Nobody makes movies bad on purpose.
I think every good, entertaining movie should have a message. I really believe that, because if you do it without it, the film feels a little bit soulless.
I'm a filmmaker, not a scientist.
I try to put in every one of my movies some sort of message. I don't want to overdo it, because I don't want people to get annoyed by it, but it's good to have a message.
If you want to assemble the same people, then you have a big problem.
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 80% or 90% if you make an expensive summer movie and that's very hard to do with anything an the White House naturally is in itself some sort of a trademark.
There are shots that I had to walk away from because we had to get the movie in the theaters. There are some in "Independence Day" and "Godzilla," but lately I got smart. I would plan it so I had enough time [to get it right]. That just comes with experience.
Do not fear. Some things will never change.
I think sport in general affects what people see in movies. I always try to explain to people in Hollywood that we have to make movies more like sport because, in sport, everything can happen and it's so much better than movies in some ways.
A lot of stuff in Wikipedia is not true, and that goes for a lot of people. I sometimes think, "How can that happen?" But Wikipedia is maintained by people, and everybody can add stuff to it.
I'm only a stupid filmmaker.
It's like everybody is obsessed with Hollywood movies worldwide. And even though everybody hates the Americans, they're still watching American movies.
That one [in "2012"] was different because it was all CG, getting washed away by water. In "Independence Day," everything was still done in models, built in a certain scale out of plaster, and packing tons and tons of little explosives and charges in there. We had a second one in case it didn't work the first time, but it worked the first time.
Everybody knows that the industrialized nations are the worst offenders.
There's a rule in Hollywood: stay away from water and stay away from snow, and I had both.
When you find something where you can give people a message and still make it an exciting movie, you get very, very excited about something. You probably even work harder than you normally do.
It's still the White House exploding [in "Independence Day"]. It was just so provocative, and no one had ever done it before. I remember when we shot it, how everyone was excited.
I'm finished with destroying for a while. It's not like I'm running around saying, 'What else can I destroy?'
I've had the pleasure to work with a lot of very great actors. And they're too different to say who's the best.
I'm doing a much smaller movie. It's set in Germany and it's a totally different subject matter. I'm trying to break it up.
I also, since we have digital cameras, the blue screen composites are so good that I would rather shoot on a stage than there, especially the complicated sequences. The sun never sets in a studio stage.
I would say, when it comes to comedy, I think Matthew Broderick was great.
When we shot "Stargate," he [ Jaye Davidson] came up to me at one point and said, "I don't like shooting movies," and I said, "Why?" "Too many people stare at me." I said, "Then you're totally in the wrong business."
I've said that "2012" was my favorite ensemble cast, because it was so evenly good.
In the first earthquake scene [ in "2012"], there was only a limo and a plane. That was it. There was nothing else there, so everything had to be created in the computer, and that's always very difficult.
