James Cameron: Fantastic Voyage

Q: Let's talk casting. You looked at every young actress for your lead character Rose. Why Kate Winslet?

A: I resisted Kate when she was initially suggested. I said, She does period movies, I don't want that. I want to be able to take the audience through that barrier with somebody new. Kate auditioned on film and it was a very simple decision. I realized she was just about the most talented actor around for her age.

Q: Were you a Leonardo DiCaprio fan?

A: The only thing I'd ever seen him in was What's Eating Gilbert Grape. He wasn't that hot yet; Romeo & Juliet was still in production. He was just this charming guy with the ability to walk in and win a room--which was one of the fundamental things about the character, Jack. So then I had to assess how committed he would be and how his acting was. I asked him to read with Kate. He did something that just rubbed me the wrong way: he sat there smoking a cigarette, slouching, as if the whole thing was too much trouble. I didn't think he was paying attention. Then he gets up there and he does the scene. And it was like, boom, I saw it. He's the guy. It was only for a second. It's like you see a UFO through the trees and try to tell somebody and they think you're high. I ran downstairs and said, He's the guy. And they went, Well, where's the tape? [But] Leonardo wouldn't let himself be taped, so it was like a Sasquatch sighting. Then I had to sell him to the studio. They were pretty lukewarm, I have to say. Then Leo decided he didn't want to do it. It wasn't quirky enough for him. He wanted, I don't know, warts or a hump or a cocaine addiction. I said, No, that's not the guy. He's like a Jimmy Stewart character, pure of heart. Then, there was a moment the lightbulb went on for Leo, and he realized that that would be a really hard thing to make great.

Q: Billy Zane was a curious choice for Cal, the upper-crust fiance of Rose.

A: I wanted to go a bit off-center with Cal, because I was afraid that, as written, he stood the chance of becoming a caricature or a cardboard villain. Billy impressed me as somebody with a lot of complexity. There is a real mind at work there. He had 10 million ideas, and he'd fling them off his tongue and fingertips like jewels. If you didn't use them, he'd come up with more.

Q: Given that cast, you were left with a big-ticket movie whose biggest stars were a sinking ship and you.

A: I don't know how much you can sell on the filmmaker, unless that filmmaker happens to be Steven Spielberg. There's Steven and there's everybody else. To the average guy on the street, if they know who I am, I'm the guy that did Terminator. And liking Terminator and liking Titanic are two different subjects.

Q: Did the studio want bigger stars?

A: It was a question of, Well, can you get somebody else? I was like, Who? Who is 19 or 20 years old and fills your requirements? There was nobody. Tom Cruise was too old. He would have loved to have been in Titanic. He would have loved to play Jack. Now, I heard that from his agent and I didn't talk to Tom about it, so I don't know if that was bullshit or not. OK, I could have made a Tom Cruise movie, but I would have had to change the whole thing, and then it would have been Tom Cruise, who's like, what, 35, in love with a 17-year-old girl. Maybe she would have had to be what, 25 or 26, and now she's 110? I don't think so! There's something so pure and innocent about these kids. She's 17, he's 19, there's an innocence to that. Titanic is about the slaughter of innocence.

Q: So the package became the riskiest big-budget film ever.

A: I'd chosen to tell a story where the characters are very young, and there aren't many actors that age who are stars globally. From the initial pitch, almost three years ago, that was a known. Three-hour movie. Hundred-million-dollar range. No stars. You still want to play? I put it in those terms. I pitched it positively, but I didn't want to dance around the negatives.

Q: The idea of love on the Titanic must have surprised your friends at Fox who awaited the next Terminator saga.

A: The pitch was one simple line: It was Romeo & Juliet on the Titanic. They were like [laughing], "Hey, greeaat, that's exactly what we want you to do. Forget all that highly successful Aliens and _Terminator 2 _stuff, you know?"

Q: You got a frosty response?

A: I would call it warm to lukewarm. They weren't negative. Peter Chernin is a very smart guy. He knew the potential. But there was always a shadow of legitimate doubt that the guy who made those techno-thrillers could pull off a love story. To have their names dragged into the ring with it very publicly, and very expensively--this is where the lukeness of the warm came from.

Q: How did the studio feel about your realization this would be tougher than originally advertised?

A: Trepidatious would be the most accurate description. I went to Peter Chernin and said they were looking at a higher number than what they wanted to spend. They saw it as Jim Cameron's art movie--if we can just, please God, survive this one, maybe he'll make something commercial for us in the future.

Q: Let's talk about your other films. You seem to like turning film traditions on their ear.

A: I like to go to the hard places to see if I can do it. Getting the audience to cry for the Terminator at the end of T2, for me that was the whole purpose of making that film. If you can get the audience to feel emotion for a character that in the previous film you despised utterly and were terrified by, then that's a cinematic arc.

Q: With Rose, you've again given a female a strong emotional development curve. You've made a career empowering women, turning them into action heroes. From The Long Kiss Goodnight to Point of No Return and Cutthroat Island, why can't anybody else do female action?

A: With The Long Kiss Goodnight I sort of thought they went down the right road until the end, which got crazy. In the case of the others, they basically wrote a male role and put a woman in it. It has to be done in female terms. Linda Hamilton's character in Terminator 2 was a mother. She was motivated by maternal instincts and I've always felt the maternal thing was the most powerful and primal motivating force. If you take that away and it's just some tough chick who's trying to outdo the men, it just lacks substance. She doesn't feel organically real as a person.

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