#311 James Cameron
01:11:45 Share

After James Cameron avatar made two point seven billion dollars, the director found the deepest point that exists in all the earth's oceans and dove to IT. When Cameron reached the bottom of the mariana trench, he became the first person in history to descend the six point eight mile distance solo.

Since then, others have followed, most prominently a private equity tighten and former naval reserve intelligence officer turn to explore name Victor vescovo. But Cameron is element that none have surprised him. Scovill Cameron told me, claim that he went deeper, but you can.

So he's basically just making shit up. Scovill disagrees. I have a different scientific perspective, he told me diplomatically, but even he is a fan of Cameron's films like Cameron.

Vescovo has made multiple dives to the reach of the titanic. And while returning from one of them, he emailed Cameron, I said, I watched the titanic at the titanic. And he actually replied, yeah, but I made titanic at the titanic.

IT is perhaps illustrative of Cameron's gifts as a filmmaker that even as most determined rivals who admit that Cameron has written and directed some of the most successful films of the time, IT would be fair to call him the father of the modern action movie, which he helped invent with his debut determinator and then reinvent with his second aliens. IT would be accurate to add that he is directed two of the three top grossing films in history, but he's also a scientist. A camera that he helped design served as the model for one that is currently on mars, attached to the mars rover.

And he's an adventure and not in the dillion billionaire. S when Cameron sets out to do something, IT gets done. The man was born with an explore instincts and capacity. The original avatar require the invention of dozens of new technology, from the cameras Cameron shot with to the digital effects that he used to transform human actors into animated creatures, to the language those creature spoke in the film. For the sequel, the way of water, Cameron told me he and his team started all over again.

They needed new cameras that could shoot under water and emotion caption system that could collect separate shots from above and below the water and then integrate them into a unified virtual image. They needed new algorithms, new A I to translate what Cameron shot with. What you see, nothing would work.

The first time Cameron and the production tried IT are the second, are usually the third. Cameron showed me a single effect shot number to four or five. That means there's been four hundred and five versions of this before IT gets to me.

He said Cameron has been working on the movie since two thousand and thirteen. IT was due out years ago. The way of water was expensive to make.

If you ask James Cameron how expensive, he replies, very fucking. But his Cameron worked late into the evening, day after day, solving the infinite problems that the wave water continued to present. He seem to be enjoying himself.

I like difficult. He told me i'm attracted by difficult. Difficult is a fucking magnet for me. I go straight to difficult, and I think it's probably goes back to this idea that there's a lot of smart, really gifted, really talented filmmakers out there that just can't do the difficult stuff.

So that gives me a tactical edge to do something nobody else has ever seen because the really gifted people don't fuck and wanna do. IT Cameron and his fifth wife live year round in new zealand, where they have owned a five thousand acre farm since two thousand and eleven. In the early days of the pandemic, Cameron and his wife gave up their home in mala bu and became full time residents.

Here I ask Cameron if he had been lonely moving halfway around the world. I don't have any friends, so it's okay, he said. We had only a hint of a smile.

Cameron's malo compound was known for its survival. Survive fast cars, a security team trained in fighting wildfires, guns. He had himself trained by one of the best championship shooters in america.

He's the guy that talk kano reefs, how to be john wick. I was his first hollywood contact. I trained with him for three years, and so i'm a competition grade shooter.

At sixty eight years old. Cameron wakes up at four forty five years and often kick boxes in the morning. Cameron is proud to work at the biggest scale possible.

Terminator two, true lies in titanic were all among the most expensive films ever made at the time of their release. To date, all of his films have made their money back, many of them spectacularly. Self doubt in general is not something Cameron has a lot of experience with.

I don't think i'm hardwired with that. I don't know why Cameron was always a typed a person whose confidence preceded his achievements. Confidence proceeded his achievements.

That is an idea that uni have discussed on multiple biographs in a lot of these books. The fact that belief comes before ability, that's exact. Same idea.

Cameron was always a type of person whose confidence proceeded his achievements. IT was while working as a truck driver, english, chinese. That camera decided to become a film ker.

And so he taught himself filmmaking. He'd go to the stacks at the library at the university, southern alive nia, which is home of the wanted filmmaking program that Cameron could afford. I'd find some boy's three hundred page dissertation on optical printing, Cameron said.

And i'd be going through this. And I think, well, i've got ta get this. So i'd pull out the staples and i'd photo copy the entire three hundred pages.

And then I just kept doing the same thing week after week for about six months, and i'm driving a truck. But I had these binders. I was going through the stuff chapter and verse and making my own notes and all that.

I basically gave myself a college education and visual effects and cinema tower phy while I was driving a truck. The idea for the terminator came to him in a dream. So did the pivotal scene in his second film, aliens.

Cameron has a rich dream life. To this day. I have my own private streaming service that's Better than any that shit that's out there.

And IT runs every night for free. He said. Avatar also originally came to Cameron while he was a sleep.

I woke up after dreaming of this kind of bioluminescent forest with these trees that kind of look like fiberoptic lamps in this river that was glowing bioluminesc ticket and kind of purple moss on the ground that lit up when you walked on IT. IT was all on the dream. I woke up super excited, and I actually drew IT.

So I actually have a drawn IT saved us from about ten lawsuits. Any successful film, there's always some freak with ten foil under their wig that thinks that you beam their idea out of their head. And IT turned out there were ten or eleven of them.

And so I pointed at this drawing I did when I was nineteen, when I was going to fulton junior college, and said, you see this, you see the glowing trees. Do you see the glowing lizard that spends around that orange? Do you see the purple moss? And everybody went away.

Zi sel. Dona, who started in the first avatar AR, and returns for the second, and who also works frequently in the moral universe, pointed out how comparatively unique cameras approaches in modern hollywood. The marvel franchise is are built by dozens of comic book artists and writers and directors who work together to create these stories.

By contrast, avatar is the result of the vision of a single man without jim's heavy, heavy brain. This would all fall apart. When Cameron moves, he moves fast and favorite one side.

When I asked him what he's done to give himself a limb, he looked at me curiously. I've got one short leg. He said he doesn't slow me down any, though Cameron, in his nearly forty years of filmmaking, king has earned a reputation for having a temper.

Some would say he's earned this reputation several times over. On more than one, Cameron said, crew members have taken to wearing shirts that red. You can't scare me. I work for jim Cameron. Cameron is well aware of this.

So I looked at IT and I was like, alright, why am I getting so upset? And what is that solving? I'm not saying I don't get upset once a while.

I mean, everybody, I think, is entitled to having a bad day as before IT might have been once every couple of weeks. Now it's like twice a year, Cameron recalled. Working was wrong.

Howard, the famously nice director on the visual effects for a paul thirteen. And I just watch what a great guy he was. And i'm like, i'm a total assets compared to run Howard.

I have to get in touch with my inner ron Howard. But despite his famous temper, Cameron has always inspired loyalty. The process of how Cameron builds the avatar films is complex.

I asked if he knew of anyone else working this way and you laughed. They're be insane to even try, he said. And I don't mean that we're special.

I mean, like if we had to made more money than any other movie in history, this is the last fucking thing that i'd want to be doing. Cameron is famous for being able to do any job on a movie set. Some say he can do most jobs Better than the people he employs to do them.

Cameron disputes this, although mildly not Better than he told me. But i'm not just some brain in a ball creative types sitting over a ten some place saying, yeah, put that over there. It's a curious fact that Cameron has directed only two feature films in the last twenty five years.

This is a part of the explanation for why Cameron has at times drifted away from filmmaking. He said, there is a certain point where my mind wanted to solve problems that are real world problems for a while. His career in ocean exploration, which camera got serious about after making titanic, nearly kept him away from directing a film ever again.

I think IT back into making movies for eight years. He told me I was having too much fun. And when he did decide to return to hollywood with his idea for the first avatar, Cameron's longer studio, fox almost didn't want to make IT.

Cameron has mellowed with time in age, but he is still a score settle er a keeper of grudges and this is what he said when fox initially passed and I said, now just so you know, before your tail lights are out of sight, I will be on the phone with disney who wants this and will make a deal and that'll be that and then whatever happens happens and you might look like a big dick if IT makes a lot of money. In the end, fox did come back and Cameron made avatara with the studio, but Cameron still remembers an executive of the company who will go unnamed, because this is a really negative review. This executive approach Cameron after a free screening of the film, and beg the director to short name.

I said something that i've never said to anybody else in the business, Cameron's recalled. I said, I think this movie is going to make all the fucking money. And when IT does, it's going to be too late for you to love the film.

The time for you to love the movie is today. So i'm not asking you to say something that you don't feel, but just know that I will always know that no matter how complimentary you are about the movie in the future when IT makes all the money. And that's exactly what I said in caps all the money, not some of the money or the fucking money.

I said, you can come back to me and compliment the film, are tom along and say, look what we did together. You will not be able to do that. And then, of course, the film came out and made all the money.

I asked Cameron whether he had a theory about why. I don't think I need a theory. He said, I think anybody that seen the movie knows why.

It's a fucking gigantic adventure. That's an all consuming emotional experience that leaves you wrong out by the end of the movie. And IT was ground breaking visually, and IT still holds up today.

So I don't think I need a theory. After avatar AR, Cameron again walked away for a while. He dove to the marriage on the trench, to the deets point on earth.

And there was a period there, about a year and half, where I didn't even know if I wanted to make another avatar film. I knew how all consuming IT would be. IT basically took over my life for four years.

I had no other life for four years making that film, and I thought, do I really, anna, do this again? It's the highest grossing film in history. Can't I just tag that base and move on? But the problem was he still had ideas.

He knew, of course, that on some level he was running out of time. When you get to your mid sixties, you start realizing that the act could fall at any moment. Maybe it's next week, maybe it's in thirty years.

Cameron said that in the end, the answer he landed on was this. I'm a storyteller in their stories to be told. I'm not done until the big hook comes out from the side of the curtain.

So to me, everything, every idea, is a work in progress. The list of things that camera has failed that is short. But there are a few destinations that have eluded him. One of them is space, but he's come close.

He went to Daniel goldin, who was then the nasi administrator and overseeing the assembly of the international space station, and asked if he could go up to the american side of the I. S. S.

They met for a summit. Golden offered Cameron a shadow flight instead. No, I S S, but he'd see the planet from above.

He would see space. Gordon said. The I S, S at the moment was too difficult. Cameron thought about IT. He said to himself, maybe everything that i've been doing over the last few years leads to this exact moment when the administrator of NASA is willing to make a solid deal to fly me on the space shadow.

But he looked at his heart and he decided, no, he would only go to space on his own terms. Are you seeing a theme here with James Cameron? We haven't got to the book that he would only go to space on their own terms.

I said, i've gotta say, no, I want to stick to my plan, even if IT can't happen. Then columbia was lost on february first, two thousand and three, the space al columbia dissented, grated, taking with its seventh souls. Cameron went to the memorial service, but he never got to go to space.

I asked what love of regret he had about this, the fact that he never went zero. He said, different life. And he's been on a planet of his own making ever since I was driving back to my hotel.

Not too long after, when the phone ring IT was Cameron wanting to talk again about the shadow flight that he had turned down. I've forgot the punchline to the story. Cameron said the punchline is the shuttle mission that i've refused.

IT was the columbia. His voice rose, i've fuck and save my own life by choosing the higher path. Okay, that was a super long, except not from the book that we are talking you about.

This is from this unbelievable long form peace on G. Q. I will leave a link.

Dumb alo IT is called the return of James Cameron box office king, and was writing by zack barren. I read this article. IT completely took over my life, life, this episode.

Gto, here. I have never ever worked on an episode longer than this one. This i've been in the mind and completely obsessed with James Cameron, starting with this incredible peace and G.

Q. I don't even know for how many weeks. So I read this. This piece is, oh my god, I have to learn more about this guy.

And so immediately ord a bike, he on him, that bike phy, which i'll talk you about today and i'm going to go over now, is called the futures. The life and films of James Cameron is ned by rebeca key, and was produced right after that. The book about ten or p push right after original avatar came out.

But what I would do with every night, uh, i'll live l in dallow. You ve got to read the entire G Q. article.

It's incredible. But I would also listen to IT. It's thirty six minutes long. They use the technological called autumn. And you can, instead of reading, you can listen to all thing. I would fall asleep as i'm reading the this biography of James Cameron every night. I would fall asleep listening to this article again.

And I probably list to, and I know ten or fifteen times, he just unbelievably impressive with not only how he approached his work, but his absolute insistence on building his own world within the world. So I wanted to read the the extra from that article first, because that the order that this information James Cameron was presented to me, I think there's going to be a few these things that's going to be repeated throughout book. But I think IT gives you that overuse gona give you a Better introduction into Cameron and why he is a one of one an unbelievable, unique individual who is unapologetically extreme.

That is one of the most, most important things that I learned about him. One thing i'm going to take away, I do think this guy gona change my, changed my approach, my own work, but also reinforce IT. So let me jump in because I got a tonus stuff talk you about.

Just going to go a brief over you, an introduction, very quick. He's a trucked driver who directed the highest growing movie of all time. He then digged hollywood to spend a decade of his life expLoring the deep ocean and the heights of science.

He's a tinker and a dreamer who pioneer tools that revolutionized the way stories are told, technologies that a generation of filmmakers now rely upon. He spent his adult od doing things that other people called impossible. As I watched the director work, I became curious about a man who seemed interested only in doing things that were hard.

And so when I got to the apart, and maybe think of one of my personal heroes, Edwin land, this is exactly what he said. He says, do some interesting science that is all your own. And if IT is manifestly important and nearly impossible, IT will be fulfilling and maybe even a way to get rich.

That sounds a lot like Camerons quote in the G. Q article is I got attracted hard a, he says in two thousand and twenty three, in back in two thousand and nine or two thousand eight, when a this book is being written, is I gay? I this very curious.

I start watching this man. And he seemed only interested in doing things that were hard. Edwin was only interested in doing things that were hard. Steve jobs was only interested in doing things that were hard.

And when you choose the hard path and you you put all your effort and focus into IT, and you were one of being like, you solved the problems, the technical problem that you have to solve, and you actually succeeded to doing the hard things other people can help our expect, even the people in his field. There's a multiple examples in this book. This is just the first one where other directors were at the top of their professions.

I know I come to James to learn. And so we have Peter Jackson here. He is the director of the lord of the rings strategy.

In this, what he says, you can't help to come away from spending time with jim feeling that you are little bit stupid. He's got such a sharp mind. He is for middle, this idea, training ourselves in becoming for middle of individuals, is something the unit but over, over again.

I jumped out my seat when I saw that word in this book. He's got such a sharp mind. He's formidable.

Cameron's korea has been built on questioning, accepted wisdom, believing the power of the individual, his outlook, this, oh my god, to say goose omb's again, his outlook is that we can take fate in our own hands. I have to read that to you again. This is what gets me so fired up about the sky.

Cameron korea has been built on questioning, accepted wisdom, believing in the power of the individual. His outlook is that we can take fate in our own hands. Okay, so I just want to pull a few things from his childhood.

Its obvious. James Cameron was a builder and a founder from an extremely early age. He winds up becoming even from like, he's like a little kid.

Him, his brother know they love to tinker, they love to build things, they love to experiment. They're consent making things like go car and they make raft, they make tree houses. He's growing up in canada before his dad um gets relocated by his job to orange county, california.

And I think one story that his mom tells this book like a little kid virtual James Cameron, you say, oh, this this is a founder from day one, Cameron demonstrated a nack for assembling large groups in service of his goal on goals. When her oldest son was about ten, SHE noticed that his Younger siblings and several neighbors od children were streaming into her, her yard, Carrying scraps of wood and metal. I said, what you guys doing with all junk? Jim said, we're gonna build something in a couple hours later, the kids had constructed an airplane.

Guess who is sitting in IT being pulled? His mom said, Cameron was very good at telling people what to do. And so another thing to know about Cameron, highly likely that he's got a genius level.

I kill. That's why I took away from this. His mom gets a call.

I think he's not like third grade. Yeah, I think he was the second grade. So we're going just going to skip him to grade three.

And then he already skip one grade. Does he even get halfway through that? And then he gets another course. I O, no, like we got to skip this kid again.

And so it's gonna no surprise you anyway, that intelligent they're gona read all the time that he started doing this Young age. He would he was a veracious reader and what he's will allow, like the interesting founders as they were when they were kids like, think jeff. So I think, elon, they were obsessed with reading science fiction.

So James Cameron was the same thing. He would just sit there and read all the time. And so he's doing that from the time he's an a school.

By time he gets a high school like he, he's winning every single academic prize you could possibly win at school. He wants to becoming the president of a of the science club. He becomes obsessed with history and studying ancient civilizations, which is funny.

Later on the book, he has a great line. I don't know i'll covered or not, but he says something like, i'm an explore by nature and i'm just a filmmaker by trade. And then even as far back excise, what we see, this development of, the initial development of this, like lifelong trade that he has.

James is just extremely comfortable going his own way. He never, ever felt IT necessary to follow the heart. You see that in the way he makes us films.

The fact that guy literally guess the top is freshes like i'm just going to take like an eight year break, dive to the deepest part, the ocean, and maybe never, never make a film again, just because this is, this is what I might happen to be interested at this moment, not really concerned with what other people think I should be doing. And I think this, a refusal to just give into the thought of other people is like a massive for founders. He says the group think of his peers.

Buffalo m, he's in high school. This point first period meant singing the national anthem and saying the lord prayer. Intense grade grade. Cameron, listen to his classmates and felt a surge of defiance. IT struck me as this tribal chance.

In the middle of this, he SAT down, opened his book and started to read this indifference to the opinions of other people concerning, like his behavior, something that continue to this day, something that changes his life. When he was a little kid, he becomes a fascine by jastrow, who was making all these like underwater documentaries. So I think even by the time I got to high school, he was already school certified.

He wants up begging his parents to let him get to take like a super class, like the local, like Y, M, C. And we start to see something. This idea, okay, I want, I don't just want to do school, but I just don't want to do anything that's just like the Normal way.

I want the hardway. He is extremely intentional about building himself into a formidable individual. So he says, in the cuba class, he learned diving military style with harassment drills in which the instructor, the instructor, pulls off your mask and rips the regulator from your mouth.

This harsh training engendered in Cameron a confidence and resourcefulness that would help him survive to near drowning experiences in his life. So James comes from a family of engineers. His dad is an engineer.

His brother goes on to become an engineer. And this is something like I was think about my really shoot with my own, my own son and my daughter for that matter. This is his dad just does the right thing, like he's like, good and i'm going to back you no matter what I personally think.

And so I know I was leaving to myself, was going to this like, I really hope I, my son, still Young yesteryears old, I hope i'm like this. I hope i'm a dad like this when he's older. So says cameras religion with his father was strained in this teenagers because his father wanted James to become an engineer and his dad daud was a little weird that his son was like a obsessed uh with saifi I and uh like the stuff that was reading.

He says he didn't understand me very well because I was an art and science fiction and a lot of fantasy. However, this is what I mean about a good guy, dad. He would provide financial help in Cameron's hungry early years as an inspiring filmmaker, actually supporting the career choice of his son, no matter how grievous the odds was that his son would succeed.

Good guy, dad. And so there is a line from last week's book, last week podcast on while dissing paratimer ABS I love IT says, are all creative individuals built on the works of their processors. No one creates in a vacuum heat.

IT took seeing a film, another film we like, oh, wait, I might be able to do this for a living. So he says the first time I considered film as a career was in thousand nine sixty eight. I think he'd around maybe fourteen or sixteen years all the time.

He goes to the movie data and he sees Stanley kubrick classic film, which is two thousand, one a space auto sy. And this is one of my favorite ines, in the entire book. IT was at that moment that Cameron went from being a fan of movies to wanting to make films himself.

What does he do? Not enough to see the movie. The first time he goes back over and over over again, he's studying, how do? How did he do this? He returned to the data and saw the film several more times, trying to understand how cute ick had managed to pull this off and write for this.

His dad gets transferred to orange county, california. And most kids like you're in high school, there's no way I think my senior of high and most kids like I don't want to move like this is terrible. He knew that orange county was closer to hollywood.

He already had this idea that he wanted be a filmmaker. And so his response, teenage ice cold in Cameron's response, is very unusually, says, can we leave tomorrow? And so after high school, Cameron goes to futon junior college, which which he mentioned earlier or mentioned the G Q.

Article rame. And there's a couple of things that are really important here. One, everybody, everybody who runs into James Cameron regards of what point in his life, they all comment on his intensity.

And so this is the first time. Now is like, okay, well, maybe the first step of making becoming a filmmakers, actually becoming a screenwriting took just meeting the right group of friends, had similar interest. So says Cameron was taking fourteen credits at full letter and college by day, and then working four to six hours a night as a precision tool and die machine.

He has got a bunch blue, blue collar jobs that he's got to work while he's going to call this time. And he continue to tackle his own creative project on the side, which was writing science fiction stories and drawing. Jim was very intense.

He was very bright and full of ideas. He was one of those guys that when you met him, you had the feeling he was going to do things. And so we meet to a friend at the same college is gunning randal.

Freak and freak shares Cameron passion for science fiction, for ancient history, for exploration. And Franks is the first person. I K, I don't like. You should be writing your own science fiction movies.

And so he goes and gets all these scripts, like the original scripts for very famous movies like gos in king, which cases dance kid. And he's just like here, James, take a look at these, like what what would would be considered well written screen, screen plays. And that will give you ideas on how to do this.

And then you can just get started by doing that. And it's at this point in Cameron's life story or works like, okay, this is what a high agency person looks like. He's working all the time.

He's a teaching myself how to write scripts in his spare time, and he's giving himself a graduate level college education, filmmaking education for free or for a couple hundred box. This is high agency personified. In his early, tony Cameron held a series of blue color drops.

He to work as a genitor, a truck driver and machines on breaks. So he's driving a truck like a lunch truck for the of the school district that he's living by. And on breaks during the day when he's driving the truck, right, he curls up in his truck and starts writing, uh, writing screen place at night.

After a full day, camera would go and hang out with friends with that had some interest. They would talk passionate about movies for hours on end on saturdays. That's not enough, right? This is, again, this is high camera.

We then go to the library, university of california, and need photocopy. All these graduate student, these on esoteric filmmaking subjects, he filled two fat binary with technical papers for the cost of a couple hundred dollars in photocopying. He essentially put himself through a graduate course in visual facts at the top film school in the country without ever meeting a single professor.

And so then it's like, okay, well, how do I break into the movie? sure. You did something very smart. Like, this is what I do.

If I I never have been on a job to review my entire life, what if I did? I wouldn't in a resume, I would send kind demo or kind proof of work. And so what he does, he makes us like twelve minute little short film called exogenesis.

And so he takes exogenesis to this guiding Roger corman. Roger corman has come up in past podcast because he minds up, uh, starting like Frances for copa and Martin cache gives all these like legendary directors their first shot in life. So takes, uh, exogenesis is to Roger corman s company. Roger corman runs company called new world pictures.

It's like this b movie, like crappy films that they just turn out a bunch of crappy films so they make money violin with as as opposed to to a quality, right? But it's incredible important because he says Cameron was about to land exactly where he needed to be in a Darwinian environment for would be filmar ers, a place that rewarded smarts and scrapers and the kind of alpha behavior that he had honed. Why would the Roger corman school film like, why was that? The perfect place for a Young, enthusiastic and driven person like James Cameron is, at this point, his life.

And the author does a fantastic job. rebeca. Inua does a fantastic job because the most successful product of commons movie making factory had been people, definitely not his movies, movie sock, right? But why is this important? His low budget production had launched the careers.

Check this out. This is something. Have launched careers of Francis for copa morn, score, cy, ron Howard, jack nicholson and many others in hollywood.

why? Because what he does so smart corman recruit the Young and the eager. He was usually the only person working at his company over the age of thirty.

I was giving them training an opportunity to make a movie that nobody else would give them. You could go from Carrying light stands, directing your first picture in less time that I took to graduate from film school. So Cameron starts, he creates a cycling card.

This demo, what he's capable of called exogenesis is, and that demo gets him hired as a model builder, is not a screen writer, is not a director, or is a model builder. But you, are you nothing? now? You ve already got ten to known James Cameron a little bit, right.

Do you think he's gna stay on to build? There is no in hell. And this guy is going to whatever the fastest path to promotion is, you can be sure that the camera find IT.

And so that's what we're about to see here. And so what we see next is that James Cameron, with James Cameron, before he was James Cameron, this is more high agency behavior. He is at the bottom, like the entry level, bottom of the tony poll.

Somebody forgot to let him know that that was the case. Cameron had only been a comments for a matter of dates, but he was already taking charge. Listen to this line.

He seems constitutional, incapable of doing otherwise. He had a very commanding presence, even if his position was not running the model shop. He clearly seemed to be running the model shop.

Camera was so eager and the production so consuming that he started sleeping at the model shop. That was where he was when cormon's assistant woke up at the corner, had had just fired the art director of the film they are working on. Did Cameron want to take his place? He had never been an art director and had no idea what what was involved in the job.

Sure, Cameron said in a matter of weeks, he had jumped from a model builder on the film to its art director. That's another main idea, main theme, to learn about or learn from Cameron. He just assumes that he can learn any job.

So if you ask me, hey, can you do this? He'll say, yes. And then i'll figure out how to do IT after.

And we see this in the early days of company founders over and over again. The fact that there is some kind of benefit of not knowing what you don't know. Cameron says there wasn't time for any doubt.

We didn't know the twenty seven reasons why we couldn't be able to do exactly what we were in the process of doing. There was this blissful ignorance about the process of how films are really made that allowed us to do some pretty damn extraordinary stuff, given the time and budget restraints. You come out of this with the feeling that you can do anything.

So he's the art director and he's like, you know, I don't think I should be the art director. I think I should be running this entire thing. And the way what's about to happen here is what he discovers that your media quality is my opportunity.

So he's watching the director of this movie, and he says he was an impressed. These guys had no idea what they were doing. I'm watching them just blowing IT.

They're not getting the shots. They are not getting the performances. IT was a light ball moment for Cameron.

I'm thinking I can do that. He cornered corman, right? He says, hey, I think I should be the second unit director. I will work at night again. Cameron made a job for himself, and again, coron encouraged the enthusiastic Young man and said that a good idea start tomorrow.

Because of his work on this film, he eventually gets recruit to be a director of this terrible, terrible movie called like purana two, or something like that. And this is a really important. Okay, let me know.

Let me read this two version, and I read my take away from this. On his fifth day at work, Cameron learned that he was fired. His first opportunity, be the main director, right? He last five days. Five days will felt like career. A career ending mistake, however, was actually just one beginning.

The torment Cameron went through over his failed first directing effort would lead him exactly where he needed to be into the dark recesses of his mind, for that is where he found the terminate was going to be. This sive hit. This is the punch line of this entire section.

He was twenty seven years old, broke and depress. Now this is the entire reason. I just want to pull that one paragraph.

He gets higher to direct right, quickly gets fired. He finds himself, at twenty seven years old, broke, depressed, feeling like a loser. Fifteen years from now, he will be at the very top, the very top of the same profession.

ExcEllent is the capacity to take pain. What if he quit here? So the terminator was like one of my favorite movies um when I was a kid but there's a few. The entire chapters like the chapters are separated uh in the spoke on like what film he's working into this like unbelievable degree of detail. So you're really into some of these films uh, reading the chapters I would highly recommend.

But there's just a few things about determinator that I want to pull up because I think they're interesting in and more widely applicable, just not just a film king, but the aspect. The first thing before you, how you can pitch a film, right, you have to write to scrip. Cameron was not, did not feel like he was a naturally gifted writer.

He, right? This is the first time he talks about this way. He talks about this is what life he finds writing to be torture, but he does IT anyways.

And I think that's the biggest lesson here. Cameron found writing a lonely and uterine unforgiving process. IT is very hard for to get started, and he is very hard for me to stay focus, he said.

When he's writing, he tends to Baker himself in working mainly at night and withdrawing from the outside world. He used to tell friends that he d liked to buy the most uncomfortable chair he could find for writing so he would finish as fast as possible just to get out of IT. And so he writes this, and then he goes around and tries to find, convince a studio to make the movie.

There's just one paragrapher. Great projects can happen in bad economies when they're trying to raise money for the terminator. This is one thousand nine and eighty two, unemployment at ten percent and interest stator at seventeen percent.

And they still need to get to deal done. And it's good that they convince people to finance movie, because the the movie only terminator, the original terminator, right? IT only cost six million dollars.

IT went up, making seventy eight million on a six million dollar story. And we see the James Cameron, and he has a lot in common with the terminator. He has a terminator like work ethic.

He is doing the right, right. He's rewriting the terminal script to get ready to film the movie, right? We already writing.

He's doing the regret. Then he also gets a job and he is no, he is no money this time. So I take every opportunity that he get, he gets a job to write the secret to aliens.

And I think it's a equal to rambo w the the the movies, uh, with selector alone. Listen to how he does IT. This is what I mean, that he is a term like work.

I think this is, well, that man, in a three month period in one thousand nine hundred eighty three here to write three scripts. Cameron approached this, dilma, as a terminator. might. He decided that each script would be a hundred twenty pages for a total page count of three hundred sixty. He divided, this is so he divided the total number of waking hours he had during the three month period by three hundred sixty and figured out out how many pages per hour he had the right and I just wrote that many pages per hour, he said into IT out while he's working on the preproduction for determining or getting ready to shoot the movie.

He winds up meeting um another like a high quality person they want to becoming partners scanning stan winston and so this is James describing the partnership stand and I clicked early on because we both respect the artist and he saw one in me and vice verso and we were both of a little crazy and enjoy each other other's eventually cities. The work that he did for Cameron in subsequent films would earn winston three of his four academy awards and would lead to their co founding a visual effects company called digital domain in one thousand ninety. If you study the career of George lucas, I covered him all back on episode five.

I'm going to reread that book and and do an episode again. future. But this is something that lucon and Cameron have in common, is they were constantly had any ideas on how visual facts on and things they wanted to do in their films that they couldn't figure how to do.

So their solution was a little saying, then I go, well, just found my own special effects company. Lucas famously founded an industrial light magic. Cameron is gonna to be a customer of theirs.

And then James does the same thing when he found digital, remain with stand windsor in one thousand nine hundred and three. And so once the production on terminator begins, we see something that was a in the, the, the G. Q.

piace. The fact that people call, anyway, that works with James, they call him to do IT yourself sufferer. They all say that he likes being extremely hands on. And then i've seen him to speak in other interviews um because I watched bunch interviews is I goes and this is the only way that I can work. It's the way I want to work, Cameron, establish the hands on workings style that he would take you an extreme.

In later films, camera would be holding the camera, editing the footage, mixing the sound, performing almost every technical artistic c task on the film himself, except acting, Cameron can do almost anything there is to do in a movie set, as well as any specialist, and he knows IT. So the financial success of terminal opens up every opportunity that Cameron is going to have. After this.

He's going to be able to pick and choose what movie he makes as he continues to have financial success with his films. He eventually is able to restore over complete control. He's got final cut.

He gets to choose like because his whole thing, he's obsessed with controlling all aspects of his work for he's able to manual himself into position of complete control, though he still has to work, and he still Young. I think he's like thirty two. Maybe at this time, this is the first time that he actually interact with with people that don't love their work.

So he is doing production on the equal to the very successful movie called alien. He the equal to alien that he does, called alien. And so this is the the the contrast between somebody like James, who loves his work, being forced to work with other people who just tolerate theirs.

They do not love what they do. They just tolerate IT. Production on aliens took place at pinewood studios, which is in landed. The ploy es at pinewood were lifers, locals who viewed their film jobs as they might factory work a paycheck and nothing more.

I was shocked to be working with people who simply could not care less about the film they were working on, says Cameron. The pinewood crew were lazy, insulin, arrogant. I despise them.

And so they both approaching this was vastly different perspectives at the time. There is a sense that you don't get to the top of your profession through talent. You get there by paying your dues and putting in your time to the pinewood veterans.

Cameron, at thirty one years old, was an undeserving kid. And so something that Steve jobs has said previously that he observed that a players only like working with other a players. We see that here. When he finally wrapped at pinewood, Cameron stood up to address them. This has been a long in difficult shoot thought by many problems.

But the one thing that kept me going through IT all was the certain knowledge that one day I would drive out of this gate and never come back, and that you, sorry bastard, would still be here. He never did return. So if you will see all my notes that I have in this book, I have these like main theme that keep writing down, because I just keep your appearing.

And then I when I went back and started thinking about like what I had talked about, I would continue to add to them. And so one main idea, where main theme and James at the life and curry of jams, Cameron, is that he's just willing to let ideas marinate for decades. In many cases, you know, he can't figure how to make what he wants to do.

Or he has an to actually make that idea like twenty five years. In this case, there is nineteen years between this idea and the execution. Water and its mysteries would be in a biding source of fascination and creative simulation for Cameron throughout his life, one that would inspire him to make his most growing and personal movie.

This move, called the abas the abyss, began as a short story that Cameron wrote when he was sixteen, when he was devouring joke stores, underwater TV documentaries. And so this is something that he's gona work on for entire life. He loves shooting and water for the precise, a reason that nobody else likes shooting in water.

And me, I called Edwin again, don't do anything that someone else can do. The harder something is, the less competition there are actually be. I think this is something I see a lot of entrepreneurs like sugar with us, like they tried to look for, like the easy way else, like no, that's exact wrong thing you should be doing competition times.

And if something is easy, there's will be way more people trying to do IT James is like, no, i'm only going after hard because I I will literally be the only person out they're doing this. I will be the only person standing. I will be a one of one.

There will be no competition while making avatar, he was also at work on an engineering project designing and building a one man sphere to dive to the mariana trench as a fantastic tic documentation uh, about this that shows like all all of the engineering that went into designing this, this sphere that he used, the sphere that he used to get to the deaf part in the world's oceans. And he had that idea because he watched this, that this, this video, the last time humans had gone to the very button, maria and trench be before James Cameron did IT with all back in nineteen sixty. But this sentence tells you a lot about his personal in this approach to work that no one else had bothered to try again in fifty years did not deter Cameron.

IT makes the journey irresistible to him. I like doing things I know others can. He says that's part of what attract him to shooting movies in water.

Nobody likes shooting and water, he says. It's physically taxing. It's frustrating. It's dangerous.

But when you have a small team of people as crazy as you are that are good at IT, there is a deep satisfaction in both the process of doing IT and the resulting footage. So this idea about i'm constant tracked to hard. I wanted do things other people aren't ing.

What is that actually like? What is hard look like in this case? Like the abyss is a movie is going to be made and I think nineteen eighty nine, right? So he's trying to figure a couple years before the movie comes out, okay, how i'm going to do this, we're i'm going to shoot IT, right?

So they're going in scouting all over locations over america, and they they're scouting out one thing, and they see something kind of weird in the distance and says in the distance jim could see something really intreating. IT was a giant concrete ball from a far look, something IT looked a little like the roman color sim. So he goes over choice, like what the hell is thing?

It's like essentially like an abandon construction project, what they were trying to make, what have been a nuclear reactors containment vessel? IT was only have finished, and IT was two hundred and two hundred forty feet in or with eighty foot tall walls and no entrance. So he parks sets the things, I O I want to, I want to look at this thing.

What is IT? Well, how are you going to look at something that is has eighty fo walls surrounding and no entrance? He's like all there's a construction cream like here. The crane that they were using to assemble IT was also been.

And so what does Cameron do? He goes and starts climbing up on one hundred and ten foot crane IT is raining and there's a ton of wind when he's doing this. And he decides this is exactly where this is the set.

This is where i'm going to film ABS. This is what hard looks like. This is what he means, like he's attracted to hard.

IT would involve pouring thousands of yards of structural concrete, installing enormous filtration systems and a row of twenty thousand haters to warm the seven point five million gallons to a comfortable temperature. What they were planning wasn't just the largest underwater set ever built. IT was a feet of industrial engineering.

And so the crazy thing is he just built the world's largest underwater set movie set ever. He matches this unbelievable initial accomplishment with this insane work ethic and dedication. I think they call him a few pages later.

What is the word? They come like a maniac. I think that he's this home, a possessed maniac. Listen to this paragraph, member. They're filling under water.

At the end of the day, Cameron had to hang ten feet under the service for an hour to adjust the pressure difference. Never want to waste time. Cameron asked crew to install a monitor in the control room underwater.

Remember, all everything about this guard is happening underwater. Never won a waste time. Cameron, as a crude and saw a monitor in the control room so he could watch his dailies through the acquiring window while suspended online when his neck was sore from his giant helmet.

She's got this helmet that has always like communication stuff in IT, right? He hung upside down and had the crew invert the monitor. So I hanging up identical bat underwater.

Ah he asked to patch phone calls from the studio through to his home and so he can talk to fox executives while he decompresses under water after a draining out eighteen hour day, the few lingering caste crew members heading home would stop and take one last look in the viewing room window at their director, cleaned to the line like a bat on a branch and still at work. I was stunned by jim allegiance to the project and the extent of his physical abilities. Jim was there for every minute of IT IT was beyond belief.

His commitment to what we were doing. Another main theme in the life of James Cameron is the the important and magical power of compounding. So present day he's been a for me for forty years where we're in the story though he's you know only a handful years into his career of filmmaker.

The reason I talked about the the compounding nature of Cameron career kind of jumps out when you study him is he starts experimenting with C. G. I, with computer graphics, although back in one thousand eighty eight.

The reason i'm bringing this up because this is when he starts working with George lucas company, industrial light magic. And IT said there was a light magic assured Cameron that they could do IT IT would take the company nine months. This is a one thousand nine hundred eighty eight.

okay? IT would take the company nine months to deliver twenty eight shots. Amazing when you consider that twenty years later on, avatara Cameron crew would produce more than two thousand shots in the same time period, each of them many orders of manual, more complex.

So in two thousand and eighty eight, IT takes nine months to make twenty shots. Twenty years later they can do two thousand. And I think twenty years after that, I was like twenty thousand, maybe even more, in that same type period.

There is a massive benefit in getting to find your lifework as fast as possible. And then once they are just stay in at all the benefits of the future technology, all that's going to compound in a cruel to the people that don't quit. And the thing is most people quit is another example that so now he's almost ten years into uh, his movie career and this is incredible.

The existing norms of the movie industry at this point in time, right, are going to be temporarily ignored to the benefit of James Cameron and anal torture. So remember terminator, I think of that, say, six million dollars, six point eight, I like that, uh, to make. So six million dollars made seventy eight million dollars in revenue.

And so now this company goes and buys, a few years later, they pay ten million dollars just for their rights, right? Just for the rights to make terminator, too. James Cameron is thirty five years old.

This time, this temporary suspension of, like the Normal economics of the industry he happens be Operating in, is going to benefit him in Arnold. This is what I mean about that. So these two guys running this company called Carol co.

Pictures, it's this independent production company and they call James Cameron. And you're like, hey, we just thought the rights for terminal two, we want you to right direct the film. And Cameron was not sure that he wanted to do a secure.

And they like, okay, we'll pay you six million dollars and so says, they offer me a lot of money. Cameron says, six million dollars, to be exact. IT turns out I can be bought.

So that is in nineteen and eighty nine, so didn't be like double that and maybe triple that today for a thirty five year old. Now that was hilarious ones, you know, becoming one of the most expensive, I think, the budget they have on the movies, like a hundred million dollars. But listen to how what they did for Arnold.

So they gave James six million oh, you know how they convinced Arnold to do the movie. These guys gave Arnold a twelve million dollar gulf stream jet to close the deal. That's incredible. So while i'm reading about how they're making terminated to, I stumbled across this like a little piece of fun history factory. So think about when the most well known a software programs of all time is photoshop.

Well, the crazy thing I discovered in this book is that an early version of what eventually becomes the first version of what will eventually come, the commercial product, photoshop, is actually the first thing they used for us to solve a technical problem that James Cameron is having on terminator to this around nineteen ninety. I think this is happening. Some of the things that Cameron wanted the t one thousand terminated to do was a stretch for industrial light magic.

When the computerized character extended into certain poses, giant black gashes appeared in the shoulders. The im industrial magic team pulled IT off things in part to a cool new piece of software invented by a twenty something person working there named john no. And his brother Thomas, uh, a grad student at the university of michigan, that that software happened to be the very first version of photoshop, still a few years away from becoming the industry standard graphics editing program.

That's incredible. I won't looked um and I think that developers wind up selling the rights to photoshop a few years later if I think thirty five million dollars there is something that appears in the book multiple times. I haven't covered yet.

I think you already know this, but he has excessively high standards, is very difficult to work with this kind of reminding me one of my favor lines in that when I was reading that chapter on waltzin pcos a last week was that what disney put excEllence before? Any other consideration I think James um would that apply to James as well? And so it's talks about like they had to get this movie made quickly um but that didn't have any effect on James James Cameron's level of perfectly onal ism ah he he's known for doing this some multiple things like so he shoots to take and then he is like a cash free like he would repeat over over again and so he says he would be either he'd alternative between these two, which is hilarious.

That's exactly what I didn't want. Are the other one perfect? Let's do IT again and he says IT chafed the t two crew, some of whom started wearing shirts.

That said, term dator three, not with me in that dedication to just making the best thinking because we could pays off in the end, quality will always make you more money is another one, I think, from the the world disney, a book I cover last week, or the world disney, I say weather. So what's faster is that I think they pay, they cost one hundred million to make the movie, makes something like five hundred million dollars. And so this crazy, he his movies keep having these fantastic financial outcomes.

And this is what allows him to get already really want to. James Cameron really wants, and what most of the history great founders want. They want the same. They want ownership and they want control. And so you are reading about jams.

James Cameron, I could easily be reading about James dyson or jorrocks, and so says, in the spring one thousand hundred and two Cameron sign and unusual five hundred million dollar lar multi picture domestic distribution deal with fox, they gave empower to put any movie he wanted into production without foxes approval up to a budget of seventy million dollars. And he retained otherness of his own films. This deal gave Cameron both more control and more responsibility than a director typically enjoys.

This is what he said, and this is what inspired him to do. So I had just made tremendous for cargo studios, and I admired how they road being their own bosses, mavericks and entrepreneurs. I admired holly road being their own bosses.

Mavicks and entrepreneur s. Cameron says, i've been fed up with the studio system after aliens and abyss, both of which I felt were not released properly. I could now set up a structure which would allow me to call the shots myself until after science.

This next deal, the next, the thing he does. The following year, he founded his own special fax company. I just love this idea.

It's like James Cameron knows that there is a revolution in computer generated special effects happening, and that won. He wants to play a role. And two, in order to play that, we're in order to do so.

He decided the the correct movies to start my own, to found my own special effects company. Camera wanted to be part of the digital revolution, special facts. I wanted to make sure that as a filmmaker, I was always ahead of the wave and not behind IT.

To do so, he felt he would need a lab of his own he was taking of founding his own special effects company, which is gonna call digital domain. This is how they get the funding for IT ah they raise fifteen million dollars from IBM, which took a fifty percent stake in the company and provided much of the hardware to get IT started. Digital domain wasn't a hard cell.

The guys behind terminator two in jurassic park, where as promising a team to back in the national is very early days in the naco digital effects industry has existed. And then just one more thing I want to pull off from the section, which I think is a good idea, go all in on where you believe the future is, regards to where currently is the companies is first, bold move would be the holy embrace, digital composition and not even bother to open an optical department. IT was a risky decision at the time.

Most of hollywood was still relying on optics. They thought that was that wasn't to be the case. The futures, they just skipped that part. They went directly to the future. Just go right to the future.

I guess the way to think about what he's doing here, but setting up digital remain that way gave the company almost instantaneous advantage over the established affects houses. And then there's another thing that appears over a Roger in the career, James Cameron. Anyone point out to you he's just got intense focus and sorts like mute the world and then build your own world.

Cameron knows a lot about a lot of subjects. They can talk about energy policy, he could talk about helicopter engines, he could talk about the punk wars. But one of his rare blind spot is hollywood gossip. He does not give a dam what is going on inside of his own industry.

This is not a man who watched e and so what um they are talking about is he I think this on true lies he wants to wanting to hire tom Arnold and he didn't know anything about like the back there was like some controversial around time are not so he give this phone call from a fox executive and they like how you're doing, like they're just so mystified by his choice of casting member. He is control so he can do whatever he he gets to choose the actors and he wants to work with. And so they asked them they're, don't you read the papers? Don't you watch T, V? And Cameron confess that, no, that he did not.

And so a short while later we hear from his long term attack. Y, and he said, us, and James is not a guy that I would call and say, let's do lunch. Cameron rarely launches our parties and applies none of his laser being focus to the hollywood power struggles.

Jim doesn't call me up and say, what is spiller g make with some of my other clients do he does not think in those terms. And so the note that I have on my pages like this is this really like a bullet point, my bullet point like model of James Cameron, up until my reading up up told the point, the book is like, he likes to focus, he likes to work. He is not motivated, motivated primarily by money.

Very much like world disney. ExcEllence came first, right? Financial consideration tions. If it's going to make him money, he's trying to build great.

And with the trust that if he build something great, he'll make money. But building something great with something the world decision and Cameron put first. And the masa was that he's just got an inner clock.

He's got an inner score card. He just wants to focus on the work that he's doing. He's not concerned with the pulling his head up and looking around like, what do other directors thinker, what is everybody else an industry doing?

It's irrelevant to him and you see this and how he picks his movies, trying to figure out like, what am I going to work on next after, uh, true lies and this is where he decides to do titanic, which at the time becomes the most find successful move all time. Uh, what movie he makes next is decided intuitively based on themes that interest him at the moment and what new technical or dramatic territories he wants to explore. I had a lot of doubts about doing titanic.

He says, could he be done? I wasn't sure. Could the deep dive filming be done? I don't know. Could we create a technology? I don't know.

Would anyone want to see IT? While he was ruminating on what to do next, he received the facts from this other guy, this expLoring him sao vich. And so he's reading sorrow with his thoughts.

And I love this idea because I find this to be true as well. When I listen to podcast, when I read books that just one line can change everything. And so he's reading this, uh, this fact and says, is sometimes necessary, like to do something extraordinary.

And Cameron's mind, that line seem to to glow on the page. Yes, I realize sometimes you have to do something extraordinary, something crazy. And this is the animation earlier. I am an explore at heart and a filmmaker by trade. And so he looked at creating titanic, making the movie, not as i'm making a film, i'm going on exploration, i'm going on an auto sy.

And then he has this great thing where h one of the reasons he wanted to do to the film, because he's been fantasising about diving down to the rock, I think he would cause, I think was like six million dollars or something like that, to to develop the technology to do IT safe. And I think he went down, you know, maybe a dozen times, maybe more. And what he realized is like, well, really, we should charge my expedition to the titanic as a marketing expense in the five and studies.

Like, what are you talking about on this actually a genius way to gain attention for the film? And so Cameron says, well, the expedition should be charged to the marketing budget because it's going to attract way more publicity, then just training out the actors and sending them around for on the talk show circuit. This is great line.

Michael Jordan autobiographers, I cover back on episode teen. He says, I focus on the little things, the little things that up to big things. And Cameron did this entire career, you see IT in in the titanic.

He was a stickler for getting the the actual historical details as accurate as possible. There was a degree of obsession in Cameron's dedication to the little details, from the ship stationary down to the White star line stamp. He has always been a stickler for the little things.

After I put out that episode on berna, and all I heard from stories, from people listen to the podcast that he is this way to the most, my new details in the stores, the businesses that he runs, the hotels, the restaurant that owns. He focuses on the large picture, the strategy, but he also pays attention to the most my new detail that he would some of the stories have heard, would just shock you if I could repeat them. And they came in mind when i'm reading the section as I.

This is what Michael Jordan, top of his prevision, but not or not, top of his profession. James Cameron, top of his prevision, obsessed with the details. Little things add up to big things.

Let's go back to this idea that was in that piece by G. Q. That that jumped out of me, right? Where it's like James is a type person whose confidence proceeded. His achievements is so important to truly believe in what you're doing to have like superhuman levels of confidence because sometimes you have people on your own team trying to talk you out of IT. He's doing titanic, right?

Titanic c this is before tita comes out, is going to be host and and successful film IT is that people on his own team on twenty century a, one of the president there comes to James and is trying to like, and still doubts into James as mine. This is crazy. This is, if you listen to the early epsom of founders, i'd have this segment because IT pop up so much, so many times where I call that critics don't know shit.

And what I mean by that, like digital biography, is are just full of people confident in why what you were doing just won't work. And so we see that here, tiny century fox president bill mechanic told Cameron that the film would never see a dima profit. He suggested that camera should not only surrender all his points, meaning his profits on titanic, but give back half of his points on the next film he deal with fox.

This conversation happen in cameras. Living room mechanics counteroffer did not go over well, get the fuck out of my house, Cameron replied. And I need to make the point at that level of confidence.

Like sometimes that has to be externalized even win. It's not you actually don't feel IT at the time inside because this is coming towards the end of the filming. So the production like the actual shooting of titanic is is rapping but then he's GTA figure out to edit IT IT is one of the lowest points of uh, James his life.

He's like just kill me now but you still have the strength of the belief in what you're doing, even though you feel like shit to make sure that you don't give into the doubt of other people. He was exhausted in drain. He had enough footage for a poor hour movie and was wildly over budget and had been told there is zero possibility that the film could make any money.

His moving was the laughing stock of hollywood critics don't know shit. The media was attacking him and ridiculing him daily. The hollywood wood media, the media that he is right to ignore, is making fun of him, because they think this can be like another water world like this.

This bust, you spent all this money. Remember, it's about to make more money than anything else. And this is what was happening right, right before its darkest, before the dawn.

This is great line. And the founder, vans, you know, a shoe company, he says the opportunity is a strange beast. IT commonly appears after a loss.

I don't know why they came to when, I guess at this point, but this is what I was thinking of. He had enough portage for a four movie, was wild leever budget, and had been told there was zero possibility the film could make money. His movie was a laughing psycho.

Hollywood in the media was ridiculing, attacking him daily. I thought to myself, lord, take me now. He had finished one impossible task only to face another, but that was tomorrow.

And then right after this was just this funny interaction he had with foxes CEO Robert murdoch in the medal. This terminal, the director ran into the news corporation chairman and CEO ruber murdoch at the studio. I guess i'm not your favorite person at the moment, Cameron said to the media baron.

But the movie is going to be good. He promised IT Better, be Better than good, murdoch told him. And so what happens? Titanic ones are being number one for sixteen straight weeks and makes almost two billion dollars there I wants with two billion dollars in the movie.

And this is why he's so interesting. He is bent on doing what he wants to do when he wants to do IT in maintaining absolute control. What would be the apex of his powers? As a director, Cameron would step orate from feature film making all together.

After titanic, Cameron told to calling himself the world's busses unemployed filmmaker, i've got my fuck you money, and I can kind of step away for a while. So as you can already tell from his interviews from this book, uh, if you watch a bunch video, like video in interview of from two, that is by far his tail word. These are his works, right? what? How he talks? I got my bucky money, and I can kind of step away for a while.

My career is not going anywhere, and I can do all the cool self that I wanted to do now. And so what does he do when he wants to get away from all the pressure he does? What is a weird to think surprising thing to me is like A I woods of tiger woods said the exact same thing, thing that James said, he, like the only place he could get away from the pressure was by diving deep into the ocean.

Surprising they, they had a comment for Cameron pieces found under the ocean. After finishing a movie, he says, I usually go diving first to decompressing by literally decompressing sing. I find the underwater world to be a great anecdo to hollywood.

Nobody knows. Nobody down there knows who you are. That's exactly what tiger wood said. And then, James, at another level to this, you are just part of the food chain. And so in the next eight years he just dedicate himself to to becoming explore, which is what he always wanted to be. In fact, there was a little like a historical anecdote where um James Cameron is actually underwater at the site of the titanic on nine eleven.

And so they come to the top, I think, is with another person I can remember, and they get to the top and the boat um and they thought I was like to be a good cause for celebration and they get that happen. Everybody's like solar and depression, like what's going on. And that's when he found out that nine, eleven age just happened.

And so he's looking back and trying to explain, like why he did this at this point in of his life. And he says, where are the twenty first centuries majlis more important? Where was the spirit of discovery in the regular citizen who had once watch the moon landing and been filled with wonder and a sense of possibility? Exploration is not a luxury.

IT defines us as a civilization. By two thousand and five, Cameron had devoted seven of his midlife years, potentially a directors most productive, to the discovery of new places and new technology, rather than making movies. And so eventually he surfaces, literally, and he's like, i'm going to make avatar.

And this is what I meant, was like one of the most impressive things about him. The idea that held, just let ideas simmer for decades. He mean, I know how to do IT, but he just keeps.

He says, there's another one in the book early on ways like all, not the time before I run out ideas. So says, at this point, Cameron had released a feature film. And over a decade he had been largely absent from the hollywood scene, writing in his submarines, filming his documentary and tinkering and building new film making toys.

The director wrote his first treatment for avatar AR twelve years before. This is twill years before he actually starts working on him. The only problem with making the movie one thousand nine hundred ninety six was that I was impossible.

The technology did not exist again. We see the same over again. I know what I want to do.

I just don't know how to do IT yet. And then he comments on this idea just doesn't let ideas die. He doesn't even go to waste.

Cameron joke said. He is like a plane indian who wants no piece of the buffo. In this case, IT is his ideas that are made of use down to the marrow sometimes.

Decades later, he started creating some of the images and avatar in the one thousand nine hundred and seventy I thought he was mentioning in the piece where he had these drawings. All the people come out after avatars. Why successful? You store their different ago? Yeah, look at this.

dated. I devote this, one of the nineteen, I have been processing this in my imagination for decades. That is an incredible statement. And so all the way back when he's founding his, uh, special effects uh company, digital domain things one thousand ninety two, the year before he found the company, he rates sing called a digital manifesto, a trial page, almost like a White outlining like why he starting digital remain and what he thinks it's gona happen and really not to focus on specifically what happening.

What is the idea behind what's happening the book and what the idea that happening behind the book, to me, is like, what is obvious to you in your industry that won't be obvious to other people for a decade? This was obvious to have a decade before, is obviously where else Cameron had written a digital manifesto, a passionate, argued thirteen page document laying out where he expected file making to go in the coming years. In his manifesto, he describes something called performance capture.

What he's calling performance capture is now known as motion capture. And that's what you see, an avatar, uh, performance capture, in which an actor would done a data suit sending a stream of information about the actors physical movements to a work station member. This is nineteen ninety two, uh, will be inserted into a synthetic environment artist with a new software to turn the actor's digitize performance into a fantastical character.

Cameron was rubbing elbows with the brightest minds and special effects at that point, the back nine, eight, two, okay. And this is the stuff they were talking about. IT.

All seems pretty obvious from where we were sitting. He says. To most of hollywood of the possibility of life, like cg characters driven by human performances, won't be obvious for at least another decade.

As fascinating. Think about like what is obvious to you in your industry that will not be obvious to other people in that induction for a decade. And can you start working on these things now? And the lash pin, the book is all about the building of avatar.

This is another main theme in the life and career of James Cameron. The fact he said he feels every idea is a work in progress he has attracted to hard I love this line and says, a crew member wrote, uh, I set catch phrase on the Whiteboard. It's avatar.

Dude, nothing works the first time. And another cooking about jim's Cameron is, he's all positive some, uh, I love when these, like people to typ of professions, interacted each other with the historical analogy, gy, or something, it's taken place to do in recent history. This is where imagine earlier how you know, he's willing to to share everything he learns.

Peter Jackson seems as we were one of setting a week using Cameron equipment, visiting, working with this crew, visiting the production, and he says he was helping us get our heads around the equipment. Jim is very generous in the way he shares knowledge and information. He doesn't jealously guard technology and secrets.

And then you fast for like another decade after this spoke ends. And that's part of the reason that Cameron moved to new zealand. He uses Jackson special facts company. He was using IT to build uh to on avatara he's been using for I think avatar AR three and avatar four two is called weather and it's actually uh headquartered in new zea very close to wear cameras ves.

And finally, one of the last pages of the book, there is a sentence that I think is a perfect way to end this conversation, this part cast this time together that gives you a great indication of James Cameron, the person, and how he approaches his work. James Cameron put on a blue baseball cap with the letters H, M, F, I, C. Printed on IT.

It's stood for head mother fucker in charge. And that is where i'll leave IT. I'm going to leave the link down below for this book.

If you buy, we support in part. At the same time, i'm also gone to leave the link down for the G Q article. At the top of the G, Q article, you will see a, the all of audio controls.

And can you wants to listen to IT? It's an excEllent did an excEllent job on and like I said, I was listening to IT every night as I went to sleep, as I was working my way through the book and think you about this part cast. So hope you check out about the G Q.

Article and this book. Absolutely fantastic. Another thing that I hope you check out is if you get on my personal email list, so I will go through, I don't know, I probably have seventy five highlights of this book, what i'll go through.

And this takes an unbelievable money time, is i'll go through and try to find like that ten, like my ten favorite sentences in the book, like ten bullet points that I want to remember from the book. If you want to get on the list, the link is down below. The second thing that I hope you check out, which a lot more people are checking out.

Now, founders A M A. IT is for if you are a fanatic, if you are an enthusiast of founders, IT is a way to go deeper. Here's the founder.

M A S. IT is a private pot. Get feed where if you sign up, you get access to a private email dress.

I read every single one of these email dresses like this, where you send in a question, if you have a question, I read the question. I I answered a form of short A M A episodes. I think i've done twenty eight or twenty nine up until this point.

You can listen to them immediately. So that's one thing you can listen. You can email me a question, which you'll know that i'll read and include you in your question if you want to let other other listener's of founder ami, no, what you're working on, you can include your name and your link to your website.

And I include that in the question is a great way to kind of check out what other people that listen to this are working on as well. That link this is all optional. You don't have to do.

You can just listen to the regular enders episodes three hundred and ten over there. Um but if you are enumerated and if you are a fanatic and a manian like like I am and you want to go deeper, this is a great way to do that. That link exam below and a vbl founder podcast out com that is three hundred and eleven books down one thousand ago and I talking to.