted out.
(15:42):
Yeah. Also, I think our audience for
someone, someone screaming rightnow, I think it's Regis and
Kathy Lee. Oh, because then it was Regis
after Regis, and Kathy Lee was Regis and Kelly.
But I think at this time we werestill Kathy.
No, I think it was Kelly becausethey were talking about.
Was it Kelly? I think it was Kelly during this
time. Yeah, it had like just recently
crossed over to that, Yeah. And they were talking about a
(16:04):
lunch box that she was trying toget and it was raining outside.
It was like super dull, like themost boring story.
And then all of a sudden 4 planes have hit the towers.
Regis two, yeah. Producer is just like, thank
God, something. Oh boy.
So meanwhile, on NB CS Plaza, tourists and mascots who showed
(16:26):
up for morning TV are now staring up at the sky in horror.
Somewhere in that crowd, Mr. Peanut is sweating through a
shell, wondering if this is still part of a bit.
Why would he think that? 'Cause he's Mr. Peanut, he's Mr.
Peanut. He don't know shit.
He's all confused peanut brain also they they staged for him
the death of Mr. Peanut. I was part of like the marketing
(16:48):
promotion for it and it said like, RIP Mr. Peanut on all
these boxes of peanuts and all the actual packaging 'cause they
were getting rid of him for whatever reason.
If it's not broke, don't fix it.Rest in Peanut.
But it was because they wanted to introduce baby Peanut.
Oh, OK. Is it?
Yeah. There was a baby Mr. Peanut.
Yeah. But I don't.
But there doesn't seem to be a peanut anymore.
(17:08):
But they rescinded killing him because they had in the
advertisement he had gotten intoa helicopter accident and Kobe
Bryant died like the next week. Oh.
My God. So they were like, let's pull
the plug on that one. Why were they so on point with
that? I don't know.
I really don't know. It's weird.
It's scary. It is.
(17:29):
Also, Mr. Peanut didn't need to die in a helicopter accident.
No. What the?
Fuck, Mr. Peanut could have lived a long happy healthy life
and died of natural causes. Exactly.
Cunts, Sir. He could just be a cartoon that
lives forever. Or that.
Yeah, yeah. Or he could have like, you know,
moved. Maybe he develops a peanut
allergy and commits suicide. Lol.
Lol Raffle. So while everybody's scrambling
(17:50):
to describe what no one fully understood yet, on another
channel, a very different slice of TV history is happening.
Whoopi Goldberg, National Treasure he got winner and queen
of the 90s, was smack dab in themiddle of an Entenmann's Donuts
commercial when the first plane hit.
Which it could have been the pilot just watching the
commercial just being like oh fuck, what could be Goldberg I'm
getting out of? Here.
(18:11):
Whoa. This was when Whoopi was still a
Whoopi. This is before view Whoopi.
Yes, even the commercial just itit ages weirdly too, because
she's in somebody else's house for some reason, talking about
how she doesn't want to tell anybody but intimates doughnuts
because they'll go flying off the shelf she wants more for.
Her Oh, I. See.
And then there's a guy at his own kitchen table about to eat
(18:31):
his own butter bread, and she steals it away from him.
Oh my God, and she eats it in front of him.
This hard working man that's holy, this lady from the rich
lady from the view just steals it was.
The view on yet. Was the view on?
Yeah, I don't think it was on yet.
It might not have been on beforeAmerica was Under attack flashed
across every screen. The last thing some viewers saw
was Whoopi Goldberg gleefully coveting Donuts.
(18:53):
So it was like the first time the commercial aired was exactly
when the. Exactly when the first plane
hit, yeah. A lot of coincidences did.
She know that. She, I think she does.
Since then, yeah. Yeah.
Goldberg doughnuts. It's all coming together.
Yes, You figure it out. But Whoopi Goldberg's commercial
(19:14):
has now been known as like a part of the last normal minute
before everything changed. Oh, got it.
And so was Mr. Peanut. Yeah, he's right.
Before then, yeah. Yeah, but is he considered a
part of the last normal minute by popular society past?
Last normal, like 7 minutes, yeah.
Yeah, that's close enough by peanut hours.
(19:36):
That's that makes sense. Peanut minutes, Peanut minutes
and hours are different than human hours.
Right. Yeah, Hollywood has always loved
blowing things up. It's basically their second
language after sequels. But after 911, suddenly every
fiery explosion on screen lookeda little too real.
Within hours of the attacks, theentertainment industry went into
full panic mode. Networks scrubbed their
(19:58):
schedules. Studios pulled trailers.
And anything that even vaguely resembled the plane's towers or
mass destruction was shoved intoa.
Vault. Oh wow, I bet.
Yeah, that's gonna really hurt somebody who had a fantastic
script all about the Twin Towers, and it's a love story
between the north and the South tower.
And they looked at each other, and they kissed.
(20:19):
Yeah, or just like an actor who finally got his big break
playing a pilot that he ends up like going on this like life
saving mission that ends up killing everyone but he like
sacrificed himself. Not doing any plane movies
anymore, yeah. Sorry.
Like no, sorry, that's canned forever.
My. Guy it would only train movies
for the next decade, yeah. Yeah, don't throw Mama from the
9/11 plane had to be scrapped. Yeah.
(20:41):
Wow. The first big casualty was a
trailer for Sam Raimi's Spider Man.
You guys remember when Spider Man went to New York City, he
actually put a big web in between the twin towers?
Yes. And then they a helicopter got
caught in it and they were like,we have to get fucking get rid
of this awesome piece here. Oh my my God, that's so sad.
Yeah, yeah, because it really just points out the failure of
(21:04):
Spiderman. He could have fucking been
there, but he didn't show up because.
Where the hell Queens were you now?
He was scared. He was in school.
He's. Probably, yeah.
With me, yeah. Exactly right.
Can't believe you were in 4th grade.
Yeah, and you were in New York City.
Yeah, I was in. I was in Queens.
So what did you see? So I saw absolutely, I saw
(21:25):
absolutely nothing. I saw my teachers panicking and
starting to cry. And then they like, they put us
all together in like 1 room because the teachers didn't want
to be alone. They were so scared.
Yeah. And we didn't really know what
was going on. But then, but then when we heard
the second plane hit, they were like, they started flipping out
and it was like a little bit chaotic.
And I feel like, again, it was more the adults than the kids,
(21:47):
right? They were trying so hard to keep
it calm but they started contacting all parents and then
and my dad. My dad picked me up.
I got picked up from my school too.
Because they were like, this is a little close.
Yeah. Yeah, this, this makes sense.
I think I'll just go home now. Half day.
Half day, yeah. Half day.
It was 9:00 in the morning. Oh yeah, almost a full day off.
Yeah, because in my family, we couldn't get in touch with my
(22:07):
uncle who would come out here for business and take that exact
flight back and forth from LA because everything originated in
Boston. So we were trying to find him.
It's my gay uncle that contracted something, so it
would have been just icing on the cake for everything.
What, he gets a horrible diseaseand then dies on 9/11?
Oh my God. But he was fine.
(22:29):
Oh. He's again.
With enough. Boston racist, where were you?
Where where are you? I know in one fucking day where
they could have been heroes. Don't let him board the plane.
Jeez, I don't. Know no, you weren't there, were
you? James Woods tried to stop it.
Yes, he did. He was on another flight and saw
a bunch of people that looked vaguely foreign to him and he
(22:50):
said I think they're planning a terrorist attack.
And it was like 2 weeks before 911 happened.
Wow. And then he went on CNN like
every day being like, I told them, I told the FBI directly.
They didn't listen to me. Wow, I mean to be fair, I would
do the same thing too. Yeah, I don't.
Know America's greatest? I told you so.
Oh yeah, that's very true. Yeah, 911 worked out for.
(23:11):
Him. Did I or did I not?
Did I not tell you? Those guys look suspicious?
Remember when I said that, Tony?Yeah, we all remember.
Didn't I say you did say he saidit?
They were Turkish. All right, buddy.
Turkish, Yeah. We don't know what they're up
to. We don't.
We absolutely. Don't The teaser was for Spider
Man was yanked from theaters within days.
(23:33):
Any promotional material featuring the twin towers
disappeared. Even background skyline shots
were re edited to erase them. Like Sex in the City.
Yeah, they got rid of it. Why?
Would they do that? Like to erase the history.
It's triggering. It's not it's, it's, it's a good
reminder. Yeah, it's.
Beautiful, man. Like I like when I watch older
movies and they do New York Skylines and you can see the
(23:55):
Twin towers. Yeah, like so it's like it's
touching it. Really is.
And it was heartbreaking when the movies that didn't have it
in the New York skyline anymore first started coming out.
Yeah. Absolutely.
And now, I mean, at least we getWorld Trade Center, Trade Center
one now. But yeah, before it was just
empty. I can't even find World Trade
Center one now in a lineup. No, like I mean put.
(24:16):
It in a building lineup I can't find it I.
Can't find it I. Can't.
It's so big. Really.
Then where is it, Ben? It's it's.
Where the Twin Towers were. I went up to the top of it.
It's crazy. You go in the elevator and it's
all LCD screens and as you go upto like the 100th floor,
whatever, or even it's higher than that, the LCD screens show
(24:40):
like what it looked like when the Dutch first came over and
it's all like marshland and stuff.
And as you go up, the city builds with you.
Oh my God. That's cool and it's insane.
I was hoping they weren't gonna try to pull a prank when like a
plane coming right at you at thevery end.
Yeah, it's like it it grows withyou, but it also gets fully
destroyed by the time you get tothe top.
And then at the top is just likea bunch of like burning flames.
(25:01):
So right. Too rail.
Too rail. That would be an experience.
That would be fucking crazy. It all goes back to the Dutch.
Yeah. It's two things in this world.
I can't stand people that are. Dutch in taxes.
No, it's a Michael Caine line from Austin Power.
Yeah. People that are like, just won't
(25:23):
talk. Intolerant to other people's
cultures. Yeah.
And a Dutch. Dutch, that's.
Good. Studios went through upcoming
releases with a fine tooth comb asking does this scene involve
planes? Does it involve explosions?
Are there buildings in the shot?Yeah, it's a Hollywood fucking
movie. Yes, yes and yes.
We got fucking, we got triggeredhard for a while, God.
(25:44):
They wanted to make sure that nobody was crying into their
popcorn. Well, the next major I.
Mean that's fair. The next major film is called
The Double Mastectomy of Scarlett Johansson.
OK, what a wonderful film that'sgonna be.
What, other than what planes andexplosions?
That's all they do. They don't want to do anything.
Else I know. Maybe a lot of ROM coms came out
(26:04):
after that. Do you?
Do we know what kind of movies came out after 911?
Yeah, it was pretty much, yeah. Very low stakes dramas and
comedies. Yeah.
Double mastectomy of Scarlett Johansson sounds amazing.
You should write that. Yeah, I'll write it, you know.
You know, get right to write it.I write so well.
(26:26):
Some movies were delayed or heavily edited, Others just
quietly vanished. Collateral Damage was a movie
starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a firefighter battling
terrorists was delayed over and over and over again.
Oh, no Big Trouble, a comedy with a climax involving a bomb
on a plane, was shelved. Yeah, I believe it.
Even TV shows scrambled. The pilot of 24, which involved
(26:49):
the plot to blow up a plane, suddenly felt like a
documentary. Yeah, it's like, it's just, it's
just a little too on the nose. Yeah, it might have been kind of
good to get a little bit more creative than there's a plane,
there's a bomb on the plane. All right, that's great.
Go with it. Right.
Feels like Hollywood really loved that idea.
Yeah, they. Loved it.
They loved they were. There were a lot of airplane
(27:09):
movies. A lot of airplane movies, a lot
of terrorist idea, yeah. Die hard.
Two at the airport. At the airport.
Yeah, the video game was awesome.
Yeah, that was so good. On TV, networks replaced reruns
and sitcoms with round the clockcoverage for days.
Once entertaining programming slowly crept back into the
atmosphere, the tone was very different.
(27:30):
Jokes were trimmed, storylines were softened.
Any plot involving the hijackings or anything involving
New York was quietly rewritten. That's a good idea.
Just forget New York. Yep.
Yeah, The Sopranos also removed the Twin Towers from intros and
different episodes. They shouldn't have.
I agree, they just keep them in there.
Late night host, delayed returns.
(27:53):
Now they can't wait to get back.Yeah, they can, Jimmy.
Oh, it's a little different than911.
But OK, he would tell you otherwise.
It is. Maybe it was his own 9/11 I
guess. And live events like the Emmys
were postponed altogether. The sudden cultural shift
created a kind of strange temporary censorship.
It wasn't government mandated, but it was fear, sensitivity and
(28:15):
optics. Nobody wanted to be the network
that accidentally aired A skyscraper explosion two weeks
after the real thing. Not to be mistaken.
Not to be mistaken with the Emily's, which is the award
given to the best softball catcher in college softball.
Shout out to Emily. Let's go big old butt.
And it wasn't just action movies.
Romantic comedies with New York Skylines had to tweak their
(28:36):
establishing shots. Musicians pulled songs off
playlist. The Dixie Chicks temporarily
dropped Goodbye Earl because it had the word bomb in it.
Oh come on now. They should.
Also. They dropped the name Dixie
Chicks. Now there's just the Chicks, but
they should have kept Dixie in there.
They dropped the Dixie. Yeah, just the chicks.
Then how would anyone know what the fuck anyone is talking about
the chicks? They got into a fight with
(28:58):
George W Bush because he's a, you know, a war criminal and a
tyrant. And then they were like, we
don't like that. And then they were met at the
South because then the South gotmad at them and then now they
just, it's another just the chicks.
Yeah, so Dick Dixie was like a Southern term that people didn't
appreciate. And then Lady Antebellum is
another one. So now there's just Lady A.
It doesn't. Lady Antebellum is Lady A.
Lady A. Actually, that one makes a
(29:18):
little more sense, that one. Yeah, a little bit.
I I support that. Lady A, what's the A stand for?
Well, we. Can't tell you antebellum.
We can't tell you. Well, guys.
It's not a. It's not considered PC.
Yeah. Why don't they just name
themselves the Dick Chicks? There we go.
We don't like that. The Dicks.
The Dicks. The Dicks?
Yeah, that would have worked. Like Dix?
(29:40):
Yeah, a lot of ideas. You know who's a bunch of Dicks?
The people over there over at Clear Channel.
Oh, they circulated a list of over 150 songs they considered
lyrically sensitive after 911. Wow, they took it upon
themselves to just do that. Yeah, 'cause they owned all the
radio stations so they could dictate what's getting on the
air, what's not getting on the air.
Got it. Songs like Let the Bodies Hit
(30:01):
the Floor was not allowed. My God.
I mean. Nothing wrong with me.
That was awesome though. Great.
I wouldn't, I would not like pair that song up with like
terrorism. I know for a fact some people
did 'cause I've seen videos withthat song in the background of
people jumping. But also that's not the issue,
right? Yeah.
It's like when Joan Jett got ridof that song, What was it?
(30:25):
Shoot me through the what's the what's the song that she has
that says the word shoot? Hit me with your best shot.
Yes, she got rid of that becauseshe's like, I don't want people
to think about school shootings.And it's like, Joan, no one's
thinking about that. Yeah, here's some of them that
some of them make sense. Some of them really don't. 3
Doors Down, duck and run. OK, I didn't even know that
(30:45):
song. I mean, I know, no, it brings
more attention to the song rightthan actually playing it on the
radio 'cause nobody even fuckingremembers it.
What if? What if they did play that as
like, you know, a warning to stay vigilant?
Right, duck and run. Also, that's really difficult to
do. Duck and run.
Yeah, anything that involved things get going down South, 311
song down, that's done. That was a that was a dumb song
(31:08):
anyway. ACDC had a ton of them.
Dirty deeds done dirt cheap Hells Bells Highway to Hell,
safe in New York City, not shootto thrill, shot down in flames
in TNT. Oh yeah, all the bombs.
I know my. Yeah, that really makes me feel
better knowing that ACDC isn't on the radio.
Right, exactly. It's almost like 911 never
(31:28):
happened. Right.
Even Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World.
Why, if we can't even have a nice song about a world where
everybody's coming together? What?
Why can't we? Why is what in a wonderful
world? Because he sees trees of green
and then something in the skies or something like that.
Yeah, clouds of white. Clouds of white, and they're
like, no, no, too much like. Smokes of night.
Too much like smoke. Take it down.
(31:51):
Take it down. Oh, maybe that is it.
I don't know. They had their own reasons for
not wanting to trigger any emotion or image of 911
whatsoever. Yeah, everyone just stay calm
and neutral. Yeah, Hollywood didn't flinch.
Hollywood didn't just flinch. It recoiled.
The same industry that it's beendecades turning chaos in the box
(32:11):
office, gold and nothing but cash, suddenly found itself
terrified of its own product. Which is weird considering now.
Right. It's definitely back.
Yeah, definitely back. They super don't care anymore.
Yeah, in the months after 911, America was living in a fog of
grief, rage and constant cable news.
Jokes felt dangerous. Sarcasm felt disrespectful.
(32:34):
Even The Onion briefly considered shutting down.
Yeah, I think didn't that comedian, comedian Anthony
Jeselnik, like he was like kind of criticized for tweeting some
kind of 9/11 joke or he was about to and like, a lot, as
soon as it happened, a lot of his close friends and family
members called him and was like,hey, before you do it, don't.
(32:56):
You must. Have been years later.
Yeah, I think so. Yeah.
No, I think it was that day. Oh, it was that day, Yeah.
I'll do my research on Oh my. God, it might have been a
Myspace update or something then, because I don't think
Twitter was. Oh yeah, it definitely wasn't a
tweet. Yeah, comedy didn't just hit
pause, it slammed into a wall. When late night shows finally
(33:17):
returned, hosts approached it like a national funeral.
David Letterman was the first tobreak the silence, returning on
September 17th, 2001. WWE even came back before then.
I believe they were September 13th.
They jumped right back in with Smackdown, like immediately.
Well, maybe they thought that this was the violence that
people needed, right? Now that yeah, choreographed
violence, yeah, absolutely. It's more of a dance.
(33:39):
Something that you know will notend in absolute horror and
tragedy. Yeah, unless your own heart, you
fell. You fell from the from the
feeling and died. Oh my God.
That was bad, unless that. Yeah, that was very bad.
You know. They did have a tight team back
in the day called the Twin Towers.
Hmm. And the brothers of destruction.
(33:59):
Oh yes. Oh wow, yeah, did they have to
stop existing? Twin Towers already didn't exist
and Brothers of Destruction camelater.
Oh, OK, yeah. Well that's that seems a little
disrespectful. It was a years later after
people stopped feeling being emotional about it.
Got it. Jon Stewart followed on
September 20th, opening The Daily Show with one of the most
sincere monologues of his career.
(34:20):
No punch lines, just grief, anger, and an unexpected
vulnerable vulnerability. So like Stephen Colbert now?
No jokes. There aren't any jokes.
It caught viewers off guard. SNL came back on September 29th,
opening not with sketches, but with a solemn tribute led by
Paul Simon and 1st responders. That's true, I remember that.
(34:45):
I. Do remember that.
And Jon Stewart, to his credit, he has done more, I think for
the survivors of 9/11, includingfirst responders.
Every year they would have like a roundtable with a bunch of
firefighters who were there and one by one they all dropped off.
Until, I think a few years ago, none of them were left.
And we still can't get these motherfuckers in Congress to
allocate any funds for people with 911 related cancers.
(35:06):
It's disgusting. It is disgusting.
It's fucking crazy. Such scumbags.
And Jon Stewart is there every year fighting for him still.
Yeah. He was so cool when I was
working as a production. This assistant for Viacom shows,
Anytime I would work at The Daily Show studios when Jon
Stewart was hosting, he would personally go to every single
person that worked on the show and shake their hand and say
thank you for being here tonight.
I love that. He's a fucking good dude.
(35:28):
That's nice. When Lorne Michaels asked then
Mayor Rudy Giuliani then celebrated Rudy Giuliani, They
loved it. I mean yeah, he was like 1 of
like the top dog heroes of 911. Before his teeth were black and
yellow. Before like his hair was
sweating by. Yeah, what happened?
(35:48):
Use me, Sir. Your hair's leaking.
Oh, what? Before people celebrated him
breaking his back in New Hampshire recently, Lorne
Michaels asked then Mayor Rudy, can we be funny?
And Giuliani said, why start now?
There you go, Rudy, you know. What?
That was the first, like bang, we got a punchline.
(36:09):
That's amazing. And that was the last time Rudy
was ever funny. Yeah.
America's mayor. He had a moment and then he
decided decided to ruin it all. They've been Batman, he says.
You live long enough to become the villain.
Yeah, that he did. He really did.
You die the hero and live long enough to be become the villain.
Absolutely. This marked the birth of the
(36:30):
modern too soon era. Before 9/11, taboo jokes were
mostly about taste. After 911, timing became
everything Comic. Second guess punch lines,
network sensors got trigger happy, and crowds tensed up at
any hint of insensitivity. Yeah, even The Onion, known for
its savage satire, struggled with its first post 911 issue.
(36:50):
They they ended up producing some of their sharpest work,
including headlines like American Life Turns into Bad
Jerry Bruckheimer Movie, and hijackers surprised to find
themselves in hell. Oh yes, classics.
Interesting. Very.
Possible. I mean, that's not bad for an
Onion title. They're going for it.
Also the Onion. I'm fairly certain their
headquarters wasn't too far away.
(37:11):
I think they were in the East Village.
Weren't. Oh, wow.
Yeah. Pretty sure I visited their
headquarters once. I did a little short film for
them. The.
Oneon. Yeah, nice.
You know, it was pretty great. Pretty excited.
Never made it to YouTube but youknow some things are too good
for YouTube. Maybe it had the twin towers in
it. Yeah, I.
Had to take it down because of that.
Meal on my back, it's my nipples, my bag.
I don't know why, I'm just. Those are the real twin towers.
(37:35):
They don't match. Well, yeah, I mean exactly.
They're not paternal. 11 is moreprotruding than the other.
Yeah, that's the one with the antenna.
Yeah, yeah. You know you don't want to know
where Building 7 is. But it's gone now.
It's. Gone now Perineum, also known as
the Pentagon. No one ever hit that baby.
(37:59):
But not everyone was celebrated.Gilbert Gottfried infamously
tried an edgy 9/11 joke at a Friars Club roast just a few
weeks later and got booed. That's.
Gilbert, though I know it's supposed to do.
Yeah, it was one time I saw Gilbert Godfrey, just a walking
along 34th St. He just had like he he had
nothing on him except for a plastic bag around one of his
(38:20):
hands. And he looked lost.
Yeah. And I was like, what?
Is Gilbert. Godfrey doing right now.
Yeah, that's so funny. I saw him one time as well in
New York. Just frail and strange.
Yeah, yeah. And he doesn't sound like that.
No, his voice is very normal. Oh my God.
Really? Yeah.
It's just got a normal voice. Oh, he just has that capability.
And then he kept it there, Yeah.I saw him once at the Comedy
(38:41):
Cellar and it just seemed like he had a goal in his head of how
many times he was going to say he turned down a show for kids
with cancer and he just kept screaming kids with cancer over
and over. It was just crushing.
That's. That's amazing.
He's. A great problem child also yes.
So good it was a high wire act. Some comics crashed, some
(39:02):
thrived, but overnight the rulesof comedy seemed to have
changed. Too soon became the cultural
reflex, the way of asking Are weallowed to laugh again?
Aren't. We right?
And we laugh. To be fair, there's a lot of
people laughing across the country.
I mean, anyone. Obviously, in New York, it was
very, very serious. But 2001, it was a different
time. Like, I was in Wisconsin.
I felt so distant. Yeah.
(39:23):
That's true. Yeah, no, it was definitely
really dark and heavy around me.And I had a bunch of family that
also lived closer inwards. So I had like family like in
Astoria, Queens that like their buildings were just like
completely covered in soot. Like even even if you close all
the window bathrooms like it allseeped in.
The smoke got in. Yeah, he couldn't get rid of the
smell for weeks. Oh geez, it.
Was yeah, it was rough. Yeah, in Boston there was like a
(39:47):
half, half and half divide wherepeople were like, sorry, the
rest of the country for that. And we'd started here, that's
our bad. And then the other half was just
like super angry, burning down like businesses of people who
they thought were Muslim but were like Sikhs.
Because they won't. Leave my Sikhs alone.
Right across the street, like around the corner from my high
school, there was a very nice man and they owned a gas station
(40:08):
and they fucking blew the gas station up on like 913.
It was crazy. Just because the guy had the.
I believe it. It's a turban.
Yeah, but yeah, it's a Sikh. There's a fucking moron in
Wisconsin who shot up a Sikh temple to be like, I got all the
Muslims. It's like they're Sikh you.
Fucking dummy. They're good people, they're
chill. Muslims are good people too, I'm
just saying. Muslims are good people, too.
(40:29):
There's a newer cartoon that came out where it's it's like
the life of a Muslim family thatis like feeling really positive
about moving to America and likegetting their life started.
And it's like September 10th. And they're like, man, nothing
can go wrong. We have the best opportunity
right here in this land. And then that happened.
(40:49):
Could have done without that, yeah.
They're turning it into like a slapstick comedy now.
Yeah, I mean, it that that cartoon came out like last year.
Oh shit. So it's it was pretty good.
It's been a long time, yeah. The usual noise of pop culture,
the boy bands, the dumb reality shows, the raunchy comedies, the
action movies all went quiet. And when it slowly came back, it
wasn't quite the same. Some parts of entertainment
(41:11):
tiptoed back, careful not to offend.
Others leaned into patriotism, which that cannot be over
understated, overstayed. People were going nuts for the
red, white and blue. They were USA cigarettes that
they came out with and people who are smoking those.
Doesn't that make you think of 911?
The slow burning of a small tower.
(41:33):
But but this ones American. Yeah, this ones just killing me.
Yeah, Freedom fries. They we wouldn't say French
fries anymore. I'll get some freedom fries.
So fucking dumb. There was legislation proposed
to change it permanently from French fried freedom fries.
Seriously. Oh my God, people are so.
(41:53):
Stupid. Oh my God.
And we invaded the wrong two countries.
Whatever helps, man. Yeah, they slapped flags on
everything from sitcom openings to Super Bowl halftime shows.
Country music was booming. News networks became 24/7 flag
factories. Hollywood churned out a wave of
post 911 movies that tried to process trauma, Some moving,
(42:14):
some shameless, and some parts of pop culture just kept going.
Brittany was Brittany. Yeah, she was.
Jackass would debut its first movie in 2002 and remind
everyone that America still loved America still loved a good
nut shot. Jackass was actually kind of
perfect comedy for this. 100% physical, So goofy.
Yeah. And then we're good friends.
(42:34):
Yes, and they all loved each other very much.
They just like to hit each otherin the balls.
Yeah, so that they could say, I don't, I didn't touch his balls.
I'm not gay. I'm not gay.
I just kick them and pull on them.
I sucked and. Sucked them and.
Sucked it. I've sucked him off and he came
all over my face for the bit, yeah.
That's it, we're friends. We do it all the time, even
without the cameras on. 'Cause we're.
(42:55):
Friends 'cause we're fucking friends.
God damn it, get over here and put that cock on me.
Play hide the fucking bottle of ketchup.
Oh. My God.
But the weirdest thing about looking back on 9/11 through the
lens of entertainment is how surreal those tiny details felt
in hindsight. Whoopi in the Donuts, Mr.
Peanuts sweating in Rockefeller Plaza, Mariah Carey's doomed
(43:17):
comeback and George Carlin's eerily, eerily titled album.
I kind of like it when a lot of people die, yeah.
I feel like I feel the worst forMr. Peanut.
Yeah, I feel the worst for Mr. Peanut.
I don't know why. Whoopi is fun.
Yeah. You know, but Mr. Peanut, then
he got, he died and right. Just like Kobe, is it a tough
run? I like it when a lot of people
(43:37):
die. Is not even too on the nose.
It's like it's, it's so broad. Any tragedy could have happened
and it would have been triggering, right?
Yeah. He could have, he could have
even if it was just like a a school shooting, which which
back then would have been shocking.
Well, yeah. I mean, we had Columbine in 99.
Yeah, yeah. And so everything came back.
We, we were able to fully process our grief and, you know,
(44:01):
get back to gory murders and stuff.
Like that, I still don't think we have processed our grief as a
nation. I think this country was founded
on there's a lot of grief, there's a lot of good stuff, but
then there's a lot of grief and violence.
And I still don't think we've processed it properly.
Yeah. Yeah, because we're constantly
being traumatized. I feel like even victims
families haven't fully processedit because this actually
(44:22):
happened in March of 2025 and I was so confused about it because
they I don't think they realizedthat 911 jokes were a thing and
so this happened. Shoppers raising concerns about
what they're calling an offensive T-shirt being targeted
to them in ads. Yeah, the T-shirt has to do with
9/11 and his fox eyes. Jody Goldberg shows us even
people who lost family members in the terrorist attack have
(44:44):
come across it. Amy Stabile lost her dad, Herman
Charles Broghammer, in the September 11th terror attacks.
Thousands of lives were murdered.
It was one of the darkest days and that's why she can't wrap
her head around how anyone couldever make light of it.
I just, I couldn't believe my eyes.
She was casually scrolling through Facebook when she said
(45:07):
she was targeted by an Etsy ad. When I saw Garfield, I didn't
even understand how it goes together.
It was a T-shirt showing Garfield flying into his
favorite food, which was in the shape of the Twin Towers.
There's so many things you couldput on a T-shirt.
Why this? It's it's Garfield flying into
the Twin Towers saying I'll take911 orders of lasagna.
(45:29):
And and and Garfield is shaped like a plane.
Oh my God, she's come on. Yeah, that is extremely heck.
I would definitely agree with her in the why.
Oh, come on now. Why?
He wants the he wants 911 ordersof lasagna.
Yeah. 911. I ain't wearing it, but also if
I saw somebody wearing it, I'd be like bold choice.
(45:51):
And I think it's very funny. It's.
Ridiculous. I just don't understand how even
some of the family members of victims don't realize that 911
jokes are a thing. I'm sure they do, yeah.
Yeah, I just think that's a bad one.
I mean, I got it. Yeah, We just agree to this.
That's the great thing about programming that we have here.
We do. How does 911 even like?
(46:14):
How do? You shape the lasagna like the
timers. Garfield, Garfield when I it.
Doesn't. That's why it works, right?
It doesn't at all. It's so stupid.
It's silly. It's so dumb.
Well, they probably were servingsome lasagna in the lunch rooms
and in the towers there. You never do know, actually.
You don't. So in a way, entertainment
didn't just reflect 9/11. It accidentally bookended it.
(46:37):
It framed the moment before the world changed and helped us
figure out how to live in the world after.
Absolutely. Which was a learning curve.
Yes, which was a total fucking nightmare that we're currently
still living in. So, and I do think that Pete
Davidson kind of helped us all with that when he came out with
his special and kind of like shining light and made like the
most 911 jokes, but then like prefaced it with like my dad
(46:59):
died on 9/11. And then just recently, this
past week, he went to Riyadh andentertained the Saudis at the
Riyadh Comedy Festival. So it's full circle More Yes, he
went to entertain the people that killed his fucking dad.
Whole holy not the Saudis, stupid.
It was all the Saudis. Everyone warns differently.
Oh my God. All right, so that'll bring us
too. Final thoughts Don't do it.
(47:26):
Don't. Don't do 9/11.
Don't do 9/11. What does that mean?
Don't, don't do it. They shouldn't have done it.
They shouldn't have fucking doneit.
Yeah, that's my thoughts. No, that's the terrorists
Shouldn't have done it. They shouldn't have.
Just go be. They should have known that you
take out our golden corrals. Stop doing it from Boston.
They had the shoe bomber after that fucking try to light his
shoes on fire in Boston. That was an FBI setup.
(47:47):
That was that was all a setup. I don't even have time for.
That that was a plant. It was a plant.
Yeah. He literally showed up with
Wicks in his shoes. Yeah, like we got him.
And it's like, yeah, 'cause you drove him to the airport, right?
I see. Hmm.
Well, for my final thought, I think, yeah, as a New Yorker,
the story always hits really close to home.
Yeah. And then hits the second
building. No, I'm kidding.
Oh, Garfield herself. Though all of a sudden,
(48:10):
Garfield's fine. Everybody processes differently.
That's correct. And I think that wherever the
twin towers were removed right after, like entertainment wise,
put them back in, put them back into all those shots.
Add extra ones. If you had, if you had twin
towers in the shot to begin with, because I personally got
really sad when they just weren't in the shots anymore.
It was a really sad reminder. Like the absence of it was a lot
(48:33):
worse than them. Like just being there and
reminding me about them. Right.
Yeah, I say add more. Just keep adding more twin
towers. Just quadruple it towers.
Yeah, wow. So take it and double it.
Give it to the next person. Yes exactly.
I think my final thought is theyneed to redo every movie with
someone standing in the twin tower on 9/11 at the very end.
(48:54):
I think they'll win Oscars everyyear.
That is a really good idea. Jason takes Manhattan on 9/11.
Yeah, we can even add this podcast and be like, thanks,
guys. And then like, just sweat.
Then the camera just zooms out while we're packing up all of
our stuff and we're like in one of the buildings.
Oh. No.
Holy shit. That plane looks like it's
(49:15):
flying pretty. Low There are planes that you
can hear in these podcasts. Yeah, it it is.
They they they fly scariously low because we live by an
airport. We live by a government base, a
secret government base where we record out of.
All right. Well, I think.
All right, everyone, we'll neverforget.
Love yourself. Be yourself.
Hail yourself. And until next week.
(49:37):
Don't go dying on us. Bye bye.
You have just heard. A true.
Hollywood murder mystery. I have never seen anything like
this before. The movies, Broadway, music,
television, all of it. A place that manufacturers
nightmares. Look, everybody, that's a rap.
Goodnight. Please drive home carefully and
(49:59):
come back again soon.
What's up Dead O universe? I'm Kyle Plue from Death and
Entertainment, and I'm here to tell you about death and
Entertainment presents. The Hollywood Walk of Death.
Think Hollywood's all glitz and glamour?
Think again. Join me on the Hollywood Walk of
Death, the newest true crime walking tour that takes you to
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you'll never look at the Walk ofFame the same way again.
(00:22):
Book your tour now at hollywoodwalkofdeath.com.
If you dare. Private tours now available.
Now sit back and enjoy the show.Live from Los Angeles. 911 What
is your emergency? They're in Hollywood.
Now 2 counts of murder. Injury and death.
Oh. My God.
Shocking new details. That has stunned the
(00:43):
entertainment world. This makes me a little nervous.
The hair stood up on my arms just like in the movies.
What? Do you call this thing anyway?
Death. Entertainment.
Greetings, Deto Universe. How the heck are you?
My name is Kyle Plouffe. And I'm Jerry Aquino.
And I'm Ben Kissel. Today we are covering the last
(01:06):
normal minute 9/11 revisited. Oh yeah, we're going back.
We covered it years ago. I love that.
I always like to revisit 911. Yeah.
Exactly. I mean, we're supposed to.
You're the job you never forget.Eggs, right.
Great point. Yeah, great point.
And with that, let's get into it.
Let's go. OK, it's the morning of Tuesday,
(01:48):
September 11th, 2001. I'm.
Already getting emotional? I wake up hungover to a phone
call for my mother in Menominee Wisconsin as I'm currently
missing class and she says Ben are you OK?
And I said I'm fine. I'm too scared I that's why I
missed. Class mom.
Wow, that was it, Yeah. And I said I'm fine because
(02:10):
everyone thought that 911 was coming to Menominee, Wisconsin
next. Yeah, everyone thought that it
was coming to wherever you were next.
Yeah, the South Shore Plaza in Braintree, MA, about 10 miles
outside of Boston. People were like, they're gonna
come for that next as they wanted to get Hot Topic in a
Quiznos, right? They went for the global economy
(02:30):
banks of of the twin towers, yes.
And next thing you know, they'regonna go for Buckle.
Yes. So the morning of September
11th, 2001, the air is crisp, the sun's out.
Jerry is in the 4th grade. That's so.
Hands right, I know it's freshman in fucking college.
Maybe a? Sophomore, I was in 10th grade,
(02:51):
so here we go right down the line.
Crazy. The air is crisp, the sun's out,
and America is waking up to another day of breakfast TV and
pop songs on the radio. And somewhere outside NBC's
Today show, there's a man in a giant Mr. Peanut costume.
Top hat, Kane, Monocle, the whole deal.
Oh wait, we're we're not going to re bearing into anti-Semitic
(03:12):
territory. Oh, peanuts.
Yeah, he's waving a Taurus like a legume themed Mickey Mouse,
surrounded by crowds holding camcorders and glitter poster
boards. He has no idea that within
minutes he's going to witness one of the most darkest mornings
in modern history through the tiny mesh eye holes of a 7 foot
peanut. Oh my God, imagine seeing
(03:35):
something tragic. And he's still smiling.
Just staring at it. I'm just going to remove this
monocle, I don't really want to see this.
Yeah, this is the story of 911 as experienced through the lens
of entertainment. The doughnut commercials that
aired just as the planes were impacting the pop album that
crashed and burned on release day and the stand up album so
(03:56):
morbid it had to be pulled from the shelves.
Oh wow. Really.
And yes, Mr. Peanut, standing helplessly in Rockefeller Plaza
as America's sense of normal flipped upside down.
Wow, that's that is the day Mr. Peanut became almond milk.
Yeah, it really was. He probably shot himself some
peanut butter, milked them. Yeah.
(04:17):
Oh, my God, Mr. Peanut, first you have to wear a peanut
costume all day. Yeah, it's you wake up kind of
sad. Yeah, because you got to do that
all day. And then 911 happens.
Yeah. I'd take off my Peanut costume
and say never again. Never.
That's the day I hung up my peanut.
I can't even look at a peanut tothis day.
(04:38):
Yeah. Why is Wilbur crying?
Somebody threw him a peanut butter sandwich.
Yes. So it's a Tuesday morning in
2001. America is deep in its TRL era.
Pop music is shiny, choreographed and utterly
inescapable. Justin Timberlake still has
ramen noodle hair. With the frosted tips and
everything, I love it. The full denim outfit that he
(04:59):
wore with Britney, which is fucking awesome.
Denim on denim, Come on Canadiantuxedos for the win.
Right. Yes, Britney Spears is on top of
the world. Oh yes.
This is before her Instagram days.
She's still on top of the world,okay?
Definitely still on top of. She's somewhere in the world.
She's just like, she's like, sheused to be like bending over,
sultry like, and now she's like squatting over it.
(05:22):
Juggling knives. I love it.
This is the Brittany I wanted tosee my the whole time.
Yeah. On cable TV, a show called
Jackass is quietly becoming a cultural supernova.
A group of dudes with Johnny Knoxville doing stunts so
painful they made America's Funniest Home Videos look like
Masterpiece Theatre. Yes.
Yeah, it was a simpler time whena guy could become famous for
(05:43):
stapling and scrotum to his thigh.
Yes, the the good old days. And America would say give us
more. Give us.
More in hindsight, I think the scrote staple isn't as painful
as I might think. As a kid I was like Oh my God.
But then I also watched a lot ofhardcore wrestling.
I think I could actually do the scrote to the thigh.
Yeah, as long as it's not a staple penetrating a testicle.
Yeah, yes, Remember, 'cause that's where all the pain is.
(06:04):
Yes, but. One of Our Lady friends, Lois,
she's a female wrestler. She was just doing a bar
wrestling match where they stapled a bunch of dollar bills
to her buttocks. Yeah, and that was really
hardcore. It was hardcore.
It was legit staples too. Yeah, pretty hot.
It's. Pretty it was.
It was so gnarly. It was incredibly attractive
and. Rousing.
Kind of sexy. Yes, we loved it.
Yeah. TV schedules are locked and
(06:24):
loaded for fall premieres. NBC is king with friends.
ER, The West Wing Survivors turning reality TV into a
gladiator sport. Richard Hatch and his small
fucking penis, Yeah. Remember that and his tax
evasions. No.
Richard Hatch, he was the one ofthe first openly gay men on
television and he was the winnerof Survivor season 1.
(06:44):
And he was always naked. And then he ended up, he ended
up going to prison 'cause he didn't claim, he didn't tell the
government on his tax return that he won $1,000,000.
But he was on national television.
Yeah, that's hard so. Then the government was like, I
think you have $1,000,000 and he's like, I don't know what.
Do you think that? How do you know and?
It was like, 'cause you wanted it on national TV.
No, they were. They were just joking.
They don't really give me $1,000,000.
(07:06):
They just give me a pair of pants.
HBO is churning out The Sopranosand redefining premium
television. The world feels stable enough
that the biggest drama on the Morning News involves cooking
segments and weather delays. I.
Remember those? Times I know.
Yeah, CDs are still dominating, Napster's been sued into
oblivion, and iTunes is on the horizon but not there yet.
(07:30):
Hip hop is taking over. New metal is growling from every
teenage bedroom. Oh my God.
And the idea of viral still involves literal viruses.
Yeah, I had a friend who went viral in high school.
He got the he got the clap. Yeah.
And scene. Mariah Mariah Carey's Glitter
soundtrack drops that morning, afilm album combo she's pinned
(07:53):
her entire comeback on. It's supposed to be her
triumphant return. Instead, it becomes one of the
most spectacular commercial faceplants in pop history.
Not because the album is worse than expected, but because
nobody's buying Mariah Carey's records while the world is
ending, right? Maybe that's what we needed.
Maybe we needed Mariah more at that moment than we ever even
thought. Oh.
(08:14):
Man, very true. Yeah.
Was there a song that came out for 911?
Did no one, no one did a Well, we are.
We are the world. No one did anything like that.
It was a different time Toby Keith sang that boot in your ass
song. Bruce Springsteen.
Cried. Come on up for the Roger.
That was. Powerful.
Yeah, that was probably the. No, don't make fun of the boss.
(08:37):
I'm a more of an employee guy. Everybody loves the boss.
Oh my. God, yeah, yeah.
I'm for the working man Ben. Yeah, Oh my God.
Whatever that means, I agree. Alright.
Over in comedy, George Carlin isabout to drop an album with an
Extremely on brand title. It was called.
I kind of Like It When a Lot of People Die.
Oh my God. He recorded that September 9th
(08:57):
and 10th in Vegas and then September 11th happens and he
had to completely shelve it. I mean, he couldn't just change
the title. I don't like it.
Yeah, Correction. He had his pulse on what was
going on in society. I kind of like it when a lot of
people die, except when it comesto terrorist attacks.
I don't like that. I was going to say I wanted them
(09:19):
to drown. I kind of like it when a lot of
people get really close and maybe flatline for two minutes
but then come back and it was because of a small plastic
surgery procedure. Non invasive and not definitely
not on a plane because of terrorist attacks.
Right, I just didn't like that new special of his.
It was too long winded to. Barely get through the title.
(09:42):
Yeah. Speaking of which, drowning
inside the Twin Towers on 9/11 actually has a meaning because
Sylvia Browne, the psychic that would always go on Montel.
Yeah. She told a woman who was asking
about her dead husband, she was like, he drowned.
I can see him. He's drowning.
She's like, actually, he died inthe Twin Towers and on 9/11.
And she goes, well, is it possible he could have drowned
in there? Like, now You're asking
(10:03):
questions. You're just very confident.
I lost my boyfriend tragically afew years ago.
They never found and I've had such a hard time since.
Every time. The reason why you didn't find
him is because he's in water. And find him in water.
It's like the girl that's missing in Aruba.
(10:26):
You can't find somebody. It was September 11th.
There was no He was a fireman, but.
Little Mills, see, I keep seeinghim in water.
Is there any way he could have drowned in water in some way?
They never found a piece of him.Nothing from 9:11.
(10:51):
Because he he says he couldn't breathe and he was filled with
water. Well, if they were trying to put
the fire out, come on town, they.
Could have, you know, I Yeah. No, they won't find him, but
honey, that's OK because it doesn't matter if they find him
or not, he's still over there. That is really, really
(11:12):
offensive. Things to say?
Yes. In the South tower pool, yeah.
So America's entertainment machine is humming like a well
oiled boy band member. Oiled by his manager.
Lou Pearlman, get off of. Me son of a bitch.
And at 8:46 AM, it all stops. Thanks, Boston.
(11:36):
Yeah, so somewhere and and somewhere out there, Robert
Pattinson is getting ready to forgive his father.
Oh God, that's such a weird movie.
God, what a weird movie. That's right, I love the ending
'cause you could literally do that to any movie and it would
be like holy shit Batman was there on 9/11 had.
Nothing to do with the actual plot at all.
I don't think Batman could have stopped 911, no no.
(11:59):
At 8:46 AM, American Airlines Flight 11 slammed into the North
Tower. NB CS Today show was mid
sentence when producers started shouting in their headsets.
Katie Couric and Matt Lahr's faces shifted from polite host
smiles to Oh no, this is real, we're fucked.
They cut from morning banter to a wide shot of the burning
tower. Nobody knew exactly what had
(12:19):
happened just yet. Some said it was a small plane,
others guessed A tragic accident, but the tone had
shifted from up next, pumpkin bread recipes to stay with us.
I heard Al Roker farted. Al Roker was with Mr. Peanut.
Oh, he was was. Yeah, shit.
Lucky the peanut made it out alive.
That was Fat Roker. It was very fat.
It looks like he's wearing a fatsuit like Eddie Murphy.
(12:42):
Yeah. Yeah, that's true.
He was like, like cartoonishly bigger for some reason.
Yeah, well, he was adorable. He was healthy.
We saw one of our friends yesterday who's lost a lot of
weight, but we're of the age nowwhere people get too skinny.
Is it bad or good? Because they could be, could be
the big C. Right, right.
It all depends, cunts. No, no cancer.
Oh. Right, right, right, right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. CNN was the first cable network
(13:06):
to confirm a plane has hit the World Trade Center.
Footage was shaky, zoomed in, confused.
There was no lower third graphic, no theme music, just
anchors talking their way through the unimaginable.
And George W Bush talking to a group of children as they
regurgitated certain words that were quite interesting.
Yeah, what were the words like? Steel plane.
Plane hit steel. Oh my God, wow I thought it was
(13:30):
fake and then me and Ben actually went back and watched
it and I was like holy shit how did we not talk about this
earlier? I've been talking about it my
whole God damn life. Have you been?
I have been. I've ranted a lot.
Yeah. And then nine O 3:00 AM, United
Airlines Flight 175 hit the celltower live on air.
Every network caught it. Yeah, it's insane.
(13:53):
It was just absolutely. Oh man.
Yeah, the last chance before cell phones where they could get
away with this too, because the flip foam footage was all real
grainy and shit. Yeah, but a lot of people, they
said when I know we're not talking about really all that,
but they said they heard explosions.
Almost. Said right.
Little tiny explosions happeningthroughout the building.
Yeah, I don't. Know what's that about?
(14:14):
The camera was trained on the twin towers from the first
impact. Suddenly, another plane appears
on the right of the frame, slamsinto the building and a fireball
bursts on the other side. Oh.
God. This is when everybody watching
realized this was not an accident.
Yeah. I mean, yeah, right.
Fool me once, right? OK guys, this isn't funny
(14:36):
anymore. Right.
Yeah. For TV anchors, this was
uncharted territory. There was no precedent for
covering A coordinated terroristattack on American soil live.
I know, I mean, how could imagine being in that position?
What do you do, especially whileyou're like, panicking on the
inside of yourself? Yeah, if you're in New York.
I mean, there's Redis in Kelly too.
Or Redis in. Regis and Regis and Kelly.
(14:58):
Oh, yeah, Regis and Kelly. I said that, right?
Yeah, you do. Yeah, they were live.
And Regis is so confused. He's like, Oh my God.
They keep showing the replays. He's like a fourth plane.
It's at the tower. How many plates I wanted?
How many? Plates.
I wanna get all my terror news. Regis Feldman.
A confused Regis. That's an amazing voice.
Hamas is bombed the hospital. Right.
(15:21):
And they're like down the street, I mean, in New York
City, in terms of miles, it's not very far.
And they're just sitting there with a studio audience.
If I was in that audience, I'd be like, I'm getting the fuck
out of here. I know.
I mean, if I was anyone in that building and feel like I knew,
listen, I know that I'm like literally the host on the
television show right now, but I'm gonna go ahead and find the
exit. Right there would have been the
cartoon plumes of smoke, 'cause I fucking sprinted out.
(15:42):
Yeah. Also, I think our audience for
someone, someone screaming rightnow, I think it's Regis and
Kathy Lee. Oh, because then it was Regis
after Regis, and Kathy Lee was Regis and Kelly.
But I think at this time we werestill Kathy.
No, I think it was Kelly becausethey were talking about.
Was it Kelly? I think it was Kelly during this
time. Yeah, it had like just recently
crossed over to that, Yeah. And they were talking about a
(16:04):
lunch box that she was trying toget and it was raining outside.
It was like super dull, like themost boring story.
And then all of a sudden 4 planes have hit the towers.
Regis two, yeah. Producer is just like, thank
God, something. Oh boy.
So meanwhile, on NB CS Plaza, tourists and mascots who showed
(16:26):
up for morning TV are now staring up at the sky in horror.
Somewhere in that crowd, Mr. Peanut is sweating through a
shell, wondering if this is still part of a bit.
Why would he think that? 'Cause he's Mr. Peanut, he's Mr.
Peanut. He don't know shit.
He's all confused peanut brain also they they staged for him
the death of Mr. Peanut. I was part of like the marketing
(16:48):
promotion for it and it said like, RIP Mr. Peanut on all
these boxes of peanuts and all the actual packaging 'cause they
were getting rid of him for whatever reason.
If it's not broke, don't fix it.Rest in Peanut.
But it was because they wanted to introduce baby Peanut.
Oh, OK. Is it?
Yeah. There was a baby Mr. Peanut.
Yeah. But I don't.
But there doesn't seem to be a peanut anymore.
(17:08):
But they rescinded killing him because they had in the
advertisement he had gotten intoa helicopter accident and Kobe
Bryant died like the next week. Oh.
My God. So they were like, let's pull
the plug on that one. Why were they so on point with
that? I don't know.
I really don't know. It's weird.
It's scary. It is.
(17:29):
Also, Mr. Peanut didn't need to die in a helicopter accident.
No. What the?
Fuck, Mr. Peanut could have lived a long happy healthy life
and died of natural causes. Exactly.
Cunts, Sir. He could just be a cartoon that
lives forever. Or that.
Yeah, yeah. Or he could have like, you know,
moved. Maybe he develops a peanut
allergy and commits suicide. Lol.
Lol Raffle. So while everybody's scrambling
(17:50):
to describe what no one fully understood yet, on another
channel, a very different slice of TV history is happening.
Whoopi Goldberg, National Treasure he got winner and queen
of the 90s, was smack dab in themiddle of an Entenmann's Donuts
commercial when the first plane hit.
Which it could have been the pilot just watching the
commercial just being like oh fuck, what could be Goldberg I'm
getting out of? Here.
(18:11):
Whoa. This was when Whoopi was still a
Whoopi. This is before view Whoopi.
Yes, even the commercial just itit ages weirdly too, because
she's in somebody else's house for some reason, talking about
how she doesn't want to tell anybody but intimates doughnuts
because they'll go flying off the shelf she wants more for.
Her Oh, I. See.
And then there's a guy at his own kitchen table about to eat
(18:31):
his own butter bread, and she steals it away from him.
Oh my God, and she eats it in front of him.
This hard working man that's holy, this lady from the rich
lady from the view just steals it was.
The view on yet. Was the view on?
Yeah, I don't think it was on yet.
It might not have been on beforeAmerica was Under attack flashed
across every screen. The last thing some viewers saw
was Whoopi Goldberg gleefully coveting Donuts.
(18:53):
So it was like the first time the commercial aired was exactly
when the. Exactly when the first plane
hit, yeah. A lot of coincidences did.
She know that. She, I think she does.
Since then, yeah. Yeah.
Goldberg doughnuts. It's all coming together.
Yes, You figure it out. But Whoopi Goldberg's commercial
(19:14):
has now been known as like a part of the last normal minute
before everything changed. Oh, got it.
And so was Mr. Peanut. Yeah, he's right.
Before then, yeah. Yeah, but is he considered a
part of the last normal minute by popular society past?
Last normal, like 7 minutes, yeah.
Yeah, that's close enough by peanut hours.
(19:36):
That's that makes sense. Peanut minutes, Peanut minutes
and hours are different than human hours.
Right. Yeah, Hollywood has always loved
blowing things up. It's basically their second
language after sequels. But after 911, suddenly every
fiery explosion on screen lookeda little too real.
Within hours of the attacks, theentertainment industry went into
full panic mode. Networks scrubbed their
(19:58):
schedules. Studios pulled trailers.
And anything that even vaguely resembled the plane's towers or
mass destruction was shoved intoa.
Vault. Oh wow, I bet.
Yeah, that's gonna really hurt somebody who had a fantastic
script all about the Twin Towers, and it's a love story
between the north and the South tower.
And they looked at each other, and they kissed.
(20:19):
Yeah, or just like an actor who finally got his big break
playing a pilot that he ends up like going on this like life
saving mission that ends up killing everyone but he like
sacrificed himself. Not doing any plane movies
anymore, yeah. Sorry.
Like no, sorry, that's canned forever.
My. Guy it would only train movies
for the next decade, yeah. Yeah, don't throw Mama from the
9/11 plane had to be scrapped. Yeah.
(20:41):
Wow. The first big casualty was a
trailer for Sam Raimi's Spider Man.
You guys remember when Spider Man went to New York City, he
actually put a big web in between the twin towers?
Yes. And then they a helicopter got
caught in it and they were like,we have to get fucking get rid
of this awesome piece here. Oh my my God, that's so sad.
Yeah, yeah, because it really just points out the failure of
(21:04):
Spiderman. He could have fucking been
there, but he didn't show up because.
Where the hell Queens were you now?
He was scared. He was in school.
He's. Probably, yeah.
With me, yeah. Exactly right.
Can't believe you were in 4th grade.
Yeah, and you were in New York City.
Yeah, I was in. I was in Queens.
So what did you see? So I saw absolutely, I saw
(21:25):
absolutely nothing. I saw my teachers panicking and
starting to cry. And then they like, they put us
all together in like 1 room because the teachers didn't want
to be alone. They were so scared.
Yeah. And we didn't really know what
was going on. But then, but then when we heard
the second plane hit, they were like, they started flipping out
and it was like a little bit chaotic.
And I feel like, again, it was more the adults than the kids,
(21:47):
right? They were trying so hard to keep
it calm but they started contacting all parents and then
and my dad. My dad picked me up.
I got picked up from my school too.
Because they were like, this is a little close.
Yeah. Yeah, this, this makes sense.
I think I'll just go home now. Half day.
Half day, yeah. Half day.
It was 9:00 in the morning. Oh yeah, almost a full day off.
Yeah, because in my family, we couldn't get in touch with my
(22:07):
uncle who would come out here for business and take that exact
flight back and forth from LA because everything originated in
Boston. So we were trying to find him.
It's my gay uncle that contracted something, so it
would have been just icing on the cake for everything.
What, he gets a horrible diseaseand then dies on 9/11?
Oh my God. But he was fine.
(22:29):
Oh. He's again.
With enough. Boston racist, where were you?
Where where are you? I know in one fucking day where
they could have been heroes. Don't let him board the plane.
Jeez, I don't. Know no, you weren't there, were
you? James Woods tried to stop it.
Yes, he did. He was on another flight and saw
a bunch of people that looked vaguely foreign to him and he
(22:50):
said I think they're planning a terrorist attack.
And it was like 2 weeks before 911 happened.
Wow. And then he went on CNN like
every day being like, I told them, I told the FBI directly.
They didn't listen to me. Wow, I mean to be fair, I would
do the same thing too. Yeah, I don't.
Know America's greatest? I told you so.
Oh yeah, that's very true. Yeah, 911 worked out for.
(23:11):
Him. Did I or did I not?
Did I not tell you? Those guys look suspicious?
Remember when I said that, Tony?Yeah, we all remember.
Didn't I say you did say he saidit?
They were Turkish. All right, buddy.
Turkish, Yeah. We don't know what they're up
to. We don't.
We absolutely. Don't The teaser was for Spider
Man was yanked from theaters within days.
(23:33):
Any promotional material featuring the twin towers
disappeared. Even background skyline shots
were re edited to erase them. Like Sex in the City.
Yeah, they got rid of it. Why?
Would they do that? Like to erase the history.
It's triggering. It's not it's, it's, it's a good
reminder. Yeah, it's.
Beautiful, man. Like I like when I watch older
movies and they do New York Skylines and you can see the
(23:55):
Twin towers. Yeah, like so it's like it's
touching it. Really is.
And it was heartbreaking when the movies that didn't have it
in the New York skyline anymore first started coming out.
Yeah. Absolutely.
And now, I mean, at least we getWorld Trade Center, Trade Center
one now. But yeah, before it was just
empty. I can't even find World Trade
Center one now in a lineup. No, like I mean put.
(24:16):
It in a building lineup I can't find it I.
Can't find it I. Can't.
It's so big. Really.
Then where is it, Ben? It's it's.
Where the Twin Towers were. I went up to the top of it.
It's crazy. You go in the elevator and it's
all LCD screens and as you go upto like the 100th floor,
whatever, or even it's higher than that, the LCD screens show
(24:40):
like what it looked like when the Dutch first came over and
it's all like marshland and stuff.
And as you go up, the city builds with you.
Oh my God. That's cool and it's insane.
I was hoping they weren't gonna try to pull a prank when like a
plane coming right at you at thevery end.
Yeah, it's like it it grows withyou, but it also gets fully
destroyed by the time you get tothe top.
And then at the top is just likea bunch of like burning flames.
(25:01):
So right. Too rail.
Too rail. That would be an experience.
That would be fucking crazy. It all goes back to the Dutch.
Yeah. It's two things in this world.
I can't stand people that are. Dutch in taxes.
No, it's a Michael Caine line from Austin Power.
Yeah. People that are like, just won't
(25:23):
talk. Intolerant to other people's
cultures. Yeah.
And a Dutch. Dutch, that's.
Good. Studios went through upcoming
releases with a fine tooth comb asking does this scene involve
planes? Does it involve explosions?
Are there buildings in the shot?Yeah, it's a Hollywood fucking
movie. Yes, yes and yes.
We got fucking, we got triggeredhard for a while, God.
(25:44):
They wanted to make sure that nobody was crying into their
popcorn. Well, the next major I.
Mean that's fair. The next major film is called
The Double Mastectomy of Scarlett Johansson.
OK, what a wonderful film that'sgonna be.
What, other than what planes andexplosions?
That's all they do. They don't want to do anything.
Else I know. Maybe a lot of ROM coms came out
(26:04):
after that. Do you?
Do we know what kind of movies came out after 911?
Yeah, it was pretty much, yeah. Very low stakes dramas and
comedies. Yeah.
Double mastectomy of Scarlett Johansson sounds amazing.
You should write that. Yeah, I'll write it, you know.
You know, get right to write it.I write so well.
(26:26):
Some movies were delayed or heavily edited, Others just
quietly vanished. Collateral Damage was a movie
starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a firefighter battling
terrorists was delayed over and over and over again.
Oh, no Big Trouble, a comedy with a climax involving a bomb
on a plane, was shelved. Yeah, I believe it.
Even TV shows scrambled. The pilot of 24, which involved
(26:49):
the plot to blow up a plane, suddenly felt like a
documentary. Yeah, it's like, it's just, it's
just a little too on the nose. Yeah, it might have been kind of
good to get a little bit more creative than there's a plane,
there's a bomb on the plane. All right, that's great.
Go with it. Right.
Feels like Hollywood really loved that idea.
Yeah, they. Loved it.
They loved they were. There were a lot of airplane
(27:09):
movies. A lot of airplane movies, a lot
of terrorist idea, yeah. Die hard.
Two at the airport. At the airport.
Yeah, the video game was awesome.
Yeah, that was so good. On TV, networks replaced reruns
and sitcoms with round the clockcoverage for days.
Once entertaining programming slowly crept back into the
atmosphere, the tone was very different.
(27:30):
Jokes were trimmed, storylines were softened.
Any plot involving the hijackings or anything involving
New York was quietly rewritten. That's a good idea.
Just forget New York. Yep.
Yeah, The Sopranos also removed the Twin Towers from intros and
different episodes. They shouldn't have.
I agree, they just keep them in there.
Late night host, delayed returns.
(27:53):
Now they can't wait to get back.Yeah, they can, Jimmy.
Oh, it's a little different than911.
But OK, he would tell you otherwise.
It is. Maybe it was his own 9/11 I
guess. And live events like the Emmys
were postponed altogether. The sudden cultural shift
created a kind of strange temporary censorship.
It wasn't government mandated, but it was fear, sensitivity and
(28:15):
optics. Nobody wanted to be the network
that accidentally aired A skyscraper explosion two weeks
after the real thing. Not to be mistaken.
Not to be mistaken with the Emily's, which is the award
given to the best softball catcher in college softball.
Shout out to Emily. Let's go big old butt.
And it wasn't just action movies.
Romantic comedies with New York Skylines had to tweak their
(28:36):
establishing shots. Musicians pulled songs off
playlist. The Dixie Chicks temporarily
dropped Goodbye Earl because it had the word bomb in it.
Oh come on now. They should.
Also. They dropped the name Dixie
Chicks. Now there's just the Chicks, but
they should have kept Dixie in there.
They dropped the Dixie. Yeah, just the chicks.
Then how would anyone know what the fuck anyone is talking about
the chicks? They got into a fight with
(28:58):
George W Bush because he's a, you know, a war criminal and a
tyrant. And then they were like, we
don't like that. And then they were met at the
South because then the South gotmad at them and then now they
just, it's another just the chicks.
Yeah, so Dick Dixie was like a Southern term that people didn't
appreciate. And then Lady Antebellum is
another one. So now there's just Lady A.
It doesn't. Lady Antebellum is Lady A.
Lady A. Actually, that one makes a
(29:18):
little more sense, that one. Yeah, a little bit.
I I support that. Lady A, what's the A stand for?
Well, we. Can't tell you antebellum.
We can't tell you. Well, guys.
It's not a. It's not considered PC.
Yeah. Why don't they just name
themselves the Dick Chicks? There we go.
We don't like that. The Dicks.
The Dicks. The Dicks?
Yeah, that would have worked. Like Dix?
(29:40):
Yeah, a lot of ideas. You know who's a bunch of Dicks?
The people over there over at Clear Channel.
Oh, they circulated a list of over 150 songs they considered
lyrically sensitive after 911. Wow, they took it upon
themselves to just do that. Yeah, 'cause they owned all the
radio stations so they could dictate what's getting on the
air, what's not getting on the air.
Got it. Songs like Let the Bodies Hit
(30:01):
the Floor was not allowed. My God.
I mean. Nothing wrong with me.
That was awesome though. Great.
I wouldn't, I would not like pair that song up with like
terrorism. I know for a fact some people
did 'cause I've seen videos withthat song in the background of
people jumping. But also that's not the issue,
right? Yeah.
It's like when Joan Jett got ridof that song, What was it?
(30:25):
Shoot me through the what's the what's the song that she has
that says the word shoot? Hit me with your best shot.
Yes, she got rid of that becauseshe's like, I don't want people
to think about school shootings.And it's like, Joan, no one's
thinking about that. Yeah, here's some of them that
some of them make sense. Some of them really don't. 3
Doors Down, duck and run. OK, I didn't even know that
(30:45):
song. I mean, I know, no, it brings
more attention to the song rightthan actually playing it on the
radio 'cause nobody even fuckingremembers it.
What if? What if they did play that as
like, you know, a warning to stay vigilant?
Right, duck and run. Also, that's really difficult to
do. Duck and run.
Yeah, anything that involved things get going down South, 311
song down, that's done. That was a that was a dumb song
(31:08):
anyway. ACDC had a ton of them.
Dirty deeds done dirt cheap Hells Bells Highway to Hell,
safe in New York City, not shootto thrill, shot down in flames
in TNT. Oh yeah, all the bombs.
I know my. Yeah, that really makes me feel
better knowing that ACDC isn't on the radio.
Right, exactly. It's almost like 911 never
(31:28):
happened. Right.
Even Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World.
Why, if we can't even have a nice song about a world where
everybody's coming together? What?
Why can't we? Why is what in a wonderful
world? Because he sees trees of green
and then something in the skies or something like that.
Yeah, clouds of white. Clouds of white, and they're
like, no, no, too much like. Smokes of night.
Too much like smoke. Take it down.
(31:51):
Take it down. Oh, maybe that is it.
I don't know. They had their own reasons for
not wanting to trigger any emotion or image of 911
whatsoever. Yeah, everyone just stay calm
and neutral. Yeah, Hollywood didn't flinch.
Hollywood didn't just flinch. It recoiled.
The same industry that it's beendecades turning chaos in the box
(32:11):
office, gold and nothing but cash, suddenly found itself
terrified of its own product. Which is weird considering now.
Right. It's definitely back.
Yeah, definitely back. They super don't care anymore.
Yeah, in the months after 911, America was living in a fog of
grief, rage and constant cable news.
Jokes felt dangerous. Sarcasm felt disrespectful.
(32:34):
Even The Onion briefly considered shutting down.
Yeah, I think didn't that comedian, comedian Anthony
Jeselnik, like he was like kind of criticized for tweeting some
kind of 9/11 joke or he was about to and like, a lot, as
soon as it happened, a lot of his close friends and family
members called him and was like,hey, before you do it, don't.
(32:56):
You must. Have been years later.
Yeah, I think so. Yeah.
No, I think it was that day. Oh, it was that day, Yeah.
I'll do my research on Oh my. God, it might have been a
Myspace update or something then, because I don't think
Twitter was. Oh yeah, it definitely wasn't a
tweet. Yeah, comedy didn't just hit
pause, it slammed into a wall. When late night shows finally
(33:17):
returned, hosts approached it like a national funeral.
David Letterman was the first tobreak the silence, returning on
September 17th, 2001. WWE even came back before then.
I believe they were September 13th.
They jumped right back in with Smackdown, like immediately.
Well, maybe they thought that this was the violence that
people needed, right? Now that yeah, choreographed
violence, yeah, absolutely. It's more of a dance.
(33:39):
Something that you know will notend in absolute horror and
tragedy. Yeah, unless your own heart, you
fell. You fell from the from the
feeling and died. Oh my God.
That was bad, unless that. Yeah, that was very bad.
You know. They did have a tight team back
in the day called the Twin Towers.
Hmm. And the brothers of destruction.
(33:59):
Oh yes. Oh wow, yeah, did they have to
stop existing? Twin Towers already didn't exist
and Brothers of Destruction camelater.
Oh, OK, yeah. Well that's that seems a little
disrespectful. It was a years later after
people stopped feeling being emotional about it.
Got it. Jon Stewart followed on
September 20th, opening The Daily Show with one of the most
sincere monologues of his career.
(34:20):
No punch lines, just grief, anger, and an unexpected
vulnerable vulnerability. So like Stephen Colbert now?
No jokes. There aren't any jokes.
It caught viewers off guard. SNL came back on September 29th,
opening not with sketches, but with a solemn tribute led by
Paul Simon and 1st responders. That's true, I remember that.
(34:45):
I. Do remember that.
And Jon Stewart, to his credit, he has done more, I think for
the survivors of 9/11, includingfirst responders.
Every year they would have like a roundtable with a bunch of
firefighters who were there and one by one they all dropped off.
Until, I think a few years ago, none of them were left.
And we still can't get these motherfuckers in Congress to
allocate any funds for people with 911 related cancers.
(35:06):
It's disgusting. It is disgusting.
It's fucking crazy. Such scumbags.
And Jon Stewart is there every year fighting for him still.
Yeah. He was so cool when I was
working as a production. This assistant for Viacom shows,
Anytime I would work at The Daily Show studios when Jon
Stewart was hosting, he would personally go to every single
person that worked on the show and shake their hand and say
thank you for being here tonight.
I love that. He's a fucking good dude.
(35:28):
That's nice. When Lorne Michaels asked then
Mayor Rudy Giuliani then celebrated Rudy Giuliani, They
loved it. I mean yeah, he was like 1 of
like the top dog heroes of 911. Before his teeth were black and
yellow. Before like his hair was
sweating by. Yeah, what happened?
(35:48):
Use me, Sir. Your hair's leaking.
Oh, what? Before people celebrated him
breaking his back in New Hampshire recently, Lorne
Michaels asked then Mayor Rudy, can we be funny?
And Giuliani said, why start now?
There you go, Rudy, you know. What?
That was the first, like bang, we got a punchline.
(36:09):
That's amazing. And that was the last time Rudy
was ever funny. Yeah.
America's mayor. He had a moment and then he
decided decided to ruin it all. They've been Batman, he says.
You live long enough to become the villain.
Yeah, that he did. He really did.
You die the hero and live long enough to be become the villain.
Absolutely. This marked the birth of the
(36:30):
modern too soon era. Before 9/11, taboo jokes were
mostly about taste. After 911, timing became
everything Comic. Second guess punch lines,
network sensors got trigger happy, and crowds tensed up at
any hint of insensitivity. Yeah, even The Onion, known for
its savage satire, struggled with its first post 911 issue.
(36:50):
They they ended up producing some of their sharpest work,
including headlines like American Life Turns into Bad
Jerry Bruckheimer Movie, and hijackers surprised to find
themselves in hell. Oh yes, classics.
Interesting. Very.
Possible. I mean, that's not bad for an
Onion title. They're going for it.
Also the Onion. I'm fairly certain their
headquarters wasn't too far away.
(37:11):
I think they were in the East Village.
Weren't. Oh, wow.
Yeah. Pretty sure I visited their
headquarters once. I did a little short film for
them. The.
Oneon. Yeah, nice.
You know, it was pretty great. Pretty excited.
Never made it to YouTube but youknow some things are too good
for YouTube. Maybe it had the twin towers in
it. Yeah, I.
Had to take it down because of that.
Meal on my back, it's my nipples, my bag.
I don't know why, I'm just. Those are the real twin towers.
(37:35):
They don't match. Well, yeah, I mean exactly.
They're not paternal. 11 is moreprotruding than the other.
Yeah, that's the one with the antenna.
Yeah, yeah. You know you don't want to know
where Building 7 is. But it's gone now.
It's. Gone now Perineum, also known as
the Pentagon. No one ever hit that baby.
(37:59):
But not everyone was celebrated.Gilbert Gottfried infamously
tried an edgy 9/11 joke at a Friars Club roast just a few
weeks later and got booed. That's.
Gilbert, though I know it's supposed to do.
Yeah, it was one time I saw Gilbert Godfrey, just a walking
along 34th St. He just had like he he had
nothing on him except for a plastic bag around one of his
(38:20):
hands. And he looked lost.
Yeah. And I was like, what?
Is Gilbert. Godfrey doing right now.
Yeah, that's so funny. I saw him one time as well in
New York. Just frail and strange.
Yeah, yeah. And he doesn't sound like that.
No, his voice is very normal. Oh my God.
Really? Yeah.
It's just got a normal voice. Oh, he just has that capability.
And then he kept it there, Yeah.I saw him once at the Comedy
(38:41):
Cellar and it just seemed like he had a goal in his head of how
many times he was going to say he turned down a show for kids
with cancer and he just kept screaming kids with cancer over
and over. It was just crushing.
That's. That's amazing.
He's. A great problem child also yes.
So good it was a high wire act. Some comics crashed, some
(39:02):
thrived, but overnight the rulesof comedy seemed to have
changed. Too soon became the cultural
reflex, the way of asking Are weallowed to laugh again?
Aren't. We right?
And we laugh. To be fair, there's a lot of
people laughing across the country.
I mean, anyone. Obviously, in New York, it was
very, very serious. But 2001, it was a different
time. Like, I was in Wisconsin.
I felt so distant. Yeah.
(39:23):
That's true. Yeah, no, it was definitely
really dark and heavy around me.And I had a bunch of family that
also lived closer inwards. So I had like family like in
Astoria, Queens that like their buildings were just like
completely covered in soot. Like even even if you close all
the window bathrooms like it allseeped in.
The smoke got in. Yeah, he couldn't get rid of the
smell for weeks. Oh geez, it.
Was yeah, it was rough. Yeah, in Boston there was like a
(39:47):
half, half and half divide wherepeople were like, sorry, the
rest of the country for that. And we'd started here, that's
our bad. And then the other half was just
like super angry, burning down like businesses of people who
they thought were Muslim but were like Sikhs.
Because they won't. Leave my Sikhs alone.
Right across the street, like around the corner from my high
school, there was a very nice man and they owned a gas station
(40:08):
and they fucking blew the gas station up on like 913.
It was crazy. Just because the guy had the.
I believe it. It's a turban.
Yeah, but yeah, it's a Sikh. There's a fucking moron in
Wisconsin who shot up a Sikh temple to be like, I got all the
Muslims. It's like they're Sikh you.
Fucking dummy. They're good people, they're
chill. Muslims are good people too, I'm
just saying. Muslims are good people, too.
(40:29):
There's a newer cartoon that came out where it's it's like
the life of a Muslim family thatis like feeling really positive
about moving to America and likegetting their life started.
And it's like September 10th. And they're like, man, nothing
can go wrong. We have the best opportunity
right here in this land. And then that happened.
(40:49):
Could have done without that, yeah.
They're turning it into like a slapstick comedy now.
Yeah, I mean, it that that cartoon came out like last year.
Oh shit. So it's it was pretty good.
It's been a long time, yeah. The usual noise of pop culture,
the boy bands, the dumb reality shows, the raunchy comedies, the
action movies all went quiet. And when it slowly came back, it
wasn't quite the same. Some parts of entertainment
(41:11):
tiptoed back, careful not to offend.
Others leaned into patriotism, which that cannot be over
understated, overstayed. People were going nuts for the
red, white and blue. They were USA cigarettes that
they came out with and people who are smoking those.
Doesn't that make you think of 911?
The slow burning of a small tower.
(41:33):
But but this ones American. Yeah, this ones just killing me.
Yeah, Freedom fries. They we wouldn't say French
fries anymore. I'll get some freedom fries.
So fucking dumb. There was legislation proposed
to change it permanently from French fried freedom fries.
Seriously. Oh my God, people are so.
(41:53):
Stupid. Oh my God.
And we invaded the wrong two countries.
Whatever helps, man. Yeah, they slapped flags on
everything from sitcom openings to Super Bowl halftime shows.
Country music was booming. News networks became 24/7 flag
factories. Hollywood churned out a wave of
post 911 movies that tried to process trauma, Some moving,
(42:14):
some shameless, and some parts of pop culture just kept going.
Brittany was Brittany. Yeah, she was.
Jackass would debut its first movie in 2002 and remind
everyone that America still loved America still loved a good
nut shot. Jackass was actually kind of
perfect comedy for this. 100% physical, So goofy.
Yeah. And then we're good friends.
(42:34):
Yes, and they all loved each other very much.
They just like to hit each otherin the balls.
Yeah, so that they could say, I don't, I didn't touch his balls.
I'm not gay. I'm not gay.
I just kick them and pull on them.
I sucked and. Sucked them and.
Sucked it. I've sucked him off and he came
all over my face for the bit, yeah.
That's it, we're friends. We do it all the time, even
without the cameras on. 'Cause we're.
(42:55):
Friends 'cause we're fucking friends.
God damn it, get over here and put that cock on me.
Play hide the fucking bottle of ketchup.
Oh. My God.
But the weirdest thing about looking back on 9/11 through the
lens of entertainment is how surreal those tiny details felt
in hindsight. Whoopi in the Donuts, Mr.
Peanuts sweating in Rockefeller Plaza, Mariah Carey's doomed
(43:17):
comeback and George Carlin's eerily, eerily titled album.
I kind of like it when a lot of people die, yeah.
I feel like I feel the worst forMr. Peanut.
Yeah, I feel the worst for Mr. Peanut.
I don't know why. Whoopi is fun.
Yeah. You know, but Mr. Peanut, then
he got, he died and right. Just like Kobe, is it a tough
run? I like it when a lot of people
(43:37):
die. Is not even too on the nose.
It's like it's, it's so broad. Any tragedy could have happened
and it would have been triggering, right?
Yeah. He could have, he could have
even if it was just like a a school shooting, which which
back then would have been shocking.
Well, yeah. I mean, we had Columbine in 99.
Yeah, yeah. And so everything came back.
We, we were able to fully process our grief and, you know,
(44:01):
get back to gory murders and stuff.
Like that, I still don't think we have processed our grief as a
nation. I think this country was founded
on there's a lot of grief, there's a lot of good stuff, but
then there's a lot of grief and violence.
And I still don't think we've processed it properly.
Yeah. Yeah, because we're constantly
being traumatized. I feel like even victims
families haven't fully processedit because this actually
(44:22):
happened in March of 2025 and I was so confused about it because
they I don't think they realizedthat 911 jokes were a thing and
so this happened. Shoppers raising concerns about
what they're calling an offensive T-shirt being targeted
to them in ads. Yeah, the T-shirt has to do with
9/11 and his fox eyes. Jody Goldberg shows us even
people who lost family members in the terrorist attack have
(44:44):
come across it. Amy Stabile lost her dad, Herman
Charles Broghammer, in the September 11th terror attacks.
Thousands of lives were murdered.
It was one of the darkest days and that's why she can't wrap
her head around how anyone couldever make light of it.
I just, I couldn't believe my eyes.
She was casually scrolling through Facebook when she said
(45:07):
she was targeted by an Etsy ad. When I saw Garfield, I didn't
even understand how it goes together.
It was a T-shirt showing Garfield flying into his
favorite food, which was in the shape of the Twin Towers.
There's so many things you couldput on a T-shirt.
Why this? It's it's Garfield flying into
the Twin Towers saying I'll take911 orders of lasagna.
(45:29):
And and and Garfield is shaped like a plane.
Oh my God, she's come on. Yeah, that is extremely heck.
I would definitely agree with her in the why.
Oh, come on now. Why?
He wants the he wants 911 ordersof lasagna.
Yeah. 911. I ain't wearing it, but also if
I saw somebody wearing it, I'd be like bold choice.
(45:51):
And I think it's very funny. It's.
Ridiculous. I just don't understand how even
some of the family members of victims don't realize that 911
jokes are a thing. I'm sure they do, yeah.
Yeah, I just think that's a bad one.
I mean, I got it. Yeah, We just agree to this.
That's the great thing about programming that we have here.
We do. How does 911 even like?
(46:14):
How do? You shape the lasagna like the
timers. Garfield, Garfield when I it.
Doesn't. That's why it works, right?
It doesn't at all. It's so stupid.
It's silly. It's so dumb.
Well, they probably were servingsome lasagna in the lunch rooms
and in the towers there. You never do know, actually.
You don't. So in a way, entertainment
didn't just reflect 9/11. It accidentally bookended it.
(46:37):
It framed the moment before the world changed and helped us
figure out how to live in the world after.
Absolutely. Which was a learning curve.
Yes, which was a total fucking nightmare that we're currently
still living in. So, and I do think that Pete
Davidson kind of helped us all with that when he came out with
his special and kind of like shining light and made like the
most 911 jokes, but then like prefaced it with like my dad
(46:59):
died on 9/11. And then just recently, this
past week, he went to Riyadh andentertained the Saudis at the
Riyadh Comedy Festival. So it's full circle More Yes, he
went to entertain the people that killed his fucking dad.
Whole holy not the Saudis, stupid.
It was all the Saudis. Everyone warns differently.
Oh my God. All right, so that'll bring us
too. Final thoughts Don't do it.
(47:26):
Don't. Don't do 9/11.
Don't do 9/11. What does that mean?
Don't, don't do it. They shouldn't have done it.
They shouldn't have fucking doneit.
Yeah, that's my thoughts. No, that's the terrorists
Shouldn't have done it. They shouldn't have.
Just go be. They should have known that you
take out our golden corrals. Stop doing it from Boston.
They had the shoe bomber after that fucking try to light his
shoes on fire in Boston. That was an FBI setup.
(47:47):
That was that was all a setup. I don't even have time for.
That that was a plant. It was a plant.
Yeah. He literally showed up with
Wicks in his shoes. Yeah, like we got him.
And it's like, yeah, 'cause you drove him to the airport, right?
I see. Hmm.
Well, for my final thought, I think, yeah, as a New Yorker,
the story always hits really close to home.
Yeah. And then hits the second
building. No, I'm kidding.
Oh, Garfield herself. Though all of a sudden,
(48:10):
Garfield's fine. Everybody processes differently.
That's correct. And I think that wherever the
twin towers were removed right after, like entertainment wise,
put them back in, put them back into all those shots.
Add extra ones. If you had, if you had twin
towers in the shot to begin with, because I personally got
really sad when they just weren't in the shots anymore.
It was a really sad reminder. Like the absence of it was a lot
(48:33):
worse than them. Like just being there and
reminding me about them. Right.
Yeah, I say add more. Just keep adding more twin
towers. Just quadruple it towers.
Yeah, wow. So take it and double it.
Give it to the next person. Yes exactly.
I think my final thought is theyneed to redo every movie with
someone standing in the twin tower on 9/11 at the very end.
(48:54):
I think they'll win Oscars everyyear.
That is a really good idea. Jason takes Manhattan on 9/11.
Yeah, we can even add this podcast and be like, thanks,
guys. And then like, just sweat.
Then the camera just zooms out while we're packing up all of
our stuff and we're like in one of the buildings.
Oh. No.
Holy shit. That plane looks like it's
(49:15):
flying pretty. Low There are planes that you
can hear in these podcasts. Yeah, it it is.
They they they fly scariously low because we live by an
airport. We live by a government base, a
secret government base where we record out of.
All right. Well, I think.
All right, everyone, we'll neverforget.
Love yourself. Be yourself.
Hail yourself. And until next week.
(49:37):
Don't go dying on us. Bye bye.
You have just heard. A true.
Hollywood murder mystery. I have never seen anything like
this before. The movies, Broadway, music,
television, all of it. A place that manufacturers
nightmares. Look, everybody, that's a rap.
Goodnight. Please drive home carefully and
(49:59):
come back again soon.
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