James Cameron: Fantastic Voyage
Q: Given the press coverage, any misperceptions about you?
A: Two big misperceptions came from Titanic. That we were unsafe, and that I'm hard on actors--that I'm sort of the heir apparent to Otto Preminger's monocle. I would call myself a crisp disciplinarian when it comes to the crew, and when you're doing a very, very large, logistically complicated, tactically complicated production, you have to be.
Q: But the cast?
A: It's a whole different thing. Even though I don't act, I understand what it's like to stand in front of the camera, naked and terrified. I rarely have bad behavior from actors, temper tantrums or breakdowns. I've never had an actor break down and leave the set. The closest thing was Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, when she was doing her big revival scene on The Abyss, and she'd just gotten to the moment where her eyelids start to flutter open and she was coming back to life. And the film ran out because they hadn't loaded the camera properly. The operator called a rollout and Mary just sort of broke down and left the set. But it had nothing to do with anything but the intensity of the moment. Other than that, never.
Q: You put Linda Hamilton through two Terminator films and she married you--I guess that weighs in your favor.
A: See, I get along great with actors! I'm sure there are a few actors walking around that may have specific beefs. Generally speaking, I have a working method that interfaces very well with the actors. I'm absolutely, utterly, crazily passionate about the scene. We're here to make a scene and we're not going to be inhuman about it, but we're going to do everything we can do and not stop until we know we've done it. That's how actors think. They don't want to do two takes. So when a director comes along who asks what can we do differently, they respond to it.
Q: Now that you've worked for free for the last three years, will you go back to work quickly, or are you worn out?
A: I'm more energized now than I was a couple of months ago, when I felt I never wanted to make another movie again. It's too much trouble, too much time off your life, too much time away from your family. Filmmaking is a lot like childbirth. You ask a woman an hour after she's delivered if she wants to have another baby and she says never, never. Then a year later she's pregnant again.
Q: You mentioned people think of you as the man who made The Terminator. After this, will you become the man who made Titanic?
A: Ideally, I should be invisible in this film. There are directors who try to create a signature style and impose it, like a Brian De Palma, who's always showing us how great he is at moving the camera. When you come out of Titanic, it's the movie that has a life, and the characters. I like that.
Q: Yet perception of Steven Spielberg changed with Schindler's List.
A: Yes, although Spielberg had already done the precursor to Schindler's List with The Color Purple. He'd shown the impulse to do something with some substance to it. Titanic _is more likely to be my _Color Purple than my Schindler's List. Problem is, this is my Schindler's List!
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Michael Fleming interviewed Jean-Jacques Annaud for the October 97 issue of Movieline.
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