PBS’s Good Intentions Gone Awry
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The producers of “Sacred Ground” must have thought they had a winner when they realized the two star players in their documentary – architects Daniel Libeskind and David Childs – had gone to war over their dueling designs for the Freedom Tower to be built on the World Trade Center site. No casting agent could ever have discovered two more entertainingly contrarian combatants: Mr. Childs, the tall, balding American wonk from Skidmore, Owings + Merrill, and Mr. Libeskind, the short, spiky-haired European visionary with the famous rectangular glasses. The two men nearly came to blows over their vastly opposing visions for what will surely be the most important construction project of our lifetime, and had Frontline delivered on the “exclusive access” it claims to have had to their battle, the result might have been far more intriguing than the superficial and unsatisfying documentary that airs tonight at 9 p.m. on PBS.
It takes “Sacred Ground” at least a third of its 60 minutes to get going – at first it introduces Messrs. Libeskind and Childs as mere players in the epic decision-making process over the construction plans. Governor Pataki and real-estate developer Larry Silverstein – who owned the World Trade Center site – appear to be the guiding hands who control the plans. But then Mr. Libeskind enters the picture, with his uplifting vision of a 1,776-foot tower that would match the Statue of Liberty as a symbol of American democracy; the decision of Mr. Pataki to embrace the Libeskind plan puts him at odds with Mr. Silverstein, who wants Mr. Childs, an experienced American builder of office towers, to control the project. A decision is made for the men to collaborate – which is where the drama is supposed to begin.
I don’t mean to suggest that there aren’t moments of real tension on “Sacred Ground.” But they’re far outweighed by the repeated and cliched shots of various players staring out their office windows. By the time the two architects begin their efforts in earnest – and discover that their visions of the Freedom Tower are incompatible – there’s no time for the documentary to capture the frenzied backstage conflicts that must have resulted from their radically different views. Instead we’re forced to imagine it, based on the heated comments each man made to the off-screen interviewer from Frontline. “In collaboration, you think of a man and a wife,” observes Mr. Childs, inadvertently showing his own dated and simplistic (not to mention sexist) views. As for Mr. Libeskind’s objections to Mr. Childs, for the most part we’re forced to infer them from the repeated shots of him staring, frustrated, at scale models for a Freedom Tower he suspects may never get built.
The narrator keeps us interested by frequent references to the ticking clock; we’re told that Mr. Pataki will soon be announcing the final vision for the Freedom Tower at a point when Messrs. Childs and Libeskind still aren’t speaking. But there’s not enough explanation of their differences of opinion to keep the tension alive; basically, we know only that Mr. Libeskind wanted to “tell a story” with his design, while Mr. Childs was more committed to building the tallest structure possible. One Childs confidant explains that his design was intended to accommodate television antennae. Surely the issues had to be more fundamental – and important – than that.
In the end, the only insights come from architecture critic Paul Goldberger, who describes the final version announced last December as a “sad compromise” that he likens to the definition in an old joke of a camel as “a horse designed by a committee.” It seems an unfortunate state of affairs that the makers of “Sacred Ground” must depend so heavily on the views of an architecture critic to frame the story it should be able to tell through its own reporting and pictures. There ought to be a compelling reason for us to devote an hour to watching a documentary as opposed to going back and reading news accounts that already chronicled these events at the time. You won’t find such a reason in “Sacred Ground,” and that’s a shame – there’s so much of this great story that remains untold. Let’s hope future historians do a better job recounting the struggle over this great monument than this weak and woefully incomplete version.
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Does Virginia Heffernan have a deal cooking with DreamWorks? Or fantasies of a lunch with Steven Spielberg? Nothing else could explain her New York Times review last week of “Father of the Pride,” in which she reported that the new NBC series was “a delight.” Please be warned that the series, which continues its nauseating ways tonight at 9 p.m., has no business being watched by anyone with a working remote control and a thumb. According to Ms. Heffernan, critics objected to the show’s seeming ethical lapse in basing its premise on the Las Vegas act of Siegfried & Roy, given Mr. Horn’s recent tragic mauling by a tiger. But Ms. Heffernan got it wrong. The lapse here has to do with besmirching the reputation of two fine, blond Austrian individuals whose memory may be forever marred by this sorry excuse for a sitcom. One thing Ms. Heffernan did get right: “Father of the Pride” definitely “goes down easy” – to the bottom rung of television shows meant to restore interest in the half-hour comedy form.