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| This looks like a painting of a Messiah... rightfully so, I suppose. |
Happy 2023 to all. I hope your holidays were stress-less, your Christmas dinner was hearty and your New Year's... uh... brought about a new year. If you're alive and reading this, you're automatically at a 1/3. I like to give easy points. I'm like signing your name on the SATs, automatic 600 points for you.
I'm kicking off the year with a series of posts dedicated to my all-time favorite film director. James Francis Cameron! I talk about him all the time in this blog, to my friends, to my family, in my two film classes I've taken, to the guy who was waiting with me at the bus stop that one time; James Cameron to me is a cinematic badass. That's the best way I can possibly describe him. He's broken box office records two or three times over, made monumental leaps in motion capture, CGI, and cinematography special effects, he's dived to the deepest points on our planet, he's been parodied famously in South Park, the once-blue collar truck driver-turned-filmmaker born in Kapuskasing, Ontario, Canada has done it all and accomplished more in life than he probably ever dreamed of.
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| "Great shot everybody! That's a wrap... now, someone want to get Arnold a towel?" |
A little history on Cameron. After high school, he enrolled at Fullerton College, a community college in 1973 to study physics. He switched subjects to English, but left the college at the end of 1974. He worked odd jobs, including as a truck driver and a janitor, but wrote in his free time! During this period, he learned about special effects by reading other students' work on "optical printing, or front screen projection, or dye transfers, anything that related to film technology" at the library. After the excitement of seeing none other than Star Wars in 1977 (take a shot, blog readers!), Cameron quit his job as a truck driver to enter the film industry.
Cameron's directing career began in 1978. After borrowing money from a group of different dentists, he learned to direct, write and produce his first short film, a film called Xenogenesis in 1978, with a friend. Learning as they went, Cameron said he felt like a doctor doing his first surgical procedure. He then served as a production assistant for Rock 'n' Roll High School. While educating himself about filmmaking techniques, Cameron started a job as a miniature model maker at Roger Corman Studios. He was soon earned work as an art director for the science-fiction film Battle Beyond the Stars, in 1980. He carried out the special effects for John Carpenter's Escape from New York in 1981 (a review of mine for this can be found here), and also served as production designer for films titled Galaxy of Terror in 1981, and consulted on the design for the film Android in 1982.
Cameron was hired as the special effects director for the sequel to Piranha, titled Piranha II: The Spawning in 1982. The original director, Miller Drake, left the project due to creative differences with producer Ovidio Assonitis. Shot in Rome, Italy and on Grand Cayman, the film gave Cameron the opportunity to become director for a major film for the first time in his life. However, Cameron later said that it did not feel like his first film due to never-ending arguments with Assonitis, something well documented in the film's production history. Completely disillusioned from being in Rome and suffering a fever, Cameron had a nightmare about an invincible robot hit-man sent from the future to assassinate him, which later led to the inspiration of for the first film in one of the most legendary, albeit messy franchises in film history... The Terminator. Upon release of Piranha II: The Spawning, critics thought the film was dogshit. Cameron's career appeared over before it began.
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| "Ok, what's our depth?" "Uh, about five miles below sea-level sir." "Ok, ready? Get your scuba suits on... I need this shot." |
Inspired by John Carpenter's horror film Halloween in 1978 (my re-review can be found here), Cameron wrote the script for The Terminator in 1982-83, a sci-fi action film about a cyborg sent from the future to carry out a lethal mission. Cameron wanted to sell the script so that he could direct the movie, for his first real start-to-finish director's job. Whilst some film studios expressed interest in the project, many executives were unwilling to let a new and unfamiliar director make the movie. Gale Anne Hurd, a colleague and founder of Pacific Western Productions, agreed to buy Cameron's script for one dollar (that's one whole buck to you and me), on the condition that Cameron direct the film. He convinced the president of Hemdale Pictures to make the film, with Cameron as director and Hurd as a producer. Lance Henriksen, who starred in Piranha II: The Spawning, was considered for the lead role, but Cameron decided that Arnold Schwarzenegger was more suitable as the cyborg villain due to his bodybuilder appearance. Henriksen was given a smaller role instead. Michael Biehn and Linda Hamilton also joined the cast. The Terminator was a box office success, exceeding expectations set by Orion Pictures. The film proved popular with audiences and earned over $78 million worldwide. Once again, Marvel-boys, that was a large sum of money back then... especially scoring against a budget of $6 million. George Perry of the BBC praised Cameron's direction, writing "Cameron laces the action with ironic jokes, but never lets up on hinting that the terror may strike at any moment". In 2008, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The rest as they say... is history.
It's here that we'll start, and for the next few posts I'll be talking all about James Cameron's history from The Terminator forward! I'll also today, as of writing this, be seeing Cameron's latest release into theaters... Avatar: The Way of Water. So we're going to be deep-diving from 1984 all the way to this year. Tighten your belts, hike up your drawers, we're in for a ride!... as much of a ride as one can have reading a blog that is! See below for the list of reviews coming your way, and I'll see you on Friday!
The Terminator
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