Speaking of stars lining up, we’ve got another one of these coming out this year. White House Down. Was that weird? When did you hear about that? How far into production?
A few days after a looked at this one, they sent it to me and said we should have dinner and talk about it, because there’s another one. And that’s when they told me about Roland [Emmerich]’s. I didn’t think much about it because we so different filmmakers, and different individuals. And Jamie Foxx is a friend. Channing Tatum, I don’t know him, but he seems like a nice guy and everything. I just said, you know, I know me. And that goes back to what I brought. I know what I have in mind, inside of me, that I want to bring [to the film]. I don’t know what’s in Roland, but I figure whatever’s in me, I’m sure is not in him, and vice-versa. So there’s room for two, because I’m actually curious of how they do theirs. So an audience can maybe look at this, and if they enjoy this ride, then go can go, “Let’s see how this other guy did it. How did they do theirs?”
It’s almost academic.
Yeah, let’s check it out! It could be fun thing to see the different approaches.
Does it make it easier that yours is coming out first?
Yeah.
Do you think you’d be a little more nervous if it wasn’t?
Yeah, I’d be a little more nervous. Yeah, for sure. But the good thing about coming out second is you can go fix any issues you might have. They can look at ours and go, “We can do this better. And bigger!” They got more money anyway. They’re Sony.
They probably do.
They do. Trust me.
This is not a cheap movie though.
No, but…
Would you have liked more?
Oh yeah.
What’s something you would have liked to have done more of?
Well, you know, it’s hard to ask a director that.
Granted.
More time.
If you could pick one thing. If the producers said, “We’ll give you one request.” What’s something you would punch up, or do a little bigger?
It really would have just been a little more time with my actors. And maybe a couple action sequences, like the helicopter sequence. There’s some things I would have done that would have made that spectacular.
What sort of things? Is it coverage…?
Well, yeah, it’s coverage. It’s emotional beats. For me, I would have love to have gotten to know some of the pilots a little bit more. I would have loved to have gotten to know some of our Navy SEAL guys a touch, just to give them some more humanity.
So it means something…
So it means something more. That was something I was always saying. I’d gotten to know these guys more. I feel like they’re my next door neighbors, my best friends, or my brothers. I wanted to get a sense of them, even if it was like a briefing room with them before they went out, or telling them the situation, and then you get the sense of who they are as a group. And then these guys go out and they die that way. Again, reminding the audience that they’re our brothers and sisters out there, on the battlefield. They’re not just soldiers in suits with guns, they’re human beings. So those moments I would have loved to just touch on. You know, in these kinds of movies it’s hard because there’s only so much time. There’s a lot of movie to tell. There’s one story to really focus on. But if I could have had a little more character in those guys, or anybody that was not going to make it, it would have been great.
Half a joke question, but half serious: Would you ever do a Training Day 2? Would you ever show where Ethan Hawke was going?
You know what? Brooklyn’s Finest was something [where] I was playing around with that. [It’s] not Training Day 2, but me and Ethan talked a lot about Jake, and I said, you know, that guy in Brooklyn’s Finest is a little bit of Jake. If Jake was on the job for a certain amount of time, and had a family, and his wife was sick and he became jaded, what would happen to him? That character was a little bit of that guy. In a different world, a little bit of that guy. So yeah, I would love to do something like that, and follow him, see where he evolved to.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel, co-host of The B-Movies Podcast, co-star of The Trailer Hitch, and the writer of The Test of Time. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
