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.

Dean [Devlin, Emmerich's partner on "Independence Day"] and I always said that we'd only do it when we had a really good story that excites us both, and we have the story written. And we've had it for a year and a half, two years. So we've been ready.

There's a rule in Hollywood: stay away from water and stay away from snow, and I had both.

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.

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.

Everybody knows that the industrialized nations are the worst offenders.

I'm a filmmaker, not a scientist.