By Joyce J. Persico
Times-Picayune (New Orleans) 
Copyright 2006 The Times-Picayune Publishing Company

PHILADELPHIA — Is it too soon?

Are the wounds of Sept. 11 still too raw for American movie-goers to revisit what happened on that horrific morning in New York City nearly five years ago?

Director Oliver Stone doesn't think so. And neither does John McLoughlin, the 19th of only 20 people pulled alive from the rubble of the crumbling World Trade Center.

Stone's new movie, "World Trade Center," is the story not of the thousands who died that day but of two rescue workers, Port Authority Police Department Sgt. McLoughlin (played by Nicolas Cage) and fellow first-responder William Jimeno (Michael Pena), who survived.

Stone's isn't the first movie this year to focus on Sept. 11, 2001. Paul Greengrass' "United 93" took movie-goers inside the ill-fated aircraft whose journey from Newark, N.J., ended in a Pennsylvania field after terrorists overtook the plane.

This fall, the ABC television network will present a miniseries on John O'Neill, the FBI's former leading expert on al-Qaida who was working as head of security at the WTC in 2001.

And, on Monday, "The Miracle of Stairway B," a new History Channel film, debuts. (To read an interview with New York City firefighter Lt. Mickey Kross, who is featured in that film, see TV, Page 10.)

But the question remains: Is it too soon?

"Too soon?" Stone responds by phone from Los Angeles. "Five years later, the consequences are far worse than the day itself. We're in worse shape in terms of constitutionality breakdown and the number of American deaths.

"If a movie drama is covering a major event, there's nothing wrong. In our case, five years was necessary because it took two years for the men to recover."

McLoughlin is 53 and lucky to be alive. He wears plastic braces on his scarred and disfigured legs. He was pulled from concrete and steel debris that trapped him under the destroyed concourse between the two World Trade Center buildings on Sept. 11. He and fellow Port Authority Police Department officer Jimeno were trapped for 22 hours, eight of which were spent on rescue efforts. Now they are reluctant celebrities.

McLoughlin has toured the country with wife, Donna, promoting the film, and a recent hot afternoon finds him in Philadelphia with a problem. The wear-and-tear of traveling on his injured legs has meant McLoughlin can do the interview only from his bed in the Four Seasons hotel. His right leg is swollen.

So there he lies, a handsome, dark-eyed man with a shaved head dressed in cargo shorts, a T-shirt and suspenders, greeting members of the media who shake his hand and call him a hero. He has heard it all before, but McLoughlin is a changed man. On permanent disability, he will never be the same because the bottom half of his body was crushed. He suffers from what he calls "compacting syndrome," a circulatory problem caused by his lower body being crushed for so many hours.

"I came out at 8 o'clock in the morning," he remembers of his rescue. "Before the rescue workers got there, things were kind of depressing. It went from bad to worse. What kept me going was thinking about my family."

He's had 30 operations, and there are long scars and deep grooves in his legs and thighs. His plastic braces are lying on the floor next to his bed. He was in the hospital four months before returning to his Long Island home.

He's spent each Sept. 11 since then alone with his family, refusing all invitations to public observances. He found out something about himself at a New York Yankees baseball game he attended in a wheelchair in the early days of his recovery -- he is now claustrophobic.

"I went to get an MRI and I freaked out," he recalls. "I've had MRIs before and that never happened."

McLoughlin's spirituality also has been affected by his ordeal.

"I've never been overly religious. I was raised Catholic, but I just live my life as a good person," he says. "But I believe something, some divine intervention happened for them to get us out of there."

McLoughlin says he doesn't miss his job or the long commute from his home in Goshen, N.Y., to the Port Authority. He no longer has to worry about getting a day off to see one of his kids' soccer games. He likes being around his wife and their four children, who range in age from 9 to 20.

These days, he "tries not to take the small stuff in life for granted."

"I appreciate what I have," he says.

He says he is not interested in the celebrity that comes with his characterization in Stone's "World Trade Center."

"I'm not here to promote the movie, but to make people understand what went on," McLoughlin explains. "This is not made up."

The film, which opened Wednesday, is being marketed not only to adults, but to teens who may have been too young in 2001 to grasp the enormity of the situation. "There is no pat answer to whether or not it's too soon," McLoughlin says. "It's an individual decision. Some people will never be comfortable to see this as an historic event.

"But I think it's important for first responders to inform people while it's still fresh in our minds, while we have a vivid and clear recollection of that day."