James Cameron: Fantastic Voyage

Q: Though disguised by hardware, your films have always had sophisticated adult storylines and characters with strong emotional arcs. Did you consciously decide to finally let that take center stage with Titanic?

A: I consider all my films to be love stories. This one, I wanted everybody to call it that first and foremost. I don't think anybody would call Terminator a love story, even though it was. Aliens to me was a love story between this woman and the little girl, maternal love. For me, every film has its emotional template first and all this other stuff gets put on it. I wanted to do a film that shifted the balance.

Q: Has the lack of recognition for your writing bothered you?

A: Not really. To me, the writing has always been a means to an end. I like to direct, I don't really like to write that much.

Q: Since your characters are so strong, ever consider doing a small film, where the only special effect is emotion?

A: I'd like to do a one- or two-million-dollar film that is so clearly stripped of any production design or visual effects it must be analyzed entirely on the basis of the writing and the acting.

Q: You're at the forefront of movie technological advances, yet your films focus on technology gone awry.

A: That's a definite theme in all my films. In Aliens, you had people who relied on their technology, their weaponry and their communications equipment, and it fails, and they're overwhelmed and destroyed. Their arrogance was, We have the stuff, we can deal with anything. It was really a metaphor for the Vietnam War, where the most technological army in the world fought one of the least technological armies in the world, and lost. Terminator and T2 had its anti-technology message._ Titanic_ falls right into that. Titanic was the symbol of greater luxury, progress, speed and power.

Q: On Aliens, were you intimidated following Ridley Scott?

A: It didn't make much sense. It's like, I've got a promising career as a director, I've just done The Terminator, now I'm going to go out and have the absolute cheek to try and make a sequel to one of the most venerated sacred cows of science fiction. But I knew I was there to basically worship that first film. I liked Alien so much I just wanted to go do that. I didn't think it through on any kind of career positioning, I just thought, This is going to be so bitchin'.

Q: Why are good sequels so few and far between?

A: There's an art to writing a sequel. It's a delicate balance of surprise and familiarity. You have to have the touchstones, honor the precursor. But you have to constantly surprise and take it in new directions, but do it in a satisfying way. As much as I admired the filmmaking in Alien3, I thought that by killing off the characters that you cared about and fought for in the second film, in the first five minutes of the third film, you sort of shit on the audience. And I don't think the audience ever quite forgave that.

Q: Will you do Terminator 3 or True Lies 2?

A: Both are possibilities. I have a better idea for a second True Lies than I do for a third Terminator right now. Arnold [Schwarzenegger] and Tom Arnold would like to come back, and I know Jamie [Lee Curtis] would like to come back. I love those characters. I think they're a lot of fun and that the comic potential between them is just as fertile.

Q: It was risky to create a James Bond-ish character who's married.

A: The James Bond films are rotten at their core. The guy's a womanizing drunk. He's a complete scumbag, he really is. It's male fantasy: I'm married and faithful but I'd really like to be that guy and have a different woman every other night. If you're going to do a comedy, you don't just send up the gadgetry. What you send up is the moral center, or the immoral center of it. What would it really be like to try and live that fantasy? It ain't going to work because that's not who most men really are. Most men really want something else. That struck me as a hysterical premise: what if James Bond was married and pussy-whipped?

Q: To direct Terminator, you sold your rights for $1 to cowriter, producer and, now, ex-wife, Gale Anne Hurd.

A: It's certainly a deal she remembers very well.

Q: Is that a major impediment to Terminator 3?

A: Absolutely. We weren't married or going together then, it was strictly a business deal. I wanted a bond between us that operated on a realm other than money. I basically said, I will give you the rights, and in return, no matter what happens, she would never make the movie without me as the director. It was essentially a handshake deal; the dollar was symbolic. It was like a blood oath. We would partner against all the scumbags we knew we would have to go into business with in order to get the movie made. We figured they'd try to divide the camp. Sure enough, they tried to get me to cut Gale loose. They tried to get Gale to cut me loose. They offered Gale $1 million to produce the movie if she would do it with another director they got to choose. She said no. So you know what? It got me the film made. I got what I needed for that dollar. And then everything else came from Terminator. In some ways I regret it. It was probably the silliest business decision in one analysis, and in another it made quite a bit of sense at the time.

Q: It's hard to imagine a third going without you or against your wishes.

A: I don't own any of the rights but I have a moral ownership or creative, aesthetic ownership of it, and Arnold [Schwarzenegger] has said pretty definitively that he won't make the film without me, which is a loyalty to me and himself. He knows that I know how to chart us through those waters and be true to the characters and make him look good. He's at a delicate stage in his career where he has to make his decisions carefully in order to preserve and protect what he's created and create that career longevity that an Eastwood has. He can certainly do it, but doing a T3 the wrong way is a good way not to do it. I'm not saying someone else can't solve it. I think I solved Aliens pretty well and I wasn't involved in the original. So someone could come along and solve it. But there's no guarantee. What I can guarantee is that it won't suck.

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