10 Sep For Bill.

Every year around 9/11, I post this short animation which I created years ago.

I made it for someone I worked with briefly back in the day – long enough for me to be able to call him a friend. I was a copywriter and he was a producer. We worked, we kidded around, ate out and hung out. In between auditions, scheduling and shoots on the west coast, we’d talk about his loving family, my crazy international travels, and his beloved America.

We also talked about Israel a fair amount. He was perplexed at how Israelis managed to cope with its constant reality of terrorism, this being a period of time where Israel was being relentlessly targeted with suicide bombings from north to south and east to west. He expressed how far America felt from it all — that the whole conflict felt surreal to him. I remember telling him it wasn’t just a regional conflict, but an ideological one and I was sure the same people who hated Israel would one day hit America in a big way. That it was just a matter of time.

His name was Bill Weems and he was a decent and kind man. He was also a passenger on one of the planes steered mercilessly into the twin towers on 9/11.

This memorial piece was made for him. For his family. For everyone who lost someone and anyone who didn’t. To remind us that individual lives, families and friendships were torn apart on 9/11, and the scores of murdered innocents that awful day don’t just make up a meaningless number. Every single person who was murdered that day was a light extinguished for someone.

I didn’t know Bill a long time. But I’m glad I met him, I’ll never forget him — and he’ll always be my friend.

https://fb.watch/4GZHSrBA3V/

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Feitanchitayat%2Fvideos%2F1072653876184955%2F

(Thanks to Birdo Studio for making this with me.)