JAMES CAMERON: Inside the Mind of One of the Most Iconic Filmmakers in History (Greatest Risks, Biggest Failures, & His KEY Principles to Success)

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Speaker 1 Hey, everyone, welcome back to On Purpose. Today's guest is someone I'm deeply excited to interview.

Speaker 1 His life is truly movie magic in so many ways, but it is filled with lessons, insights, and inspiration that you can take into into your own journey to chase your passion, to pursue the career that you love, to bring your art to life, to bring your magic to the world and offer it as a service.

Speaker 1 I'm sitting down with the one and only James Cameron, one of the most influential storytellers of our time, filmmaker, explorer, and visionary who has redefined what's possible on the screen.

Speaker 1 From The Terminator and Aliens to Titanic and Avatar, his films have shaped global culture, pushed the boundaries of technology, and sparked entire generations of imagination.

Speaker 1 James is a deep sea explorer, the pioneer of performance capture, and a director whose work continues to challenge, innovate, and expand what storytelling can be.

Speaker 1 The highly anticipated new chapter, Avatar, Fire, and Ash, that I got to see last week, comes to theaters December 19th. Make sure you book your seat.
Go and watch it with the whole family.

Speaker 1 You won't regret it. Please welcome to On Purpose, James Cameron.

Speaker 3 James, it is such an honor can can you just travel around with me for the rest of my life and do the introduction

Speaker 3 no pressure by the way

Speaker 3 well you had to build it you had to live it yeah exactly i gotta live it i have no choice there's no backing out now right

Speaker 1 well you've had to live it for all these years and create all these iconic films that we all have fallen in love with and still talk about to this day and so many new ones to come in the future but i wanted to take us back to your childhood

Speaker 1 because I feel that so much of who we become is defined in those early years, as you and I both know.

Speaker 1 And I was wondering, do you remember the first character or world that you ever imagined, even if it wasn't for a movie or a film or an idea, but just a world that you lived in when you were younger?

Speaker 3 Well, I was totally enamored. as a kid with anything

Speaker 3 fantastic or science fiction, anything I saw on television that was fantasy and science fiction. But I remember one

Speaker 3 sort of, I think there's a moment where something inspires you to take your own action, to do your own art. And I remember, and this may not have been the first, but this is what pops to mind.

Speaker 3 So seeing Mysterious Island, which was a Ray Harryhausen film, I probably would have been seven or eight.

Speaker 3 and coming home and wanting to do my own version of Mysterious Island. So I started to draw essentially a comic book.

Speaker 3 But it was my own story. The animals were different.
They wound up cast away on a raft as opposed to in the movie it was a balloon. And I just started telling my own story.

Speaker 3 So technically, that would be the first case I can remember of world building inspired by something else, but not copying that thing.

Speaker 3 And of course, Ray Harryhausen was always inspiring to me as a kid.

Speaker 3 You know, I mean, the technique that he used of stop-motion animation animation is considered quite quaint now, you know, and we can do things that are far more realistic.

Speaker 3 But at the time, there was nothing like that in terms of his art, his craft, and that blew my mind at the time. And, you know, look, it doesn't take much to inspire.

Speaker 3 Kids are imaginative, you know, and when you get something that impacts your imagination and triggers it, and then you start to draw, all of a sudden my hand's going. You know what I mean?

Speaker 3 I'm drawing. I'm I'm choosing colors what what color do I want the giant turtle to be I picked green

Speaker 3 no big surprise there did you ever get to share that with the director or anyone in the cast I did talk I talked to Ray later in his life he was pretty retired he hadn't he hadn't done any stop motion for some time but you know I shared with him some of these early stories and the impact he had on me and so many other filmmakers he was absolutely the most fantastic of the fantasy filmmakers that were out there for many, many years.

Speaker 1 I can't imagine what that felt like to him to hear that something of his had inspired you to go on to see what you did.

Speaker 3 I think he was just kind of dazzled by where we, where the next generation and the one after that had sort of taken it into CG and so on and things that

Speaker 3 he couldn't have imagined the technology, but he certainly could have imagined the design and the storytelling, you know, that were possible with those new tools.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, I think that's the power of art.

Speaker 1 As I'm listening to you, I'm thinking just how many young kids are going to go and watch Fire and Ash and that becomes their version of that movie that then inspires them to go and bring their art into the world, whether it's film and TV or poetry or music or whatever it may be and how important it is.

Speaker 1 Because he probably didn't imagine that, you know, James Cameron as a seven or eight year old was watching his film.

Speaker 3 No, how could he have? You know, I mean, he was just following his muse and we all do, you know, but I'd love to think that stuff that I've done has

Speaker 3 inspired,

Speaker 3 you know, I want to say kids, but, you know, it could be anybody that wants to be an artist at any age. And, you know, I have this art show that's touring around in Europe.

Speaker 3 It's actually in Istanbul right now. And it's a lot of drawings that I did and paintings that I did when I was in high school and in college.

Speaker 3 I didn't know I was going to be a big shot filmmaker someday. You know, how could you possibly know that? You know, I was just the ideas in my head.
I just had to draw them.

Speaker 3 I mean, I had to draw them. And I always say artists, artists are the people that can't not draw or can't not create.
It's like, it's not like you force yourself to create.

Speaker 3 You have to force yourself not to, you know, and if that's flowing from you, if it's flowing from your fingertips or if it's voice or if it's music or whatever it is, if it's flowing from you and you can't stop it, guess what?

Speaker 3 You're stuck. You're an artist.

Speaker 1 And you feel compelled.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 And you don't question it. That's the crazy thing.
At least I never did.

Speaker 3 You know, I'd sit on the quad at college and I'd just have my math notebook or whatever, and I'd be sketching some girl sitting under a tree or some guy or my own hand.

Speaker 3 Or, you know, I mean, it was just always drawing. I couldn't imagine not drawing.

Speaker 1 Was there a part of you that felt out of place as a kid, but now that same skill is essential to who you are now? Or did you always feel that you?

Speaker 3 I think so, yeah.

Speaker 3 I mean, look, you can get very solitary, the creative act, especially when you write, because you really have to just, you know, isolate and you need to be in your own headspace and be comfortable there for long periods of time.

Speaker 3 So it can be isolating. I remember, and, you know, I mean, our memory of our childhood is always tainted by the stories that we tell ourselves and we don't remember the event, we remember the story.

Speaker 3 Yes. Right? Very true.
Because memory is an interesting thing. We don't really, we're not video cameras.
There isn't enough storage in this three and a half pound meat computer to last a lifetime.

Speaker 3 It'd be million petabytes of data. We just don't have room for that, right? So we don't remember the event like a videotape.
We remember the story we tell ourselves.

Speaker 3 The story I tell myself is that I spent a lot of time on my own, in my imagination, in the woods, connecting with nature, finding animals, finding bugs, collecting butterflies, tadpoles, whatever it was.

Speaker 3 A lot of time on my own drawing and just thinking and creating. And a lot of time with other kids organizing and doing fun collective projects.

Speaker 3 You know, the one in the neighborhood that always said, hey guys, let's build a fort. You know, hey, guys, let's build a go-kart.

Speaker 3 Hey, guys, let's make an airplane out of wood and hang it from a tree and fly, which we did until the rope broke and, you know, it crashed. But, you know, so there was an...

Speaker 3 alpha social component, which is now critical, but there was also a quiet, creative and introspective component to it.

Speaker 3 And I think it was, if I look at my life now, it's my comfort in both of those zones that allows me to do what I do.

Speaker 3 Because a lot of people are good writers, they're good creators, good artists, but they don't have the social organizational component to motivate people to do things, you know, and to leverage their creativity.

Speaker 3 And so that's a big part of it, that sort of alpha component, if you will.

Speaker 1 Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 It's fascinating because you hear about this passion in your childhood, the flow to draw and create and to be fascinated with nature, and it almost makes sense, but then you become a truck driver.

Speaker 1 And so walk me through that arc of your life because I feel so many people kind of up until 10, 11 years old, may even have these passions and dreams and ideas and creatives, but then their life takes a different.

Speaker 3 I never went to university per se. I went to the Fullerton Junior College, which is part of the junior college system.
I was intensely curious.

Speaker 3 It was the first time in my life where I was surrounded by people who actually wanted to be there, you know, as opposed to high school where people didn't want to be there. They just had to be there.

Speaker 3 You know, and most of them sort of rejected the learning process. I was always hungry to learn, not necessarily

Speaker 3 what they were teaching, but lots of new things. I got to college and I was surrounded by people who actually wanted to be there and wanted to learn.
And there was

Speaker 3 people were having arguments about philosophy and

Speaker 3 English and storytelling and art. And it was very exciting, but it was unsustainable for me.
I couldn't afford to do it continuously or endlessly.

Speaker 3 And so I had to work and I worked various jobs, all blue-collar jobs, right? And I didn't mind working. I didn't mind just sort of being, you know, and I got married at a very early age.

Speaker 3 I had a little pink house with a white picket fence and a dog.

Speaker 3 you know and it was kind of you know kind of comforting it was very very limited and and simple but at the same time in my after hours as a truck driver because it was a you know nine to five or an eight to five job i was painting i was drawing i was storytelling for myself my wife didn't understand that she was a waitress and she she liked the me that was social and with her but not the me that was off you know creating all these these worlds.

Speaker 3 And so I was still trying to reconcile

Speaker 3 that kind of social facing versus the

Speaker 3 landscape of my own imagination. But I've always been comfortable in my own head that way.
Dreams are a big part of it.

Speaker 3 Dreams are a big part of my creativity, a source of imagery, source of little bits and pieces of narrative, you know, because it can be quite chaotic and jumbled, but still within that, there can be some interesting ideas.

Speaker 3 And so I think it was all just building up, building up a pressure to the point where I had to do something about it.

Speaker 3 And that was in my mid-20s. So I was kind of a late starter.
I never went to film school. You know, my film school was the drive-in movie theaters of Orange County.

Speaker 3 You know, so no formal training in film aesthetics or film history or any of that stuff.

Speaker 3 But it was just kind of building up that, all right, you know, it's that urge to, when you can't not draw, when you start thinking filmically and in terms of storytelling, it's like, well, you can't not tell a story.

Speaker 3 You've got to tell somebody the damn story, you know. And I think anybody out there that hears this, that feels that way, you're stuck.
You don't have a choice.

Speaker 3 You're probably going to be a filmmaker or a writer or whatever it is. Just accept it.

Speaker 3 You might never be rich because

Speaker 3 it's a difficult task and

Speaker 3 there's a lot of luck, I think, involved in getting to be a successful storyteller. But I just followed it and I didn't question it.

Speaker 3 I just quit my job one day. No rancor, just guys, I got stuff to do.
I'll see you to

Speaker 3 the other drivers. And they're like, what? Where are you going?

Speaker 3 You know?

Speaker 1 I mean, it feels like a bold step looking back because without film school, without having made a film,

Speaker 1 without any of that background to watch Star Wars, I believe, in 1977,

Speaker 1 and for you to then go, I need to go and become a filmmaker, even though you love drawing. And it feels like a bold step.
And I think about all of our listeners in our community who are all.

Speaker 1 thinking something similar. I think a lot of people in my generation and the generations after me maybe studied something something at school that wasn't the thing they wanted to be.

Speaker 1 They have a dream inside of them. They have a story and they feel a pull, but they're scared to take that final step.
What gave you that conviction? Was it conviction or what was it? Was it?

Speaker 3 I think it was a conviction.

Speaker 3 Star Wars helped. And I've talked to George Lucas about this.
I said, there are untold people that you've inspired, George, but I'm one of them because...

Speaker 3 But in a way, I don't think he quite wanted the answer that I gave, which was I was already seeing all that stuff in my head.

Speaker 3 And when I saw Star Wars, I thought, if that could be the highest-grossing film in history, then the stuff that I'm seeing in my mind, when I listen to fast electronic music and imagine space battles and all this crazy stuff, it's like, I should be doing that.

Speaker 3 You know,

Speaker 3 there will be a market for it. There's a market for my imagination.

Speaker 3 And that's maybe the boldest step is the step you take internally, you know, where you give yourself permission permission to at least go try it, you know,

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 when you make that commitment, you have to go in wholeheartedly. You can't say, okay, I'm going to be a filmmaker part-time, but I'm going to sort of keep a foot in like medical school.

Speaker 3 It's not going to work. You've got to go.
You just got to jump out of the plane and hope you're wearing a parachute.

Speaker 3 You know, so I always tell people that...

Speaker 3 opportunities come along and they're fleeting and that door will open for a moment and then it'll slide closed. And you've got to be, fortune favors the prepared mind.

Speaker 3 If it's really something you love, read as much as you can. Prepare your mind ahead of time.
Be ready because when that door opens. But the critical thing is to understand, it's not an example.

Speaker 3 of an opportunity. It is the opportunity.
You either take it or you don't. You don't use it as a time to think about, well, when the next one comes along, I may or may not, you know what I mean?

Speaker 3 That's not how it works. You go, you launch, you know.

Speaker 3 And that opportunity for me was that a guy that I was working with on learning to sculpt and make molds, who was a little bit ahead of me in the sort of fan curve of actually knowing how to do rubber armatures for stop motion, and I was pretty fascinated by that.

Speaker 3 His sister was dating a guy who was a carpenter on a super low-budget Roger Corman science fiction film.

Speaker 3 And I just said, introduce us. And so she talked to him, he talked to them.
We got an appointment, and we went in and showed our little models and our little things that we had.

Speaker 3 And I had this film that I had made with some friends, and we both got jobs on a Roger Corman film. And we thought we'd died and gone to heaven because now we were getting a paycheck on a real movie.

Speaker 3 No, it was a total piece of crap movie. It was a little tiny movie.
You know, it was actually the biggest movie Roger Corman had ever made.

Speaker 3 It was like a million dollars or something like that, which was huge for him. He usually made movies for like $200,000.

Speaker 3 And then all of a sudden I'm on a movie. And then the rest just sort of made sense after that.
It's that prepared mind thing. You know, I had read everything I could possibly read.

Speaker 3 I had schooled myself on how visual effects were done, all for no money, all not at university. Just

Speaker 3 over

Speaker 3 that sort of two or three years that I was driving trucks and working blue-collar jobs.

Speaker 3 So I guess in the back of my mind, I must have thought, I'm going to do this for real at some point, because I was clearly preparing myself, but I had no entree.

Speaker 3 I didn't know anybody that knew anybody that knew anybody that worked on a film.

Speaker 3 Even though I was in Orange County, it's not that far from here, not that far from the center of the film industry, but it might as well have been Montana,

Speaker 3 you know, at that time, certainly. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Did you? Do you record your dreams? How do you note them down? How do you capture them?

Speaker 3 Yeah, sometimes I'll wake up and I'll just write it down, you know, or I'll type it out on my laptop, whatever.

Speaker 1 How long have you recorded them for? Like, when did you start?

Speaker 3 It's sporadic. I mean, you know, I mean, it's a constant sort of streaming channel that's running all the time, and they're not all necessarily worthy of it.

Speaker 3 But every once in a while, I'll get a corker. It's like, oh, man, I got to write this one down.
You won't believe this.

Speaker 1 Did you ever follow the curiosity of where they come from or how they originate?

Speaker 3 Or, you know,

Speaker 1 where have you found, where do you think you get them from?

Speaker 3 Look, I've read a lot on the theories of consciousness and dreams and what purpose they serve.

Speaker 3 And there are some researchers that think they have deep psychological meaning and others that think they're really just the brain just kind of resetting itself and reshuffling memory and

Speaker 3 kind of cleaning house and it doesn't really have any meaning. I happen to think that

Speaker 3 they have meaning to you. Now, my wife Susie believes that she has,

Speaker 3 and I I believe she's right, has received premonitory dreams about events in her life, and she's documented this in a way that I find quite compelling. I'm not 100% convinced.

Speaker 3 Sorry, baby, if you're listening, not 100% convinced, but she's given me evidence that gives me pause. And I'm a pretty hardcore empiricist.
I'm not a mystic.

Speaker 3 I don't follow all of the various winds of the

Speaker 3 spirituality fads and things like that. That's not how I roll.
I'm very science-oriented. You've got to show me.
You've got to prove it. It's got to be peer-reviewed, you know, and that sort of thing.

Speaker 3 It's got to be the subject of double-blind studies and it's got to be falsifiable and all the empirical stuff. But I've seen some things I can't explain.

Speaker 3 And she's demonstrated some things to me that can't be explained by

Speaker 3 my understanding of science. I mean, I'm not a scientist, but I did study physics.
I studied astronomy. And I keep pretty current in the sciences.

Speaker 3 So there's clearly stuff out there that's not well explained or explained at all right now. Doesn't mean it won't be someday using empirical methodology.

Speaker 3 I don't know quite how I got off on that, but we were talking about dreams, and dreams are not well understood,

Speaker 3 even by neuroscientists and so on.

Speaker 3 What is the brain doing?

Speaker 3 I personally think that we're kind of

Speaker 3 like large language models.

Speaker 3 So all the training data of our life it just goes into a kind of diffusion state, which is how generative AI works.

Speaker 3 It goes into a kind of a very noisy state, and then out of that coalesces new things. And I think the brain is just constantly creating in the way that a generative AI works.

Speaker 3 But who's creating it and who is it being created for? So you're simultaneously the creator and the watcher, which is kind of amazing.

Speaker 3 I'm creating a simulated experience for myself. One part of my brain is, and another part of my brain, let's call it the ego locus or whatever,

Speaker 3 the person taking the ride,

Speaker 3 the kid in the roller coaster, is going on the ride, which is kind of the filmmaking process.

Speaker 1 That's fascinating.

Speaker 3 Because I'm making a story. I'm making up a story for my kind of simulation of the audience mind, the group mind, right? So part of my brain is making up a story for another part of my brain.

Speaker 3 That part of my brain is sitting in a movie theater with hundreds of other people and receiving it and judging it like, okay, this is cool. I like that.

Speaker 3 And you try to drill down on the creative process. I'm a writer.
I'm sitting there. I'm looking at a blank screen.
Where do you start? Yeah. You know?

Speaker 3 And a lot of writers do it in very different ways. Some start, you know, page one, you know, Bob walks down the street, you know, and then it just goes from there in a linear fashion.

Speaker 3 For me, it coalesces probably almost in a diffusion model kind of way. I start writing notes and little images come to me and I start putting the notes together.

Speaker 3 And for the avatar sequels, for example,

Speaker 3 I wrote over a thousand pages of notes, just little fragments.

Speaker 1 Dreams and images.

Speaker 3 And sometimes dreams play a part in that, and sometimes just the daydreaming process, that creative engine, because I think that same creative engine that runs at night, out of control, non-linear, chaotic.

Speaker 3 montage style is actually more functional during the day and can be kind of directed to stay on a topic and follow it through.

Speaker 3 You know, so maybe I'll be thinking about a character and then something will pop into my mind, you know, and then I'll start writing about that.

Speaker 3 And it does, I'm not trying to tell a linear narrative at that point, you know,

Speaker 3 and it becomes a bit of a dialogue. So I remember the time I was sitting there in my writing office and I said, well, what if there was a kid that was, you know, a kid that was born on the base?

Speaker 3 And what if he was out in the forest with his Navi little kid friends and his mask got messed up and, you know, they had to save him. He was

Speaker 3 running out of air and it became a whole thing and so i imagined this whole thing about a race against time to get him get him back to the base and i thought okay that's a pretty good story now what if what if that kid was korich's son

Speaker 3 and then i wrote literally wrote nah

Speaker 3 nobody would believe that you know and then i'm going on writing more notes and about three or four pages later it's like yeah but wait a minute it would be really cool yeah you know and then i just started to riff on that and then it became all right well what if he was korich's son and the human Korch dies in the first film?

Speaker 3 Now he's orphaned. His mother maybe dies as well.
She was part of the military group that Jake was opposed to. And now he's an orphan and he's being raised on Pandora and he's got Na'Vi friends.

Speaker 3 What if his Na'Vi friends were Jake's kids?

Speaker 3 What if...

Speaker 3 What if, what if, what if, what if, right? That's how the writing process works. And then it just, and then all of a sudden ideas just, you can't turn away from them.

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Speaker 1 Do those creative ideas, do you find a set of systems or rituals or processes that help you access that, or is it more organic? And

Speaker 3 I know all every writer's got their own process. Some, you know, I'm up at 5 a.m.,

Speaker 3 I run two miles, I have a cup of coffee, I sit down, I write 18 pages, and then I call it a day. For me, it's a slow boil.
I noodle around for most of the day.

Speaker 3 I get to the point toward the end of the day, maybe four or five o'clock in the afternoon, where I've been playing. Maybe I've been doing notes.

Speaker 3 And then I'll just say, okay, time to write some pages. And then usually for about three hours, I'll write pages and I'll get four or five pages.

Speaker 3 It'll come fast at that point, you know, and that's when you hit your stride in screenwriting.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 You can see that the way you're describing this scene with Crowja's son, because there's almost like three different storylines kind of

Speaker 1 connecting in that moment around that one thing that you just pointed out. Yeah, yeah.
But there's so many other things going on at the same time.

Speaker 3 Oh, I usually come up with way more ideas than I could conceivably pack into a movie. And then I'll winnow that down.
I'll winnow that down to a big old fat screenplay that's unshootable.

Speaker 3 And then I'll winnow that down. And then I'll make a movie that's four hours long.
And then I'll winnow that down.

Speaker 3 And then what you get is the end result is the distillation of the distillation of the best ideas.

Speaker 3 And then that's what winds up in the lean little tight indie film that I like to to call Fire and Ash. It's only three hours and seven minutes long.

Speaker 1 But what's incredible about it, when I watched it, I was so grateful that you allowed me to go see it last week.

Speaker 1 And as I said, when I was there, the gentleman in the theater who was playing it for me, he told me which seat you'd like me to watch it from, which I thought was a beautiful experience to have.

Speaker 1 So I said, yes, I want to sit in the exact seat. And then...

Speaker 3 Well, no, it's good that you moved back, though. I did.

Speaker 1 He told me I had that option. He said.

Speaker 3 I did that

Speaker 3 today, actually, for the first time. I watched from the seat behind.
Now, normally that's my working seat when I'm reviewing, because you can see that there's a desk there with an abbot and so on.

Speaker 3 But I thought... Well,

Speaker 3 let me see what it's like from there where it doesn't fill my peripheral field. And I've got a little bit more of that sense of control that you have when it's a proscenium.

Speaker 3 And I thought, oh, this is actually pretty good.

Speaker 1 It was spectacular. But more importantly, three hours and and seven minutes flew by.
There was never a moment.

Speaker 1 I didn't look at my phone once in three hours and seven minutes. To me, that's the test today of having your engagement, attention, and awareness.

Speaker 3 Right. So we passed the most critical test.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And the most magnificent thing is that

Speaker 1 so much happens. Yeah.
Like you're just on the edge of your seat wondering what's going to happen next. And so much is happening.

Speaker 1 And to do that for three hours and seven minutes in your indie movie is

Speaker 1 pretty, it's just an incredible feast for the eyes and ears and like i felt like all my senses are engaged all the time absolutely which is such a beautiful experience to have where just every time a new scene opens you're just totally captivated and it's well thanks it's it's so hard to do that for that long especially with i i consider myself to have good presence and attention but even then i can turn off something in 30 minutes when you you know and so to have your engagement not just on a story level but on a sensory level and uh i think it yeah

Speaker 3 I think you're on to something there and describing,

Speaker 3 as you're saying it, I'm thinking, well, what are my goals creatively?

Speaker 3 I want to tell a great story with good characters that I care about and I care about how they interact with each other and how their relationships evolve and how they resolve their own conflicts, you know, in a way that moves me, you know, because if I can't move myself in a story, how do I expect to move an audience emotionally, right?

Speaker 3 But then the layer on top of that is the sensory layer, which is color, composition, all of those artistic things, you know, because I also started as an artist, you know, figuratively, but I could draw, I could paint, I knew the rules of composition.

Speaker 3 I knew, you know, I learned all the art history, Renaissance lighting, composition, all that sort of thing. So there's an aesthetic level to it that I like.

Speaker 3 There's the world-building level where every plant,

Speaker 3 you know, either looks real and or has a purpose, you know, and we spend an awful lot of time. Fortunately, you know, we're blessed with good budgets and good

Speaker 3 time to sort of let these ideas marinate and gestate, right? And I've got great designers. It doesn't all flow from my consciousness.
It comes out very out of focus, if you will.

Speaker 3 And it's an act of working with other people to bring it more and more into finite detail.

Speaker 3 I call it my role is to create the grand provocation for the other creative people. And I got that term from my wife, Susie, who's an educator.

Speaker 3 And she says that the school provides the provocation, the kids provide the investigation and the curiosity and the passion.

Speaker 3 That's brilliant. Right.
And I think it's very, it's very good. It's the basis of her school.
She can do all that stuff better than I can. I'm just a bystander to that part of it.

Speaker 3 But I think about what I do. I come in and I say, guys, we're going to do the coolest woven tropical village, overwater village.
No, but what is that?

Speaker 3 And you'd think that they could create that in a week or two weeks. No, it took a year.
And because part of the provocation was, and it all has to be intention.

Speaker 3 Nothing is built with rigid cut lumber the way we would do it, where we create posts that are in

Speaker 3 compression. right? Everything's in tension.
It's like a spider web. It's all woven between these big structures like like the mangrove roots.

Speaker 3 And so they were actually sculpting with pantyhose to get the right degree of elasticity. To put it all in tension, they sculpted the village with pantyhose.

Speaker 3 This is absolutely true. And then they wove these little structures that later became the homes and the walkways and all that.
And then they developed it from there.

Speaker 3 And then eventually we started building full scale, not full scale, but say quarter-scale models of these woven structures. So when you walk through it, you don't really get a chance.

Speaker 3 I always want to give a little more than you can fully perceive. Because isn't that what daily life is like? There's always more going by than you can fully perceive.

Speaker 3 And so the brain becomes selective. Okay,

Speaker 3 what's narratively important to me in the moment?

Speaker 1 No, and

Speaker 1 talking about the emotional nature of the characters in the story, my wife always says, my wife always says, I think James Cameron and his team have been to other planets. That's what she always says.

Speaker 1 Whenever she watches one of your movies, she's like, he's been to other planets in other lifetimes. Like, that's what she'll say.
She'll be like,

Speaker 1 how is it that, you know, you could, and, and you feel that because you feel the depth of the relationship the characters have for each other. You feel that you fully believe this is real.

Speaker 1 It must exist somewhere.

Speaker 3 Yeah, right.

Speaker 1 Because how can you feel so deeply for people who look different to you and feel different to you and have different experience? But we feel that.

Speaker 3 That's a goal, right? So the goal is, all right, these people look different. They're physiologically different.
They live in a different place.

Speaker 3 But doesn't that give us permission to step outside ourselves with our petty little differences between race and culture and religion and politics and all that stuff?

Speaker 3 Step well outside ourselves and see kind of universals of human behavior and the things we care about, whether that's a sense of duty and love that a parent has for their child.

Speaker 3 And that's why these films travel, I think, you know, why they resonate in China and India and Europe and Africa, wherever they go, because I'm trying to deal with universal stuff.

Speaker 3 But I'm not trying to make stuff up, right? So with the sequels,

Speaker 3 Way of Water and Fire and Ash, and beyond that, if we get to make some more, I don't know if we will or not. We have to make some money.

Speaker 3 I mean, it's a business also. But if we do get to make some more, the stories are about a family.
And so I couldn't,

Speaker 3 not only couldn't, but probably wouldn't have even tried to write them if I hadn't been in a large family and gone through all that teen anxiety and that issue, the father issues and not being seen and all those things.

Speaker 3 And then having been a father of teens, we've got Susie and I have five kids. And

Speaker 3 so, I mean, artists are just working out their stuff, you know, their lived experience and project.

Speaker 3 But taking that to another world and putting it in another context allows everybody to share in it and or recognize themselves in it, either in an aspirational way, like, wow, I wish I was part of a family like that.

Speaker 3 My family, not so great, or maybe I don't have a lot of siblings, or maybe I wonder what that would be like, or maybe it's like, I'm in exactly that kind of family. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And I wish I wasn't sometimes.

Speaker 1 I've been repeating to my wife, I'm saying this in reaction way, in response to what you just said.

Speaker 1 Now, I've been saying to my wife all week, we need to have, we don't have kids yet, but we plan on having them one day.

Speaker 1 And I said, When we have kids, we need to have mantras and affirmations as a family. So, I keep saying to her, Sully's never quit.

Speaker 1 Like, I'm like, I just keep saying that to her because I'm like, I love that statement, it stuck with me. And I was like, to see the little child's like courage in that moment, right?

Speaker 1 Where they're in so much danger, in so much pain, but they remember that their dad told them that Sully's never quit.

Speaker 3 Right. And then, when she says it, when she says it later, she basically saves the world

Speaker 3 with one thing.

Speaker 3 She says, you know, come on, we can do this. Sully's never quit.
And you're like, go, dude.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly. And that's that feeling of, I'm like, to see that courage in a young person and how these simple, universal messages are things they hold on to in a child's mind.

Speaker 1 And then even the storyline with PyCon, like for me, that,

Speaker 1 oh, my, I mean, from the second to the third, because when I watched the second movie, for me, that fully just made me fall in sea life in a way that I hadn't before. Right.

Speaker 1 And, and, and got a, I was like, wow, this is genius in how you're sharing a message around, you know,

Speaker 1 water wildlife that we just don't treat well anymore.

Speaker 3 We won't protect what we don't love and care about, right? And so this,

Speaker 3 I'm working on a very small part of a much bigger project that's being run by a marine biologist named David Gruber. And he's working with people who are in AI

Speaker 3 and machine learning kind of more side of AI, but they're using some large language model technology as well to decode

Speaker 3 whale vocalizations. So they've got thousands of hours of sperm whale vocalizations and they've got some context footage of what socially they're doing and they're decoding their

Speaker 3 clicks, which are called codas, and their click sequences.

Speaker 3 And they're finding that they have verbs, they have syntax, they have complex language, at least as complex as human language, which is kind of amazing.

Speaker 3 But it all sounds like, if you could actually hear it, it sounds like...

Speaker 3 That's like a whole paragraph in sperm whale.

Speaker 3 And it's taken years and years and AI tools. So, yeah, nature is far more complex than we understand.
Consciousness is clearly shared by some of the higher mammals, even some birds,

Speaker 3 that have true consciousness, that they recognize themselves in a mirror. And that's one of the key signs that there is a higher form of consciousness.

Speaker 3 Like a dog doesn't recognize itself as an individual in a mirror.

Speaker 3 And we think of dogs as conscious, and of course they are, and they're emotive and they're empathetic, and they're very much like us emotionally, but they don't have a consciousness high enough to recognize their individual selves in a mirror.

Speaker 3 But an elephant can, a chimpanzee can, and a dolphin can.

Speaker 3 And I don't know if they've done that. I think they've proven that a beluga whale can as well, but I don't think they've done it with the great whales.

Speaker 3 It's just a little difficult to do because you can't put them in a tank and study them like some of the smaller toothed whales like dolphins and belugas.

Speaker 3 But anyway, there's even a parrot species in New Zealand that is intelligent enough to recognize itself as an individual.

Speaker 3 Most birds can't.

Speaker 3 So, you know, you've got these glimmers of emergent consciousness besides us, you know, and now we're going to have machine consciousness emerging in the next decade or whatever it's going to be.

Speaker 3 And that's going to be a whole new set of challenges for us as well. We don't even understand consciousness yet in ourselves.

Speaker 3 And now we're going to have to start relating to this alien consciousness that we create.

Speaker 1 Yeah, absolutely. And it's almost like I was speaking at a conference about AI and consciousness recently, and someone asked me if I ever believed AI would ever have a soul.

Speaker 1 And my response was, I'm not qualified to answer whether AI will ever have a soul, but I really hope the people building AI have a soul because

Speaker 1 it's so much of

Speaker 3 a conscience.

Speaker 1 More consciousness.

Speaker 3 I think you can have a soul. If you believe in some kind of animus or spirit or soul or whatever it is that's persistent beyond the biological framework, I personally don't, just saying that up front.

Speaker 3 But I also,

Speaker 3 I won't

Speaker 3 bet completely against something that just hasn't simply been proven yet.

Speaker 3 But I also only I believe in believing in things that have been empirically demonstrated and being kind of agnostic or fluid about everything else, right?

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 if you do believe in that, then

Speaker 3 a machine couldn't possibly have that, now could it? Because we didn't create that in the first place. And if we think we can create a machine that can have it, then we can't.

Speaker 3 So now you get the sort of the soulless,

Speaker 3 the soulless Frankenstein kind of mythology around that. On the other hand, if you believe that consciousness is this kind of field of operations that is almost infinitely complex,

Speaker 3 but can be understood as

Speaker 3 a real-world thing based in matter,

Speaker 3 then theoretically a machine intelligence could be as soulful, as empathetic, as emotional as us, although it might be very, very, very different.

Speaker 3 And then you get into the quantum physics of consciousness, where you've got observer effect and things like that, where there seems to be some link at a quantum level with consciousness, and then all bets are off.

Speaker 3 And I've had some strange experiences with one practitioner in particular that believed in quantum consciousness and could do things I can't explain to me. to my mind.
What do you mean?

Speaker 3 And I'm, well, could actually create a state of consciousness in my mind by sitting across from me, just like you are right now.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 I'm not hypnotizable. Nobody's ever been able to hypnotize me.
I'm pretty resistant to any kind of suggestibility, but this particular individual was able to do something.

Speaker 1 What were you experimenting with that you even sat across someone like that?

Speaker 3 My wife, Susie, had met this guy and worked with him, workshopped with him a lot many, many years earlier and said, you really need to meet this guy. His name was Carl Wolff.

Speaker 3 And I was very skeptical. Like I said, I'm an empiricist.
You gotta, you know, and I said, all right, I'm skeptical, but I'll, but I'll, I'll do it for you, baby.

Speaker 3 And something happened. And I can't explain it.
Wow. Something happened.
Now, what was it? I don't know. Carl had hypotheses.
I don't know if his own hypotheses were accurate.

Speaker 3 I'd love to ask him, but unfortunately, he died tragically in a car accident. And because I wanted to like, can I just spend millions of dollars studying your mind, please?

Speaker 1 That's fascinating. I mean,

Speaker 1 what's beautiful about all these worlds you create? And when I was researching your story and learning about just how many failures and moments you've had to quit and give up.

Speaker 1 And again, I think about our listeners and I think about them.

Speaker 3 Sally's never quit.

Speaker 1 Sally's never quit. There you go.
And even what you just mentioned right now about your own experience with your father and then becoming a father and what that looks like

Speaker 1 was,

Speaker 1 are the worlds you create worlds that you didn't have or did have for you?

Speaker 3 I I think both. Both.

Speaker 3 I mean,

Speaker 3 the thing that I've tried to do in the avatar films is create a dynamic range of experience from ecstatic to terrifying to heart-wrenching, from despair to joy,

Speaker 3 all of those things.

Speaker 3 I think movies are pretty good at creating a state, maybe a state of dread or something like that, but I don't think they're good at taking you on that roller coaster ride that more is the way our real existence is.

Speaker 3 So I wanted to have amazing moments of beauty. I think beauty gets forgotten in movies these days.
You know, everything is about threat and conflict and all that.

Speaker 3 But I also wanted to take you on an emotional journey where you get to places that are that are either terrifying or heart-wrenching through loss or whatever.

Speaker 3 And that's all dependent on performance. You know, that's all dependent on the actors.
The actors are

Speaker 3 our path through this, our conduit. We see it all through their eyes, you know.
So for me, the real act of creation, everybody is quite enamored of the world building because that's what they see.

Speaker 3 They see the end result. But for me, it's about getting those characters down on the page, bringing it in with my actors.
And the beauty of the two sequels is that I was writing for actors I knew.

Speaker 3 And I could hear the way they'd say it.

Speaker 3 And I didn't feel the dialogue was right until I knew that Slang, Stephen Lang, who plays Corridor, would say it that way, you know, or Sam would say it that way, or Zoe would say it that way.

Speaker 3 And then, of course, I threw a new element in, which is Una Chaplin, who, you know, who plays Varong, who's, you know, pretty, pretty terrifying character

Speaker 3 at times. And I was just making her up out of whole cloth, obviously.
I didn't know who the actor was that was going to

Speaker 3 play her. But that's the part where I think that engagement that you were talking about, it's not just sensory and and visual, it's also heartfelt, right? Yeah,

Speaker 3 and we bring our own human experience to it every time we walk into a movie theater. And I also think a critical part of the engagement is the theatrical experience.
So a lot was made, you know,

Speaker 3 during the rise of like DVD and Blu-ray and all that,

Speaker 3 A lot was made about the fact that, oh, well, you don't have a screen that big. Your sound isn't that good.
The theater is a better experience.

Speaker 3 But we're at the point now where probably your home TV set and your home sound bar and everything is as good as what you're going to see in a movie theater.

Speaker 3 So that goes away. So what's left? What's left is

Speaker 3 in our day-to-day life, we're very fragmented and scattered and distracted and multitasking and

Speaker 3 we're scrolling and

Speaker 3 we're typing and we're connected and

Speaker 3 multi-channeling all simultaneously. Very rarely do we just sit in a meditative state and just focus.
You know,

Speaker 3 people who practice mindfulness and yoga and things like that, they know how to do that,

Speaker 3 and they do it to clear their mind. But

Speaker 3 how often do we do it where we focus on a received experience? You know, some people will sit and read a novel for hours and hours. I think they're a dying breed, unfortunately.

Speaker 3 But the movie theater is one of the last bastions of a focused entertainment where we make a deal with ourselves before we go there, before we leave our homes, we make a deal with ourselves that for two or three hours we're going to be undistracted.

Speaker 3 And then all of a sudden it's like the world goes away and you're on that journey and nothing else matters for that brief period of time.

Speaker 3 And I think that's the real magic of the theatrical experience. And it boils down to one simple thing.
You don't have a remote.

Speaker 3 It's that simple.

Speaker 3 You can't pause it. You can't go order a pizza.
You can't pause it, go to the bathroom.

Speaker 3 You can't be in a room with other family members who are talking and you pause it so you can hear their lame comment.

Speaker 1 Absolutely. I'm kidding.

Speaker 3 No, no, no. The kids don't make lame comments, but they do comment during the movie and I'll pause it and I'm like, yes, you were saying

Speaker 1 that's so funny.

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Speaker 1 Do the kids kids ever look at the movies and go, dad, you just made a character out of me? Like, is there ever that?

Speaker 3 I think they see that there was a moment in time 10 years ago where who I believed they were influenced the creation of a character.

Speaker 3 But I think for them, it's all a big laugh because they say two things. One is, that was 10 years ago.
And two, even then, you didn't really know who I was.

Speaker 1 That's brilliant.

Speaker 1 I want to come back to depth of character, but I wanted to talk about failure because you've told this story before, but the part I wanted to ask about was before you made Terminator, you actually lost a job.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And we won't mention the film because I heard you didn't mention it.

Speaker 1 But like for anyone who's finally found their way, you went from truck driver, starting to make films, you did this small movie. you get fired off a job.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 That almost feels like, all right, well, this is the end of the road. You said you felt fired.

Speaker 3 It felt that way. And it felt like there was going into my first directing gig that I did get fired off of after, I think, six or seven days of shooting.
And not for incompetence, it turns out.

Speaker 3 It turns out that I was being set up the whole time. And when I found that out later, it sort of put it in perspective.
But I believed at the time, I internalized that I was not doing it well.

Speaker 3 And I thought, oh, crap, now I'm worse off than if I hadn't taken the job in the first place. Now I'm at negative 10.
I could have just been at zero. Now I have to dig out of a a hole to get to zero.

Speaker 3 And so then I knew I had to do something extraordinary or something different. I couldn't wait for a directing gig to come to me.
I had to create it for myself. And that's when I wrote the Terminator.

Speaker 3 I thought, I have to write something original, something that I could plausibly make.

Speaker 3 that wouldn't have an enormous budget and it was scaled to you know conventional locations present day city streets that sort of thing so that we could do it relatively cheaply but i but i also thought all right but i've got to inject into it, it can't just be, you know,

Speaker 3 a simple drama. I've got to inject into it something that I bring as expertise.
So my expertise was in design and in visual effects. I thought, all right, so I've got to create a careful balance here.

Speaker 3 The visual effects have to be very limited, but they have to be powerful,

Speaker 3 so that it's not a ridiculous budget like a Star Wars movie that I knew we couldn't afford or nobody would hire me for.

Speaker 3 So then I came up with the idea of a futuristic technology that gets injected into the present day time travel right so there was a logic to the the story elements that i was playing with that was based entirely on being practical and trying to get a gig so would i have come up with that story if i didn't have those constraints i don't know maybe not you know but it all worked out um

Speaker 3 so i thought all right i want this extraordinary thing that requires you know, animation and design, this Terminator, but I'll have it come from the future, which I don't have to see.

Speaker 3 And I'll just see present day. You know, we could just use available light, street lighting, and that sort of thing, which is kind of how we did it.

Speaker 1 That's such a fascinating point you just made, though, that constraints actually led to brilliant creativity.

Speaker 1 It wasn't the other way around. And often we get lost in the trap of, when I have resources,

Speaker 1 I'll make a masterpiece.

Speaker 1 And you made something that's timeless.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's really good. I mean, you know, the resources will come eventually, and that brings its own curse because now you can do anything.

Speaker 3 And when you have infinite choice, you could get paralyzed, right? And an avatar movie is an exercise in limiting choice because when you work with performance capture, I get a great performance.

Speaker 3 But then I can put the camera anywhere I want. I can cut it anywhere I want.
I'm not constrained by just the footage that we were able to grab that day before the sunset.

Speaker 3 It becomes a kind of a problem of infinite choice. I think it makes you a better filmmaker.
Because now, why is the camera going right here?

Speaker 3 Not because that's the farthest back I can move before my ass hits the wall and that's the widest shot I can do. Why is it here?

Speaker 3 And not back there or not over there, you know, and so it forces you to become quite rigorous about your aesthetic. You know, that's a separate problem from getting great performance, by the way.

Speaker 3 And the weird thing about an avatar movie, it's a little weird, is we separate performance from cinematography. We do all the cinematography later.
I don't even think about it.

Speaker 3 I don't think about the camera angles when I'm working with the actors. I know I'll be able to shoot it.

Speaker 3 I don't know exactly how I'll shoot it, but I just care about the heart and the soul and the authenticity of the moment with the actors. Now I'm done with them.

Speaker 3 Now they're all working on another movie. Now it's like, okay, am I on a wide shot, close shot? Am I on a long lens, short lens? Is the camera moving? Is it still? Is it raining? Is it not?

Speaker 3 You know, is it night? Is it day? You can make all those decisions later with that nucleus, that sort of beating heart heart of the performance, but you can interpret it many, many different ways.

Speaker 3 So that idea of

Speaker 3 infinite choice, it can be paralyzing or it can make you more rigorous. And it forces you to define to yourself and to the others you're working with, other editors, other designers,

Speaker 3 why you're doing it that way. And sometimes I just talk.
It's like, okay, you know, I'll just like, I'll talk while I'm working.

Speaker 3 It's like, okay, I can be here, I can be there, I can put the camera here. What do you guys think? You know, and they're like, well, I like the water shot.
It's like, okay, let's do the water shot.

Speaker 3 It gets more inclusive in a way. Not that I'm doubting myself, but it's like, why not? Why wouldn't you be inclusive?

Speaker 1 Yeah, absolutely. And you were so committed to that that you sold it for $1 and rejected all of these amazing studio budgets because they wouldn't let you direct it.

Speaker 3 This is going back to the Terminator. You're talking about the fact that I made a rights deal with Gail Ann Hurd, who was another up-and-comer in the same super low tier as I was.

Speaker 3 And, you know, she had the eye of the tiger, and I recognized in her the same thing she recognized in me, which is that we could get this done. We could make something happen together.

Speaker 3 And so I sold her the rights for a dollar in exchange for a promise. And that promise was worth a lot more than a dollar to me, which was, you will never proceed with this movie.

Speaker 3 I mean, I could have written a 20-page contract to do it,

Speaker 3 but it was like a blood oath, almost literally. I don't think we actually cut our hands, but it was pretty much that.

Speaker 3 And this is before we were romantically involved. This was just us, you know, a nascent producer and a nascent director.

Speaker 3 I said, you will never make this movie without me as a director, and I will never make this movie without you as the producer. And man, they tried to split that team.

Speaker 3 They tried to get her in the rights and

Speaker 3 get another director, you know, and there were times when Gail was beating them up so much on the budget, they took me aside and said, look, we'll make the movie with you, but we've got to get rid of her.

Speaker 3 And I'm like, nope, that ain't going to happen. And she said, nope, that ain't going to happen.
So in a way, everything else flowed from that first film.

Speaker 3 And so that was, you know, that was a dollar well spent.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's, that's, I love that story.

Speaker 1 It just, every time I hear you tell it from when I was doing research and listening to you tell it and even hearing it now, I'm just like, There's such a today, there's such a fixation on getting what you deserve

Speaker 1 and demanding what you deserve. And I think sometimes it sets you up for failure because you could be waiting a long time for someone to give you what you deserve.

Speaker 1 And your career is this constant, well, I'll build what I deserve or I'll take it myself.

Speaker 3 The simple answer is you don't deserve anything. It's just a question of what you can negotiate for yourself and what you can prove.

Speaker 3 prove to the world

Speaker 3 that you're you're capable of right and then and then the money will flow from that and the you know all of those things will flow from that i never was in it for the money, in a sense. I'm still not.

Speaker 3 It's a consequence of doing the job well and reaching people and communicating.

Speaker 3 I am a commercial filmmaker. I don't try to do something that's intentionally obscure or intentionally so kind of intellectual that

Speaker 3 it doesn't connect for the majority of the audience. I'm a bell curve guy.
It's like I want to...

Speaker 3 I want to hit that sweet spot in the middle of the bell curve where I'm communicating with the greatest number of people.

Speaker 3 And there will be some people for whom it is beneath them to even consider enjoying an avatar movie. And there are some people that just don't get it

Speaker 3 on the other end. You know what I mean? But I'm looking at that bell curve.
And I think there are some filmmakers that

Speaker 3 want to

Speaker 3 indicate that they're smarter than the audience and challenge them to try to keep up and pirouette their intelligence.

Speaker 3 Not to say they're not intelligent, but

Speaker 3 come on, guys. It's entertainment.

Speaker 3 It can have deeper meaning. I mean, I like to have thematic layering, you know, and I like to have things that mean something to me.
And if people pick up on it, great.

Speaker 3 But I won't make the story hinge on that, you know.

Speaker 3 So, I don't know. Maybe it's that drive-in movie, you know, College of Cinematic Knowledge, the drive-in movie theaters of Orange County paying off.

Speaker 1 I feel like everyone looks at you, and even these examples you're talking about, there's such a people would say, James Cameron's a risk taker, he takes big risks.

Speaker 1 But do you see yourself that way?

Speaker 1 I feel like it's something more than that.

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 3 I think it's not a question of taking a risk for risk's sake, but I do think the biggest risk as an artist is to not take risks because then you're just doing what you've done and what you know and or what other people have done, which is even worse, you know, just in being in a kind of a comfort zone of mediocrity.

Speaker 3 So yeah, I think you do take risks, but having taken that risk, you then do everything within your power to make sure that you are communicating, that it is working, that you're not jeopardizing large amounts of other people's money by doing something foolish.

Speaker 3 You know, Titanic was a risk. You know, it was a

Speaker 3 very, very expensive film in which basically everybody dies, you know, and it was a period piece, and it was three hours long.

Speaker 3 The only successful film previously that had been three hours long that was a commercial film was a best picture winner, which was Dances with Wolves.

Speaker 3 I always pronounce it Dances with Wolves because it was a name.

Speaker 3 So I always imagine it hyphenated, not Dances with Wolves, which is what most people say.

Speaker 3 And I don't know if that's accurate.

Speaker 3 I never asked anybody, but it probably is.

Speaker 3 And so we were in uncharted territory. I mean, we

Speaker 3 went in knowing it was going to be a long film and that it's a tragic film and that it's a tragic love story,

Speaker 3 pretty risky in a sense. You know, it certainly didn't follow any of the commercial paradigms of the time.

Speaker 3 And we reached a point after we went over budget, even though the film was looking pretty good in the dailies and in the rough cuts, we reached a point where the studio was utterly convinced it was only a question of whether they were going to lose $50 million or $150 million.

Speaker 3 And they were so dead set on an outcome, they almost manifested the outcome they dreaded because of their lack of faith in the film.

Speaker 3 I even almost, in a way, lost faith in the film being commercial, but I never lost faith in it being artistically correct. And that's when I...

Speaker 3 The story's been told, but it's actually true. I literally had a razor blade taped to my avid screen with a little sign that said, use in case film sucks.

Speaker 3 Because I knew that the only way out of this was through, and the only way through was to make the best possible movie you could make.

Speaker 3 Even if I didn't make a dime off it, even if it failed commercially, it had to be good and it had to deliver on

Speaker 3 those artistic principles that we went in with. I knew I had a great cast.
I had great performances.

Speaker 3 And it turned out

Speaker 3 from the moment James Horner played the first,

Speaker 3 he wrote three themes and just reiterated them throughout the score he wrote three themes and he played them for me on his piano in March of 1997 and that's when I knew I had a movie because I cried on all three themes first one I was just like holy shit dude it's amazing you know and I said we've got a score he said I haven't written the score yet I said we've got a score and I wasn't wrong I knew from that moment that it was going to be great.

Speaker 3 And yeah, sure,

Speaker 3 he wrote it, he orchestrated it, he went out, he recorded it with a hundred-piece orchestra. But I knew from that simple piano melody that we were good.

Speaker 3 And I think at that point, I started to have some faith that the movie itself would deliver on what I intended it to deliver. You know, there's a funny point in movies.

Speaker 3 It's okay if I just kind of

Speaker 1 roll it. Please, that's my favorite bit of podcast.

Speaker 3 Please. There's a certain point in making a movie where it's not your movie anymore.
I think it's my movie when I write it. I think the second I cast it, it's not my movie anymore.

Speaker 3 And the second I'm working with designers and we're building sets and all that, now it's got its own momentum, it's got its own life. And there's a point in post-production where it's being received.

Speaker 3 And I don't mean that necessarily in a mystical way, although it might be, I don't know.

Speaker 3 But it's being received from the group's creative energy. what the actors did, what the designers did, what the camera operator did,

Speaker 3 you know, what the DP did. And it's just up to me to see it and see it emerging and then help, assist, you know,

Speaker 3 clear the debris out of the way, get it to kind of emerge.

Speaker 3 And I felt that more so, especially on these last two avatar films than I've ever felt before. You've got a long film, it's half an hour longer than it could be.
You've got to take stuff out.

Speaker 3 So you're paring away and themes are emerging and getting stronger.

Speaker 3 And it even got quite snaky on this last one because I felt the themes emerging so strongly that I actually wrote new scenes and asked the actors to come back and reshape the whole thing.

Speaker 3 For example, there was a scene in the script which we captured where Jake teaches all the Navi how to fire machine guns. I was wrong.

Speaker 3 I didn't want, that's not what the movie was supposed to be saying.

Speaker 3 And so the power, the dark, grim power that comes from when Corach arms the ash people and you see them lift those weapons up and you say, oh oh my God, this whole thing's going wrong.

Speaker 3 I can't have Jake be doing the same thing, but somehow I didn't see that in the writing, but I saw it as it was unveiling itself to me and I called everybody back in.

Speaker 3 I said, guys, you got to come back.

Speaker 3 And the beauty of performance capture is you can recreate the set almost instantly in like an hour. So we just were able to go back into it.

Speaker 3 And I did something else instead, which is I had Jake go get the Toruk, which was also not in the script.

Speaker 3 But when you see it, you think, how could that happen?

Speaker 3 How could that that momentum?

Speaker 1 That's one of the most epic moments of the whole thing.

Speaker 3 Exactly. Well, I had put that in movie four, but I realized I was playing too long a game.

Speaker 3 The scene with him and Spider, which I won't go into the details of, but after that,

Speaker 3 when Netidi says, then we will find another way, that's the only way he's got left is to do the thing. that he dreads the most.
Yes, yes. That he absolutely knows will take something out of his soul.

Speaker 3 But he has to do it. That's the only other way.
And so, you know, sacrifice is a theme that I deal with a lot.

Speaker 3 Duty, because you can't have love without the fear of death, the fear of loss, without the need for sacrifice, without a sense of duty.

Speaker 3 What will you do to prove yourself in a loving relationship?

Speaker 3 Played with that on Titanic, played with that on Aliens,

Speaker 3 played with that on Terminator 2, right? And so these last two avatar films are the same thing. What would Jake and Aetiri do for their children?

Speaker 3 What would they do for their people? And what happens when what is right for the children is not right for the people?

Speaker 3 If the right thing is to go to war, and I know that you're all about peace and purpose and all of that, and I agree with all of those things because I think empathy is our great human superpower which will get us through this somehow.

Speaker 3 But I do believe there are times when you do have to fight. I'm not a total pacifist.

Speaker 3 And I think in my lifetime, there has not been a righteous war that the U.S. has been involved in.
But World War II, when you have a predator that's destroying everything that is of value to people,

Speaker 3 yeah, you have to fight. You have to fight for your survival.
So

Speaker 3 we could have a whole conversation just about this. I know.

Speaker 1 I was just about to say that the,

Speaker 1 well, I was about to say that.

Speaker 3 I'm flipping the script here

Speaker 3 in case you didn't notice.

Speaker 1 No, I was about to say that the spiritual text that I practice and teach and follow is based on a battlefield.

Speaker 1 And it's God or the divine telling the greatest archer of his time to pick up his bow and fight for righteousness and duty.

Speaker 3 For righteousness and duty.

Speaker 1 It makes a lot of, it definitely resonates what you're saying that there is a need.

Speaker 3 Yeah, so I'm an action filmmaker. So, you know, action, I mean, if you think about it, action is just a candy-coated term for violence, right?

Speaker 3 When it's righteous violence practiced by the good guy in defense of good people and so on,

Speaker 3 we spend a lot of time justifying it to ourselves. And I think a lot of the classic cinematic justifications aren't really sufficient,

Speaker 3 which is why I went down the road of having the Tulkun

Speaker 3 be utter pacifists, where they have rejected any kind of violent

Speaker 3 confrontation up to and almost including their own final destruction.

Speaker 3 But they, at the very brink, they decide that there is something

Speaker 3 that they have to rise up for. And when they see the horror of what's happened to Tanok and Piakon's clan and all that, which I think is quite a heart-wrenching scene, even though...

Speaker 1 Oh, that's like, yeah, when you make me feel for Piakon, I'm like, that's like,

Speaker 1 you know, because now you're not even feeling for something that looks remotely human.

Speaker 3 Right, exactly.

Speaker 3 But we're able to see consciousness in others, in the eyes, you know, in dogs,

Speaker 3 in the great apes, you know. I think it's a little harder in birds, even though they're pretty damn smart.

Speaker 3 Whales, though, have a soulfulness. And maybe to some extent we project it onto them, but I don't think so.
There's something very calm about whales.

Speaker 3 They've been greatly injured on our planet. So I think

Speaker 3 what I was trying to express there is, look what we've done to them.

Speaker 3 And they don't don't seem to hate us as much as we would if that was done to us.

Speaker 3 Although there are pods of orcas near Gibraltar and off the Azores that are attacking sailboats now and ripping the rudders off and leaving them adrift.

Speaker 3 Wow. So it's like, are they learning? Are they learning that we're actually not so great for them?

Speaker 3 Orcas have a matriarchal society and the mothers teach the sons behaviors. And so the question is, is this being handed down?

Speaker 3 Because it's been happening a lot in the last few years, and it's the same group, the

Speaker 3 territorial group.

Speaker 1 All of this you're talking about, you spent around 10 years just studying the ocean, right? Like if while you weren't making films at that time, you literally went deep into

Speaker 3 literally everything that you're sharing right now.

Speaker 3 I went as deep as you can go. Mind blown.

Speaker 1 Did you just put everything else away?

Speaker 3 Not really. I kind of kept my hand in.
So after Titanic was a big hit, and I was questioning, you know, is this even important? Is Hollywood even important? It seems like such a glitzy game, and

Speaker 3 it seems kind of quite fatuous.

Speaker 3 And at about that time, I wound up on the NASA Advisory Council, believe it or not. And I looked around a room full of people who were very

Speaker 3 intelligent. Most of them, all of them really, better educated than me, with a strong sense of purpose, right? That they were doing something extraordinary.
They were exploring space.

Speaker 3 And none of them cared about Hollywood. They didn't even know what was happening.
Oh, the Oscars, what's that? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 You know, it's what they, and I could name a movie star they wouldn't even recognize. I mean, sure, there's always little movie fans here and there, but it just mattered to them.

Speaker 3 It didn't matter to them at all. They were doing something far more important.
And that was a real bucket of cold water.

Speaker 3 It's like, oh, all these things, we live in this little self-referential bubble that we think is so important, and it just isn't. And

Speaker 3 so I thought, you know, maybe I'll just explore around a little bit

Speaker 3 just in life, you know, and because I had gotten to do an expedition to the wreck site where I was really now becoming conversant with real deep ocean technology, I thought, why don't I just go down that road?

Speaker 3 I know everybody, you know, I know all the scientists and researchers and submersible people and everything.

Speaker 3 So I just started creating expeditions and building new technical systems, cameras and lighting systems and exploratory vehicles.

Speaker 3 And the other thing I liked about it is the ocean is unforgiving. Either your math is right or your equipment fails.

Speaker 3 It'll implode or the electronics will flood and it won't work and you'll come back with nothing. And that's not a critic's opinion.

Speaker 3 I came up with this idea, this principle that the second law of thermodynamics is not an opinion. It's a law.
It's not some critic's opinion. It's not some journalist's opinion.

Speaker 3 It's not even a fickle audience member's opinion or some,

Speaker 3 you know,

Speaker 3 some blogger's trolling opinion, you know.

Speaker 3 It either works or it doesn't. And I

Speaker 3 really enjoyed immersing myself in a world of hard rules.

Speaker 3 You succeed or you fail, not based on your art or your creativity or somebody else's subjective opinion of your art, because the two don't exist without each other. That's the crazy thing.

Speaker 3 So as an artist, you bury your soul and you can can be utterly rejected.

Speaker 3 But ultimately, the point of art is to communicate with other humans. They may hate it,

Speaker 3 so you put yourself at risk. I thought, you know what, I'm just going to go into an empirical world, a Cartesian world where it either works or it doesn't, based on good engineering.

Speaker 3 And that was good. And I learned some really important human lessons in that world as well, because when you're offshore with a small team,

Speaker 3 It's all about respect and cohesion and that bond. And when you come back to shore, you can't even explain to people how hard it was or why it worked or what it took.

Speaker 3 But that bond exists between those people. And then I realized, okay, we're only as good as our team.

Speaker 3 And when I, after Titanic, I put together a team to do the impossible, which was Avatar. Nobody had ever made a film like that.
It was a new form of cinema. And I remember

Speaker 3 we fell on our ass. Some of the first things we tried, we were face down on the ground.
And we'd stop in the middle of a production day and pull out a table and sit around it.

Speaker 3 And there'd be a bunch of glum faces because it wasn't working. And I say, guys, this may seem like the hardest day of the production.

Speaker 3 This is going to be the day you remember because this is the day we write page 38 of the manual that tells the rest of the world how this stuff works.

Speaker 3 And we're going to do it and we're going to figure it out. It was like, you know, Sully's never quit, right? But, and then we did, and we figured it out.

Speaker 3 And then there's such a feeling of pride and cohesiveness in the group after that. And you start to feel like, okay, bring the next challenge.
We'll figure it out.

Speaker 3 And the team spirit and the team morale is so high now. This was 19 years ago in 2006.
The team spirit and the cohesiveness is so high now.

Speaker 3 People really, they hated when it all came to an end here a few months ago as people dropped off one by one as the project was winding down. And everybody just can't wait to get back to the next one.

Speaker 3 Now, I don't know artistically as a director if that's something I want to do right away, next. There's a pretty strong, I feel a strong pressure on my shoulders

Speaker 3 to do it, to bring that team back together because it's so important for them, you know, and that's not a bad reason to do something at all, you know, to make other people happy is not a bad reason to do something or to make other people feel fulfilled.

Speaker 3 But I also have other things I want to do as well. So it's a little bit of a, it's a little bit of going off a cliff.

Speaker 3 I've told Susie, my wife, that I feel like I'm Wiley Coyote in a Roadrunner cartoon and I just ran off the cliff

Speaker 3 and I haven't hit the ground yet. There's that moment where my legs are pinwheeling in the air, you know.
Yeah, but that's okay. That's okay.

Speaker 3 The scariest moments are always the moments of the greatest opportunity, I think.

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Speaker 1 When you're building a universe with people, you're building lives and hearts and worlds that connect on such a deep level.

Speaker 1 I feel like when I'm listening to you, I'm like, everything you do is highly emotional and emotive and heartfelt and deep. And you can't help but cry when you're watching your work.

Speaker 1 You know, maybe not Terminator, but what follows, or maybe, maybe. Oh, Terminator too.

Speaker 3 And the Terminator goes, come on, when he goes there again, when he goes down into the steel and his POE goes

Speaker 3 to nothing, come on. Yes, people tear up.

Speaker 1 Yes, yes. No, and so you see that.
And I'm like, it feels like the emotion of creating it,

Speaker 1 whatever we're getting out of it is because the emotion that's creating it is going into it.

Speaker 1 And this team that you are curating is bringing all of that emotion, as you said, whether it was the Pantheos that are building the, you know, the physical buildings in the movie, or whether it's the emotion that the characters are feeling and Tuka is feeling and etc.

Speaker 1 How do you even start to detach from that as a team when you've been immersed in it for decades at this point?

Speaker 3 Maybe you don't.

Speaker 3 Maybe you just keep going. I don't know.
Well, look, I mean, there are a number of milestones here that have to be met. First of all, the film has to succeed financially, and that's not a given.

Speaker 3 Everybody just assumes it's a no-brainer, but the theatrical marketplace has been dwindling and collapsing about 35%. It hasn't rebounded, and people's habit patterns have changed.

Speaker 3 And so the thing that I grew up and love and feel such

Speaker 3 a strong sense of passion for may be becoming obsolete

Speaker 3 maybe and the cost of making movies is continuously going up and the demand is falling so that's a little bit of a death spiral right there you know and so maybe it's maybe it's going to be okay we were sort of successful if we can do the next one cheaper we can continue right

Speaker 3 and then there's also that wild card you know there are other projects that i have that I've been sort of sitting on in the in the background and there's a thing that I want to do about Hiroshima I bought a book recently but it's a story I've been following and

Speaker 3 you know excavating and researching for really my whole adult life it's something that I really feel strongly I need to do at some point it's not a big film sounds like it would be but it's not a big film in the sense of an avatar film it's not a four-year commitment it might be a one-year commitment

Speaker 3 So I need to do that.

Speaker 1 Why is that so meaningful to you? What about it?

Speaker 3 I just think that we live in this world. I mean, I think Catherine Bigelow's film title is kind of growing on me, The House of Dynamite.
It's like we live in a house.

Speaker 3 Imagine you live in a house and you feel perfectly normal and you go about your business and you're chopping onions for the guacamole and you're going to watch your favorite show, but the basement is filled with dynamite and it could go off at any moment.

Speaker 3 That's the world that we live in, you know, and that it hits that metaphor. And so it's not a metaphor.
It's our world.

Speaker 3 So I feel that we have a kind of a systematic forgetting of history, you know, just at that remove, and we're enough removed from the event of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I think people need to be reminded what these weapons really are and what they really do.

Speaker 3 Of course, the punchline of the movie is going to be the card at the end that says, there are 12,000 nuclear warheads. deployed in the world today.

Speaker 3 Each one is 100 to 500 times more powerful than the one that destroyed Hiroshima.

Speaker 3 And you're going going to witness it, and you're going to go through it with the main characters, and it's not going to be pretty. It might be a hard film to watch.

Speaker 3 In fact, it might be my least successful film, but I just feel

Speaker 3 it's that thing of duty.

Speaker 3 You're all about purpose. We define our own purpose.

Speaker 3 We choose purpose for ourselves. And it doesn't all have to be

Speaker 3 obviously benevolent, like, you know, maybe helping out a soup kitchen

Speaker 3 and easing the pain of others. It might be something that's more of a warning that helps guide us away from the rocks of destruction, of civilization.

Speaker 3 As an artist, I think it's important to consider these things, you know, and not feel powerless. Because it's easy in a world of 8 billion people to feel powerless.

Speaker 3 And yet empirically, I can look at it, oh, I'm reaching millions of people. I'm reaching hundreds of millions of people with a movie like Avatar.
You know, maybe

Speaker 3 I won't reach as many people with a movie like Ghosts of Hiroshima, but I'll reach some.

Speaker 3 You know, and you never know, you never know the causal chain that puts a person out a moment where they've been influenced by something.

Speaker 1 But you have it even in Fire and Ash.

Speaker 1 I mean, that scene that you were referencing without giving too much away of Quarage actually arming, you know, and all of a sudden you see the becoming of terrorists, like that idea of the government, you know, all these messages are just, I feel like there are so many deep layers to the movie you could keep going, whether it's family, whether it's racism, whether it's equality, whether it's equity, whether it's, you know, whether it goes down all the way through to governmental politics that we're seeing today.

Speaker 1 I mean, the movie is filled with so many powerful messages.

Speaker 3 And just seeing each other. You know, ultimately, it all goes back to connection and equity.
Is that the root? Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 3 You know, there are two moments in the film where people say they see each other and they understand each other.

Speaker 3 And one gives you this feeling of vast dread when Varong says she sees Korraj Koraj and she sees this vision of destruction and for herself you know she's she's like you know Kali

Speaker 3 right

Speaker 3 and then when Netiri sees Spider you know,

Speaker 3 and there's a bridge across the two species, across that divide, across that, because she becomes quite a racist in the film, and that's by design.

Speaker 3 It's like we take our most beloved character and we challenge you to really walk in her shoes and go the hard yards of what loss and grief can do.

Speaker 3 And I think about all these people and everything that they've lost in the world, whether it's in Gaza or Sudan or Ukraine or wherever, and how does that not generate just a hatred that will span generations?

Speaker 3 Well, that's the cycle that we have to break, right? You know,

Speaker 3 Loak says something at the beginning. And it's kind of like a little cheeky to actually say your theme out loud, you know, in the voice over here.
I'm going to tell you what the movie's about, okay?

Speaker 3 You know, and he says

Speaker 3 the fire of hate leaves only the ash of grief. But he doesn't complete it, which is that from that ash of grief comes that fire of hate again, and the cycle perpetuates indefinitely.

Speaker 3 So how do you break it? Right? That's the challenge, I think, that's presented in the movie. You know, how do you break it? And how do you know when it's not about hatred and revenge and when

Speaker 3 you fight defensively defensively for the things that you value, you know, as opposed to offensively going out after somebody to punish them for revenge, to take what's theirs, you know.

Speaker 3 And you see all of that happening in the world right now, all over the place. And

Speaker 3 you wonder, this is, I'm going to circle this back to AI for a second.

Speaker 3 The thing that the proponents of artificial superintelligence always say is, well, we'll manage the alignment problem. We'll align AI to our common good as human beings.

Speaker 3 But we can't agree on a damn thing. We can't agree on what's right and wrong, what's ethical, what's moral.

Speaker 3 You know, a Republican's idea of that is very different from a Democrat's, a Muslim, a Christian, a Hindu, you know, a Shintoist, whatever it is, everybody's got a different opinion.

Speaker 3 And we can't agree on anything. So, how are we going to suddenly form this wonderful moral consensus so we can teach it to something smarter than us that we can't control.

Speaker 3 I mean, if that's not the biggest recipe for disaster I've ever heard in my life, what is?

Speaker 3 You know?

Speaker 3 Now I am a science fiction fan and it always goes into the darkest possible, you know, scenario because that's where science fiction goes because it's meant to be a warning to us about possible futures.

Speaker 3 But okay, I mean we're living in a science fiction world right now.

Speaker 3 You know, so I look at you, I look into your eyes, I see your kind of soulfulness and your enlightenment and all the things that you do and why you do it.

Speaker 3 And I think, all right, that's why we're going to make it because there are people who are practitioners of empathy and connection and they're out there and they are Legion.

Speaker 3 They just don't ever seem to get into positions of power

Speaker 3 where it really

Speaker 3 makes a big difference. It just seems like all the wrong people elevate.
I don't know how you feel about that. And I I don't know if that keeps you up at night.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, I think that's partly why I try and do what I do, because I think I saw that for a long time.

Speaker 1 And of course, what I love about the way you build character, which is true of me or anyone, is that no one's perfect.

Speaker 1 Everyone's flawed and has multiple, you know, when you look at all of the characters in Fire and Ash, like. they're not just good and bad.

Speaker 1 Like that would be, and hence, hence the scene we were just talking about with Spider, like that moment is so, I mean, I can't believe you went there i was like wow this is like really testing yeah you know everything that i believe to be true about this family and i'm not giving it away hence speaking in broad terms but so so to be really clear there's no one who's perfect or flawless or you know and of course i have all of those challenges myself but

Speaker 1 I find that what I try and do by having this platform and by having these types of conversations with people like yourself and allow for these, we've like my vision, and I think you'll relate to to this based on what you were saying i love the bell curve too so when i started this my vision was to make wisdom go viral i said i wanted to find a way that hundreds of millions or billions of people would engage with themes yes that were at one point saved for the elite or

Speaker 3 yeah yeah right right and

Speaker 1 We do that. We do 750 million views a month

Speaker 1 about conversations like this, which is proof to me

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 people want this. And so I think we may, I agree with you.
I don't think we'll do it through the traditional means.

Speaker 1 But art and creativity, and now the microphone belongs to everyone, there is an opportunity to galvanize community and connect to these higher populations.

Speaker 3 We have to do what we can do. Our voice may carry not very far or it may ripple outward very far.
We have to do what we can do. And for me, what drives me is being a parent, you know, and knowing that

Speaker 3 there is a legacy that's being handed to my kids by my generation,

Speaker 3 and I just want it to be the best that it can be. It's not going to be perfect.

Speaker 3 It might not even be that great, but everything that people like yourself and hopefully I do can improve it incrementally, you know.

Speaker 3 And so anyway, you just keep banging away at it, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, I think the stories you tell do that in the most

Speaker 1 profound way. And I do think that

Speaker 1 art transcends so many things in the world, as you said. And anyone can sit in that room, forget their designation or their seat or their status and watch a movie about humanity and connection.

Speaker 3 Well, you're using the term connection, and I think of that as an extension of our impulse to empathy. We have a natural human impulse toward empathy.

Speaker 3 I think we all have it, unless you're a psychopath, and that's 1% of the population. So 99% of the population has an impulse toward empathy.

Speaker 3 I think where empathy goes awry is that it's narrow and powerful as opposed to more diffuse, right? So when we have

Speaker 3 an empathy for our family, for our children, for our friends, then everybody else starts to look like an enemy.

Speaker 3 And I think it's that narrow spotlight of empathy where it breaks down.

Speaker 3 On the other hand, we can hear a story about somebody in another state or another country, and all of a sudden we're weeping for that person because our mirror non allows us to feel their pain,

Speaker 3 right? But we can't feel the pain of the world.

Speaker 3 But we have to. We have to.
We have to be able to expand it, not where it crushes us, but to where we don't see the other as an enemy, but somebody who's maybe an equal victim with us of

Speaker 3 a kind of

Speaker 3 a world that

Speaker 3 can go against you. And, you know, medically, in any kind of moment, you know, things can go against you.
And there are people that are less fortunate, people that are more fortunate.

Speaker 3 But people never feel like they have enough. That's the problem.

Speaker 1 It's not that they're greedy.

Speaker 3 It's that they never have enough to feel completely secure and safe for their family.

Speaker 3 So there's a certain point where you have to be willing to risk your own family and risk your own comfort for the good of a greater group. And that's a very, very hard place for most people to go.

Speaker 3 Absolutely.

Speaker 3 But there's an image that I always wanted in one of the avatar movies, which is seeing that world

Speaker 3 from orbit at night

Speaker 3 where you see everything connected.

Speaker 3 Those little glowing,

Speaker 3 you basically see the mind or the heart of Ewa, of that connected. connectedness.
And so I managed to squeeze it in. I managed to squeeze it into this film.
And hopefully people will resonate

Speaker 3 for what it means, what it's meant to mean anyway.

Speaker 1 James, I have a warning from your team is you have to get up to the event. So I want to end with a final five that we do with every guest.

Speaker 1 I could talk to you for hours, and I hope we do get to talk more offline. But we end every interview with these final five.
They have to be answered in one word to one sentence maximum. Okay.

Speaker 1 So James Cameron.

Speaker 3 We can do a six-paragraph long sentence.

Speaker 1 Okay. So we ask these to every guest.
James Cameron, these are are your final five. Question one: What is the best advice you've ever heard or received?

Speaker 3 I had a teacher that said,

Speaker 3 you have unlimited potential.

Speaker 3 And he meant it.

Speaker 3 And it changed a lot for me.

Speaker 1 It's a great answer. Yeah.
Question number two: What is the worst advice you ever heard or received?

Speaker 3 Roger Corman told me to always sit down on set.

Speaker 1 Do you stand up a lot?

Speaker 3 I never sit down.

Speaker 1 That's a great answer. Question number three.
What's the hardest thing you've learned about yourself that shaped your art?

Speaker 3 The movie is not more important than the process of working with people to make the movie. Wow.

Speaker 3 That took 40 years.

Speaker 3 No, maybe 30.

Speaker 1 The people are more important.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, it's beautiful uh question number four

Speaker 3 tell us the real reason why jack couldn't fit on the door you went there i had to okay this interview is over

Speaker 3 um

Speaker 3 because his chivalry demanded it it's a great answer he loved her and he would not take a chance that they could both survive if they could both die

Speaker 3 that's a great answer yeah and yeah by the way Romeo and Juliet had to die.

Speaker 1 But there's sacrifice duty in your themes.

Speaker 3 Love, death, sacrifice, duty. They're all related and they're all thematic in all of my films.

Speaker 1 Why do you think that is?

Speaker 3 I don't know.

Speaker 1 You're still discovering that? Still curious about that?

Speaker 3 Where that comes from? Can I speak in longer? Yeah, please.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, that's a big question.

Speaker 3 I don't know because

Speaker 3 these are things that I'm finding later in life I actually am confronting and having to deal with, but in early life, they just made sense to me. You know,

Speaker 3 I always say all my movies are love stories, but they're not necessarily conventional love stories. Duty and sacrifice are things that I don't even know if it's enculturated.

Speaker 3 It might even be just biological. It might just be innate.
I don't know, or some combination. I think Canadians in general tend to be less selfish.

Speaker 3 But, you know, you can't generalize about an entire population. And there were some real assholes in the town I grew up in.
So, you know,

Speaker 3 I don't know where that comes from. But it's a belief system.

Speaker 3 Definitely a belief system.

Speaker 1 I'm glad I asked you that question now because we've

Speaker 1 got an answer that just, yeah,

Speaker 1 shares so much more of your heart and where it all comes from. Fifth and final question: we ask this to every guest who's ever been on the show.

Speaker 1 If you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be?

Speaker 3 A law.

Speaker 3 Wow.

Speaker 3 Legislating morality, that's a hard thing.

Speaker 3 See the person in front of you.

Speaker 3 I don't know how you'd enforce that. Just see them.

Speaker 1 What does it mean to see?

Speaker 3 See who they are.

Speaker 3 See who they are on the inside.

Speaker 3 You know.

Speaker 3 In the avatar universe, I see you can mean I understand you. It can mean very simply, I see you, you're here, hello.
It's like hello. It can be, I see something about you I never saw before.

Speaker 3 I understand you. It can mean I love you, meaning that fullness of understanding another person that goes to a higher level.

Speaker 3 It's got many layers of meaning in Navi lore. It's very deceptively simple, you know.

Speaker 3 But it goes back to that empathy thing, it goes back to the mirror neuron, it goes back to projecting yourself into their situation.

Speaker 3 I also find that there's a little thing I do where it doesn't matter where I am, especially if I'm in a car or I'm just meeting some driver that's driving me from the airport or I'm on the street or I'm killing time someplace.

Speaker 3 I just start talking to people

Speaker 3 and I want to hear their story, you know.

Speaker 3 People that the average person would think that a person like me would never talk to. You know, the the janitor,

Speaker 3 the guy selling the churro,

Speaker 3 I just want to talk to them. Maybe it's a writer's instinct, you know, to want to hear stories, because I think everybody is a universe.

Speaker 3 And, you know, that sort of Trump idea that they're all a bunch of losers and they're not worth anything drives me insane, you know.

Speaker 3 Because it's not about social standing or status or having a PhD or the argument from authority, oh, his argument, argument may, you know, his opinion is more important than that person.

Speaker 3 You know, I just want to hear everybody's stories. I find them all fascinating because we all are on this unique path, and we're all, our camera is viewing the world from a unique position.

Speaker 1 I felt that most in watching Sully and Courage's relationship through fire and ash.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of seeing each other

Speaker 1 in different moments, which in moments you don't expect it.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and

Speaker 3 the story definitely teases to a potential.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 You know.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 We can't give everything away.

Speaker 1 Well, I can't wait to watch it again. I'm going to take my family when I get back to London for Christmas.
I'm so excited, James. I hope we do see four and five happen.
I can't wait to watch them.

Speaker 1 We'll see.

Speaker 3 We'll see. See them with four.

Speaker 1 But such a pleasure sitting with you. Thank you for your energy, your presence, your connection with me today.
And I hope for many more. So thank you so much.

Speaker 3 Well, thanks. Thanks, Jay.
Really, really a wonderful interview, you know, and I'm glad we got to go to important, meaningful things instead of all the stupid stuff I normally get asked.

Speaker 1 I only asked you one.

Speaker 3 You did.

Speaker 3 You definitely went there on that one. But you know what? At this point, it's like there are worse problems to have than people still arguing about the demise of a character from 28 years ago.

Speaker 3 You know, as a filmmaker, it's kind of like, great. Thank you.
Thank you for that.

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JAMES CAMERON: Inside the Mind of One of the Most Iconic Filmmakers in History (Greatest Risks, Biggest Failures, & His KEY Principles to Success)

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