5:41min
September 2001. Eric (Michael Urie) is looking for a roommate for his Manhattan apartment, which has a view of the recently destroyed World Trade Centre. “Did you see it happen?” a would-be tenant asks. Todd Downing, of our panel, says: “I was next to the Empire State Building. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, what if it’s next!’”

18:04min
Weeks after the attacks, dust still hangs in the air. “There was a particular smell – you don’t know it unless you were there,” Megan Maczko recalls. Downing agrees: “It was like plastic, an artificial burning.”

19:17min
Eric’s best friend Josie has noticed a new sincerity and compassion in people. “I was working as a waitress and people were suddenly interested in engaging with you as another person who had gone through this shared experience,” Maczko recalls. “But soon it got back to normal and people started being jerks to each other again.”

21:19min
After the attacks, Eric recalls, he went about his business as normal, even voting in the local elections. “I just went to bed for four hours,” Downing says. “I didn’t really have an emotional response to it until a couple of months after.”

24:25min
A montage of Eric’s prospective roommates. “Oh my God, I know that guy!” Maczko shrieks. “We Facebooked today.”

29:40min
Eric has considered joining the air force. “My boyfriend at the time said he would gladly join the Armed Forces and defend his street with a machinegun,” Maczko says.

37:33min
All relationships are either coming together or falling apart, Eric says. “Everybody was hooking up, calling their exes and shagging,” Downing says. “They didn’t know what else to do.”

62:09min
Eric is paranoid about another attack. “A year afterwards, there were still military men with machineguns in the West Village, the safest area there could be,” Bethany Ann McDonald recalls. “The paranoia is still there,” Downing insists. “You still feel as though you’re ready for war.”

83:11min
“I felt that New York needed us,” one character says. “I can relate to that,” McDonald admits. “I was in Boston and I was really frustrated that I wasn’t there because I had forged this relationship with the city.”

VERDICT

A thumbs up. With its believable emotions and authentic details, the film conveyed New Yorkers’ spectrum of reactions to the attacks very well, thought our panel.

WTC View is out to buy on DVD on Monday

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