Director James Cameron's films have all been big, complex, special effects-propelled dramas--and nearly all have been blockbusters. Here Cameron talks about working with Arnold Schwarzenegger, about whether actresses should reconsider their objections to screen violence, and about why his new action-comedy True Lies is unlikely to meet the fate of Arnold's last action-comedy.
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Watching a James Cameron film is like getting an adrenaline spike in the heart -- the action is nonstop, the violence over-the-top, the visual effects mesmerizing. Cameron began his career as a model builder for low-budget king Roger Gorman's New World Pictures, but his status as an instant A-list director was assured, and the action genre forever altered, with the release of The Terminator in 1984, when Cameron was 29. Cameron followed The Terminator with Aliens, a pumped-up, breakneck sequel to the 1979 Ridley Scott sci-fi classic Alien. The director's next film, The Abyss, an undersea adventure, was his first and only box-office bomb. But instead of presaging an ego run amok on out-of-proportion films, The Abyss merely set the stage for the triumph of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which reteamed Cameron with the former bodybuilder and B-movie grunt he had elevated to superstardom with the original Terminator. Cameron gambled by relying on new computer technology called digital compositing, or "morphing," for the film's mind-blowing visual effects, and the risk paid off, confirming Cameron as an F/X pioneer and T2 as a technological landmark along with films like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars.
But Cameron is out to do more than just stun with his pyrotechnics. He injects his films with warnings about the dangers of technology, computers and nuclear weapons (although critics have labeled his messages ambiguous). And he's unique among action directors in that his films are constructed around heroic female characters. Strong women play a role in his own life as well. His first marriage was to Terminator producer Gale Ann Hurd (they still work together). His second was to Kathryn Bigelow, an accomplished action director in her own right (Point Break), and he's currently involved with Terminator heroine Linda Hamilton. He doesn't discuss his personal life in interviews.
Cameron is tall (6' 2") and rangy, with longish red-blond hair. He exudes quiet confidence, and he's affable and soft-spoken. Except for sturdy opinions and the occasional zinger about Hollywood, there isn't much to suggest a filmmaker who habitually marshals vast armies of people and resources to realize his grand cinematic visions. Certainly, for a director who has allegedly fallen dangerously behind in postproduction on True Lies, he looks remarkably placid as he sits down for a couple hours of conversation.
True Lies, an "action-comedy," is the first release under Cameron's Lightstorm Entertainment Company's unprecedented half-billion-dollar deal with 20th Century Fox. It's also Arnold Schwarzenegger's unofficial comeback after the disaster of his 1993 "action-comedy" Last Action Hero. The implacable Cameron begins by dismissing talk that Lies is over budget and behind schedule: "It's not like it's a runaway locomotive. You set out to make a film on a certain scale because you believe the film is marketable on that scale." But he has plenty more to say.
JOSHUA MOONEY: Nice chairs.
JAMES CAMERON: This guy designed furniture with David Hockney. Hockney had this theory where he wanted to force you to relax. You can't really sit properly without leaning back. I thought the idea of forced relaxation was funny.
Q: But convenient if you're working under the gun.
A: [Laughs] Not that I would ever work like that. That would be too artistically limiting.
Q: I take it editing is a hectic time around here.
A: That would be an understatement.
Q: I heard from someone who played against them that your company Softball team wears shirts that say, "You can't scare me. I work with Jim Cameron."
A: I did not actually sanction this. I found out about it after they'd been wearing them and I thought, Well, I don't want to draw attention to it by pulling them off the field.
Q: How scary is it to work for you?
A: People know that I demand a tremendous amount from myself and everyone else. My feeling is that when I put a film crew together we're a football team and we're going to the Super Bowl. I use a lot of sports imagery-- and I'm not even a big sports fan. For some reason in other areas of endeavor, it's frowned upon to be aggressive. In sports everybody takes it for granted-- you do your best or you're cut from the team. Why shouldn't it be the same when you're making a movie?
Q: There can't be much room for error on productions as large and complicated as yours.
A: Right. And I pay people like they're the best. I say, "You'll make a lot of money on this movie, but you'd better do the job." It doesn't make me the most popular person in the world. What I find is that when I get to the end of a film, there's about 50 percent of the crew that thinks I'm a complete asshole, and the other 50 percent have gone through that phase and have come to the understanding that yeah, I'm a complete asshole but I'm going for something.
Q: With True Lies, you're going for that difficult synthesis called "action comedy." What does that mean to you?
A: I wouldn't call it a comedy, but it has a lot of comedy in it.
Q: It's your first film that's not science fiction, and it doesn't involve the complicated special effects of T2.
A: Yeah, it's not as big a picture as T2. It's a more complex picture on other levels because of the relationships and humor. But in terms of seeing that sort of stunning science fiction image that existed only in your dreams previously--like the guy coming out of the linoleum floor in T2--that doesn't exist in this film. It takes our shared cultural fantasy from the '60s of what espionage was all about and has fun with it. It has a pop sensibility--the spy stuff I loved as a kid: James Bond, "The Man from U.N.C.L.E.," "I Spy." But it's really a movie about relationships. It's not for kids.
Q: But kids were a big part of T2's audience.
A: Well, kids will go, because it's got jet planes and explosions and good action, but ultimately it's for anyone over 15 who's been in a relationship or wants to be in one.
Q: Was there a conscious decision to make a film smaller in scale than T2?
A: No. When Arnold and I sat down to talk about this, we said, "We've gotta go big. We're gonna be compared to Bond pictures and we have to deliver the goods." It's big in that sense. My term for the movie is "domestic epic." It juxtaposes the guy's home life with his work. His wife doesn't have any clue what he does, but then she kind of gets sucked into that. Ultimately, the movie is about the unknowability of people and how that's a good thing if you are in a relationship.
Q: How does the comedy element get in there?
A: Because marriages are inherently funny, when viewed from the outside. It's like that old expression: Life is a tragedy to those who feel and a comedy to those who think.
Q: One look at your films proves you're an outrageously confident director. What allows you to work on such a gigantic scale and take risks that could be considered sheer lunacy?
A: The necessity of a challenge. I mean, the work is extremely tedious. It's detail-oriented. You do the same thing over and over. Something that may seem bright and spontaneous in the final film will have been thought about and storyboarded and planned like a military campaign for a year in advance. So there's not a lot of satisfaction on a daily basis in the work itself. The satisfaction comes from setting a challenge for myself beyond what I've done before and then flogging myself to meet that challenge. It's a sickness. Disturbed people do this, basically. People who, if they weren't able to do it, would probably be on Thorazine.
Q: And you've also got to have an ego large enough to withstand the possibility of failure.
A: You know what? I don't think I fear failure any more now than I did when I was making The Terminator. In a funny way, that film was my most critical juncture. There's nothing I can do now which can take away the good shit that I've already done. So as far as I'm concerned, I'm sliding for home. Even if True Lies tanks, I still made those other movies. I worried on Terminator when I didn't know if I was a filmmaker or not. But if you think about that stuff, you're creating a defeatist mentality. A movie is like a war that's fought on many different fronts simultaneously. You're editing simultaneously with shooting. You're dealing with the location you're on and the one coming up. To wage that kind of battle, you can't have a negative image of any kind.
Q: So you didn't let it get to you when, during preproduction for True Lies, Arnold came out in Last Action Hero--also an action-comedy--and the movie died a horrible death?
A: At first I was a little nervous. But then I started thinking about why Last Action Hero didn't work. My current theory is that it totally stepped outside and looked in on and made fun of the audiences who were willing to invest in Arnold--essentially, it was ridiculing the very fans it was hoping to attract.
Q: The movie was savaged by critics and was a major box-office disappointment.
A: First of all, I disagree with them savaging the film. You have to look at the fact that, regardless of whether it was the best film Arnold ever made, it was necessary, at that exact moment in history, for the media to cut him down to size. It didn't matter what he did. Thank God I wasn't making that picture! He stepped in the shit--that simple. And the result was so overblown and negative. It's not that bad of a film. I believe that basically everything in the universe oscillates. Everything is a wave. It's quantum physics. I studied physics in college. Everything goes back and forth. Tide goes in, tide goes out--Arnold had been surfing that tide for a long time. Tide went back out. Hopefully it will be coming back in on my movie.
Q: Clearly, it will take more than one film to derail the Arnold juggernaut, but was he angry or surprised at what happened to Last Action Hero?
A: The only reaction I could perceive from Arnold--and I've worked with him for 10 years--was that he decided he wanted to go less toward comedy and more toward hard action, which was basically a retrenchment for him. Now, my only interest in True Lies was to do comedy. Action to me is boring, in and of itself, unless it can be contextualized. So I said no, we have to go for it. We have to pop the jokes.
Q: There can't be many people in Hollywood who can tell Arnold no.
A: I never tell him what to do. We talk about stuff. I think we were more partners on this film than any other. When we did Terminator, he was an acolyte, still learning how to be an actor, and I was the director, so he did what I told him. By the time we got around to T2, he was an international megastar, highest paid actor on the planet, but there was still a sense that it was my baby, because I'd created the first one.
Q: Much was made of his kinder, gentler Terminator in T2. At what point was it decided that he should play the good guy in the sequel?
A: That decision was made in about 1985, when I pitched him that story. That was always the idea.
Q: So the role wasn't tailored to suit the superhero status he'd achieved by the time T2 was actually made?
A: You mean, was he going politically correct? A lot of people said that, but politically correct certainly doesn't prey on our minds very much.
Q: It was actually a kinder, gentler Jim Cameron.
A: At that same time, I was writing Point Break, and I was getting into sort of surf Zen and I thought, That's great--it's sort of Eastern and Western. The T-1000 Terminator that Arnold battles is scary because he's kind of plastic. The more force you use against him, the less effective you are. I was getting into the whole aikido concept. What's the one thing [Arnold] can't win against? That which he can't use his force against. He has to use his brain. You see him use force and he fails. Then he uses more force. [Laughs] That's Western Zen. It's like, "Fuck that aikido shit--bigger gun!"
Q: When you first met with Arnold 10 years ago, wasn't it to consider him for the hero's role in The Terminator--the one played by Michael Biehn?
A: That idea didn't come from me. I went to that first meeting thinking I was gonna have to derail this thing somehow--pick a fight with Arnold so I could say we didn't get along. Funny thing was, we got along great. I thought he was hysterically funny and he loved the script. He didn't particularly love the other character for whom he had been proposed, by people who I will not name who are clearly morons, because quite obviously Arnold was not ready to play that guy then.
Q: When The Terminator came out, your main competition was two highly anticipated sci-fi epics, Dune and 2010--
A: Two overblown and overproduced pictures.
Q: --and you blew them out of the water.
A: You know, some young turk will come along and blow my ass out of the water with my overblown, overproduced picture. That's pretty much how it works, isn't it? It's all a big coral reef.
Q: You were only 29. How good a feeling was it when The Terminator hit big?
A: It was a rush. It was cool. We never had any real great expectations for the film. I didn't think it would capture people's imaginations the way it did.
Q: Did you know what you had?
A: Yeah. I had the movie I wanted to make.
Q: Beginning with Linda Hamilton in The Terminator, and in all your films since, you've had woman characters who are heroic and dominant forces. The argument has always been that until more actresses are able to find roles like that, they won't be able to really score at the box office and achieve parity with male superstars. Why does it seem like you're the only one generating these kinds of roles?
A: I think it's a schizophrenic response on the part of actresses. On the one hand, they want to be politically correct and stay away from violent material, so they look for strength in films where you don't care about strength. And that's not how it works. You can't have a hero without a situation of jeopardy--there's no other way to be heroic, at least in an escapist, action context. And a lot of actresses I find are not willing to commit to that.
Q: So the fact that Sigourney Weaver's role in your Aliens sequel was even stronger and more heroic than her original role was not a selling point with her?
A: Sigourney was a little worried about that stuff with guns. I said, "What are you gonna do, talk the alien to death? I don't think so."
Q: But she ended up playing that part as well as anyone could have.
A: Right, but you can see her backlash. For the next one, Alien3, she said no guns. So they went to a prison planet where there were no guns-- they fought the alien by hiding. Behind doors. And it was somehow less satisfying.
Q: What do you do to guarantee that your films will satisfy?
A: I think ultimately that no matter how cloaked in the sense of reality and dramatic immediacy, you have to remember that film is fantasy. An audience comes into a theater in Encino and is transported to another planet, and gets chased around by a monster in the dark. So a film is dealing with subconscious things--the id-- very primal fears that we don't get to take out and exercise much in our society. It's been a couple thousand years since we've had to worry about things eating us. But it's still there in the medulla someplace.
Q: How do you tap into your medulla oblongata?
A: Two things: First, I'm in contact with my memory of how I saw the world as a kid. And I try to keep that over here in a bell jar so that I can always go look through that lens. And dreams. I stay real alive in my dreams at that stage--what the world looked like at nine or 10. Scary. Childhood is not a blissful state.
Q: How was yours?
A: I'm not saying I had an abnormal childhood in any way. No. I was the only abnormal event in my childhood.
Q: How do you approach your dreams?
A: No method, no books, no armchair psychoanalysis. Just imagery. I love it when I have a nightmare--to me that means I got my money's worth out of that eight hours. Because I pretty much view sleep as a complete waste of time.
Q: Here are some of the headlines from reviews of The Abyss: "Close Encounters of the Wet Kind." "Watered Down." "The Abyss-mal." Any chance you see the negative reaction to this film as similar to what happened with Arnold on Last Action Hero?
A: Yes. It's like this: Terminator was the discovery. Aliens was the glorification. The Abyss was the backlash. T2 was the forgiving. So I don't know where the fuck I am now on the spectrum [laughs]. But the media do tend to lock arms in a way that's quite frightening at times. A perfect example: Peter Travers was the first person to review The Abyss. He reviewed it like it was the second coming of Christ. The best film he'd ever seen. Then everybody else sees it and somehow in there the talk about the budget, something was skewed, and there were a lot of bad reviews. Then, six months later Travers was doing his year-end, best-of roundup and he doesn't even mention The Abyss. Not to single him out, but people do tend to move like a school of fish.
Q: Were you surprised by the bad reviews?
A: No. Because I kind of knew what was going on. The Abyss was always dangerous. It doesn't have a monster. It was basically about love. Love and hydrogen bombs [laughs].
Q: Any regrets?
A: The only thing I regret about The Abyss is that I let myself get talked out of telling the movie I wanted to tell and at the last second going, "Let's release a movie we think will make money." It's still a good movie. So, ultimately, we went back and put in what we'd taken out for our laser disc release.
Q: The longer version makes more sense.
A: The complete cut of the movie is three hours long. And you know what? Nobody's got any business making a three-hour movie. People don't want to see a three-hour movie. So if that's the movie I was trying to make--it probably shouldn't have been made.
Q: You could argue that, in trying to meld human drama and a love story into sci-fi action, there was, on one level at least, a lot more going on in The Abyss than in Jurassic Park.
A: But how do you trash a movie that's so much fun? Criticizing Jurassic Park is like criticizing a roller coaster for not being Proust. The visual perfection in some of those scenes is really exciting to me.
Q: Did you ever want to do a dino flick?
A: You know, it's funny, because I was sitting in Tom Pollock's office about a year earlier and I said, "The first person who does a dinosaur movie with the technology that now exists, between animatronic puppetry and CG animation, will make all the money." Quote, unquote. "All the money"--as in, there won't be any money left to feed the children. Which is exactly what happened.
Q: In terms of the kind of films you make--mega sci-fiaction/adventures--do you see it as you and Spielberg up here and everyone else somewhere else?
A: No, I think Spielberg is up here, and everyone else is down here. Which is okay. It's okay to have someone who is beyond reproach.
Q: "Beyond reproach" is high praise. Do you have a relationship with Spielberg? Is there any competition between you?
A: I know him. We've handed people back and forth, like DP's. He and I had a conversation about visual effects--how they cost too much; we have to try to force the digital technology to the next stage to bring the cost down and he said, "Well, why don't we start a visual effects company? And I said to myself, "Good idea. Think I will!" [Laughs] I'm a big fan. His movies inspired me to want to be a filmmaker. He'd already made Close Encounters before I'd gotten my first job as a model builder.
Q: Schindler's List was an important movie with a message. You called T2 "a violent movie about world peace." On some level, you were thinking of it as a movie with a message. But it didn't make $500 million because of its message of peace.
A: The message was insidious. It was kind of the spoonful-of-sugar concept.
Q: Yet you obviously have ideas you want to convey. Ever think of doing a message movie that's really about the message? Your Schindler's List?
A: Look, Steven--I know he comes from a family which had a number of members die in the Holocaust. I don't think you can be Jewish, even if you weren't directly touched by it, without it being a big burden that you carry around with you. And when a guy gets to his position of influence and ability to convey concepts visually to the world, it would almost be a shame if he didn't do a film like Schindler's. So in a way it's good that he bided his time and made it something in and of itself. It could have just been his guilt movie, and it's a brilliant film.
Q: But as to your films--
A: There are a lot of things which are on my mind with respect to technology, nuclear war, genetics, the environment, the ocean ... So far I've made essentially entertainment films and whatever message is in them is embedded, not way out front.
Q: Are you looking for an angle from which to approach any of these subjects?
A: I don't know. Yeah. I mean, not actively. I never thought of myself as that political. I think I'd like to make a movie about the ocean that's as stunning as it can be. I've said a lot about nuclear weapons--I don't think there's a lot more I can say about that, short of doing a Schindler's-like film about Hiroshima which nobody really wants to see, but they'll go to it anyway cause it'd be, you know, astounding. Which is something I actually started to write a few years ago--went to Hiroshima a few times. Something I might do someday.
Q: Is the threat of nuclear war more insidious today?
A: Insidious is the right word. Because, like in a good suspense film, the moment the person relaxes is when the killer strikes. You've got the Russians starving, their country's in chaos and to my knowledge they haven't dismantled one of their nuclear weapons and we've still got ours. Everyone thinks it's, "Boy! Whew! We got through that one." Uh--hello?
Q: Spielberg credits reaching a certain age and becoming a father with inspiring him to make Schindler's. Are you waiting to be similarly inspired?
A: He's had that book for 12 years. Quite frankly, you've got to have the confidence to make a movie you think isn't gonna make any money. He probably figured, nobody's going to go to a movie about the Holocaust. Maybe he didn't have the confidence until he made it. He attributes it to whatever--maturity. And that's valid. But he was always a pretty good filmmaker. I just think that it may be harder in general for a filmmaker who's been relied on by the system to deliver commercial products. I feel it myself.
Q: You were going to make The Crowded Room--a small drama about a serial rapist with multiple personalities--for Fox, but your involvement ended in litigation. Why?
A: I entered an arrangement with a partner. We had joint control of the material. This partner turned out to be someone I couldn't work with and who felt that they couldn't work with me. We parted ways. A script had been written, we'd cast John Cusack to play the guy, and I was in preproduction. I was ready to go shoot ... I will say that I believe this person behaved very unprofessionally.
Q: This person is executive producer Sandra Arcara?
A: Absolutely.
Q: The Crowded Room is based on a true story--the guy really exists.
A: Yeah. I got to know him, and he got in the middle of this whole thing because he wanted his story told. He was running around creating more chaos, filing law suits. It turned into madness.
Q: He's no doubt an interesting man.
A: Very. We kind of got to be friends but ultimately he contributed to the downfall of the project, at least in its incarnation with me. I sort of didn't want to tell his story anymore, you know?
Q: Are there any young or first-time directors whose work you've been impressed by recently?
A: I tend to be interested in the established guys who are operating at a level of craft I can relate to. I'd be much more interested in a Coppola film or a Spielberg film than I would in a first-time director, because it's not my business to promote first-time directors. But Dances With Wolves inspired me. An astonishing first movie. I mean, Kevin Costner can die now. He doesn't have to make another film. He did it his way and he had to put his money in it--the whole story's great. That's his Schindler's List. I wish he'd make another film.
Q: One doesn't often see or hear of you in the Hollywood spotlight.
A: You can stay out of it if you want to. I'm in the spotlight for a week or two when I release a movie every couple of years. I don't talk about my personal life. I never have. I just won't feed into that. Actors do, because I guess they don't have private lives. Their emotions, their whole beings are up there on the screen and people want to know everything about them. Actors seem to walk right into that with open arms. I don't know why.
Q: Well then, let's talk about your next film, Spider-Man, from the classic comic book.
A: Another deeply philosophical tome. Actually, it is. It has a much stronger moral underpinning than True Lies. I wrote it that way.
Q: There's always been a moral dimension to Spidey.
A: I've kind of expanded it to include the whole subject of teenage angst, and what if you were 17 and could do anything you fucking wanted anytime you wanted, and you didn't believe anything anybody said about right and wrong? What would you do? It's basically The Last Temptation of Peter Parker.
Q: So it's heavy, but it's got webs, too.
A: Heavy but fun--webs, all the stuff you want to see, but underneath it is a darker theme. As opposed to, for me, what is the reverse: Batman, which was all dark and brooding and moody but ultimately wasn't about anything. Sorry. I don't mean to trash another person's work. I mean, Tim did what he wanted to do, which is create the ultimate mood piece. But for me it didn't really take a stand on anything. This film will be completely different.
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Joshua Mooney interviewed Kristy Swanson for the April Movieline.