Normally, I prowl the video store shelves hunting for films based on true stories like Schindler’s List and Hotel Rwanda. I enjoy watching these films because they are a window to events I either missed in history class (Schindler’s) or swept passed me in the flood of news images I ingest everyday (Rwanda).

Unlike history books and news media, films are designed to evoke emotions and inspire thought. When the subject of the film is an event I had little or no knowledge of, having my noggin challenged by new information disguised as art is like savoring a tall glass of sweetened iced tea on the hottest day of the summer.

While I do not have first hand knowledge of the events portrayed in United 93, I, as well as every other American, remember every detail of that fatal day. We witnessed the attacks over and over again on television from the safety of our homes or places of employment.

The images of a commercial jet swooping down from the clear blue sky and slicing through one of the World Trade Center towers are permanently burned into my mind as if I stood on the roof of a New York City skyscraper and saw the destruction without the aid of a camera lens.

Five years after watching the destruction, I can still recall the details of my life that day when I hear a news report on the new Freedom Tower being built at ground zero. Yesterday I heard on NPR that ten U.S. soldiers died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan.

As my mind digested the information, an image of 9/11 pops up in my brain reminding me of why U.S. soldiers are in Afghanistan. News from the war in Iraq also reminds me of the attack on America. I’m still living with the aftermath of 9/11 everyday. Do I really need a movie to stir up emotions that have never settled to the bottom of my stream of consciousness?

The presence of the movie in the news and in the blogosphere has already caused grains of emotion to float to the surface of my inward eye. Whenever I hear a movie review on the radio or see photos from the film splashed across the pages of a newspaper, I recall the tiny roll I played on that day.

Back then, I worked at the only television station in the mountain oasis of Asheville, North Carolina. As I cruised down the interstate in my trusty news unit on the morning of 9/11, I listen to the banter of the John Boy and Billy Big Show oozing from the single dashboard speaker of the car radio. I worked the nightshift but I was on my way to an internship at a local cable company. I would spend my mornings shooting cheesy car dealership commercials, then head on to my real job of chauffeuring around a television news reporter.

In the early stages of my career I wasn’t sure if I wanted to continue pointing my lens at the news or create marketing tools for local businesses. Little did I know that today’s events would settle that question permanently.

I was laughing along to the quick wit of the two comedians when suddenly their voices turned serious. John Boy read a news wire saying a plane had crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center in New York. While my mind recalled a memory of me standing on an NYC sidewalk craning my neck back to stare up at one of the tallest buildings on earth, my right hand left the steering wheel and punched a button on the radio. John Boy’s humorous voice disappeared, replaced by the grim tone of NPR’s Carl Castle. As Carl gave me more details on the tragedy happening in New York, I mashed the gas petal a little harder. I wanted to get in front of a television to see this unbelievable sight.

When I pulled into the strip mall where the cable company leased office space, I notice groups of people from other businesses in the mall crowding around the door and windows of the office I was headed for. I got a few questioning glances as I pulled up in my rolling billboard, but most were entranced by the images radiating from the big screen T.V. sitting in the lobby of the cable company’s office.

I pushed my way through the crowd to get inside the lobby. Instead of joining the mass in front of the big screen, I hurled down the hallway leading to the edit suite in the back of the office. There I found my co-workers watching the black smoke billowing from one of the Twin Trade Towers on multiple television screens around the room.

I arrived just in time to see a second plane bury itself into the side of the second tower. I heard gasps from the crowd in the lobby and I heard Erin Brown of ABC news mutter “Oh my God” as the reality of what we all just witnessed registered in our minds. I reached down and grabbed the cell phone attached to my belt. I called the assignment desk to let them know I was on my way in.

I still have a tape of the two stories I shot that day. I’ve kept them so I could show my grandchildren what I did on the day America was under attack.

The first story dropped in our lap as my reporter and I canvassed downtown looking for the local mosque. A group of peace activists had already rallied together and organized a protest against any U.S. military retaliation. They gathered next to the busiest intersection in downtown and waved their hastily made signs at the cars passing by. Some of them beat drums while others blew into long bamboo tubes producing a low humming sound.

The activists weren’t having any problems getting reactions from passing motorist. Some people simply honked while others shouted obscenities at them and waved their fists out their windows. The normally noisy intersection erupted in an explosion of angry voices and prolonged horn blasts.

The scene was a perfect picture of how Americans were responding in different ways to the violence happening miles away. We abandon our search for reaction from the local Muslim community to focus on the backlash happening right in front of my camera.

Later that evening, we interviewed a retired American Airlines pilot who used to fly one of the flights the terrorists had hijacked earlier in the day. He talked about how the airline and government could have prevented the attack simply by increasing security on the planes. He told our viewers how he knew an attack like the one today would happen because of the lack of security in America’s airports. He suggested that armored cockpit doors would have kept the terrorist from taking the control of the planes away from the pilots. He also talked about the need for pilots to have weapons in the cockpit to prevent a takeover. A lot of what he said made sense and left me wondering if the government or the airlines had turned a blind eye to security.

My career path changed course in the days following 9/11. The internship at the cable company quickly ended because clients were canceling advertisements to prepare for difficult financial times ahead. The news business was booming as America prepared for war so I decided news photography was the best place for me to be. I moved away from Asheville to pursue the American dream in a larger television market. I even traveled to Iraq twice as an embedded photojournalist. Just about every event in my life since 9/11 has been a result of the attack on America.

Do I need a movie to remind me of how life in American society changed on that day in 2001? Not when I’m still living with the changes everyday.

I think I will wait to watch this movie when my children study 9/11 in history class. My daughter was only a year old and my son wasn’t here yet. They are the ones who will benefit from art based on stories about the day that shaped the course of events for an entire decade. They need to appreciate how the passengers of Flight 93 and New York City police officers and firefighters gave their lives to save Americans from terrorism.

A movie can evoke emotions in them that they wouldn’t feel from reading a chapter in a history book. I, on the other hand, already know what the passengers of Flight 93 did for me. I want to remember their actions without the drama and embellishment of a big budget film.