/Film Interview: Director Roland Emmerich On The Set Of ‘White House Down’
Everyone thoughtRoland Emmerich’s next movie was going to beSingularity. But there we were, last year, on the Montreal set ofWhite House Down, where even Emmerich himself is surprised. What happened? It’s a simple story of Hollywood going a little old school. A studio buys what they feel is a great script, and executives bend over backwards to get a huge star and director on board so audiences can see the movie as soon as possible.
On the set ofWhite House Down, which opens June 28, the director who is well-known for destroying the White House inIndependence Daytalked about doing that again. He discussed how this film will look very different from his previous films, how his starChanning Tatumis doing his own stunts, the exhaustive research into showing audiences places in the White House we never get to see, and much more.
Clickherefor our full visit to the set,herefor our interview with Tatum, and below for Emmerich.
Note: This is a transcription of a roundtable attended by myself, Collider, Cinemablend and Next Movie.
Question: So you’re sitting at home, working onSingularity, it’s got a release date and then…White House Down. What made you decide to jump ship and do this?
You’ve done many movies. Is this the fastest you’ve ever done anything?
Specifically with this one, you got the project so quick and it’s like fourteen months from when they bought it to when it’s going to be in theaters, which is crazy.
If you had more time, would you have shot more or at all in DC or anything like that?
It would always be one stages you think?
You’re known for very big summer movies with “holy shit” effects. Do you feel a pressure in all of your films not to raise the bar over yourself? Are you doing anything in this one that’s going to raise the bar?
How is it going to look different?
Getting back to my thing about “holy shit” effects, are you doing anything in this one that falls under that banner?
We keep hearing about this. I’m so excited about this already.
It sounds like you’re turning the president of the United States into Batman. He’s got the cool car, he’s got the caves under the White House. I don’t mean that as a diss at all. I’m super excited about the idea.
When you are making a movie that looks like this that’s so jam packed with “wow” moments and explosions and fighting, we were kind of blown away by the attention to detail on the White House. What goes into making the decision to actually bother?
When you took that tour or when you got to go in there and look around, did you tell them “I’m getting ready to do something to the White House?”
I meant more of the private thing when you called someone.
The question you’re going to get asked several times in the coming months is how aware were you that “I’m the guy who famously on the Super Bowl and in Independence Day blew up the White House. Now I’m making a movie about the White House.” I mean how aware were you when you took the project that that was going to be the thing?
I mean immediately… it’s so hard these days to find projects, which you think have a chance in the marketplace, because most of the time when you see big summer blockbusters they are based on comic book characters or like a famous book, which is a best seller and already a well known title, or it’s sequels. It’s very, very rare you find something really original and also because a lot of original stuff, most of the time has no chance, because it’s so expensive to make something famous or put it in people’s head that it’s the one to see, it’s like awareness has to be almost like at eighty or ninety percent if you make an expensive summer movie and that’s very hard to do with anything. The White House naturally is in itself some sort of a trademark. Everybody in the world knows the White House, so with White House Down it’s pretty much in the title. You know what’s happened and that’s also the cool part about this one and gives you the filmmaker the freedom to say “Okay, so what do we want?” And were very ambitious with what we wanted to say. We have a political story. We have an action story. We have an emotional story. So it’s all like these things are possible in a movie like that and so I’m quite excited about the script, it’s really good.
We had heard earlier that some of the elements of the script had been kind of tailored to better suit Channing.
I’m curious if you were talking about shooting wide and that is such an unexpected turn for a lot of action movies, were you inspired by his physicality that we have seen?
That’s what he told us.
When you first got the project we heard that you gave some notes on the script and to like alter the villain, the antagonist a little bit. I’m just curious when you got involved how the script changed at all.
Definitely. Were there any films that you looked at as they did right, in terms of the action and balancing the tone that you’re going for?
Yeah, the fact that Channing is wearing the wife beater, at least in the scene we saw, like the dirty t-shirt like John McClane, was that intentional?
