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'Twin Towers Movie Cameos' Video Marks 9/11 Anniversary With Moving Pop Culture Tribute

By Julie Parise, CBSNewYork.com

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- For nearly 10 years, the Twin Towers have been absent from the New York City skyline.

We still see occasional glimpses of the former World Trade Center site in the seemingly countless Big Apple-based movies and television shows made prior to the day of the worst attack ever on American soil. They serve as intermittent reminders of life before the death and destruction our city – and our world – saw that day.

New York City-based videographer Dan Meth has collected several of the skyscrapers' Silver Screen appearances for a moving tribute to the Towers, released just in time for the 10-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

The Twin Towers Movie Cameos is a video montage of just that – cameos made by the World Trade Center in over 25 movies, including King Kong, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Superman, The Sentinel, Ghostbusters II and When Harry Met Sally.

Photos: 9/11/2001 | The Day After

"It's by no means an all-comprehensive list," said Meth, who grew up in the New York City area and lived in Astoria at the time of the attacks. "Some of my rules were that it had to be pre-9/11 footage, I didn't want to use any digital recreations of movies from the past decade."

The featured cameos are set to three songs: Dennis Park's "Like an Eagle," "Once In A Lifetime" by the Talking Heads and a mash-up of Notorious B.I.G.'s "Juicy" with Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York."

"I chose songs that I thought had the feel of New York in that decade, but were kind of haunting at the same time," Meth said.

"I was surprised nobody had done it," he said of the project. "The Twin Towers were, as with everybody, they were just a natural part of the landscape, so 9/11 will always be this dividing point in your life," he said.

Noticeably absent from the video is a scene of the post-9/11 World Trade Center site.

"I was really trying not to think of this as a 9/11 video," he said. "It's more of a celebration of when the Towers were standing and the 30 years before 9/11. As hard as it is to think of the World Trade Center in any other context, what I wanted to make was a video just about the Twin Towers."
Watch the video below:

What's your reaction to the video? Sound off in our comments section.

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