Forgotten

Michael Lomonaco can account for every minute of the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 — including the small decision that saved his life.

Lomonaco, the executive chef who ran Windows on the World on the 106th and 107th floors of the North Tower of the World Trade Center, was on his way up to his office when he stopped at an optometrist shop on the ground level to have his eyeglass frames adjusted.

He was still inside when American Airlines Flight 11 hit the tower above him at 8:46 a.m.

“I felt the buidling shake,” he recalled in the new CNN Films documentary “Top of the World.” “And I thought that can’t be the subway. That’s impossible.”

Lomonaco was evacuated. From the street, he watched employees of his own restaurant wave a white tablecloth from a window more than 100 floors up. Seventy-nine Windows on the World employees and 91 guests died that morning in the gastronomic soul of the Twin Towers — the one part of the complex that belonged to New Yorkers who didn’t work there, and to visitors from everywhere else.

“Top of the World” premieres Monday at 8 p.m. ET/PT on CNN and begins streaming the following day on the network’s subscription streaming platforms. The documentary short arrives on a double anniversary: 25 years since the attacks, and 50 years since Windows on the World opened on April 19, 1976.

It is the work of producer-director team Betsy West and Julie Cohen, who made “RBG,” the Oscar-nominated portrait of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The film is a production of CNN Films, TIME Studios and Tribeca Studios, in association with Montalto Pictures and Storyville Films, and was inspired by Tom Roston’s book “The Most Spectacular Restaurant in the World.” Actor Denis Leary voices the restaurant’s creator, Joe Baum, drawn from decades of archival recordings.

West and Cohen were reluctant to take it on. Both were working in network television news in 2001.

“There’s like a part of you that doesn’t want to go back there,” Cohen said in a recent interview. “But when we read this book and met some of the amazing people who had worked at Windows over its 25-year history, we realized this was actually a really good way into remembering there was a lot of beautiful stuff in the Twin Towers and like we shouldn’t let that disappear just because it ended so painfully.”

What emerges is a history of how a restaurant transformed the reputation of the monolithic Twin Towers, which received little respect from architecture critics and bafflement from a public that wondered why it was built in the 1970s by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey as the city was fighting off financial collapse.

“This film tells a story of a restaurant that was very special to New York a time when New York was getting kicked in the teeth,” the Brooklyn-born Lomonaco said in a recent interview.

The World Trade Center operators turned to restaurant impresario Joe Baum to create a dining experience that would draw people to the Manhattan neighborhood largely known for its blocks of stores that sold radios and electronic parts. Baum was known for such New York dining landmarks as the Four Seasons and Tavern on the Green, and his new creation became an immediate hit after it opened in 1976, becoming a magnet for tourists and celebrities alike who came for the eye-popping views through the floor-to-ceiling windows.

At the time of the 9/11 attack, the World was the highest-revenue-generating privately owned restaurant in the U.S.

West noted another draw to the story was the stories of the many immigrants who worked at Windows, which proudly called itself “the U.N. of restaurants.” The film’s focus on the contribution of the foreign-born population to the restaurant industry stands in stark contrast to the image of immigrants conveyed by the Trump White House to justify its deportation efforts.

“Immigrants continue to make a contribution to our country and to the economy,” West said. “This was an opportunity to tell that positive story as opposed to what’s going on in our country now.”

Cohen and West scoured the Windows on the World Facebook page to find surviving former employees to help tell the story. Nathalie Tolentino was a hostess whose family came to the U.S. to escape political upheaval in Peru. Sekou Siby was a line cook from the Ivory Coast, who swapped shifts with one of the workers who died during a morning breakfast held in the restaurant on 9/11. Both talk about how the restaurant changed their lives.

Lomonaco is a central character in the “Top of the World,” as his arrival as the executive chef of Windows in 1997 boosted the restaurant’s culinary reputation. A hot chef who oversaw a turnaround at the 21 Club, another legendary New York dining spot, Lomonaco turned Windows into a destination for American cuisine along with the breathtaking views.

Lomonaco arrived after the restaurant was closed for three years following the first terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 that killed six people and injured more than 1,000 but left the towers intact.

Once Windows on the World was gone, Lomonaco was offered high-profile restaurant jobs in other parts of the country. But he had unfinished business in New York.

“I didn’t want to abandon my city,” he said.

In the first days after the attacks, Lomonaco said, he read nothing about Windows on the World; coverage centered on the massive loss of life among the first responders and at the financial firms inside the World Trade Center. But over time, he got attention and support for the families of the employees who lost their lives that day.

Lomonaco and the restaurant’s owners formed Windows of Hope, a charitable foundation that raised more than $22 million to pay for healthcare and tuition costs for the children of the victims. “We were giving checks to people to pay their rent before federal funds came through,” he said.

Lomonaco said he still meets patrons who give him a matchbook or coaster from their visit to Windows. “They feel like they have to give me or send me these little artifacts,” he said. “That’s what has touched me the most.”

The ferry cuts across the waters of Lake Biel, creating soft ripples, as if someone has taken a brushstroke to a blue canvas. To starboard, as we approach St Peter’s Island, are gentle mountains; to port side, lie golden fields. Straight ahead, the isle looks empty and Crusoe-esque.

On the jetty, Max Frey, a boatman, historian and guide, is waiting for me. He’s a man of dates and paperwork and pulls a handful from his satchel as he greets me, thrilled at the prospect of leading a tour; Switzerland’s Jura and Three Lakes region, this idyllic nook on the French border, is often overlooked by visitors.

“Welcome to paradise,” he says, raising his voice above the ferry engine thrum. “That’s how Jean-Jacques Rousseau felt about the island when he came in 1765. He was always running away from places, but spent the happiest days of his life here.”

Beach-fringed St Peter’s Island is now actually a peninsula (in the mid-19th century the level of the surrounding lake was lowered, creating a land bridge to the mainland) but it is still best reached by boat, and is car-free. With golden light falling on the sand and silver zander ghosting through the clear water, it undoubtedly feels heavenly. Rousseau – the philosopher, writer, composer, rebel who spent six weeks on the island in exile – wasn’t the only one to fall under its spell. “Alexandre Dumas and Goethe stayed, too,” says Max, proudly. “So did Joséphine Bonaparte, the first wife of Napoleon. When she arrived, it is said that more than 1,000 boats sailed on to the lake to see her.”

Home to the country’s gentlest summits, the Jura Mountains, and the glacial-blue lakes Biel, Neuchâtel and Murten – linked by the beautiful Zihl and Broye canals – the region is connected by regular ferries (perhaps it could offer an alternative to Greek or Croatian island hopping, only with better cheese). It’s also wine country, the lakesides fringed by tidy vineyards, and small towns such as Ligerz, La Neuveville, Le Landeron and Erlach contain dozens of understated family cellars.

I’m here on a three-day, DIY ferry-hopping trip, travelling from Biel to Murten, hiking, swimming, birding and wine tasting along the way. It’s a wholly different side to the Switzerland I’m used to – low on pomp, lower on price, but high on novelty.

The ferry journey to St Peter’s takes just 15 minutes from the mainland towns of La Neuveville or Ligerz (or 55 minutes from Biel, where I’d arrived from), and Max and I are as good as alone as we explore. Paths slalom through chestnut trees to empty coves. Butterflies flit by. A farmer cycles past to tend to an Angus herd grazing beside swans and reed-bed warblers on the shore. An information panel gives notice that St Peter’s was once home to Romans, then Benedictine monks who, it is said, with free rein on the island lured in the most beautiful girls from around the lake.

We explore the western side on foot, and vineyards take over from forests and sandy coves as we cross to the east. I arrive at my accommodation for the night, Hotel St Petersinsel, housed in a beautiful monastery dating back to 1127, complete with a restaurant courtyard, sarcophagi, Roman-era columns and a museum-piece bedroom where Rousseau slept. As dusk approaches, I dine alone on zander with lemon risotto and summer tomatoes with burrata from nearby Fribourg, paired with local wine.

The next morning, I start the day with a swim by the jetty as a heron flaps overhead. The Three Lakes are full of easily accessible swimming spots and beaches, but I’m alone apart from a family of ducks watching me from the sand. Afterwards, I hop on a ferry to Ligerz, a wine village halfway along Lake Biel’s northern banks on the Franco-German linguistic border.

Ligerz’s name is said to come from an ancient Roman settler, Ligerius, and it turns out to be a village bursting with grapes and bacchanal bliss. Every house seems to have its own vineyard plot leaning towards the shore, which is ideal if it’s lunchtime and a hike around pretty-as-pie St Michael’s Chapel has helped you work up a thirst.

Wine drinking in Switzerland has its challenges. The Swiss keep nearly all they produce and it’s pricey compared with German or Italian wine. But I arrive at Andrey Schafis, a fifth-generation family cellar overlooking the water, where drinkers on the restaurant terrace enjoy chilled lemony chasselas for 15 Swiss francs (£13.50) a bottle, accompanied by charcuterie and cheese. The feeling is less Alpine, more Amalfi.

“Almost everything we make is drunk here,” says Arielle Andrey, uncorking a bottle. We chat over a glass before she dashes off into the wood-beamed cellar to bring out more fresh-baked bread, cheese and wine.

With a spring in my step, I take the village’s Vinifuni – a short, steep funicular through the vineyards – all the way through a cleft in the limestone to the Tessenberg plateau and the petite village of Prêles in the shadow of Chasseral, Jura’s flat-topped mountain. This is a country of preposterously beautiful summits, and although this crest is a gentle one, the view from it is still one of the most dazzling; the fields below look like a gigantic eiderdown of gold and green stitched around three enormous patches of blue.

I follow the lonely path to the highest point through a forest of pine, then stand awhile on its observation deck beneath a 120-metre telecommunications tower that has all the exposed platforms, gantries and satellites of a rocket launch pad.

From here, I zigzag downhill to the village of Nods, as sleepy as it sounds, and then take a bus back to Prêles and the family-run Hôtel de l’Ours Prêles, sitting high above the lake. It isn’t the most celebrated address in the Alps, but it quickly becomes one of my favourites, because of its delightful hosts, Mélanie and Marcello Pigozzo. Marcello cheerfully brings me a cold BLZ beer from nearby Orvin and Mélanie serves an entrecôte steak and profiteroles on the terrace. My meal is soundtracked by bell-rattling cattle in the next-door field.

On my final morning, I take one last boat ride, a three-hour journey from Lake Biel via the Zihr canal to Lake Neuchâtel, and on via the Broye canal to Lake Murten and its lakeside fortress town. The ferry putters past radiant sunflower fields and fruit crops. While the verges are scattered with campsites, cycle paths and bird reserves, including La Grande Cariçaie, the country’s largest marshland, the medieval town of Murten is a time capsule.

Church spires soar, swifts nest in the towers and the battlements can be patrolled, offering a Mary Poppins view of old rooftops and stone chimneys. Beyond the ramparts, beneath a vivid blue sky, vineyards gather on the hazy hills and I watch the ferry depart on its sailing back to Biel. The horn blows. A heron takes flight. A dozing fisher stirs on the jetty. A different Switzerland is out there. You simply need to take the slow boat to find it.

The trip was provided by Jura & Trois Lacs, supported by Switzerland Tourism. St Petersinsel has doubles from £128 B&B and Hôtel de l’Ours Prêles has doubles from £175 B&B. A Swiss Travel Pass for three days covering all public transport, including lake ferries, costs £238

For every actor, musician, writer and artist who has become a wealthy and enduring celebrity, exponentially more of them have enjoyed a brief, shining moment, never to be heard of again. What separates those who last from those who fade away? Is it luck, talent, drive, destiny? All of the above?

It’s an intriguing question that may have no definitive answer, but one that director Kent Jones (2018’s acclaimed “Diane”) and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Samy Burch (“May December”) lovingly and lyrically consider in the often first-rate “Late Fame.” The film is based on an 1895 novella by Arthur Schnitzler (also author of the book that became “Eyes Wide Shut”), which went unpublished until 2014.

A quietly captivating Willem Dafoe plays Ed Saxberger, a New York post office veteran of 37 years in a seemingly satisfying if decidedly low-key existence. For him, it’s work, then maybe a game of pool with his blue-collar buddies at a local bar (though he’s six years sober) and a solo return to his Greenwich Village walk-up.

That is, until one night, he’s approached outside his apartment building by a somewhat affected but seemingly earnest young man who goes by his last name, Meyers (Edmund Donovan). With his elevated speech, tony air and throwback attire, he’s like someone from another era; you could see him as one of Jay Gatsby’s pals or a bon vivant who drops by on “Downton Abbey.”

Meyers proceeds to tell an astonished Ed that he’s a huge fan of his long-forgotten 1979 poetry collection entitled “Way Past Go,” the postal worker’s fleeting brush with literary success. “They just slap you across the face with their style and with their relevancy,” extols Meyers of the poems. “They’re timeless.”

Really, what writer, no matter how detached from their past, could resist that kind of sweet talk?

A meet-up with Meyers’ “artistic community,” a circle of so-called intellectuals known as the Enthusiasm Society, leads Ed to humbly dip a toe back into his vanished creative side. He’s not unaware that Meyers’ mostly 20-something male friends have — like many — romanticized the gritty abandon of lower Manhattan’s bygone literary scene and perhaps Ed’s tenuous place in it. They might be poseurs tossing around references to Ginsberg and Bukowski, but the welcome mat the group offers Ed is enticing and inspiring.

Still, a visit to Meyers’ sleek apartment, admittedly paid for by his parents, confirms for Ed the kind of youthful privilege at play here, so unlike the scrappier downtown bohemia of his own artistic heyday.

The wild card in the Society is Gloria (Greta Lee, dazzlingly good), an impish sprite who’s hard to pin down. Is she really a working stage actor? Ed gets swept up in her performative antics and elusive, larger-than-life allure. (She’s older than her fellow Society members but decades younger than Ed.) When they develop a teasing flirtation, it’s one of the less credible turns here, given how authentic Ed is — and how dubious she appears (though some truth on that front will later unfold).

This tilt toward Gloria causes the film to lose its way a bit, pulling focus from the more potentially vital mentor-disciple dynamic between Ed and the anxious, navel-gazing Meyers. Plus, Donovan is excellent here, so less of him is, well, less.

That said, there’s a bravura second-act scene that finds Gloria performing an impassioned version of the 1929 Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill torch song “Surabaya Johnny” for an appreciative cabaret audience, one that includes a rapt Ed. It verifies Gloria’s singing talent and proves a perfect match for her showy, cagey persona: the love child of Marlene Dietrich and Sally Bowles.

If the story has a through line, it concerns the planning and execution of an evening of live readings from the Society’s works, with a new poem from Ed as its centerpiece. A few of the obstacles layered in — Ed’s struggle to write and some show-night personality conflicts — feel a tad obligatory. But the event itself has its high points, including the piece Ed finally reads.

In addition, an awkward meeting between Ed and a smooth literary agent (Jake Lacy), along with a mini-subplot involving phone calls from Ed’s frustrated sister about their dying brother, come off slightly wedged in. Not much payoff there.

No matter. There’s wisdom and depth to the film’s themes of growing old, dashed dreams and the magic of rediscovery, plus a deliciously ironic final twist. Jones manages his superb cast with aplomb and cinematographer Wyatt Garfield evocatively captures lower Manhattan’s wintry, burnished glow.