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Speaker 1: Opportunities come along on their fleetote and that door will

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Speaker 1: open for a moment, and then it'll slide close. When

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Speaker 1: that door opens, the critical thing is to understand it's

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Speaker 1: not an example of an opportunity. It is the opportunity.

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Speaker 1: You either take it or you don't.

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Speaker 2: Hey, everyone, welcome back to on Purpose. Today's guest is

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Speaker 2: someone I'm deeply excited to interview. His life is truly

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Speaker 2: movie magic in so many ways, but it is filled

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Speaker 2: with lessons, insights, and inspiration that you can take into

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Speaker 2: your own journey to chase your passion, to pursue the

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Speaker 2: career that you love, to bring your art to life,

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Speaker 2: to bring your magic to the world and offer it

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Speaker 2: as a service. I'm sitting down with the one and

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Speaker 2: only James Cameron, one of the most influential storytellers of

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Speaker 2: our time, filmmaker, explorer, and visionary who has redefined what's

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Speaker 2: possible on the screen, from The Terminator and Aliens to

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Speaker 2: Titanic and Avatar. His films have shaped global culture, push

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Speaker 2: the boundaries of technology, and spark entire generations of imagination.

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Speaker 2: James is a deep sea explorer, the pioneer of performance capture,

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Speaker 2: and a director whose work continues to challenge, innovate, and

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Speaker 2: expand what storytelling can be. The highly anticipated new chapter, Avatar,

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Speaker 2: Fire and Ash, that I got to see last week,

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Speaker 2: comes to theaters December nineteenth. Make sure you book your seat,

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Speaker 2: go and watch it with the whole family. You won't

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Speaker 2: regret it. Please welcome to On Purpose, James Cameron. James

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Speaker 2: it is.

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Speaker 1: Can you just travel around with me for the rest

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Speaker 1: of my life and do the introduction? No pressure, by

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Speaker 1: the way.

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Speaker 2: Well, you had to build it, you had to live it.

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Speaker 1: I gotta live it. I have no choice. There's no

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Speaker 1: backing out now, right.

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Speaker 2: Well, you've had to live it for all these years

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Speaker 2: and create all these iconic films that we all have

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Speaker 2: fallen in love with and still talk about to this day,

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Speaker 2: and so many new ones to come in the future.

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Speaker 2: But I want to take us back to your childhood, okay,

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Speaker 2: because I feel that so much of who we become

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Speaker 2: is defined in those early years, as you and I

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Speaker 2: both know, and I was wondering, do you remember the

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Speaker 2: first character or world that you ever imagined, even if

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Speaker 2: it wasn't for a movie or a film or an idea,

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Speaker 2: but just a world that you lived in when you

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Speaker 2: were younger.

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Speaker 1: Well, I was totally enamored as a kid with anything

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Speaker 1: fantastic or science fiction, anything I saw on television that

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Speaker 1: was fantasy and science fiction. But I remember one one

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Speaker 1: I think there's a moment where something inspires you to

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Speaker 1: take your own action, to do your own art, and

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Speaker 1: I remember, and this may not have been the first,

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Speaker 1: but this is what pops to mind. So seeing Mysterious Island,

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Speaker 1: which was a Ray Harryhausen film, I probably would have

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Speaker 1: been seven or eight and coming home and wanting to

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Speaker 1: do my own version of Miss Silence. So I started

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Speaker 1: to draw essentially a comic book, but it was my

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Speaker 1: own story. The animals were different. They wound up cast

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Speaker 1: away on a raft as opposed to in the movie.

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Speaker 1: It was a balloon, and I just started telling my

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Speaker 1: own story. So technically that would be the first case

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Speaker 1: I can remember of world building inspired by something else,

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Speaker 1: but not copying that thing. And of course Ray Harryhausen

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Speaker 1: was always inspiring to me as a kid, you know.

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Speaker 1: I mean the technique that he used of stop motion

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Speaker 1: animation is considered quite quaint now, you know, and we

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Speaker 1: can do things that are far more realistic, But at

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Speaker 1: the time, there was nothing like that in terms of

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Speaker 1: his art, his craft, and that blew my mind at

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Speaker 1: the time. And you know, look, it doesn't take much

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Speaker 1: to inspire. Kids are imaginative, you know. And when you

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Speaker 1: get something that impacts your imagination and triggers it and

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Speaker 1: then you start to draw, all of a sudden, my

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Speaker 1: hands go. You know what I mean, I'm drawing. I'm

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Speaker 1: choosing colors. What color do I want the giant turtle

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Speaker 1: to be? I picked green? No big surprise there.

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Speaker 2: Did you ever get to share that with the director

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Speaker 2: or anyone in the cast?

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Speaker 1: I did talk. I talked to Ray later in his life.

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Speaker 1: He was pretty retired. He hadn't he hadn't done any

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Speaker 1: stop motion for some time. But you know, I shared

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Speaker 1: with him some of these early stories and the impact

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Speaker 1: he had on me and so many other filmmakers. He

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Speaker 1: was absolutely the most fantastic of the fantasy filmmakers that

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Speaker 1: were out there for many, many years.

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Speaker 2: I can't imagine what that felt like to him to

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Speaker 2: hear that something of his that inspired you to go

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Speaker 2: on to see what you did.

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Speaker 1: I think he was just kind of dazzled by where

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Speaker 1: we were. The next generation and the one after that

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Speaker 1: had sort of taken it into CG and so on,

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Speaker 1: and things that he couldn't have imagined the technology, but

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Speaker 1: he certainly could have imagined the design and the storytelling,

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Speaker 1: you know, that were possible with those those new tools.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's the power of art. As I'm

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Speaker 2: listening to you, I'm thinking just how many young kids

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Speaker 2: are going to go and watch Fire and Ash and

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Speaker 2: that becomes their version of that movie that then inspires

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Speaker 2: them to go and bring their art into the world,

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Speaker 2: whether it's film and TV or poetry or music or

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Speaker 2: whatever it may be. And how important it is because

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Speaker 2: he probably didn't imagine that. You know, James Cameron as

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Speaker 2: a seven or eight year old was watching his film.

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Speaker 1: Oh how could he have, you know, I mean, he

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Speaker 1: was just following his muse and we all do, you know.

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Speaker 1: But I'd love to think that stuff that I've done

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Speaker 1: is inspired inspired, you know. I want to say kids,

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Speaker 1: but you know, it could be anybody that wants to

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Speaker 1: be an artist at any age. And you know, I

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Speaker 1: have this art show that's touring around in Europe. It's

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Speaker 1: actually in istan Ball right now, and it's a lot

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Speaker 1: of drawings that I did and paintings that I did

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Speaker 1: when I was in high school and in college. I

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Speaker 1: didn't know it was going to be a big shot

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Speaker 1: filmmaker someday. You know, how could you possibly know that?

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Speaker 1: You know, I was just the ideas of had I

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Speaker 1: just had to draw them. I mean, I had to

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Speaker 1: draw them. And I always say artists, artists are the

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Speaker 1: people that can't not draw or can't not create. It's like,

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Speaker 1: it's not like you've forced yourself to create. You have

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Speaker 1: to force yourself not to, you know. And if that's

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Speaker 1: flowing from you, if it's flowing from your fingertips, or

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Speaker 1: if it's voice, or if it's music or whatever it is,

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Speaker 1: if it's flowing from you and you can't stop it,

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Speaker 1: guess what You're stuck. You're an artist and you feel compelled. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: and you don't question it. That's the crazy thing. At

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Speaker 1: least I never did, you know. I'd sit on the

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Speaker 1: quad at college and I'd just have my math notebook

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Speaker 1: or whatever, and I'd be sketching some girls sitting under

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Speaker 1: a tree, or some guy or my own hand or

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Speaker 1: you know. It was just always drawing. I couldn't imagine

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Speaker 1: not drawing.

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Speaker 2: Was was there a part of you that fell out

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Speaker 2: of place? As a kid, but now that same skill

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Speaker 2: is essential to who you are now or did you

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Speaker 2: always feel that.

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Speaker 1: You think so? Yeah? I mean, look, you can get

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Speaker 1: very solitary the creative act, especially when you're write, because

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Speaker 1: you really have to just you know, isolate and you

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Speaker 1: need to be in your own headspace and be comfortable

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Speaker 1: there for long periods of time. So it can be isolating.

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Speaker 1: I remember, and you know, I mean, our memory of

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Speaker 1: our childhood is always tainted by the stories that we

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Speaker 1: tell ourselves, and we don't remember the event. We remember

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Speaker 1: the story, yes, because memory is an interesting thing. We

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Speaker 1: don't really, we're not video cameras. There isn't enough storage

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Speaker 1: in this three and a half pound meat computer to

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Speaker 1: last a lifetime. It'd be a million petabytes of data.

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Speaker 1: We just don't have room for that, right, So we

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Speaker 1: don't remember the event like a videotape. We remember the

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Speaker 1: story we tell ourselves. The story I tell myself is

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Speaker 1: that I spend a lot of time on my own,

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Speaker 1: in my imagination in the woods, connecting with nature, finding animals,

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Speaker 1: finding bugs, collecting butterflies, tadpoles, whatever. It was a lot

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Speaker 1: of time on my own drawing and just thinking, creating,

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Speaker 1: and a lot of time with other kids organizing and

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Speaker 1: doing fun collective projects. You know, the one in the

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Speaker 1: neighborhood that always said, hey guys, let's build a fort.

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Speaker 1: You know, hey guys, let's build a go cart. Hey guys,

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Speaker 1: let's make an airplane out of wood and hang it

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Speaker 1: from a tree and fly at which we did until

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Speaker 1: the road broke and you know, it crashed. But you know,

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Speaker 1: so there was an alpha social component which is now critical,

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Speaker 1: but there was also a quiet, creative and introspective component

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Speaker 1: to it. And I think it was if I look

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Speaker 1: at my life now, it's my comfort in both of

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Speaker 1: those zones that allows me to do what I do

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Speaker 1: because a lot of people are good writers, are good creators,

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Speaker 1: good artists, but they don't have the social organizational component

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Speaker 1: to motivate people to do things, you know, and to

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Speaker 1: leverage their creativity. And so that's a big part of it,

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Speaker 1: that sort of alpha component, if you will.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, it's fascinating because you hear about this passion

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Speaker 2: in your childhood, the flow to draw and create and

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Speaker 2: to be fascinated with nature, and it almost makes sense.

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Speaker 2: But then you've become a truck driver, and so walk

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Speaker 2: me through that arc of your life, because I feel

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Speaker 2: so many people kind of up until ten eleven years

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Speaker 2: old may even have these passions and dreams and ideas

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Speaker 2: and creatives, but then their life takes a difference.

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Speaker 1: I never went to university, per se. I went to

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Speaker 1: the Fullerer and Junior College, which is part of the

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Speaker 1: junior college system. Was intensely curious. It was the first

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Speaker 1: time in my life where I was surrounded by people

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Speaker 1: actually wanted to be there, you know, as opposed to

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Speaker 1: high school, where people didn't want to be there. They

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Speaker 1: just had to be there, you know, and most of

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Speaker 1: them sort of rejected the learning process. I was always

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Speaker 1: hungry to learn, not necessarily what they were teaching, but

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Speaker 1: you know, lots of new things. I got to college

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Speaker 1: and I was surrounded by people actually wanted to be

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Speaker 1: there and wanted to learn, and there was people were

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Speaker 1: having arguments about philosophy and English storytelling and art, and

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Speaker 1: it was very exciting. But it was unsustainable for me.

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Speaker 1: I couldn't afford to do it continuously or endlessly, and

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Speaker 1: so I had to work. And I worked various jobs,

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Speaker 1: all blue collar jobs, right, And I didn't mind working.

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Speaker 1: I didn't mind just sort of being, you know, and

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Speaker 1: I got married at a very early age. I had

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Speaker 1: a little pink house with a white picket fence and

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Speaker 1: a dog, you know, and it was kind of, you know,

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Speaker 1: kind of comforting. It was very, very limited and simple.

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Speaker 1: But at the same time, in my after hours as

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Speaker 1: a truck driver, because it was a you know, nine

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Speaker 1: to five or eight to five job, I was painting,

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Speaker 1: I was drawing, I was storytelling for myself. My wife

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Speaker 1: didn't understand that she was a waitress, and she liked

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Speaker 1: the me that was social and with her, but not

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Speaker 1: the me that was off, you know, creating all these worlds.

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Speaker 1: And so I was still trying to reconcile, you know,

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Speaker 1: that kind of social facing versus the you know, landscape

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Speaker 1: of my own imagination. But I've always been comfortable in

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Speaker 1: my own had that way. Dreams are a big part

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Speaker 1: of it. Dreams are a big part of my creativity

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Speaker 1: and source of imagery, source of little bits and pieces

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Speaker 1: of narrative, you know, because it could be quite chaotic

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Speaker 1: and jumbled, but still within that there could be some

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Speaker 1: interesting ideas. And so I think it was all just

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Speaker 1: building up, building up a pressure to the point where

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Speaker 1: I had to do something about it. And that was

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Speaker 1: in my mid twenties, so I was kind of a

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Speaker 1: late starter. I never went to film school, you know.

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Speaker 1: My film school was the drive in movie theaters of

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Speaker 1: Orange County. You know, so no formal training in film

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Speaker 1: aesthetics or film history or any of that stuff. But

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Speaker 1: it was just kind of building up that all right.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's that urge to when you can't not draw,

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Speaker 1: when you start thinking filmically and in terms of storytelling,

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Speaker 1: it's like, well, you can't not tell a story. You've

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Speaker 1: got to tell somebody the damn story, you know. And

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Speaker 1: I think anybody out there that here's this that feels

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Speaker 1: that way, you don't have a choice. Yeah, you're probably

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Speaker 1: going to be a filmmaker or a writer or whatever

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Speaker 1: it is. You know, just accept it. You know, you

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Speaker 1: might never be rich because you know it's it's a

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Speaker 1: difficult task and there's a lot of luck, I think

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Speaker 1: involved in getting to be a successful storyteller. But I

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Speaker 1: just followed it, and I didn't I didn't question it, you know,

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Speaker 1: I just quit my job one day, no rankor just guys,

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Speaker 1: I got stuff to do. I'll see you to the

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Speaker 1: other drivers and they're like, what where are you going,

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Speaker 1: you know.

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Speaker 2: I mean it feels like a bold step looking back,

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Speaker 2: because without film school, without having made a film, yeah,

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Speaker 2: without any of that background. To watch Star Wars, I

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Speaker 2: believe in nineteen seventy seven that was and for you

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Speaker 2: to then go, I need to go and become a filmmaker,

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Speaker 2: even though you love drawing. And it feels like a

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Speaker 2: bold step. And I think about all of our listeners

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Speaker 2: in our community who are all thinking something similar. I

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Speaker 2: think a lot of people in my generation and the

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Speaker 2: generations off to me maybe studied something at school that

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Speaker 2: wasn't the thing they wanted to be. They have a

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Speaker 2: dream inside of them, they have a story and they

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Speaker 2: feel a pull, but they're scared to take that final step.

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Speaker 2: What gave you that conviction? Was it conviction or what

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Speaker 2: was it? Was it?

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Speaker 1: I think it was a conviction. Star Wars helped. And

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Speaker 1: I've talked to George Lucas about this. I said, untold

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Speaker 1: people that you've inspired, George, but I'm one of them,

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Speaker 1: because but in a way, I don't. I don't think

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Speaker 1: he was quite wanted the answer that I gave, which

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Speaker 1: was I was already seeing all that stuff in my head,

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Speaker 1: and when I saw Star Wars. I thought, if that

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Speaker 1: could be the highest grossing film in history, then the

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Speaker 1: stuff that I'm seeing in my mind when I listened

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Speaker 1: to fast electronic music and imagined space battles and all

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Speaker 1: this crazy stuff, It's like I should be doing that.

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Speaker 1: You know, there will be there will be a market

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Speaker 1: for it. There's a market for my imagination. And that's

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Speaker 1: maybe the boldest step is the step you take internally,

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Speaker 1: you know, where you give yourself permission to at least

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Speaker 1: go try it, you know, and and when you make

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Speaker 1: that commitment, you have to go in wholeheartedly. You can't say, Okay,

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Speaker 1: I'm going to be a filmmaker part time, but I'm

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Speaker 1: going to sort of keep a foot in like medical school.

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Speaker 1: It's not going to work. You got to go. You

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Speaker 1: just got to jump out of the plane and hope

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Speaker 1: you're wearing a parachute, you know. So I always tell

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Speaker 1: people that opportunities come along and they're fleeting, and that

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Speaker 1: door will open for a moment and then it'll slide closed,

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Speaker 1: and you've got to be Fortune favors the prepared mind.

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Speaker 1: If it's really something you love, read as much as

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Speaker 1: you can prepare your mind ahead of time, be ready

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Speaker 1: because when that door opens. But the critical thing is

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Speaker 1: to understand it's not an example of an opportunity. It

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Speaker 1: is the opportunity. You either take it or you don't.

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Speaker 1: You don't use it as a time to think about, well,

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Speaker 1: when the next one comes along, I may or may not,

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Speaker 1: you know what I mean. That's not how it works.

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Speaker 1: You go, you launch, you know. And that opportunity for

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Speaker 1: me was that a guy that I was working with

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Speaker 1: on learning to sculpt and make molds who was a

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Speaker 1: little bit ahead of me in the sort of fan

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Speaker 1: curve of actually knowing how to do rubber armatures for

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Speaker 1: stop motion, and I was pretty fascinated by that. His

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Speaker 1: sister was dating a guy who was a carpenter on

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Speaker 1: a super low budget Roger Corman science fiction film, and

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Speaker 1: I just said, introduce us, and so she talked to him,

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Speaker 1: he talked to them. We got an appointment and we

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Speaker 1: went in and showed our little models and our little

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Speaker 1: things that we had, and I had this film that

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Speaker 1: I had made with some friends, and we both got

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Speaker 1: jobs on a Roger Corman film, and we thought we'd

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Speaker 1: died and gone to heaven because now we were getting

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Speaker 1: a paycheck on a real movie. No, it was a

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Speaker 1: total piece of crap movie. It was a little, tiny movie.

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Speaker 2: You know.

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Speaker 1: It's actually the biggest movie Roger Carman ever had ever made.

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Speaker 1: It was like a million dollars or something like that,

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Speaker 1: which was huge for him. He usually made movies for

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Speaker 1: like two hundred thousand dollars. But and then all of

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Speaker 1: a sudden, I'm on a movie, and then the rest

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Speaker 1: just sort of made sense after this. It's that prepared

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Speaker 1: mind thing, you know. I had read everything I could

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Speaker 1: possibly read. I had. I had schooled myself on how

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Speaker 1: visual effects were done, all for no money, all not

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Speaker 1: at university, just just you know, over the that sort

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Speaker 1: of two or three years that I was driving trucks

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Speaker 1: and working blue collar jobs. So I guess in the

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Speaker 1: back of my mind, I must have thought I'm going

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Speaker 1: to do this for real at some point, because I

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Speaker 1: was clearly preparing myself. But I had no entree. I

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Speaker 1: didn't know anybody that knew anybody that knew anybody that

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Speaker 1: worked on a film, even though I was in Orange County.

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Speaker 1: It's not that far from here, not that far from

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Speaker 1: the center of the film industry, but it might as

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Speaker 1: well have been Montana, you know, at that time? Certainly?

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Speaker 2: Did you do you record your dreams? How do you

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Speaker 2: note them down? How do you capture them?

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Speaker 1: Yeah? Sometimes I'll wake up and I'll just write it down,

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Speaker 1: you know, or I'll type it out on my laptop whatever.

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Speaker 2: How long have you recorded them for? Like when did

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Speaker 2: you start?

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Speaker 1: It's sporadic, I mean, you know, I mean it's a

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Speaker 1: constant sort of streaming channel that's running all the time.

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Speaker 1: And they're not all necessarily worthy of But every once

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Speaker 1: in a while I'll get a corker. It's like, oh man,

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Speaker 1: I got to write this one down. You won't believe this.

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Speaker 2: Did you ever follow the curiosity of where they come from?

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Speaker 2: Or how they originate?

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Speaker 1: Or you know, what have you?

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Speaker 2: Where have you found? Where do you think you get

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Speaker 2: them from?

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Speaker 1: I look, I've read a lot on the theories of

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Speaker 1: consciousness and dreams and what purpose they serve, and and

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Speaker 1: there are some researchers that think they have deep psychological

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Speaker 1: meaning and others that think they're really just the brain

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Speaker 1: just kind of resetting itself and reshuffling memory and you know,

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Speaker 1: kind of cleaning house and it doesn't really have any meaning.

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Speaker 1: I happen to think that they have meaning to you. Now,

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Speaker 1: my wife, Susie believes that she has, and I believe

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Speaker 1: she's right, has received promontory dreams about events in her life,

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Speaker 1: and she's documented this in a way that I find

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Speaker 1: quite compelled. I'm not one hundred percent convinced. Sorry, baby,

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Speaker 1: if you're listening, not one hundred percent convinced, but she's

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Speaker 1: given me evidence. It gives me pause. And I'm a

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Speaker 1: pretty hardcore empiricist. I'm not a mystic. I don't I

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Speaker 1: don't follow all of the various winds of the spirituality

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Speaker 1: fads and things like that. That's not how I roll.

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Speaker 1: I'm very science oriented. You've got to show me. You've

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Speaker 1: got to prove it. It's got to be pure reviewed,

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Speaker 1: you know, and that sort of thing. It's got to

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Speaker 1: be the subject of double blind studies, and it's got

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Speaker 1: to be falsifiable and all the you know, empirical stuff.

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Speaker 1: But I've seen some things I don't I can't explain,

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Speaker 1: and she's demonstrated some things to me that can't be

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Speaker 1: explained by my not my understanding of science, you know.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not a scientist, but I did study physically,

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Speaker 1: I studied astronomy, and I keep pretty current in the sciences.

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Speaker 1: So there's clearly stuff out there that's not well explained

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Speaker 1: or explained at all right now, doesn't mean it won't

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Speaker 1: be someday using empirical methodology. I don't know quite how

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Speaker 1: I got off on that, but we were talking about dreams,

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Speaker 1: and dreams are not well understood even by neuroscientists, and

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Speaker 1: so on. What what is what is the brain doing?

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Speaker 2: You know?

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Speaker 1: I personally think that that we're kind of we're like

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Speaker 1: large language models, you know, so all the training data

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Speaker 1: of our life, it just goes into a kind of

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Speaker 1: diffusion state, which is how generative AI works. It goes

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Speaker 1: into a kind of a very noisy state, and then

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Speaker 1: out of that coalesces new things. And I think the

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Speaker 1: brain is just constantly creating in the way that a

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Speaker 1: generative AI works. And but who's creating it and who's

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Speaker 1: it being created for, So you're simultaneously the creator and

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Speaker 1: the watcher, which is kind of amazing. I'm creating a

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Speaker 1: simulated experience for myself one part of my brain is

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Speaker 1: and another part of my brain, let's call it the

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Speaker 1: ego locusts or whatever. The person taking the ride, the kid,

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Speaker 1: the kid in the rollercoaster, is going on the ride,

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Speaker 1: which is kind of the filmmaking process. Because I'm making

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Speaker 1: a story. I'm making up a story for my kind

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Speaker 1: of simulation of the audience mind, the group mind. Right,

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Speaker 1: So part of my brain is making up a story

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Speaker 1: for another part of my brain. That part of my

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Speaker 1: brain is sitting in a movie theater with hundreds of

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Speaker 1: other people and receiving it and judging it like, Okay,

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Speaker 1: this is cool. I like that, you know, And you know,

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Speaker 1: you try to drill down on the creative process. I'm

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Speaker 1: a writer. I'm sitting there, I'm looking at a blank screen.

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Speaker 1: Where do you start? You know? And a lot of

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Speaker 1: writers do it in very different ways. Some start, you know,

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Speaker 1: page one, you know, Bob walks down the street, you know,

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Speaker 1: and then it just goes from there in a linear fashion.

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Speaker 1: For me, it coalesces, probably almost in a diffusion model

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Speaker 1: kind of way. I start writing notes, and little images

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Speaker 1: come to me, and I start putting the notes together.

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Speaker 1: And for the Avatar sequels, for example, I wrote over

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Speaker 1: a thousand pages of notes, just little fragments. Oh and

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Speaker 1: sometimes dreams play a part in that, and sometimes just

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Speaker 1: the daydreaming process that creative engine. Because I think that

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Speaker 1: same creative engine that runs at night out of control,

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Speaker 1: nonlinear chaotic montage style is actually more functional during the

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Speaker 1: day and can be kind of directed to stay on

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Speaker 1: a topic and follow it through, you know. So maybe

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Speaker 1: I'll be thinking about a character and then something will

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Speaker 1: pop into my mind, you know, and then I'll start

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Speaker 1: writing about that, and it does I'm not trying to

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Speaker 1: tell a linear narrative at that point, you know, and

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Speaker 1: it becomes a bit of a dialogue. So I remember

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Speaker 1: the time I was sitting there in my writing office

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Speaker 1: and I said, well, what if there was a kid

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Speaker 1: that was you know, a kid that was born on

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Speaker 1: the base, And what if he was out in the

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Speaker 1: forest with his novvi little kid friends and his mask

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Speaker 1: got messed up and you know, they had to save him.

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Speaker 1: He was running out of running out of air, and

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Speaker 1: it became a whole thing. And so I imagine this

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Speaker 1: whole thing about a race against time to get them

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Speaker 1: back to the base. And I thought, Okay, that's a

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Speaker 1: pretty good story. Now what if what if that kid

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Speaker 1: was Gorge's son? And then I wrote, literally wrote, nah,

432
00:22:16,680 --> 00:22:20,520
Speaker 1: nobody would believe that, you know, And then I'm going

433
00:22:20,560 --> 00:22:22,920
Speaker 1: on writing more notes than about three or four pages later,

434
00:22:23,040 --> 00:22:24,879
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, but wait a minute, it would be

435
00:22:24,960 --> 00:22:27,359
Speaker 1: really cool, you know. And then I just started a

436
00:22:27,440 --> 00:22:29,280
Speaker 1: riff on that. And then it became all right, well,

437
00:22:29,400 --> 00:22:32,199
Speaker 1: what if he was gorgeous son and the human coorage

438
00:22:32,320 --> 00:22:36,000
Speaker 1: dies in the first film? Now he's orphaned. His mother

439
00:22:36,080 --> 00:22:37,840
Speaker 1: maybe dies as well, if she was part of the

440
00:22:37,840 --> 00:22:41,919
Speaker 1: military group that you know, Jake was opposed to. And

441
00:22:42,000 --> 00:22:44,760
Speaker 1: now he's an orphan and he's being raised on Pandora

442
00:22:44,760 --> 00:22:47,000
Speaker 1: and he's got Navi friends. What if his Novi friends

443
00:22:47,000 --> 00:22:51,760
Speaker 1: were Jake's kids? What if? What if? What if? What if?

444
00:22:51,800 --> 00:22:52,360
Speaker 2: What if? Right?

445
00:22:52,440 --> 00:22:54,560
Speaker 1: That's how the writing process works, and then it just

446
00:22:54,760 --> 00:22:56,800
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, ideas just you can't

447
00:22:56,840 --> 00:23:14,240
Speaker 1: turn away from them.

448
00:23:14,480 --> 00:23:18,159
Speaker 2: Do those creative ideas? Do you find a set of

449
00:23:18,200 --> 00:23:20,960
Speaker 2: systems or rituals or processes that help you access that

450
00:23:21,119 --> 00:23:22,440
Speaker 2: or is it more organic?

451
00:23:22,520 --> 00:23:26,520
Speaker 1: And I know all every writer's got their own process

452
00:23:26,560 --> 00:23:29,720
Speaker 1: some you know. I'm up at five am. I run

453
00:23:29,800 --> 00:23:31,920
Speaker 1: two miles, I have a cup of coffee, I sit down,

454
00:23:32,000 --> 00:23:34,200
Speaker 1: I write eighteen pages and then I call it a day.

455
00:23:34,600 --> 00:23:37,080
Speaker 1: For me, it's a slow boil. I noodle around for

456
00:23:37,160 --> 00:23:38,920
Speaker 1: most of the day. I get to the point toward

457
00:23:38,960 --> 00:23:40,720
Speaker 1: the end of the day, maybe four or five o'clock

458
00:23:40,760 --> 00:23:44,080
Speaker 1: in the afternoon, where I've been playing, maybe i've been

459
00:23:44,080 --> 00:23:47,440
Speaker 1: doing notes, and then I'll just say okay, ty to

460
00:23:47,480 --> 00:23:50,840
Speaker 1: write some pages. And then usually for about three hours,

461
00:23:50,880 --> 00:23:53,320
Speaker 1: I'll write pages and I'll get four or five pages.

462
00:23:53,359 --> 00:23:56,760
Speaker 1: It'll come fast at that point, you know, And that's

463
00:23:56,760 --> 00:23:58,720
Speaker 1: when you hit your stride in screenwriting.

464
00:23:59,200 --> 00:24:02,399
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can see that the way you're describing this

465
00:24:02,560 --> 00:24:06,560
Speaker 2: scene with Kharija's son, because there's almost like three different

466
00:24:06,600 --> 00:24:11,880
Speaker 2: storylines kind of connecting in that moment around that one

467
00:24:11,920 --> 00:24:14,320
Speaker 2: thing that you just pointed out. Yeah. Yeah, but there's

468
00:24:14,359 --> 00:24:17,159
Speaker 2: so many other things going on at the same time. Oh.

469
00:24:17,200 --> 00:24:19,080
Speaker 1: I usually come up with way more ideas than I

470
00:24:19,119 --> 00:24:23,200
Speaker 1: could conceivably pack into a movie, and then I'll winnow

471
00:24:23,280 --> 00:24:25,680
Speaker 1: that down or window that down to a big old

472
00:24:25,960 --> 00:24:29,320
Speaker 1: screenplay that's unshootable, and then I'll winnow that down, and

473
00:24:29,359 --> 00:24:31,320
Speaker 1: then I'll make a movie that's four hours long, and

474
00:24:31,359 --> 00:24:33,960
Speaker 1: then I'll winnow that down, and then what you get

475
00:24:34,119 --> 00:24:36,879
Speaker 1: is the end result is the distillation of the distillation

476
00:24:37,040 --> 00:24:39,520
Speaker 1: of the best ideas, and then that's what winds up

477
00:24:39,560 --> 00:24:43,159
Speaker 1: in the lean, little tight indie film that I like

478
00:24:43,200 --> 00:24:47,160
Speaker 1: to call fire and Ash. Only three hours and seven

479
00:24:47,200 --> 00:24:50,199
Speaker 1: minutes long, you know, But.

480
00:24:50,359 --> 00:24:52,359
Speaker 2: What's incredible about it? When I watched it, I was

481
00:24:52,359 --> 00:24:54,040
Speaker 2: so grateful that you allowed me to go see it

482
00:24:54,119 --> 00:24:56,720
Speaker 2: last week. And as I said, when I was there,

483
00:24:56,840 --> 00:24:59,080
Speaker 2: the gentleman in the theater who was playing it for me,

484
00:24:59,640 --> 00:25:01,560
Speaker 2: he told me which seat you'd like me to watch

485
00:25:01,560 --> 00:25:04,159
Speaker 2: it from, which I thought was a beautiful experience to have,

486
00:25:04,400 --> 00:25:05,919
Speaker 2: I said. I said, yes, I want to sit in

487
00:25:05,920 --> 00:25:06,679
Speaker 2: the exact seat.

488
00:25:07,359 --> 00:25:09,720
Speaker 1: And then, well, it's good that you moved back, though

489
00:25:09,800 --> 00:25:10,680
Speaker 1: I did.

490
00:25:10,680 --> 00:25:12,760
Speaker 2: He told me I had that option, he said, I.

491
00:25:12,680 --> 00:25:16,919
Speaker 1: Did that to today. Actually, for the first time, I

492
00:25:16,960 --> 00:25:19,720
Speaker 1: watched from the seat behind. Now normally that's my working

493
00:25:19,760 --> 00:25:22,040
Speaker 1: seat when I'm reviewing, because you could see that there's

494
00:25:22,280 --> 00:25:25,280
Speaker 1: a desk there with an abbot and so on. But

495
00:25:25,440 --> 00:25:27,439
Speaker 1: I thought, well, let me see, let me see what

496
00:25:27,480 --> 00:25:29,879
Speaker 1: it's like from there where I it doesn't fill my

497
00:25:30,000 --> 00:25:33,119
Speaker 1: peripheral field, and I've got a little bit more of

498
00:25:33,160 --> 00:25:36,040
Speaker 1: that sense of control that you have when it's a proscenium,

499
00:25:36,480 --> 00:25:38,359
Speaker 1: you know, And I thought, oh, this is actually pretty good.

500
00:25:40,280 --> 00:25:43,520
Speaker 2: It was spectacular, but more importantly, three housand and seven

501
00:25:43,600 --> 00:25:46,720
Speaker 2: minutes flew by. There was never a moment I didn't

502
00:25:46,760 --> 00:25:48,720
Speaker 2: I was I didn't look at my phone once in

503
00:25:48,760 --> 00:25:50,880
Speaker 2: three thousand and seven minutes. To me, that's the test, right,

504
00:25:50,960 --> 00:25:54,000
Speaker 2: the day of having your engagement, attention and awareness.

505
00:25:53,720 --> 00:25:55,840
Speaker 1: Right, So we passed the most critical test.

506
00:25:56,119 --> 00:26:00,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the most magnificent thing is that so much

507
00:26:00,119 --> 00:26:02,359
Speaker 2: much happens. Yeah, Like you're just on the edge of

508
00:26:02,359 --> 00:26:04,320
Speaker 2: your seat wondering what's going to happen next, and so

509
00:26:04,480 --> 00:26:07,159
Speaker 2: much is happening. And to do that for threeosand and

510
00:26:07,200 --> 00:26:10,640
Speaker 2: seven minutes in your indie movie is it's pretty It's

511
00:26:10,720 --> 00:26:13,760
Speaker 2: just an incredible feast for the eyes and ears, and

512
00:26:14,240 --> 00:26:17,800
Speaker 2: like I felt like all my senses are engaged, which

513
00:26:17,880 --> 00:26:21,600
Speaker 2: is such a beautiful experience to have where just every

514
00:26:21,640 --> 00:26:25,480
Speaker 2: time a new scene opens, you just totally captivated. It's

515
00:26:26,280 --> 00:26:29,840
Speaker 2: it's so hard to do that for that long, especially

516
00:26:29,880 --> 00:26:32,919
Speaker 2: with I consider myself to have good presence and attention,

517
00:26:33,040 --> 00:26:35,920
Speaker 2: but even then I can turn off something in thirty

518
00:26:35,920 --> 00:26:38,600
Speaker 2: minutes when you know, and so to have your engagement

519
00:26:38,680 --> 00:26:43,000
Speaker 2: not just on a story level, but on a sensory level, and.

520
00:26:42,160 --> 00:26:45,159
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, I think you're onto something there and

521
00:26:45,200 --> 00:26:48,479
Speaker 1: describing as you're saying and I'm thinking, well, what are

522
00:26:48,520 --> 00:26:51,159
Speaker 1: my goals creatively? I want to tell a great story

523
00:26:51,200 --> 00:26:54,480
Speaker 1: with good characters that I care about, and I care

524
00:26:54,520 --> 00:26:57,200
Speaker 1: about how they interact with each other and how their

525
00:26:57,280 --> 00:27:01,959
Speaker 1: relationships evolve and how they resolve their own conflicts, you know,

526
00:27:02,160 --> 00:27:04,800
Speaker 1: in a way that moves me, you know, because if

527
00:27:04,800 --> 00:27:07,679
Speaker 1: I can't move myself in a story, how do I

528
00:27:07,720 --> 00:27:10,640
Speaker 1: expect to move an audience emotionally?

529
00:27:10,720 --> 00:27:10,920
Speaker 2: Right?

530
00:27:11,400 --> 00:27:14,000
Speaker 1: But then the layer on top of that is the

531
00:27:14,040 --> 00:27:19,280
Speaker 1: sensory layer, which is color, composition, all of those artistic things,

532
00:27:19,440 --> 00:27:23,640
Speaker 1: you know, because I also started as an artist, you know, figuratively,

533
00:27:23,680 --> 00:27:26,480
Speaker 1: but I could draw a paint. I knew the rules

534
00:27:26,520 --> 00:27:30,040
Speaker 1: of composition, I knew you know, I learned all the

535
00:27:30,160 --> 00:27:33,280
Speaker 1: art history, Renaissance, lighting, composition, all that sort of thing.

536
00:27:33,640 --> 00:27:36,560
Speaker 1: So there's aesthetic level to it that I like. There's

537
00:27:36,640 --> 00:27:41,200
Speaker 1: the world building level where every plant, you know, either

538
00:27:41,280 --> 00:27:44,360
Speaker 1: looks real and or has a purpose, you know. And

539
00:27:44,720 --> 00:27:46,960
Speaker 1: we spend an awful lot of time, fortunately, you know,

540
00:27:47,000 --> 00:27:51,120
Speaker 1: we're blessed with good budgets and good time to sort

541
00:27:51,160 --> 00:27:55,120
Speaker 1: of let these ideas marinate and state, right, and I've

542
00:27:55,119 --> 00:27:59,800
Speaker 1: got great designers. It doesn't all flow from my consciousness

543
00:28:00,000 --> 00:28:02,760
Speaker 1: comes out, very out of focus, if you will. And

544
00:28:02,800 --> 00:28:05,000
Speaker 1: it's an act of working with other people to bring

545
00:28:05,000 --> 00:28:08,960
Speaker 1: it more and more into finite detail. Right, I've got

546
00:28:08,960 --> 00:28:13,480
Speaker 1: the I call it. My role is to create the

547
00:28:13,520 --> 00:28:16,960
Speaker 1: grand provocation for the other creative people. And I got

548
00:28:17,000 --> 00:28:19,719
Speaker 1: that term from my wife, Susie, who's an educator, and

549
00:28:19,760 --> 00:28:22,919
Speaker 1: she says that the school provides the provocation. The kids

550
00:28:23,160 --> 00:28:28,360
Speaker 1: provide the investigation and the curiosity and the passion, right,

551
00:28:28,440 --> 00:28:30,440
Speaker 1: And I think it's very it's very good. It's the

552
00:28:30,520 --> 00:28:32,760
Speaker 1: basis of her school. She can do all that stuff

553
00:28:32,760 --> 00:28:35,119
Speaker 1: better than I can. I'm just a bystander to that

554
00:28:35,160 --> 00:28:37,200
Speaker 1: part of it. But I think about what I do.

555
00:28:37,400 --> 00:28:39,360
Speaker 1: I come in and I say, guys, we're going to

556
00:28:39,440 --> 00:28:45,920
Speaker 1: do the coolest woven tropical village overwater village. Now what

557
00:28:46,120 --> 00:28:48,880
Speaker 1: is that? And you'd think that they could create that

558
00:28:48,960 --> 00:28:51,240
Speaker 1: in a week or two weeks. No, it took a year,

559
00:28:51,960 --> 00:28:54,800
Speaker 1: and because because part of the provocation was and it

560
00:28:54,840 --> 00:28:58,360
Speaker 1: all has to be intention. Nothing is built with rigid

561
00:28:59,160 --> 00:29:01,680
Speaker 1: cut lumber the way we would do it, where we

562
00:29:01,760 --> 00:29:08,320
Speaker 1: create posts that are that are in compression. Right, everything's intention.

563
00:29:08,720 --> 00:29:12,160
Speaker 1: It's like a spiderweb. It's all woven between these big

564
00:29:12,640 --> 00:29:16,160
Speaker 1: structures like the mangrove roots, and so they were actually

565
00:29:16,160 --> 00:29:20,760
Speaker 1: sculpting with pantyhose to get the right degree of elasticity

566
00:29:20,800 --> 00:29:23,480
Speaker 1: to put it all intention they sculpted the village with pantehose,

567
00:29:23,520 --> 00:29:27,560
Speaker 1: This is absolutely true, and then they wove these little

568
00:29:27,560 --> 00:29:31,000
Speaker 1: structures that later became the homes and the walkways and

569
00:29:31,040 --> 00:29:34,200
Speaker 1: all that, and then they developed it from there, and

570
00:29:34,200 --> 00:29:36,920
Speaker 1: then eventually we started building full scale, not full scale,

571
00:29:36,920 --> 00:29:40,360
Speaker 1: but say quarter scale models of these woven structures. And

572
00:29:40,480 --> 00:29:42,520
Speaker 1: so when you walk through it, you don't really get

573
00:29:42,520 --> 00:29:45,320
Speaker 1: a chance. I always want to give a little more

574
00:29:45,360 --> 00:29:49,280
Speaker 1: than you can fully perceive, because isn't that what daily

575
00:29:49,360 --> 00:29:52,560
Speaker 1: life is like. There's always more going by than you

576
00:29:52,600 --> 00:29:56,520
Speaker 1: can fully perceive, you know, And so the brain becomes selective. Okay,

577
00:29:56,560 --> 00:30:00,600
Speaker 1: what's narratively important to me in the moment?

578
00:30:01,040 --> 00:30:04,360
Speaker 2: No, And talking about the emotional nature of the characters

579
00:30:04,360 --> 00:30:07,320
Speaker 2: and the story, my wife always says. My wife always says,

580
00:30:07,560 --> 00:30:09,920
Speaker 2: I think James Cameron as team have been to other planets.

581
00:30:10,160 --> 00:30:12,040
Speaker 2: That's what she always says. Whenever she watches one of you.

582
00:30:12,320 --> 00:30:15,480
Speaker 2: She's like, he's been to other planets in other lifetimes.

583
00:30:15,520 --> 00:30:17,600
Speaker 2: Like that's what she'll say, she'd be like, how how

584
00:30:17,680 --> 00:30:20,840
Speaker 2: is it that you know you could? And you feel

585
00:30:20,880 --> 00:30:24,280
Speaker 2: that because you feel the depth of the relationship the

586
00:30:24,360 --> 00:30:27,360
Speaker 2: characters have for each other. You feel that you fully

587
00:30:27,400 --> 00:30:30,640
Speaker 2: believe this is real. It must exist somewhere, yeah, right,

588
00:30:30,680 --> 00:30:33,600
Speaker 2: because how can you feel so deeply for people who

589
00:30:33,640 --> 00:30:36,120
Speaker 2: look different to you and feel different to you and

590
00:30:36,160 --> 00:30:37,000
Speaker 2: have different experience.

591
00:30:37,040 --> 00:30:40,080
Speaker 1: But we feel that's a goal, right, So the goal is,

592
00:30:40,560 --> 00:30:44,080
Speaker 1: all right, these people look different, they're physiologically different, they

593
00:30:44,120 --> 00:30:46,720
Speaker 1: live in a different place. But doesn't it give us

594
00:30:46,840 --> 00:30:51,880
Speaker 1: permission to step outside ourselves with our petty little differences

595
00:30:51,920 --> 00:30:56,360
Speaker 1: between race and culture and religion and politics and all

596
00:30:56,400 --> 00:30:59,640
Speaker 1: that stuff, step well outside ourselves and see kind of

597
00:30:59,720 --> 00:31:02,680
Speaker 1: universe versals of human behavior and the things we care about.

598
00:31:03,080 --> 00:31:06,320
Speaker 1: Whether that's a sense of duty and love that a

599
00:31:06,360 --> 00:31:09,400
Speaker 1: parent has for their for their child. And that's why

600
00:31:09,400 --> 00:31:12,120
Speaker 1: these films travel. I think you know why they They

601
00:31:12,160 --> 00:31:15,920
Speaker 1: resonate in China and India and Europe and Africa wherever

602
00:31:15,960 --> 00:31:19,360
Speaker 1: they go, because I'm trying to deal with universal stuff,

603
00:31:19,640 --> 00:31:22,560
Speaker 1: but I'm not trying to make stuff up, right, So

604
00:31:22,680 --> 00:31:26,800
Speaker 1: with the sequels way of water and fire, fire and

605
00:31:26,840 --> 00:31:29,160
Speaker 1: ash and beyond that, if we get to make some more.

606
00:31:29,200 --> 00:31:30,600
Speaker 1: I don't know if we will or not. We have

607
00:31:30,680 --> 00:31:32,320
Speaker 1: to make some money, you know, I mean it's a

608
00:31:32,360 --> 00:31:35,720
Speaker 1: business also, but if we do get to make some more.

609
00:31:36,160 --> 00:31:40,360
Speaker 1: The stories are about a family, and so I couldn't

610
00:31:40,800 --> 00:31:44,200
Speaker 1: probably not only couldn't, but probably wouldn't have even tried

611
00:31:44,720 --> 00:31:47,280
Speaker 1: to write them if I hadn't been in a large

612
00:31:47,280 --> 00:31:50,160
Speaker 1: family and gone through all that teen X and that issue,

613
00:31:50,240 --> 00:31:53,080
Speaker 1: the father issues and not being seen in all those things,

614
00:31:53,400 --> 00:31:56,560
Speaker 1: and then having been a father of teens, We've got

615
00:31:57,000 --> 00:32:00,880
Speaker 1: Susie and I have five kids, and so I mean,

616
00:32:01,000 --> 00:32:03,920
Speaker 1: artists are just working out their stuff, you know, their

617
00:32:03,960 --> 00:32:08,320
Speaker 1: lived experience and projecting, but taking that to another world

618
00:32:08,400 --> 00:32:12,160
Speaker 1: and putting it in another context allows everybody to share

619
00:32:12,160 --> 00:32:16,120
Speaker 1: in it and or recognize themselves in it, either in

620
00:32:16,160 --> 00:32:19,160
Speaker 1: an aspirational way, like wow, I wish I was part

621
00:32:19,160 --> 00:32:22,120
Speaker 1: of a family like that, my family not so great,

622
00:32:22,280 --> 00:32:23,960
Speaker 1: or maybe I don't have a lot of siblings, or

623
00:32:24,000 --> 00:32:26,360
Speaker 1: maybe I wonder what that would be like, or maybe

624
00:32:26,360 --> 00:32:29,600
Speaker 1: it's like I'm in exactly that kind of family. Yeah,

625
00:32:29,640 --> 00:32:31,280
Speaker 1: and I wish I wasn't. Sometimes.

626
00:32:31,720 --> 00:32:35,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been repeating to my wife, I'm saying this

627
00:32:35,640 --> 00:32:37,880
Speaker 2: in reaction in response to what you just said. Now,

628
00:32:37,880 --> 00:32:39,400
Speaker 2: I've been saying to my wife for a week, we

629
00:32:39,480 --> 00:32:41,520
Speaker 2: need to have We don't have kids yet, but we

630
00:32:41,560 --> 00:32:43,920
Speaker 2: plan on having them one day, and I said, when

631
00:32:43,960 --> 00:32:46,880
Speaker 2: we have kids, we need to have montras and affirmations

632
00:32:46,880 --> 00:32:49,320
Speaker 2: as a family. So I keep saying to Sally's never quit, like,

633
00:32:49,360 --> 00:32:51,200
Speaker 2: I'm like, hey, you just keep saying that to him.

634
00:32:51,240 --> 00:32:53,280
Speaker 2: I'm like, okay, I love that statement. It stuck with me,

635
00:32:53,320 --> 00:32:55,840
Speaker 2: and I was like to see the little child's like

636
00:32:56,120 --> 00:32:59,520
Speaker 2: courage in that moment right where they're in so much danger,

637
00:32:59,520 --> 00:33:01,520
Speaker 2: in so much but they remember that their dad told

638
00:33:01,600 --> 00:33:03,080
Speaker 2: him that Sally's never quit.

639
00:33:03,520 --> 00:33:06,520
Speaker 1: And then when she says it, when she says it later,

640
00:33:06,640 --> 00:33:11,160
Speaker 1: she basically saves the world with one thing. She says,

641
00:33:11,240 --> 00:33:14,600
Speaker 1: you know, come on, we can do this, Sally's never quit.

642
00:33:14,880 --> 00:33:18,160
Speaker 2: And you're like, go to yeah, exactly. And that's that

643
00:33:18,200 --> 00:33:21,160
Speaker 2: feeling of I'm like to see that courage in a

644
00:33:21,200 --> 00:33:24,920
Speaker 2: young person and how these simple universal messages the things

645
00:33:24,960 --> 00:33:27,880
Speaker 2: they hold on to in a child's mind. And then

646
00:33:27,960 --> 00:33:31,840
Speaker 2: even the storyline with Python like for me that oh,

647
00:33:32,160 --> 00:33:34,400
Speaker 2: I mean from the second to the third, because when

648
00:33:34,440 --> 00:33:39,239
Speaker 2: I watched the second movie, for me that fully just

649
00:33:39,360 --> 00:33:41,080
Speaker 2: made me fall in sea life in a way that

650
00:33:41,120 --> 00:33:44,680
Speaker 2: I had n't before, right, and and God, I was like, wow,

651
00:33:44,720 --> 00:33:48,400
Speaker 2: this is genius in how you're sharing a message around

652
00:33:49,000 --> 00:33:53,520
Speaker 2: you know, water wildlife that we just don't treat well anymore.

653
00:33:53,600 --> 00:33:58,160
Speaker 1: We won't protect what we don't love and care about. Right,

654
00:33:58,280 --> 00:34:02,200
Speaker 1: And so this I'm working in a very small part

655
00:34:02,280 --> 00:34:04,360
Speaker 1: of a much bigger project that's being run by a

656
00:34:04,400 --> 00:34:09,000
Speaker 1: marine biologist named David Gruber, and he's working with people

657
00:34:09,040 --> 00:34:14,000
Speaker 1: who are in AI and machine learning, kind of more

658
00:34:14,200 --> 00:34:17,520
Speaker 1: side of AI, but they're using some large language model

659
00:34:17,719 --> 00:34:24,680
Speaker 1: technology as well to decode whale vocalizations. So they've got

660
00:34:24,760 --> 00:34:27,879
Speaker 1: thousands of hours of sperm whale vocalizations and they've got

661
00:34:27,920 --> 00:34:31,160
Speaker 1: some context footage of what socially they're doing, and they're

662
00:34:31,200 --> 00:34:35,080
Speaker 1: decoding their clicks, which are called code is, and their

663
00:34:35,120 --> 00:34:37,799
Speaker 1: click sequences, and they're finding that they have verbs, they

664
00:34:37,800 --> 00:34:42,239
Speaker 1: have syntax, they have complex language, at least as complex

665
00:34:42,520 --> 00:34:46,040
Speaker 1: as human language, which is kind of amazing. But it

666
00:34:46,120 --> 00:34:48,279
Speaker 1: all sounds like if you could actually hear it, it

667
00:34:48,360 --> 00:34:54,920
Speaker 1: sounds like that's like a whole paragraph in sperm whale,

668
00:34:55,400 --> 00:34:58,240
Speaker 1: you know, And it's taken years and years and AI tools.

669
00:34:58,239 --> 00:35:02,120
Speaker 1: So yeah, nature's far more complex that we understand. Consciousness

670
00:35:02,160 --> 00:35:05,879
Speaker 1: is clearly shared by some of the higher mammals. Even

671
00:35:05,920 --> 00:35:10,480
Speaker 1: some birds you know that have true consciousness. You know

672
00:35:10,520 --> 00:35:13,480
Speaker 1: that they recognize themselves in a mirror, and that's one

673
00:35:13,520 --> 00:35:16,960
Speaker 1: of the key signs that there is a higher form

674
00:35:17,000 --> 00:35:20,440
Speaker 1: of consciousness. Like a dog doesn't recognize itself as an

675
00:35:20,440 --> 00:35:23,720
Speaker 1: individual in a mirror. And we think of dogs as conscious,

676
00:35:23,760 --> 00:35:26,560
Speaker 1: and of course they are, and they're a motive and

677
00:35:26,560 --> 00:35:29,520
Speaker 1: they're empathetic, and they're very much like us emotionally, but

678
00:35:29,600 --> 00:35:32,799
Speaker 1: they don't have a consciousness high enough to recognize their

679
00:35:32,840 --> 00:35:36,480
Speaker 1: individual cells in a mirror. But an elephant can, a

680
00:35:36,560 --> 00:35:40,680
Speaker 1: chimpanzee can, and a dolphin can. And I don't know

681
00:35:40,719 --> 00:35:42,680
Speaker 1: if they've done that. I think they've proven that a

682
00:35:42,680 --> 00:35:45,279
Speaker 1: beluga whale can as well, but I don't think they've

683
00:35:45,280 --> 00:35:47,560
Speaker 1: done it with the great whales. It's just a little

684
00:35:47,600 --> 00:35:49,520
Speaker 1: difficult to do because you can't put them in a

685
00:35:49,560 --> 00:35:52,520
Speaker 1: tank and study them like some of the smaller toothed

686
00:35:52,560 --> 00:35:56,279
Speaker 1: whales like dolphins and belugas. But anyway, there's even a

687
00:35:56,280 --> 00:36:00,400
Speaker 1: parrot species in New Zealand that is intelligent enough to

688
00:36:00,440 --> 00:36:05,680
Speaker 1: recognize itself as an individual. Most birds can't. So you know,

689
00:36:05,880 --> 00:36:10,759
Speaker 1: you've got these glimmers of emergent consciousness besides us, you know.

690
00:36:10,800 --> 00:36:13,400
Speaker 1: And now we're going to have machine consciousness emerging in

691
00:36:13,440 --> 00:36:16,239
Speaker 1: the next decade or whatever it's going to be, and

692
00:36:16,280 --> 00:36:19,120
Speaker 1: that's going to be a whole new set of challenges

693
00:36:19,120 --> 00:36:22,000
Speaker 1: for us as well. We don't even understand consciousness yet

694
00:36:22,239 --> 00:36:24,839
Speaker 1: in ourselves, and now we're going to have to start

695
00:36:24,880 --> 00:36:28,400
Speaker 1: relating to this alien consciousness that we that we create.

696
00:36:28,960 --> 00:36:32,040
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, And it's almost like I was. I was

697
00:36:32,080 --> 00:36:35,000
Speaker 2: beaking at a conference about AI and consciousness recently and

698
00:36:35,160 --> 00:36:37,319
Speaker 2: someone asked me if I haven't believed AI would ever

699
00:36:37,400 --> 00:36:40,480
Speaker 2: have a soul, And my response is, I'm not qualified

700
00:36:40,480 --> 00:36:42,759
Speaker 2: to answer whether AI will ever have a soul, but

701
00:36:43,560 --> 00:36:46,319
Speaker 2: I really hope the people building AI have a soul

702
00:36:46,480 --> 00:36:47,879
Speaker 2: the case it's so.

703
00:36:48,000 --> 00:36:53,359
Speaker 1: Much of Bengo or weren't conscious. Yeah, yeah, I think

704
00:36:53,360 --> 00:36:55,400
Speaker 1: you're can have if you if you believe in some

705
00:36:55,480 --> 00:36:57,880
Speaker 1: kind of animus or spirit or soul or whatever it

706
00:36:57,960 --> 00:37:02,040
Speaker 1: is that's persistent beyond the biologue framework. I personally don't

707
00:37:02,080 --> 00:37:03,440
Speaker 1: just stay in that upfront, but if you, but I

708
00:37:03,480 --> 00:37:09,160
Speaker 1: also I I won't bet completely against something that just

709
00:37:09,239 --> 00:37:12,680
Speaker 1: hasn't simply been proven yet. But but I, but I

710
00:37:12,719 --> 00:37:15,360
Speaker 1: also only I believe in believing in things that have

711
00:37:15,400 --> 00:37:19,640
Speaker 1: been empirically demonstrated and being kind of agnostic or fluid

712
00:37:19,880 --> 00:37:23,719
Speaker 1: about everything else. Right. But but if if you do

713
00:37:24,000 --> 00:37:28,960
Speaker 1: believe in that, then a machine couldn't possibly have that, now,

714
00:37:28,960 --> 00:37:32,200
Speaker 1: could it, Because we didn't create that in the first place.

715
00:37:32,239 --> 00:37:34,280
Speaker 1: And if we think we can create a machine that

716
00:37:34,520 --> 00:37:36,719
Speaker 1: can have it, then we can't. So now you get

717
00:37:36,719 --> 00:37:40,359
Speaker 1: the sort of the soulless uh, the Sollis Frankenstein kind

718
00:37:40,400 --> 00:37:43,960
Speaker 1: of mythology around that. On the other hand, if you

719
00:37:44,000 --> 00:37:48,440
Speaker 1: believe that consciousness is this kind of field of of

720
00:37:48,440 --> 00:37:53,120
Speaker 1: of operations that is almost infinitely complex, but but it

721
00:37:53,120 --> 00:37:56,320
Speaker 1: can be understood as real, a real world thing based

722
00:37:56,320 --> 00:38:02,920
Speaker 1: in matter, then theoretically a machine intelligence could be as soulful,

723
00:38:03,200 --> 00:38:07,000
Speaker 1: as empathetic, as emotional as us, although it might be very,

724
00:38:07,120 --> 00:38:09,920
Speaker 1: very very different. And then you get into the quantum

725
00:38:10,000 --> 00:38:13,680
Speaker 1: physics of consciousness, where you've got observer effect and things

726
00:38:13,719 --> 00:38:16,080
Speaker 1: like that, where there seems to be some link at

727
00:38:16,080 --> 00:38:19,359
Speaker 1: a quantum level with consciousness, and then all bets are off,

728
00:38:21,719 --> 00:38:24,480
Speaker 1: you know, and I've had I've had some strange experiences

729
00:38:25,200 --> 00:38:29,040
Speaker 1: with one one practitioner in particular that believed in quantum

730
00:38:29,120 --> 00:38:32,279
Speaker 1: consciousness and could do things I can't explain to me

731
00:38:32,640 --> 00:38:34,960
Speaker 1: to my mind, what do you mean? And I'm well,

732
00:38:35,040 --> 00:38:38,560
Speaker 1: could actually actually create a state of consciousness in my

733
00:38:38,760 --> 00:38:41,480
Speaker 1: mind by sitting across from me, just like you are

734
00:38:41,560 --> 00:38:45,239
Speaker 1: right now, and I am I'm not hypnotizable. Nobody's ever

735
00:38:45,239 --> 00:38:48,319
Speaker 1: been able to hypnotize me. I'm pretty resistant to any

736
00:38:48,400 --> 00:38:53,320
Speaker 1: kind of suggestibility. But this particular individual was able to

737
00:38:53,400 --> 00:38:53,799
Speaker 1: do something.

738
00:38:54,120 --> 00:38:57,400
Speaker 2: You kill you experimenting with that, you even sat across

739
00:38:57,440 --> 00:38:58,120
Speaker 2: someone like that.

740
00:38:58,760 --> 00:39:01,200
Speaker 1: My wife Susie had met this guy and worked with

741
00:39:01,280 --> 00:39:05,360
Speaker 1: him and workshopped with him a lot, many many years earlier,

742
00:39:05,760 --> 00:39:07,759
Speaker 1: and said, you really need to meet this guy. His

743
00:39:07,840 --> 00:39:11,680
Speaker 1: name was Carl Wolf. And I was very skeptical, like

744
00:39:11,719 --> 00:39:14,600
Speaker 1: I said, I'm an empiricist. You got to you know.

745
00:39:15,239 --> 00:39:18,640
Speaker 1: And I said, all right, I'm skeptical, but I'll do

746
00:39:18,719 --> 00:39:24,719
Speaker 1: it for you, baby, And something happened and I can't

747
00:39:24,760 --> 00:39:28,200
Speaker 1: explain it. Wow, something happened. Now, what was it? I

748
00:39:28,280 --> 00:39:31,319
Speaker 1: don't know. Carl had hypotheses. I don't know if his

749
00:39:31,360 --> 00:39:34,080
Speaker 1: own hypotheses were accurate. I'd love to ask him, but

750
00:39:34,160 --> 00:39:38,319
Speaker 1: unfortunately he died tragically in a car accident. And because

751
00:39:38,360 --> 00:39:40,480
Speaker 1: I wanted to, like, can I just spend millions of

752
00:39:40,520 --> 00:39:41,640
Speaker 1: dollars study in your mind?

753
00:39:41,680 --> 00:39:48,359
Speaker 2: Please? It's fascinating. I mean, what's beautiful about all these

754
00:39:48,400 --> 00:39:50,840
Speaker 2: worlds you create? And when I was researching your story

755
00:39:50,880 --> 00:39:54,359
Speaker 2: and learning about just how many failures and moments you've

756
00:39:54,400 --> 00:39:56,920
Speaker 2: had to quit and give up, and again, I think

757
00:39:56,960 --> 00:39:58,640
Speaker 2: about our listeners and I think about.

758
00:39:58,440 --> 00:40:00,319
Speaker 1: That, well, he's never quit, that he's never quick.

759
00:40:00,440 --> 00:40:02,920
Speaker 2: There you go. And even what you just mentioned right

760
00:40:02,960 --> 00:40:05,279
Speaker 2: now about your own experience with your father and then

761
00:40:05,320 --> 00:40:09,120
Speaker 2: becoming a father and what that looks like was are

762
00:40:09,160 --> 00:40:12,080
Speaker 2: the worlds you create? Worlds that you didn't have or

763
00:40:12,120 --> 00:40:12,960
Speaker 2: did have for you?

764
00:40:13,120 --> 00:40:17,080
Speaker 1: I think both? But right thing, I mean, the thing

765
00:40:17,120 --> 00:40:19,040
Speaker 1: that I've tried to do in the Avatar films is

766
00:40:19,120 --> 00:40:24,279
Speaker 1: create a dynamic range of experience, from ecstatic to terrifying

767
00:40:24,400 --> 00:40:30,520
Speaker 1: to heart wrenching, from despair to joy, all of those,

768
00:40:30,600 --> 00:40:32,920
Speaker 1: All of those things, I think movies are pretty good

769
00:40:32,960 --> 00:40:36,520
Speaker 1: at creating us state, maybe a state of dread or

770
00:40:36,560 --> 00:40:38,480
Speaker 1: something like that. But I don't think they're good at

771
00:40:38,600 --> 00:40:41,759
Speaker 1: taking you on that roller coaster ride that more is

772
00:40:41,840 --> 00:40:44,920
Speaker 1: the way our real existence is. So I wanted to

773
00:40:44,920 --> 00:40:48,000
Speaker 1: have amazing moments of beauty. I think beauty gets forgotten

774
00:40:48,200 --> 00:40:50,680
Speaker 1: in movies these days. You know, everything is about threat

775
00:40:50,760 --> 00:40:54,400
Speaker 1: and conflict and all that. But I also wanted to

776
00:40:54,440 --> 00:40:56,880
Speaker 1: take you on an emotional journey where you get to

777
00:40:56,960 --> 00:41:01,000
Speaker 1: places that are that are that are either terrifying or

778
00:41:01,200 --> 00:41:05,960
Speaker 1: or heart wrenching through loss or whatever. And that's all

779
00:41:06,000 --> 00:41:09,120
Speaker 1: dependent on performance, you know, that's all dependent on the actress.

780
00:41:09,160 --> 00:41:13,080
Speaker 1: The actors are our path through this, our conduit. We

781
00:41:13,640 --> 00:41:17,040
Speaker 1: see it all through through their eyes, you know. So

782
00:41:17,120 --> 00:41:20,200
Speaker 1: for me the real act of creation. Everybody is quite

783
00:41:20,200 --> 00:41:22,399
Speaker 1: an amorate of the world building because that's what they see.

784
00:41:22,400 --> 00:41:25,600
Speaker 1: They see the end result. But for me, it's about

785
00:41:25,640 --> 00:41:28,960
Speaker 1: getting those characters down on the page, bringing it in

786
00:41:29,840 --> 00:41:33,440
Speaker 1: with my actors. And the beauty of the two sequels

787
00:41:33,480 --> 00:41:36,360
Speaker 1: is that I was writing for actors I knew and

788
00:41:36,440 --> 00:41:39,640
Speaker 1: I could hear the way they'd say it, and I

789
00:41:39,640 --> 00:41:42,920
Speaker 1: didn't feel the dialogue was right until I knew that slang.

790
00:41:43,440 --> 00:41:46,640
Speaker 1: Stephen Lang, who plays Coors, would say it that way,

791
00:41:46,800 --> 00:41:49,239
Speaker 1: you know, or Sam would say it that way, or

792
00:41:49,600 --> 00:41:51,439
Speaker 1: or Zoe would say it that way. And then of course,

793
00:41:51,480 --> 00:41:54,120
Speaker 1: I threw a new element in which is Unna chaplain

794
00:41:54,560 --> 00:41:57,080
Speaker 1: who you know? Who plays wrong? Who is you know,

795
00:41:57,320 --> 00:42:02,279
Speaker 1: pretty pretty terrifying character times, and I was making her

796
00:42:02,400 --> 00:42:04,359
Speaker 1: up out of whole cloth. Obviously I didn't know who

797
00:42:04,400 --> 00:42:07,360
Speaker 1: the actor was that was going to play her. But

798
00:42:08,400 --> 00:42:11,319
Speaker 1: that's the part where I think that engagement that you

799
00:42:11,320 --> 00:42:14,480
Speaker 1: were talking about, it's not just sensory and visual, it's

800
00:42:14,600 --> 00:42:19,920
Speaker 1: also heartfelt, right yeah, And we'd have to and we

801
00:42:19,920 --> 00:42:22,080
Speaker 1: bring our own human experience to it every time we

802
00:42:22,120 --> 00:42:24,520
Speaker 1: walk into a movie theater. And I also think a

803
00:42:24,520 --> 00:42:29,560
Speaker 1: critical part of the engagement is the theatrical experience. So

804
00:42:29,760 --> 00:42:32,560
Speaker 1: a lot was made, you know, when during the rise

805
00:42:32,600 --> 00:42:36,719
Speaker 1: of like DVD and Blu ray and all that, a

806
00:42:36,760 --> 00:42:38,440
Speaker 1: lot was made about the fact that, oh, well, you

807
00:42:38,480 --> 00:42:40,919
Speaker 1: don't have a screen that big, your sound isn't that good.

808
00:42:40,960 --> 00:42:43,480
Speaker 1: The theater is a better experience. But we're at the

809
00:42:43,520 --> 00:42:46,160
Speaker 1: point now where you're probably your home TV set and

810
00:42:46,200 --> 00:42:49,319
Speaker 1: your home sound bar and everything is as good as

811
00:42:49,360 --> 00:42:52,400
Speaker 1: what you're going to see in a movie theater. So

812
00:42:52,480 --> 00:42:56,680
Speaker 1: that goes away. So what's left. What's left is in

813
00:42:56,760 --> 00:42:59,320
Speaker 1: our day to day life, we're very fragmented and scattered

814
00:42:59,360 --> 00:43:05,880
Speaker 1: and multitasking and we're we're scrolling and you know, and

815
00:43:05,960 --> 00:43:12,360
Speaker 1: we're typing, and we're connected and you know, multi channeling

816
00:43:12,520 --> 00:43:16,279
Speaker 1: all simultaneously. Very rarely do we just sit in a

817
00:43:16,360 --> 00:43:22,720
Speaker 1: meditative state and just focus. You know, people who practice

818
00:43:22,760 --> 00:43:24,879
Speaker 1: mindfulness and yoga and things like that, they know how

819
00:43:24,880 --> 00:43:27,919
Speaker 1: to do that, and they do it to clear their mind.

820
00:43:28,440 --> 00:43:31,880
Speaker 1: But how often do we do it where we focus

821
00:43:32,080 --> 00:43:35,400
Speaker 1: on a received experience. You know, some people will sit

822
00:43:35,440 --> 00:43:37,160
Speaker 1: and read a novel for hours and hours. I think

823
00:43:37,200 --> 00:43:41,200
Speaker 1: they're a dying breed, unfortunately, But the movie theater is

824
00:43:41,200 --> 00:43:45,440
Speaker 1: one of the last bastions of a focused entertainment where

825
00:43:45,840 --> 00:43:49,080
Speaker 1: we make a deal with ourselves before we go there,

826
00:43:49,120 --> 00:43:50,799
Speaker 1: before we leave our homes, we make a deal with

827
00:43:50,840 --> 00:43:53,239
Speaker 1: ourselves that for two or three hours, we're going to

828
00:43:53,239 --> 00:43:56,440
Speaker 1: be undistracted. And then all of a sudden, it's like

829
00:43:56,440 --> 00:43:59,759
Speaker 1: the world goes away and you're on that journey and

830
00:44:00,120 --> 00:44:02,799
Speaker 1: nothing else matters for that brief period of time. And

831
00:44:02,880 --> 00:44:06,520
Speaker 1: I think that's the real magic of the theatrical experience,

832
00:44:07,000 --> 00:44:10,600
Speaker 1: And it boils down to one simple thing. You don't

833
00:44:10,719 --> 00:44:15,279
Speaker 1: have a remote, It's that simple. You can't pose it,

834
00:44:15,800 --> 00:44:18,279
Speaker 1: you can't go order Repeazza. You can't posit, go to

835
00:44:18,320 --> 00:44:21,000
Speaker 1: the bathroom, you can't be in a room with other

836
00:44:21,080 --> 00:44:23,200
Speaker 1: family members who are talking and you pose it so

837
00:44:23,239 --> 00:44:29,520
Speaker 1: you can hear the lame comment. Absolutely, I'm kidding, No, no, no,

838
00:44:29,680 --> 00:44:32,000
Speaker 1: the kids don't make lame comments, but they do comment

839
00:44:32,080 --> 00:44:34,040
Speaker 1: during the movie and I'll posit and I'm like, yes,

840
00:44:34,320 --> 00:44:35,279
Speaker 1: you were saying.

841
00:44:36,920 --> 00:44:55,600
Speaker 2: That's so funny. Do the kids ever look at the

842
00:44:55,600 --> 00:44:58,120
Speaker 2: movies and go, Dad, you just made a character of me? Like,

843
00:44:58,320 --> 00:44:59,320
Speaker 2: is there ever that.

844
00:44:59,480 --> 00:45:02,920
Speaker 1: I think see that there was a moment in time

845
00:45:03,080 --> 00:45:08,560
Speaker 1: ten years ago where who I believed they were influenced

846
00:45:08,600 --> 00:45:10,839
Speaker 1: the creation of a character. But they But I think

847
00:45:11,160 --> 00:45:13,680
Speaker 1: for them it's all a big laugh because they say

848
00:45:13,719 --> 00:45:16,200
Speaker 1: two things. One is that was ten years ago, and

849
00:45:16,280 --> 00:45:18,719
Speaker 1: two even then you didn't really know who I was.

850
00:45:20,800 --> 00:45:23,480
Speaker 2: That's brilliant. I want to come back to depth of character.

851
00:45:23,520 --> 00:45:26,319
Speaker 2: But I wanted to talk about failure because you've told

852
00:45:26,360 --> 00:45:28,439
Speaker 2: this story before. But the part I wanted to ask

853
00:45:28,480 --> 00:45:33,440
Speaker 2: about was before you made Terminator, you actually lost a job. Yeah,

854
00:45:33,480 --> 00:45:35,920
Speaker 2: and we won't mention the film because I heard you

855
00:45:35,920 --> 00:45:41,000
Speaker 2: didn't mention it. But like for anyone who's finally found

856
00:45:41,000 --> 00:45:43,600
Speaker 2: their way, you went from truck drivers starting to make films,

857
00:45:43,680 --> 00:45:47,680
Speaker 2: made this small movie. You get fired off a job. Yeah,

858
00:45:47,920 --> 00:45:49,719
Speaker 2: that almost feels like, all right, well, this is the

859
00:45:49,800 --> 00:45:51,960
Speaker 2: end of the road. You said you felt way.

860
00:45:52,120 --> 00:45:55,279
Speaker 1: It felt that way, and it felt like there was

861
00:45:55,760 --> 00:45:59,560
Speaker 1: going into my first directing gig that I did get

862
00:45:59,600 --> 00:46:01,680
Speaker 1: fired off of after I think six or seven days

863
00:46:01,680 --> 00:46:03,880
Speaker 1: of shooting, and not for incompetence. It turns out, it

864
00:46:03,920 --> 00:46:06,680
Speaker 1: turns out that I was being set up the whole time,

865
00:46:06,719 --> 00:46:08,360
Speaker 1: And when I found that out later, it sort of

866
00:46:08,360 --> 00:46:10,680
Speaker 1: put it in perspective. But I believed at the time,

867
00:46:10,719 --> 00:46:14,400
Speaker 1: I internalized that I was not doing it well, you know,

868
00:46:14,640 --> 00:46:17,319
Speaker 1: and I thought, oh crap, Now I'm worse off than

869
00:46:17,360 --> 00:46:19,160
Speaker 1: if I hadn't taken a job in the first place.

870
00:46:20,040 --> 00:46:22,719
Speaker 1: Now I'm at negative ten. I could have just been

871
00:46:22,760 --> 00:46:25,040
Speaker 1: at zero. Now I have to dig out of a

872
00:46:25,040 --> 00:46:28,640
Speaker 1: hole to get to zero, you know. And so then

873
00:46:28,680 --> 00:46:31,440
Speaker 1: I knew I had to do something extraordinary or something different.

874
00:46:31,480 --> 00:46:34,000
Speaker 1: I couldn't wait for a directing gig to come to me.

875
00:46:34,880 --> 00:46:36,960
Speaker 1: I had to create it for myself. And that's when

876
00:46:37,000 --> 00:46:39,200
Speaker 1: I wrote The Terminator. I thought, I have to write

877
00:46:39,200 --> 00:46:43,320
Speaker 1: something original, something that I could plausibly make that wouldn't

878
00:46:43,360 --> 00:46:46,319
Speaker 1: have an enormous budget, and it was scaled to you know,

879
00:46:46,560 --> 00:46:50,520
Speaker 1: conventional locations, present day city streets, that sort of thing,

880
00:46:50,640 --> 00:46:53,360
Speaker 1: so that we could do it relatively cheaply. But I

881
00:46:53,840 --> 00:46:56,160
Speaker 1: also thought, all right, but I've got to inject into it.

882
00:46:56,160 --> 00:47:00,279
Speaker 1: It can't just be you know, a simple drama. To

883
00:47:00,280 --> 00:47:03,880
Speaker 1: inject into it something that I bring as expertise. So

884
00:47:03,920 --> 00:47:08,040
Speaker 1: my expertise was in design and in visual effects. I thought,

885
00:47:08,040 --> 00:47:11,479
Speaker 1: all right, so I've got to create a careful balance here.

886
00:47:12,000 --> 00:47:14,600
Speaker 1: The visual effects have to be very limited, but they

887
00:47:14,640 --> 00:47:18,120
Speaker 1: have to be powerful so that it's not a ridiculous

888
00:47:18,120 --> 00:47:20,000
Speaker 1: budget like a Star Wars movie that I knew we

889
00:47:20,040 --> 00:47:23,399
Speaker 1: couldn't afford or nobody would hire me for. So then

890
00:47:23,440 --> 00:47:26,520
Speaker 1: I came up with the idea of a futuristic technology

891
00:47:26,600 --> 00:47:29,640
Speaker 1: that coulds injected into the present day time travel. Right,

892
00:47:30,000 --> 00:47:33,360
Speaker 1: So there was a logic to the story elements that

893
00:47:33,400 --> 00:47:36,080
Speaker 1: I was playing with that was based entirely on being

894
00:47:36,120 --> 00:47:39,640
Speaker 1: practical and trying to get a gig. So would I

895
00:47:39,640 --> 00:47:41,279
Speaker 1: have come up with that story if I didn't have

896
00:47:41,320 --> 00:47:43,600
Speaker 1: those constraints, I don't know, maybe not, you know, but

897
00:47:43,680 --> 00:47:47,000
Speaker 1: it all worked out. So I thought, all right, I

898
00:47:47,080 --> 00:47:50,880
Speaker 1: want this extraordinary thing that requires you know, animation and

899
00:47:51,520 --> 00:47:55,160
Speaker 1: design this terminator, but I'll have it come from the

900
00:47:55,200 --> 00:47:57,440
Speaker 1: future which I don't have to see, and I'll just

901
00:47:57,480 --> 00:47:59,800
Speaker 1: see present day. You know, we could just use a

902
00:48:00,000 --> 00:48:03,120
Speaker 1: helb light, street lighting and that sort of thing, which

903
00:48:03,160 --> 00:48:04,480
Speaker 1: is kind of how we did it.

904
00:48:04,680 --> 00:48:08,160
Speaker 2: That's such a fascinating point. You just made that constraints

905
00:48:08,160 --> 00:48:12,320
Speaker 2: actually lead brilliant creativity. It wasn't the other way around.

906
00:48:12,320 --> 00:48:14,600
Speaker 2: And often we get lost in the trap of when

907
00:48:14,640 --> 00:48:18,279
Speaker 2: I have resources, I'll make a masterpiece. Yeah, and you

908
00:48:18,360 --> 00:48:19,799
Speaker 2: made something that's timeless.

909
00:48:19,880 --> 00:48:22,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's really good. I mean, you know, the resources

910
00:48:22,440 --> 00:48:24,959
Speaker 1: will come eventually, and that brings its own curse, because

911
00:48:25,000 --> 00:48:27,799
Speaker 1: now you can do anything, and when you have infinite choice,

912
00:48:27,840 --> 00:48:31,279
Speaker 1: you could get paralyzed, right, And an Avatar movie is

913
00:48:31,320 --> 00:48:35,080
Speaker 1: an exercise in limiting choice because when you work with

914
00:48:35,160 --> 00:48:38,400
Speaker 1: performance capture, I get a great performance, but then I

915
00:48:38,400 --> 00:48:40,640
Speaker 1: can put the camera anywhere I want, I could cut

916
00:48:40,680 --> 00:48:43,600
Speaker 1: it anywhere I want. I'm not constrained by just the

917
00:48:43,640 --> 00:48:46,520
Speaker 1: footage that we were able to grab that day before

918
00:48:46,520 --> 00:48:49,400
Speaker 1: the sun set. It becomes a kind of a problem

919
00:48:49,440 --> 00:48:52,640
Speaker 1: of infinite choice. I think it makes you a better filmmaker.

920
00:48:52,920 --> 00:48:56,360
Speaker 1: Because now, why is the camera going right here? Not

921
00:48:56,480 --> 00:48:58,920
Speaker 1: because that's the farthest back I can move before my

922
00:48:58,960 --> 00:49:01,360
Speaker 1: ass hits the wall. That's the widest shot I can do.

923
00:49:01,960 --> 00:49:05,040
Speaker 1: Why is it here? Not back there or not over there?

924
00:49:05,160 --> 00:49:05,359
Speaker 2: You know?

925
00:49:05,400 --> 00:49:09,240
Speaker 1: And so it forces you to become quite rigorous about

926
00:49:09,239 --> 00:49:12,800
Speaker 1: your esthetic. You know. It's a separate problem from getting

927
00:49:12,800 --> 00:49:15,399
Speaker 1: great performance. By the way, and the weird thing about

928
00:49:15,440 --> 00:49:18,920
Speaker 1: an Avatar movie, it's a little weird is we separate

929
00:49:18,960 --> 00:49:22,800
Speaker 1: performance from cinematography. We do all the cinematography later. I

930
00:49:22,840 --> 00:49:24,400
Speaker 1: don't even think about it. I don't think about the

931
00:49:24,400 --> 00:49:26,480
Speaker 1: camera angles when I'm working with the actors. I know

932
00:49:26,560 --> 00:49:28,520
Speaker 1: I'll be able to shoot it. I don't know exactly

933
00:49:28,600 --> 00:49:31,279
Speaker 1: how I'll shoot it, but I just care about the

934
00:49:31,560 --> 00:49:33,960
Speaker 1: heart and the soul and the authenticity of the moment

935
00:49:34,560 --> 00:49:37,319
Speaker 1: with the actors. Now I'm done with them. Now they're

936
00:49:37,360 --> 00:49:39,680
Speaker 1: all working on another movie. Now, it's like, okay, am

937
00:49:39,719 --> 00:49:42,400
Speaker 1: on a wide shot, close shot, amount a long lens,

938
00:49:42,640 --> 00:49:46,400
Speaker 1: short lens? Is the camera moving, is it still? Is

939
00:49:46,400 --> 00:49:48,719
Speaker 1: it raining? Is it not? You know, is it night?

940
00:49:48,880 --> 00:49:49,399
Speaker 2: Is it day?

941
00:49:50,080 --> 00:49:53,920
Speaker 1: And you can make all those decisions later with that nucleus,

942
00:49:53,960 --> 00:49:56,000
Speaker 1: that sort of beating heart of the performance. But you

943
00:49:56,000 --> 00:49:59,480
Speaker 1: can interpret it many, many different ways. So that idea

944
00:50:00,239 --> 00:50:03,880
Speaker 1: of you know, infinite choice. It can be paralyzing or

945
00:50:03,960 --> 00:50:07,359
Speaker 1: it can make you more rigorous, and it forces you

946
00:50:07,400 --> 00:50:10,279
Speaker 1: to define to yourself and to the others you're working with,

947
00:50:10,560 --> 00:50:15,279
Speaker 1: other editors, other designers, why you're doing it that way?

948
00:50:15,400 --> 00:50:18,560
Speaker 1: And sometimes I just I just talk. It's like okay,

949
00:50:18,760 --> 00:50:20,640
Speaker 1: you know, it's just like I'll talk while I'm working.

950
00:50:20,719 --> 00:50:22,759
Speaker 1: It's like, okay, I can be here, I can be there,

951
00:50:22,760 --> 00:50:25,040
Speaker 1: I can put the camera here. What do you guys think?

952
00:50:25,400 --> 00:50:25,640
Speaker 2: You know?

953
00:50:25,760 --> 00:50:27,919
Speaker 1: And they're like, well, I like the water shot. It's like, okay,

954
00:50:28,000 --> 00:50:31,080
Speaker 1: let's do the water shot. It gets more inclusive in

955
00:50:31,120 --> 00:50:33,319
Speaker 1: a way, not that I'm doubting myself, but it's like

956
00:50:33,440 --> 00:50:36,000
Speaker 1: why not. Why wouldn't you be inclusive?

957
00:50:36,200 --> 00:50:39,640
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely, And you were so committed to that that

958
00:50:39,719 --> 00:50:42,600
Speaker 2: you sold it for one dollar and rejected all of

959
00:50:42,640 --> 00:50:45,919
Speaker 2: these amazing studio budges because they wouldn't let you direct it.

960
00:50:46,080 --> 00:50:48,480
Speaker 1: This is going back to the terminator, and you're talking

961
00:50:48,480 --> 00:50:51,360
Speaker 1: about the fact that I made a rights deal with

962
00:50:51,440 --> 00:50:55,160
Speaker 1: Gail Anne Hurd, who was another up and comer in

963
00:50:55,239 --> 00:50:59,600
Speaker 1: the same super low tier as I was, and you know,

964
00:50:59,680 --> 00:51:02,160
Speaker 1: she had the eye of the tiger, and I recognized

965
00:51:02,200 --> 00:51:04,319
Speaker 1: in her the same thing she recognized in me, which

966
00:51:04,360 --> 00:51:06,840
Speaker 1: is that we could we could get this done, we

967
00:51:06,880 --> 00:51:10,719
Speaker 1: could make something happen together. And so I sold her

968
00:51:10,719 --> 00:51:13,280
Speaker 1: the rights for a dollar in exchange for a promise,

969
00:51:13,320 --> 00:51:15,200
Speaker 1: and that promise was worth a lot more than a

970
00:51:15,280 --> 00:51:19,279
Speaker 1: dollar to me, which was, you will never proceed with

971
00:51:19,360 --> 00:51:21,439
Speaker 1: this movie. I mean, I could have written a twenty

972
00:51:21,440 --> 00:51:25,480
Speaker 1: page contract to do it, but it was like a

973
00:51:25,480 --> 00:51:27,120
Speaker 1: blood oath, almost literally.

974
00:51:27,120 --> 00:51:28,239
Speaker 2: I don't think we actually.

975
00:51:28,040 --> 00:51:30,640
Speaker 1: Cut our hands, but it was pretty much that. And

976
00:51:31,360 --> 00:51:34,399
Speaker 1: this is before we were romantically involved. This was just us,

977
00:51:34,520 --> 00:51:37,799
Speaker 1: you know, a nascent producer and a nascent director. I said,

978
00:51:37,800 --> 00:51:40,200
Speaker 1: you will never make this movie without me as a director,

979
00:51:40,239 --> 00:51:42,799
Speaker 1: and I will never make this movie without you as

980
00:51:42,840 --> 00:51:45,840
Speaker 1: the producer. And man, they tried to split that team.

981
00:51:46,000 --> 00:51:48,720
Speaker 1: They tried to get her in the rights and and

982
00:51:48,760 --> 00:51:51,680
Speaker 1: not and get another director, you know, and there were

983
00:51:51,719 --> 00:51:53,919
Speaker 1: times when when Gail was beating them up so much

984
00:51:53,920 --> 00:51:55,879
Speaker 1: on the budget, they took me aside and said, look,

985
00:51:55,920 --> 00:51:57,320
Speaker 1: we'll make the movie with you, but we got to

986
00:51:57,320 --> 00:51:58,919
Speaker 1: get rid of her. And I'm like, Nope, that ain't

987
00:51:58,920 --> 00:52:01,800
Speaker 1: gonna happen, and she said, Nope, that ain't gonna happen.

988
00:52:01,880 --> 00:52:05,080
Speaker 1: So in a way, everything else flowed from that, that

989
00:52:05,239 --> 00:52:08,920
Speaker 1: first film, and so that was you know, that was

990
00:52:08,960 --> 00:52:09,920
Speaker 1: a dollar well spent.

991
00:52:10,200 --> 00:52:13,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's I love that story. It just every

992
00:52:13,480 --> 00:52:14,920
Speaker 2: time I hear you tell it, from when I was

993
00:52:14,960 --> 00:52:17,080
Speaker 2: in research and listening to you tell it and even

994
00:52:17,120 --> 00:52:20,000
Speaker 2: hearing it now, I'm just like, there's such a today,

995
00:52:20,000 --> 00:52:23,319
Speaker 2: there's such a fixation on getting what you deserve, yeah,

996
00:52:23,560 --> 00:52:26,000
Speaker 2: and demanding what you deserve, and I think sometimes it

997
00:52:26,040 --> 00:52:28,520
Speaker 2: sets you up for failure because you'd be waiting a

998
00:52:28,560 --> 00:52:31,320
Speaker 2: long time for someone to give you what you deserve.

999
00:52:31,960 --> 00:52:35,040
Speaker 2: Your career is this constant well I'll build what I

1000
00:52:35,080 --> 00:52:36,800
Speaker 2: deserve or I'll take it myself.

1001
00:52:36,840 --> 00:52:40,000
Speaker 1: The simple answer is you don't deserve anything. It's just

1002
00:52:40,080 --> 00:52:42,440
Speaker 1: a question of what you can negotiate for yourself and

1003
00:52:42,440 --> 00:52:46,359
Speaker 1: what you can prove proof to the world you know

1004
00:52:46,680 --> 00:52:50,440
Speaker 1: that you're you're capable of, right, and then and then

1005
00:52:50,719 --> 00:52:52,920
Speaker 1: then the money will flow from that, and the you know,

1006
00:52:53,040 --> 00:52:54,919
Speaker 1: all of those things will flow from that. I never

1007
00:52:55,040 --> 00:52:56,480
Speaker 1: was in it for the money in a sense of

1008
00:52:56,600 --> 00:53:00,200
Speaker 1: still not, you know, uh, it's a consequence of doing

1009
00:53:00,280 --> 00:53:03,920
Speaker 1: the job well and reaching people and communicating. You know,

1010
00:53:04,680 --> 00:53:06,880
Speaker 1: I am a commercial filmmaker. I don't try to do

1011
00:53:06,960 --> 00:53:12,920
Speaker 1: something that's intentionally obscure or intentionally so kind of intellectual

1012
00:53:13,040 --> 00:53:15,760
Speaker 1: that you know that it doesn't connect for the majority

1013
00:53:15,760 --> 00:53:17,799
Speaker 1: of the audience. I'm a Bell curve guy, you know.

1014
00:53:17,920 --> 00:53:19,759
Speaker 1: It's like I want to I want to hit that

1015
00:53:19,800 --> 00:53:22,000
Speaker 1: sweet spot in the middle of the Bell curve where

1016
00:53:22,000 --> 00:53:24,759
Speaker 1: I'm communicating with the greatest number of people. And there

1017
00:53:24,760 --> 00:53:26,920
Speaker 1: will be some people for whom it is it is

1018
00:53:27,000 --> 00:53:31,120
Speaker 1: beneath them to even consider enjoying an Avatar movie. And

1019
00:53:31,160 --> 00:53:33,960
Speaker 1: there are some people that just don't get it on

1020
00:53:34,040 --> 00:53:36,760
Speaker 1: the other end, you know what I mean. But I'm

1021
00:53:37,000 --> 00:53:38,680
Speaker 1: looking at that Bell curve and I think there are

1022
00:53:38,680 --> 00:53:43,759
Speaker 1: some filmmakers that want to indicate that they're smarter than

1023
00:53:43,800 --> 00:53:46,520
Speaker 1: the audience and that challenge them to try to keep

1024
00:53:46,600 --> 00:53:51,719
Speaker 1: up and purouet their intelligence. Not to say they're not intelligent,

1025
00:53:52,320 --> 00:53:57,640
Speaker 1: but come on, guys, it's entertainment. Yeah, it can have

1026
00:53:57,800 --> 00:54:01,000
Speaker 1: deeper meaning. I mean, I like to have thematic layering,

1027
00:54:01,520 --> 00:54:03,080
Speaker 1: you know, and I like to have things that mean

1028
00:54:03,160 --> 00:54:05,280
Speaker 1: something to me and if people pick up on it, great,

1029
00:54:05,880 --> 00:54:11,360
Speaker 1: But I won't make the story hinge on that, you know, So,

1030
00:54:11,719 --> 00:54:14,200
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe maybe it's that drive in movie

1031
00:54:14,520 --> 00:54:18,560
Speaker 1: you know, College of Cinematic acknowledge the drive in movie

1032
00:54:18,640 --> 00:54:21,279
Speaker 1: theaters of Orange County paying off.

1033
00:54:21,960 --> 00:54:23,600
Speaker 2: I feel like everyone looks at you, and even these

1034
00:54:23,640 --> 00:54:26,959
Speaker 2: examples you're talking about, there's such a people would say,

1035
00:54:27,160 --> 00:54:29,800
Speaker 2: you know, James Cummon's a risk take he takes big risks.

1036
00:54:30,400 --> 00:54:31,920
Speaker 2: But do you see yourself that way? How do you?

1037
00:54:31,920 --> 00:54:33,680
Speaker 2: How do you? I feel like it's something more than that.

1038
00:54:34,040 --> 00:54:36,360
Speaker 1: Well, I think I think it's not a question of

1039
00:54:36,400 --> 00:54:39,359
Speaker 1: taking risks for risk's sake, But I do think the

1040
00:54:39,400 --> 00:54:42,640
Speaker 1: biggest risk as an artist is to not take risks,

1041
00:54:43,080 --> 00:54:45,200
Speaker 1: because then you're just doing what you've done and what

1042
00:54:45,239 --> 00:54:48,879
Speaker 1: you know, and or what other people have done, which

1043
00:54:48,920 --> 00:54:50,920
Speaker 1: is even worse, you know, just in being in a

1044
00:54:51,280 --> 00:54:54,800
Speaker 1: kind of a comfort zone of mediocrity. So yeah, I

1045
00:54:54,880 --> 00:54:58,240
Speaker 1: think I think you do take risks, but having taken

1046
00:54:58,280 --> 00:55:01,360
Speaker 1: that risk, you then do every everything within your power

1047
00:55:01,400 --> 00:55:04,880
Speaker 1: to make sure that you are communicating that it is working,

1048
00:55:05,719 --> 00:55:08,960
Speaker 1: that you're not jeopardizing large amounts of other people's money

1049
00:55:08,960 --> 00:55:12,760
Speaker 1: by doing something foolish. You know, Titanic was a risk,

1050
00:55:13,480 --> 00:55:17,880
Speaker 1: you know, it was a very very expensive film in

1051
00:55:17,920 --> 00:55:21,600
Speaker 1: which basically everybody dies, you know, And it was a

1052
00:55:21,680 --> 00:55:24,400
Speaker 1: period piece, and it was three hours long. The only

1053
00:55:24,440 --> 00:55:27,480
Speaker 1: successful film previously that had been three hours long that

1054
00:55:27,560 --> 00:55:31,359
Speaker 1: was a commercial film was a Best Picture winner, which

1055
00:55:31,440 --> 00:55:35,120
Speaker 1: was Dances with Wolves. I always pronounced it Dances with

1056
00:55:35,200 --> 00:55:37,520
Speaker 1: Wolves because it was a name, you know, So yeah,

1057
00:55:37,520 --> 00:55:41,239
Speaker 1: I always imagine that hyphenated, not Dances with Wolves, which

1058
00:55:41,280 --> 00:55:45,600
Speaker 1: is what most people say. But I don't know if

1059
00:55:45,640 --> 00:55:48,799
Speaker 1: that's accurate. And you know, I never asked anybody, but

1060
00:55:49,239 --> 00:55:55,680
Speaker 1: probably is. But and so we were uncharted territory. I mean,

1061
00:55:55,719 --> 00:55:58,200
Speaker 1: we went in knowing it was going to be a

1062
00:55:58,200 --> 00:56:01,160
Speaker 1: long film and that it's a film, and that it's

1063
00:56:01,160 --> 00:56:06,239
Speaker 1: a tragic love story, pretty risky in a sense, you know.

1064
00:56:06,719 --> 00:56:09,880
Speaker 1: It certainly didn't follow any of the commercial paradigms of

1065
00:56:09,960 --> 00:56:12,960
Speaker 1: the time. And we reached a point after we went

1066
00:56:13,000 --> 00:56:15,399
Speaker 1: over budget, even though the film was looking pretty good

1067
00:56:15,440 --> 00:56:18,040
Speaker 1: in the dailies and in the rough cuts, we reached

1068
00:56:18,040 --> 00:56:20,239
Speaker 1: a point where the studio was utterly convinced it was

1069
00:56:20,280 --> 00:56:22,040
Speaker 1: only a question of whether they were going to lose

1070
00:56:22,040 --> 00:56:24,520
Speaker 1: fifty million dollars or one hundred and fifty million dollars.

1071
00:56:24,960 --> 00:56:28,520
Speaker 1: And they were so dead set on an outcome. They

1072
00:56:28,560 --> 00:56:33,319
Speaker 1: almost manifested the outcome they dreaded because of their lack

1073
00:56:33,360 --> 00:56:36,120
Speaker 1: of faith in the film. I even almost in a

1074
00:56:36,160 --> 00:56:39,400
Speaker 1: way lost faith in the film being commercial, but I

1075
00:56:39,480 --> 00:56:43,399
Speaker 1: never lost faith in it being artistically correct. And that's

1076
00:56:43,400 --> 00:56:47,040
Speaker 1: when I the story has been told, but it's actually true.

1077
00:56:47,280 --> 00:56:50,320
Speaker 1: I literally had a razor blade taped to my avid

1078
00:56:50,360 --> 00:56:54,160
Speaker 1: screen with a little sign that said, using case film sucks,

1079
00:56:54,920 --> 00:56:57,560
Speaker 1: because I knew that the only way out of this

1080
00:56:57,800 --> 00:56:59,960
Speaker 1: was through, and the only way through was to make

1081
00:57:00,120 --> 00:57:02,719
Speaker 1: the best possible movie you could make. Even if I

1082
00:57:02,719 --> 00:57:05,960
Speaker 1: didn't make a dime off it, even if it failed commercially,

1083
00:57:06,440 --> 00:57:08,600
Speaker 1: it had to be good and it had to deliver

1084
00:57:08,800 --> 00:57:13,160
Speaker 1: on those artistic principles that we went in with. I

1085
00:57:13,239 --> 00:57:15,880
Speaker 1: knew I had a great cast, I had great performances,

1086
00:57:16,240 --> 00:57:19,160
Speaker 1: you know. And it turned out from the moment James

1087
00:57:19,200 --> 00:57:23,680
Speaker 1: Horner played the first he wrote the three themes and

1088
00:57:23,840 --> 00:57:27,600
Speaker 1: just reiterated them throughout the score. He wrote three themes

1089
00:57:27,600 --> 00:57:30,320
Speaker 1: and he played them for me on his piano in

1090
00:57:30,440 --> 00:57:33,080
Speaker 1: March of nineteen ninety seven, and that's when I knew

1091
00:57:33,080 --> 00:57:36,920
Speaker 1: I had a movie, because I cried on all three themes.

1092
00:57:37,680 --> 00:57:41,360
Speaker 1: First one it was just like, holy shit, dude, it's amazing,

1093
00:57:41,840 --> 00:57:43,480
Speaker 1: you know. And I said, we've got a score. He said,

1094
00:57:43,480 --> 00:57:45,400
Speaker 1: I haven't written the story yet. I said, we've got

1095
00:57:45,440 --> 00:57:48,640
Speaker 1: a score. And I wasn't wrong. I knew from that

1096
00:57:48,680 --> 00:57:51,439
Speaker 1: moment that it was going to be great. And yeah, sure,

1097
00:57:51,800 --> 00:57:54,520
Speaker 1: he wrote it, he orchestrated it, he went out, he

1098
00:57:54,560 --> 00:57:57,320
Speaker 1: recorded it with one hundred piece orchestra. But I knew

1099
00:57:57,360 --> 00:58:01,000
Speaker 1: from that simple piano melody that we were good. And

1100
00:58:01,840 --> 00:58:03,880
Speaker 1: I think at that point I started to have some

1101
00:58:04,040 --> 00:58:08,440
Speaker 1: faith that the movie itself would deliver on what I

1102
00:58:08,520 --> 00:58:12,200
Speaker 1: intended it to deliver. You know, there's a funny point

1103
00:58:12,440 --> 00:58:16,480
Speaker 1: in movies. It's okay if I just kind of love it.

1104
00:58:16,520 --> 00:58:17,840
Speaker 2: That's my favorite bit of podcast.

1105
00:58:17,840 --> 00:58:20,120
Speaker 1: Okay, there's a certain point in making a movie where

1106
00:58:20,120 --> 00:58:22,840
Speaker 1: it's not your movie anymore. I think it's my movie

1107
00:58:22,880 --> 00:58:25,840
Speaker 1: when I write it. I think the second I cast it,

1108
00:58:25,840 --> 00:58:28,000
Speaker 1: it's not my movie anymore. And the second I'm working

1109
00:58:28,040 --> 00:58:30,000
Speaker 1: with designers and we're building sets and all that. Now

1110
00:58:30,080 --> 00:58:32,240
Speaker 1: it's got its own momentum, it's got its own life,

1111
00:58:32,640 --> 00:58:37,280
Speaker 1: and there's a point in post production where it's being received.

1112
00:58:37,320 --> 00:58:39,640
Speaker 1: And I don't mean that necessarily In a mystical way,

1113
00:58:39,640 --> 00:58:44,280
Speaker 1: although it might be I don't know, but it's being

1114
00:58:44,320 --> 00:58:49,240
Speaker 1: received from the group's creative energy. What the actors did,

1115
00:58:49,280 --> 00:58:53,080
Speaker 1: what the designers did, what the camera operator did, you know,

1116
00:58:53,120 --> 00:58:55,880
Speaker 1: what the DP did, and it's just up to me

1117
00:58:56,080 --> 00:59:01,520
Speaker 1: to see it and see it emerging and then help assist,

1118
00:59:01,720 --> 00:59:05,160
Speaker 1: you know, clear the debris out of the way, get

1119
00:59:05,240 --> 00:59:09,479
Speaker 1: it to kind of emerge. And I felt that more so,

1120
00:59:09,960 --> 00:59:12,800
Speaker 1: especially on these last two Avatar films, that I've ever

1121
00:59:12,840 --> 00:59:15,880
Speaker 1: felt before. We had a long film. It's half an

1122
00:59:15,920 --> 00:59:17,560
Speaker 1: hour longer than it could be. You've got to take

1123
00:59:17,600 --> 00:59:21,840
Speaker 1: stuff out, so you're pairing away and themes are emerging

1124
00:59:21,880 --> 00:59:25,280
Speaker 1: and getting stronger. And it even got quite snaky on

1125
00:59:25,320 --> 00:59:29,160
Speaker 1: this last one because I felt the themes emerging so

1126
00:59:29,320 --> 00:59:32,360
Speaker 1: strongly that I actually wrote new scenes and asked the

1127
00:59:32,440 --> 00:59:35,920
Speaker 1: actress to come back and reshape the whole thing. For example,

1128
00:59:36,440 --> 00:59:38,280
Speaker 1: there was a scene in the script which we captured

1129
00:59:38,560 --> 00:59:42,360
Speaker 1: where Jake teaches all the Nave how to fire machine guns.

1130
00:59:43,040 --> 00:59:45,680
Speaker 1: I was wrong. I didn't want That's not what the

1131
00:59:45,720 --> 00:59:48,440
Speaker 1: movie was supposed to be saying. And so the power,

1132
00:59:48,880 --> 00:59:51,479
Speaker 1: the dark grim power that comes from when korch arms

1133
00:59:51,520 --> 00:59:54,360
Speaker 1: the ash people and you see them lift those weapons up,

1134
00:59:54,360 --> 00:59:56,840
Speaker 1: and you say, oh my god, this whole thing's going wrong.

1135
00:59:57,920 --> 00:59:59,760
Speaker 1: I can't help Jake be doing the same thing. But

1136
01:00:00,240 --> 01:00:02,440
Speaker 1: I didn't see that in the writing, but I saw

1137
01:00:02,480 --> 01:00:05,280
Speaker 1: it as it was unveiling itself to me, and I

1138
01:00:05,360 --> 01:00:07,200
Speaker 1: called everybody back in. I said, guys, you got to

1139
01:00:07,200 --> 01:00:10,400
Speaker 1: come back. And the beauty of performance capture is you

1140
01:00:10,400 --> 01:00:13,080
Speaker 1: can recreate the set almost instantly, in like an hour,

1141
01:00:13,640 --> 01:00:15,280
Speaker 1: so we just were able to go back into it.

1142
01:00:15,320 --> 01:00:17,680
Speaker 1: And I did something else instead, which is I had

1143
01:00:17,760 --> 01:00:20,800
Speaker 1: Jake go get the Toruk, which was also not in

1144
01:00:20,840 --> 01:00:23,400
Speaker 1: the script, but when you see it, you think.

1145
01:00:23,440 --> 01:00:27,080
Speaker 2: How could that. That's one of the most epic moments

1146
01:00:27,080 --> 01:00:27,240
Speaker 2: of the.

1147
01:00:27,280 --> 01:00:29,760
Speaker 1: Home exactly Well. I had put that in movie four,

1148
01:00:29,800 --> 01:00:31,800
Speaker 1: but I realized I was playing too long a game,

1149
01:00:32,440 --> 01:00:35,120
Speaker 1: you know, and you know the scene with him and Spider,

1150
01:00:35,160 --> 01:00:37,720
Speaker 1: which I won't go into the details of, but after that,

1151
01:00:38,680 --> 01:00:42,040
Speaker 1: you know when Natitty says, then we will find another way.

1152
01:00:42,720 --> 01:00:44,760
Speaker 1: That's the only way he's got left is to do

1153
01:00:44,880 --> 01:00:49,480
Speaker 1: the thing that he dreads the most, that he absolutely

1154
01:00:49,520 --> 01:00:53,520
Speaker 1: knows will take something out of his soul. But he

1155
01:00:53,640 --> 01:00:55,919
Speaker 1: has to do it. That's the only other way, And

1156
01:00:55,960 --> 01:00:59,360
Speaker 1: so you know, sacrifice is the theme that I deal

1157
01:00:59,360 --> 01:01:03,600
Speaker 1: with a lot duty because you can't have love without

1158
01:01:03,720 --> 01:01:06,880
Speaker 1: the fear of death, the fear of loss, without the

1159
01:01:06,960 --> 01:01:10,880
Speaker 1: need for sacrifice, without a sense of duty. What will

1160
01:01:10,920 --> 01:01:15,440
Speaker 1: you do to prove yourself in a loving relationship? You know,

1161
01:01:16,320 --> 01:01:19,240
Speaker 1: played with that on Titanic, played with that on Aliens.

1162
01:01:19,880 --> 01:01:23,280
Speaker 1: You know, played with that. And Terminator too, right, And

1163
01:01:23,360 --> 01:01:26,760
Speaker 1: so these these last two Avatar films are the same thing.

1164
01:01:27,120 --> 01:01:30,640
Speaker 1: What would Jacob Nate Diery do for their children? What

1165
01:01:30,680 --> 01:01:33,280
Speaker 1: would they do for their people? And what happens when

1166
01:01:33,400 --> 01:01:36,360
Speaker 1: what is right for the children is not right for

1167
01:01:36,440 --> 01:01:39,280
Speaker 1: the people. If the right thing is to go to war.

1168
01:01:40,080 --> 01:01:42,960
Speaker 1: And I know that you're you're all about peace and

1169
01:01:43,480 --> 01:01:46,960
Speaker 1: purpose and all of that, and I agree with all

1170
01:01:47,000 --> 01:01:50,880
Speaker 1: of those things because I think empathy is our great

1171
01:01:51,280 --> 01:01:56,080
Speaker 1: human superpower which will get us through this somehow. But

1172
01:01:56,160 --> 01:01:57,720
Speaker 1: I do believe there are times when you do have

1173
01:01:57,840 --> 01:02:00,800
Speaker 1: to fight. I'm not a total pacifist, and I think

1174
01:02:01,680 --> 01:02:04,560
Speaker 1: in my lifetime there has not been a righteous war

1175
01:02:04,680 --> 01:02:07,800
Speaker 1: that the US has been involved in, but World War Two.

1176
01:02:08,120 --> 01:02:11,200
Speaker 1: When you have a predator that's destroying everything that is

1177
01:02:11,240 --> 01:02:14,840
Speaker 1: of value to people, yeah, you have to fight. You

1178
01:02:14,840 --> 01:02:18,000
Speaker 1: have to fight for your survival. So we could have

1179
01:02:18,040 --> 01:02:19,440
Speaker 1: a whole conversation just about this.

1180
01:02:19,600 --> 01:02:22,120
Speaker 2: I know, I was just about to say that the well,

1181
01:02:22,160 --> 01:02:23,120
Speaker 2: I was about to say that.

1182
01:02:23,040 --> 01:02:24,160
Speaker 1: I'm flipping the scripture.

1183
01:02:25,640 --> 01:02:27,600
Speaker 2: No, I was about to say that the spiritual text

1184
01:02:27,640 --> 01:02:30,040
Speaker 2: that I practice and teach him follow is based on

1185
01:02:30,080 --> 01:02:35,320
Speaker 2: a battlefield, and it's God or the Divine telling the

1186
01:02:35,360 --> 01:02:37,919
Speaker 2: greatest archer of his time to pick up his bow

1187
01:02:38,000 --> 01:02:42,480
Speaker 2: and fight for righteousness and duty righteous. It makes a

1188
01:02:42,520 --> 01:02:45,520
Speaker 2: lot of it definitely resonates what you're saying, that there

1189
01:02:45,560 --> 01:02:46,000
Speaker 2: is a need.

1190
01:02:46,800 --> 01:02:50,200
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I'm an action filmmaker, so you know action.

1191
01:02:50,560 --> 01:02:52,360
Speaker 1: I mean, if you think about it, action is just

1192
01:02:53,200 --> 01:02:57,200
Speaker 1: a candy coated term for violence, right when it's righteous

1193
01:02:57,280 --> 01:03:00,360
Speaker 1: violence practiced by the good guy in defense so of

1194
01:03:00,400 --> 01:03:02,520
Speaker 1: good people, and so on it. You know, we spend

1195
01:03:02,560 --> 01:03:04,760
Speaker 1: a lot of time justifying it to ourselves, and I

1196
01:03:04,760 --> 01:03:09,880
Speaker 1: think a lot of the classic cinematic justifications aren't really sufficient,

1197
01:03:11,480 --> 01:03:13,600
Speaker 1: which is why I went down the road of having

1198
01:03:13,600 --> 01:03:17,600
Speaker 1: the tulkuon be utter pacifists, where they have rejected any

1199
01:03:17,680 --> 01:03:23,200
Speaker 1: kind of violet confrontation up to and almost including their

1200
01:03:23,240 --> 01:03:29,760
Speaker 1: own final destruction, but they at the very brink, they

1201
01:03:29,800 --> 01:03:33,200
Speaker 1: decide that there is something that they have to rise

1202
01:03:33,280 --> 01:03:36,360
Speaker 1: up for, and when they see the horror of what's

1203
01:03:36,400 --> 01:03:39,680
Speaker 1: happened to Tonok and Pya Kon's clan and all that,

1204
01:03:39,720 --> 01:03:41,920
Speaker 1: which I think is quite a heart wrenching scene, even.

1205
01:03:41,720 --> 01:03:44,840
Speaker 2: Though that's like, yeah, when you make me feel for PyCon,

1206
01:03:45,480 --> 01:03:48,040
Speaker 2: that's like right, you know, because now you're not even

1207
01:03:48,320 --> 01:03:50,560
Speaker 2: feeling for something that looks remotely human.

1208
01:03:50,560 --> 01:03:55,040
Speaker 1: Right exactly. But we're able to see consciousness in others,

1209
01:03:55,040 --> 01:03:59,280
Speaker 1: in the eyes, you know, and dogs in the great apes,

1210
01:03:59,520 --> 01:04:01,720
Speaker 1: you know. I think it's a little harder in birds,

1211
01:04:01,760 --> 01:04:05,640
Speaker 1: even though they're pretty damn smart. Whales, though, I have

1212
01:04:05,720 --> 01:04:09,840
Speaker 1: a soulfulness and maybe to some extent we projected onto them,

1213
01:04:09,840 --> 01:04:15,000
Speaker 1: but I don't think so. There's something very calm about whales.

1214
01:04:15,400 --> 01:04:19,720
Speaker 1: You know, they've they've been greatly injured on our planet.

1215
01:04:19,760 --> 01:04:21,640
Speaker 1: So I think, you know, what I was trying to

1216
01:04:21,680 --> 01:04:24,520
Speaker 1: express there is, look what we've done to them, and

1217
01:04:24,560 --> 01:04:27,760
Speaker 1: they don't seem to hate us as much as we

1218
01:04:27,840 --> 01:04:31,280
Speaker 1: would if that was done to us. Although there are

1219
01:04:31,560 --> 01:04:36,400
Speaker 1: pods of orcas near Gibraltar and off the Azorus that

1220
01:04:36,480 --> 01:04:39,200
Speaker 1: are attacking sailboats now and ripping the rudders off and

1221
01:04:39,280 --> 01:04:44,400
Speaker 1: leaving them adrift. So it's like, are they learning, are

1222
01:04:44,440 --> 01:04:46,840
Speaker 1: they learning that we're actually not so great for them?

1223
01:04:47,560 --> 01:04:50,920
Speaker 1: Workers have a matriarchal society and the mothers teach the

1224
01:04:51,000 --> 01:04:55,120
Speaker 1: son's behaviors, and so the question is is this being

1225
01:04:55,160 --> 01:04:57,400
Speaker 1: handed down because it's been happening a lot in the

1226
01:04:57,480 --> 01:05:01,040
Speaker 1: last few years, and it's the same group, the territorial

1227
01:05:01,200 --> 01:05:02,280
Speaker 1: territorial group.

1228
01:05:03,040 --> 01:05:04,720
Speaker 2: All of this you're talking about, you spent around ten

1229
01:05:04,800 --> 01:05:08,040
Speaker 2: years just studying the ocean, right Like, yeah, well, you

1230
01:05:08,080 --> 01:05:11,160
Speaker 2: weren't making films at that time. You literally went deep.

1231
01:05:11,000 --> 01:05:14,240
Speaker 1: Into literally on anything that you're sharing right now is

1232
01:05:14,720 --> 01:05:15,800
Speaker 1: as deep as you can go?

1233
01:05:17,480 --> 01:05:18,960
Speaker 2: Did you just put everything else away?

1234
01:05:19,080 --> 01:05:21,400
Speaker 1: Like? Not really? I kind of kept my hand in

1235
01:05:21,520 --> 01:05:24,680
Speaker 1: so so after Titanic was a big hit and I

1236
01:05:24,720 --> 01:05:27,640
Speaker 1: was questioning, you know, is this even important? Is Hollywood

1237
01:05:27,640 --> 01:05:30,000
Speaker 1: even important? It seems like such a glitzy game and

1238
01:05:31,280 --> 01:05:34,919
Speaker 1: it seems kind of quite fatuous. And at about that time,

1239
01:05:35,000 --> 01:05:38,080
Speaker 1: I wound up on the NASA Advisory Council, believe it

1240
01:05:38,200 --> 01:05:40,840
Speaker 1: or not, and I looked around a room full of

1241
01:05:40,880 --> 01:05:46,160
Speaker 1: people who were very intelligent, most of them all of

1242
01:05:46,200 --> 01:05:49,240
Speaker 1: them really better educated than me. With a strong sense

1243
01:05:49,280 --> 01:05:52,520
Speaker 1: of purpose right, that they were doing something extraordinary. They

1244
01:05:52,520 --> 01:05:56,400
Speaker 1: were exploring space, and none of them cared about Hollywood.

1245
01:05:56,840 --> 01:05:59,160
Speaker 1: They didn't even know what was happening. Oh they ask us,

1246
01:05:59,160 --> 01:06:01,560
Speaker 1: what's that? Oh yeah, you know, it's where they and

1247
01:06:01,760 --> 01:06:04,040
Speaker 1: I could name a movie star they wouldn't even recognize.

1248
01:06:04,120 --> 01:06:06,840
Speaker 1: I mean, sure, there's always little movie fans here and there,

1249
01:06:06,880 --> 01:06:09,200
Speaker 1: but it just mattered to them. It didn't matter to

1250
01:06:09,240 --> 01:06:12,360
Speaker 1: them at all. They were doing something far more important,

1251
01:06:12,600 --> 01:06:16,400
Speaker 1: and that was a real bucket of cold water. It's like, oh,

1252
01:06:16,480 --> 01:06:18,960
Speaker 1: all these things we live in this little self referential

1253
01:06:19,000 --> 01:06:21,800
Speaker 1: bubble that we think is so important, and it just isn't.

1254
01:06:22,520 --> 01:06:26,040
Speaker 1: And so I thought, you know, maybe I'll just explore

1255
01:06:26,040 --> 01:06:29,360
Speaker 1: around a little bit, just in life, you know. And

1256
01:06:29,840 --> 01:06:32,760
Speaker 1: because I had gotten to do an expedition to the

1257
01:06:32,840 --> 01:06:36,480
Speaker 1: rec site where I was really now becoming conversant with

1258
01:06:36,920 --> 01:06:39,920
Speaker 1: real deep otion technology, I thought, why don't I just

1259
01:06:39,960 --> 01:06:42,960
Speaker 1: go down that road. I know everybody, you know, I

1260
01:06:43,000 --> 01:06:46,320
Speaker 1: know all the scientists and researchers and submersible people and everything.

1261
01:06:46,480 --> 01:06:51,360
Speaker 1: So I just started creating expeditions and building new tectical systems,

1262
01:06:51,480 --> 01:06:55,960
Speaker 1: cameras and lighting systems and exploratory vehicles. And the other

1263
01:06:55,960 --> 01:06:59,360
Speaker 1: thing I liked about it is the ocean is unforgiving.

1264
01:06:59,680 --> 01:07:03,160
Speaker 1: Either your math is right or your equipment fails. It'll implode,

1265
01:07:03,480 --> 01:07:06,080
Speaker 1: or the electronics flood and it won't work and you'll

1266
01:07:06,080 --> 01:07:09,680
Speaker 1: come back with nothing. And that's not a critics opinion,

1267
01:07:10,440 --> 01:07:13,280
Speaker 1: you know. That's when I came up with this idea,

1268
01:07:13,600 --> 01:07:16,880
Speaker 1: this principle that you know, the second law of thermodynamics

1269
01:07:16,960 --> 01:07:20,200
Speaker 1: is not an opinion, it's a law. It's not some

1270
01:07:20,360 --> 01:07:24,200
Speaker 1: critics opinion. It's not some journalist's opinion. It's not even

1271
01:07:24,240 --> 01:07:28,000
Speaker 1: a fickle audience member's opinion or some some you know,

1272
01:07:29,240 --> 01:07:31,880
Speaker 1: some bloggers trolling opinion.

1273
01:07:32,040 --> 01:07:32,280
Speaker 2: You know.

1274
01:07:33,800 --> 01:07:37,720
Speaker 1: It either works or it doesn't. And I really enjoyed

1275
01:07:37,880 --> 01:07:42,120
Speaker 1: immersing myself in a world of hard rules. You succeed

1276
01:07:42,400 --> 01:07:45,200
Speaker 1: or you fail, not based on your art or your

1277
01:07:45,240 --> 01:07:49,760
Speaker 1: creativity or somebody else's subjective opinion of your art, because

1278
01:07:49,760 --> 01:07:52,560
Speaker 1: the two don't exist without each other. That's the crazy thing.

1279
01:07:52,640 --> 01:07:54,800
Speaker 1: So as an artist, you bury your soul and you

1280
01:07:54,840 --> 01:07:57,880
Speaker 1: can be utterly rejected, you know, But ultimately the point

1281
01:07:57,920 --> 01:08:00,800
Speaker 1: of art is to communicate with other humans. They may

1282
01:08:00,840 --> 01:08:04,000
Speaker 1: hate it, you know, so you put yourself at risk.

1283
01:08:04,360 --> 01:08:05,760
Speaker 1: I thought you know what, I'm just going to go

1284
01:08:05,800 --> 01:08:09,600
Speaker 1: into an empirical world, a Cartesian world where it either

1285
01:08:09,640 --> 01:08:12,520
Speaker 1: works or it doesn't, based on good engineering. And that

1286
01:08:12,640 --> 01:08:15,320
Speaker 1: was good and I learned some really important human lessons

1287
01:08:15,720 --> 01:08:17,800
Speaker 1: in that world as well, because when you're offshore with

1288
01:08:17,880 --> 01:08:21,920
Speaker 1: a small team, it's all about respect and cohesion and

1289
01:08:22,439 --> 01:08:25,320
Speaker 1: that bond. And when you come back to shore, you

1290
01:08:25,360 --> 01:08:27,519
Speaker 1: can't even explain to people how hard it was or

1291
01:08:27,560 --> 01:08:29,800
Speaker 1: why it worked or what it took, you know, but

1292
01:08:29,840 --> 01:08:33,280
Speaker 1: that bond exists between those people. And then I realized, Okay,

1293
01:08:33,520 --> 01:08:36,519
Speaker 1: we're only as good as our team. And when I

1294
01:08:36,640 --> 01:08:40,200
Speaker 1: after Titanic, I put together a team to do the impossible,

1295
01:08:40,280 --> 01:08:42,600
Speaker 1: which was Avatar. Nobody'd ever made a film like that.

1296
01:08:42,800 --> 01:08:45,559
Speaker 1: It was a new form of cinema, and I remember

1297
01:08:45,600 --> 01:08:48,360
Speaker 1: we fell on our ass. Some of the first things

1298
01:08:48,400 --> 01:08:51,360
Speaker 1: we tried. We were face down on the ground and

1299
01:08:51,760 --> 01:08:54,160
Speaker 1: we'd stop in the middle of a production day and

1300
01:08:54,240 --> 01:08:56,120
Speaker 1: pull out a table and sit around it, and there'd

1301
01:08:56,120 --> 01:08:58,360
Speaker 1: be a bunch of glum faces because it wasn't working.

1302
01:08:58,400 --> 01:09:01,280
Speaker 1: And I say, guys, seem like the hardest day of

1303
01:09:01,280 --> 01:09:03,960
Speaker 1: the production, This is going to be the day you remember,

1304
01:09:04,800 --> 01:09:07,280
Speaker 1: because this is the day we write page thirty eight

1305
01:09:07,880 --> 01:09:10,400
Speaker 1: of the manual that tells the rest of the world

1306
01:09:10,439 --> 01:09:12,760
Speaker 1: how this stuff works, and we're going to do it

1307
01:09:12,800 --> 01:09:14,280
Speaker 1: and we're going to figure it out. It was like,

1308
01:09:14,400 --> 01:09:17,800
Speaker 1: you know, silly's never quit, right, And then we did

1309
01:09:17,920 --> 01:09:19,720
Speaker 1: and we figured it out. And then there's such a

1310
01:09:19,760 --> 01:09:23,760
Speaker 1: feeling of pride and cohesiveness in the group after that,

1311
01:09:24,080 --> 01:09:27,120
Speaker 1: and you start to feel like, Okay, bring the next challenge.

1312
01:09:27,280 --> 01:09:30,200
Speaker 1: We'll figure it out. And the team spirit and the

1313
01:09:30,240 --> 01:09:34,000
Speaker 1: team morale is so high now. This was nineteen years

1314
01:09:34,000 --> 01:09:37,680
Speaker 1: ago in two thousand and six. The team spirit and

1315
01:09:38,160 --> 01:09:42,719
Speaker 1: the cohesiveness is so high now. People really they hated

1316
01:09:42,760 --> 01:09:44,479
Speaker 1: when it all came to an end here a few

1317
01:09:44,479 --> 01:09:46,880
Speaker 1: months ago, as people dropped off one by one as

1318
01:09:46,920 --> 01:09:50,000
Speaker 1: the project was winding down, and everybody just can't wait

1319
01:09:50,000 --> 01:09:51,200
Speaker 1: to get back to the next one.

1320
01:09:51,479 --> 01:09:51,599
Speaker 2: Now.

1321
01:09:51,640 --> 01:09:54,400
Speaker 1: I don't know artistically as a director if that's something

1322
01:09:54,400 --> 01:09:57,160
Speaker 1: I want to do right away next there's a pretty

1323
01:09:57,200 --> 01:10:01,280
Speaker 1: strong I feel a strong pressure on my shoulder to

1324
01:10:01,439 --> 01:10:05,160
Speaker 1: do it, to bring that team back together because it's

1325
01:10:05,160 --> 01:10:08,680
Speaker 1: so important for them, you know, and that's not a

1326
01:10:08,680 --> 01:10:11,800
Speaker 1: bad reason to do something at all, you know, to

1327
01:10:11,840 --> 01:10:13,840
Speaker 1: make other people happy is not a bad reason to

1328
01:10:13,880 --> 01:10:17,479
Speaker 1: do something or to make other people feel fulfilled. But

1329
01:10:17,520 --> 01:10:19,320
Speaker 1: I also have other things I want to do as well,

1330
01:10:19,400 --> 01:10:22,280
Speaker 1: So it's a little bit of a it's a little

1331
01:10:22,280 --> 01:10:25,960
Speaker 1: bit of going off a cliff. I've told Susie, my wife,

1332
01:10:26,000 --> 01:10:29,160
Speaker 1: that I feel like I'm Wiley Coyote and a Roadrunner

1333
01:10:29,200 --> 01:10:32,719
Speaker 1: cartoon and I just ran off the cliff. I haven't

1334
01:10:32,800 --> 01:10:34,840
Speaker 1: hit the ground yet. There's that moment where my legs

1335
01:10:34,840 --> 01:10:38,760
Speaker 1: are pin wheeling in the air, you know, But that's okay,

1336
01:10:39,040 --> 01:10:42,280
Speaker 1: that's okay. The scariest moments are always the moments of

1337
01:10:42,320 --> 01:10:44,679
Speaker 1: the greatest opportunity. I think.

1338
01:11:01,200 --> 01:11:04,960
Speaker 2: When you're building a universe with people, you're building lives

1339
01:11:05,040 --> 01:11:08,800
Speaker 2: and hearts and worlds that connect on such a deep level.

1340
01:11:09,080 --> 01:11:11,120
Speaker 2: I feel like when I'm listening to him, like everything

1341
01:11:11,160 --> 01:11:15,120
Speaker 2: you do is highly emotional and emotive and heartfelt and deep,

1342
01:11:15,200 --> 01:11:19,040
Speaker 2: and you can't help but cry when you're watching your work.

1343
01:11:19,280 --> 01:11:22,479
Speaker 2: You know, maybe not Terminator, but what follows, or maybe

1344
01:11:22,600 --> 01:11:24,120
Speaker 2: maybe Eminator too.

1345
01:11:24,680 --> 01:11:28,080
Speaker 1: When the terminator going, come on, when he when he

1346
01:11:28,160 --> 01:11:33,759
Speaker 1: goes down into the steel and goes to nothing, come on? Yes,

1347
01:11:33,800 --> 01:11:34,719
Speaker 1: people tear up.

1348
01:11:34,800 --> 01:11:37,479
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, no, And so you see that, and I'm

1349
01:11:37,520 --> 01:11:42,400
Speaker 2: like it feels like the emotion of creating it. Whatever

1350
01:11:42,400 --> 01:11:44,160
Speaker 2: we're getting out of it is because the emotion that's

1351
01:11:44,200 --> 01:11:46,599
Speaker 2: creating it is going into it, and this team that

1352
01:11:46,640 --> 01:11:50,599
Speaker 2: you are curating is bringing all of that emotion, as

1353
01:11:50,600 --> 01:11:53,479
Speaker 2: you said, whether it was the pantheos that are building

1354
01:11:53,520 --> 01:11:56,680
Speaker 2: the you know, the physical buildings in the movie, or

1355
01:11:56,720 --> 01:11:59,000
Speaker 2: whether it's the emotion that the characters are feeling and

1356
01:11:59,280 --> 01:12:03,000
Speaker 2: two kids feel and et cetera. How do you even

1357
01:12:03,120 --> 01:12:06,439
Speaker 2: start to detach from that as a team when you've

1358
01:12:06,439 --> 01:12:08,880
Speaker 2: been immersed in it for decades at this.

1359
01:12:08,880 --> 01:12:13,600
Speaker 1: Point, Maybe it don't. Maybe you just keep going. I

1360
01:12:13,640 --> 01:12:16,479
Speaker 1: don't know. Well, look, I mean there are a number

1361
01:12:16,560 --> 01:12:18,960
Speaker 1: of milestones here that have to be met. First of all,

1362
01:12:18,960 --> 01:12:23,639
Speaker 1: the film has to succeed financially, and that's not a given.

1363
01:12:24,040 --> 01:12:26,760
Speaker 1: Everybody just assumes it's a no brainer. But the theatrical

1364
01:12:26,760 --> 01:12:31,080
Speaker 1: marketplace has been dwindling and collapsing about thirty five percent

1365
01:12:31,120 --> 01:12:35,599
Speaker 1: and hasn't rebounded, And people's habit patterns have changed, and

1366
01:12:35,640 --> 01:12:38,240
Speaker 1: so the thing that I grew up and love and

1367
01:12:38,360 --> 01:12:45,320
Speaker 1: feel such strong sense of passion for maybe becoming obsolete. Maybe,

1368
01:12:45,560 --> 01:12:48,200
Speaker 1: And the cost of making movies is continuously going up.

1369
01:12:48,720 --> 01:12:52,120
Speaker 1: And and the demand is falling. So that's a little

1370
01:12:52,160 --> 01:12:54,360
Speaker 1: bit of a death spiral right there, you know, And

1371
01:12:54,400 --> 01:12:57,320
Speaker 1: so it's maybe it's going to be okay, we were

1372
01:12:57,400 --> 01:13:00,639
Speaker 1: sort of successful. If we can do the next one cheaper,

1373
01:13:00,800 --> 01:13:04,519
Speaker 1: we can continue, right And then there's also that wild card,

1374
01:13:04,640 --> 01:13:06,559
Speaker 1: you know. There are other projects that I have that

1375
01:13:06,600 --> 01:13:09,200
Speaker 1: I've been sort of sitting on in the background. And

1376
01:13:09,240 --> 01:13:11,640
Speaker 1: there's a thing that I want to do about Hiroshima.

1377
01:13:11,680 --> 01:13:14,000
Speaker 1: I bought a book recently, but it's a story I've

1378
01:13:14,040 --> 01:13:18,639
Speaker 1: been following and you know, excavating and researching for really

1379
01:13:18,640 --> 01:13:21,240
Speaker 1: my whole adult life. It's something that I really feel

1380
01:13:21,280 --> 01:13:23,439
Speaker 1: strongly I need to do at some point. It's not

1381
01:13:23,479 --> 01:13:25,519
Speaker 1: a big film. Sounds like it would be, but it's

1382
01:13:25,520 --> 01:13:27,559
Speaker 1: not a big film in the sense of an Avatar film.

1383
01:13:27,680 --> 01:13:29,320
Speaker 1: It's not a four year commitment. It might be a

1384
01:13:29,360 --> 01:13:33,200
Speaker 1: one year commitment. So I need to do that.

1385
01:13:33,400 --> 01:13:35,760
Speaker 2: And so why is that so meaningful to you? What

1386
01:13:35,840 --> 01:13:36,320
Speaker 2: about it?

1387
01:13:36,479 --> 01:13:38,680
Speaker 1: I just think that we live in this world. I mean,

1388
01:13:38,720 --> 01:13:41,560
Speaker 1: I think Catherine Bigelow's film title is it's kind of

1389
01:13:41,600 --> 01:13:43,960
Speaker 1: growing on me, The House of Dynamite. It's like we

1390
01:13:44,040 --> 01:13:46,479
Speaker 1: live in a house. Imagine you live in a house

1391
01:13:46,479 --> 01:13:48,559
Speaker 1: and you feel perfectly normal, and you go about your

1392
01:13:48,560 --> 01:13:51,599
Speaker 1: business and you're chopping onions for the guacamalle and you're

1393
01:13:51,600 --> 01:13:54,000
Speaker 1: going to watch your favorite show. But the basement is

1394
01:13:54,000 --> 01:13:56,240
Speaker 1: filled with dynamite and it could go off at any moment.

1395
01:13:56,439 --> 01:13:58,479
Speaker 1: That's the world that we live in, you know, and

1396
01:13:58,560 --> 01:14:02,240
Speaker 1: that it hits that metaphor, and so it's not a metaphor,

1397
01:14:02,240 --> 01:14:06,200
Speaker 1: it's our world. So I feel that we have a

1398
01:14:06,320 --> 01:14:10,080
Speaker 1: kind of a systematic forgetting of history, you know, just

1399
01:14:10,439 --> 01:14:13,320
Speaker 1: at that remove, and we're enough removed from the event

1400
01:14:13,439 --> 01:14:16,439
Speaker 1: of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I think people need to be

1401
01:14:16,520 --> 01:14:19,760
Speaker 1: reminded what these weapons really are and what they really do.

1402
01:14:20,439 --> 01:14:22,880
Speaker 1: Of course, the punchline of the movie is going to

1403
01:14:22,920 --> 01:14:25,680
Speaker 1: be the card at the end that says there are

1404
01:14:25,680 --> 01:14:30,479
Speaker 1: twelve thousand nuclear warheads deployed in the world today. Each

1405
01:14:30,560 --> 01:14:34,240
Speaker 1: one is one hundred to five hundred times more powerful

1406
01:14:34,520 --> 01:14:36,720
Speaker 1: than the one that destroyed Hiroshima, and you're going to

1407
01:14:36,800 --> 01:14:38,080
Speaker 1: witness it, and you're going to go through it with

1408
01:14:38,120 --> 01:14:40,400
Speaker 1: the main characters, and it's not going to be pretty.

1409
01:14:40,439 --> 01:14:42,240
Speaker 1: It might be a hard film to watch. In fact,

1410
01:14:42,240 --> 01:14:44,519
Speaker 1: it might be my least successful film. But I just

1411
01:14:44,560 --> 01:14:48,439
Speaker 1: feel that's that thing of duty. You know, You're all

1412
01:14:48,439 --> 01:14:53,000
Speaker 1: about purpose. We define our own purpose, you know, we

1413
01:14:53,280 --> 01:14:56,160
Speaker 1: choose purpose for ourselves, and it doesn't all have to

1414
01:14:56,200 --> 01:15:00,920
Speaker 1: be you know, obviously benevolent, like you know, maybe helping

1415
01:15:00,920 --> 01:15:05,000
Speaker 1: out a soup kitchen and easing the pain of others.

1416
01:15:05,560 --> 01:15:07,640
Speaker 1: It might be something that's more of a warning that

1417
01:15:07,760 --> 01:15:12,120
Speaker 1: helps helps guide us away from the rocks of destruction

1418
01:15:12,320 --> 01:15:15,840
Speaker 1: of civilization. As an artist, I think it's important to

1419
01:15:15,840 --> 01:15:19,799
Speaker 1: consider these things, you know, and not feel powerless, because

1420
01:15:20,040 --> 01:15:22,680
Speaker 1: it's easy in a world of eight billion people to

1421
01:15:22,720 --> 01:15:25,720
Speaker 1: feel powerless, and yet empirically I can look at it. Oh,

1422
01:15:25,760 --> 01:15:28,200
Speaker 1: I'm reaching millions of people. I'm reaching hundreds of millions

1423
01:15:28,240 --> 01:15:31,360
Speaker 1: of people with a movie like Avatar. You know, maybe

1424
01:15:31,920 --> 01:15:33,880
Speaker 1: I won't reach as many people with a movie like

1425
01:15:34,040 --> 01:15:37,280
Speaker 1: Ghosts of Hiroshima, but I'll reach some, you know, And

1426
01:15:37,320 --> 01:15:39,880
Speaker 1: you never know, you know, you never know that the

1427
01:15:40,000 --> 01:15:42,880
Speaker 1: causal chain that puts a person out a moment where

1428
01:15:42,920 --> 01:15:44,960
Speaker 1: they've been influenced by something.

1429
01:15:45,080 --> 01:15:46,760
Speaker 2: But you have it even in fire and Ash. I

1430
01:15:46,800 --> 01:15:49,519
Speaker 2: mean that that scene that you are referencing without giving

1431
01:15:49,560 --> 01:15:53,040
Speaker 2: too much away of quarriage actually arming, you know, and

1432
01:15:53,240 --> 01:15:55,520
Speaker 2: all of a sudden you see the becoming of terrorists,

1433
01:15:55,560 --> 01:15:58,120
Speaker 2: like that idea of the government. You know, all these

1434
01:15:58,120 --> 01:16:01,360
Speaker 2: messages are just I feel like there are so many

1435
01:16:01,400 --> 01:16:04,599
Speaker 2: deep layers to the movie. You could keep going. Whether

1436
01:16:04,640 --> 01:16:09,960
Speaker 2: it's family, whether it's racism, whether it's equality, whether it's equity,

1437
01:16:10,000 --> 01:16:11,840
Speaker 2: whether it's you know, whether it goes down all the

1438
01:16:11,840 --> 01:16:15,400
Speaker 2: way through to the governmental politics that we're seeing today.

1439
01:16:15,400 --> 01:16:20,280
Speaker 2: I mean, the movie is filled with so many powerful messages.

1440
01:16:19,960 --> 01:16:22,240
Speaker 1: And just seeing each other, you know it all Ultimately

1441
01:16:22,320 --> 01:16:25,240
Speaker 1: it all goes back to connection. Had the route, yeah,

1442
01:16:25,320 --> 01:16:28,240
Speaker 1: I think so. You know, there are two moments in

1443
01:16:28,280 --> 01:16:30,120
Speaker 1: the film where people say they see each other and

1444
01:16:30,160 --> 01:16:32,839
Speaker 1: they understand each other, and one gives you this feeling

1445
01:16:32,880 --> 01:16:37,360
Speaker 1: of vast dread, when when varrogs she sees Quora and

1446
01:16:37,439 --> 01:16:42,200
Speaker 1: she sees this vision of destruction and for herself, you know,

1447
01:16:42,760 --> 01:16:49,320
Speaker 1: she's she's like, you know Collie, yes, right, And then

1448
01:16:49,520 --> 01:16:55,000
Speaker 1: when the TV sees Spider, you know, finally, and there's

1449
01:16:55,080 --> 01:16:58,080
Speaker 1: a bridge across the two species across that divide across

1450
01:16:58,120 --> 01:17:00,519
Speaker 1: that because she becomes quite a racist in the film,

1451
01:17:00,560 --> 01:17:04,000
Speaker 1: and that's by design. It's like, we take our most

1452
01:17:04,080 --> 01:17:07,479
Speaker 1: beloved character and we challenge you to really walk in

1453
01:17:07,520 --> 01:17:10,639
Speaker 1: her shoes and go the hard yards of what loss

1454
01:17:10,640 --> 01:17:13,400
Speaker 1: and grief can do. And I think about all these

1455
01:17:13,439 --> 01:17:15,759
Speaker 1: people and everything that they've lost in the world, whether

1456
01:17:15,800 --> 01:17:18,920
Speaker 1: it's in Gaza or Sudan or Ukraine or wherever, and

1457
01:17:19,120 --> 01:17:22,160
Speaker 1: how does that not generate just a hatred that will

1458
01:17:22,200 --> 01:17:26,240
Speaker 1: span generations. Well, that's the cycle that we have to break, right,

1459
01:17:26,720 --> 01:17:30,080
Speaker 1: you know. La says something at the beginning, and it's

1460
01:17:30,160 --> 01:17:32,400
Speaker 1: kind of like a little cheeky to actually say your

1461
01:17:32,439 --> 01:17:35,040
Speaker 1: theme out loud, you know, and the voice over here,

1462
01:17:35,080 --> 01:17:38,120
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you what the movie's about, okay,

1463
01:17:38,200 --> 01:17:40,599
Speaker 1: you know, And he says that the fire of ash leaves,

1464
01:17:41,040 --> 01:17:43,880
Speaker 1: the fire of hate leaves only the ash of grief,

1465
01:17:44,400 --> 01:17:47,479
Speaker 1: but he doesn't complete it, which is from that ash

1466
01:17:47,520 --> 01:17:50,360
Speaker 1: of grief comes that fire of hate again, and the

1467
01:17:50,400 --> 01:17:54,040
Speaker 1: cycle perpetuates indefinitely. So how do you break it?

1468
01:17:54,520 --> 01:17:54,680
Speaker 2: Right?

1469
01:17:55,080 --> 01:17:57,759
Speaker 1: That's the challenge I think that's presented in the movie,

1470
01:17:58,080 --> 01:17:59,840
Speaker 1: you know, how do you break it? And how do

1471
01:17:59,880 --> 01:18:03,960
Speaker 1: you know when it's not about about hatred and revenge

1472
01:18:04,000 --> 01:18:08,920
Speaker 1: and when you fight defensively for the things that you value,

1473
01:18:09,080 --> 01:18:12,080
Speaker 1: you know, as opposed to offensively going out after somebody

1474
01:18:12,360 --> 01:18:15,680
Speaker 1: to punish them for revenge, to take what's theirs, you know,

1475
01:18:16,760 --> 01:18:18,960
Speaker 1: and you see all of that happening in the world

1476
01:18:19,000 --> 01:18:22,760
Speaker 1: right now, all over the place, and you know, you

1477
01:18:22,880 --> 01:18:25,080
Speaker 1: wonder this is I'm going to circle us back to

1478
01:18:25,120 --> 01:18:28,200
Speaker 1: AI for a second. The thing that will the thing

1479
01:18:28,240 --> 01:18:34,080
Speaker 1: that the proponents of artificial superintelligence always says, well, well,

1480
01:18:34,360 --> 01:18:38,559
Speaker 1: we'll manage the alignment problem, will align AI to our

1481
01:18:39,160 --> 01:18:42,040
Speaker 1: common good as human beings. But we can't agree on

1482
01:18:42,080 --> 01:18:44,599
Speaker 1: a damn thing. We can't agree on what's right and wrong,

1483
01:18:44,840 --> 01:18:48,320
Speaker 1: what's ethical, what's moral? You know, A Republican's idea of

1484
01:18:48,360 --> 01:18:52,080
Speaker 1: that is very different from a Democrats, a Muslim, a Christian,

1485
01:18:52,360 --> 01:18:56,880
Speaker 1: a Hindu, you know, a Shintoist, whatever it is. Everybody's

1486
01:18:56,920 --> 01:18:59,599
Speaker 1: got a different opinion. And we can't agree on anything.

1487
01:18:59,640 --> 01:19:01,839
Speaker 1: So how are we going to suddenly form this wonderful

1488
01:19:02,400 --> 01:19:05,679
Speaker 1: moral consensus so we can teach it to something smarter

1489
01:19:05,960 --> 01:19:10,439
Speaker 1: than us that we can't control. I mean, if that's

1490
01:19:10,479 --> 01:19:14,559
Speaker 1: not the biggest recipe for disaster I've ever heard in

1491
01:19:14,560 --> 01:19:15,439
Speaker 1: my life, what is?

1492
01:19:16,240 --> 01:19:16,439
Speaker 2: You know?

1493
01:19:17,000 --> 01:19:19,200
Speaker 1: Now? I am a science fiction fan, and it always

1494
01:19:19,240 --> 01:19:23,280
Speaker 1: goes into the darkest possible, you know, scenario, because that's

1495
01:19:23,320 --> 01:19:25,880
Speaker 1: where science fiction goes because it's meant to be a

1496
01:19:25,920 --> 01:19:31,360
Speaker 1: warning to us about possible futures. But okay, I when

1497
01:19:31,360 --> 01:19:34,400
Speaker 1: we're living in a science fiction world right now, you know,

1498
01:19:35,080 --> 01:19:37,320
Speaker 1: so I look, I look at you, I look into

1499
01:19:37,400 --> 01:19:41,040
Speaker 1: your eyes. I see your kind of soulfulness and your

1500
01:19:41,120 --> 01:19:43,400
Speaker 1: enlightenment and what all the things that you do and

1501
01:19:43,439 --> 01:19:44,960
Speaker 1: why you do it. And I think, all right, that's

1502
01:19:44,960 --> 01:19:47,639
Speaker 1: why we're going to make it. Because there are people

1503
01:19:47,640 --> 01:19:52,200
Speaker 1: who are practitioners of empathy and connection and they're out

1504
01:19:52,200 --> 01:19:55,360
Speaker 1: there and they are legion. They just don't ever seem

1505
01:19:55,400 --> 01:19:58,640
Speaker 1: to get into positions of power and and and you

1506
01:19:58,720 --> 01:20:02,240
Speaker 1: know where really makes a big makes a big difference.

1507
01:20:02,280 --> 01:20:05,040
Speaker 1: It just seems like all the wrong people elevate. I

1508
01:20:05,040 --> 01:20:06,800
Speaker 1: don't know how you feel about that, And I don't

1509
01:20:06,880 --> 01:20:08,559
Speaker 1: know if that keeps you up at night.

1510
01:20:09,200 --> 01:20:12,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I think that's partly why I try and

1511
01:20:12,200 --> 01:20:14,840
Speaker 2: do what I do, because I think I saw that

1512
01:20:14,920 --> 01:20:17,599
Speaker 2: for a long time. And of course, what I love

1513
01:20:17,600 --> 01:20:19,479
Speaker 2: about the way you build character, which is true of

1514
01:20:19,520 --> 01:20:22,559
Speaker 2: me or anyone, is that no one's perfect. Everyone's flawed

1515
01:20:22,600 --> 01:20:25,840
Speaker 2: and has multiple You know, when you look at all

1516
01:20:25,840 --> 01:20:28,080
Speaker 2: of the characters in Fire and Ash, like, they're not

1517
01:20:28,200 --> 01:20:30,800
Speaker 2: just good and bad like that would be, and hence

1518
01:20:30,840 --> 01:20:32,799
Speaker 2: hence the scene we were just talking about with Spider

1519
01:20:32,880 --> 01:20:36,320
Speaker 2: like that moment is so I mean, I can't believe

1520
01:20:36,360 --> 01:20:38,160
Speaker 2: you went there. I was like, wow, this is like

1521
01:20:38,960 --> 01:20:42,880
Speaker 2: really testing, you know, everything that I believe to be

1522
01:20:42,920 --> 01:20:44,920
Speaker 2: true about this family, and I'm not giving it away

1523
01:20:44,960 --> 01:20:49,280
Speaker 2: hence speaking in broad terms, but so to be really clear,

1524
01:20:49,360 --> 01:20:51,479
Speaker 2: there's no one who's perfect or flawless or you know,

1525
01:20:51,520 --> 01:20:54,080
Speaker 2: and of course I have all of those challenges myself,

1526
01:20:54,160 --> 01:20:57,160
Speaker 2: but I find that what I try and do by

1527
01:20:57,200 --> 01:21:00,240
Speaker 2: having this platform and by having these types of conversation

1528
01:21:01,040 --> 01:21:04,880
Speaker 2: with people like yourself and allow for these we've like

1529
01:21:04,960 --> 01:21:07,000
Speaker 2: my vision, and I think you'll relate to this based

1530
01:21:07,040 --> 01:21:09,280
Speaker 2: on what you were saying. I love the Bell curve too.

1531
01:21:09,720 --> 01:21:12,240
Speaker 2: So when I started this, my vision was to make

1532
01:21:12,280 --> 01:21:15,120
Speaker 2: Wisdom go viral. I said, I wanted to find a

1533
01:21:15,160 --> 01:21:18,800
Speaker 2: way that hundreds of millions or billions of people would

1534
01:21:18,840 --> 01:21:22,800
Speaker 2: engage with themes yes that were at one point saved.

1535
01:21:22,479 --> 01:21:25,439
Speaker 1: For the elite or yeah, yeah, right right.

1536
01:21:25,320 --> 01:21:28,040
Speaker 2: And we do that. We do seven hundred and fifty

1537
01:21:28,120 --> 01:21:32,360
Speaker 2: million views a month about conversations like this is proof

1538
01:21:32,479 --> 01:21:37,400
Speaker 2: to me that people want this, and so I think

1539
01:21:37,439 --> 01:21:39,599
Speaker 2: we may, I agree with you. I don't think we'll

1540
01:21:39,600 --> 01:21:44,240
Speaker 2: do it through the traditional means. But art and creativity

1541
01:21:44,280 --> 01:21:46,960
Speaker 2: and now the microphone belongs to everyone. There is an

1542
01:21:46,960 --> 01:21:51,040
Speaker 2: opportunity to galvanize community and connect to these higher point.

1543
01:21:51,080 --> 01:21:53,439
Speaker 1: We have to do what we can do. Our voice

1544
01:21:53,479 --> 01:21:56,320
Speaker 1: may carry not very far, or it may ripple outward

1545
01:21:56,400 --> 01:21:58,760
Speaker 1: very very far. We have to do what we can do.

1546
01:21:59,360 --> 01:22:02,160
Speaker 1: And from me, what drives me is being a parent,

1547
01:22:02,560 --> 01:22:06,240
Speaker 1: you know, and knowing that there's there's a legacy that's

1548
01:22:06,280 --> 01:22:11,000
Speaker 1: being handed to my kids by my generation, and I

1549
01:22:11,160 --> 01:22:13,280
Speaker 1: just want it to be the best that it can be.

1550
01:22:13,320 --> 01:22:15,600
Speaker 1: It's not gonna be perfect, it's not even might not

1551
01:22:15,640 --> 01:22:19,240
Speaker 1: even be that great, but everything that people like yourself

1552
01:22:19,320 --> 01:22:24,120
Speaker 1: and hopefully I do can improve it incrementally, you know.

1553
01:22:26,640 --> 01:22:29,120
Speaker 1: And so anyway, you just you just keep banging away

1554
01:22:29,120 --> 01:22:29,639
Speaker 1: at it, right.

1555
01:22:29,920 --> 01:22:31,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, I think I think the stories you tell

1556
01:22:32,920 --> 01:22:36,760
Speaker 2: do that in the most profound way. And I think

1557
01:22:36,800 --> 01:22:41,720
Speaker 2: I do think that art transcends so many things in

1558
01:22:41,720 --> 01:22:44,160
Speaker 2: the world, as you said, And anyone can sit in

1559
01:22:44,200 --> 01:22:49,240
Speaker 2: that room, forget their designation or their seat or their

1560
01:22:49,680 --> 01:22:54,439
Speaker 2: status and watch a movie about humanity and connection.

1561
01:22:54,720 --> 01:22:58,080
Speaker 1: But well, you're using the term connection, and I think

1562
01:22:58,080 --> 01:23:01,720
Speaker 1: of that as an extension of our impulse to empathy.

1563
01:23:02,120 --> 01:23:05,680
Speaker 1: We have a natural human impulse toward empathy. I think

1564
01:23:05,680 --> 01:23:07,639
Speaker 1: we all have it unless you're a psychopath, and that's

1565
01:23:07,920 --> 01:23:10,160
Speaker 1: one percent of the population, So ninety nine percent of

1566
01:23:10,240 --> 01:23:13,280
Speaker 1: the population has an impulse toward empathy. I think where

1567
01:23:13,320 --> 01:23:18,400
Speaker 1: empathy goes awry is that it's narrow and powerful as

1568
01:23:18,400 --> 01:23:23,679
Speaker 1: opposed to more diffuse. Right, So when we have an

1569
01:23:23,760 --> 01:23:28,679
Speaker 1: empathy for our family, for our children, for friends, then

1570
01:23:28,840 --> 01:23:32,200
Speaker 1: everybody else starts to look like an enemy. And I

1571
01:23:32,240 --> 01:23:36,040
Speaker 1: think it's that narrow spotlight of empathy word breaks down.

1572
01:23:36,200 --> 01:23:37,880
Speaker 1: On the other hand, we can hear a story about

1573
01:23:37,880 --> 01:23:40,000
Speaker 1: somebody in another state or another country, and all of

1574
01:23:40,040 --> 01:23:44,160
Speaker 1: a sudden, we're weeping for that person because our mirroron

1575
01:23:44,560 --> 01:23:48,360
Speaker 1: allows us to feel their pain. Right, But we can't

1576
01:23:48,520 --> 01:23:51,840
Speaker 1: feel the pain of the world. But we have to.

1577
01:23:52,240 --> 01:23:54,200
Speaker 1: We have to we have to be able to expand it,

1578
01:23:54,520 --> 01:23:57,120
Speaker 1: not where it crushes us, but to where we don't

1579
01:23:57,160 --> 01:24:02,559
Speaker 1: see the other as an enemy, but somebody who's maybe

1580
01:24:02,600 --> 01:24:06,920
Speaker 1: an equal victim with us of you know, a kind

1581
01:24:06,960 --> 01:24:12,200
Speaker 1: of a world that can go against you, and you know,

1582
01:24:12,280 --> 01:24:15,200
Speaker 1: medically and any any kind of moment. You know, things

1583
01:24:15,240 --> 01:24:17,479
Speaker 1: can go against you, and there are people that are

1584
01:24:17,520 --> 01:24:21,240
Speaker 1: less fortunate, people that are more fortunate. But never people

1585
01:24:21,280 --> 01:24:23,599
Speaker 1: never feel like they have enough. That's the problem. They

1586
01:24:23,760 --> 01:24:26,679
Speaker 1: never It's not that they're greedy, it's that they never

1587
01:24:26,720 --> 01:24:30,919
Speaker 1: have enough to feel completely secure and safe for their family.

1588
01:24:31,520 --> 01:24:33,000
Speaker 1: So there's a certain point where you have to be

1589
01:24:33,040 --> 01:24:35,720
Speaker 1: willing to risk your own family and risk your own

1590
01:24:35,760 --> 01:24:39,320
Speaker 1: comfort for the good of a greater group. And that's

1591
01:24:39,360 --> 01:24:41,800
Speaker 1: a very very hard place for most people to go,

1592
01:24:42,680 --> 01:24:45,000
Speaker 1: you know. But there's an image that I always wanted

1593
01:24:45,000 --> 01:24:47,519
Speaker 1: in one of the Avatar movies, which is seeing that

1594
01:24:47,600 --> 01:24:53,799
Speaker 1: world from orbit at night where you see everything connected.

1595
01:24:54,160 --> 01:24:58,240
Speaker 1: You know, that those little glowing you know, you basically

1596
01:24:58,240 --> 01:25:00,639
Speaker 1: see the mind or the heart of a of that

1597
01:25:00,720 --> 01:25:03,519
Speaker 1: connected connectedness. And so I managed to squeeze it in.

1598
01:25:03,960 --> 01:25:06,479
Speaker 1: I managed to squeeze it into this this film, and

1599
01:25:06,520 --> 01:25:09,920
Speaker 1: hopefully people will resonate, you know, for what it what

1600
01:25:09,960 --> 01:25:11,960
Speaker 1: it means, what it's meant to me in any way.

1601
01:25:12,439 --> 01:25:14,880
Speaker 2: James, I have a warning from your team is you

1602
01:25:14,880 --> 01:25:18,120
Speaker 2: have to get whoop. I want to end with a

1603
01:25:18,400 --> 01:25:21,040
Speaker 2: final five that we do with every guest. I could

1604
01:25:21,040 --> 01:25:22,240
Speaker 2: talk to you for hours and I hope we do

1605
01:25:22,320 --> 01:25:24,920
Speaker 2: get to talk more offline, but we end every interviewed

1606
01:25:24,960 --> 01:25:27,040
Speaker 2: these final five. They have to be answered in one

1607
01:25:27,080 --> 01:25:30,519
Speaker 2: word to one sentence maximum. Okay, So James Cameron, we.

1608
01:25:30,520 --> 01:25:35,920
Speaker 1: Can do a six paragraph.

1609
01:25:33,720 --> 01:25:36,599
Speaker 2: Okay, So we asked these every guests, James Cameron, these

1610
01:25:36,600 --> 01:25:39,040
Speaker 2: are your final five. Question one, what is the best

1611
01:25:39,080 --> 01:25:40,679
Speaker 2: advice you've ever heard or received?

1612
01:25:41,439 --> 01:25:46,360
Speaker 1: I had a teacher that said you have unlimited potential,

1613
01:25:49,080 --> 01:25:52,559
Speaker 1: and he meant it and it changed a lot for me.

1614
01:25:54,160 --> 01:25:57,160
Speaker 2: It's a great answer. Yeah. Question number two, what is

1615
01:25:57,200 --> 01:25:59,160
Speaker 2: the worst advice you've ever heard her receive?

1616
01:26:03,720 --> 01:26:06,559
Speaker 1: Roger Corman told me to always sit down on set?

1617
01:26:08,479 --> 01:26:09,799
Speaker 2: Do you stand up the lies?

1618
01:26:10,040 --> 01:26:10,960
Speaker 1: I never sit down.

1619
01:26:12,439 --> 01:26:16,920
Speaker 2: That's a great answer. Question number three, what's the hardest

1620
01:26:16,920 --> 01:26:20,560
Speaker 2: thing you've learned about yourself that shaped your art?

1621
01:26:20,960 --> 01:26:24,680
Speaker 1: The movie is not more important than the process of

1622
01:26:24,760 --> 01:26:29,439
Speaker 1: working with people to make the movie? Wow, that took

1623
01:26:29,520 --> 01:26:32,120
Speaker 1: forty years. No, maybe thirty.

1624
01:26:33,840 --> 01:26:38,599
Speaker 2: The people are more important. Yeah, well it's beautiful. Question

1625
01:26:38,680 --> 01:26:43,040
Speaker 2: number four, tell us the real reason why Jack couldn't

1626
01:26:43,040 --> 01:26:43,760
Speaker 2: fit on the door?

1627
01:26:43,920 --> 01:26:52,200
Speaker 1: Yeah? You went there. Okay, there's some interviews over because

1628
01:26:52,240 --> 01:26:55,320
Speaker 1: his chivalry demanded it.

1629
01:26:55,320 --> 01:26:56,280
Speaker 2: It's a great answer.

1630
01:26:57,280 --> 01:26:59,920
Speaker 1: He loved her, and he would not take a chance

1631
01:27:00,080 --> 01:27:02,920
Speaker 1: that they could both survive if they could both die.

1632
01:27:04,000 --> 01:27:04,960
Speaker 2: That's a great answer.

1633
01:27:05,439 --> 01:27:08,519
Speaker 1: Yeah, by the way, Romeo and Juliet had to die.

1634
01:27:08,960 --> 01:27:12,639
Speaker 2: But they sacrifice duty in your scenes.

1635
01:27:12,880 --> 01:27:17,759
Speaker 1: Just their self love, death, sacrifice, duty, they're all related,

1636
01:27:17,960 --> 01:27:20,519
Speaker 1: and they're all thematic in all of my films.

1637
01:27:21,040 --> 01:27:21,920
Speaker 2: Why do you think that is?

1638
01:27:23,240 --> 01:27:23,680
Speaker 1: I don't know.

1639
01:27:24,360 --> 01:27:26,360
Speaker 2: You're still discovering that, still curious about that?

1640
01:27:26,880 --> 01:27:29,400
Speaker 1: Where from can I speak in longer?

1641
01:27:29,760 --> 01:27:30,960
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, that's a big question.

1642
01:27:31,160 --> 01:27:34,799
Speaker 1: I don't know, because these are things that I'm finding

1643
01:27:34,880 --> 01:27:37,800
Speaker 1: later in life I actually am confronting and having to

1644
01:27:37,840 --> 01:27:40,840
Speaker 1: deal with. But in early life they just made sense

1645
01:27:40,880 --> 01:27:44,840
Speaker 1: to me. You know, I always say all my movies

1646
01:27:44,840 --> 01:27:48,000
Speaker 1: are love stories, but they're not necessarily conventional love stories.

1647
01:27:48,800 --> 01:27:51,479
Speaker 1: Duty and sacrifice are things that I don't even know

1648
01:27:51,479 --> 01:27:54,120
Speaker 1: if it's enculturated. It might even be just biological, it

1649
01:27:54,200 --> 01:27:56,960
Speaker 1: might just be innate, I don't know, or some combination.

1650
01:27:57,640 --> 01:28:02,160
Speaker 1: I think Canadians in general tend to be less selfish,

1651
01:28:02,280 --> 01:28:05,840
Speaker 1: but you know, you can't generalize about an entire population,

1652
01:28:06,240 --> 01:28:08,120
Speaker 1: and there were some real assholes in the town I

1653
01:28:08,160 --> 01:28:12,400
Speaker 1: grew up in, so you know, I don't know where

1654
01:28:12,479 --> 01:28:15,880
Speaker 1: that comes from. But it's a belief system, definitely a

1655
01:28:15,880 --> 01:28:16,639
Speaker 1: belief system.

1656
01:28:17,160 --> 01:28:19,080
Speaker 2: I'm glad I asked you that question now because we've

1657
01:28:19,080 --> 01:28:22,679
Speaker 2: got to get an answer that just Yeah, show shares

1658
01:28:22,720 --> 01:28:24,960
Speaker 2: so much more of your heart and where it comes from.

1659
01:28:25,360 --> 01:28:27,479
Speaker 2: Fifth and final question. We asked this to every guest

1660
01:28:27,600 --> 01:28:30,120
Speaker 2: who's ever been on the show. If you could create

1661
01:28:30,160 --> 01:28:32,880
Speaker 2: one law that everyone in the world had to follow,

1662
01:28:33,200 --> 01:28:34,120
Speaker 2: what would it be.

1663
01:28:37,360 --> 01:28:48,599
Speaker 1: A law? Wow, legislative morality. That's a hard thing. See

1664
01:28:48,640 --> 01:28:51,479
Speaker 1: the person in front of you. I don't know how

1665
01:28:51,520 --> 01:28:55,360
Speaker 1: you enforced that. Just see them.

1666
01:28:55,520 --> 01:28:56,639
Speaker 2: What does it mean to see?

1667
01:28:57,720 --> 01:29:01,360
Speaker 1: See who they are? See see who they are on

1668
01:29:01,400 --> 01:29:02,040
Speaker 1: the inside?

1669
01:29:03,479 --> 01:29:03,720
Speaker 2: You know?

1670
01:29:04,920 --> 01:29:09,760
Speaker 1: In the Avatary universe, I see you can mean I

1671
01:29:09,880 --> 01:29:12,519
Speaker 1: understand you. It can means very simply, I see you,

1672
01:29:12,520 --> 01:29:16,000
Speaker 1: you're here. Hello, It's like hello. It can be I

1673
01:29:16,040 --> 01:29:20,080
Speaker 1: see something about you I never saw before. I understand you.

1674
01:29:20,360 --> 01:29:24,240
Speaker 1: It can mean I love you, meaning that fullness of

1675
01:29:24,360 --> 01:29:28,960
Speaker 1: understanding another person. That goes to a higher level. It's

1676
01:29:28,960 --> 01:29:32,519
Speaker 1: got many layers of meaning. In Navi Lord, It's it's

1677
01:29:32,640 --> 01:29:36,479
Speaker 1: very deceptively simple, you know, but it goes back to

1678
01:29:36,520 --> 01:29:39,080
Speaker 1: that empathy, then goes back to the mirror neuron. It

1679
01:29:39,120 --> 01:29:43,639
Speaker 1: goes back to projecting yourself into their situation. I also

1680
01:29:43,680 --> 01:29:46,400
Speaker 1: find that there's a little thing I do where it

1681
01:29:46,439 --> 01:29:48,840
Speaker 1: doesn't matter where I am, especially if I'm in a

1682
01:29:48,920 --> 01:29:51,840
Speaker 1: car or I'm just meeting some driver that's driving me

1683
01:29:51,880 --> 01:29:53,479
Speaker 1: from the airport, or I'm on the street, or I'm

1684
01:29:53,560 --> 01:29:58,080
Speaker 1: killing time someplace. I start talking to people and I

1685
01:29:58,120 --> 01:30:03,360
Speaker 1: want to hear their story. People that the average person

1686
01:30:03,400 --> 01:30:05,439
Speaker 1: would think that a person like me would never talk to,

1687
01:30:05,920 --> 01:30:10,600
Speaker 1: you know, the janitor, the guy selling the truro, the

1688
01:30:10,680 --> 01:30:12,720
Speaker 1: you know, I just want to talk to them. And

1689
01:30:12,800 --> 01:30:15,720
Speaker 1: maybe it's a writer's instinct, you know, to want to

1690
01:30:15,760 --> 01:30:21,320
Speaker 1: hear stories because I think everybody is a universe, and

1691
01:30:21,640 --> 01:30:24,000
Speaker 1: you know, that sort of Trump idea that they're all

1692
01:30:24,000 --> 01:30:27,000
Speaker 1: a bunch of losers and they're not worth worth anything

1693
01:30:27,400 --> 01:30:31,519
Speaker 1: drives me insane, you know, because it's not about social

1694
01:30:31,560 --> 01:30:34,600
Speaker 1: standing or status, or having a PhD, or or the

1695
01:30:34,720 --> 01:30:38,439
Speaker 1: argument from authority. Oh his argument, may you know, his

1696
01:30:38,520 --> 01:30:41,000
Speaker 1: opinion is more important than that person.

1697
01:30:41,720 --> 01:30:41,960
Speaker 2: You know.

1698
01:30:42,040 --> 01:30:44,519
Speaker 1: I just want to hear everybody's stories. Find them all

1699
01:30:44,560 --> 01:30:48,240
Speaker 1: fascinating because we all are on this unique path and

1700
01:30:48,280 --> 01:30:51,479
Speaker 1: we're all Our camera is viewing the world from a

1701
01:30:51,560 --> 01:30:52,400
Speaker 1: unique position.

1702
01:30:53,600 --> 01:30:57,800
Speaker 2: I felt that most in watching Sully encourages relationship through

1703
01:30:57,800 --> 01:31:02,120
Speaker 2: fire and ash. There's a lot of each other in

1704
01:31:02,200 --> 01:31:05,400
Speaker 2: different moments, which in moments you don't expect it.

1705
01:31:05,640 --> 01:31:11,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the story definitely teases to a potential, you know.

1706
01:31:11,920 --> 01:31:16,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, we can't give over. Well, I can't wait to

1707
01:31:16,200 --> 01:31:17,760
Speaker 2: watch it again. I'm gonna take my family when I

1708
01:31:17,760 --> 01:31:20,360
Speaker 2: get back to lending for Christmas. I'm okay, So, James,

1709
01:31:20,400 --> 01:31:22,920
Speaker 2: I hope we do see four and five half then.

1710
01:31:22,920 --> 01:31:23,960
Speaker 2: I can't wait to watch them.

1711
01:31:24,000 --> 01:31:25,880
Speaker 1: We'll see, We'll see that.

1712
01:31:26,280 --> 01:31:29,000
Speaker 2: Such a pleasure sitting with you. Thank you for your energy,

1713
01:31:29,080 --> 01:31:32,880
Speaker 2: your presence, your connection with me today and I hope

1714
01:31:32,920 --> 01:31:34,360
Speaker 2: for many more. So thank you so much.

1715
01:31:34,439 --> 01:31:39,080
Speaker 1: Well, Thanks, thanks Jay, really really a wonderful interview, you know,

1716
01:31:39,200 --> 01:31:42,000
Speaker 1: and I'm glad we got to go to important, meaningful

1717
01:31:42,000 --> 01:31:44,639
Speaker 1: things instead of all the stupid stuff I normally get asked.

1718
01:31:45,400 --> 01:31:48,960
Speaker 1: I only asked you what you did you you definitely

1719
01:31:48,960 --> 01:31:51,160
Speaker 1: went there on that one. But you know what, at

1720
01:31:51,160 --> 01:31:54,479
Speaker 1: this point, it's like there are worse problems that have

1721
01:31:54,680 --> 01:31:57,519
Speaker 1: than people still arguing about the demise of a character

1722
01:31:57,560 --> 01:32:01,040
Speaker 1: from twenty eight years ago. You know, as a filmmaker.

1723
01:32:01,080 --> 01:32:03,840
Speaker 1: It's kind of like, great, thank you, thank you for that.

1724
01:32:04,800 --> 01:32:07,519
Speaker 2: Thank you. If you love this episode, I need you

1725
01:32:07,600 --> 01:32:10,840
Speaker 2: to listen to one of my favorite conversations ever. It's

1726
01:32:10,880 --> 01:32:13,680
Speaker 2: with the one and only Tom Holland on how to

1727
01:32:13,800 --> 01:32:18,200
Speaker 2: overcome your social anxiety, especially in situations where you're not

1728
01:32:18,360 --> 01:32:22,240
Speaker 2: drinking and everyone else is. We talk about his sobriety

1729
01:32:22,320 --> 01:32:25,800
Speaker 2: journey and so much more. He gets really personal. I

1730
01:32:25,840 --> 01:32:27,519
Speaker 2: can't wait for you to hear it. It's going to

1731
01:32:27,560 --> 01:32:30,040
Speaker 2: blow your mind. The quote is, if you have a

1732
01:32:30,040 --> 01:32:32,080
Speaker 2: problem with me, text me. And if you don't have

1733
01:32:32,160 --> 01:32:34,120
Speaker 2: my number, you don't know me well enough to have

1734
01:32:34,120 --> 01:32:34,800
Speaker 2: a problem with me.