← On Purpose with Jay Shetty
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
JAMES CAMERON: Inside the Mind of One of the Most Iconic Filmmakers in History (Greatest Risks, Biggest Failures, & His KEY Principles to Success)
01:32:35
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- [00:00]
Jay Shetty
This is the Iheart Podcast. Guaranteed Human Checking off the boxes on your to do list is a great way to keep your mind clear. That's why a State Farm agent is there to help you choose a coverage option that's right for you as you go through life getting that new house, car, boat, motorcycle or even rv. Helping protect it is always a good idea whether you prefer talking in person, on the phone or on the award winning app. State Farm is there to help protect what's important to you. And with so many coverage options, it's nice having help to find what fits for you like a good neighbor. State Farm is there. Radhi. We're always talking about being intentional with our time and energy, right? What about gifting with intention? Apple Gift Card is perfect.
- [00:53]
James Cameron
They can use it for meditation apps.
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Commercial Voiceover
On the App Store or audiobooks from Apple Books. Whatever nourishes their mind best.
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Jay Shetty
Exactly. It's a gift of possibilities aligned with their personal growth journey. Visit applegiftcard.apple.com to learn more and Gift with purpose Today, Amazon has everything for everyone on your list. Like my wife Radhi, who somehow nails every holiday photo while I look like I got caught mid sneeze. I'm getting us something new to wear in our holiday photos. But here's the thing. Even if you wait until the very last minute, Amazon has you covered. Fitness, toys, home decor, electronics, even fashion delivered fast enough to skip the parking lot panic and still show up with gifts that feel thoughtful. Shop gifts for everyone. Amazon. Everything for everyone on your list.
- [01:46]
James Cameron
Opportunities come along and they're fleeting and that door will open for a moment and then it'll slide closed when that door opens. The critical thing is to understand it's not an example of an opportunity, it is the opportunity. You either take it or you don't.
- [02:01]
Jay Shetty
Hey everyone. Welcome back to On Purpose. Today's guest is someone I'm deeply excited to interview. His life is truly movie magic in so many ways, but it is filled with lessons, insights and inspiration that you can take 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. You won't regret it. Please welcome to On Purpose, James Cameron. James, it is such an honor.
- [03:19]
James Cameron
Can you just travel around with me for the rest of my life and do the introduction? No pressure, by the way.
- [03:26]
Jay Shetty
Well, you had to build it. You had to live it.
- [03:29]
James Cameron
I got to live it. I have no choice. There's no backing out now, right?
- [03:34]
Jay Shetty
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.
- [03:47]
James Cameron
Okay.
- [03:48]
Jay Shetty
Because I feel that so much of who we become is defined in those early years, as you and I both know. 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?
- [04:07]
James Cameron
Well, I was totally enamored as a kid with anything fantastic or science fiction. Anything I saw on television, that was fantasy and science fiction. But I remember one. 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. So seeing my Mysterious island, which was a Ray Harryhausen film, I probably would have been seven or eight and coming home and wanting to do my own version of Mysterious Island. So I started to draw essentially a comic book, 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. So technically, that would be the first case I can remember of world building inspired by something else, but not copying that thing. And, of course, Ray Harryhausen was always inspiring to me as a kid, you know, I mean, the technique that he used of stop motion animation is considered quite quaint now, you know, and we can do things that are far more realistic. 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. 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? I'm drawing, I'm choosing colors. What color do I want the giant turtle to be? I picked green. No big surprise there.
- [05:54]
Jay Shetty
Did you ever get to share that with the director or anyone in the cast?
- [05:58]
James Cameron
I did talk, I talked to Ray later in his life. He was pretty retired. He hadn't done any stop motion for some time. But you know, I shared with 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.
- [06:18]
Jay Shetty
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.
- [06:25]
James Cameron
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 he couldn't have imagined the technology, but he certainly could have imag the design and the storytelling, you know, that were possible with those new tools.
- [06:45]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, no, I think that's the power of art. 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. Because he probably didn't imagine that, you know, James Cameron as a 7 or 8 year old was watching his film.
- [07:10]
James Cameron
Oh, 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 inspired. Inspired, 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. It's in 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. 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. 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. 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? You're stuck.
- [08:10]
Jay Shetty
You're an artist and you feel compelled.
- [08:13]
James Cameron
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you don't question it. That's the crazy thing. At least I never did. You know, I'd. I'd sit on the. 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 or, you know, I mean, it was just always drawing. I couldn't imagine not drawing.
- [08:36]
Jay Shetty
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?
- [08:44]
James Cameron
You think so? Yeah. I mean, look, it can get very solitary, the creative act, especially when you write, because you really have to just isolate. And you need to be in your own headspace and be comfortable there for long periods of time. 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. Yes, right.
- [09:11]
Jay Shetty
Very true.
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James Cameron
Because memory is an interesting thing. We don't really. We're not video cameras. There isn't enough storage in this 3 1/2 pound meat computer to last a lifetime. 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. The story I tell myself is that I spend 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 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. You know, the one in the neighborhood that always said, hey guys, let's build a fort. Hey guys, let's build a go kart. 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 alpha social component, which is now critical, but there was also a quiet creative and introspective component to It. 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. 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. And so that's a big part of it, that sort of alpha component, if you will.
- [10:44]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, absolutely. 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. 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.
- [11:08]
James Cameron
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. 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. And most of them sort of rejected the learning process. I was always hungry to learn. Not necessarily what they were teaching, but. But, you know, lots of new things. I got to college and I was surrounded by people that actually wanted to be there and wanted to learn. And there was. People were having arguments about philosophy and 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. 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. I got married at a very early age. I had a little. A little pink house with a white picket fence and a dog, you know, and it was kind of, you know, kind of comforting. It was very, very limited and simple. But at the same time, in my after hours as a truck driver, because it was a, you know, 9 to 5 or an 8 to 5 job. I was painting, I was drawing, I was storytelling for myself. My wife didn't understand that. She was a waitress, and she liked the me that was social and with her, but not the me that was off, you know, creating all these worlds. And so I was still trying to reconcile, you know, that kind of social facing versus the, you know, landscape of my own imagination. But I'VE always been comfortable in my own head that way. Dreams are a big part of it. Dreams are a big part of my creativity. A source of imagery, source of little bits and pieces of narrative, you know. Cause it could be quite chaotic and jumbled, but still within that, there could be some interesting ideas. And so I. I think it was all just building up. Building up a pressure to the point where I had to do something about it. And that was in my. 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, you know, so no formal training in film aesthetics or. Or film history or. Or any of that stuff, 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. 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. You're probably going to be a filmmaker or a writer or whatever it is. You know, just accept it. You know, you might never be rich because, you know, it's. It's a difficult task and there's a lot of luck, I think, involved in getting to be a. A successful storyteller. But I just followed and I didn't. I didn't question it. You know, I just quit my job one day. No rancor, just guys, I got stuff to do. I'll see you to my other. The other drivers. And they're like, what? Where are you going?
- [14:17]
Jay Shetty
You know, I mean, it feels like a bold step, looking back, because without film school, without having made a film.
- [14:23]
James Cameron
Yeah.
- [14:24]
Jay Shetty
Without any of that background to watch Star Wars, I believe in 1977, that was. 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 thinking something similar. I think a lot of people in my generation and the generations after me maybe studied something at school that wasn't the thing they wanted to be. 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.
- [15:00]
James Cameron
I think it was a conviction. 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. 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. 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. You know, There will be. There will be a market for it. There's a market for my imagination. And that's maybe the boldest step, is the step you take internally, you know, where you give yourself permission to at least go try it, you know, And. And you've. And when you make that commitment, you have to go in wholeheartedly. You can't say, okay, I want to be a filmmaker part time, but I'm gonna sort of keep a foot in, like, medical school. It's not gonna work. You gotta go. You just gotta jump out of the plane and hope you're wearing a parachute, you know? So I always tell people that opportunities come along and they're fleeting, and that door will open for a moment, and then it'll slide closed, and you gotta be. Fortune favors the prepared mind. If it's really something you love, read as much as you can. Prepare your mind ahead of time. Be ready. Cause when that door opens. But the critical thing, understand, it's not an example of an opportunity. It is the opportunity. You either take it or you don't. You don't use it as a. As a time to think about, well, when the next one comes along, I may or may not. You know what I mean? That's not how it works. You go, you launch, you know, 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 on the sort of fan curve of actually knowing how to do rubber armatures for stop motion. And I was pretty fascinated by that. His sister was dating a guy who was a carpenter on a super low budget Roger Corman science fiction film. 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. 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. Cause now we were getting a paycheck on a real movie. No, it was a total piece of crap movie. It was a little tiny movie. You know, it's actually the biggest movie Roger Corman had ever had, ever made. It was like a million dollars or something like that, which was huge for him. He usually made movies for like $200,000, but. 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. I had, I had schooled myself on how visual effects were done. All for. Not at university, just, just, you know, over the. That sort of two or three years that I was driving trucks and working blue collar jobs. 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. Yeah, I didn't know anybody that knew anybody that knew anybody that worked on a film, 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, you know, at that. Certainly.
- [18:34]
Jay Shetty
Yeah. Did you. Do you record your dreams? How do you note them down? How do you capture them?
- [18:39]
James Cameron
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.
- [18:45]
Jay Shetty
How long have you recorded them for? Like, when did you start?
- [18:47]
James Cameron
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. But every once in a while I'll get a corker. It's like, oh man, I gotta write this one down. You won't believe this.
- [19:01]
Jay Shetty
Did you ever follow the curiosity of where they come from or how they originate or, you know, what have you. Where have you found? Where do you think you get them from?
- [19:08]
James Cameron
Look, I've read a lot on the theories of consciousness and dreams and what purpose they serve. 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, you know, kind of cleaning house and it doesn't really have any meaning. I happen to think that they have. They have meaning to you. Now my wife Susie believes that she has, and 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. 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. I don't follow all of the various winds of the spiritual spirituality fads and things like that. That's not how I roll. I'm very science oriented. You got to show me, you got to prove it. It's got to be peer reviewed, you know, and that sort of thing. It's got to be the subject of double blind studies and it's got to be falsifiable and all the, you know, empirical stuff. But I've seen some things I don't, I can't explain. And she's demonstrated some things to me that can't be explained by my. Not my understanding of science. You know, I mean, I'm not a scientist, but I did study physics, I studied astronomy, and I, I keep pretty current in the sciences. 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. I don't know quite how I got off on that, but we were talking about dreams, and dreams are not well understood, even by neuroscientists and so on. What is the brain doing? You know, I personally think that we're kind of. We're like large language models, you know, so all the training data of our life, it just goes into a kind of diffusion state, which is how generative AI works. 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. But who's creating it and who's it being created for? So you're simultaneously the creator and the watcher, which is kind of amazing. 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, the person taking the ride, the kid in the roller coaster is going on the ride, which is kind of the filmmaking process. That's fascinating 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 other part of my brain. 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, you know, and, you know, 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, 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. 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. And for the Avatar sequels, for example, I wrote over a thousand pages of notes. Just little fragments, dreams and images. 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 montage style is actually more functional during the day and can be kind of directed to stay on a topic and follow it through, 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. And it does. I'm not trying to tell a linear narrative at that point, you know, 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, and what if he was out in the forest with his Na' Vi little kid friends and his mask got messed up and, you know, they had to save him. He was running out of. 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 that kid was Quaritch's son? And then I wrote, literally wrote, nah, nobody would believe, 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, you know. And then I just started to riff on that, and then it became, all right, well, what if he was Quaritch's son? And the human Quaritch dies in the first film, now he's orphaned. His mother maybe dies as well, if she was part of the military group that, you know, Jake was opposed to. And now he's an orphan and he's being raised on Pandora. And he's got Na' Vi friends. What if his Na' Vi friends were Jake's kids? What if, 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, the idea is just. You can't turn away from them.
- [24:51]
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- [25:54]
Ed Helms
Hey, everyone. Ed Helms here.
- [25:56]
James Cameron
And hi, I'm Cal Pen, the hosts of Irsay, The Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.
- [26:03]
Ed Helms
This week on the podcast, I am sitting down with Jenny Garth, host of the iHeart podcast. I choose me to discuss the new Audible adaptation of the timeless Jane Austen classic, Pride and Prejudice. This is not a trick question. There's no wrong answer. What role would I play?
- [26:24]
Commercial Voiceover
You know what?
- [26:25]
James Cameron
I can see you as Mr. Darcy.
- [26:27]
Commercial Voiceover
You got a little Colin Firth.
- [26:29]
Ed Helms
Okay, that's really sweet. I appreciate that. But are you sure I'm not the dad? I'm not Mr. Bennett.
- [26:37]
James Cameron
Here.
- [26:39]
Ed Helms
Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartradio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [26:50]
Commercial Voiceover
Okay, only 10 more presents to wrap. You're almost at the finish line. But first, There the last one. Enjoy a Coca Cola for a pause. That refreshes.
- [27:29]
Jay Shetty
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?
- [27:37]
James Cameron
And I know all. Every writer's got their own process. Some. You know, I'm up at 5am 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. 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. Doing notes. 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. It'll come fast at that point. And that's when you hit your stride in screenwriting.
- [28:13]
Jay Shetty
Yeah. You can see that, the way you're describing this scene with Courage's son, because there's almost like three different storylines kind of connecting in that moment around that one thing that you just pointed out. But there's so many other things going on at the same time.
- [28:31]
James Cameron
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. 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. And then what you get is the end result is the distillation of. The distillation of the best ideas. And then that's what winds up in the lean, little tight indie film that I like to call Fire and Ash. It's only. Only three hours and seven minutes, you know.
- [29:04]
Jay Shetty
But what's incredible about it, when I watched it, I was so grateful that you allowed me to go see it last week. 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. So I said, yes, I wanna sit in the exact seat. And then.
- [29:22]
James Cameron
Well, no, it's good that you moved back, though.
- [29:24]
Jay Shetty
I did, but he told me I had that option.
- [29:26]
James Cameron
He said, I did that today, actually, for the first time. I watched from the seat behind. Now, normally, that's my seat when I'm reviewing, because you could see that there's a desk there with an Avid and so on. But I thought, well, let me see. 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. And I thought, oh, this is actually pretty good.
- [29:54]
Jay Shetty
It was spectacular. But more importantly, three hours and seven minutes flew by. There was never a moment I didn't look at my phone once in three hours and seven minutes. To me, that's the test. The day of having your engagement. Attention and awareness.
- [30:08]
James Cameron
Right. So we passed the most critical test.
- [30:10]
Jay Shetty
Yeah. And the most magnificent thing is that so much happens.
- [30:15]
James Cameron
Yeah.
- [30:15]
Jay Shetty
Like, you're just on the edge of your seat wondering what's going to happen next, and so much is happening.
- [30:19]
James Cameron
Right.
- [30:20]
Jay Shetty
And to do that for three hours and seven minutes in your indie movie is 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, which is such a beautiful experience to have, where just every time a new scene opens, you just totally captivated. And it's.
- [30:40]
James Cameron
Well, thanks.
- [30:41]
Jay Shetty
It's so hard to do that for that long, especially with. I consider myself to have good presence and attention, but even then, I can turn off something in 30 minutes. And so to have your engagement not just on a story level, but on a sensory level. And.
- [30:58]
James Cameron
I think you're onto something there. And describing as you're saying it, I'm thinking, well, what are my goals creatively? I want to tell. 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 in a way that moves me. Because if I can't move myself in a story, how do I expect to move an audience emotionally? 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 a. An artist, you know, figuratively. But I could draw, I could paint. I knew the rules of composition. I knew, you know, I learned all the art history, Renaissance, lighting, composition, all that sort of thing. So there's a aesthetic level to it that I like. There's the world building level, where every plant, 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. Good budgets and good 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. And it's an act of working with other people to bring it more and more into finite Detail, Right. I've got the. 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. And she. She says the school provides the provocation. The kids provide the investigation and the curiosity and the passion to.
- [32:42]
Jay Shetty
That's brilliant.
- [32:42]
James Cameron
Right? And I think 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. But I think about what I do. I come in and I say, guys, we're going to do the coolest woven tropical village over water. Village number one is that 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, nothing is built with rigid cut lumber the way we would do it, where we create posts that are in compression. Right. Everything's in tension. It's like a spider web. It's all woven between these big structures like the mangrove roots. 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. 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. 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. 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, you know, and so the brain becomes selective. Okay, what's narratively important to me in the moment.
- [34:15]
Jay Shetty
No. And talking about the emotional nature of the characters and 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 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, how is it that you know you could 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. It must exist somewhere.
- [34:44]
James Cameron
Yeah, right.
- [34:45]
Jay Shetty
Because how can you feel so deeply for people who look different to you and feel different to you and have different experience.
- [34:51]
James Cameron
But we feel 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. But does 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, 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. And that's why these films travel. I think, you know, why they resonate in China and India and Europe, in Africa, wherever they go. Because I'm trying to deal with universal stuff, but I'm not trying to make stuff up. Right. So with the sequels, 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. 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, 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 angst and that, that issue, the father issues and not being seen and all those things. And then having been a father of teens, we've got Susie and I have five kids. And so, I mean, artists are just working out their stuff, you know, their lived experience and project and. 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 a, a aspirational way, like, wow, I wish I was part of a family like that. 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.
- [36:43]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [36:44]
James Cameron
And I wish I wasn't sometimes.
- [36:46]
Jay Shetty
You know, I, I, I've been repeating to my wife, I'm saying this in reaction, in response to what you just said. 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. 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. Like, I'm like, 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 where they're in so much danger, in so much pain, but they remember that their dad told them that Sully's never quit, Right?
- [37:18]
James Cameron
And then when she says it, when she says it later, she basically saves the world with one thing where she says, you know, come on, we can do this. Sully's never quit. And you're like, go, Tuke.
- [37:31]
Jay Shetty
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 onto in a child's mind. And then even the storyline with Pikon, like, for me, that. Oh my. I mean, from the second to the third, because when I watched the second movie, for me that. That fully just made me fall in sea life in a way that I hadn't before. I was like, wow, this is genius in how you're sharing a message around water, wildlife that we just don't treat well anymore.
- [38:08]
James Cameron
We won't protect what we don't love and care about. Right. And so I'm working at 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 and machine learning, kind of more side of AI, but they're using some large language model technology as well to decode 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 clicks, which are called codas, and their click sequences, and they're finding that they have verbs, they have syntax, they have complex language, language at least as complex as human language, which is kind of amazing. But it all sounds like if you could actually hear it, it sounds like that's like a whole paragraph in. In sperm whale, you know, 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, you know, 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. Like a dog doesn't recognize itself as an individual in a mirror. 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. And emotional mirror. But an elephant can, a chimpanzee can, and a dolphin can. Wow. 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. 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. But anyway, there's even a parrot species in New Zealand that is intelligent enough to recognize itself as an individual. Individual. Most birds can't. So, you know, you've got these glimmers of emergent consciousness besides us. And now we're going to have machine consciousness emerging in the next decade or whatever it's going to be. 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, and now we're going to have to start relating to this alien consciousness that we create.
- [40:42]
Jay Shetty
Create, 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. 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 it's so much of.
- [41:03]
James Cameron
Bingo. Or conscience.
- [41:05]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [41:05]
James Cameron
More conscience.
- [41:07]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [41:07]
James Cameron
I think you can have if you believe in some kind of animus or spirit or soul or whatever it is that's persistent beyond the biological logical framework. I personally don't, just saying that up front, but if you. But I also, I, I won't bet completely against something that just hasn't simply been proven yet. But, but I, 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. But, but if, if you do believe in that, then 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. So now you get the sort of 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, but can be understood as a real world thing based in matter, then theoretically a machine intelligence could be as soulful, as empathetic, as emotional as us, although it might be very, very, very different. 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, you know. And I've had some strange experiences with one, 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? And I'm. Well, could actually, actually create a state of consciousness in my mind by sitting across from me, just like you are right now. And I am not. 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.
- [43:08]
Jay Shetty
What were you, what were you experimenting with that you even sat across someone like that?
- [43:13]
James Cameron
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 Wolf. 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 you tell. Do it for you, baby. 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. I'd love to ask him, but unfortunately he. He died tragically in a. In a car accident. And because I wanted to, like, can I just spend millions of dollars studying your mind, please?
- [43:58]
Jay Shetty
That's fascinating. I mean, 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. And again, I think about our listeners and I think about them.
- [44:13]
James Cameron
He's never quit.
- [44:14]
Jay Shetty
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 was, are the worlds you create create worlds that you didn't have or did have for you.
- [44:27]
James Cameron
I think both. Both right things. I mean, 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, all of those things. 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. 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. But I also wanted to take you on an emotional journey where you get to places that are, that are, that are either terrifying or heart wrenching through loss or whatever. And that's all dependent on performance, you know, that's all dependent on the actors. The actors are our path through this, our conduit. We see it all through their eyes. So for me, the real act of creation. Everybody is quite enamored of the world building because that's what they see. 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 and I could hear, hear the way they'd say it. And I didn't feel the dialogue was right until I knew that slang Stephen Lang, who plays Quaritch would say it that way, you know, or Sam would say it that way, or Zoe would say it that way. And then of course I threw a new element in, which is Una Chaplin, who, you know, who plays Varong, who is, you know, pretty, pretty terrifying character at times. And I was making her up out of whole cloth. Obviously I didn't know who the actor was that was, was gonna play her. But that's the part where I think that engagement that you were talking about, it's not just sensory and visual, it's also heartfelt. Right? Yeah, I would have to. 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, during the rise of like DVD and Blu Ray and all that. 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. But we're at the point now where you're probably your home TV set and your home sound bar and everything is as good as what you're gonna see in a movie theater. So that goes away. So what's left? What's left is in our day to day life, we're very fragmented and scattered and distracted and multitasking and we're scrolling and we're typing and we' connected and you know, multi channeling all simultaneously. Very rarely do we just sit in a meditative state and just focus, you know. People who practice mindfulness and yoga and things like that, they know how to do that, and they do it to clear their mind. But 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. 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. 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. 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. It's that simple. You can't pause it. You can't go order a pizza. You can't pause it. Go to the bathroom. You can't be in a room with other family members who are talking and you pause it. So you can hear the lame comment.
- [48:42]
Jay Shetty
Absolutely.
- [48:43]
James Cameron
I'm kidding.
- [48:43]
Jay Shetty
No, no, no.
- [48:44]
James Cameron
The kids don't make lame comments. But they do comment during the movie and I'll pause it. I'm like, yes, you were saying?
- [48:51]
Jay Shetty
That's so funny.
- [49:00]
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- [49:33]
Ed Helms
Hey, everyone. Ed Helms here.
- [49:35]
James Cameron
And hi, I'm Cal Penn, and we're the hosts of Irsay, The Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.
- [49:42]
Ed Helms
This week on the podcast, I am sitting down with Jenny Garth, host of the iHeart podcast. I choose me to discuss the new Audible adaptation of the timeless Jane Austen classic, Pride and Prejudice. This is not a trick question. There's no wrong answer. What role would I play?
- [50:03]
Commercial Voiceover
You know what?
- [50:04]
James Cameron
I can see you as Mr. Darcy.
- [50:06]
Commercial Voiceover
You got a little Colin Firth.
- [50:08]
Ed Helms
Okay, that's really sweet. I appreciate that. But are you sure I'm not the dad? I'm not Mr. Bennett here. Listen to earsay the audible and iheart audiobook club on the iheartradio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [50:29]
Commercial Voiceover
Okay, only ten more presents to wrap. You're almost at the finish line, but first, There, the last one. Enjoy a Coca Cola for a pause that refreshes.
- [51:07]
Jay Shetty
Do they. Do the kids ever look at the movies and go, dad, you just made a character out of me. Like, is there ever that?
- [51:12]
James Cameron
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. 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.
- [51:34]
Jay Shetty
That's brilliant. 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.
- [51:46]
James Cameron
Yeah.
- [51:46]
Jay Shetty
And we weren't. We won't mention the film because I heard you didn't mention it. But. But like, for anyone who's finally found their way, you went from truck driver, starting to make films, made this movie. You get fired off a job.
- [52:00]
James Cameron
Yeah.
- [52:01]
Jay Shetty
That almost feels like, all right, well, this is the end of the road. You. You said you felt that way.
- [52:05]
James Cameron
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. 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 perspect perspective. But I believed at the time, I internalized, that I was not doing it well, you know, 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 hole to get to zero, you know? 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. I thought, I have to write something original, something that I could plausibly make that wouldn't have an enormous budget. And it was scaled to conventional locations, present day city streets, that sort of thing, so that we could do it relatively cheaply. But I also thought, all right, but I've got to inject into it. It can't just be 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. The visual effects have to be very limited, but they have to be powerful 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. 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 story elements that I was playing with that was based entirely on being practical. 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. So I thought, all right, I want this extraordinary thing that requires animation and design, this Terminator. But I'll have it come from the future, which I don't have to see, 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.
- [54:18]
Jay Shetty
That's such a fascinating point you just made, though, that constraints actually led to brilliant creativity. It wasn't the other way around. And often we get lost in the trap of, when I have resources, I'll make a masterpiece. And you made something that's timeless.
- [54:33]
James Cameron
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, 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, but then I can put the camera anywhere I want. I could cut it anywhere I want. I'm not constrained by just the footage that we were able to grab that day before the sun set. It becomes a kind of a problem of infinite choice. I think it makes you a better filmmaker. Cause now why is the camera going right here? 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 and not back there or not over there? You know, and so it forces you to become quite rigor about your aesthetic. You know, that's a separate problem from getting great performance, by the way. 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. I don't think about the camera angles. When I'm working with the actors, I know I'll be able to shoot it. 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. Now they're all working on another movie now it's like, okay, am I 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, you know, is it night? Is it day? You can make all those decisions later with that nucleus, that sort of beating heart of the performance, but you can interpret it many, many different ways. So that idea of, you know, 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 design, why you're doing it that way. And sometimes I just talk. It's like, okay, you know, it's like, I'll talk while I'm working. 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. 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?
- [56:49]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, absolutely. And you were so committed to that that you sold it for $1 and rejected all of these amazing studio budget. They wouldn't let you direct it.
- [56:59]
James Cameron
This is going back to the Terminator, and you're talking about the fact that I made a rights deal with Gale Anne Hurd, who was another up and comer in the same super low tier as I was. And 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. 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. I mean, I could have written a 20 page contract to do it, but it was like a blood oath, almost literally. I don't think we actually cut our hands, but it was pretty much that. And this is before we were romantically involved. This was Just us, you know, a nascent producer and a nascent director. I said, you will never make this movie without me as a director, and I will never make this movie without you as the prod producer. And, man, they tried to split that team. They tried to get her in the rights and. And not. And get another director, you know, and there were times when. 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 gotta get rid of her. And I'm like, nope, that ain't gonna happen. And she said, nope, that ain't gonna happen. So in a way, everything else flowed from that. That first film. And so that was, you know, that was a dollar well spent.
- [58:23]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, that's. That's. I love that story. It just. Every time I hear you tell 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.
- [58:36]
James Cameron
Yeah.
- [58:36]
Jay Shetty
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.
- [58:44]
James Cameron
Yeah.
- [58:45]
Jay Shetty
And your career is this constant. Well, I'll build what I deserve or I'll. I'll take it myself.
- [58:50]
James Cameron
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. Prove, prove to the world, you know, that you're. You're capable of. Right. And then. And then, 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. You know, it's a consequence of doing the job well and reaching people and communicating. You know, I am a commercial filmmaker. I don't try to do something that's intentionally obscure or intentionally so kind of intellectual that, you know, that it doesn't connect for the majority of the audience. I'm a bell curve guy, you know, it's like I want to. I want to hit that sweet spot in the middle of the bell curve where the. Where I'm communicating with the greatest number of people. And there will be some people for whom it is. It is beneath them to even consider enjoying an Avatar movie. And there are some people that just don't get it on the. 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. That wants to indicate that they're smarter than the audience and challenge them to try to keep up and pirouette their intelligence. Not to say they're not intelligent, but come on, guys, it's entertainment. It can have deeper meaning. I mean, I like to have thematic layering and I like to have things that mean something to me and if people pick up on it, great. But I won't make the story hinges on that, you know, So I don't know, maybe it's that drive in movie, you know, College of Cinematic Knowledge that the drive in movie theaters of Orange county paying off.
- [60:35]
Jay Shetty
I feel like everyone looks at you and even these examples you're talking about, there's such a. People would say, you know, James Cameron's a risk taker, he takes big risks. And. But do you see yourself that way? How do you. I feel like it's something more than that.
- [60:47]
James Cameron
Well, I think, I think it's not a question of taking 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. In a kind of a comfort zone of mediocrity. 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. You know, was a risk. You know, it was a very, very expensive film in which basically everybody dies, you know, and it was a period piece and it was three hours long. 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. I always pronounce it Dances with Wolves because it was a name, you know. So, yeah, I always imagine it hyphenated, not Dances with Wolves, which is what most people say, but. And I don't know if that's accurate, I never asked anybody, but probably is. And so we were in uncharted territory. I mean, we 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. Pretty risky in a sense. You know, it certainly didn't follow any of the commercial paradigms of the time. 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 gonna lose $50 million or $150 million. 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. I even almost, in a way, lost faith in the film being commercial, but I never lost faith in it being correct. And that's when I. 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. 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. 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, On. On those artistic principles that we went in with. I knew I had a great cast, I had great performances, you know, and it turned out from. From the moment James Horner played the first, he had. 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 gonna be great. And yeah, sure, he wrote it, he orchestrated it, he went out, he recorded it with 100 piece orchestra. But I knew from that simple piano melody that we were good. 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. It's okay if I just kind of.
- [64:28]
Jay Shetty
I love it.
- [64:29]
James Cameron
Please.
- [64:29]
Jay Shetty
That's my favorite bit of podcast.
- [64:31]
James Cameron
Okay?
- [64:31]
Jay Shetty
Please.
- [64:31]
James Cameron
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. 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. And I don't mean that necessarily in a mystical way. Although it might be, I don't know, but it's being received from the group's creative energy. What the actors did, what the designers did, what the camera operator did, you know, what the DP did. And it's just up to me to see it and see it emerging and then. Then help assist, you know, clear. Clear the debris out of the way, get it to. To kind of emerge. And. And I felt that more so, especially on these last two Avatar films that I've ever felt before. You know, a long film, it's half an hour longer than it could be. You've got to take stuff out, so you're pairing away and. And themes are emerging and getting stronger. 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. For example, there was a scene in the script which we captured where Jake teaches all the Na' Vi how to fire machine guns. I was wrong. I didn't want. That's not what the movie was supposed to be saying. And so the power, the dark, grim power that comes from when Core charms the ash people and you see them lift those weapons up and you say, oh, my God, this whole thing seems going wrong. I can't have Jake be doing the same thing. But I 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, I said, guys, you got to come back. 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. And I did something else instead, which is I had Jake go get the. The Toruk, which was also not in the script.
- [66:35]
Jay Shetty
Ah.
- [66:35]
James Cameron
But when you see it, you think, how could that not?
- [66:38]
Jay Shetty
How could that not? That's one of the most epic moments of the whole.
- [66:40]
James Cameron
Exactly. Well, I had put that in Movie four, but I realized I was playing too long a game. You know, you know the scene with. With him and Spider, which I won't go into the details of, but after that, you know, when Natiti 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.
- [67:00]
Jay Shetty
Yes, yes.
- [67:01]
James Cameron
That he absolutely knows will take something out of him, his soul. 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. 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. What will you do to, to prove yourself in a loving relationship? You know, played with that on Titanic, played with that on Aliens. You know, played with that on Terminator 2. And so these last two Avatar films are the same thing. What would Jake and Neytiri do for their children? What would they do for their people? And what happens when what is right for the children is not right for the people 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. But I do believe there are times when you do have to fight. I'm not a total pacifist. And I think in my lifetime there has not been a righteous war that the US has been involved in, but World War II, when you have a predator that's destroying everything that, that is of value to people. Yeah, you have to fight. You have to fight for your survival. So we could have a whole conversation just about this.
- [68:33]
Jay Shetty
I know, I was just about to say that the. Well, I was about to say that.
- [68:36]
James Cameron
I'm flipping the script here.
- [68:37]
Jay Shetty
I love it. No, I was about to say that the spiritual text that I practice and teach and follow is based on a battlefield.
- [68:44]
James Cameron
Yeah.
- [68:44]
Jay Shetty
And it's God or the divine telling the greatest archer of his time to pick up his bow and fight.
- [68:51]
James Cameron
Yeah.
- [68:52]
Jay Shetty
For righteousness and duty.
- [68:53]
James Cameron
For righteousness and duty.
- [68:55]
Jay Shetty
It makes a lot of it. It definitely resonates with you saying that. Yeah, there is a need.
- [69:00]
James Cameron
Yeah. So I'm an action filmmaker. So I'm, you know, action. I mean, if you think about it, action is just a candy coated term for violence. Right. When it's righteous violence practiced by the good guy in, in defense of good people and so on it, you know, we spend a lot of time justifying it to ourselves. And I think a lot of the classic cinematic justifications aren't really sufficient. Which is why I went down the road of having the Tulkun be utter pacifists, where they have rejected any kind of violent confrontation up to and almost including their own final destruction. But they, at the very brink, they decide that there is something that they have to rise up for. And when they see the horror of what's happened to Tahnok and Payakan's clan and all that, which I think is quite A heart wrenching scene.
- [69:54]
Jay Shetty
Even though, like, yeah, when you make me feel for Pycon, I'm like, that's like, right. You know, because now you're not even feeling for something that looks remotely human.
- [70:03]
James Cameron
Right, exactly. But, but we're able to see consciousness in, in others, in the eyes, you know, in dogs, in, in. In the great apes. You know, I think it's a little harder in birds, even though they're pretty damn smart. Whales, though, have a soulfulness and maybe, maybe to some extent we projected onto them, but I don't think so. So something very calm about whales, you know, and they, they've, they've been greatly injured on our planet. So I think, you know, what I was trying to express there is, look what we've done to them. And they don't seem to hate us as much as we would if that was done to us. Although there are pods of orcas near Gibraltar and off the Azores that are attacking sailboats now and ripping the rudders off and leaving the them adrift.
- [70:55]
Jay Shetty
Wow.
- [70:55]
James Cameron
So it's like, are they learning? Are they learning that we're actually not so great for them? Yeah. Workers have a matriarchal society and the mothers teach the sons behaviors. And so the question is, is this being handed down? Because it's been happening a lot in the last few years. And it's the same group, the territorial. Territorial group, all of this you're talking about.
- [71:17]
Jay Shetty
You spent around 10 years just, just studying the ocean. Right. Like if.
- [71:20]
James Cameron
Yeah.
- [71:21]
Jay Shetty
While you weren't making films at that time, you literally went deep into literally everything that you're sharing right now. It's.
- [71:27]
James Cameron
I went as deep as you can go.
- [71:29]
Jay Shetty
Mind blown. Like, did you just put everything else away?
- [71:32]
James Cameron
Like, not really. I kind of kept my hand in. So. 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. And it seems kind of quite fatuous. And. And at about that time, I. I wound up on the N Council, believe it or not. And I looked around a room full of people who were very 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 and none of them cared about Hollywood. They didn't even know what was happening. Oh, the Oscars. What's that? Oh, yeah, you know, it's what they. And I could name a movie star, they wouldn't even. I mean, sure, there's always little movie fans here and there. But it just mattered to them. It didn't matter to them at all. They were doing something far more important. And that was a real bucket of cold water. 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 so I thought, you know, maybe I'll just explore around a little bit just in life, you know. And because I had gotten to do an expedition to the rec site where I was really now becoming conversant with real deep ocean technology, I thought, why don't I just go down that road? I know everybody, you know, I know all the scientists and researchers and submersible people and everything. So I just started creating expeditions and building new technical systems, cameras and lighting systems and exploratory vehicles. And the other thing I liked about it is the ocean is unforgiving. Either your math is right or your equipment fails. It'll implode or the electronics will flood and it won't work and you'll come back, back with nothing. And that's not a critic's opinion, you know, that's one. I, I came up with this idea, this principle that, you know, the second law of thermodynamics is not an opinion, it's a law. It's not some critics opinion, it's not some journalist's opinion, it's not even a fickle audience member's opinion or some, some, you know, some blogger's trolling opinion, you know, it either works or it doesn't. And I really enjoyed immersing myself in a world of hard rules. 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. So as an artist, you bury your soul and you can be utterly rejected. But ultimately the point of art is to communicate with other people, humans, they may hate it, you know, 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. 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, 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, you know, but that bond exists between those people. And then I realized, okay, we're only as good as our team. 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 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, and there'd be a bunch of glum faces because it wasn't working. And I said, guys, this may seem like the hardest day of the. Of the production. 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. And we're going to do it, and we're going to figure it out. It was like, you know, cellies never quit, right? But. And then we did, and we figured it out. 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. 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. 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. Now, I don't know, artistically, as a director, if that's something I want to do right away, way next, there's a pretty strong. I feel a strong pressure on my shoulders 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, 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. I've told Susie, my wife, that I feel like I'm Wile E. Coyote in a Roadrunner cartoon, and I just ran off the cliff. I haven't hit the ground yet. There's that moment where my legs are pinwheeling in the air, you know? But that's okay. That's okay. The scariest moments are always the moments of the greatest opportunity. I think.
- [77:06]
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- [78:08]
Ed Helms
Hey, everyone. Ed Helms here.
- [78:11]
James Cameron
And hi, I'm Cal Penn, and we're the hosts of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart audiobook.
- [78:18]
Ed Helms
This week on the podcast, I am sitting down with Jenny Garth, host of the iHeart podcast. I choose me to discuss the new Audible adaptation of the timeless Jane Austen classic Pride and Prejudice. This is not a trick question. There's no wrong answer. What role would I play?
- [78:39]
Commercial Voiceover
You know what?
- [78:40]
James Cameron
I can see you as Mr. Darcy.
- [78:42]
Commercial Voiceover
You got a little Colin Firth.
- [78:44]
Ed Helms
Okay, that's really sweet. I appreciate that. But are you sure I'm not the dad? I'm not Mr. Bennett here. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartradio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [79:04]
Commercial Voiceover
Okay, only 10 more presents to wrap. You're almost at the first finish line, but first. There the last one. Enjoy a Coca Cola for a pause that refreshes.
- [79:43]
Jay Shetty
When you're building a universe with people, you're building lives and hearts and worlds that connect on such a deep level. You. 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. You know, maybe not Terminator, but. But what follows? Or maybe, maybe.
- [80:05]
James Cameron
Oh, Terminator. When the Terminator goes. Come on. When he goes. When he goes down into the steel and his POV goes to nothing. Come on. Yes, people tear Up.
- [80:17]
Jay Shetty
Yes, yes. No. And so you see that and I'm like, it feels like the emotion of creating it, whatever we're getting out of it is because the emotion that's creating is going into it.
- [80:27]
James Cameron
Yes.
- [80:28]
Jay Shetty
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 body buildings in the movie or whether it's the emotion that the characters are feeling and Tuk is feeling and etc. How do you even start to detach from that as a team when you've been immersed in it for decades?
- [80:50]
James Cameron
At this point, maybe you don't maybe just keep going. I don't know. Well, look, I mean there are, 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. Everybody just assumes it's a no brainer. But the theatrical marketplace has been dwindling and collapsing about 35% and it hasn't rebounded. And people's habit patterns have changed. And so the thing that I grew up and love and feel such strong sense of passion for may be becoming obsolete maybe. And the cost of making movies is continuing continuously going up and the demand is falling. So that's a little bit of a death spiral right there. And so maybe it's going to be okay. We were sort of successful. If we can do the next one cheaper, we can continue. Right. 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 background and there's a thing that I want to do about Hiroshima. I bought a book recently, but it's a story, story I've been following and 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. So I needed to do that.
- [82:15]
Jay Shetty
And so, you know, why is that so meaningful to you? What about it?
- [82:18]
James Cameron
I just think that we live in this world. I mean, I think Kathryn Bigelow's film title, it's kind of growing on me. The House of Dynamite. It's like we love live in a House. 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 gonna watch your favorite show. But the basement is filled with dynamite, and it could go off at any moment. 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. 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. Of course, the. 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. Each one is 100 to 500 times more powerful than the one that destroyed Hiroshima. And you're 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. In fact, it might be my least successful film. But I just feel it's. It's a. That's. That's thing of duty, you know, you're all about purpose. We define our own purpose. You know, we choose purpose for ourselves. And it doesn't all have to be, you know, obviously benevolent, like, you know, maybe helping out a soup kitchen 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. As an art artist, I think it's important to consider these things, you know, and not feel powerless, because it's easy in a. In a world of 8 billion people to feel powerless. 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 I won't reach as many people with a movie like Ghosts of Hiroshima, but I'll reach some, you know, and you never know. You never know the causal chain that puts a person at a moment where they've been influenced by something.
- [84:27]
Jay Shetty
But you have it even in Fire and Ash. I mean, that. That scene that you were referencing, without giving too much away of Quaritch actually arming, you know, and they're. 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 absolutely governmental politics that we're seeing today. I mean, the. The movie is filled with so many.
- [85:00]
James Cameron
Powerful messages and just seeing each other, you know, it all. Ultimately, it all goes back to connection.
- [85:05]
Jay Shetty
And is that the root?
- [85:07]
James Cameron
Yeah, I think so. You know, there are two moments in the film where people say they see each other and they understand each other. And one gives you this feeling of vast dread when. When Varrog says she sees Quaritch and she sees this vision of this destruction. And for herself, you know, she's. She's like, you know, Kali. Yes, right. And then when Neytiti sees Spider, you know, finally. 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. It's like we take our most beloved character and we. We challenge you to really walk in her shoes and go the hard yards of what loss and grief can do. 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? Well, that's the cycle that we have to break. Right. You know, Loach says something at the beginning, and it's kind of like a little cheeky to actually say your theme out loud, you know, and the voice over here, I'm going to tell you what the movie's about. Okay. You know, and he says, the. The fire of ash leaves. The fire of hate bring. 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. 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 you. How do you know when it's not about. About hatred and revenge and when you fight 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, and you see all of that happening in the world right now, all over the place, and, you know, you wonder. This is. I'm going to circle this back to AI for a second. The thing that will. The thing that the proponents of artificial superintelligence always say as well, we'll manage the alignment problem. We'll align AI to our common good as human beings, 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. Republican's idea of that is very different from a Democrat's, a Muslim, a Christian, a Hindu, Shintoist, whatever it is. Everybody's got a. A different opinion, 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? I mean, if that's not the biggest recipe for disaster I've ever heard in my life, what is? Now, I am a science fiction fan, and it always goes into the darkest possible scenario, because that's where science fiction goes, because it's meant to be a warning to us about possible futures. But, okay, I mean, we're living in a science fiction world right now, you know, So I look. I look at you. I look into your eyes. I see your kind of soulfulness and your enlightenment and what. All the things that you do and why you do it. 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. They just don't ever seem to get into positions of power. And. And you know, that where it really makes a big. Makes a big difference, it just seems like all the wrong people elevate. I don't know how you feel about that, and I don't know if that keeps you up at night.
- [88:51]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, well, I. I think that's partly why I try and do what I do, because I think I saw that for a long time. 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. Everyone's flawed and has exactly multiple. You know, when you look at all of the characters in Fire and Ash, like, they're not just good and bad, like that would be. And the. 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.
- [89:22]
James Cameron
Yeah.
- [89:23]
Jay Shetty
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 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 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.
- [90:02]
James Cameron
Yes.
- [90:02]
Jay Shetty
That were at one point saved for the elite or niches.
- [90:06]
James Cameron
Yeah, yeah. Right, right, right.
- [90:07]
Jay Shetty
And we do that. We do. 750 million views a month.
- [90:11]
James Cameron
Yeah.
- [90:12]
Jay Shetty
About conversations like this, which is proof to me that 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.
- [90:23]
James Cameron
Yeah.
- [90:24]
Jay Shetty
But art and creativity, and now the microphone belongs to everyone. There is an opportunity to galvanize community and connect to these higher powers.
- [90:33]
James Cameron
We have to do what we can do. Our voices 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 and knowing that there's a legacy that's being handed to my kids by my generation. And I just want it to be the best that it can be. It's not gonna be perfect. It might not even be that great. But everything that people like yourself and hopefully I do, can improve it and incrementally, you know? And so anyway, you just. You just keep banging away at it, Right.
- [91:12]
Jay Shetty
Yeah. Well, I think. I think the stories you tell do that in the most profound way. And I think. I do think that 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. But.
- [91:37]
James Cameron
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. 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. I think where empathy goes awry is that it's narrow and powerful as opposed to more diffuse. Right. So when we have an empathy for our family, for our children, for our friends, then everybody else starts to look like an enemy. And I think it's that narrow spotlight of empathy where it breaks down. 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 neuron allows us to Feel their pain, but we can't. The pain of the world. 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 a kind of a world that can go against you. And medically and any kind of moment things can go against you. And there are people that are less fortunate, people that. That are more fortunate, but people never feel like they have enough. That's the problem. It's not that they're greedy, it's that they never have enough to feel completely secure and safe for their family. 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.
- [93:24]
Jay Shetty
Absolutely.
- [93:25]
James Cameron
But there's an image that I always wanted in one of the Avatar movies, which is seeing that world from orbit at night where you see everything connected, you know, that those little glowing, you know, you basically see the mind or the heart of awa. Of that connectedness. And so I managed to squeeze it in, I managed to squeeze it into this film and hopefully people will resonate, you know, for what it means, what it's meant to mean.
- [93:53]
Jay Shetty
Anyway, James, I have a warning from your team because you have to get up to the. I want to end with a final five that we do with every guest. 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, so James Cameron.
- [94:12]
James Cameron
I can do a six paragraph long sentence.
- [94:16]
Jay Shetty
Okay, so we ask these to every guest. James Cameron, these are your final five. Question 1. What is the best advice you've ever heard or received?
- [94:23]
James Cameron
I had a teacher that said.
- [94:27]
Jay Shetty
You.
- [94:27]
James Cameron
Have unlimited potential and he meant it and it changed a lot for me.
- [94:36]
Jay Shetty
It's a great answer.
- [94:37]
James Cameron
Yeah.
- [94:38]
Jay Shetty
Question number two. What is the worst advice you've ever heard or receive?
- [94:45]
James Cameron
Roger Corman told me to always sit down on set.
- [94:50]
Jay Shetty
Do you stand up a lot?
- [94:52]
James Cameron
I never sit down.
- [94:54]
Jay Shetty
That's a great answer. Question number number three. What's the hardest thing you've learned about yourself that shaped your art?
- [95:03]
James Cameron
The movie is not more important than the process of working with people to make the movie. Wow, that took 40 years. No, maybe 30.
- [95:15]
Jay Shetty
The people are more important.
- [95:17]
James Cameron
Yeah. Well, it's beautiful.
- [95:20]
Jay Shetty
Question number four. Tell us the real reason why Jack couldn't fit on the door.
- [95:26]
James Cameron
Ah, you went there.
- [95:27]
Jay Shetty
I had to.
- [95:28]
James Cameron
Okay, this interview's over. Because his chivalry demanded it.
- [95:37]
Jay Shetty
It's a great answer.
- [95:39]
James Cameron
He loved her, and he would not take a chance that they could both survive if they could both die.
- [95:46]
Jay Shetty
That's a great answer.
- [95:47]
James Cameron
Yeah. And by the way, Romeo and Juliet had to die.
- [95:51]
Jay Shetty
But there's sacrifice, duty in your themes. Just that.
- [95:55]
James Cameron
So love, death, sacrifice, duty. They're all related and they're all thematic in all of my films.
- [96:03]
Jay Shetty
Why do you think that is?
- [96:05]
James Cameron
I don't know.
- [96:06]
Jay Shetty
You're still discovering that. Still curious about that, where that comes from.
- [96:10]
James Cameron
Can I speak in longer? Yeah, please.
- [96:12]
Jay Shetty
Yeah, yeah. That's a big question.
- [96:13]
James Cameron
I don't know, because I. These are things that I'm finding later in life I actually am confronting and having to deal with. But in. But in early life, they just made some sense to me. You know, I always say all my movies are love stories, but they're not necessarily conventional love stories. Duty and sacrifice are things that I. I don't even know if it's enculturated. 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, but, you know, you can't generalize about an entire population. And there were some real in the town I grew up in, so, you know, I don't know where that comes from, but it's a belief system. Definitely a belief system.
- [96:59]
Jay Shetty
I'm glad I asked you that question now because we got an answer that just. Yeah. Share 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. If you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be?
- [97:19]
James Cameron
A law. Wow. Legislating morality. That's a hard thing. See the person in front of you. I don't know how you'd enforce that. Just see them.
- [97:37]
Jay Shetty
What does it mean to see.
- [97:39]
James Cameron
See who they are. See. See who they are. Authentic. The inside, you know, 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. I understand you. It can mean I love you, meaning that fullness of understanding another person that goes to a. To a higher level. It's got many layers of meaning in navi lore. It's very Deceptively simple, you know, but it goes back to that empathy thing, goes back to the mirror neuron. It goes back to projecting yourself into their situation. 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. I just start talking, talking to people, and I want to hear their story. You know, people that. People that the average person would think that a person like me would never talk to. You know, the. The janitor, the guy selling the churro, the. You know, 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, and, you know, that sort of trump idea that they're all a bunch of loose losers and they're not worth anything drives me insane, you know, because it's not about social standing or status or having a PhD or the argument from authority. Oh, his argument. You know, his opinion is more important than that person. You know, I just want to hear everybody's stories, 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, unique position.
- [99:35]
Jay Shetty
I felt that most in watching Sully and Courage's relationship through fire and ash. There's a lot of seeing each other in different moments.
- [99:45]
James Cameron
Yeah.
- [99:45]
Jay Shetty
Which in moments, you don't expect it.
- [99:47]
James Cameron
Yeah. And you. It. It. The story definitely teases to. To a potential. Yeah. You know. Yeah. We can't give all the thing away.
- [99:57]
Jay Shetty
Well, I can't wait to watch it again. I'm gonna take my family when I get back to London for Christmas. Christmas. I'm so excited, James. I hope we do see 4 and 5 happen. I can't wait to watch them.
- [100:06]
James Cameron
We'll see.
- [100:06]
Jay Shetty
We'll see them with fun. 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.
- [100:16]
James Cameron
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.
- [100:27]
Jay Shetty
I only asked you one.
- [100:29]
James Cameron
You did. You. 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.
- [100:41]
Jay Shetty
Yeah.
- [100:42]
James Cameron
You know, as a filmmaker. It's kind of like, great. Thank you. Thank you for that.
- [100:46]
Jay Shetty
Well, thank you. If you love this episode, I need you to listen to one of my favorite conversations ever. It's with the one and only two Tom Holland on how to overcome your social anxiety, especially in situations where you're not drinking and everyone else is. We talk about his sobriety journey and so much more. He gets really personal. I can't wait for you to hear it. It's going to blow your mind. The quote is, if you have a problem with me, text me. And if you don't have my number, you don't know me well enough to have a problem with me. This episode of On Purpose is brought to you by Chase Sapphire Reserve. I believe that travel is one of the greatest gifts that we've ever been given, and Chase Sapphire Reserve has been my gateway to the world's most captivating destinations. When I use my Chase Sapphire Reserve card, I get eight times the points on all the purchases I make through Chase Travel and even access to one of a kind experiences. Experiences like music festivals and sporting events. And that's not even mentioning how the card gets me into the Sapphire Lounge by the club at select airports nationwide. Travel is more rewarding with Chase Sapphire Reserve. Trust me. Discover more@chase.com Sapphire Reserve cards issued by JP Morgan, Chase Bank, NA Member, FDIC, subject to credit approval terms apply.
- [102:10]
James Cameron
Hey, audiobook lovers, I'm Cal Penn.
- [102:12]
Ed Helms
I'm Ed Helms.
- [102:13]
James Cameron
Ed and I are inviting you to join the best sounding book club you've ever heard with our new podcast, Irsay the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.
- [102:22]
Ed Helms
Each week we sit down with your favorite iHeart podcast hosts and some very special guests to discuss the latest and greatest audiobooks from Audible.
- [102:31]
James Cameron
Listen to earsay on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow earsay and start listening on the free iHeartradio app today.
- [102:41]
Ed Helms
What a matchup we got, y'.
- [102:43]
James Cameron
All.
- [102:43]
Ed Helms
This is that classic HBCU vibe. Non stop action. The band is rocking and the crowd lit. Chance, echo, drum beat. Everybody showing that school pride game like this. Yeah, it calls for an ice cold Coca Cola. Ah, crisp and refreshing. That's a game changer right there. Yeah, that taste always hits the right note. Just like the band at halftime. And just like that, we're back at it. Passionate fans, school colors everywhere. And an ice cold Coca Cola. That's a winning combo. No matter the sport, no matter the yard. Everybody knows fan work is thirsty work. So grab a Coca Cola and keep that HBCU pride going.
- [103:28]
James Cameron
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.