10 Brilliant Hidden Details In Oscar Winning Films
6. Independence Day - The President's Speech Was Actually A Placeholder
One of the standout moments in the Best Visual Effects winning alien invasion flick Independence Day (1996) came in the form of the President of the United States (Bill Pullman) delivering one of the greatest speeches in cinematic history.
Delivered with true passion and conviction, Pullman's iconic words felt like the sort of moment a director would have spent months working on in order to get it just right.
However, it may come as a bit of surprise to find out that this speech wasn't actually considered a priority for director Roland Emmerich and writer Dean Devlin. The latter simply walked into a room, wrote it down in five minutes and said he'd touch it up later down the road.
Only they completely forgot about it and when it came time to shoot the speech Dean realised he hadn't had a chance to rewrite the text, meaning that Pullman was effectively told to perform dialogue which was only supposed to act as a placeholder for the real thing.
Pullman of course knocked it out of the park and this potential !*$% up turned into one of the most compelling monologues you'll ever see on screen.