AUGUST 8, 2006ÑWorld Trade Center is not the 9/11 film anyone expected from Oliver Stone.
The controversial director of JFK and Nixon dispenses with the politics and conspiracy theories to tell the little-known true story of two Port Authority police officers rescued from the rubble of the Twin Towers.
Sgt. John McLoughlin and Officer Will Jimeno (played, respectively, by Nicolas Cage and CrashÕs Michael Pe–a) found themselves buried under the World Trade Center while trying to assist people fleeing the North Tower. They remained trapped for 12 hours before they were eventually found and pulled to safety.
Stone also recounts how their wivesÑDonna McLoughlin and Allison McLoughlin (played, respectively, by Maria Bello and Maggie Gyllenhaal)Ñcoped with the possibility that they died when the World Trade Center collapsed.
Prior to World Trade CenterÕs Aug. 9 release, a pregnant Gyllenhaal visited Miami to discuss her role as Allison McLoughlin, who was expecting her second daughter at the time of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Here are Gyllenhaal's comments on:
Portraying Allison Jimeno
I felt the way for me to do my job effectively was not to imitate Allison, either in her characteristics or exactly in what she remembered going through that day. I thought what would be more honest and have the effect I wantedÑwhich is to make a movie that is moving and honestÑis to really try to experience what she experiences in the script myself in the way that I experienced them or the way the character I made of Allison experienced them. At the same time, I was drawn to Allison from the second I met her. É I think [Will Jimeno and Michael Pe–a] worked very differently. Michael Pe–a had to figure out what it was like to be in that hole for 13 hours specifically and accurately. I had a different job, so I didnÕt ask Allison a million questions about exactly what it was she went through. It was more that I just wanted to be near her and just get a sense of her and just let it seep in.
Playing a woman, in the late stages of a pregnancy, coping with the possible death of her husband
What I tried to do was find a way that that experience could be mine. Again, to hear other people tell me their experience is helpful to some degree. ItÕs the same with the pregnancy. I wasnÕt pregnant when I made the movie. ItÕs one thing to talk to a bunch of women and ask what itÕs like to be almost seven months pregnantÑhowÕs it feel like, how can you move, how can you not move? ThatÕs fine. That helps you pretty great. After that, you have to say to yourself, OK, IÕve never had this experience, is there some way I can imagine something that feels just as real to me in the experiences IÕve had to actually be inside that experience? I had this one thing that I thought, instead of just having one heart and going through this, I felt like I had two hearts. That felt like something real to me, more real than when youÕre that pregnant, you canÕt bend over the middle. Some people did tell told me that, but I didnÕt know what that meant until I got pregnant.
Playing an emotionally demanding role
Bad acting is when you pretend to feel things that you say youÕre feeling. That feels awful and you feel like a fake. When itÕs working, whatÕs so hard about it is that you have to go through what you say youÕre going through. With Oliver as a director, heÕs not going to accept anything but the most committed version of whatever it is that you are playing. That is such a catastrophic thing to have to experience. All I could do was imagine it and to be as vulnerable as I could be and allow as much as what I could imagine to actually exist as I could. I canÕt begin to say that I felt what Allison might have felt that day. I have no way of knowing.
We shot it for months and months and months. There wasnÕt like a lot of catharsis. In the script, there wasnÕt a lot of crying. It wasnÕt like, IÕm going to release this tension somehow. É Mostly it just tension, and it fills up your whole body. ItÕs hard to relax. ItÕs hard to let go. ItÕs a weird feeling.
Where she was on Sept. 11, 2001
I live in New York, but strangely, randomly, I was out of the country, alone. I was in France. I heard about it like everyone else. I checked my email right after the first hit. I didnÕt know. My mom had said to me, ÒSomeone bombed the World Trade Center.Ó It was before anyone knew what was going on. É And then I just did everything I could to get home. My great aunt, whoÕs now 91, lives still literally across the street from the World Trade Center. So we were spending a lot of time trying to figure out where she was. It took days to find her. All my family lives there, so I did my best to get home. I live in California, so I flew there first and then to New York.
Fears of Oliver Stone politicizing his fact-based subject matter
ItÕs an understandably thing to be afraid of. People are saying, Is there going to an agenda, is there going some kind of manipulation going on? How many things have you seen about 9/11 that havenÕt had some sort of agenda. IÕve read the script É and itÕs very, very straightforward, and its message is really not political. I went into watching the movie thinking, OK, am I going to be manipulated. I went in very worried. ThatÕs what IÕm used to. And thatÕs how it is these days. ThatÕs how we have to exist. I do not fault people for being afraid of that. But thatÕs what makes the movie particularly special. É I can let myself feel how heroic these people were and what an incredible thing happened that day. ItÕs so honest. I love that people are so afraid of that, and that they can go in and feel that relief and remember through Oliver strangely. All our intentions were good, but Oliver was the one who insisted on it. And it takes someone as powerful as Oliver Stone to be the only person I can think of in five years whoÕs made something like this without any agenda. But I must say I did not see United 93.
Working with Oliver Stone
I had one of the most ideal experiences working as an actress with him. É I always really liked his movies. Really liked them. I thought he was like a sweeping, dramatic filmmaker. Before I met him I was a little scared. I had heard he could be kind of tough and tricky. When I met himÑand I think people get along with people differentlyÑbut we immediately É made a connection, which I did not expect. He listens so well. The meeting was an hour and I felt like I had actually met him, which is unusual in a meeting with a director. You feel like youÕre talking business. But this was like a real, personal connection. I think working with him, he does something that is really ideal É he made it very clear to me that I was respected. Not a pretend-like respect É but he really respected me, collaborated with me, included me in the process in deciding what the scenes would mean. I need that in order to feel comfortable. At the same time, almost without me knowing it, he was totally in control of what was going on and really had his hands in me and was working me emotionally in terms of the work weÕre working. ThatÕs ideal for me. I want to be able to not have to be in control of anything and be totally vulnerable and trust the person whoÕs working with me. I donÕt want to be cut out of the process artistically of what the work is about. He just nailed it what I needed to feel comfortable.
World Trade Center is now in theaters. Click here for more information.
Click the links below to read World Trade Center interviews with:
ÑDirector Oliver Stone
ÑMichael Pe–a
ÑWill Jimeno
ÑAllison Jimeno
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