PARK CITY, Utah (AP) -- What had been the beginnings of a reality-TV pilot on a New York City police squad became painfully real for producer Dick Wolf on Sept. 11, 2001.
Creator of NBC's ``Law & Order'' franchise, he had a show in the works featuring interviews and footage of a police emergency services unit that was called into action Sept. 11 to help in the World Trade Center rescue.
Fourteen of the 23 New York City police officers killed in the trade-center collapse were from that unit, among them 34-year-old Joe Vigiano, a highly decorated cop who had been shot twice on duty. Among the 343 firefighters killed was Joe's brother, John Vigiano Jr., 36.
After the attacks, Wolf used his footage as the basis for ``Twin Towers,'' a half-hour documentary playing at the Sundance Film Festival that runs through Sunday.
``It's an amazing and horrifying coincidence that they were both there. I think anybody who sees it comes away with an admiration for the sacrifice this family made,'' said Wolf, who screened ``Twin Towers'' at a Los Angeles theater late last year to qualify for the Academy Awards and expects to land the film in commercial theaters or on television.
``These were both really good guys, really good at their jobs. We got to know Joe pretty well, and he was to me the kind of cop you hoped would respond if you ever had to call the police.''
The film blends pre-Sept. 11 interviews with Joe Vigiano and his colleagues discussing the rigors of their jobs, footage of them on crime raids and rescues, still photos and archival material of the Vigiano brothers, and new interviews with their father, John Vigiano Sr., a retired firefighter.
Vigiano Sr. recounts his horror on Sept. 11 as he watched events unfold on television, realizing his sons were on the scene.
``To watch those buildings come down, I'm saying, `Oh, God. They're in there. I know it.' There's something just telling me, they're in there,'' Vigiano Sr. says.
The film presents chilling irony as Joe Vigiano relates the tasks his unit might face, saying, ``we go from being a SWAT team one minute, next minute we could be called to a building collapse trying to rescue people under rubble.''
Wolf collaborator Bill Guttentag, a documentary filmmaker who co-directed ``Twin Towers,'' said the story of the Vigiano brothers humanizes the tragedy by narrowing the focus from thousands of victims to just a few.
``We're trying to take a very large story and present it as one family's tragedy. Hopefully, that speaks to all of us,'' Guttentag said. ``The price this family paid is almost unimaginable, losing two sons at the same time.''
The film's title is a metaphor for the Vigiano brothers. Their father notes that after the trade-center a collapse, a reporter interviewed him and ``called the boys the `twin towers.' I said, well how fitting, because they were.''
