James Cameron's Full 2010 Interview for Avatar

james cameron is here or i should say james cameron is back he is a director and writer for avatar the movie has resonated around the globe it has become the highest grossing film of all time box office numbers worldwide have surpassed two billion dollars it replaced the second highest grossing film which james cameron also made that was titanic avatar has received nine oscar nominations it is tied in nomination with catherine bigelow's the hurt locker he and catherine were married they are still friends this is a contest everybody is somehow obsessed by if there is a good time to be james cameron it has to be now i am pleased to have him back on this program to talk about this little movie and what it says about the rest of us welcome well thank you for that introduction it's a pleasure and a pleasure to meet you thank you thank you well we'll get into all of this again let me just talk about why do you think it is doing so well beyond the technology beyond the 3d yeah i think well we didn't see this coming uh yeah we expected that we were making a commercial film it had action it had this this whole other world we kind of knew what worked about the movie um and i think it's actually the sum total of all the elements it's no there's no one thing it's not just the 3d not just the visual effects i think it's driven a lot by the fact that people are having a strong emotional reaction in the film i think it's driven a lot by the fact that it's a it's a film for women as much as men and for families meaning that parents can take their children parents can take their parents grandparents can take their grandkids you know and it's that cross-generational thing and trans cultural thing that that gets you to this kind of stratospheric level and i'm only saying that because we saw the same thing with titanic even though it was a very different film is there any different in terms of region do the audience react differently in china than they do in spain i haven't actually sat through a screening in china but our results in china are phenomenal they're off the scale uh and uh you know it'll be the highest grossing film in in china and you know so i'm guessing that they're they're responding in the same way to the to the universalities of the human experience uh uh in the film i think they're probably if i have to guess and and what i can tell from the reports i'm getting there they're crying in the same places and they're cheering the same places so they're getting it there's something almost almost the sort of uh the simplicity of the story seems to transcend cultures very very easily and the strength of the visual the simplicity of the story is what other people are drawn to they say this is a classic story uh and it's been criticized for that exactly right yeah i mean what's the message here that you the filmmaker were trying to say well you know it's it's a it's probably my most personal film in the sense that i can i can track the inception of this film over or development period of many years from when i was a a kid out in the woods in in canada where i where i grew up catching frogs and snakes and being a kind of hands-on you know junior naturalist you know through uh learning to scuba dive and loving the loving the ocean so much and and you know it's my response to this world this pandora right here this this you know natural beauty and diversity that we have here and then through the the development as a as a filmmaker learning the craft learning the visual effects learning how to push the envelope and all that so for me avatar is is a sum total of of all of that um and so my you know i wanted that environmental theme in there i wanted those kind of spiritual themes in there this the studio of course in their in their way tried to get me to down peddle that oh they did oh yeah absolutely sure what did they say well look it's common i would say it was common wisdom at least prior to avatar that you didn't do that in a mainstream film you don't put political messages in them yeah especially environmental messages i mean it was death you know if if it got out that there was an environmental message to this film it would cost us 50 of our box office that would be the the classic thinking on it so what they did not want you to do what well you know i mean the the the the request was uh is there a way to cut down on this sort of you know hippie tree hugging stuff what do you think was the sure yeah absolutely i mean look it's a legitimate concern but that's what why i wanted to make the film in the first place that was the the fundamental driver because you know after after titanic i didn't have to make another movie if i didn't want to and i did all these cool expeditions yeah it worked out you know and i had other interests frankly i was doing explosions what do you hope the movie convinces people about that the planet planet is fragile that somehow you know we don't take care of it it's going to be consumed by our own appetites yeah i think is that it i think that that we are in a very precarious position as as humans we're not going to destroy nature we can't do that nature will heal but our our life as as the human species will be radically changed we're going to go through a lot of a lot of pain and heartache if we don't acknowledge our kind of stewardship responsibilities to nature because we're in a unique position in history that's never existed before where there's enough of us and there's enough of an impact created by our industrialized society that we're actually changing the world that we live on and that's never happened before and we're sort of in the middle of it so we don't see it happening and there's this you know human nature is such that we believe that if it's worked for several thousand years it's going to continue to work but that's not the case business as usual isn't going to work here's what the critics say not those studio bosses this is doubt that avatar is deeply stupid it is relentlessly stupid he's taken left every left-wing cliche about politics about religion the environment the military imperialism big business vietnam george w bush you name it from a generation's worth of preachy hollywood movies and crammed them all into a single teeming blockbuster right there you go exactly that's what you did and it must just every cliche you could find just pour it on let's it must drive him nuts that people love that so much you know and i think that's obviously deeply demeaning to the to the audience that has found something in the film and and frankly i think it's an attempt to deflect from the real issue uh which is that people are connecting to the message of the film as well as the as the visuals and the characters too i mean i like the characters but i mean here it's the noble savage thing that drops them crazy too yeah intellectuals are not intellectual people who who have an insight and a sense of history saying this is the noble savage all over again of course it is it's the it's the the rousseau fantasy yeah of the noble savage but that's why the film works we look intellectually we can know that there is no such creature as someone who lives a perfect harmonious life in nature that nature nature in a perfect place and by the way it's a very hostile place where they have to hunt for a living and they can be hunted so there's there are even different interpretations of what is harmony with nature harmony of nate in harmony with nature is knowing your place in the food chain and that in fact you may be the prey it's not holding hands singing in a field of daisies you know but you know i think i think the fact that people respond to the the na'vi the the character the characters respond to their philosophy of connectedness to the earth and to each other means that we have that within ourselves but here's what they were bothered by to the critics of this message it is that they have to be rescued by uh that's a different criticism though i know it's very different but that's another criticism that's the that's the that's the the left-wing criticism of the movie that's exactly that it's paternalistic that which is which is a form of religion somebody from every planet earth has to come over and rescue the navy from the bad people who want to do in their planet you see i think that they're looking at at the film from a kind of a civil rights aspect instead of from a historical perspective the historical perspective is that when indigenous populations who are at a bow and arrow level are met with technologically superior military forces that have muskets you know blunderbusses and and ships and horses with armor and so on which is the history of the colonial period they lose if somebody doesn't help them they lose it's not a question of them standing up for themselves they can't do it and historically that has been the case so we're not talking about uh uh you know a racial group within an existing population fighting for those cannot win alone absolutely that's what you're saying historically there's only one instance that i know of on this planet where they have actually prevailed and become a legitimate part of the ongoing culture once the europeans invaded and that's in new zealand where the maori because they're they're tough bastards basically managed to fight them to a draw and get a decent treaty that they all live by but but in here in in south america and central america they just got subsumed or enslaved or or uh you know or marginalized david brooks in the new york times no you're you're lining them up this is good break bring it bring it bring it on bring it it rests on the stereotype that white people are rationalist and technocratic while colonial victims are spiritual and athletic it wrecks on it rests on the assumption that non-whites need the white messiah to lead their crusades it rests on the assumption that illiteracy is the path to grace it also creates a sort of two-edged cultural imperialism natives can either have their history shaped by cruel imperialist or benevolent ones but either way they're going to be supporting actors in our journey to self-admiration interesting yeah well there's a lot i've already talked about the white messiah right concept and and how i i think that's frankly not appropriate it's just it's not germane to what the movie's doing i think some of the other stuff there was a little confusing and i'm i'm hearing it for the first time but i think that people are are it's a summary of what he's saying i think they're a little bit missing the point of how the movie works and how it's intended to work the way i intended the film to work and the way i believe it is working is that when people view the film they uh are told initially that the navi are bad and they're hostile ferocious and that they're going to try to kill you and then you meet them and you find out that in fact they're actually pretty pretty fearsome but as you start to see the world more from their perspective and our hero goes on this journey of perceptual change we begin to embrace them more and more and really we emerge from the end of the film on the side of the of the navi which really means that we've got 180 degrees and we're looking at ourselves now from the outside that's what science fiction can do that that all the other literary forms can't do we can actually look at ourselves from the outside through through a mirror or a lens of this of this fantasy allegorical story so we see ourselves human culture human civilization as nature sees us as the intruder as the invader as that which is threatening and for and when people have that in within the film they feel they feel a sense of moral outrage so the united states for example should see itself as imperialistic uh as i think that they're destroying its own environment as yes absolutely all developed nations are destroying their environment some to different degrees and of course the developing nations are even worse because they don't even have the luxury of being able to protect their their environment as they try to scramble up the the ladder of of development to to a stronger economy if you look at what's happening in china and india you know they they have much for growth that and we have to chain we have to have we have to be able to grow an economy sustainably in a way that we're not doing right now and we're you know we are we are jeopardizing the the uh the the we're jeopardizing everything on this planet because as things it's not it's not about nature yes we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna hit the planet hard we're doing it right now but the effect of that is that there's gonna be chaos between between nations for food supply diminishing foods apply as populations water always to climb water is going to be critical aquifers are falling all of this stuff yeah and we're in denial about it exactly everybody that i know who thinks seriously about the future makes that point sure whether it has to do with food whether it has to do energy water whether it has to do with energy you know scarcity becomes a point of political conflict that's right exactly and it will drive conflict and it will it will crash economies and it will create chaos and it's going to be a very unpleasant time for us to go through if we don't get a handle on these things right now to me the way i look at it and i've done a tremendous amount of personal research on this not not necessarily as part of avatar is that all of the curves seem to converge out 10 15 20 years in the future having to do with population the way our agricultural resources are stretched to the limit they're highly dependent on cheap energy which is going away we're not replacing it with alternative energy rapidly enough all the trends you know the falling aquifers the rising climate all these trends all converge um and and we're not getting a handle on it quickly enough i mean look at copenhagen which was a bust you know and if we don't and if we don't it's a seize of our own yeah it's and look human race is not going to be wiped out we we will adjust we'll survive where we're resourceful people but you know hundreds of millions of people are going to be displaced uh you're going to have refugees and situations so you hope that people who go in will be i assume and they are i assume will be entertained absolutely that's that's number one yes you know you are a commercial filmmaker anybody in the history of cinema has ever been a commercial filmmaker you are the king and you had to go there it was not pretty it though it was cheap too but it was a cheap shot yeah but it's okay i set myself up for it you know there's nothing like the academy awards for making a fool of yourself in front of a billion people what is it you know what did you say at the golden globe then you know i always thought you were okay yeah i spoke a little knobby to my cat he was doing something like that yeah yeah i mean do you think do you want the world and certainly the developed world to wake up is that yeah that you want to be on being entertained by your characters and your story and your technology you want them to wake up look i have no illusions about the efficacy of entertainment motion picture in changing public policy it's going to be a minor contribution but here's where i think it can work and where it hasn't historically worked but where it can work which is we've got the facts we've seen inconvenient truth we've we've read all the magazine articles we we collectively as a society know that there are these issues but as a society we're in denial well what is denial but a mental mechanism in response to an emotional uh reaction which is fear fear of change fear of an uncertain future fear for our children uh and and the fear generates the denial so i figure you fight an emotion with an emotion avatar doesn't teach you facts it doesn't have one bar graph in it it's not inconvenient truth but it does create a sense of emotional outrage and it creates a sense of hopefulness toward the end as good conquers and could you hope it creates a sense of urgency absolutely that's right that's right and people do do uh the message does resonate for them because they recognize it when you want a movie to have impact with a message mayor said if you want to send a message go to western union exactly you don't buy that do you no i don't think so look you know going back to what i said before i didn't really need to make another film and i wanted to do something that was personal and that i thought had some thematic value to it and you know so i threw everything i had at getting it uh at making it a great piece of entertainment and that was the 3d and the cg and the and the the creating the world and everything i knew how to do every trick i knew to get people to come to a theater and then every trick i knew as a filmmaker to to engage them in terms of the the story and the actors and so on and part of that was telling a story that was simple in the in the in an art archetypal manner that located them comfortably so they could have an emotional reaction here is my point though i mean does everything to to have the impact does it always have to be white hat bad hat uh if you can you make it more nuanced and if you do will you you lose something both in terms of commercial value or in terms of political value well you know look we're kind of in uncharted territory with this movie because it's a big 200 million plus dollar production four-year production big mainstream hollywood picture that is dealing with social political cultural environmental themes that's in a very narrow category because i can't point to other examples of that the studios try to stay away from that stuff they don't want to lose one ticket sale to somebody who might be upset by you know you know a message um so you know they they they caution away from that and generally speaking the common wisdom is you know you don't do it and in fact you do it in a smaller picture you know yeah um so it's a little bit uncharted uncharted territory so i was just trying you know i mean every movie is a big experiment and sometimes they're social experiments and i was hoping that there was a way to create an emotional reaction and and gravitate the public conversation to these to these topics fair enough but i mean you did this because this is what you do is your point if i was talking about jim cameron i i wouldn't say he could have gone off and and and set up shop on his yacht that's not who you are you are a filmmaker you are a guy who wants to be in there and you are running against yourself yeah you ran against titanic in terms of creating another film you had to make something that was beyond whatever else had gone before that's the nature of you maybe i'm being you know i think so you know i think that's very accurate i think maybe i'm being charitable but i think that that filmmakers always run against themselves it's part of running it's pointless to try to compete with other filmmakers because everybody's got a different vision and a different you know agenda different bit of communication that they want to do but you do run against yourself in the sense that you want to do the job better you want to learn from what's gone before you want to beat your personal best right you know and i'm not talking about money i'm not talking about box office uh because we didn't imagine that we would we would you know blow past titanic like like we did uh but but communicating you know at it to a global audience that i like to do that i like to engage people in different languages because i'm speaking in cinema not because i'm speaking in english or in french or or whatever else you're going to make another one it'll either be a you can write a book about this going to be a prequel to this are you not no well i'm going to i'm going to figure more tell us more about how the navies came into being yeah yeah there's i mean i had planned this novel project for a long time and i just never had time to finish it before the film came out and you know so i'm going to do it in the next few months assuming i can write a novel this is a more uncharted territory but and and then we'll continue to the extent that i can get deals worked out with 20th century fox and all that will continue with this this world because it all exists we have the hard drives that have all the plants and animals and everything all ready to go tell me how this in any way is in the same place as star wars well star wars was a film that when i was in my early 20s really blew my mind in a couple of ways because it was it was a milestone in the creation of new cinematic technique and in that case they were using motion control systems which didn't really exist before to create these dynamic uh moving landscapes and lucas did so many things that were groundbreaking on that film that it just blew away an audience with the shock of the new and the and the wonder of brand new characters new mythology all that quality of the sound quality of the sound quality of the just of the image in general it really elevated fantasy filmmaking to to he leapfrogged over a couple of quantum steps and you know i always remember that and the film before that that did that for me was 2001 a space odyssey because there's really sort of all science fiction before that film and then everything after and i think of star wars very much the same way so we sat down to to conceive this project i said i want to pull out all the stops i want to do that i want to blow people away with something they've never seen before now that's a lofty goal and a very difficult goal because there's been so much improvement in the cg technology over the last uh 15 years that that it's very people are just inundated by imagery that they they don't understand how it's made it's all sort of magical so how do you do that you know and it seemed like we had to create a photo real seamless complete world and all the characters and and creatures in it and that's a huge order but we knew that that was that was the goal you know mount everest you know and you made the goal and we did we did but you don't measure by commercial existence do you measure it by whether this puts you in the pantheon of 2001 space odyssey and star wars that's the question that remains to be seen that's a historical analysis you can't tell that it gets well look i think we're definitely that's what you were shooting for in your judgment did you make it is that where you wanted to go you want to be up there on that level of filmmaking stanley kubrick yeah george lucas james cameron is it here is it there i don't know what i know is in the relative it's in the ballpark because relative to the you know the films that have come out in the last few years people seem to be getting more of a sense of a profound experience out of this and whether that comes from the 3d or from the imagery the dreamlike quality of the film what i call the lucid dream aspect of it whether it's the story whether it's all those things i think the very first question you asked me was what's contributing to the success how do you account for it and my answer was it's all of those things combined because i don't think you fight the battle on one for the war on one front i think you fight it on as many fronts as you as you can to create a to create a a kind of an all-consuming experience tell me what's the most important thing you know about storytelling you have to find a key into the to the heart of the audience which means you have to find universals of human experience and then express them in exotic new ways so you've got to find something that people recognize simple as boy meets girl on a ship which is going to sink but the knowledge that it's going to sink was a critical part of that storytelling because otherwise you had two hours of of women and corsets and funny hats before anything happened before the ship even hit the iceberg but if you know it's sinking you hang around for all that you see what i mean so that was a part of the storytelling but i think it's always about the characters and about how those characters express something that the audience is feeling so it has to have some universality to it having to do with relationships whether it's parent child male female whatever it is and then you have to take them on a on a journey and then you have to make it excruciating excruciating excruciating they have to be challenged they have to be in danger they have to be in pain they have to be feared triumphant tension and triumphant triumph yeah right exactly that's an element of it some form of triumph some form of triumph exactly whether it's a values or a victory something yeah in the case of titanic everybody died including at the very end of the film the main character but she lived a life that she had learned there was an energy transfer from one character to another which i also think is a fundamental of a love story that there is some flow of energy from one one character to the other and so i applied that rule set at a very abstract level to avatars it's a very different story obviously different setting different characters different goals to the to the uh to the to the story and to the relationships but there's i think you can step back to a very abstract level of general principles and if you apply those principles it'll work what do you make of this competition between you and catherine bigelow two very different people who married but more than that two people who share this sense of wanting to be good filmmakers yeah yeah i think we're really not that different in in so many ways and we know that about each other that we're both dedicated to the craft and it's for both of us it's very much about the about the work and about a total consuming passion for filmmaking and uh you know i think that's what drew us together is you know the the each respected the others passion and and craft and so on plus she wasn't gorgeous it was gorgeous you know but you know i mean it's not real and our mind is not a competition that's a narrative that's imposed by by others because it's you know it's it makes a good story uh we're so celebratory of each other's work and we've remained you know i i produced two of her films one of which i i produced wrote wrote and produced right uh wrote it with jay cox right uh after we were divorced and so we've worked together and we've we've been uh you know supportive colleagues she saw avatar five times at different stages of its of its development from very crucial you would go show it to her and say tell me what do you think yeah she'd come over and she and and tirelessly come over watch the film this is over a period of six or eight months and give me notes and and even mark bowle who who wrote her locker came and gave him very good notes very good very helpful notes and they shared hurt locker with me earlier on right and i my note was very simple don't change a damn thing you know because they showed it to me fairly late in the process because i had been shooting and i said don't change the damn thing this thing is great and they were of course very so great i think just because it's consummately good filmmaking excuse me constantly good filmmaking i mean you are in those guys shoes and you're there i mean i've i've been at screenings and watched people literally sit on the edge of their seat literally i mean you hear that expression all the time literally sit forward for the entire movie hands clenched like this it's that tight it's that taut you know and for her i mean she's outgunned the guys you know definitely and of course her person you're not surprised by that not at all not at all because she's always done that but it's the recognition you know finally the recognition catching up with the scope of her talent so if someone's sitting there says look i'm going to give it to cameron best picture but bigelow best director that would be a fantasy that would be my fantasy outcome absolutely that would be what you'd like to see that's the that's the best possible outcome because it's because i know how hard my team worked and how much they would how proud they would be of that accolade you know what i mean look for myself i've already i've already got an oscar i've got a couple of them you know and and and i resp i r i respect the whole institution of the academy awards because it's so it's the pinnacle of achievement in in my chosen profession but i don't really need another one but to be honored uh you know have the team honored and for their accomplishment that it would mean so much to them and i think that's that that would be the fantasy outcome in all of this so you're saying to the voters please take a look at my team and go for us his best picture but you know yeah and i vote for catherine bigelow for best director i you know i i mean all i can say is that that would make me very happy if that uh you know i don't want to try to then if director for james cameron honestly yes i believe absolutely absolutely i mean i just think she's worked so hard for so long and there's something very irresistible about the idea of of a woman finally being anointed in that role it's ridiculously long overdue and she of course would reject that being a woman should have anything to do with it and that's what's cool about it yeah you know we'll see thank you for coming i mean this is i love film as you know and for you to come and talk about it in an interesting way uh well it's always a pleasure you know because we get a chance to talk about cool stuff and you were well prepared you had every negative review you could find you sent your people out it's good it was like a good a good singles tennis match you know i like that i like tennis uh james cameron the director and writer of avatar of film that's gotten all the commercial success you could ever hope and at the same time critical success because of its nine nominations uh for the academy award and what it's already won in other awards that have already been granted what can you say the people have spoken back in a moment stay with us

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Length: 29min 44sec (1784 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 25 2020