Part 1: James Cameron on Avatar Misconceptions, AI’s Skynet Moment, and His Elon Musk Friendship

0:01This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. Right now, get up to 15 % off select storage solutions. Put heavy-duty HDX totes to good use, protecting what's important to you.

0:34The solid, impact-resistant design prevents cracking. And the clear base and sides make items easy to find even when the totes are stacked. Find select shelving and tote storage up to 15 % off at the Home Depot to organize every room in your home, from your garage to your attic. Visit homedepot.com. How doers get more done. It is Monday, November 24th. There are a handful of upper, upper echelon filmmakers in Hollywood. You know their names. I don't need to list them. And then there is James Cameron. Avatar is still the highest grossing movie of all time at$2.9 billion. And with its 2022 sequel and Titanic, Cameron has made three of the top five films of all time.

1:18He doesn't make movies that often, but when he does, he's made some all-time classics like Terminator, Terminator 2, Aliens, The Abyss. You know what he's made. At the same time, he's become a technologist, an undersea explorer, an environmental activist, and a filmmaker who, despite all his technological chops, including inventing a lot of the technology he uses on the Avatar movies, he still grounds them in human performances. It annoys him, and rightly so, when people refer to Avatar and his motion capture technique as purely visual, or CGI, or animation, or even AI. Though he has a lot of thoughts on AI.

1:51And now he's back with Avatar Fire and Ash, which he delivered to Disney just about a week ago. I saw it, and of course I wanted to talk to Cameron before he starts his big press tour. So Craig and I went down to Avatar US headquarters in Manhattan Beach last week and got him on the town early. We talked about a lot, his exacting filmmaking process, how he works with actors, the cost of the Avatar machine, I believe he used the term fuck ton of money, why he's letting the audience under the hood for this one, plus his fears for the state of Hollywood and the world and the future of the kind of movies he likes to make, even his friendship with Elon Musk.

2:24We may have discussed alien life forms a bit. I definitely told him to his face that he's famously difficult. And he talked about why he thinks David Ellison is the right buyer for Warner Brothers and why he's not a fan of Netflix. Really not a fan. For a guest this big, we had to do a two-parter, a special treat for Thanksgiving, plus a lightning round and a good one. Today, it's James Cameron, the king of the world. From The Ringer and Puck, I'm Matt Bellany, and this is The Town.

2:52All right, we are here with James Cameron, filmmaker, environmentalist, technologist. Am I missing anything? International man of mystery. Underwater explorer. Underwater explorer. I got to admit, I'm a little intimidated. I don't get intimidated often with guests, but I've got the literal king of the world here. I would not have thought of you, Matt, as being intimidated in any scenario. The number of big shots that you've exposed and investigated and challenged. You have a track record. I was reviewing in the research. It's unbelievable, the track record you have. There has never been a bigger flex in the entertainment business, I don't think, than to come out with a movie that everyone said would flop, that everyone said was going to...

3:40Which one are we talking about? Titanic, Avatar? You made the biggest grossing movie of all time. And then you kind of go away for 12 years. You do your underwater stuff. you do your documentaries, and then you come back and you beat it. Yeah, that's true. That is the greatest flex in the history of Hollywood. Yeah, well, it wasn't planned as a flex. Neither one of them were. They were just cool projects. You know, I mean, I just follow my nose to stuff that interests me, that I know is going to be challenging, you know, that I know is going to put on a big show. I mean, I think that is where the seed of it is.

4:13To me, the challenge is how do we do something extraordinary? How do we do something people haven't seen? So, you know, Titanic was, we're going to go to the wreck of Titanic. We're going to make a movie about Titanic with the real Titanic. And then, you know, once we'd sort of set that bar for ourselves, then we had to build this giant set and we had to cast it properly and actually make a good movie. And then with Avatar, it was the same thing. Let's do a new form of cinema, see what happens. For me, it's just this crazy, quirky, let's just do this, spend a lot of OPM, all other people's money.

4:48and just see what happens. We'll get to that. You just delivered the film to Disney. Do you have a ritual when you finish a film? No, not really, because there's never like a clear moment when it's done. It just kind of tapers off. It doesn't die with a bang, but with a whimper. It's not like you have a special martini or you have a falafel from your favorite vegan place. Nothing quite that sort of superstitious or knock wood luck kind of thing. But what we do is on Avatar, we have this tradition. It's a 20-year tradition. When we finish the week's work, we all get together for a shot of tequila.

5:25And we call it Friday shots, even if it happens to be Saturday or even, God forbid, Sunday. So we did our Friday shots when we finished the mix and everybody celebrated. Then we came back to work the next day and fixed some stuff in the mix. And then it just sort of attenuates. And then there's a moment where it's kind of pried out of your hands by reality because it's got to get disseminated. across all the international platforms and subtitled and all that sort of thing. So they just yank it away from me. And I'm like, okay, I guess we're done. Right. You know? All right. So I want to talk about your filmmaking process.

5:57I want to talk a little bit about the kind of machine of the Avatar movies. But let's start with the production element here. Because I know it's very important to you and you're doing more on this movie than you did on the last one. Kind of explain to people what goes into these movies. Because I don't think with all the press that these movies get, I don't think even people in the business understand the lift for these movies. They don't get it. And there's a great documentary on Disney Plus right now about that. It is not just promotional. It is actually really informative. And it shows you side by side how this is done.

6:35And people don't understand. When people talk about, oh, this movie does $2.3 billion, why is it doing this much? Why is it? It's because when you're watching the movie, either subconsciously or consciously, these are people that you're watching. Exactly. You're getting the emotion and you're getting the movement. And it's something that you cannot get with CGI. And you can't get it with makeup because makeup suppresses the actor, whereas a CG version of the character is more emotive. You know, the not-me characters have eyes that are volumetrically four times the volume of a human eye, so almost twice the width.

7:16So they have these big expressive faces. Now, it's the actor, right? We start with a scan of the actor, but let me generalize first. It's about performance. So you've hit on it. Like, what is making these films so compelling? It's the story of these characters. It's going with them. It's feeling their pain, feeling their emotion, feeling their joy and their own wonder at this world. that they're exploring. It's in their eyes. It's in their voices, in their faces. So it starts with the actors. That starts with hopefully decent writing. Starts with great casting, because I always think the casting makes up for any deficits in the writing, speaking as the screenwriter.

7:52You know, I listen to how the actors express themselves. Sometimes I change the dialogue. Starts with performance. So people hear about performance capture. They kind of dismiss it as the kind of redheaded stepchild of film acting, like it's not real acting. It's not real acting like when you're in front of a camera. I mean, I could do an hour just on that subject. It must annoy the shit out of you when people say, oh, they're animated. Oh, it's CG. Oh, it's AI. Well, I'll tell you what annoys me is when it's misrepresented, especially in media, that let's say Sigourney Weaver voiced the character of Kiri.

8:29When you voice a part for, let's say, a Pixar film, we all love Pixar movies. I'm not dissing them. But when you come in to do that as an actor, you stand at a podium for a day or two or maybe three, and you say the part. You act it out verbally. And then a team of animators goes off and does the physical character, the visual interpretation of that voice part. That's not what Sigourney or any of the other actors did. For making Avatar 2 and Avatar 3, we did 18 months of capture. They perform everything. Every breath is recorded. Every bit of movement, every hand gesture. A lot of it here at the studios.

9:09Right here. Right here at Manhattan Beach Studio. And we even had a big tank here. So if you saw the characters underwater, the actors were underwater. If you saw them riding a creature, they were riding a water jet powered. I love that Zoe didn't want to go underwater. Zoe is, well, she's very much like a cat. You know, kind of her beauty is a very kind of feline beauty. you know, her grace, her poise, her athletic speed, all those things. And sure enough, she doesn't like being underwater. That's really funny. By the way, Pixar completely ripped you off for their new movie. Have you seen the Hoppers trailer?

9:43No, no. They even have a joke in it because it's literally Avatar, except the Avatar is an animal. Okay, great, you know? I mean, it's the sincerest form of flattery, right? Right up until it starts to bite into my box office. Exactly. Then it's actionable. Yes, exactly. Make your lawyers aware. I'm sure Disney will be getting a call. All right. So the performance aspect is important to you. And I feel like you are doing a better job this time because, you know, I think there's probably a temptation for you to just let the movie speak for itself. Right? Absolutely. Well, you're right on the button with that because I thought I don't want to disperse the magic or I kind of swept our process under the rug.

10:25because I thought seeing people in tights, in marker suits, is not transportive. It doesn't take your mind to another place, your imagination, right? So I swept it under the rug for movie one and movie two. I think on movie two, The Way of Water came out three years ago. I think we got burned a little bit by the advent of Gen AI at that point and people conflating us with computer-made images. You know, our images are, they're performed by actors, they're made by artists. Sure, we use computers. You're using a computer to read your notes right now. It's a tool. It's not the creative force. The creative force is the human imagination, right?

11:05And I realized after the fact, okay, it was a mistake to hide the man behind the curtain, so to speak. The man being Stephen Lang or Sam Worthington or whatever. And all our digital artists, you know, who do, you know, takes over a thousand people to make one of these movies. And they're all artists. Yeah, we have some engineers too, of course. But so this time I thought, no, I got to reverse the polarity on this. I've got to show people what these actors are doing, the commitment they make, their passion, how they put their heart and soul into the character as much as any live action production.

11:40And I would even make the case, and we can circle back to this if you want, I would make the case that it's the purest form of cinema acting, the purest form of acting in general. Because what you've got is photographic cinema, you've got capture-based cinema, and you've got theater. Those are basically your three kind of thresholds for acting. And people sort of judge as if cinema, 125 years of photographic cinema, is best simply because it's essentially first and the one we all grew up in. But it's not best from an actor's perspective. And most actors haven't done capture, so they don't know.

12:17So the vast majority haven't done it and therefore diss it. And the small minority have done it and aren't listened to. Well, it's arguably more difficult because there's nothing around you either. It's very Shakespearean. All right. Let's take it point by point. Let's break it down. Let's do it. All right. All right. So you're on a set, a beautiful set. You know, maybe it's a set for Wicked. Maybe it's a set for Harry Potter, whatever. They really put lavish attention into it. You walk in before the crew gets there. It's dark. You see nothing. You walk in when the crew is there. There's lights everywhere.

12:49There's stands everywhere. There's big flags everywhere. There's big silks everywhere. You can barely see the set based on where the camera will be looking at a given moment. Now you're in the scene. There's flags and lights all around you. There's a grip on a ladder with his butt cleavage kind of hanging out right next to you. It's in the Teamster contract. Yeah, right. I mean, there's a guy that just does that. I mean, that's all he does. He's supposed to be holding something. No, the butt guy. He's the butt guy. Yeah. So the point is that the actor must tune all that out. They must zero in on the other actor.

13:22They must get the eyes of the other actor, get the feeling, get the wave of whatever the emotion is, hostility, conflict, love, whatever it is, longing. And that's what they play to. All right. So take that same pair of actors. Let's call it a two-hander scene, right? Let's stick them in the volume. I'll show them the set. I'll walk them through it virtually. They'll know, okay, there's a waterfall over there. There's a sunset over there. There's some interesting flying creatures flapping around. They're in the jungle. There's a stream right there. I'll make it real for them in their minds, and then I'll let their imaginations take over.

13:58And then it becomes that kind of childlike process when, you know, I don't know about you, but when I was a kid, a cardboard box became a submarine or an airplane or a spaceship or whatever. We have that capacity. it takes them back to a very pure kind of almost childlike place now it doesn't mean their character is necessarily childlike but at that point they have total freedom to just walk i mean they can't walk in what we know is the water but they can i let them uh i let the emotion of the moment let them drive their bodies to wherever they feel they need to be i don't go in pre-vis i don't go in storyboarded i go in and i i i just open it up to blocking on rehearsal and just feeling it's very much like theater rehearsal, right?

14:41So theater rehearsal, you haven't put the marks down yet. You start at the table, you talk about the character, then you stand it up and you start moving around and you start finding it. And the setting kind of evolves from that often, right? That's how we do it. And you've been doing that in demonstrations for various groups around town. Right. You've done it for the DGA, you've done it for SAG. Exactly. Why are you doing that? Just to explain as part of the education process? So far, we've done four demos, two for DGA, two for SEG. And the result have been that people stayed for literally hours afterwards and wanted to talk about it.

15:16Their minds are kind of blown at how actor-centric it is, how much, for example, the director said, well, wait a minute, 100 % of your focus is on the actors. I said, exactly. I'll worry about all the cinematography later. I'll do the beautiful dolly moves, the beautiful static camera. They just think that because you're known as the great technologist. See, a certain set of assumptions work against us. you know and and people think that it's a very tactical thing they see somebody in a capture suit and they think oh you're just a robot sure you know they don't realize how absolutely liberating it is both for for them for the actors and for me i don't have to think about the dolly track i don't have to think about the setting sun and the fact that i've got 20 minutes to get the shot i don't have to think about all the background extras missing their marks or or dropping something or screwing up or mugging the camera or whatever it is.

16:06I don't have to worry about a car hitting its marks or all of these sort of background exigencies. I don't have to worry about the lighting. I don't have to worry about the lens. I don't have to worry about it being out of focus and having to go again. And, oh, we just had the best performance conceivable. And here's the other thing most people forget. There's no coverage. We don't shoot for coverage. We shoot for the truth of the scene, the right, uh, the, the right, you know, kind of dramatic timber to the moment. And you build the coverage around. We build, I'll build the coverage later. The actors are all gone at that point.

16:41And then I'm doing the two shot, the closeup, the, the overs, you know, the wide, the helicopter shot. I'm doing all that later, you know? So I take that burden upon myself to take it off them. It also gives me time to really finesse that and not have to rush that either. Because I love both. I love the acting. I love the, as a writer director, I love finding the character with the actor. There's nothing more fun in this work. Even though you were drawing and sketching these characters, like when you were a kid, you're still finding it. Oh yeah, absolutely. Sure. It's a, it's, you know, we call it Pandora because, you know, it's like, it's everything flow, everything flow.

17:20Pandora was the first woman, by the way, in Greek mythology. Everybody thinks of Pandora's box and that part of the story, but she was considered the first female in Greek mythology. So there's a lot of female energy in the story in Pandora. Certainly in this movie. Female deity. Yeah, we got the villain. We got Zoe Saldana. We got Kate Winslet.

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18:23Don't share needles or pens or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it. Or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2, tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop ZipBound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia. if you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills.

18:55Taking ZepBound with a sulfonylurea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-5979 or visit zepbounds.lily.com. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? ZepBound Terzepatide may be able to help. ZepBound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity, or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical problems to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off.

19:35ZepBound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15 milligram injection. ZepBound contains terzepatide and should not be used with other terzepatide-containing products or any GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if ZepBound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pens or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it. Or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2, tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop ZepBound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction.

20:13Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia, if you're nursing, pregnant, plan-to-be, or taking birth control pills. Taking ZepBound with a sulfonylurea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-5979 or visit zepbounds.lily.com. All right, so you mentioned AI. Let's talk about it because you've made a lot of comments in the past about in 2023, you said that AI could never come up with a quote, good story that could replace screenwriters.

20:59Let me be more specific. Here's what AI can do. It's trained on everything we ever valued artistically. They don't put the crap stuff into the training data. They put the stuff that's been published, that's online, the art, the performances, the movies, all that sort of thing, whether they're doing it legally or ethically or not or whatever. To be determined. That's all in flux, obviously. But let's assume that there is this kind of almost de facto selection for that which the human eye and the human consciousness enjoys, right? And that goes into the training data. So millions and millions of images and millions and thousands of hours of performance and so on.

21:38So what you're going to get is the average, it goes in a blender, right? And then it precipitates out as a single unique new image, but it's based on a sort of a generic feedstock, if you will. What it can never do is create a unique lived experience reflected through the eyes of a single artist, right? Whether that's a single writer, single director, single actor. You still believe that? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It won't select for the quirkiness, for the offbeat. And I think what we celebrate is the uniqueness of our actors, you know, not their perfection, not their kind of glossy Vogue cover beauty, but their off-centeredness, you know.

22:20I mean, Sigourney Weaver, Cate Blanchett, they're not like supermodels. They're themselves, right? And I think that's true. Jesse Buckley, they're themselves. They're, you know, and they're not generic. But you've also said that you see an AI revolution coming and that it sort of has to happen in order to bring the cost of movies down. Right. How can that necessarily coexist without replacing? I have lots of dualities in my mind that I'm very comfortable with. Okay. So that's a duality, right? I think there's a great deal of caution around generative AI. I think we as an industry need to be self-policing on this.

23:03I don't see government regulation as an answer. That's a blunt instrument. They're going to mess it up. But who does that? Guilds? I think the guilds should play a big role. I think the director's guild and the actor's guild should play a big role in this, just as they did. I mean, the actors certainly did, you know, to the detriment of a lot of people. But they definitely drove a flag in the ground over this a couple of years ago. It strikes, yeah. Right? I think we have to be self-policing. We've got to talk about it. It's not a question of what we sort of can legally do or even ethically what we should do.

23:34It's a question of, I almost want to say morally, what we should do, what we should embrace. You know, how we should celebrate ourselves as artists and how we should set a kind of set of artistic standards that celebrate human purpose. because the overall risk of AI in general, not just gen AI, but AGI, right? Any form of AI is that we lose purpose as people. We lose jobs. We lose a sense of, well, what are we here for? You know, we are these flawed biological machines and a computer can be theoretically more precise, more correct, faster, all of those things. And that's going to be a threshold existential issue.

24:16I'm not, I'm now sort of jumping to AI more broadly, artificial general. You said a thousand people work on Avatar movies. What is the correct amount of people that should be working on Avatar movies? A thousand people for half the time. And then we start the next one. Okay. So nobody loses a job. Our cadence increases. Our throughput increases. I can make, look, I'm 71. I got a finite amount of time. Maybe another 30, 40 years at most. At most. I don't know. Elon Musk seems to have ideas about that. Yeah. No, I'm not one of these longevity freaks. No, you're not. But I just have a lot. You don't have a chamber?