The Futurist...

Just finished reading The Futurist, a biographical book about "The Life and Films of James Cameron," which features a noticeably slimmer and less hairy looking James Cameron (probably a photo circa 2000). See for yourself:



Real classy of me, right? Whatever, nobody reads this blog anyway, cut me some slack.

But to be honest, the book is great. Cameron is a man I greatly admire. I devour anything of substance written about him (a particularly good article from the New Yorker)

I won't go into an in-depth review, as the subject of this book is fairly self-explanatory. Instead, I will recount a few of my favorite parts.

- Cameron almost died on the set of The Abyss. He was at the bottom of the immense tank they were filming in and he ran out of air when his AD forgot to remind him that he had been under for an hour. (he had about and hour and 15 minutes of air). He dropped his helmet and swam to the surface and almost drowned, having to punch a scuba PA to get out of his way.

- After struggling with the English crew on Aliens, enduring short 8 hour work days, abrupt breaks for tea, and near mutiny, Cameron leaves them this little nugget before leaving for the States:

"This has been a long and difficult shoot, fraught by many problems. But the one thing that has kept me going, through it all, was the certain knowledge that one day I would drive out the gate of Pinewood and never come back, and that you sorry bastards would still be here."

- On his first Hollywood gig, he was promoted from model builder to art director. He was making $200 per week, they offered him $300. So he asked what the previous art director made. $750, but he was very experienced. Cameron:

"Yeah, but he fucked up. The show is in dire crisis. You fired him. You want me to do the same job. I want the same money."

- On his first directing gig, Piranha II, Cameron lost control of the film to the Producer. As the film was nearing completion, he broke into the editing suite night after night and re-edited the film.


And one more quote, not from the book but from the New Yorker article, which I find inspiring:

“If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.”

Book is highly recommended, though it was published just months before Avatar destroyed all box office records, so in that regard it is already a bit out of date.