Speaker 1: Now really, now, hello again everybody, I am Jason Owens
Speaker 1: and I'm still Peter Children. Still you want to stay
Speaker 1: with it? Anyway? I really know? Really, today is what
Speaker 1: is it? Imagine this is your situation. Now you get
Speaker 1: asked to spend what's probably going to be ten years
Speaker 1: of your life to work on several sequels of a
Speaker 1: movie really that was made twelve years ago, and to
Speaker 1: break even it has to make two billion dollars in
Speaker 1: the theaters. Really, no, really, if someone comes to you
Speaker 1: with that proposition, you got you know what, I got
Speaker 1: other things on my plate. I got things to do.
Speaker 1: You know what I say, I got another franchise. I
Speaker 1: don't need you say. What do you say? They're betting
Speaker 1: against James Cammeron really really discard did an alien? He
Speaker 1: did a Terminator? Sure, he did the first Avatar, which
Speaker 1: made a good zillion dollars. Who bets against this guy?
Speaker 1: Either he the genius of the century or we finally
Speaker 1: see a guy who is able to make a deal
Speaker 1: with the devil because nobody has those percentage were both
Speaker 1: so we're both so I'm in So today we are
Speaker 1: joined by a man we both know that's the lovely
Speaker 1: guy who this, this couple along with his wife, who
Speaker 1: is smart enough to not appear on our podcast smart
Speaker 1: and he's either fifty percent of a couple, half of
Speaker 1: a couple, or one eighth. We don't I think. I
Speaker 1: think Rick does the typing, but I mean she dictates
Speaker 1: paces and Rick gos yes, way, hello, slow it down
Speaker 1: till one of the co writers of Avatar two three, four, eight, five, seven, six, seven,
Speaker 1: nine and eleven, and let me just say yeah to
Speaker 1: say Avatar the Way of the Order has overtaken. Titanic
Speaker 1: is the third highest grossing movie of all times. An
Speaker 1: amazing thing about this is to write a movie that's
Speaker 1: global in this way. In China it did two hundred
Speaker 1: and forty two million dollars, in Germany one hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty five million. But the thing that's the most fascinating, yeah,
Speaker 1: is it is the highest grossing film of all time
Speaker 1: in France, Germany, Australia, Bulgaria. This is the number one
Speaker 1: movie Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal, Slovenia. Surest places that don't
Speaker 1: have water, Slovakia, well, they don't have movies either, so
Speaker 1: it's high um Cambodia, Mongolia. The last thing they saw
Speaker 1: highest grossing film in Mongolia. I would not have seen
Speaker 1: in the movie before the music New Zealand, Colombia and
Speaker 1: Puerto Rico. Mister Rick Java is here with us. Congratulations.
Speaker 1: Did you know all of those stats, by the way,
Speaker 1: that the movie was that big in like Slovakia and
Speaker 1: did you get the grosser like, yeah, the only man
Speaker 1: on the planet, I know Slovakians. So you sitting in
Speaker 1: the writers room, you go, oh, this kills and sis
Speaker 1: joke killing Slovaskia. They definitely kill there. Wow, congratulations. I
Speaker 1: didn't know those stats though I know this. I know
Speaker 1: that the Ukrainian distributor called John John Landau to say
Speaker 1: that it was going to be the highest grossing film
Speaker 1: of all time and you crane and evidently he was
Speaker 1: saying that the people really need it. When the lights
Speaker 1: come back on, you know, in electricity comes back on,
Speaker 1: people who are going to the theater to see the movie.
Speaker 1: So you're saying, even through the war, they are still
Speaker 1: getting access to that film and people are coming out
Speaker 1: and seeing it in numbers. That's what I've been telling
Speaker 1: that is spec Yeah, that's amazing. Congratulations and thank you.
Speaker 1: So I everybody have to be with you, I'll never
Speaker 1: forget this, because you know I'm prepping. I read a
Speaker 1: lot about this stuff. And he said that Cameron gave
Speaker 1: the co writers. He started with a thousand page, single
Speaker 1: spaced document and it got it down to eight hundred.
Speaker 1: And we were talking about this earlier. We were with
Speaker 1: Rick the night shortly after you got the assignment, and
Speaker 1: you said to me, I heard the fax machine going
Speaker 1: starting at like eight o'clock at night, and I heard
Speaker 1: it at twelve, and then I heard it at three,
Speaker 1: and then I heard it. It just kept going and going.
Speaker 1: And you said, I think you said. He even described
Speaker 1: like the bolts on the ounce side of the lab
Speaker 1: thing that holds the water. Everything was so specific to
Speaker 1: make sure you were up to speed on the world
Speaker 1: that he created. Yeah. Well, the story was that I
Speaker 1: emailed him right after our deal. First of all, I'm
Speaker 1: approximately one half. I know he's smarter, and it's going
Speaker 1: to become more obvious. I'm not coming from but I'm
Speaker 1: listening anyway. I emailed Jim just said, hey, our deal's
Speaker 1: clothes were really excited. Is there anything he want us
Speaker 1: to do to prepare because the room wasn't going to
Speaker 1: start for like three weeks and that's when within that's
Speaker 1: all I said, And within I don't know, twenty minutes,
Speaker 1: I got like a three three page single space to
Speaker 1: response with attachments. The first attachment was called Pandorapedia, which
Speaker 1: was by the way, available online and just anything you'd
Speaker 1: ever want to know about Avatar Pandora, and that described
Speaker 1: the flora, the fauna of the of the planet, but
Speaker 1: also the rivets in the and the shuttles, and it
Speaker 1: was it was so unbelievably specific. And uh so, what
Speaker 1: happened was is that I just hit print. I didn't
Speaker 1: even look at it. I just hit print. And that's
Speaker 1: when the machine started going. And it was in the
Speaker 1: days when the wheel would expand the numbers would go,
Speaker 1: and at like eighty, I started to get concerned. I
Speaker 1: had three hundred and fifty. I thought, there goes my marriage,
Speaker 1: you know, I was really concerned. That was But let
Speaker 1: me say though, that was just the beginning. A PA
Speaker 1: came over like almost with the truck and dropped off
Speaker 1: books and movies, the things he wanted to read and watch,
Speaker 1: and once we got into the room, that's when he
Speaker 1: shared with us. I think that he had like fifteen
Speaker 1: hundred pages of his own personal notes going all the
Speaker 1: way back to middle school. And he didn't make us
Speaker 1: go through all of those, but he read to us
Speaker 1: and we read with him. Probably seven hundred page was it? So?
Speaker 1: How much of it was character different? How much of it?
Speaker 1: How many rivets on the side of a thing? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I would imagine, even even with his melodious voice,
Speaker 1: seven hundred pages of the rivets. That's a little. It
Speaker 1: was depends on what the thing, because I'm listening totsything.
Speaker 1: It was both. It was both. I mean, he came
Speaker 1: in saying, I want to build a family saga. That
Speaker 1: was kind of his first introduction to us into the room.
Speaker 1: I want to build a family saga. But before we
Speaker 1: get there, let's do our homework. So James could pick
Speaker 1: anybody to do this avatar thing. You picked two other
Speaker 1: writers and you and your wife. What was it that
Speaker 1: you saw on you and your wife? What piece of
Speaker 1: work where you went? I think I want to work
Speaker 1: with these people. We had actually written a draft of
Speaker 1: Fantastic Voyage, which was on development for a long time
Speaker 1: at We were kind of like long middle relievers on
Speaker 1: that project, and so he and John were producers and
Speaker 1: so that was our first introduction to those guys, but
Speaker 1: plant and it was Rise to the Planet of Apes.
Speaker 1: Really that got him excited. And then when we met
Speaker 1: with him, he said to me later, he said, look,
Speaker 1: I it was important. It was important to him that
Speaker 1: the room be collaborative and open and in good listeners.
Speaker 1: And he said he figured that if Amanda and I
Speaker 1: could be together, you know, thirty years and collaborate and
Speaker 1: still be married, that we must have mad collaboration skills.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm in the macro. I'm interested in I'm interested
Speaker 1: in romantic couples life, couple partners that are able to
Speaker 1: take that partnership into their work, because you are. You know,
Speaker 1: it's hard enough to navigate a relationship sometimes, but to
Speaker 1: navigate a working relationship and a personal relationship. So I'm
Speaker 1: interested in that. But I'm also in the room, which
Speaker 1: we get is collaborative. Everybody's got an open voice. But
Speaker 1: do you in Amanda tend to present ideas as a
Speaker 1: unified team or is she's got something her idea, You've
Speaker 1: got your idea. It gets worked out in the process.
Speaker 1: In the avatar room, we were never huddled together and
Speaker 1: then come up with an idea and consented because we
Speaker 1: were sitting there as a unit. Jim, Yeah, it was Jim, Amanda, me,
Speaker 1: Josh Friedman and Shane Siller and uh and so as
Speaker 1: a team. We we tried to build this family saga
Speaker 1: out originally over three movies. But uh, but um, we
Speaker 1: would just contribute individually. But you under then Amanda and
Speaker 1: I though obviously would go home. On the way home,
Speaker 1: unless we were too tired to think, you know, we
Speaker 1: would talk and then a lot of times we would
Speaker 1: work things out together and one of us would present it.
Speaker 1: It didn't really matter whether it came from her, from
Speaker 1: me or you know, there was never anything like, you know,
Speaker 1: we we cooked this up. What do you guys think?
Speaker 1: It's just an idea? And what if you're not on
Speaker 1: the same page with an idea? Yeah, does go? Well?
Speaker 1: It never happens. But because flamming doors, no, I'm not
Speaker 1: talking to you, I just say yes to everything. Well,
Speaker 1: and that's that's the key, that's that says what that's
Speaker 1: what makes the horse he's riding all right really true?
Speaker 1: Do you find for the most part that the way
Speaker 1: to navigate both of those realities is is to kind
Speaker 1: of let her take the lead or or or is
Speaker 1: there a moment? Look, I vehemently disagree we have to
Speaker 1: go this way. The thing is is that what's kept
Speaker 1: at working all these years is that we just have
Speaker 1: really and it has definitely helped our marriage. But we
Speaker 1: just really listen to one another. I mean really listen.
Speaker 1: So we don't we don't listen in order to respond.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not a ping pong match, you know,
Speaker 1: it's really listening and understanding where Because even if an
Speaker 1: idea comes and you don't like it or you don't
Speaker 1: think it's right, it's coming from something. And this is
Speaker 1: a person, I mean, Amanda, you know, someone I respect
Speaker 1: as much as anyone on earth, so in terms of
Speaker 1: her creativity and her smarts and all. So I really listen.
Speaker 1: It's like, where's this idea coming from? You know why
Speaker 1: I'm screwed? Ask me Sat Peter, why are you screwing?
Speaker 1: Why are you screwing? Because when my wife listens to
Speaker 1: this episode, when it gets to this point, I'm going
Speaker 1: to here from the other room. See See he listens.
Speaker 1: He's not expecting an answer, he's not just he just
Speaker 1: sometimes you just need to let me talk, not have
Speaker 1: a solution. That's gonna happen. That's gonna happen. You know
Speaker 1: what I was gonna say is he was describing really
Speaker 1: the relationship you and I have because we listen to
Speaker 1: each other talk, what don't what's your anyway? Listen what
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, We do. We do, We actually
Speaker 1: listen to but we we have a very different thing
Speaker 1: because we more often than that, we are on other
Speaker 1: sides of an idea. It's a negotiation that involves threats
Speaker 1: and oh, we've had the great thing and I can
Speaker 1: say this, we have had. We have one in front
Speaker 1: of our crew where they get uncomfortable and we're going
Speaker 1: at it. And the great thing about him and our
Speaker 1: friendship is a lot of people say when it's over,
Speaker 1: it's over, but it's not. They hold a grudge. I
Speaker 1: don't have. I have zero, zero, It just goes away.
Speaker 1: It's just it's been thirty years and now he's the
Speaker 1: fact that I'm usually right helps a lot, because the
Speaker 1: delusion is why bother? Why try to explain to somebody
Speaker 1: who doesn't get it? You know, they don't get it.
Speaker 1: They don't get it. So I gotta ask you, Jim Cameron.
Speaker 1: I've been around Jim's Carment a little bit. Yeah, he's scary.
Speaker 1: He scares me. I heard if a phone goes off
Speaker 1: on the set, he takes a nail gun and nails
Speaker 1: it to the wall. Um, I heard what I just
Speaker 1: that's the landline, right, Schwartzenegger, I wanted the movie terminators
Speaker 1: had to go to the bathroom, but he was in
Speaker 1: the costume and Jim went no, no, no, no, no, no no,
Speaker 1: no no, you don't go to the bathroom right now.
Speaker 1: And Schwartzenegger, I think, relieve himself on Jim or whatever.
Speaker 1: Is he that tough? And and part of that is
Speaker 1: I'm also blown away because he feels there's a thing
Speaker 1: that's successful people do, and it's called certainty. They come
Speaker 1: at it with certainty. You don't doubt it. Larry David
Speaker 1: on Seinfeld, Jerry and Steinfeld. They didn't take any No,
Speaker 1: they didn't want notes. They listened, but there were certainty
Speaker 1: they said, no, we're doing this in at one Jimmy
Speaker 1: looks like he used the poster board for certainty. So
Speaker 1: when you're dealing with that, that's a little bit intimidating.
Speaker 1: So is he scary? I mean, your friends, now you've
Speaker 1: worked with him, but he's a daunting figure. It was
Speaker 1: more so in the very beginning. You know, we were
Speaker 1: all a little nervous and intimidated. I think. But the
Speaker 1: thing about about Jim in terms of the writer's room
Speaker 1: is that you have to remember he's a writer also.
Speaker 1: I mean you think of him as a director or
Speaker 1: this technological genius and it's bigger than life character. But
Speaker 1: in a writer's room, he's just one of the writers,
Speaker 1: one of the guys, as it were. And he wanted
Speaker 1: us all to be really comfortable. Also, because I'll go
Speaker 1: back to the family saga of it all, when we
Speaker 1: got into the room, it required being open and telling
Speaker 1: a lot of personal stories and opening up not just
Speaker 1: about our kids, but my relationship with my brother, you know,
Speaker 1: who had passed away a year before we got into
Speaker 1: the room. And so if if we all had felt intimidate,
Speaker 1: I think Jim realized, if we'd felt so intimidated, it's like,
Speaker 1: am I gonna really talk about my brother? Am I
Speaker 1: really gonna suggest this dynamic? Because it was the way
Speaker 1: it was for me of growing up or its like that.
Speaker 1: So it felt like a very safe room. So we
Speaker 1: never saw any of those kinds of behavioral things. I'm
Speaker 1: sure they're true, by the way, I'm sure they are.
Speaker 1: But we we we you know, were fortunate. We never
Speaker 1: saw it where there did get a couple of times
Speaker 1: like when we would start to argue. You know, there
Speaker 1: was one time we were he and I were arguing
Speaker 1: story point and Shane at the end of the table
Speaker 1: just leans down the table. He says, stay down, Luke,
Speaker 1: stay down if he if you pitched goes Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think so, I mean it is it is it? Can
Speaker 1: you change his mind or is it sort of certain?
Speaker 1: And yeah, usually you can't change his mind in the moment.
Speaker 1: A lot of times, though, the right idea finds its
Speaker 1: way and it will become his idea. You know. But that,
Speaker 1: by the way, well that's us, that's right, that's but
Speaker 1: that's that's sure. Now that's human nature. So that's that's
Speaker 1: a big part of our job, me and Amanda is
Speaker 1: to a lot of times introduce things that then can
Speaker 1: become panning the seed. And and it wasn't ever apples
Speaker 1: to apples. It wasn't always apples to apples. Sometimes you'd
Speaker 1: suggest something and it would become you know, Jim's banana
Speaker 1: and what were the movies he sent you into prep.
Speaker 1: What was he everything from Emerald Forest, I mean things
Speaker 1: with indigenous characters, things that work, things that didn't work.
Speaker 1: But he was influenced by Star Wars and you by
Speaker 1: James Bond, right, isn't that is not kind of the Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's funny we did. We did bring up all that
Speaker 1: stuff in the room. Um for some of those underwads.
Speaker 1: So funny with some of those underwater scenes. I said,
Speaker 1: there was this great moment in Thunderball, and so we
Speaker 1: can maybe it goes. Let's go watch that, and of
Speaker 1: course we do it. It didn't hold up at all.
Speaker 1: It just was so slow, you know. But but you know, honestly,
Speaker 1: when you're designing how you're gonna how you're gonna get
Speaker 1: a movie like that, which is so much underwater acting, right,
Speaker 1: do you ever think, well, I gotta get my actors
Speaker 1: up to ninety seconds in order to get this sequence.
Speaker 1: We were at one point in the room and we
Speaker 1: were deep into the room. We had probably designed the
Speaker 1: first and second film already. I asked Jim, I said,
Speaker 1: have you figured out, like how are you gonna do
Speaker 1: performance capture underwater? And he literally said, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I'll figure it out. Studios notoriously fidgety and upset.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing when they can't see it, and it's four
Speaker 1: hundred million or five hundred million bucks in the cedyard,
Speaker 1: it's going to come later. And you just got to
Speaker 1: believe what I'm saying. Yeah, he has no studio has
Speaker 1: no say in this. They don't look at the script,
Speaker 1: they can't approve nothing, they don't talk. They just let
Speaker 1: him go and pray. They sit and pray the whole time.
Speaker 1: And it's all, well, there were you know, they were
Speaker 1: regime changes throughout these number of years, so things were
Speaker 1: handed down. But Emma Watts, who was running Fox at
Speaker 1: the time, did read the scripts and she did give
Speaker 1: a handful of notes. I think, how does that depends
Speaker 1: on what the nuts you guys actually stood fast against.
Speaker 1: I think it was probably studio notes Unrise the Planet
Speaker 1: of the Apes, because it was your idea that the
Speaker 1: protagonist in that film had to be Caesar, and they
Speaker 1: kept saying, though, it has to be the humans, and
Speaker 1: how did you and they basically dismissed you from the
Speaker 1: project for two or three times. Yeah. Well yeah, they
Speaker 1: they said to us, let's be clear, we'll never have
Speaker 1: we'll never make the movie if the ape is the protagonist.
Speaker 1: And we said absolutely yes, you're absolutely right, and we
Speaker 1: just kept writing what we knew to be right and true.
Speaker 1: And so then we got fired. And the thing is
Speaker 1: that we were producers on it, so when we sold
Speaker 1: them the idea, we insisted on being producers for moments
Speaker 1: just like this one. So we'd be fired and then
Speaker 1: another writer would come on and then we'd be sitting
Speaker 1: there in the room with the other writer. Thing. Then
Speaker 1: we tried that already, that doesn't really work. You may
Speaker 1: want to try it this way. So that happened. So
Speaker 1: I guess we got fired three times off of that,
Speaker 1: and we just, I don't know, we just kept It's
Speaker 1: kind of like the Bobby Kennedy Missiles of October thing.
Speaker 1: We just pretended we didn't get We remember that the
Speaker 1: letter from cruise. We didn't get letter, So it's kind
Speaker 1: of like that. Richard Gear told me the same thing.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty woman, he said, I said, what do you
Speaker 1: do if if the director gives you a note and
Speaker 1: it just doesn't feel right? He's like, uh huh uh
Speaker 1: huh yes, and then they shoot another take and I
Speaker 1: do what I want to do and then the director
Speaker 1: comes over and he goes, no, no no, no, What I
Speaker 1: meant is da da da da da da da. And
Speaker 1: you go yes, oh, yes, yes, and then you do
Speaker 1: exactly what you do. When he goes after about four takes,
Speaker 1: they'll give up. They'll go he's stupid, but you'll never
Speaker 1: do something, you know, that's for us. We learned this
Speaker 1: from Curtis Hanson, you know, who was the first director
Speaker 1: who directed our first movie. And he would he would
Speaker 1: say to us, he would go to these uh notes
Speaker 1: meetings and he would always be so thin and so calm,
Speaker 1: and he'd say to us, look, even if it sounds
Speaker 1: like the stupidest note you've ever gotten, you have to
Speaker 1: give them the benefit of the doubt. The notes coming
Speaker 1: from something. So if they're saying this moment isn't playing
Speaker 1: an act too, then maybe the setup an act one
Speaker 1: isn't clear or precise enough. And so we never really
Speaker 1: dismiss It's easy to say, oh, the studios are full.
Speaker 1: They're not idiots. I mean they know it's a tough
Speaker 1: job and they have a job to do. And so
Speaker 1: again it's listening, it's like, well, where is this note
Speaker 1: really coming from? Yea, And sometimes and sometimes it actually,
Speaker 1: you know, you can find it something really. My wife,
Speaker 1: who's a painter, says something very similar. Someone will say
Speaker 1: the face isn't quite right, the face isn't quite right,
Speaker 1: and she'll look at it and she goes, well, the
Speaker 1: face is right, and she'll say, what it is is
Speaker 1: the thing next to the thing isn't right right. It's
Speaker 1: not that the face isn't right. The hair is off.
Speaker 1: The hair is the wrong chroma and it's throwing off
Speaker 1: and she goes, So sometimes, and I've tried to take
Speaker 1: that in when when I have any kind of creative control,
Speaker 1: sometimes it's the thing next to the thing, or or
Speaker 1: as you say, the set up and act one is
Speaker 1: telling the story. Yeah, and sometimes too, as a writer,
Speaker 1: do you think, oh man, you crazy, don't you see it?
Speaker 1: But it's not really clear. Sometimes it's clear to you.
Speaker 1: And the good thing about us as a team is
Speaker 1: that it's got to get through two filters before it
Speaker 1: gets to the studio, so it's fewer times and something's
Speaker 1: not clear. But even so a lot of times it'll
Speaker 1: get past both of us and we'll think no, no, no no,
Speaker 1: that moment's playing. But then you reread it and you
Speaker 1: think no, okay, it's it's really nice. We're gonna be
Speaker 1: really honest. It can be clearer and and then sometimes
Speaker 1: too we write it as if we're writing, you know,
Speaker 1: screenwriting for dummies kind of a thing. It's just really
Speaker 1: spell it out. You know, the king is dead, right?
Speaker 1: I think I read camera The camera said eighty percent
Speaker 1: of this movie is X it's digital. Did you have
Speaker 1: a sense that this was going to be this insane
Speaker 1: box office? But also do you when you know that
Speaker 1: it has to be this insane but you have to
Speaker 1: hit two billion dollars in order to break even? Do
Speaker 1: do you sit there and go, oh, that's that's madness.
Speaker 1: You can't. We can't go forward. We can't. I mean,
Speaker 1: is there a panic when you know? Luckily no one
Speaker 1: ever told us that. We didn't hear that until, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe three or four months before it came out. We
Speaker 1: were starting to hear those kind of quotes. Jim is
Speaker 1: that he was misquoted in that, by the way, but uh,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. I never read that quote. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you what. We were intimidated though, by trying to
Speaker 1: write a sequel to the most successful movie of all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and not only that, it's a great movie and it
Speaker 1: works on all these different cylinders, and it played all
Speaker 1: over the world and it's like that was that was
Speaker 1: a little scary. Yeah, and uh but once once we
Speaker 1: kind of got to know the family and got to
Speaker 1: know the different characters, and it really it doesn't you know,
Speaker 1: we never really think that way. How about and get
Speaker 1: then listen it's just us. Nobody listens to podcast, so
Speaker 1: you're not going to give away any secret. When when
Speaker 1: they say to you Stephen Lange has got to be
Speaker 1: in the next film, and you look at the first
Speaker 1: film and you go, he took a spear the size
Speaker 1: of the top of the Empire State building right through
Speaker 1: the heart. How is he coming back? Is it just
Speaker 1: because Cameron really likes Stephen Lange, goes, I like him
Speaker 1: on the set. I want to have him around him
Speaker 1: to go you know what would be great if Stephen
Speaker 1: Lane's character came back? What was the chicken? What was
Speaker 1: the egg on that? Yeah, he came in with the
Speaker 1: with the I wouldn't say idea, I'd say the decision
Speaker 1: that Lange would that you know, Chorritz was going to
Speaker 1: come back, And was that purely because I see the
Speaker 1: story or was that I really like im by the way,
Speaker 1: both as legit or is it just like I really
Speaker 1: did Stephen Lange and I want him back on my movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well again you'd have to ask Jim that question. But
Speaker 1: I know that he was not going to this thing.
Speaker 1: We have to ask you. Well, I'll tell you this.
Speaker 1: He is, uh, he loves Stephen Lange. Sure those guys
Speaker 1: are you know, brothers, And he loves him and so
Speaker 1: I don't know that that. And he also loves the
Speaker 1: character of Korridge. Yeah, so I don't know in terms
Speaker 1: of those two things, which was the chicken and egg.
Speaker 1: But he came in and said, we're bringing back Chorridge
Speaker 1: and we say, you know, we didn't. We weren't quite
Speaker 1: as articulate and vocal as you just were. It was
Speaker 1: more like a silent pause. Yeah. And I don't know
Speaker 1: which one of us. I said, it's I kind of work,
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. And he's he pitches this whole idea he
Speaker 1: had about a soul drive and this and that, and
Speaker 1: and I was always kind of the guy in the
Speaker 1: room and says, well, man, I don't know people canna
Speaker 1: buy that or you know, and and are there no
Speaker 1: consequences on Pandora. In other words, that you can die,
Speaker 1: but you can come back, and yeah, so yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: in the tree. If I if they hooked me up
Speaker 1: to the tree before I died, I'm alive in the tree.
Speaker 1: All these possibilities for people living and coming back into
Speaker 1: these movies, And yet you all in five ape movies,
Speaker 1: and now what's gonna be four Pandoras. I'm not a navvy,
Speaker 1: I'm not an ape. I worked with an orangutan. I
Speaker 1: know how to do orangutan. I just did a movie
Speaker 1: with mo Cap. I know how to do mo Cap.
Speaker 1: What do I have to Who do I have to
Speaker 1: talk to to be a nabby? You don't see a
Speaker 1: little bold running around. I can. I'm gonna work up
Speaker 1: to a fish. And you know, raw, what keeps me
Speaker 1: from hold my breath? What do you need forty eight seconds?
Speaker 1: I can do forty eight seconds at the stretch. I'll
Speaker 1: get there, please, he says, Ever since we knew your
Speaker 1: every day, you think he's gonna put me in a movie?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I can do it. First of all.
Speaker 1: And this man writes movies with holes. Caesar was a chimp.
Speaker 1: There's a gorilla standing right next to the how come
Speaker 1: the gorilla never went, Oh, you're tough guy. Huh, you're
Speaker 1: a tough guy. Come here, let's arm wrestle. How come
Speaker 1: the gorilla never did that with the chimp? Can I
Speaker 1: tell you? Yeah? In the first one, I can say
Speaker 1: exactly give me yeah. So Buck the Gorilla, Yeah, was
Speaker 1: based on a guy I knew in high school who
Speaker 1: played fullback for the football team. And I made friends
Speaker 1: with him as a freshman. So nobody pick on me,
Speaker 1: sure right, yeah, And so we patterned Buck after this,
Speaker 1: after this guy I grew up with protect So yeah,
Speaker 1: So that was their relationship. All right, all right, you
Speaker 1: shot me right? Listen. Can I go back to the
Speaker 1: Soul Drive thing for a second please. The thing is
Speaker 1: is that you talked about certainty before, yeah, And Jim
Speaker 1: has a way of presenting an idea. He was like,
Speaker 1: they're gonna buy it. The audience is gonna buy it.
Speaker 1: It's gonna work. And then you don't argue because he's
Speaker 1: absolutely certain. And there were there was a lot of
Speaker 1: things even as we saw cuts of the films and
Speaker 1: we'd say, would give him notes and he would listen,
Speaker 1: and I think he did, you know, he just and
Speaker 1: I think he incorporated some of our notes, the other things.
Speaker 1: He's like, don't waste your breath. I'm not changing the frame.
Speaker 1: You know, he's very big on the audience is gonna
Speaker 1: buy it? Which is gonna take me to Titanic for
Speaker 1: a minute. Now, I know you, I know you didn't
Speaker 1: work on Titanic, so none of this isn't And I
Speaker 1: know he just he did a thing. He had scientists
Speaker 1: come in and they determined there's very little chance if
Speaker 1: they both got on the door that they would have
Speaker 1: been they would have been below the water. And he
Speaker 1: went out of his way to prove that the decision
Speaker 1: that he made for the end of that movie was
Speaker 1: the right. But we need you to call. He's not
Speaker 1: going to tell you. I've been talking about this for years. Right,
Speaker 1: he did it wrong. Right, he did it wrong. It's
Speaker 1: still wrong. It's still wrong. And he's testing the wrong
Speaker 1: things because the first thing is I love you, Jack,
Speaker 1: I love you, I'll always love you. I love you,
Speaker 1: two Rose, You're gonna live, You're gonna make it, blah
Speaker 1: blah blah. By right, right, and why didn't Jack ever
Speaker 1: say you know what? I love you two Rose? Listen,
Speaker 1: how about this if I could just get my testicles
Speaker 1: out of the freezing water for twenty minutes, how about
Speaker 1: the buddy system twenty minutes, we switch off, we tag up.
Speaker 1: If nothing else, maybe you're on the thing, Maybe you stay,
Speaker 1: get up on your knees, look for another piece of debris.
Speaker 1: Maybe if you float on And if and if all
Speaker 1: of that, he save a whole of that fails. At
Speaker 1: least the last line should be asked before he goes
Speaker 1: in the water. He goes, Okay, Rose, I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: make it, but you are. And you know what, that
Speaker 1: little pendant I gave you, that's worth about eight billion dollars.
Speaker 1: Use it in, don't do any more stupid with it,
Speaker 1: to make a donation, make a foundation in my name.
Speaker 1: Hold it close to you, Rose, Never let it go.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't even say this you with that? Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: testing whether they can both float on a door. These
Speaker 1: are the wrong questions. See, that's what I'm the beautiful
Speaker 1: thing about that is when did that movie come out?
Speaker 1: Eighteen forty six? Eighteen forty six and we're still talking
Speaker 1: about it? Yes? Yeah, still ye playing. So do you
Speaker 1: know what? Because Jack, people still have this argument all
Speaker 1: the time. Bett listen the movies I make beause people
Speaker 1: are arguing about it thirty minute, thirty years later, I
Speaker 1: can make a lot of movies. By the way, let
Speaker 1: me ask yourself. You were a big muckety, but you're
Speaker 1: a big agent most pictures. William Morris, you de sign Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't want to be in power anymore. Who've got
Speaker 1: to be the writer? Who doesn't you learn anything about
Speaker 1: show business? You become a producer, you become a director,
Speaker 1: you become an executive. Who becomes the writer? Did you
Speaker 1: learn nothing? Yeah, that's a really good point. Are you,
Speaker 1: by the way, on the set? Are you on the
Speaker 1: set every day with rewrites and stuff? Definitely? Not for Avatar?
Speaker 1: I mean with Avatar. Uh, we didn't really spend any
Speaker 1: time on the set it. After a while, it just
Speaker 1: became Jim's movie. So when you see it, are you
Speaker 1: are you as just blown away by what you're seeing
Speaker 1: as anybody would. Yeah, it's a funny thing with our
Speaker 1: movies and that you see lots of cuts with people
Speaker 1: running around in great leotards, you know, and it's it's
Speaker 1: it takes a certain leap to see it, and then
Speaker 1: it's every one of our films. We are always worried
Speaker 1: about it right up to the I mean just really
Speaker 1: worried and oh my god, is it going to work?
Speaker 1: And we've been so blessed because every time we're sitting
Speaker 1: there for the first time in the theater at the
Speaker 1: premiere usually and it's like, oh my god, it's they're
Speaker 1: going crazy. They love it. They're laughing, they're screaming, they're
Speaker 1: you know, they're crying or whatever it is. And uh,
Speaker 1: it's a weird thing. It's like we worry about it
Speaker 1: until the day it comes out. And did you get anything,
Speaker 1: by the way, like when you hit a billion dollars?
Speaker 1: Did you drop a car at your house and go
Speaker 1: look outside, muffins and it's two billion? Two billion? Got what? Oh? Sprinkles? Wow?
Speaker 1: The Friends cast got like cars? Yeah? You anything? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: we got We got a signed copy of the test
Speaker 1: results saying it'll never work. You're working for another couple
Speaker 1: of years on the avatars, right at least were shot already.
Speaker 1: So I think any work we do will be just
Speaker 1: watching cuts and talking to Jim and so so that
Speaker 1: begs my question, what what don't you want a man
Speaker 1: to want to do? Is there a story you guys?
Speaker 1: Have always wanted to do that you just haven't been
Speaker 1: able to get to, or that you haven't gotten anybody
Speaker 1: to sort of give it the green light, because I
Speaker 1: would imagine, right, I mean, everybody thinks with success, you
Speaker 1: have autonomy and you can do whatever you want. But
Speaker 1: is there something is a passion project you'd love to
Speaker 1: get to. There's a couple of ideas that we haven't
Speaker 1: quite figured out, you know that that we'd like to
Speaker 1: we'd like to figure out and try to set up.
Speaker 1: But so speaking of that, before you go, we knew
Speaker 1: you're free now and we were worried could you have
Speaker 1: the downtime? Even Amanda, we have a couple of pictures
Speaker 1: that I think are really I mean, don't be embarrassed
Speaker 1: to love these. You can ask about Patrick projects because
Speaker 1: I think captive Bunny as we'll pitch please be honest, honest,
Speaker 1: but listen, open mind, and I'm gonna tell you ahead
Speaker 1: of time. They're all sequels because you do very good
Speaker 1: is what you do the next We're not stupid. We
Speaker 1: have you win because you're the sequel. You've done amazing sequels.
Speaker 1: Here we go, Here we go. I'll give the title
Speaker 1: and Jason, we'll tell you what it's about. Wizard of
Speaker 1: Our sequel, Home again, the Kansas years. No scarecrows, no lions,
Speaker 1: no just Dorothy, no place like home and now foreclosed drought,
Speaker 1: you know, And that's bow. It's sort of ad where
Speaker 1: he go. I'm just trying to make the thing. Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: what do you think scale of one to ten possible? Doable? Yeah? No,
Speaker 1: I think it's a ten plus. All right, there we go.
Speaker 1: I think it's good. Wait, I almost I almost don't
Speaker 1: need to pitch the restaurant, if we may wait until
Speaker 1: he hears it. All right, we go. Feel the dreams
Speaker 1: the next five years, the pandemic version. Nobody's coming. That
Speaker 1: long line of cars, they're all gone. They all came.
Speaker 1: Now there's no corn Fiel, there's no crop. The little
Speaker 1: girl swallowed another hot dog. The red headed kid wasn't
Speaker 1: there to save her. There's no ghosts. Now you're stuck
Speaker 1: with a with a baseball field in the middle of
Speaker 1: nowhere and barely dreams, and and somebody saying, you know,
Speaker 1: if you scrap it, you'll get paid. There's a voice
Speaker 1: in the field that goes, if you if you plow
Speaker 1: it under, you'll get paid. At least for the land. Amazing, right,
Speaker 1: what is that? Well? Maybe yeah, one of those like
Speaker 1: intros on t it terror classic movies, you know, one
Speaker 1: of the short films. Oh, short film? Okay, he liked
Speaker 1: The Wizard of Us better, Right, I can read. I
Speaker 1: can read the room, all right, But that's okay. We
Speaker 1: got two more, we got two start. Yeah. Ridget Jones.
Speaker 1: Ridget Jones, not the Diary X Files, Ridget Jones, the obituary.
Speaker 1: She's dead. Everybody else is writing about her. She's not
Speaker 1: writing about anybody. They were all writing about her. She
Speaker 1: was a nut nick, she was a pain. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't even know why I'm reading my birthday she
Speaker 1: she you know you've seen it. You've seen it. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to worry. Yeah, he's the wheels. This may
Speaker 1: be more of a project for Amanda. We may be
Speaker 1: pitching and wait, just our favorite one because you like
Speaker 1: action and heart. I think this has got This is
Speaker 1: the one. Yeah, this is the one. You're gonna say, Rick,
Speaker 1: how do I get involved in this car? You're aging? Right?
Speaker 1: And I would say, okay, but I don't have an aging.
Speaker 1: But here we go. Taken four? Taken four, what's it?
Speaker 1: Called taking four. I just went upstairs. I just went
Speaker 1: upstairs for a minute. Right. It starts with Liam Neeson
Speaker 1: goes upstairs to shower, grandchild is gone, and now the
Speaker 1: whole movie it's a twist. It's not Liam Neeson looking
Speaker 1: for the grandchild. It's fom Key Jensen looking for Liam Neeson.
Speaker 1: He doesn't going to come out. I can't do this
Speaker 1: and make sure she takes. Nobody in his family knows
Speaker 1: how to take care of themselves. Like, what am I
Speaker 1: have to be all the time? I'm not doing it.
Speaker 1: I think the only one he bought was in the
Speaker 1: room was the Wizard. I like taking And listen, if
Speaker 1: you don't want to work on any of these, it's
Speaker 1: fine again. I can be blue and I can be
Speaker 1: an ape. That's all I want to say. I might.
Speaker 1: I can be a blue ape, the great Blue Ape.
Speaker 1: Whatever you need. Okay, you know I'm here. Yeah, I'm sure.
Speaker 1: Here's what I heard. Because I tie into empathy of people. Yes, Rick,
Speaker 1: up until this moment was the partner of the writer. Sure,
Speaker 1: he just became the agent for a second. I saw that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I love it. Let's run it up and I can
Speaker 1: see the eyes different yea, yeah, you haven't felt that
Speaker 1: in a long time. Yeah, now I know. I quit Rick,
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you. And by the way we see
Speaker 1: you do any of these ideas were soon You're right,
Speaker 1: thank you, bring me have it on tape. So what
Speaker 1: do you think that this is? Uh So, if I
Speaker 1: came to you and I said, we're gonna make a movie,
Speaker 1: a sequel of anything, and it needs to make two
Speaker 1: billion dollars. But I got James Cameron, you in oh
Speaker 1: are you? I'm not betting against that. You know. My
Speaker 1: take on this, my takeaway of how many times can
Speaker 1: he do it as many times as he wants? Do
Speaker 1: you really think? So? Look at the movie set even no,
Speaker 1: I understand, I get it, But do you this guy
Speaker 1: knows something and knows how to do move story and
Speaker 1: character in a way that other Globally The numbers don't lie.
Speaker 1: All of his movies have been big global successors, and
Speaker 1: they of ecology, They have connection, human connection, They have
Speaker 1: so many moving parts and these did it look simple?
Speaker 1: It's blue people doing no no, no, no, no. It
Speaker 1: resonates because it's really like he said about family. You're
Speaker 1: absolutely But I want to ask a question. I want
Speaker 1: you get anything would I want the honest answer you
Speaker 1: on it, okay, because I know you and I know
Speaker 1: you can't sit still from what thin twenty minutes at
Speaker 1: a time. Have you seen the movie? I have not
Speaker 1: seen the movie. You know why did see the movie?
Speaker 1: And why are you laughing? I know why you didn't
Speaker 1: see them as the movie. Here's why I didn't see
Speaker 1: the movie. You couldn't sit through a three minutes. That's
Speaker 1: not the reason. If you would trapped on an ass,
Speaker 1: you'd be out of the way. The reason, what's the reason?
Speaker 1: I had COVID twice. That's the perfect time to see
Speaker 1: them all. I was gonna then I got better going
Speaker 1: to see the movie and thought, you know what three
Speaker 1: hours and fourteen minutes in a room with people coughing,
Speaker 1: or after I just got better from COVID, I can
Speaker 1: wait a little long. So we just did an episode
Speaker 1: about the success of a movie you haven't seen. I
Speaker 1: know the whole story, but you have what everybody did.
Speaker 1: What was the most moving part that they didn't you
Speaker 1: untanium again, that they said drop that it's stupid? What
Speaker 1: was the most fantastical creature? Who gave the best performance?
Speaker 1: These are Come on, Come on, mister reach. You're talking
Speaker 1: with your hands now and it's like you're tossing a
Speaker 1: condition paper. Wow, I didn't go. You went to the
Speaker 1: premiere because you were invited two different times, and I
Speaker 1: got COVID. The God was saying to me, you're not
Speaker 1: going yet. You're not going yet. So there you go.
Speaker 1: That's why what Rick and Amanda have been making and
Speaker 1: what Cameron have been making. What's so exciting about going
Speaker 1: to the movies, going to the movies is that they're
Speaker 1: creating worlds. Yeah, these are trends. These are not just stories.
Speaker 1: There you're transported and you cannot watch. You cannot watch
Speaker 1: the Avatar film on a TV screen. I don't care
Speaker 1: if it's any five inch screen. You cannot do it.
Speaker 1: That world is so big. And as he says, when
Speaker 1: when you're talking about what are the rivets made of
Speaker 1: the detail the attention. I've seen the original Avatar. I
Speaker 1: think I've seen it six times. I watched Way of
Speaker 1: Water at the premiere and I was I did not
Speaker 1: feel that time. And even in there are parts of
Speaker 1: the film where there isn't a lot of storytelling happening.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of come visit this world, Come be
Speaker 1: part of this world. It's almost like an experiential segment.
Speaker 1: And I was I could have gone and gone and
Speaker 1: gone and gone. It was, it was. I'm cractuous. I'm
Speaker 1: curious to see what it's going to do screaming. It's
Speaker 1: gonna be fascinating to see in this new world. It's environment.
Speaker 1: What the streaming is going to look like for this
Speaker 1: movie too? Who behind? What are we doing here? What
Speaker 1: are we miss? What we do wrong? A couple of things.
Speaker 1: Stephen Lange, who played Miles Goorch, has said that James
Speaker 1: Cameron came to him years ago, saying that his character
Speaker 1: would be resurrected. Current was not a new idea for
Speaker 1: mister Cameron. Also, the whole you know, would Rose and Jack?
Speaker 1: Could they have survived on the door? There was an
Speaker 1: episode of MythBusters they were able to find a way
Speaker 1: for them both to survive, But it sounds pretty intricate
Speaker 1: that you might not be able to figure that out
Speaker 1: when you're half frozen to death. And the last thing,
Speaker 1: The Wizard of Oz probably doesn't need a prequel what
Speaker 1: it is based on a book series of eight volumes,
Speaker 1: so maybe go to the any of them. The Kansas
Speaker 1: Years the Kansas years. Now, what happened to Dorothy's mother
Speaker 1: and father? Do any of the books talk about that?
Speaker 1: Why is it? Auntiem and uncle Henry? But she seems
Speaker 1: perfectly content with by the way, now drop of remorse
Speaker 1: about oh my mother, no song about somewhere my mother
Speaker 1: lies happy Daddy's sweet deathing. It's all, Oh, hey, am,
Speaker 1: mini am, what happened to mister and missus Gale? How
Speaker 1: I'm about the song? Now I gotta get a job.
Speaker 1: Now I get a good job. What am I gonna
Speaker 1: do on that tree for anything? Certainly not in Kansas
Speaker 1: was a concussion. I mean he was gonna hire meat.
Speaker 1: So the longest that was already made, it was turned. Yes,
Speaker 1: we don't talk about that. It's like we don't talk
Speaker 1: about Bruno. Hey, everybody say, I'm just hoping that, you know,
Speaker 1: two billion dollars made in the box office. If we
Speaker 1: get half that many downloads, whoa, because it could have him.
Speaker 1: Oh my wife is calling. Well that's it got up
Speaker 1: thanks to the next episode of Really While I Be Home.
Speaker 1: As soon as Peters says the episode stop staring, stopped talking,
Speaker 1: the episode of the episode is officially over. Goodbye, everybody.
Speaker 1: I think it was Walladay. Now now, Jason and I
Speaker 1: have to thank screenwriting legend Rick Jaffa and there's absent
Speaker 1: better have for bringing us entertainment such as the classic
Speaker 1: thriller The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, for being the
Speaker 1: only two people in this planet that knew how to
Speaker 1: revive the Jurassic franchise with their Jurassic World, and of
Speaker 1: course those amazing Apes films which they re envisioned with
Speaker 1: Rise of the Planet of the Apes to the forthcoming
Speaker 1: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. Thank you Rijafa
Speaker 1: and Amanda Silver, and thank you Rick so much for
Speaker 1: showing up and being on the podcast. Of course, you
Speaker 1: can find us online at really No Really dot com.
Speaker 1: We are also now on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok At
Speaker 1: Really No Really podcast. We have full episodes on YouTube,
Speaker 1: so please check those out, hit the subscribe button and
Speaker 1: tick that bell so you're updated when we release new videos,
Speaker 1: and for questions and suggestions, you can of course message
Speaker 1: us on Instagram, and most of all, thank you for listening, subscribing,
Speaker 1: and sharing the show. We released new episodes every Tuesday.
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