James Cameron: ‘The downside of being attracted to independent women is that they don’t need you’
Do you agree that a film director is the most important and responsible person in film production? The director provides the most important input - direction.The screenplay is just raw material on paper for a group of people to bring to life. That group relies on the director for a cohesive vision, decisions, and direction.The director should know cinema grammar, directing actors in order to get the optimal performances out of them, have a keen sense of pacing and editing, and making the movie an 'experience' that holds together rather well. What duties does this job involve? Film Director responsibilities include reading and editing scripts, directing film crews and actors, and overseeing the production of the final film. What are the most important qualities of a film director? I will name 5 skills that to my mind is the most important in this type of job, so it’s technological expertise, flexible creativity, leadership approach, writing/visual storytelling and understanding of how communication really works
Who are the greatest film directors in the world and Hollywood in particular? So according to the google the highest-grossing film director is Steven Spielberg Is James Cameron one of them? James Cameron ranks sixth in the list of highest-grossing film directors, but we can take into account that Cameron directed only 10 films meanwhile Spielberg more than thirty. What are his most famous films? The most well-known projects are Titanic and Avatar
Who do you think the director says this about, women in his life or female characters in his films? I think in his films he portrays women in which he himself could fall in love. This quote directly refers not only to his fictional heroines on the screen but also to the women who left an indelible mark on his personality.
What ideas do you get about Cameron’s attitude to women or/and his relationships with them? As I understand it he chooses women with strong character the same as his, that’s why it’s hard to maintain this relationships balanced. Their temperaments always clashes with each other, maybe there was a lot of quarrels because no one doesn’t want to compromise. And at the end of the day he acted like he’s a director even in his private life.
What is the subject of the interview, according to the introductory paragraph? The introductory paragraph gave a hint that the article was about his working process and his relationships with his filming crew and maybe some kind of misunderstandings that he overcome. What other issues does the interview deal with? Eventually the interview also covered his private life, his plans about future projects and how he dealt with his bossiness at work.
When did Hadley Freeman interview James Cameron before? What did they talk about then? They met in 2012 to promote the 3D blue-ray release of Titanic
What stories about Cameron’s obsessiveness circulate in Hollywood? the story where he got so furious about the fact that one of the crew members’ phones rang on the Avatar set that he nail-gunned it to the wall, phone obviously not the crew member but still the crew took to wearing T-shirts that said: “You can’t scare me, I work for Jim Cameron.”
How different was Cameron’s behaviour in the second interview? Instead of prowling around the room, now he is , his handshake friendly as opposed to bone-crushing.What question did the interviewer ask the director in both interviews? “Why couldn’t Rose just share her giant board with Jack instead of leaving him to freeze in the ocean?” Was his response the same? He’s approach to the answer changed but his vision is still the same What conclusion does she make about Cameron in the second interview? That he grown
How has his behaviour at work changed, according to the director? “Yeah, I think my demeanour at work is much more congenial,” How does he explain this change? “I’ve learned that, OK, the film is important but quality of life is also important.”So I realised that it’s good to have a good movie at the end of a job, but it’s not the most important thing. The working environment is very important,” What explanation does Hadley Freeman suggest?
What is Cameron’s “big-scale” approach to directing films? How does he explain it? “I look for things that haven’t been done. I like finding that gap between everything that hasn’t been done and what I think can be done. Everything I’ve ever done has been based on that little gap: every expedition, every piece of robotics that we built, every camera system, the deep-ocean stuff – it all falls into that same pattern,”
Why is Terminator 2 the interviewer’s favourite Cameron movie? Partly this is because it was the first of his films I saw in a cinema – Cameron is the ultimate film-maker who needs to be experienced on the big screen – and feeling my mouth drop open as I saw the T-1000 (Robert Patrick) morph from liquid metal into human, using technology invented by Cameron, remains one of my most memorable movie experiences.
What is the purpose of rendering Terminator 2 (as well as his other films) 3D, according to Cameron? “We’ll never be able to reproduce the shock of the new that the film created in its day, but we can now give you a very sumptuous experience,” he adds. This need to create an “experience” is why Cameron has been spending such an inordinate amount of time rendering his back catalogue 3D.
What does Hadley Freeman think gives his films an enduring appeal? What really gives his films an enduring appeal is that he is a proper storyteller, which is why his movies are so fun
How did Cameron change Schwarzenegger’s character in Terminator 2? Cameron knew he was aiming for mass appeal and so he took Schwarzenegger’s character, a terrifying killing machine in the first Terminator movie, and turned him into a kind of comedy exchange student, an alien in a foreign world that both bewilders and charms him. Was the actor initially enthusiastic about that change? “Arnold HATED it – he even tried to talk me out of it! But I said: ‘No, this is what we’re doing, it’s really cool.’ And along the way, he saw the wisdom of it,”
What could have prevented Terminator 2 from becoming a big box-office hit? it could have all gone so wrong, had one of the producers had their way. “Mike Medevoy at Orion called me up one night and said: ‘I just went to this party and I got the movie cast!’ Now, of course, every film-maker loves to hear that some douche executive has cast your movie for you,” he says. “And he said: ‘OK, OJ Simpson for the Terminator.’ I was like: ‘Hey Mike! Bad idea! You’re going to have this black athlete chasing this white girl around LA with a fricking knife and a gun? We’re not doing that.’ Which was fortunate, but also unfortunate in that life ended up imitating art there.”
What makes this film special, according to Hadley Freeman? What reasons
does she give?Does Cameron share the excitement over the film Wonder Woman? What does he think of its heroine? How does he compare her with Sarah Connor? Do you think he is fair and objective in his judgement? Do you agree with him? “All of the self-congratulatory back-patting Hollywood’s been doing over Wonder Woman has been so misguided. She’s an objectified icon, and it’s just male Hollywood doing the same old thing! I’m not saying I didn’t like the movie but, to me, it’s a step backwards. Sarah Connor was not a beauty icon. She was strong, she was troubled, she was a terrible mother, and she earned the respect of the audience through pure grit. And to me, [the benefit of characters like Sarah] is so obvious. I mean, half the audience is female!”
In what respect are women in his life, his wives in particular, similar to his female characters? What does he say about it? Cameron doesn’t only writing strong women – he has quite a habit of marrying them. He has been married five times now, and his previous wives include director Kathryn Bigelow and two women closely involved in the Terminator movies: first, producer Gale Ann Hurd and then Hamilton.
“Being attracted to strong independent women has the downside that they’re strong independent women – they inherently don’t need you!”
How does Hamilton explain her breakup with Cameron? “The very first night [I moved in with him], I realised I made a mistake,” she said in 2009. “He was the controlling director. The person I’d seen on set came back to life – we’re in his environment, and I didn’t have much of a say-so.”
How does Cameron prefer to spend vacations with his family? “My idea of a vacation is to take the whole family to Tahiti and spend the week doing underwater photography with underwater vehicles.”
What views does he hold on the world’s future? Why? Nonetheless, Cameron you would never guess that he is tied up for the next eight years making another four – four! – Avatar movies, as well as about the world’s future. A vegan and committed environmentalist, he is, unsurprisingly, not a Trump fan.“There’s nothing that he’s done since he took office that should surprise anyone, but it’s about as horrific as it can be. At a critical point in history when we should have been making progress, we’re going in the wrong direction. The toll in human misery in the future was going to be big anyway, and it’s now going to be greater,” he says.