James:
Thanks for having me Alicia.

Alicia:
Now basically this is a movie about how a family copes in the ten days following the World Trade Center attacks. How did you come to make this movie?

James:
Well I live just a few blocks from where the Twin Towers once stood and the first plane flew right over my skylight. I'm on the top floor of a building and I have the roof, so after that, I went upstairs and saw the second plane fly into the second tower. Both of the towers collapsed and I finally ran down the fire escape stairs and then ran from that enormous debris cloud that was heading up my street. That image that you've now seen in ad nauseum was only about fifty feet behind me, and like everybody else I felt completely helpless. But I had a camera and my cameraman was with me, so we just began filming the chaos, even though at that point I had no idea what the shape of the project was going to ultimately be. I was just filming whatever shocked me, or confused me, or whatever I found interesting, and that ended up shaping into a journey that was ten days long where in the end this father was faced with the horrendous burden of having to tell his little boy who's only seven years old that his mommy is dead.

Alicia:
And now how did you get such access to the family, was that difficult or did they really welcome you in and want to share their story.

James:
Well for a family going through a tragedy, it's much easier in a way for them to talk to a complete stranger about how wonderful their daughter is. Their daughter, Michelle, is Nicholas' mother, and they expected her to walk through that door at any moment. They did not believe that she was dead, and for ten days, they were hanging on to that belief. The cameras were academic to them, because they were much more concerned about the well-being of their daughter than they were of my camera crew. Besides, I was genuinely concerned about what was going on. My last two films have also been about issues regarding children so they knew that I very interested in Nicholas' welfare and, in fact, I had come prepared with child help hotline numbers and crisis information like different dot com addresses that had been set up. But there was nothing to help out this poor father-he had no idea whatsoever how to face the burden of telling his little boy about his mother. There's no handbook about this, so everybody was just winging it. It wasn't until day ten that he finally had the courage to tell his little boy what was going on, because he needed some sort of resolve. It was on that day that the entire family realized that there was no miracle around the corner, and that Michelle was not going to walk through that door ever again. She was dead.

Alicia:
Right, well everyone was hoping for a miracle at that time. Now this film it actually follows two families, unfortunately were running out of time but I'd like you to talk a bit about the other family.

James:
Well Nicholas' grandmother, that's Michelle's mother, expressed anger toward all Muslims after the attack. She blamed them en mass for the loss of her daughter. On day 3, I found another flier that said Shabir Ahmed and I sought out that family hoping for a response to this expression of hatred. The Ahmed family lives in Sheepshead Bay and through this ten-day journey the sixteen-year-old Muslim boy ended up coming with me and my crew and befriending Nicholas. In fact, at the end of the film Thanbir, the Muslim boy, actually is welcomed into Nicholas' grandmothers home, and at the very end of the film you see them walking off together after Michelle's memorial. So there really is a joining of two different cultures and two different worlds in this movie that is airing this Sunday, Mother's Day.

Alicia:
Right

James:
And one of the most wonderful things about this movie is that at the very end, little Nicholas, only 7 years old, utters his final words in this film that will hopefully, among other things, help to memorialize his mother. He simply says, "I love you Mom."

Alicia:
Sounds like a perfect, perfect film for Mothers day. Ron I'm so sorry to cut you off there but unfortunately were running out of time but I want to thank you so much for joining us.

James:
Thank you again Alicia.

Alicia:
And Telling Nicholas airs this Sunday at 10 PM EST on HBO following 'Six Feet Under.'