Roland Emmerich

Emmerich was born in Stuttgart, West Germany, and grew up in the nearby town of Sindelfingen.[4] As a youth, he traveled extensively throughout Europe and North America on vacations financed by his father, Hans, the wealthy founder of a garden machinery production company.[5] In 1977, he began attending University of Television and Film Munich with the intention of studying to become a production designer.[5][6] After watching Star Wars, he instead decided to enroll in the school's film director program.[5][7] Required to create a short film as his final thesis in 1981, he wrote and directed the full-length feature The Noah's Ark Principle, which was screened as the opening film of the 34th Berlin International Film Festival in 1984.[6]

In 1985, he founded Centropolis Film Productions (now Centropolis Entertainment) in partnership with his sister, producer Ute Emmerich, and directed his major film debut, a fantasy feature named Joey.[5] He subsequently directed the 1987 comedy Hollywood-Monster and the 1990 science-fiction film Moon 44. Theatrically, these were only released in and nearby his native country, although Emmerich filmed them in English and went against conventional German styles in an attempt to appeal to a larger market.[5][8] This subsequently resulted in Moon 44 being released direct-to-video in the U.S. in early 1991. Joey and Hollywood-Monster eventually also saw home video releases in the U.S. (as Making Contact and Ghost Chase, respectively) once Emmerich achieved more prominence in America.

Emmerich owns homes in Los Angeles, New York City, London and Stuttgart.[5][36][37][38][39] He likes to decorate his homes in a self-described "outlandish" manner,[39] adorning them with rare Hollywood memorabilia, murals and portraits of dictators and Communist figures, and World War II militaria.[5][38]

He is a collector of art and an LGBT activist, and is openly gay.[40] Emmerich's extensive collection of artwork includes a painting of Jesus Christ wearing a Katharine Hamnett-styled T-shirt during his crucifixion,[39] prints of Alison Jackson's works of a Princess Diana lookalike making obscene gestures and engaging in sex acts,[37][41] a wax sculpture of Pope John Paul II laughing as he reads his own obituary,[37][41] and a Photoshopped image of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a homoerotic pose.[39] Emmerich, a financial supporter of U.S. progressive politics,[42] states that the decorations and pieces are not declarations of any beliefs,[39] but rather reflections of his "predilection for art with a political edge".[41]

Emmerich has claimed that he witnessed overt racism when producers and studio executives were opposed to allowing him to cast Will Smith for the lead in Independence Day, and reluctant to allow him to portray an interracial couple in The Day After Tomorrow.[43] He has also claimed that he has encountered homophobia from the same groups, and is vocal in his opposition to such behavior.[43] He has stated that sometimes he does "[not like working in] the movie business", describing it as a sometimes "very cold, brutal business", but his motivation to keep directing is that he genuinely "like[s] making movies".[5]

In 2006, he pledged $150,000 to the Legacy Project, a campaign dedicated to gay and lesbian film preservation. Emmerich made the donation on behalf of Outfest, making it the largest gift in the festival's history.[44] In 2007, on behalf of the LGBT community, he held a fundraiser at his Los Angeles home for Democratic Party presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.[38] In 2011, he became a U.S. citizen while keeping his German citizenship. He stated he did so because he "wanted to have a vote in the next US elections" and that he waited because he "didn’t want to become an American under Bush."[45]

Emmerich is in favor of the campaign for stunt performers to receive recognition at the Academy Awards, and has worked to raise awareness over the issue of global warming.[46][47] He once was a chain-smoker who was known to smoke as many as four packs of cigarettes a day,[48] Emmerich has often included in his films characters who are trying to quit smoking or warn against the dangers of tobacco use. Along with several other celebrities, he is a producer of The 1 Second Film, a non-profit project intended to raise money for women's rights in the developing world.[49]

Emmerich is married to Omar De Soto.[50]

In addition to film,[51] Emmerich also co-created and produced the short-lived television series The Visitor, and, in 2001, directed a one-minute commercial entitled "Infinite Possibilities" for DaimlerChrysler.[52]

Reviewers often criticize Emmerich's films for relying heavily on visual effects and suffering from clichéd dialogue, flimsy and formulaic narratives, numerous scientific and historical inaccuracies, illogical plot developments, and lack of character depth.[53][54][55] Emmerich contends that he is not discouraged by such criticism and that he aims to provide enjoyable "popcorn" entertainment to movie-going audiences.[46] Stating that he is "a filmmaker, not a scientist", he creates his own fiction based on actual science or history to make the messages he sends "more exciting".[56]

In response to accusations of insensitivity for including scenes of New York City being destroyed in The Day After Tomorrow, less than three years after the September 11 attacks, Emmerich said that it was necessary to depict the event as a means to showcase the increased unity people now have when facing a disaster, because of the attacks.[36][46][56] When accused of resorting too often to scenes of cities being subjected to epic disasters, Emmerich says that it is a justified way of increasing awareness about both global warming, and the lack of a government preparation plan for a global doomsday scenario in the cases of The Day After Tomorrow and 2012, respectively.[56][57]

Acknowledging what he characterized as flaws with Godzilla, Emmerich admitted he regretted having agreed to direct it. He stated that his lack of interest in the previous Godzilla movies, the short time he promised it would take for him to complete the film, and the studio's refusal to screen it for test audiences were all factors that may have negatively affected the quality of the final product,[36] and cited the former reason as to why he turned down an offer to direct Spider-Man, as he was not interested in comic books or superhero-related fiction.[36] However, Emmerich still defends Godzilla, noting that the film was highly profitable[36] and claiming that, of all his movies, people tell him Godzilla is the one they and their kids watch the most repeatedly.[56]

Emmerich has also faced criticism from the LGBT community. His film Stonewall was criticized for being whitewashed and diminishing the contributions of transgender women of color to starting the Stonewall Riots,[58] and for being sex-negative.[59] In response to these claims, Emmerich has said the Stonewall riots were "a white event".[60] The film received generally negative reviews from critics.[61]

Similarly, Emmerich touted his 2016 film Independence Day: Resurgence as having a gay couple,[62] but when the film was released, Johnny Gayzmonic of Unicorn Booty criticized the film because the couple in question was two trivial characters lacking in believable chemistry who were utilized solely for comic relief, one of whom was needlessly killed off in a way that was not vital to the plot (the other having been depicted as strictly heterosexual in tie-in material to the first film), the characters only being revealed to have been a gay couple during the aforementioned death scene (with references to their relationship being cut from the Chinese version of the film), a fate that Gayzmonic observed befell many gay couples in film.[63]

• Roland Emmerich at IMDb
• Roland Emmerich Producer Profile for The 1 Second Film Archived 25 August 2009 at the Wayback Machine
• Interview with Roland Emmerich from July 2009
• Centropolis Entertainment Archived 29 August 2018 at the Wayback Machine