What kind of historical investigation about the Mayans are you making?

Roland: Well it’s just a fact that the Mayan calendar ends 2012 on the 21^st of December, but that’s only like a side thing. This is only like a part of the story. There are a lot of other people that also said it’s going to end in 2012, you know the I-ching, Nostradamus, a lot of people, the Bible by the way, anyhow.

Did you watch the Raquel Welch film with the similar title?

Roland: Yeah.

What did you think?  Is there anything that you’ve taken from the…?

Roland: Yeah, when I said I kind of …there’s a warning that’s what cheesy is…try to avoid cheesy after this movie. I said it’s a little bit like “1 Million BC” but it’s also…look it’s like this— for me it was an example and also in “Clan of the Cave Bears” that when you have a famous actress in a movie or famous actor in a movie it becomes cheesy inevitably and that’s why I avoided having known actors in this movie and opted for like discovering new actors.  Because also when you look at George-Jacques Lewis, “Quest for Fire” which I thought was a brilliant movie—has no known actor in there.

When you were casting for this was it a priority to find a blue-eyed actress or did you always think…

Roland: I knew this was a contact lens thing, you know, but I was inspired by this very famous photograph of this girl in Afghanistan and I said that’s how unreal it has to look.

Did you look at a lot of actresses before arriving at Camilla?

Roland: I looked at quite some but when I saw Camilla I knew I have my girl.  I had actually seen her act 2 or 3 times when she was a girl. And all of a sudden this beautiful woman walks in and I said, wow. She grew.  I tested her with Steven and the chemistry was right and I cast them both.

Also on the Internet, I noticed that you’re referred to as the little Spielberg.  How would you feel about that one?

Roland: Derogatory term. I told this one to Spielberg and he kind of cracked up laughing. I said they call me the little Spielberg.  I mean come on, you know?  But you know how this came because somebody in Spiegel (Germany) after my first student film which was a feature film, said oh my God it’s like a Spielberg growing in our homeland. 

It just stuck with you. 

Roland: What?

On this title. 

Roland: Yeah, but it’s taken a lot how the press works. You know what it’s like I mean, I don’t want to criticize you guys but there’s a lot of kind of research going on on the internet and everybody is like copying from everybody else.  Sometimes it happens like this, somebody puts something out there for example, Roland Emmerich does Fantastic Voyage, just everybody believes because its’ written.  Nobody asked me and yes it was one of my projects but I have many projects. I have many projects, you know. I have like 10 projects but it was just one. Also wasn’t this movie already 15 years ago or 12 years ago.  Nobody kind of remembered that, you know, but everybody keeps not asking so your movie is “Fantastic Voyage” that’s next. I said no. It’s just this whole thing that yeah, I mean you know and I have to say I like kind of get a lot out of the internet too, for example this whole movie I’m doing next was inspired by just the phenomenon of the Internet when you kind of like type in Google 2012, you get 240 million hits. That’s a lot. And it’s just so many people write about it, believe it that like our world comes to an end 2012. I said wow.  This is like kind of…and then even I kind of said before I will never do a disaster movie again. I said for this idea I have to do it again.

What is the myth based on now the 2012 world?

Roland: It’s just a coincidence of many very peculiar things, you know. And it’s just a lot of things kind of culminate 2012.

And what’s the main thing that’s linked to 2012 that would make people believe that?

Roland: It started with the Mayan calendar. That was like the main thing.

I’m curious. Is your movie “2012”—well first of all when are you going to be doing casting for that or announcing casting and are you going big A list or are you going for unknowns?

Roland: No, I don’t go real A—no, actually, why am I saying that?  I don’t know yet. I mean, I really don’t know yet.

And is this going to be…

Roland: I’m actually meeting on Monday with my casting director.

Are you…is this a mega-budget kind of film or is this a…I’m just curious the scale of what this is going to be?

Roland: Well, it’s really hard to say.  Yes, it will be very expensive, but I think it will be for a price because people who read the script said this is undoable. And I said, well but we’ll do it.  I mean it’s one of these things that everybody says its undoable because it’s like you know you see the whole world go to shit and it’s kind of one of these things when I write a script and I wrote it again with Harold together, we just said no, we’ll not think is it’s doable or not, we’ll just write it. We’ll just come up with it. And then we’ll figure out how we’ll do it. I think it’s worth doing it because it’s also when you have something where you have adrenalin because you are like nervous about it that’s good. That’s a little bit like…it’s good when actors have this adrenalin when they go on stage. I think they do their best work, you know and for us it’s the same thing, you know.

I know the script went out and there was a lot of people thinking about making it.  I believe you ended up with Sony.  What was it about Sony that made you pick them?

Roland: Well, it’s always kind of like about release schedule. That’s what it’s mainly about.

It seems like you have the perfect formula for the perfect poster, I mean, what do you have in mind when you write the stories because you always have like the children, the romance, the big father…

Roland: Well, I have like a computer program at home.  I only put in like “stone age” you know and “10,000 B.C.” comes out. It’s a lot of…first of all as a director you have certain things, you know. Look it’s the same thing when Woody Allen—look at all his movies. They’re very similar. Or like an Alfred Hitchcock had very similar…you know? A certain language you have and you can’t escape your own personality. You always come back to the same themes.  For example, I’m obsessed about father/son relationships because I had a very, very good relationship with my dad. He was some sort of mentor to me. And because of that I have a lot of father figure and then you know this whole…I always wanted to do a hero myth.  And just the fact that I know so much about it and tried to re-create it and it’s really, really difficult so we worked very, very hard and very long on the script because it all seems very simple but then when you look at it very careful there’s a lot of themes in it and everything had to somewhat interact.  You know, there is no formula it’s just my taste. It’s not that I say okay, let’s take this element, this element, this element and boom we have a successful movie.  That’s not how it works.

(inaudible) new mythology if you like it?

Roland: Yeah, I’d love to.  I mean, I’m always kind of like saying to everybody who…there’s always these distracters who say this is totally unrealistic, you know? And I say, so is “Lord of the Rings”.  Middle earth is not existing, you know.  We’re like artists.  I see myself as an inventor of stories and not trying to do documentaries, you know? I also think historical movies are always wrong. Look at a movie I absolutely love is “Gladiator”.  At the end of “Gladiator” they re-install the Senate. They return to Roman Empire back into democracy, wow!  And nobody caught it. You know it just made sense for the story. 

Don’t you think that’s why people want to go to the movies for nowadays anyway is for escapist entertainment?

Roland: Well it does. I think on one hand escapist but on the other hand I also think films have to have something to do with our life.  When they don’t reflect…for example I’m very, very proud, as our hero is actually a hero who unifies. You look very carefully; there are no heroes in this world anymore who unify. There’s no Gandhi anymore and that’s one of the true heroes.  People who brought people together.