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The Magic Doesn't Come From Within The Director's Mind, It Comes From Within The Hearts Of The Actors.

-James Cameron

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The Magic Doesn't Come

James Cameron

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The Magic Doesn't Come From Within The Director's Mind, It Comes From Within The Hearts Of The Actors.

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The Universe Is Like A Giant Bank Vault Lock, Where The Tumblers Are Constantly Moving And Once In A While The Tumblers Line Up And You Have To Listen For The Click. So You Must Be Prepared In That Moment To Step Through The Door.

I Love It When I Have A Nightmare To Me That Means I Got My Money's Worth Out Of That Eight Hours

I Had Read Tons Of Science Fiction. I Was Fascinated By Other Worlds, Other Environments. For Me, It Was Fantasy, But It Was Not Fantasy In The Sense Of Pure Escapism.

In Writing The New Films, I’ve Come To Realize That Avatar’s World, Story And Characters Have Become Even Richer Than I Anticipated, And It Became Apparent That Two Films Would Not Be Enough To Capture Everything I Wanted To Put On Screen.

Your Imagination Can Create A Reality

Targets And Timetables Do Matter. But There Is A Dispirited Feeling That The U.s. Just Rejects Multilateral Target-setting For The Time Being.

When You Have The Feeling That Anything’s Possible, Sometimes You Wind Up Acting On It.

You're So Stupid, Rose!

I'm Hopeful That We'll Be Able To Study The Ocean Before We Destroy It.

I Probably Spend More Time Writing Than Reading Science Fiction. I Find That Science-fiction Literature Is So Reactive To All The Literature That's Gone Before That It's Sort Of Like A Fractal. It's Gone To A Level Of Detail That The Average Person Could Not Possibly Follow Unless You're A Fan. It Iterates Upon Many Prior Generations Of Iterations.

If It Was Up To The Studio, Everything Would Be Shot With A Camcorder.

I've Tried Not To Get Sucked Into The Hollywood Hierarchy System. Personally, I Don't Like It When People Are Deferential To Me Because I'm An Established Filmmaker. It's A Blue-collar Sensibility.

You Can't Really Call Yourself An Environmentalist If You're Still Consuming Animals. You Just Can't.

Environmentalist

I Think "avatar" Is Kind Of A Unique Category Where People Are Enjoying The Unique Theatrical Experience Even Though They May Have Seen It On The Small Screen. They Want To Have That Immersive, Transportive Experience. "2001: A Space Odyssey" Played For Three Years At The Loews Cinema In Toronto. I Remember That. It Just Kept Playing. People Wanted To Return To That Experience. That May Not Be The Best Example Because I Think "2001" Took 25 Years To Break Even.

I Pick My Feature Film Battles Very Carefully. They're Going To Be Personal And They're Going To Take A Lot Of My Energy. I'm Not Going To Be Some Big Production Company And Be Jerry Bruckheimer Or Something Like That. It Doesn't Interest Me.

I Don't Just Want To Be Associated With A Few Good 3d Movies And The Audience Is Saying All Of The Other Ones Are Crap.

Every Time My Cameras Go Out On A Movie, We Learn Something New And Then We Take What We Learn And We Put It Into The Next Generation Of The Cameras So We're Constantly Improving. It's Kind Of Like Building A Race Car, Racing It, Then Running Back To The Shop And Working On The Engine Some More And Tinkering With It To Improve It.

But Failure Has To Be An Option In Art And In Exploration - Because It's A Leap Of Faith. And No Important Endeavor That Required Innovation Was Done Without Risk. You Have To Be Willing To Take Those Risks.

Broken Horses Is An Artistic Triumph. Beautifully Written, Acted And Imaged, This Film Wraps Slowly Around You Like A King Snake And Squeezes.

Getting The Audience To Cry For The Terminator At The End Of T2, For Me That Was The Whole Purpose Of Making That Film. If You Can Get The Audience To Feel Emotion For A Character That In The Previous Film You Despised Utterly And Were Terrified By, Then That's A Cinematic Arc.

The Nation That Leads In Renewable Energy Will Be The Nation That Leads The World 10, 20 Years From Now.

I Had Pictured Myself As A Filmmaker But I Had Never Pictured Myself As A Director If That Makes Any Sense At All.

There Is A Vast Frontier That's Going To Take Us A While To Understand... It Was Very Lunar, A Very Desolate Place, Isolated.

Failure Is An Option, Fear Is Not.

People Of Conscience In Our Leadership In Washington Have Been Scared Off By The Right And The Fossil Fuel Lobbies. They Won't Even Use The Term "sustainability" Or "climate Change" In An Energy Bill, Which Is Ludicrous On Its Face. It Completely Ignores The Elephant In The Room That We're All Dealing With. The Average American Doesn't Even Believe Climate Change Is Real, They Think It's All A Hoax.

I Like The Evening In India, The One Magic Moment When The Sun Balances On The Rim Of The World, And The Hush Descends, And Ten Thousand Civil Servants Drift Homeward On A River Of Bicycles, Brooding On The Lord Krishna And The Cost Of Living.

I'm King Of The World!!!

It’s Not A Requirement To Eat Animals, We Just Choose To Do It, So It Becomes A Moral Choice And One That Is Having A Huge Impact On The Planet, Using Up Resources And Destroying The Biosphere.

A Director's Job Is To Make Something Happen And It Doesn't Happen By Itself. So You Wheedle, You Cajole, You Flatter People, You Tell Them What Needs To Be Done. And If You Don't Bring A Passion And An Intensity To It, You Shouldn't Be Doing It.

I Don’t Feel That I’m Making Movies For Iphones. If Someone Wants To Watch It On An Iphone, I’m Not Going To Stop Them, Especially If They’re Paying For It, But I Don’t Recommend It. I Think It’s Dumb, When You Have Characters That Are So Small In The Frame That They’re Not Visible. I’m Trying To Make An Epic.

Hope Is Not A Strategy. Luck Is Not A Factor. Fear Is Not An Option.

Any Direct Experience That I Have With Indigenous Peoples And Their Plights May Feed Into The Nature Of The Story I Choose To Tell. In Fact, It Almost Certainly Will.

It Took Me A Long Time To Realize That You Have To Have A Bit Of An Interlanguage With Actors. You Have To Give Them Something That They Can Act With.

Avatar Is The Most High Tech Film In Terms Of Its Execution, Dealing With Essentially A Very Low Tech Subject; Which Is Our Relationship With Nature...and In Fact The Irony Is That The Film Is About Our Relationship With Nature And How Our Technological Civilization Has Taken Us Several Removes Away From A Truly Natural Existence And The Consequences Of That To Us.

Every Time You Dive, You Hope You'll See Something New - Some New Species. Sometimes The Ocean Gives You A Gift, Sometimes It Doesn't.

I've Sworn Off Agnosticism, Which I Now Call Cowardly Atheism. I've Come To The Position That In The Complete Absence Of Any Supporting Data Whatsover For The Persistence Of The Individual In Some Spiritual Form, It Is Necessary To Operate Under The Provisional Conclusion That There Is No Afterlife And Then Be Ready To Amend That If I Find Out Otherwise.

Old Rose: It's Been 84 Years, And I Can Still Smell The Fresh Paint. The China Had Never Been Used. The Sheets Had Never Been Slept In. Titanic Was Called The Ship Of Dreams, And It Was. It Really Was.

Don't Get Seduced By Your Own Stuff; Work Hard To Keep A Blank Slate State Of Mind Each Time You Watch Your Film.

Writing A Screenplay, For Me, Is Like Juggling. It's Like, How Many Balls Can You Get In The Air At Once? All Those Ideas Have To Float Out There To A Certain Point, And Then They'll Crystallize Into A Pattern.

I Certainly Didn't Think Of Myself As Gifted. The Standards For Being Gifted In My Environment Were If You Were Good In Little League Or If You Were Good In Football.

Imagination Is A Force That Can Actually Manifest A Reality.don't Put Limitations On Yourself.others Will Do That For You.

The Quickest Way To Destroy Ocean Science Is To Take Human Explorers Out Of The Water

The Films That Influenced Me Were So Disparate That There's Almost No Pattern.

I'm A Curious Guy. I Can't Turn Away From An Investigative Story, When It Comes To The Forensic Analysis. I've Done 33 Dives, To The Titanic Wreck Site. I've Spent Over 50 Hours Piloting Robotic Vehicles At That Wreck Trying To Piece Together What Happened During The Disaster. How The Ship Broke Up, Comparing The Historical Record With The Forensic Record. Documentaries Are Kind Of My New Life. I Love Documentary Filmmaking.

Everybody's Going To Do The 3d Slightly Differently The Same Way That People Are Going To Deal With Color Differently. Some Movies Downplay The Color, Some Color Is Very Vibrant. Color Design Is Very Different. We've Got To Think Of 3d Like Color Or Like Sound, As Just Part Of The Creative Palette That We Paint With And Not Some Whole New Thing That Completely Redefines The Medium.

That Worst Evil Of Long Dictatorships: The Loss Of All Political Experience.

We Have Nightmares Because Our Brain Is Running Simulations To Put Us In Jeopardy To See What We'll Do Or To Acclimatize Us To That Idea That Something Bad Could Happen. It's Just How Human Beings Are Wired Because The Entire Time We Were Evolving We Had To Jump Quick Or The Leopard Would Get Us Or Whatever It Was. It's Darwinian.

Rose: You're Trembling. Jack: I'll Be Alright.

The Last I Checked, 'titanic' Worldwide Has Grossed $1.3 Billion. Imagine How Much More It Would Have Grossed If I Had Gotten The Sky Correct.

I Guess Titanic Because It Made The Most Money. No, I`m Kidding. I Don`t Really Have A Favorite. Maybe Terminator Because That Was The Film That Was The First One Back When I Was Essentially A Truck Driver.

If You Wait Until The Right Time To Have A Child You'll Die Childless, And I Think Film Making Is Very Much The Same Thing. You Just Have To Take The Plunge And Just Start Shooting Something Even If It's Bad.

To Convince People To Back Your Idea, You've Got To Sell It To Yourself And Know When It's The Moment. Sometimes That Means Waiting. It's Like Surfing. You Don't Create Energy, You Just Harvest Energy Already Out There.

Go Home, Pick Up Your Video Camera, And Make A Film.

Here's My Philosophy In Life: If There's A Fire, You Put It Out. If There's A Flood, You Fill Sandbags And You Build A Dike. You Roll Up Your Sleeves And You Get To Work.

Rose: You're Crazy. Jack: That's What Everybody Says But, With All Due Respect, Miss, I'm Not The One Hanging Off The Back Of A Ship Here. Come On. C'mon, Give Me Your Hand. You Don't Want To Do This.

I Do An Awful Lot Of Scuba Diving. I Love To Be On The Ocean, Under The Ocean. I Live Next To The Ocean.

Climate Change Is Critical To Me Because I'm A Parent; I Feel A Sense Of Responsibility To The Future. I'm Not Going To Be Around To See Its Worst Effects, Which Are Going To Be Hitting In The 2030s, '40s, '50s, But My Kids Will.

I Am King Of The World!

Don't Get Seduced By Your Own Stuff. Don't Get High On Your Own Supply. The Hardest Thing As A Filmmaker Is When You're Watching A Film That You've Worked On For Several Years. You Know Every Frame So Intimately That Holding Lots Of The Objectivity Of A New Viewer Who Has Just Seen It For The First Time Is The Hardest Thing. Every Aesthetic Decision You Make - And You Make Thousands Of Them Every Day, Have To - In Theory, Must Be Done From You Being A Blank Slate. You Almost Have To Run A Program, Like A Mind Wipe, Every Time You Watch The Movie.

Decisions You Make

When The Ship Docks, I'm Getting Off With You. This Is Crazy. I Know It Doesn't Make Any Sense, That's Why I Trust It.

Rose: But Now You Know There Was A Man Named Jack Dawson And That He Saved Me... In Every Way That A Person Can Be Saved

Nature's Not Our Enemy, It's Our Sustenance; And We Need It - And We Need Nature Healthy For Us To Be Healthy And To Survive Long Term

If You Want To Move Through A Virtual Reality It’s Called A Video Game, It’s Been Around Forever.

If You Set Your Goals Ridiculously High And It's A Failure, You Will Fail Above Everyone Else's Success.

God Wears White Flannels.

The Literature Now Is So Opaque To The Average Person That You Couldn't Take A Science-fiction Short Story That's Published Now And Turn It Into A Movie. There'd Be Way Too Much Ground Work You'd Have To Lay. It's Ok To Have Detail And Density, But If You Rely On Being A Lifelong Science-fiction Fan To Understand What The Story Is About, Then It's Not Going To Translate To A Broader Audience.

My Mother Was A Housewife But She Was Also An Artist. My Father Was An Electrical Engineer.

It's Important For Me To Have Hope Because That's My Job As A Parent, To Have Hope, For My Kids, That We're Not Going To Leave Them In A World That's In Shambles, That's A Chaotic Place, That's A Dangerous Place.

Action Is A Way Of Externalizing An Emotional State. You Might Not Be Running, Leaping, Climbing And Doing All That. But, The Way You Create That Emotional State In A Movie Is By Having The Characters Have Physical Jeopardy That They Have To Work Against.

Pick Up A Camera. Shoot Something. No Matter How Small, No Matter How Cheesy, No Matter Whether Your Friends And Your Sister Star In It. Put Your Name On It As Director. Now You're A Director. Everything After That You're Just Negotiating Your Budget And Your Fee.

With 'avatar,' I Thought, Forget All These Chick Flicks And Do A Classic Guys' Adventure Movie, Something In The Edgar Rice Burroughs Mold, Like John Carter Of Mars - A Soldier Goes To Mars.

If You Faced A Long Hungry Period With Nothing Between You And Starvation But A Bit Of Barley And A Pig, You'd Be Better Off Turning The Barley Into Beer And Letting The Pig Starve.

You Can Have A Strong Economy Or You Can Help The Environment, But You Can't Do Both At The Same Time. That's Ridiculous. In Fact, As A Sustainable Vision For A Healthy Economy Has To Involve Changing Our Energy Policy And Changing With Respect To The Natural World. Because We're Hitting Nature's Thresholds, We're Hitting Nature's Limits With Respect To Water And Crop Yields And Energy Use And Fossil Fuels Heating The Atmosphere At The Same Time We're Past Global Peak And Running Out Of That.

Everybody Is Always Talking About Droughts And Sea Level Rise, But When Human Civilization, With More Crowding And Greater Resource Depletion, Is Under That Much Stress, It Translates Into Wars And Huge Displaced Populations. The Syrian Refugee Crisis Is Just A First Taste Of What It's Going To Be Like. I Don't Want My Kids Growing Up In That Kind Of World.

When Nikita Khrushchev Wrapped Himself In The Bloody Mantle Of The Czars He Broke Hungary, He Broke The Little Communist Parties Over The Western World, And He Broke The Hearts Of Many Honest Men Who Had Trusted A Little Too Far, A Little Too Long.

There Is A Hugely Underserved Population Out There... Those Who Are The Least Capable Of Paying Pay The Highest.

So Much Of Literary Sci-fi Is About Creating Worlds That Are Rich And Detailed And Make Sense At A Social Level. We'll Create A World For People And Then Later Present A Narrative In That World.

I'm Certainly Not A Fan Of Conversion When You Could Shoot The Movie In 3-d.

All My Films Are Love Stories.

I Think People Had Somehow Gotten The Sense That We Have Explored Everything, When That Isn't The Case. We So Know So Little About The Ocean, And So Much Of It Is Being Destroyed.

It's Really The Sense Of Isolation, More Than Anything, Realizing How Tiny You Are Down In This Big Vast Black Unknown And Unexplored Place.

I Always Do Makeup Touch-ups Myself, Especially For Blood, Wounds, And Dirt. It Saves So Much Time.

Hate Is A Disease, And In 1930 I Became Sick With Hatred.

You Can't Be An Environmentalist, You Can't Be An Ocean Steward Without Truly Walking The Walk And You Can't Walk The Walk In The World Of The Future, The World Ahead Of Us, The World Of Our Children, Not Eating A Plant-based Diet.

I Love Short Trips To New York; To Me It Is The Finest Three-day Town On Earth.

I Mean, You Have To Be Able - You Have To Have Made The Commitment Within Yourself To Do Whatever It Takes To Get The Job Done And To Try To Inspire Other People To Do It, Because Obviously The First Rule Is You Can't Do It By Yourself.

I Tend To Like Strong Female Characters. It Just Interests Me Dramatically. A Strong Male Character Isn't Interesting Because It Has Been Done And It's So Cliched. A Weak Male Character Is Interesting: Somebody Else Hasn't Done It A Hundred Times. A Strong Female Character Is Still Interesting To Me Because It Hasn't Been Done All That Much, Finding The Balance Of Femininity And Strength. [from A 1986 Fangoria Interview]

Your Only Competitors Are Your Past Achievements.

I Was Always Fascinated By Engineering. Maybe It Was An Attempt Maybe To Get My Father's Respect Or Interest, Or Maybe It Was Just A Genetic Love Of Technology, But I Was Always Trying To Build Things.

The Film Industry Is About Saying 'no' To People, And Inherently You Cannot Take 'no' For An Answer.

I Want To Challenge All Of You As People Of Deep Conscience, People Who Are Environment Stewards Of The Earth And Oceans ... By Changing What You Eat, You Will Change The Entire Contract Between The Human Species And The Natural World.

Jack: Where To, Miss? Rose: To The Stars.

You Don't Rest Well As Long As You're Seeking Vengeance. I Feel Sad Justice Wasn't Done, But It's Time To Move On And Sleep Well.

The Snake Kills By Squeezing Very Slowly. This Is How The Civilized World Slowly, Slowly Pushes Into The Forest And Takes Away The World That Used To Be.

It's About Human Imagination And Curiosity. What's Out There? What's In The Great Beyond? What Exists At Levels We Can't See With Our Five Senses?

I Watched A Couple Of Really Bad Directors Work, And I Saw How They Completely Botched It Up And Missed The Visual Opportunities Of The Scene When We Had Put Things In Front Of Them As Opportunities. Set Pieces, Props And So On.

I Tried [being A Mogul]. It Bores Me. I Don't Really Want To Produce Other People's Movies. Because They're Either Grown-up Filmmakers Like Steven Soderbergh Or Kathryn Bigelow That Didn't Really Need Me - And I've Produced Both Of Them. It's Fun To Sit Around With Them And Be Collegial, But They Don't Need Me. They Can Make The Film Without Me. I Make My Own Stuff. There Are Tons And Tons Of Other Things I'm Interested In That Have Nothing To Do With Movies Or Are Documentary Projects.

I Set My Goals Way Higher Than The Achievable. And When I Fail, I Fail At A Very High Level. That's My Process. It's Really Demented, But It Actually Works. When You Are Aiming Really High And Doing Something New, You Must Be Also Prepared To Fail, Learn From Your Mistakes And Begin With A New Plan. More Motivated Than Before.

What Are You Gonna Do, Talk The Alien To Death?

Sometimes Your Whole Life Boils Down To One Insane Move.

Usually, When You Go To A Movie, Your Consciousness Floats Above The Film. 3d Sucks You In And Makes It A Visceral Experience.

I Try To Live With Honor, Even If It Costs Me Millions Of Dollars And Takes A Long Time. It's Very Unusual In Hollywood. Few People Are Trustworthy - A Handshake Means Nothing To Them. They Feel They're Required To Keep An Agreement With You Only If You're Successful Or They Need You.

There Are Many Talented People Who Haven't Fulfilled Their Dreams Because They Over Thought It, Or They Were Too Cautious, And Were Unwilling To Make The Leap Of Faith.

Tread Softly Upon The Earth Because The Faces Of The Unborn Look Up At You.

I Blame It On Walt Disney, Where Animals Are Given Human Qualities. People Don't Understand That A Wild Animal Is Not Something That Is Nice To Pat. It Can Seriously Harm You.

Inspiration Can Hit You In The Head At Any Time In Any Context. It Could Happen In A Conversation. Talking To Someone At A Party, You Can Get An Idea. But You've Got To Remember Those Inspirations.

Jack: Rose! You're So Stupid. Why Did You Do That, Huh? You're So Stupid, Rose. Why Did You Do That? Why? Rose: You Jump, I Jump, Right? Jack: Right. Rose: Oh God! I Couldn't Go. I Couldn't Go, Jack. Jack: It's All Right. We'll Think Of Something. Rose: At Least I'm With You.

So My Message Is In Whichever Realm, Be It Going Into Space Or Going Into The Deep Sea, You Have To Balance The Yin And Yang Of Caution And Boldness, Risk Aversion And Risk Taking, Fear And Fearlessness. No Great Accomplishment Takes Place, Whether It Be A Movie Or A Deep Ocean Expedition, Or A Space Mission, Without A Kind Of Dynamic Equipoise Between The Two. Luck Is Not A Factor. Hope Is Not A Strategy. Fear Is Not An Option.

I'm Willing To Engage Or Indulge Real Ideas, But If We Don't Do Something [about Global Warming], We're All Going To Die! What's It Going To Take, A Big F--ing Disaster With All Kinds Of People Dying? We Need To Change Our Priorities Fast.

People Call Me A Perfectionist, But I'm Not. I'm A Rightist. I Do Something Until It's Right, And Then I Move On To The Next Thing.

Literary Science Fiction Is A Very, Very Narrow Band Of The Publishing Business. I Love Science Fiction In More Of A Pop-culture Sense. And By The Way, The Line Between Science Fiction And Reality Has Blurred A Lot In My Life Doing Deep Ocean Expeditions And Working On Actual Space Projects And So On. So I Tend To Be More Fascinated By The Reality Of The Science-fiction World In Which We Live.

I Don't Look At Scripts. I Just Write Them.

You Have To Not Listen To The Nay Sayers Because There Will Be Many And Often They`ll Be Much More Qualified Than You And Cause You To Sort Of Doubt Yourself.

It Was Long Ago In My Life As A Simple Reporter That I Decided That Facts Must Never Get In The Way Of Truth.

I Actually Started As A Model Builder And Quickly Progressed Into Production Design, Which Made Sense Because I Could Draw And Paint. But I Kept Watching That Guy Over There Who Was Moving The Actors Around And Setting Up The Shots.

The Magic Doesn't Come From Within The Director's Mind, It Comes From Within The Hearts Of The Actors.

I Lived In A Small Town. It Was 2,000 People In Canada. A Little River That Went Through It And We Swam In The - You Know, There Was A Lot Of Water Around. Niagara Falls Was About Four Or Five Miles Away.

You Know, In The Film Making Business No One Ever Gives You Anything.

James Cameron Doesn't Do What James Cameron Does For James Cameron. James Cameron Does What James Cameron Does Because James Cameron Is... James Cameron.

Raising The Bar

We Have A Great Responsibility. Whatever We Make Will Become The Truth, The Visual Reality That A Generation Will Accept.

What Are The Lessons Learned? Well, I Think Number One Is Curiosity. It's The Most Powerful Thing You Own. Imagination Is A Force That Can Actually Manifest A Reality. And The Respect Of Your Team Is More Important Than All The Laurels In The World.

I Dreamed I Was A Soldier Who Could Bring Peace. Sooner Or Later, Though, You Always Have To Wake Up.

Sooner Or Later

There Seems To Be A Lot Of Excitement Around Something That, To Me, Is A Yawn, Frankly.

The Future Is Not Set. There Is No Fate But What We Make.

Rose: You Have A Gift Jack, You Do. You See People. Jack: I See You. Rose: And? Jack: You Wouldn't Have Jumped.

Religions Fulfill Deep-seated Psychological Needs For People, And If You Don't Get It From A Specific Religious Doctrine, You'll Get It From The Kind Of Films I Like To Make. A Film Like The Terminator Is Consciously Meant To Give A Sense Of Empowerment To The Individual.

Psychological Needs

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