Video:2012 Roland Emmerich and Producers Interview

Transcript:2012 Roland Emmerich and Producers Interview

Rebecca Murray from About.com Hollywood Movies at the LA Premiere of Columbia Pictures' 2012.

2012 Writer/Director Roland Emmerich

This is your biggest scale ever. How do you tackle that and how do you keep upping the bar?

Roland Emmerich: "Well I will not up the bar in my next movie. No, I'll just do a small, little movie, very different. Because I knew this was… You know, 2012 is one of these ideas that comes around not all the time and I kind of thought it was so good that I said, 'Okay, for this one I want to have a little bit more money, have a little bit more resources.' I did something where I think when people see the movie they will say, 'You know, this is like probably the biggest thing I've ever seen."

Did you get to do everything you wanted to do? Was there any effect you had to leave out?

Roland Emmerich: [Shakes his head]

And you stayed on budget?

Roland Emmerich: "Yes."

Why do you think audiences are still so into these big, action epics?

Roland Emmerich: "I think they… Look, it's like our life is in a way a very boring one. And then when you let go in one of these movies, it's like things happen which they're impossible images. I think people have just incredible fun seeing them, and seeing a very realistic character reacting to these images."

How tough to balance that character and not lose it within all the effects?

Roland Emmerich: "Well it's like I'm really proud this time because I think in this movie we told ourselves, 'Yes, we have incredible visual effects – hopefully – but we have to counter it with really great characters.' When we wrote the script, it was out of this thing, you know? Of course we wanted to have it start, but we were not finished with the characters yet. And then after 45 pages, finally the first big visual effects scene comes. And then we made this so big that from that moment people know what they're in [for]. But it's important to create like 45 minutes of set-up for characters, because you have to later there's only short moments where you can go back to them. And when you do that, it really works."

Because you have to care about them.

Roland Emmerich: "Exactly. When you don't care about the characters, you don't care about the visual effects."

2012 Executive Producer Michael Wimer

Michael Wimer: "This is the only place that you can find these. It's perfect movie stuff. You don't get these in a book, you can't get it on television, you can't get them on a tiny, little Youtube thing. This is the only place you can find them, so I think people love them for the popcorn of it all."

Why is Roland Emmerich so good at telling these stories?

Michael Wimer: "You know, I think he's a great combination of coming from a place of really big heart. And, as a visual filmmaker, he has a great, great sense of scale. So, it's very human but at the same time, as you've seen in some of the posters, you've got the ocean coming over the Himalayas. That kind of thing, there aren't very many brains that have that pop up into their mind's eye, you know?"

As a producer, how tough was it to get everything accomplished and come in on budget?

Michael Wimer: "Well I think that the way we did this particular one was that we had the script written and we went out and figured out what we thought it would cost, both the practical elements of it and the visual effects element of it. And then when we took it to the town, all the different studios, we told them what we thought we'd need. And since we had a very calm environment in which to come up with that budget, and we were the only ones limiting ourselves, it made all the sense in the world. Of course it's kind of a rigorous thing when you yourself say that you're not going to go above X budget. Sony was such a great budget that we just stuck on it."

So you didn't have anything that you couldn't get done, that you wanted to get done.

Michael Wimer: "No. I think everything that we wanted to get in the movie is in the movie, and you'll see."

2012 Producer Mark Gordon

From a producer's point of view was this one as difficult as you thought it was going to be or more difficult than you thought it was going to be?

Mark Gordon: "You know what? We came in right on budget on this movie. I'm extremely proud of that and the movie cost a lot of movie. We had great people, many of whom we've worked with before: the visual effects crew we worked with before, the production designer we worked with before. Harald Kloser, my partner, is the producer and also the writer with Roland and the composer. So we've all worked together before. We have a rhythm; we know how to do it. We really got it down. And, oddly enough, as big and complicated as this movie was, it was the easiest movie we've made in a long time."

What are we going to see next from you?

Mark Gordon: "I have another movie opening on the same day as this one called The Messenger, which stars Woody Harrelson. It's a beautiful, beautiful film about Ben Foster and Woody who are Casualty Notification officers who share with the people whose loved ones have passed away in war what's happened to them. It's a very heavy, very dramatic film, but it's beautiful."

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