Today I'll write about the book "THE FUTURIST - The Life and Films of JAMES CAMERON" by Rebecca Keegan and Japanese book "James Cameron - Talks About Film" by James Cameron and Takao Komine. James Cameron is one of my favorite artists all the time. I love his film "Titanic" the most, and I love his attitude for his filmmaking and life, style to make his imagination realize and challenging spirit. I'll write about them by mainly quoting some passages from the book "THE FUTURIST."
Focus on writing and making
“Cameron found writing a lonely, utterly unforgiving process. "Every thought, every gesture, is judged directly," he says. "And it's very hard to get started, and to stay focused."”
As he says like this, the writing process is so tough, and it's so difficult to stay focused. About when he focused on writing the script of "Avatar" was written in this way in this book.
“Cameron went to his vacation house in Crested Butte, Colorado, to work on the script. After New Year's, he relocated to his ranch in Santa Barbara County to continue writing.
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Whenever he went, Cameron faced his usual writing demons. "I'm not one of these guys who can write from nine to four every day and have a normal family or social life at the same time," Cameron says. "I need to completely isolate and think about the piece 24-7. This gets harder later in your career, when you're multitasking on lots of projects, and having five kids doesn't help. I still need to bunker completely to get anything good written."”
I can understand his thought because I need to be away from daily life and mood and focus on myself to write my lyrics and compose my music, too. I can't relocate to my ranch like him now. But I often used to go to my favorite cafe with my MIDI piano and Mac and focus on making music by Ableton Live. That enabled me to write a lot of songs. And I always make an effort to stop multitasking by being away from SNS and other media. In the case of James Cameron, he simplifies his relationship to others like this to stay focused on his making films.
“For much of the director's career he has had no agent or publicist, relying instead on a tight circle of colleagues like Lightstorm president Rae Sanchini and Titanic and Avatar producer Jon Landau to mediate between him and the outside world.
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Cameron rarely lunches or parties and applies none of his laser-beam focus to the Hollywood power struggles detailed in industry blogs or the pages of Variety.”
I think this tight circle of colleagues enables him to focus on his writing his incredible and unique scripts and to make fantastic films. He says that he is very unsociable. And he says he dislikes going parties, and playing golfs in the book "James Cameron - Talks About Film" by James Cameron and Takao Komine, too. And he says working on a film together is a better way to know others' human nature than going parties or having dinner together in the book. And he says he hardly uses his mobile phone and his working companions know that they can't contact him generally in the book. I think this style enables him to focus on his film.
The Spirit of DIY
James Cameron was working with Roger Corman, who is known as a trailblazer in the world of independent film when he was young. Corman's low-budget productions have launched the careers of Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Jack Nicholson, Peter Bogdanovich, Jonathan Demme, and many others in Hollywood. As Cameron was working at a low-budget film project, I think he has the strong spirit of DIY.
“By the time he got to Avatar, Cameron would be holding the camera, editing the footage, mixing the sound—performing almost every technical and artistic task on the film himself except acting.”
I love this indie style because I am indie, too. I make all my music by myself, and I made my music video "Island Girl" by myself. I bought my cameras, lenses, stabilizers and editing software, wrote the script, went location hunting, decided cast roles in a play, contacted them, held the cameras, edited the footage, and so on. This style is so hard. But I believe this enables him to realize his originality.
“On the Terminator, if an actor needed to have a stunt explained to him, Cameron demonstrated it, without padding. "He jumped on this Honda motorcycle I was supposed to be riding and accelerated and spun around, did a one-eighty to show me what he wanted," Schwarzenegger recalls. "I thought he was crazy." Cameron relied on all the low-budget tricks he had learned working for Roger Corman but delivered them at triple the scale. For a scene where a truck explodes on a downtown street,, he cut from a long shot of a real semi to a miniature on the first burst of flame. "He had everything laid out in such detail that there was no room for error," Schwarzenegger says. "He got so obsessed and so into it, he lived the movie."”
He is crazy. Amazing! Like a boy! This is one of the reasons I love him.
Today I put the pen here though I can't write about all the critical aspects of these books and James Cameron. So soon I'll write about him again. Thanks for your reading. And I hope you'll enjoy this. Feel free to leave me a comment.
