Whether audiences are ready to relive Sept. 11, 2001
I can’t tell you that. I can only tell you we’d better be because the consequences of that day are far worse than what happened on that day. There’s been far more death through terror, more terror, more fear. We have constitutional breakdowns in this country. We have huge debts. On Sept. 12 [2001] … people felt sorry for us. There was a feeling [of empathy] throughout the world, and we were in a different place that day. We helped each other day. We were united, we were really pulling to over the suffering and the setback, and I think that’s important to Will and John. That’s why they’re telling this story. Where are we now?

Choosing to direct World Trade Center
In its origin it came to me as a script. It was an inspiring story. And it was true. I talked to people. I checked it out. We talked to everybody. It’s very rare to find a script tat you read and sit there and say, This one I want to do. [Stanley] Kubrick once said that you should be aware the first time you read the screenplay because many years will go by, many readings, many drafts, but the first reading is very important to remember. And I remember that first reading, it hit my heart in a way I hope I never forget. It wasn’t a movie yet; it was a great idea, a great inspiration. With [screenwriter Andrea Berloff], we broke it down, we sent it to the sawmill, everything changed around at some point, and what came out is the result of this collaboration. It’s the nature of the business. I always work as a writer or a co-writer, or I’m not interested in credit.

World Trade Center being an atypical Oliver Stone film
This is all pigeonholing me. I understand that. The same methods went into this movie which I always have used, which is realism, talking to the witnesses, following up the facts, and I include JFK in that because we talked to a hell of lot of witnesses who were at Dealey Plaza and all the other places, in Washington. That’s my style, but I’ve always blended it with other aspects, whether it was a subject or sometimes a style. Because each time I’ve tried to suit the style to the movie. And if you look closely at the movie, you can see the style has changed. There’s a big difference, for example, between Natural Born Killers, which was 1994, and Heaven and Earth, which was ’93. Heaven and Earth was shot in a classical style, which is very much like this style. And I’ve gone back and forth. Nixon was shot in a different style than JFK. Alexander was shot in a more classical style, too.

Deliberately avoiding Oliver Stone-isms
The worse thing that I could do, and I said this for this movie, is to let the character called Oliver Stone come between the audience and the film. It would be a disservice to the people in the film. And I would say the same thing if I was doing the JFK murder. But it happened, and my name grew through the years, and it came something other than what I am, which is what I am, but there’s I’ve had to deal that there’s an Oliver Stone out there, but that’s not me. The next movie that I do, it’s going to be the same way.

The process of directing World Trade Center
It was not shot with reverence. It wasn’t like each time we did a shot we bowed down to the Holy Grail and said, Bless us, O Father because we’re dealing with a holy ritual here. Not at all. We dealt with it the same way we always do. We had with us the best. The people were fresh, the memories were fresh, the police and fireman—the Port Authority especially, because this is a Port Authority film—were most helpful. The rescuing issue was filled with confusion because the day was filled with confusion. But we checked out the stories and we had enormous technical nightmares trying to match it. So much the Fire Department did this, the Police Department did this, the Port Authority did that. If you notice closely, the rescue of Will is done by Scotty Struass, who is a NYPD (Emergency Service Unit officer). The rescue of John, he was discovered by Scotty Fox of the Fire Department, who plays himself. So naturally there’s tension between departments. They all want to do their best to get down there to help. They stepped on each other’s toes constantly. By the way, most of the rescuers were mixed. By the time you get to the paramedics they would be from different units…. And when you saw John coming out of the hole in the daylight, that is based on a documentary shot we saw of. Literally all those uniforms were different. A hundred different uniforms in the document, we tried to match it.

Light vs. darkness
The idea was that [McLoughlin and Jimeno] were plunged into the Hades world, the darkness from the light of the morning…. The light comes up, and then we lose the light, they go into the darkness. To get out of that gloom—no audience could sit through a dark film; we had 35 minutes of hole at the end of the day, we made them into nine holes, averages out four minutes per—we’d get out of the holes to go to the light. The light in the homes was intended to be a contract. So, at first, it was really light, but then as the day dims and the chances of their husband coming home, we took the daylight into a more threatening aspect, into the somberness of the twilight. Corresponding, when we go back to the later holes, they’ve warmed up a bit because the fires are getting more intense. So there’s a little more warmth in the holes; that they’re getting closer to the light. At the very end, of course, Nic comes out into the light.

Refraining from showing much of the horror of Sept. 11, 2001
Jumping out of the building. You’ve seen footage of it. We could have done a lot more. It was necessary, though [to include a scene of someone jumping from the World Trade Center]. You have to take into account that people who see this film are not just people who know this event. There are people who don’t know about the event, peasants in Peru or young people who were 7 years old at the time and didn’t know what it was all about. All kids who are born today who are going to see it in 10 years, 15 years. You have to take this into account, and you want to at least some information you have to share…. We didn’t use any real footage stock so as not to offend. Who knows who can spot who there? So we create that via computer. The only time we created computer images outside the TV was the burning buildings and the jumper, one time. TV images are all real and real voices. They are chronologically correct. That occurs at that time of day.

Securing a PG-13 rating
My ideal would to be make a PG-13, and no one’s congratulated me yet…. It wasn’t necessary to swear. There are some swear words in there, but it wasn’t necessary. The pain is sufficient. You see how graphic it is. I think the code has become more liberal, but whatever happens, we did preview, the kids 13 to 16 loved the movie. There’s a bigger audience there. Thirteen year olds want to know what happened that day.

Earning the PG-13 rating
What I was worried about was the same problem I had on Natural Born Killers. (The Motion Picture Association of America) would simply say a generality such as, This is too intense. Then you end up stripping your movie of the things that make it. The movie is a fine line between … it’s clean in the sense that the grit is not overwhelming. You want the grandmother to see it with the kid. It is painful. There are moments that will take her eyes away, maybe. But I tested it with my daughter, my wife, several Korean family members, some of whom are very squeamish. Various other people. So I got a feeling of where the line was.

Casting Nicolas Cage as John McLoughlin
He looks a bit like (McLoughlin). Nic, I had been told, was wanting to do something serious like this. He’s very intense. He’s very sensitive, more than you perhaps think. He’s torn. He’s a very emotional person, and he’s made huge contributions to Amnesty, but he’s done it quietly. He has a big social conscience in his way. The thing is, he works ferociously. He’s obsessed with work. He looks at it as an exploration, as a science. He does movies to test some new aspect of himself. So he experiments far more than most actors.

He was a head in the jar. He couldn’t move. And also he had to be very straight. It wasn’t the normal Nic Cage. McLoughlin … is hardly as colorful as John Wayne. He’s more like Ward Bond. How do you make a life out of the Ward Bond character?

The time and cost to make World Trade Center
I would say it’s a moderate Hollywood film. It was done in 63 days … it was expensive to build the sets. Absolutely. We built the rubble field exterior in Los Angeles—Playa del Ray—and we built the interior holes. It’s very hard to work in rubble. Just to walk in rubble. When I walked to the World Trade Center, it’s exhausting after an hour. You have the light the damn thing, you bring cameras in, you have to bring crews, you have to have access, actors have to come and go. It’s a very complicated technical process.

It was a big build. We shot a third in New York, two-thirds in L.A. The budget was medium by the standards of Hollywood: $63 million.

Accusations of turning tragedy into profit
How do you make something like this? How do you get people—crews—to work? They’ll take the money; we need some salaries to keep going. We need a year, a year-and-a-half of our lives. Everyone on the film worked harder than usual. They always work hard, but they went beyond the ordinary. The actors didn’t take anything close to their normal fees. I didn’t. The only way to possibly make some money to justify the long period is to take a profit, is to take a piece of the backend. If you look at Titanic, Pearl Harbor, all the movies that are made about historical (disasters), The Battle of Algiers, how would you get those movies made unless there was some kind of profit? People are not work totally for free. Even the people building the memorial are getting paid. You give back any way you can. Paramount is giving back more even than United 93. They’re giving back 10 percent of the first five days to four charities. That’s a big gross. Each person will do what they feel. If it works out, I’ll give back something a percentage…. I’m sure Nic will.

The rumors of a Wall Street sequel
I was and I’m not anymore. Those rumors are random. While we’re at it, let’s get rid of some other rumors. What else? Custer (The Son of the Morning Star)? No.

World Trade Center is now in theaters. Click here for more information.

Click the links below to read World Trade Center interviews with:
—Maggie Gyllenhaal
—Michael Peña
—Will Jimeno
—Allison Jimeno

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