#26: The Story of James Cameron (Biography Breakdown #3)

**Jack** (0:00)
welcome back to the podcast, everyone. In this episode, I have perhaps what might end up being my best episode yet, and the longest episode. We'll see where it ends up. And this is one I've researched heavily for, one that I'm extremely excited for, and just one that I think is going to come out really well and be very entertaining and informative. And in this episode, I'll be discussing the director behind some of the biggest films in cinematic history, including The Terminator, Aliens, The Titanic, and Avatar among others. So for this episode, I'm going to be talking about the biography, The Futurist, The Life and Films of James Cameron by Rebecca Keegan. And I've linked the book in the description if you'd like to purchase it. And this is the main source I've utilized for this episode. So without further ado, let's kind of get into the book. So first off, I want to just address the question, why is it called The Futurist? Well, James Cameron has always been someone interested in the future. This is going to be a common theme throughout this book. He's someone who's tried to predict the future and someone who has pushed the medium of film forward in a unique way through examining the impacts of technology on humanity. And here's a quote from IMDB from James Cameron. Well, I see our potential destruction and the potential salvation as human beings coming from technology and how to use it, how we master it, and how we prevent it from mastering us. Titanic was as much about that theme as The Terminator films. And in Aliens, it's the reliance on technology that defeats the marines, but it's technology being used properly that allows Sigourney's character to prevail at the end.
And Titanic is all about technology, metaphorically as well as on a literal level, because the world was being transformed by the technology at the time, and people were rescued from the Titanic because of wireless technology and because of the advances that had been made only in the year or so before the ship sank that allowed them to call for help when they were lost at sea in the middle of the North Atlantic. So I think it's an interesting theme, one that's always been fascinating for me, end of quote. So here we see where James Cameron earns his name, The Futurist, and his lens on the past's ability to predict the future is a theme in which we're going to come across many times throughout this biography. So without further ado, let's really discuss the story of James Cameron. And let's start with a quote from the opening pages of this biography. Here it is. The end of the world was coming, and he was eight. That's when James Cameron found a pamphlet with instructions for building a civilian fallout shelter on the coffee table in his family's living room in Chippawa, Ontario, a quaint village on the Canadian store of Niagara Falls. It was 1962, the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Philip and Shirley Cameron felt they had reason to be concerned about the bomb. The Camerons lived just a mile and a half from the falls, a major power source for communities on both sides of the international border. And this is really interesting because we are about to see a major influence on Cameron early on, something in which he will carry on onto his filmmaking later on, and that's his idea of the power of destructive forces on mankind. And he gets this sort of fear early on from his community, his parents, and just the world around him which has at this point developed into a very hostile place in the heights of the Cold War, a place that's filled with paranoia and so much fear because of the potential of World War III. And he kind of gets that apocalyptic idea stuck in his mind, which we're going to see later on. And here's another quote from the book. And this is from James Cameron. I realized that the safe and nurturing world I thought I lived in was an illusion, and that the world as we know it could end at any moment, Cameron says. The quote continues. From that time on, he was fascinated by the idea of nuclear war, his fears fueled by the apocalyptic scenarios depicted in the science fiction books he devoured at night, reading under his blanket with a flashlight. And, end quote there. And this might seem like a small and rather insignificant fact within the greater story of James Cameron's life and what influenced his films, but I find it very important to look at, because as we learned, if you look back, I made episode, excuse me, episode one and two is about George Lucas. I did a biography breakdown, and then episode seven is about Steven Spielberg, which is my favorite episode to listen to. And what I learned in both those books is that the childhood experiences of these directors, whether they were good or not, oftentimes have basically all the time really has a major impact on a director and their ideas. And this one I just mentioned certainly had a big impact on Cameron and how he made his movies because he realizes how fragile life is, and he realizes how important it is to realize that. So here's another quote relating back to this idea. The pensive eight-year-old boy would grow up to tell vivid stories about world's ending from a machine-led war in 2029 to an unsinkable ship's descent into the deep in 1912 Each James Cameron movie is a warning against his darkest childhood fears and a kind of how-to guide for living through catastrophe with humanity and spirit intact. His own story begins with a long line of troublemakers. End quote. Fantastic quote right there. And we see this idea of Cameron's end of the world fantasy in a way. And it really originates from his childhood. Certainly something to keep in mind as we continue along with the story in this biography. And then a few pages later, we see an interesting bit about Cameron's leadership style early on in his childhood. And this really reminds me of how Steven Spielberg is, because in Spielberg's childhood, he was described as a kind of skinny nerd who was this loner. He didn't have a lot of friends and he was bullied a lot. He was ostracized because he was a Jew and his family was like the only Jewish family among all these other Protestants and whatnot. But when he directed movies as a teen, he had this innate command of everyone else, including the jocks and the bullies from school, which people commented on later. And I think that leadership quality of being able to manage and control people in a smart way is very important to James Cameron's career and just in general to the career of any successful director as we've seen. And here's the quote about Cameron's leadership abilities. Early on, Cameron demonstrated a knack for assembling large groups and service of his own goals. When her oldest son was about 10, Shirley noticed his younger siblings and several neighborhood children streaming into her side yard carrying scraps of wood and metal. I said, what are you going to do with all this junk, Shirley recalls? Jim said, we're going to build something. When Shirley checked on the project a couple of hours later, the kids had constructed an airplane. Guess who was sitting in it being pulled? Cameron was very good at telling people what to do. He took it upon himself to keep his younger siblings in line when the family went out to dinner. The oldest boy would fold his hands at the table and start twiddling his thumbs, cue to the little ones to follow and to not grab the salt and pepper shakers. End quote. So this right here is such a good quote, so just incredibly critical as I mentioned previously. And I think this skill is in part why he was able to create the highest grossing movie ever, which was Avatar. And these massive spectacle films like Avatar, The Titanic, The Abyss, which is because he's able to organize and control people on a very large scale, on a very large project to bring his vision to light, which is just, again, extremely, extremely important. So moving on from this, I noticed that Cameron's mother was very encouraging of his artistic side, which I think is important, because anytime parents encourage their child or the child's passion, it certainly adds fuel to the fire in a good way. And Cameron was lucky enough to have that, which I think helped him. Here's a quote from the book. Surely encourage your son's artistic side. At his request, some Saturdays, they traveled eight miles to the Royal Ontario Museum, where Cameron pulled out a sketchbook to draw helmets and mummies. Everything I saw and liked and reacted to, I immediately had to draw, he says. Drawing was my way of owning it. He created his own comic book versions of movies and TV shows he liked. From pirates, inspired by the 1961 Ray Harry Hosson fantasy mysterious island, to spaceships he saw on the first season of Star Trek in 1966 He easily won all the local design contests to paint a mural on the Seagram Tower at Niagara Falls, where the bank windows at Halloween. At age 14, he painted an activity scene for the bank for $100, enough to buy Christmas presents for his parents and siblings. So early on, we see James Cameron having this, I guess you could call it sense of urgency, where he's doing these impressive things. And he's putting himself in situations to be able to get experience artistically. And his parents really encourage that, which I think is helpful for him. And so James Cameron, basically growing up, he's experimenting a lot artistically. He's kind of forging his own path. And we see something very unique with Cameron. And this is something that we kind of came across in the George Lucas or Steven Spielberg biographies. And just we see again here, and that's that Cameron is extremely intelligent. He basically has a genius level intellect. But he also, you know, you think he want to go into like, I don't know, physics or some kind of engineering, but he wants to use that intelligence in a more artistic way. And he doesn't want to go the traditional route of being like a doctor or a lawyer, or something like that, right? Because he's very much a lot of these guys, a lot of these famous directors and successful people are very much rebels in the sense that they want to forge their own path. And that's what James Cameron wants as well. And this relates back to the other biographies, because Lucas and Spielberg are just tremendously gifted filmmakers. And we saw early on, they didn't have, this is kind of goes with Cameron, but more so with these two. They didn't have that academic inclination, I guess is the best way to put it. They weren't interested in academics, not they weren't the best students. And the thing about James Cameron is that he's able to learn the material very quickly, but similar to Lucas and Spielberg, he isn't interested in academics. I mean, I think it goes to show the rebellious side, a great deal of successful directors have, but it also goes to show that James Cameron, a lot of these successful people, especially in the entertainment world of things, they already know what they want to do. Like Cameron knows what he wants to do at like 10 years old. Same goes with Steven Spielberg. In the Steven Spielberg biography, there was this one quote, it was really funny. It's actually where Steven Spielberg practices receiving an Oscar. I think he was like 12 years old or something. He like recited his speech in the mirror. Like you have these very successful people who know what they want to do and they're basically going to go after it. They don't want to be told no, they want to do things their way. I think that's what James Cameron, what we're going to see throughout his entire life, this perfectionism artistically to do things his way. And here's a quote that just kind of relates to this idea of Cameron not really being super interested in traditional schooling and kind of wanting to create his own curriculum. Here's the quote. As a child, Cameron was sometimes too smart for his own good. At the end of first grade, his teacher called Shirley in to explain that her son was going to be held back. She said, he can't read, he can't do anything. He just sits and looks out the window, Shirley recalls. I said, you can't read, Jim. He gets the smirk on his face. He knows I know he can read. Shirley asked her son to pick up any book on the teacher's desk. He selected a science text and began reading aloud about the species of the Blastonian era. The teacher's jaw dropped. She said, why didn't you tell me you could read? He said, if you think I'm going to sit there and read C-Spot Run all day long and see, let me repeat that, and read C-Spot Run all day long. He's like, no, I'm not going to do this. I was so mad at that kid. Then we see this theme in this quote here, that is common in the three biographies, which I read, which I just mentioned. Of course, this, which is these guys are all obsessed from an early age with the entertainment industry, whether it be reading, writing, movies, TV, radio, they kind of mat like James Cameron can already read at such a high level at an extremely young age, and it goes on from here. Here's a quote. Shirley had a rule that her kids weren't allowed to do homework when they got home from school. She felt they had spent enough time bent over books. But Cameron was a voracious recreational reader who poured over the latest comic books, especially Spider-Man, and loved science fiction writers like Arthur C. Clark, Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, and Kurt Vonnegut. So it's really for Cameron, that enjoyment and absorption of all these stories, if you will, that kind of gets him so invested. And then after this, we see Cameron's rebellious streak a bit more, where he's in his teens and everyone is saying the, the All Father, the Our Father. And Cameron just doesn't like it, and he just doesn't say it. And this kind of relates back to him. You know, he's very smart. He wants to do things his way. You know, when he's like, he could already read, he's very invested in learning, but he just doesn't like the way things are traditionally. He thinks it's very stagnant. He thinks that it just doesn't work. And up ahead here, when Cameron is like saying the Lord's prayer, when he doesn't say it, his teacher doesn't actually even yell at him. And after that, he's like, all right, I was very surprised that didn't happen. And then he just stops attending his angelic church. And he becomes very interested, though, in religion and specifically world religions, but ends up stating that he doesn't believe in an afterlife. So already at such a young age, Cameron, he's exploring the different facets and ideas of spirituality and religion. And he kind of ends up just doing his own thing, right? He sees everyone doing this one thing, and he says, okay, I'm just going to really think about this and see where I stand at the end of the day. And maybe I don't agree with all this after all. And I think that's what makes him so unique, is that he's a very independent thinker. So early on in Cameron's life, there's a sub-chapter here and it's titled Other Worlds. And we see his fascination with adventure stories. And stories where the world building and the incredible nature of the environment is displayed firsthand. And you know, this is seen in a lot of his movies. It's seen primarily in The Abyss, the Titanic, Avatar with some stunning visuals, and attention to detail in the surrounding environments. And where, especially in Avatar, for example, the world of Pandora is one that the characters really care for and love, which reflects this idea, it gets early on, of environmentalism, the importance of taking care of the environment, and the importance of protecting nature and just learning about it. And this is kind of where he gets it from. Here's the quote. Growing up hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean, Cameron never so much as stuck a toe in saltwater, but he was riveted by Jacques Cousteau's underwater documentaries. The French Oceanographers movies aired on TV regularly in the 1960s, delivering images of the richness and exoticism of life beneath the waves into the living room of landlocked families like the Camerons. Later in his life, Cameron would adopt Cousteau's deeply felt environmentalism, but at 16, it was the spirit of exploration that hooked him. Here's a quote from Cameron. I began to think of the deep ocean as equal to outer space. This was an alien world I could actually reach.