2012 Director Roland Emmerich: The Movieline Interview

On a micro level, this film is very much about the relationships between parents and children. It's come up before in your films; what is it that interests you about that theme?

I loved my father very much. He passed away five years ago, now. But even when he was still alive, I was always very drawn to father/son stories because I think my Dad gave me so much along the way. We were butting heads, but we were always loving each other. In a way, this conflict always inspired me to do father/son stories. But I think it's true: Any time you're in a disaster, even if it's a car accident or stuck in an elevator, your first thought is your family. And it doesn't have to be your kids. It can be your sister, or your mother. Family is something that's very close to us. Everybody has a father and a mother. I still think it's the thing the social and emotional structure of humans is most bound by. If these movies are all about survival, then you have to deal with family.

John Cusack mentioned you approached him for this film. What about him appealed to you as a father figure?

When you look at the actors out there in that age group who can play super-smart and also down-to-earth, there's not many. There's really not many. There's a lot of guys who the "heroes," but you want to stay away from them, you know? It just has to be someone who's flawed, but likable. Who's flawed but intelligent. Who's witty. He was just all of these things that we wrote. He was also kind of the alter ego of Harold and me; we're also artists, we also have tunnel vision. I think of John Cusack as one of us. And on top of that, he's a brilliant actor. I've been a fan of his since Say Anything. He also brings a certain cachet to the movie -- a certain intelligence, a certain quality. I think there's a lot of reasons why he's in this movie.

What did you think of Adam Lambert's music video revealing what it revealed about the ending of 2012?

Well, you always have to kind of show everything. I always believe that when it's that close to the release of the movie, you can show everything, in a way, because it doesn't really matter. When you watch the video, you don't know the movie. You know images, but you don't know the movie.

Without spoiling too much more of the ending, what was up with that last exchange?

It just comes down to what the movie started with. You have this little unit of people. I didn't want to have this big moment at the end; I wanted to have something small and private, a little exchange between parents and kids. For me, it was just kind of perfect. And then you pull out, and you see the Earth. It's really all about that -- not big ideas or big philosophies. It's about how people interact with each other and find some kind of closure.

So... I'm to believe that outlasting the apocalypse cures bedwetting?

Well, for that girl, it did!

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