USA: Director Oliver Stone and star Nicolas Cage talk about the upcoming film 'World Trade Center'

'World Trade Center', acclaimed director Oliver Stone's latest offering about the September 11 attacks follows the story of two real life police officers who were trapped under the smoking rubble of the collapsed towers for 12 hours. Around 3000 people lost their lives when terrorists crashed two jet airliners into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Stone believes it is important to hear the story of the two men - police officers Sergeant John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno "They were at the epicenter of the collapse, in an elevator shaft, they lived it and that's the best witness we have. You need to go with the testimony of the eyewitness," he said The film stars Academy Award winner Nicolas Cage as McLoughlin and Michael Pena as Jimeno, the two Port Authority Police Department officers who were recovered alive from the rubble. The men were two of the 20 people rescued from underneath the remains of the two buildings. Cage's character McLoughlin is the rescue team leader who directs his team to an elevator shaft when the building collapses. For most of the film he remains buried under rubble communicating with Jimeno, played by Pena, to stay alive. "It was very liberating to be in a confined space like that, probably like a puppy in a dog crate. I felt very relaxed and felt free to explore within myself to come up with whatever the mechanism I needed to portray John honestly, to try to understand his pain," Cage said Both characters had each other and the memories of their families to keep them going. Pena, echoed Cage's sentiments. "You know, it was challenging emotionally and it was challenging physically and I never did anything like that where the person is stuck somewhere and has to carry on a conversations. But the through line to everything was just trying to think about the families, trying to think about my sergeant and try to get through that and survive for them," he said. Will Jimeno himself, who was present through most part of the shooting of the film, was looking for authenticity in Stone's depiction of their plight. "For me the story is not about me and John. It's about all those around us, our families, our rescuers, our team and he really portrayed that in an accurate light," said Jimeno The film also follows the lives of the families of the two men, in particular their wives, played by Mario Bello and Maggie Gyllenhall. Gyllenhall who played the role of Pena's wife Allison Jimeno said her conversations with Mrs. Jimeno off the stage helped her prepare for her role. "I felt like in order to really do what I wanted to which was make a movie about something that's very difficult and moving, to really have the effect I wanted to have I think I had to experience the things she experienced, in the script as opposed to imitate her experience of them," Gyllenhall said. Responding to whether people are ready for the film, Stone said he hopes the audiences will view the film as a way to understand 9/11 better. "Yeah, I would love them to feel it, to feel the day again, to reassess what happened, to come out feeling healed, to come out feeling cleaned because that experience has been mythologized and distorted and politicized," he said. 'World Trade Center' is due for release in the the U.S. on August

ITN Source | July 27, 2006

Tags:. .memories. .witness. .conversations. .audiences. .particular