James Cameron horror stories- Is he the new "uncompromising" director?
kelpzoidzl
Hoping it's a good film. Here's his horror stories.
Mentions Cameron's Conversion to Kubrick, after viewing 2001 A Space
Oddyssey
Has James Cameron, Hollywood's scariest man, blown £200 million on the
biggest movie flop ever?
By Nicole Lampert
Last updated at 8:41 PM on 11th December 2009
James Cameron's favourite phrases is: 'I eat pressure for breakfast.'
He likes to shout it at the worried film executives who see the
budgets for his films spiralling out of all control and are pleading
with him to stop the spending.
He barks it at the exhausted, tearful actors who beg for a break and
the put-upon designers who have made an alien slightly the wrong shade
of blue.
And he is probably muttering it to himself several times a day this
week as, once again, he puts his career on the line.
As the creator of some of the 20th century's most popular films,
Cameron's talent is not in doubt. But with his latest movie Avatar
being branded the most expensive film ever made at $300million
(£200million) - breaking the record he first set with Aliens ($100
million) and then with Titanic ($200million) - the pressure is most
certainly on.
Because as untrammelled ego-fuelled ventures go, they do not get much
bigger than Avatar.
Overwhelmingly confident in his own vision, this week Cameron said he
could not envisage Avatar failing: 'It's hard for me to imagine that
it's not going to work for people.'
But executives at Fox, the company which has put up the majority of
the money, are 'very scared, nay terrified, that it is all going to go
wrong', one movie insider told me.
The question is, has Hollywood's most monstrous genius finally gone
mad?
After all, his latest project hinges on his rather eccentric belief
that he can make cinemagoers fall in love with blue people.
They, the blue people, are the Na'vi, the inhabitants of the idyllic
world of Pandora, which evil humans are trying to colonise in Avatar's
tale of good versus evil with a love story at its core.
Cameron, 55, first envisaged the concept for the film 14 years ago -
but it has its roots even further back than that; when he saw Star
Wars and realised George Lucas was living his dream career. He has
been working on his science fiction epic solidly for four years. And
his attention to (some would say obsession with) detail has known no
bounds. Nearly two of those years were spent just creating the
technology to make the film possible.
Along the way, he helped reinvent the way 3D is filmed and made
computer-generated scenes perfectly mirror human emotions by creating
a camera which can detect movements made by the actor's muscles under
their skin.
Some of the characters in Avatar come from drawings the science
fiction geek first drew as a child (he is a talented artist). Its
world, the extraterrestrial moon Pandora, is peopled entirely from his
imagination and its heroes, the Na'vi, are ten feet tall blue aliens
he loves like his own family.
His mastery of the whole project is astonishing: he is the
scriptwriter, the producer, the director, the cameraman, the picture
editor, the special effects creator and even - at times - the makeup
man. 'I always do make-up touch-ups myself, especially for blood,
wounds, and dirt,' he says. 'It saves so much time.'
Cameron, then, is the ultimate control freak. He hired a linguistics
expert, Professor Paul Frommer, to devise a whole language for the
Na'vi based on Maori (Cameron became intrigued by the language after
spending time in New Zealand).
He also hired a professor of plant physiology, Jodie Holt, to help
create the plant life on Pandora based on sea vegetation.
There are 3,000 different special effects in Avatar; Cameron has
studied each of them at
least 20 times. Whether a rock looked too soft, or an alien too
gentle, Cameron would send it back to the drawing board. 'If I wanted
it done this badly I'd hire a f***ing temp,' is one of his preferred
insults to people who have worked tirelessly on a project for days on
end.
You can't work for Cameron without devoting your whole life to the
project. Fourteen-hour days are mandatory. Twenty-hour days are
common. Cameron does not need to sleep for more than four hours a
night.
On watery film sets such as The Abyss and Titanic, cast and crew would
often be in chilly water for ten hours a day causing colds, flu and
even kidney infections.
On the set of True Lies, his 1994 film with Arnold Schwarzenegger and
Jamie Lee Curtis, he told everyone that using the lavatory was a
sackable offence and he meant it.
On the set of The Abyss, where many of the crew found their hair
bleached albino white because they were in chlorinated water for so
many hours, actress Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio reportedly ran from
the set crying 'We are not animals', when he suggested the cast
relieve themselves in their wetsuits to save time.
His temper is legendary and he is known as the scariest man in
Hollywood. Even his friends recognise his dark side - an alter ego
they have nicknamed MIJ (Jim backwards).
Kate Winslet, whose role in Titanic made her a huge star, says she
would never work with the director again after her 'ordeal' in which
she nearly drowned, came down with flu and chipped a small bone in her
elbow.
'He's a nice guy, but the problem was that his vision for the film was
as clear as it was. He has a temper like you wouldn't believe. There
were times I was genuinely frightened of him.'
BUT there are no apologies from Cameron; indeed, he seems to revel in
his reputation. 'I think what is misunderstood about my particular
film-making process is that I get people to go that extra mile that
they've never done before and they go into new territory,' he says.
'They go beyond what they previously thought were their limits, and
then afterwards they talk about it like it was a big adventure: "Oh,
man, we worked around the clock and you know, we all almost died."
'The more I can lead other people into these situations where they all
think they're going to die, the more fun I'm having. We have a few
people that don't like my version of day camp, but I would say that 80
or 90per cent of them feel like they've been through something.
They've done the best that they've done in their professional
careers.'
In fairness, there are some who do love it. Sigourney Weaver, who
worked with him on Aliens, is back for Avatar. While Avatar actress
Michelle Rodriguez says: 'That guy is so amazing. He thinks in 12
dimensions at all times. He can sit there and talk for hours about the
advancements in molecular science, about mythology and story building,
character building. This guy is a genius.'
Still, Sam Worthington, who plays hero Jake Sully in the new film,
admits Cameron pushed them all to the limit to get the scenes he was
looking for, including physically hitting him. 'He'd throw foam or
debris to get me to react, because the action was being created later
on the computer. And Jim would go: "Hmm, this ain't working, right, so
I'll just hit you with a stick." '
It is no surprise that few women have been able to cope with Cameron's
obsessive standards and workaholism. He loves strong women, both in
his work and his life - but the two seldom go hand in hand. It is no
surprise that he has been married five times - with his break-ups
usually coinciding with the times he has been working on a movie.
His longest relationship was with Sharon Williams, whom he met when
she worked as a waitress in a truckers' bar and he was still an 18-
year-old lorry driver. They were married for 12 years and she
supported his film-making ambitions, working two jobs, as he gained an
apprenticeship at the lowbudget New World Studio.
But they split when he started making The Terminator, an idea that
came to him in a dream, and he got together with his second wife,
Terminator producer Gale Anne Hurd.
It is no surprise that few women have been able to cope with Cameron's
obsessive standardsTogether they also produced Aliens, but the
marriage imploded when they worked on The Abyss together. Within
months he had fallen for director Kathryn Bigelow (best known for
surfing thriller Point Break) when he went scouting for actors on a
film she was working on.
They married in August 1989 but by the time he had starting producing
Terminator 2 a year later the marriage had soured and he was rumoured
to be involved with the film's leading lady Linda Hamilton.
His divorce from Kathryn came through just two years after they wed
and, sure enough, Linda Hamilton then moved into Cameron's Malibu
house. A year later she was pregnant with his first child, Josephine,
but several months after the baby was born, she moved out.
For five years the pair would have a strange relationship - officially
still a couple yet living apart. She is the only one of his wives ever
to talk about marriage with Cameron. 'The very first night, I realised
it was a mistake,' she revealed this month. '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.'
She found herself having to join him on adventure weekends in the
desert, flying model planes and shooting; he was simply not interested
in a more conventional life.
'It was Jimbo who had the love of fast cars, but as the warrior bride
I was on the back of the motorcycle,' she said. 'He used to say to me:
"Anybody can be a father or a husband. There are only five people in
the world who can do what I do, and I'm going for that."'
While filming Titanic, he fell for actress Suzy Amis, who had a small
part in the film. But, torn between the women in his life, he went
back to Linda and married her. The marriage lasted just eight months
before he went back to Amis, who he has been married to for the past
nine years. They have three children.
Although there are many who consider the way Cameron treats other
people as a mark of his genius, it has made him plenty of enemies in
Tinseltown.
AJ Benza, an actor and television host, tells me: 'James's tactics on
set made Sigourney Weaver cry, made Linda Hamilton cry, Kate Winslet
cry and Jessica Alba cry. What kind of a person does that? There's got
to be some deep-rooted stuff going on in his brain.'
Cameron's view? 'What people call obsession or passion, for me it's
just a work ethic. I think it comes from an insecurity that I'm not
good enough
Born in Kapuskasing near Niagara Falls in Canada, his father was an
electrical engineer and his mother an artist. He did not get on with
his father and became engrossed in science fiction from an early age.
His epiphany came when he saw Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.
He saw the film ten times and became obsessed with the accompanying
'behind the scenes' book, and painstakingly recreated the story with
rockets and planets that he had made.
Although he had a natural aptitude and love of engineering, he turned
his back on it - mainly, it seems, to annoy his father. He says of his
early career: 'I would say that my father was completely unsupportive
in any way, shape or form and was sharpening his knives waiting for me
to fail, so he could say: "Ah-ha, I was right. You should have gone
into engineering."
'Because there was zero support there, it made me angry enough that I
had to succeed. It made me mad and I had to prove that I was right,
and it made me mad enough to get good and to survive.'
Today, his custard- coloured mansion in the secluded Serra Retreat
near Malibu beach is filled to the brim with movie memorabilia from
his own films, and others which he has bought at auction.
Now, with his great alien epic, there are many people who are hoping
Avatar will prove his nemesis.
Websites have called the film an alien version of Dances With Wolves -
a notoriously costly gamble - while special half-hour previews of
Avatar, released earlier this year, played to almost empty theatres.
For all its high-tech, cutting-edge graphics, the public has to
emotionally connect with Cameron's protagonists. And the big question
is, will they fall in love with 10ft tall blue aliens?
At a high-security screening earlier this week (in typical control-
freak fashion, everyone there had to sign a contract stating they
would not review the film until Monday) the reaction was profoundly
mixed.
'Why should we care about blue people?' asked one critic. Another
found the film 'a bit preachy about the environment'.
More worryingly for Cameron, the 3D effects, which are supposed to
mean that Avatar is the 'first film of the future', left several
viewers feeling nauseous. 'I definitely would not eat before seeing
the film,' one told me.
Cameron is hoping that people will love Avatar so much that they will
want to see it not just once, but four times. He certainly needs
people to fall that much in love with it to recoup his excessive
costs.
But while his gamble with Titanic paid off handsomely, there is a
real, and growing, concern that Avatar may be an obsession too far for
Cameron - and that the only monster that people will remember is the
one who made it. "
matthewdickinson
> good article on Cameron ---the new anti hollywood director?
>
> Hoping it's a good film. Here's his horror stories.
>
> Mentions Cameron's Conversion to Kubrick, after viewing 2001 A Space
> Oddyssey
>
> Has James Cameron, Hollywood's scariest man, blown £200 million on the
> biggest movie flop ever?
>
>
> By Nicole Lampert
>
What an awful article!!!! James Cameron is a not monster!!! James
Cameron is the director of Titanic, Terminator, Aliens and True
Lies!!! So what if he hit Sam Worthington with some foam? How much is
Sam Worthington getting paid? He probably deserves to get hit with a
truck. I fucking hate this article. I hate all British people. That
was the biggest mistake Stanley Kubrick ever made: to move to Great
Britain. The worst fucking country in this stupid world. I hate great
britain. I hope all the Arabs take over that retarded country and I
hope it stays a CCTV hell too. I fucking hate British people. I don't
care if my last name is British in origin. All British people are
JERKS. Just watch "Abigail's Party"! They're all a bunch of jerks.
matthewdickinson
wrote:
http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/9051/fuckingwhoresinbritaini.png
kelpzoidzl
>
> - Show quoted text -
My only question about that is do you have a Leica? Are you getting
one?
dc
The Other
> good article on Cameron ---the new anti hollywood director?
Cameron IS Hollywood (calling him 'anti-hollywood' is like calling
Gordon Gecko 'anti-wall street'). He's a typical film mogul, all
irrational bluster and psychopathic misanthropy, a bullying thug with
the infantilist mindset of a tantrum-throwing three-year-old child.
The irony, of course, is that he's a total slave to technology, his
films entirely in the service of (a brutal, imperialist) technology,
his simple-minded, reactionary 'stories' an after-thought to Special
Effects. He's the opposite of Kubrick, for whom technology was purely
in the service of an artistic vision. Cameron isn't an artist, he's an
unhinged meglomaniacal technician. And his manic misogyny, oh christ:
his conception of the ideal 'woman' would be a (stereotypically
altered) mirror image of his own looney narcissism: a Sergeant Hartman
- with TITS!
>
> Hoping it's a good film.
It's an dumb ad for silly 3d special effects
Success could only happen if he brought on the Terminator/Governator
to kill all the Blue People ...
matthewdickinson
>
> > - Show quoted text -
>
> My only question about that is do you have a Leica? Are you getting
> one?
>
>
> - Show quoted text -
Stop stalking me!
kelpzoidzl
>
> > > - Show quoted text -
>
> > My only question about that is do you have a Leica? Are you getting
> > one?
>
> > dc- Hide quoted text -
>
> > - Show quoted text -
>
> Stop stalking me!
>
You are stalking my thread duh
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9JTkWZlrsk
dc
MP
like blurry people walking amongst cardboard cut-out scenery and the
story is nothing but a clothes-line of cliches. It's like "Ferngully"
meets "Princess Mononoke" meets "The Last Samura" meets "Pocahontas"
meets "The New World" meets "Dances With Wolves" meets "Lawrence of
Arabia" etc...only more cheesy.
There's also lots of ecological utopianism all over the place. Cameron
has gone from "technology is bad, the machines will kill us!" to
"nature is good, hug a tree!" Everyone in the film is using their
"brain stems" to literally connect themselves directly to "trees",
"animals" and "nature" as though we can get back to our roots and
become "one with the earth".
Being Canadian, there's also lots of America/Iraq War bashing, which
might have worked if it wasn't also so pro-chlorophyll.
I thought Cameron would have at least delivered some great action
sequences, but nope. There's nothing here as exciting as "Terminator"
or "Aliens". Watching the film I thought spectacle was dead (500
million buy this?), but nope, everyone applauded and there was a
chorus of "wow, Ive never seen that befores".
kelpzoidzl
I can't be that hard on it. I wasn't blown away by the movie, but I
enjoyed it for it's fantasy imagery. It was a huge advancement in
terms of integrating the CGI and Motion Capture. That alone makes it
worth it in terms of technology. Still the 3D requires dumb glasses
which dim the film image slightly like watching a movie through light
sunglasses and the background tends to washout, while the foreground,
does tend to have a cut-out look.
It has some nice imagery and beauty, but has a familiar look to anyone
whose played World of Warcraft, complete with the "WorldTree" on a
good computer. It has a more realistic look then any Video Game,
even if the scenery and creatures seem familiar. I had a sense of
missing the interactivity of Warcraft. I wanted to fly the dragons.
I haven't seen the Avatar Videogame, that was released on the 1st, but
it's getting mixed reviews. Apparently Cameron had considered a full
blown MMO, but the costs were too high and too speculative in terms of
making a profit, considering the competition, but it does have 3D.
Perhaps Cameron should have ONLY made a video game and concentrated on
improving that media, because a film is not interactive, but were the
video game to have the realism of the film, the bandwidth and Computer
power, would be excessive as a MMO----and Cameron would have been up
against the reality that he would have had to dumb down the graphics
to run on older, less powerful computers. As a fully blown MMO the
internet just isn't good enough yet. Looking at the videos of the
game play of the game that was released, it looks nice, but then looks
like it turns into yet another shoot em up.
For me the best scenes in the film were those flying dragon scenes.
But that is all very familiar to anyone who's played Warcraft---except
in WOW you are controlling where and how you fly, while in thise we
see a finer quality and realism, but have no control over flying.
The live action scenes with the Marines, were similar but more
expensive and more spectacular, then Aliens, but the banter was not as
effective or humorous. There is no terrific monster threat, even the
most frightening mosters were dealt with rather easily so the tension
isn't based in monster suspense. Those chase scenes remined me of the
jackson King Kong, It's about on the same level as Aliens, but
without the "horror," suspense and add the Fanatsy world instead.
The film's plot has a similar device as seen in previous films, were
the hereo lies down and his mind enters some a different space.
Dreamscape, The Cell (underated IMO), and a few others films whose
name escapes me atm.
I like it better and find the cinematic story more interesting then
Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. It is not as stiff as either (Not
talking about LOTR book, which is a materpiece),
I don't see any real politics in it. Tyranny vs. freedom loving is
nothing new and there is no political history from any country, that
hasn't seen or participated in oppression.
The young actress in the film is very good. I kinda thought her 10
foot tall blue body was kind hot, in a furry kind of way.:)
Surprisingly I think the film worked more as a romance, then anything
else.
So score high on a pure hearted, unique romance and flying dragon
scenes and cinematic fantasy art and a new level of CGI/MoCap.
If I think of how this would have been, had I seen this as a 10 year
old---well it would be a timeless classic.
If this is the first of a series of films---all by Cameron--- i'd be
happier with it. as a standalone, it needs more story.
I want to see it again and see if I missed anything, but i'll wait til
it come out on a 3D dvd,
dc
kelpzoidzl
On second thought I think I'll see it in the IMAX 3D version with
family members at Christmas get together. I didn't realize it had an
IMAX 3D version, I should have known.
I didn't mention above, that the not-wide-screen-enough, aspect ratio
disappointed me.
dc
kelpzoidzl
show, Fringe always has people on tables with electrodes on their
head and body. That film about tthe med students researching the
death experience...what was the name a that...Julia Roebert was in
it....Of course Frankenstein has the strapped down scenes and
countless other sci-fi horror. The Jim Carrey film, what was that
called....and Altered States, he became an ape in the isolation tank
experience.
Perhaps some hidden domination fantasy? Wanting some skilled Doctor
transform you....the ultimate Plastic Surgery. "I want to be a ten
foot tall blue, Warrior"
Mandy in the morgue in EWS--her programming was finsihed. Alex of
course but instead strapped to a chair.
Programming, conditioning---like the film Avatar itself. Part real
part virtual. Bowman who became a new creature.
Like creating your own Avatar in WOW or Second Life or countless RPG
games. You become someone else in your mind. Thus the film title.
The Na'vi called him a Dreamwalker. Sigourney is also a dreamwalker.
In a sense this is like aboriginal veneration of people that come from
a dream. or even an Angel coming to help. I bet the Na'vi religion
involves use of a entheogen of the Salvinorum variety.
The idea of the weird tail tendrils fusing to nature was interesting,
clearly sexual connectivity.
dc