Jeff Goldblum opens up about how a line from Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park made it into Roland Emmerich's Independence Day. Based on Michael Crichton's novel of the same name, Jurassic centered on a group of scientists invited to the titular amusement park by wealthy businessman John Hammond to assure its safety, only for industrial sabotage to result in the dinosaurs getting loose. Goldblum starred in the film alongside Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Richard Attenborough, and returned for the polarizing sequel The Lost World and the poorly received Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
Co-written and directed by Emmerich, Independence Day sees the world invaded by an extraterrestrial race of unknown origin and focuses on the efforts of a group of soldiers, scientists, and the President of the United States to launch a counter-attack on the titular July date. The film featured an ensemble cast led by Goldblum, Will Smith, and Bill Pullman alongside Mary McDonnell, Judd Hirsch, Margaret Colin, Randy Quaid, Robert Loggia, James Rebhorn, and Harvey Fierstein. Though it initially received mixed-to-positive reviews from critics, Independence Day has long been seen as a landmark for the Hollywood blockbuster and disaster and sci-fi genres and became the highest-grossing film of 1996 and the second-highest ever at the time behind Jurassic Park.
Goldblum recently sat down with Yahoo! Entertainment (via ComicBook.com) to reflect back on some of the most memorable roles in his near-50-year career. When discussing Emmerich's fan-favorite disaster film, Goldblum opened up about how a line from Spielberg's classic adaptation of Crichton's novel made its way into the alien invasion thriller. See what Goldblum had to say below:
“[Emmerich] was like, ‘I know what you can say. How about one of those ‘must go faster’ from the other movie. Really? OK. Come on, Will Smith, must go faster. Get out of here before the alien creatures trap us in here and kill us… I hope that Mr. Steven Spielberg looked kindly upon that. We appropriated it only with the most affection. It was an homage, that’s a French word. It means, some kind of glazed donut, I believe.”
While some might better remember Goldblum for his work in David Cronenberg's The Fly and Lawrence Kasdan's The Big Chill, his performances as Ian Malcolm and David Levinson are frequently cited as his most iconic. Having come out around the same time and been major landmarks in their respective genres and fields, they subsequently helped launch Goldblum into further stardom. Though their narratives seemingly don't lend themselves to any sort of crossover, the somewhat similar characters of Ian and David certainly opened up the door.
Ian may be more casual while David is a bit more neurotic, but both are certainly one of the smarter of the bunch in both of their respective stories. When faced with danger, it's understandable that the duo would throw their large vocabulary out the window in favor of getting right to the point that to escape, they must go faster. While the belated Independence Day sequel proved to be a dud, fans can look forward to Goldblum's return to Jurassic Park's Ian when Jurassic World: Dominion arrives next summer.
Source: Yahoo! Entertainment (Via ComicBook.com)
