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World Trade Center
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  World Trade Center Production NotesTagline: A true story of courage and survival.
September 11, 2001 was an unusually warm day in New York. Will Jimeno, an officer with the Port Authority Police Department, was tempted to take a personal day to enjoy his hobby of bow hunting, but ultimately decided that he would go to work. Sergeant John McLoughlin, a respected veteran of the PAPD, had been up for hours - a requirement of his daily, 1½-hour trek to the city. They and their colleagues made their way to midtown Manhattan, just like they did any other day. Only this wasn't any other day.
A team of PAPD first responders drove from mid-town Manhattan to the World Trade Center. Five men, including McLoughlin and Jimeno, went into the buildings themselves and were trapped when the towers collapsed. Miraculously, McLoughlin and Jimeno survived, but were buried and pinned beneath slabs of concrete and twisted metal, 20 feet below the rubble field.
Though they couldn't see each other, each could hear that the other had survived, and for the next 12 hours, McLoughlin and Jimeno kept each other alive - talking about their families, their lives on the force, their hopes, their disappointments. Their story is told in the new motion picture from Oliver Stone, “World Trade Center.”
The film also follows their wives (Donna McLoughlin in Goshen, New York, and Allison Jimeno in Clifton, New Jersey), children, and parents who suffered in their own confined circle of hell, with no messages from or information about their loved ones. The film also chronicles the improbable search by a determined accountant and ex-Marine from Connecticut, Dave Karnes, who found the two officers that night, and then the dozens of firemen, policemen, and paramedics who rescued them over the next grueling 12 hours.
About the Production
“Will and I feel an obligation to all those men that we lost that day,” says Port Authority Police Dept. Sgt. John McLoughlin. “Through us, we're able to get the story out of all those men that sacrificed themselves that day. There is no doubt in my mind that the filmmakers wanted to show honor and respect to those who perished too.”
“John and me, we're down-to-earth people, we're just regular American families,” says Jimeno, “but a lot of regular Americans were doing the best they could that day. I am very honored to represent that.”
The motion picture based on their experiences, “World Trade Center,” is directed by three-time Academy Award-winner Oliver Stone, who says that from the moment he read Andrea Berloff's screenplay, he knew this was a story that he wanted to tell.
“Andrea Berloff's screenplay is one of the best that's ever come to me out of the blue - I guess like that day. It walloped me - and many others - with its emotion and simplicity. It hit this horrific event in a way I had not seen before, in a way that deeply personalized it for me,” says Stone.
Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher have produced other true stories, including “Erin Brockovich,” which was an Academy Award-nominee for Best Picture. They were struck by the way in which the experiences of the two men spoke to larger themes. “The story of John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno and all the people who helped rescue them is just one story from 9/11, but it shows the larger story of how on a terrible, tragic day, people risked everything to help each other. We must remember that,” Shamberg notes.
“It appealed to us because it is about heroism in the sense that it reveals the best in humanity as people came together to help each other,” Sher adds.
From the beginning, the filmmakers' mandate was to make a film that not only honored the men and women involved in the story of John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno, but told it accurately. This meant including not just McLoughlin and Jimeno, but their wives, their families and, ultimately, as many people connected to their rescue as possible.
“I've always felt that we were entrusted with this story by the real people - John and Will and Donna and Allison,” says Shamberg. “So it was our responsibility to be as authentic and accurate as possible at all times. We had to get it right.”
An important part of that commitment to authenticity was shooting as much of the film as possible on location in New York City. “The story of what happened on that day is also a story of the city of New York,” says producer Moritz Borman. “To be honest to that and the people of the city, there was never any question - we would chronicle what happened as truthfully as we could, and part of that meant we would film in New York.”
Stone, a native New Yorker, had not shot extensively in the city since 1987's “Wall Street” or 1991's “The Doors.” “It was reinvigorating to go back to New York and work with policemen and firemen, and working men and women. Everyone seemed to go out of their way - particularly the Port Authority, which became our base in New York.”
“World Trade Center” was also a chance for Stone to explore the themes that have defined his career. “To treat 9/11 in this way - deeply personal, exact, austere - challenged me,” says Stone. “We tried to make as realistic a film as possible: two men, buried in the middle of those towers, for 24 hours. What makes a person live? What makes him survive these horrible circumstances? They probably would've died if they hadn't been able to communicate with each other, or experience the memories of their families. I believe, in the end, they survived because of these deeply personal and spiritual reasons.”
Stone never saw “World Trade Center” as a political film, but as an intensely human story. “Although my politics and John and Will's may be different, it didn't matter; we all got along. I can make a movie about them and their experiences because they went through something that I can understand. Politics does not enter into it - it's about courage and survival.”
“If you watch `Platoon' or `Born on the Fourth of July,' you know that Oliver understands men in groups trying to give their best and serve their country,” says Shamberg. “Initially, I saw this film as the biggest canvas we could work on because everyone has an emotional connection to this material - everyone remembers that day. But Oliver sees it as a small, intimate story, which is a fascinating take on the material and completely correct. In looking at the story of John and Will that way, it isn't a flat retelling of 9/11; the film, for me, weaves reality with spirituality.”
Academy Award-winner Nicolas Cage and rising young actor Michael Peña play McLoughlin and Jimeno. “I was at the point in my life where I really wanted to try to apply my abilities as an actor to something with meaning, something that could help people in some way,” Cage explains. “I was taken by how the human spirit emerged so positively in the screenplay. As devastating as 9/11 was, this story depicts something positive coming out of that incredible well of sadness.”
“I remember reading the script and thinking, `There is no way someone like Will Jimeno exists,'” says Peña. “Will has a line where he says that his whole life, he always wanted to be a cop, and I thought it was just a cliché. Then I met the guy and the first thing he said to me was, `I gotta tell you, I wanted to be a cop my whole life - that was the only thing I wanted.' He is the real deal. I talked to his family, his friends, and the people who saved him, and they all talk about his ability to go through so much pain and still find the humor in it. Even at his darkest depths, he managed to keep his spirits up. It was a real honor to meet him, let alone to play him.”
“World Trade Center” also focuses on the women who waited to hear word about their loved ones, trapped beneath the collapsed towers. Maria Bello plays Donna McLoughlin and Maggie Gyllenhaal is Allison Jimeno.
Bello says that conversations with Donna McLoughlin gave her great insight into her character. “She told me that being the wife of a cop, she learned not to go to that negative place - that until she heard differently, everything was fine,” says Bello. “She's the wife of a policeman and the mother of four children, so she's not sappy and definitely in control. Alongside that strength, she also has a real lightness and joy, almost a softness about her. The film gives a sense of her moments alone during that terrible period when she was waiting for news of John, where she's keeping it together but having all these flashes of memories of the man she loves. We see both sides of Donna, her perseverance and her gentleness.”
Gyllenhaal remembers reading Andrea Berloff's screenplay for the first time and experiencing a strong emotional connection to the material. “I read the script on an airplane and I cried probably three or four times,” she says. “Sitting on that airplane, reading the script - a very public place to read something like this - I felt very emotional and vulnerable. I was so moved by it, which is unusual for me. My mom is a screenwriter and I really value scripts, so I don't often find a script that moves me as completely as this one did.”
“World Trade Center” began life with producer Debra Hill, who read about McLoughlin and Jimeno in a newspaper article. She met with the men, who related their stories to her. As Will Jimeno recalls, “She was very emotional before long; she was very kind and we felt she was sincere. She explained that she wanted us to meet Michael and Stacey, who were close friends of hers and producers who, like her, wanted to make this story into a meaningful film.”
“World Trade Center” would become Hill's last film credit. After a long fight, the prolific producer succumbed to cancer in 2005.
“John and I know that this project came to be because of Debra's love and commitment to making it,” says Jimeno. “Debra makes me look like a wimp. She was suffering a great deal, but she kept her head and spirits as high as she could for as long as she could. If you want to look for a hero, refer to Debra Hill, who was our angel looking over this film.”
Hill's sensibility and sensitivity for the material was shared by a first-time screenwriter named Andrea Berloff. No one was more surprised or grateful to receive the chance to work on this project than she was.
“I had a very brief meeting with Michael and he said, `Maybe you want to take a look at this material and see what you think?'” says Berloff. At this early stage in her career, Berloff was not expecting to get the job. Still, she says, “I knew I had to give it the best I could. I researched John and Will's story and, frankly, fell in love with it, even before I met them. The story that I saw from the very beginning was, essentially, a character piece about these two men - and that's the story we shot.”
“Two men in that hole, in the darkest hours of their lives, hardly knowing each other, bonded together through the fire of their experience,” says Stone. “On a day when we came so close to losing faith in humanity, they helped give that faith back to us.”
About John and Donna McLoughlin
Port Authority Sergeant John McLoughlin, a 21-year veteran of the Port Authority Police Department, was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Long Island, New York. He attended Oswego State College, where he received a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration. During college, he interned at a bank and upon graduation, he worked in the firm's management trainee program. McLoughlin moved up through the ranks, but at the same time, he joined the Massapequa volunteer fire department, where his brother, Pat, already served. “We were fairly active for a volunteer fire department and I found it more interesting than banking,” says McLoughlin. “After five years at the bank, I felt like I was in a rut. My brother was also a Port Authority cop, so I ended up taking a test for that; it was now or never to make a career move. I was 27, which actually was fairly old for the academy; most of the guys are 21, 22, 23. I never looked back, never regretted having done it.”
McLoughlin spent three years at the Port Authority Bus Terminal before being transferred to the World Trade Center, where he spent 12 years and made sergeant. As a regular cop on duty, he was as familiar with the building as anyone was when terrorists bombed the building in 1993. Alongside his fellow officers, he helped evacuate and attend to the wounded; he would receive a commendation for his work there.
After the 1993 bombing, McLoughlin applied for and received a Trade Center position that would lead to his unique knowledge of and relationship with the Towers: Post Nine - subgrade control - a position that included responsibility for the towers' emergency equipment. McLoughlin was in charge of keeping the gear maintained, tested, and in good working order.
McLoughlin took that responsibility seriously and went several steps further than required; his background in fire fighting combined with a fix-it mentality led him to completely redesign the safety and emergency protocols within the Trade Center. In addition, he began to take classes with the Emergency Service Unit, a specialized division of the Port Authority trained to handle a variety of catastrophic events, from hazardous materials to bridge-and-water rescue to tactical operations. Eventually, McLoughlin worked with the FBI, the Secret Service, and the Trade Center to design procedures to deal with chemical and biological agents. Because terrorists had attacked the Trade Center once, McLoughlin was convinced that it was a viable target and could be hit again.
Transferring back to the Bus Terminal, McLoughlin hoped that he would end his career as an Emergency Services Supervisor. “But then, 9/11 happened,” he says.
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Nicolas Cage as John McLoughlin in World Trade Center.
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