Entertainment

10:41 AM CDT on Wednesday, July 19, 2006

By STEPHEN BECKER / The Dallas Morning News

Like all of his movies, World Trade Center is billed as an Oliver Stone Film. But Tuesday night at an advanced screening of the Sept. 11 drama, the auteur director was happier standing in the shadows of the teammates he had in tow to help him support the movie.

LOUIS DeLUCA/DMN

Oliver Stone attended Tuesday's screening of World Trade Center, a film he directed about the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Accompanying Mr. Stone to the screening at the AMC NorthPark were stars Maggie Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña and their real-life counterparts, retired Port Authority Police Officer Will Jimeno and his wife, Allison Jimeno. The film, which opens Aug. 9, tells the story of Mr. Jimeno and Sgt. John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage), the 18th and 19th of only 20 people who were pulled from the World Trade Center after the buildings collapsed.

As the crowd, many of whom serve North Texas as emergency first responders, filed into the auditorium, the filmmakers fielded questions from a host of media gathered in the theater lobby.

"I didn't know it would be as hard as it was," said Ms. Gyllenhaal about making the film. The actress, who plays a pregnant Ms. Jimeno in the movie, is expecting a child in October with actor Peter Sarsgaard.

Meanwhile, Mr. Jimeno served as a capable spokesman, comfortably conversing in English and Spanish. Wearing a New York Mets shirt, a Port Authority cap and jean shorts that exposed the thick brace he must wear to support his heavily damaged left leg, he said that he and his wife are, "just regular people." He later added that his wife is really the strong one and that the film, "did a great job of portraying that."

After talking with the media, the group headed into the auditorium to address the crowd before the film. Mr. Stone, clad in a bright orange blazer, kept his comments brief but took special care to acknowledge the police, firefighters and paramedics in attendance.

"We went to great lengths to make this as accurate and realistic as possible," he told the group, adding that he wanted them to see it first because they are, "the toughest audience in the world to judge this."

Soon after, the lights went down, the film started, and for the next two hours the crowd relived alongside Mr. and Mrs. Jimeno that life-altering day of five years ago.

E-mail sbecker@dallasnews.com