(Steve White)
CLOSE CALL: Jonathan Parisen, who made a 9/11 movie the year after the attacks, was pulled from these tracks by a hero badly hurt in the rescue. (
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He should have stayed focused.
The drunken passenger pulled from the Staten Island Railway tracks by a good Samaritan — who was critically injured himself during the rescue — is an independent filmmaker who made the first movie about the 9/11 attacks, sources said yesterday.
Jonathan M. Parisen, 40, of East Orange, NJ, wrote, produced and directed “Stairwell: Trapped in the World Trade Center” in 2002, and more recently was working on a flick called “Terrobot” about a giant robot that attacks New York City.
Parisen was charged with reckless endangerment and criminal trespass for going on the tracks to retrieve his shoes at around 1:30 a.m. Sunday, authorities said yesterday.
Rescuer Steven Santiago, 39, of Staten Island saw Parisen scrambling to get back on the platform as a Tottenville-bound train pulled into the New Dorp station, and he reached down to yank him back up, sources said.
But Santiago couldn’t scramble from the edge of the platform himself, and the train struck him on the head.
Parisen, who also goes by the name Jon Par, had not envisioned such a night of excitement.
“Off to do some much needed food shopping then I shall spend a relaxing day at home watching Netflix,” he tweeted Saturday.
Records suggest he could use some relaxation — the cash-strapped auteur was evicted from his apartment on Tysens Lane in Staten Island for not keeping up with the rent and had been looking for a new pad until a few weeks ago.
“Well in 2 weeks I shall be calling East Orange NJ home. I am excited, it is the birthplace of the first movie studio in the world,” he tweeted on Dec. 16.
The 9/11 flick — which angered some critics because of its release so soon after the attacks — was largely a tribute to the firefighters who gave their lives saving others.
The cult-film Web site Film Threat gave it three stars out of a possible five.
Parisen’s other movies include:
* “800,” about the 1996 TWA Flight 800 crash over Long Island.
* “The Atomic Space Bug,” a tribute to 1950s monster movies that starred B-movie legend Conrad Brooks, who was in Ed Wood’s so-bad-it’s-good “Plan 9 from Outer Space.”
* “A Conversation with Norman,” a tribute to Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” and its murderous protagonist, Norman Bates.
Parisen was still being treated for minor injuries yesterday at Staten Island University Medical Center.
Santiago, an ex-con with a lengthy rap sheet who did time for burglary and drug-dealing, was in critical condition in the hospital’s ICU with a serious head injury.
Additional reporting by Danny Gold