Former Vermonter Martin Guigui returns with new Charlie Sheen/Whoopi Goldberg film 9/11

Former Burlington resident Martin Guigui said his most-recent film, “9/11,” affected him unlike any other movie he’s directed.

“It was the most emotional experience I’ve ever had making a film. It was extremely challenging in every way imaginable, technically and emotionally,” Guigui said in a phone conversation Friday from his home in Calabasas, California, outside Los Angeles. “There was just a feeling about it when we were making this movie; it’s sacred ground. There was a feeling on the set that every frame mattered.”

Guigui’s film that tells the fictional real-time story of a group of people stuck in a World Trade Center elevator on Sept. 11, 2001, will be screened Sunday at Merrill’s Roxy Cinema in Burlington. Guigui, a musician as well as a filmmaker, will make a rare return to Vermont for a question-and-answer session after the screening that will be moderated by Vermont filmmaker Jay Craven.

“It’s been really busy in a good way the past couple of years both on the movie side and the music side,” said Guigui, the father of three children between the ages of 3 and 12. “I haven’t found that little window to be able to get back into Vermont.” The pianist and music director said he’s in talks with the Flynn Center to organize a blues night during next year’s Burlington Discover Jazz Festival that would be anchored by ZZ Top guitarist/vocalist Billy Gibbons.

Guigui, son of the late Vermont Symphony Orchestra conductor Efrain Guigui, has directed 10 independent feature films since leaving Burlington in 1997. He was hired about eight years ago to write a film adaptation of the stage play “Elevator” by Patrick Carson.

“I loved it because it was a self-contained story about 9/11 told from the inside out,” Guigui said of Carson’s play. “We all remember where we were that day. Everybody has a story about 9/11 because it’s sort of a modern-day Pearl Harbor. Those who got out (of the World Trade Center) have no recollection of what it looked like. Their memory is so different from ours.”The script sat for years until Guigui received a call from producer Warren Ostergard who asked Guigui to direct the film. They knew they needed a big name or two to fuel investment in the film. Guigui lives near the manager for Charlie Sheen and helped get the actor on board for “9/11.” Sheen then suggested Whoopi Goldberg to sign on for the film.

Goldberg lived for years in southern Vermont, fellow “9/11” actor Luis Guzman lives part-time in the state and Ostergard’s wife is from Vermont. Guigui tapped into some of his Vermont connections for the film’s soundtrack, arranging for Vermont musician Chad Hollister and Vermont natives Jamie Lee Thurston and Gregory Douglass to contribute songs for “9/11.”

“We had that Vermont connection proliferating throughout this journey,” Guigui said. One Vermont connection didn’t happen, though: The independent film that was screened in 350 theaters was not distributed in Vermont. Sunday’s screening came about after Guigui and others connected to “9/11” received numerous emails and letters from Vermonters asking if the film could be shown in Guigui’s former state. “I’m really proud of this picture,” Guigui said. “If I don’t make another movie this is the one I want people to see.”

Reviews of the film, which came out last month, have largely been negative, earning only 11-percent favorability ratings on the movie-review website Rotten Tomatoes. More than 50 percent of audience members, however, reacted positively on the website toward the film.

“Most of it is just Charlie-hater critics,” Guigui said, referring to negative opinions of Sheen. Some of those views of the controversial actor came, according to the New York Daily News, when he expressed years after the terrorist attacks that the toppling of the World Trade Center buildings may have been the result of “controlled demolition” rather than planes crashing into the towers.

Guigui praised Sheen’s dedication to the role – because it unfolds over the course of one day Sheen ate the same meals for three-weeks to stay in character. Guigui said Sheen saw “9/11” as a story about the heroes of that day, the emergency workers who risked and in many cases lost their lives trying to save others.

“This is not a conspiracy movie or a political thriller,” Guigui said. “It’s a film about survival.”

He said audience reaction has generally been positive toward his film. “It’s somewhat of a cathartic experience because it reconnects you with the emotional experience that we had back then. For most of the general public that’s been dormant,” Guigui said. “To relive that is an absolute combination of cathartic and almost a weird healing experience because there’s a release.”

Guigui would like viewers to see “9/11” objectively. “I don’t think this is a movie you criticize or a movie you praise,” he said. “It’s a movie you experience.”