Roland Emmerich Interview, 2012

Never before has a date in history been so significant to so many cultures, so many religions, scientists and governments. “2012” is an epic adventure about a global cataclysm that brings an end to the world and tells of the heroic struggle of the survivors.

We sat down recently at Comic-Con to talk to Roland Emmerich about his new movie, “2012,” which stars John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, Thandie Newton, Danny Glover and Woody Harrelson. Here’s what the director of “Independence Day” and “The Day After Tomorrow” had to tell us about his latest apocalyptic sci-fi thriller:

Q:  Roland, what is it about you and the end of the world?

Roland Emmerich: It’s a love affair.

Q:  Apparently that’s an on-going theme in most of your works.  What is the fascination with that?

Roland Emmerich:   Well, I think the first time I was confronted with it was with Independence Day. The world ends July 4th which was for us, Dean (Devlin) and me, some sort of absolute statement. Then I was attracted to it again in Day After Tomorrow because I had the feeling that if we keep going, that will be the end. It would be not the total end but an Ice Age will come or some other big catastrophe. And then, this time around, I was discussing with Harald (Kloser) possible new projects. We came up with this idea that maybe a global flood would be a great movie because we could do a retelling of Noah’s Ark in a modern way. Then we played around with who would build these arks.  And then, during the course of coming up with the story, we found this phenomenon 2012 and we incorporated it in our movie. And that’s what it is now.  It’s actually a retelling of Noah’s Ark, a modern retelling. And because of that, for me, it’s not only a disaster movie, because disaster movies have to have another extra element which makes it kind of special. The whole third act is more a different kind of movie. It’s about who will survive in the arks.

Q:  Did you tie the Mayan calendar into 2012 and why?

Roland Emmerich:   Yeah. We tied it in. We tied it in a little bit the same way that Area 51 was tied into Independence Day.  Also, at that time, a lot of people believed in Area 51. No one could really prove it but a lot of people believed in it, and the same way, we thought it’s good to tie it into 2012 in our movie.  At one point actually, Harald called me up in Los Angeles, I was just in two or three meetings, and he said,  “I know now what we should call our film:  2012. What do you think?” and I hated it. I totally hated it, because I said that will date our movie, but then more and more I realized it’s good to do that.  It’s good to tie it into something real that people believe.

Q:  I was going to ask if you heard about the Mayan 2012 stuff and thought I could do that, but it sounds like that came later.

Roland Emmerich:   No, that came later. That’s not how movies or ideas work.  Most of the time, you’re interested in some sort of aspect and out of this aspect comes a story, and then, from the story, come characters. Then you do research and then sometimes something like this happens that you find.  It’s the same thing that happened with Independence Day. We found out how many people believe in Area 51 and we tied it into our story to make it more real.

Q:  When you were doing your research, how did you separate the 2012 Mayan theory from other peoples’ theories that may or may not be true?

Roland Emmerich: Well, there are so many, you can create your own.  (laughs)  The most amazing thing for me was how many books there are. When you go on Amazon, it’s like hundreds of books, all with 2012. (laughs)  It’s incredible. I ordered the first six or seven pages (laughs) and I had all these books.  Everyone tells a different story. We only used the fact that the Mayan calendar ends. That gave us the year.  It’s also mainly because it’s the cycle of the way the sun’s destructive force is going to destroy earth.  We used that a little bit and that’s all what we used.

Q:  A lot of times in an end of the world movie, people like to destroy just the United States, but I think you’ve set out to destroy the entire world?  Is that something that you really wanted to do?

Roland Emmerich:   When you do a flood movie, a flood has to be global and then you have to come up mentally with a theory. We pretty much researched a little bit, and we found this one theory which is earth quest displacement, which may be true or not. It doesn’t really matter, but for our movie it was perfect, because it pretty much comes with earthquakes, volcano eruptions, and the whole crust shifting and because of that this incredible cataclysm comes and then these enormous tsunamis it created, and then I had to fill in.  I come from Germany so why only [America]. It’s great to start in America but I thought the Himalayas would be great. (laughs)  I don't know exactly how we came up with the Himalayas. I think because it’s the highest, it’s the roof of the world. When that gets flooded, that’s a flood.

Q:  What challenges did you encounter when you tried to create the flood visually?

Roland Emmerich: Well first of all, I hired my old visual effects supervisor, Volker Engel, who I really think was the right person. In the meantime, he partnered with Marc Weigert, also another German, and they were the right people and they approached this in a very methodical way. We pretty much cast effect houses like actors, and then certain people for water and certain people for this and certain people for that, and then we had a huge in-house team. It was like 70, 80 people who worked tirelessly since the last year or so to create the earthquake sequence in LA, which they do half of it, and the other half is Digital Domain. We have 15 companies working for us, and that’s the biggest visual effect show I have ever done, and I have done some pretty big ones. It’s like 1,400 shots and maybe that doesn’t sound like so many, but our shots are really, really complicated. We have so many shots with water and water is always famously the most difficult thing to do.

Q:  Has it been a lot of trial and error for you to try and get it as photo-realistic as possible? Is that particularly hard to do?

Roland Emmerich:   We have more and more to say in our visual effects review. Every day, we’re sitting for two or three hours in a room. I sit, but they sit even longer. They sit there another two or three hours because they review everything before I see it.  So we have this thing, never, never, never, give up.  It’s like Winston Churchill.  And it’s a really true thing for visual effects, because you can only abandon a visual effects, and then if you abandon too early, later you’re kind of pissed at yourself.  Because we’re three guys, everybody has to be happy.  It’s really a democratic process. 

Q:  How do you think this will play in 2013? (laughter)

Roland Emmerich: Well, 2013 doesn’t exist. (laughter) I mean, yeah, there’s still some land mass somewhere.  I don’t know.  That was exactly my discussion with Harald. (laughs)  What are we doing? In 2013, the movie’s dated.  One of my favorite movies is called 2001.  So I said, I still like that movie, then there’s hope for 2012 to survive.

Q:  What was it about John Cusack that made you think he was right for this role?

Roland Emmerich:   Well, we looked for an actor who was an everyman but also smart, and had some comedic talent.  And there’s not too many out there.  I always admired John Cusack, and that’s why we offered it to him. 

Q:  He’s never really done a genre film either, which is kind of interesting.

Roland Emmerich:   Well, he’s done a little bit of genre. He did this movie about the room number, right?  (He’s referring to 1408.) And then he did Con-Air, which also was a little bit action, but no, that’s actually great in disaster movies, you don’t have to have somebody, you don’t need a Bruce Willis.  You don’t need an Arnold Schwarzenegger, just a regular guy, regular people, and then naturally, if you write good characters, you get really good actors.  We’ve got I think some really good actors in this film.

Q:  How hard is it to direct your actors when there’s nothing there and you’re trying to tell them that an aircraft carrier just fell into the White House?

Roland Emmerich:   (laughs) We do Pre-vis. It’s pretty much a comic book version. It looks like an animated movie, a very simple animated movie, where you see every shot.  And that’s the first thing that we showed to the actors, and this is what comes towards you, and the first question that they always ask is will it look like that?  (laughs)  Then you say, no, there will be a lot of work going into it, but it will look better and then you go from there. You have to talk a lot, you have to explain to them constantly what’s coming and keep them [engaged]. It’s actually quite hard to keep actors [engaged]. We have a couple of sequences with some small little plane and it was really cramped in there. There was a gimbal and it was just a nightmare. It’s very hard to keep them going and keep them involved because you still need acting, you know?  You still need acting and that’s very hard sometimes. 

Q:  You’re very fortunate in finding people like Will Smith and others who keep finding their big breaks.  Who in this movie do you feel is a break out actor?

Roland Emmerich:   Well, a lot of them are already known, but one who is not so well known is Chiwetel Ejiofor.  I think he will be a big star. 

Q:  Can you talk about your inspiration for the imagery? How involved were you? Did you sketch stuff out or did you go from photos?

Roland Emmerich: Well I start out with Harald talking about what could happen and what kind of scenes we could do and then out of that comes images. There are always certain things that immediately pop into your mind.  You see some drawing of somebody.  It’s a group effort too.  We had incredible artists working on this.  It’s just a group effort and a lot of work.

Q:  Can you describe what the arks look like?

Roland Emmerich:   You’ll see it pretty soon.  They’re built to withstand the waves so they had to be very big because they wanted to save a lot of people.  But they also had to be able to withstand incredible forces of water. They’re part submarine and part ship, it’s a mix. 

Q:  Do you get to explore the juicy details of who gets to go on them and who gets left behind?

Roland Emmerich:   Yeah, the movie’s about that.

Q:  Roland, this isn’t the only sci-fi movie coming up for you.   Can you tell us something about Isobar and Foundation?

Roland Emmerich:   Isobar was a project that I actually came to Los Angeles [to pursue]. That’s actually how I came to Hollywood. I was working on it for 9 months and then decided to not do it. So, I don't think I will do it. (laughs)  That was 20 years ago. (laughs)  And then, Foundation is just a book series I was very fortunate to get because a lot of people wanted to have it.  I’m just developing the first of three planned movies. The first one is called Foundation, then Foundation Empire, then second Foundation. I hired the writer of Saving Private Ryan, Bob Rodat, to write it.

Q:  Is that going to be your Lord of The Rings?

Roland Emmerich:   I don’t know.  (laughter)  Let’s hope.

Q:  Independence Day is one of the highest grossing films and one of the five most often run films on basic cable, why did you never do a follow up?

Roland Emmerich: It’s one of these movies that’s very hard to do a follow up.  Also, in the meantime, Will Smith has become probably the number one movie star and he has a very busy schedule. I’ve talked with Will only lately about it.  He’s really up for it, but then you also need a good story and the economics have to be right.  And then, there’s always these other projects you want to do which are original, and so it just never happened. 

Q:  But you talked about doing a second one?

Roland Emmerich:   Well yeah, actually every two years we have a weekend somewhere and yack about what it could be. (Laughs) And then, most of the time, we’re reminiscent about our past.

Q:  Could you talk about the character that John Cusack plays? You said you were looking for the actor that has a comedic sense?

Roland Emmerich:   No, look it’s like this.  I always believe that when you have characters in these kinds of movies, I always tend to cast actors who also have comedic timing, because if you can laugh at these characters, you take them more seriously.  This is a little like in real life, you cry, you laugh.  Those are the two emotions that people induce from you.  I think a good joke once in awhile also keeps the movie light and tells people that this is a movie, this is not reality.  Enjoy this. I think John brings a kind of sly humor. Whenever he talks to somebody, he’s very irreverent…

Q:  Dry?

Roland Emmerich:   Dry, it’s dry humor, yeah.  He has very dry humor.  (laughs)

Q:  Just one more thing about The Foundation, when it’s Asimov, do you have to have a much lighter touch than the sort of bombastic, ‘destroy everything in the world’ type of movie?

Roland Emmerich:   Well, it’s a different kind of movie altogether. The interesting and difficult thing of Asimov’s Foundation is that he actually wrote it as short stories. Then out of the short stories, he put the first book out called Foundation, which was actually several short stories, and then he wrote the two big novellas which became the second part and then only wrote a novel called Second Foundation.  So it was never really meant to be one narrative.  And when you make a movie, you need one narrative.  You need one actor. One character leads us through, one bad guy leads us through.  The tricky thing was to figure that one out.  Yeah, it was just difficult to figure that out.

Q:  Did you figure it out yet?

Roland Emmerich:   Oh yeah, Bob Rodat is writing and he already announced to me it’s a very long script and to brace myself.

Q:  How many pages is the script?

Roland Emmerich:   I don't know, I haven’t read it yet but I asked him, “How long is it, Bob?” (he said), “Oh, when I wrote The Patriot it was first 240 pages.” (laughter)  I said, “Jesus. It’s longer than that?”  He said, “You can cut it down.”  I said, “We have to!” (laughter)  He’s a writer who just writes it out, writes it out and he said he just has to spit it out on paper.  He said there’s a lot of nonsense but it’s kind of like pearls, and then you have to keep picking, and he re-writes, and you keep picking and picking until you have something that really works well. He’s not a writer who, when you read a script, that’s it.  He loves to write, write, write and then uses you as the director more as an editor who constantly edits him down and condenses it.

Q:  Does sound design play an important role in 2012?

Roland Emmerich:   Yeah, and we’re still working on it. The sound design is very, very important and it’s always about level, you know, how loud is this, or should we have the music or sound effects carry it -- for example, certain scenes where we do half without music and then the music kicks in or the music takes over, because at a certain point the noise level is too high and you don’t hear anything anymore. You have to give them just a melody, give them a drive of music. It’s actually quite difficult to do a film and mix it and you constantly listen back and give notes and it’s quite stressful sometimes. 

Q:  Could you talk a little about the story and the character dynamics?

Roland Emmerich:   I’ll tell you now, as short as I can, it’s the story of people who know that the world is coming to an end, and people who don’t know.  The people who know secretly build ships.  It’s the government of the world, secretly building ships and not telling the people. Then, they discover that the world comes much faster to an end than they anticipated and they have to race to these ships.  That’s the one story.  The other story is about a totally normal person who goes with his kids to Yellowstone and learns from a crazy radio host that the world is going to end.  Because a lot of the things that this guy says happen, he starts to believe in it.  He’s a divorced father. His first thought is about his children and his ex-wife and then he rescues them.  In the rescue attempt, he has to go all the way, he has to bring them to China, and he kind of reconciles with his wife and his kids. 

Q:  Is the crazy radio host a tribute to Art Bell? 

Roland Emmerich:   Yeah.

Q:  You worked with him before.  Can you tell us about him and your relationship?

Roland Emmerich:   I only met him once, on the premiere of Day After Tomorrow. 

Q:  Was Jay based at all on his book?

Roland Emmerich:   No, this was based on The Coming of The Global Superstone.  It’s actually in the title. 

Q:  Can you talk a little bit about the balance between the religious and scientific aspects of the end of the world?

Roland Emmerich:   Well, there’s a lot of religious symbols that get destroyed in this movie, strangely.  It’s a little bit of a comment on, there’s not a comment in any way, it’s just people, when bad things happen, they turn to god.  And when you destroy the Vatican or the Jesus in Rio De Janiero, you tell people, even God can’t help you.  Then it becomes very philosophical in a way. It comes down to what should people do in a situation like that, what is morally right to do, and all these questions occur.

Q:  Does the film say either way that this is God ending the world or this is just cosmic flooding brought on by nature?

Roland Emmerich:   It’s pretty much nature.  It’s a curse every like six out of forty thousand years.  It’s a little bit like, look, it’s like I have this feeling and it’s my feeling, so I cannot prove it or anything, but I have the feeling that earth in a way has a replay or a restart button and it’s just like a gigantic restart.  And I think all the floods in this have that too.  My last movie actually was based on one of these theories. It was of course the lost civilization theory. It was also kind of the big cataclysm and these cultures were destroyed. It’s just something I believe in, and a lot of people actually believe in, but regular signs naturally cannot confirm this, because I mean how?

Q:  Does 2012 have an environmental message?

Roland Emmerich:   No, it doesn’t have an environmental message, because I would have repeated myself, but it has a very cool philosophical base. You have to actually see the movie to understand what I mean, because there are constant discussions going on. Is this right what we’re doing, and this one person constantly gives you the feeling, yeah, it’s right what you’re doing.  But then, there is this lingering kind of doubt.  And then, throughout the movie, the one who has the lingering doubt is the one who wins out. 

Q:  Godzilla is coming to Blu-Ray.  What are your feelings about Godzilla today?

Roland Emmerich:   I’m totally proud of Godzilla.  I’m always saying this. I mean, I know there’s a lot of naysayers, but I’m proud of it.

Q:  You had a great idea for a Godzilla remake at one point.  Is that dead?

Roland Emmerich:   That’s dead. I’m not a person for sequels.  I just want to do something original. Once in awhile I plan or try to do something like a remake but then most of the time original stories just win out.  And it has to be a good one. 

Q:  How do you think the world is actually going to end?

Roland Emmerich:   Poof.  (laughter)  I’m only kidding.  I don’t know, I don’t know, I’m not a prophet. I hope we are not ruining our planet.  I really believe that if we keep going and doing what we are doing, we will not be leaving the planet how it should be for our kids and that’s been going on for several generations.  Also, we still have these wars going on, and all this energy could go into environment or in other peaceful activities. It’s just very sad to read the news everyday and see what are these people fighting over?  It’s like don’t they understand the clock is ticking?