Tech Noir: The Art of James Cameron Press Roundtable Interview With James Cameron

I had the pleasure to attend a press roundtable interview with James Cameron to talk about his new book Tech Noir: The Art of James Cameron. Below you can read the full transcribe of the press roundtable.

Mitchell: Plenty of your sketches in the book have a story in itself, but without an ending, like an astronaut with no hope and takes his helmet off or prisoner or walking through a dystopian city now later on over the years, did you ever think back to those narratives and wonder what happened to those characters?

James Cameron: I think there's something nice about that, that moment where anything could happen. You're reading a book guy takes off his helmet. He can breathe the air, but he's got no water. He's walking across the endless dunes of a planet. What happens next? The reader knows there's still a hundred pages to go. I ain't going to die. You know what I mean? But how does he get saved? How does he save himself or does, you know, an alien rock up on a Hubbard hovercraft and, and take them back to meet a new culture? You know, it's, it's, it's all that, that tingling feeling of what's going to happen next, you know, and you don't. I mean, if, if I was a fine artist, the painting itself would, would be self-fulfilling, you know, uh, although I don't think there's anything wrong with art pausing you to ask a lot of questions about, you know, what it means, typically it's not that narrative.

So I realized somewhere along the way that I was really better as a storyteller than as, that an artist because I wanted to know what happened. I wanted to know how it got resolved. So you're kind of asking in a way, a question that goes right to the heart of why I do what I do now. Um, which is, uh, I want you to, I want you to know what happened, even if, sometimes there's a little bit of a cliffhanger ending, that sort of thing, or an ending that's disturbing and ask questions. Although I tend not to make those films. I tend to, I tend to make films that serve button off, having completed a statement. Um, you know, and I think that it's, it's that, it's that realization when I look back over the body of work, I realized a lot of it is design-oriented. It's just aesthetic. And maybe it's, maybe it's a, a homage to technology, that sort of thing. But, but it's also, it's also storytelling. It's very narrative, very narrative-driven.

Justin (Otakus & Geeks): Can you talk a little bit about your early days of sketching and so how some of your influences were to get you to this point?

James Cameron: Yeah, I mean, that's the big question, right? When, you know, where did, where does, uh, what feeds into this process? You know, so for me, uh, comic books, obviously, um, and, uh, movies, uh, clearly, and, and television wasn't, you know, what it is now, or even, even a thousand of it. Um, but there were some, uh, some shows that had an influence on me right around that formative time would be 10, 11, 12, 13 years old with a, uh, you know, super expanding imagination. So outer limits was a show that in its day was quite groundbreaking and asked a lot of profound questions and had a lot of very disturbing endings, you know? Um, and I would riff on that, but to me, it was, I took everything that I'd been reading in science fiction, and we had, we had the greats of that kind of, kind of golden age.

We had Clark, we had Heinlein, uh, you know, Asimov, people like that. And as the sixties progressed, we were getting some of the new rebellious, uh, you know, writers that were kind of really kind of, um, like kind of classic, right? So I was reading voraciously science fiction. I lived in a little town called Chippewa and I went to high school in, uh, the city of Niagara falls, Canadian side. And I had a one hour bus ride, both directions. So two hours of reading a day, I could pretty much knock off a science fiction book a day. And I was, I was just churning through anything that had a lurid cover with spaceships and scantily clad girls and, and, uh, robots and monsters. You know, you could count on me to read it. So that was all going into the big blender. And a lot of science fiction was emerging in that time period because of the cold war as very dystopian, there was the democracy and the sort of nuclear annihilation was hanging over us all, you know, I mean, still is, but we sort of don't think about it in the same way then, uh, you know, and I was, uh, I think nine during the Cuban missile crisis, maybe eight or nine, and my dad had pamphlets for like how to make a long shelter in your basement, out of sandbags, you know?

And, uh, you know, so all of that was feeding into it, a sense of dread about the future. So it was this incredible golden optimism about the possibilities of space travel. And at the same time, this dread that same technology could just wipe us all out. And maybe we're just heart lab rats in this giant experiment that's doomed, you know, and so all that's churning, turning around and at the same time, there's the Apollo program going on. We're going to the moon and John Cousteau is bringing back all these incredible images from the ocean, you know, all that's going, going into it. And then all connected with this comic book sense of narrative and animals. I mean, you could actually tell a story in pictures. You don't even need to fill in the word bullets. I mean, one of the things that surprised me was, you know, I'd started doing a when worlds, collide, kind of what you'd call it graphic novel today. They didn't exist back then, but here I was drawing in black and white and I just left all the word balloons empty. I'll figure it out a lot of weight, which is kind of how I write screenplays. You know, some going to happen and it's going to be really cool and it's going to be all this fantastic imagery yet. Now I got to sit down and think about what people are actually saying, this is the hard part.

I think when I look back on that book, now that it's all kind of organized. Um, I realize that you know, that's just kinda my process. I get that. I get the imagery that I want first, and then I connect it with a story, and then I have to figure out who the people are. And then I have to write the dialogue. Thank you. Then get the actress to say it and stick them in front of a camera. Wait too much time on my masterclass. I could have done it in eight seconds.

Mike May: How do you find time to put a book out? And while you were digging through this book, did you kind of stir up any memories while working on them? '

James Cameron: Well, interestingly, uh, the, the work of, of kind of curating all the art and organizing and all that was done by, uh, under Maria who's on the call under her supervision, and a great designer, uh, Kim Butts, a good editor, Chris Prince who I have a good relationship with and Insight Editions. We've done other books in the past. So it was relatively effortless for me. I was almost like I was along for the ride. Uh, you know, I contributed a lot of the stories, you know, to kind of spice it up a bit. So it wasn't a yawn because there are stories associated with different periods in my life, from my work as a filmmaker and, and that sort of thing. So I thought I'd just share that. Um, and that was all mostly done in an interview process. They just hold up a picture and say, God, you know, let me tell you what I was thinking when I was doing that. It was this kind of, for the most part, kind of enjoyable trip back through my individual creative process. I don't sit and reflect very much, and I'm not the kind of person that would sit down and write an autobiography. Like I have something so important to say about, you know, about my life or anything like that. And this, this had, I'm kind of an autobiography or a black biographical field to it for me because it triggered a lot of memories of, you know, where I was, who I was, you know, and at that moment, what I thought of the world, you know, um, so it was good. It was kind of cathartic even in a way, but I mean, ultimately the shocking realization at the end of the day is I haven't evolved at all. I'm still here. I'm still a teenager at heart.

Gaius: Is there anyone currently today that is inspiring your work now?

James Cameron: You know, there's so much great fantasy and science-fiction art out there now, which is the response to the artists that went before. So, when I was in my teens, a lot of the references are mentioned there, presenter Kelly Freeze, who did a lot of the covers for the science-fiction books and magazines. And then later it was Chris Foss and Ron Cobb. And I got even worked with Broadcom and sit and meet, you know, but you could name the really strong artists, probably in a list of 10. And, and, but now we were, you know, let's call it a generation and a half beyond that you can go on to any, uh, fantasy fan art site and just see amazing work, just amazing, amazing work it's proliferating. There are now hundreds, if not thousands of people who were at the same level, that those, those artists were in the sixties and seventies. It's just a landscape out there of ideas that are constantly evolving. And, you know, a lot of people are kind of stuck at the van art phase. It's like a gut guy with muscles and a sword, you know, but you see within that, a lot of people that are, that are riffing doing, doing amazing things. Um, so it's, it's, not an individual name is springing to mind. I think of filmmakers that inspire me, but that's not really a question. You know, what I think you see now is this vast proliferation and democratization and sense of these ideas and artists that were inspired around the world across all cultures, by those seminal artists. So the forties, fifties, sixties, you know, and I could look at, at, at a piece now and say, I know who this person's influences work is in a lot of cases, in a lot of cases, it's just so, so fresh and amazing like right here in New Zealand, we have Richard Taylor's company, which is called lead a workshop.

Mitchell: I love part of the book of the Xeno Genesis, which is actually one of the best proof of concept shorts I've ever seen. Really. It's really pretty impressive. Um, and I know you kind of pilfered from it for Terminator aliens, even avatar. Uh, are you still kind of picking the bones clean?

James Cameron: I think I'm done picking them the bones of it, but, uh, I think you can see that some of the artwork that I did for Xeno Genesis of the bioluminescent world and actually saved us tens of millions of dollars on avatar, because we got sued by everybody and their dog, you know, and I could point back to stuff I did in 1977. And for some of these people that were suing, you were born and say, no, there was prior art. You gotta just, you know, go to hell. And they did basically, we had 11 lawsuits that were, that was just, um, what do they call it? Summary judgment. They were just kicked to the curb. And it was, it was a lot of that early artwork that, that turned the tide, you know? So, um, be warned if you're gonna, if you're gonna, you know, write a big hit movie or direct a big hit movie, keep track of all that early stuff. Cause otherwise, people love to just step up and say, Hey, that was my idea. I kept the tinfoil on my head, but their laser saw through it.

You can purchase Tech Noir Here