James Cameron

The most successful filmmaker of our time started somewhere: XENOGENESIS.

As a guest at a recent taping of The Jay Leno Show, I heard James Cameron talk about his earliest experience in the world of film.  The episode aired last night at 10.

After years as a machinist and truck driver, he claims to have maxed out his wife’s credit card to make a short film  in his living room.  The film was inspired by the recent release of Star Wars, in which Cameron recognized a world that reflected many of his own ideas.  The short is both amateur and inspired, a machinist’s take on the sci-fi genre.  Even though the human element is underdeveloped, the old-school robot fight is almost exciting, and foreshadows Cameron’s creation of THE TERMINATOR.

Xenogenesis got him “a gig” working for Roger Corman, the most prolific B-movie producer of all time.  His first feature directing gig was a gem: 1989′s PIRANHA PART II: THE SPAWNING.  The film was basically a JAWS ripoff involving a mutant strain of killer fish that originate from a sunken fighter ship.  I recommend the article Bad Acting, Boobies and Blood… James Cameron’s First Film. Then his first script, THE TERMINATOR, was produced.  And the rest is history: ALIENS, T2, TRUE LIES, TITANIC and AVATAR.  Those are just the highlights.

To learn that he was at one time a very normal person encourages those of us who have big dreams and humble realities.  But wouldn’t machining be fun too?

Sleepwriting

Supposedly Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson and Thomas Edison are among the many creative minds to claim substantial inspiration from their dreams.  Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa (winner of the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement) chronicled his own sleeping hours in the lyrical film Dreams, a pilgrim’s journey through Van Gough paintings, war zones, peaceful villages, and hell itself.  What are dreams?  Do we glimpse in them a world of pure imagination unfettered by the limitations of our own?  It would seem so.  I can zoom through space and time, survive death and have sex with beautiful strangers.

The Bard asks, “…in that sleep of death what dreams may come?”  Might we meet imagination itself, the writer of our narrative existence?  The real Willy Wonka?

I’m a little worried about that, because Wonka can be creepy.  The original depiction by Roald Dahl is no less cynical than those by Gene Wilder and Johnny Depp.  He lets the little dreamers literally destroy themselves in Candyland.  But it’s his house, his rules.  There is always a shadow to be found in dreams; always a nightmare to shake us up.  We are uncomfortable even in the cradle of imagination.  “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,” and we aren’t meant to forget it.

Last night I dreamed several good stories, scenes and off-color jokes.  Where’s my Lifetime Achievement Award?

Back to Basics

Video. The combination of moving image, spoken word and music is undeniably effective in captivating our attention, transmitting a message and eliciting an emotional response. It’s the dominant art form of our century. It is flexible and powerful, and now it’s open to virtually everybody. For two thousand bucks you can have a good HD camera and a computer for editing.  It’s easy to go overboard in the editing room — because it’s so cheap, so easy and fun to manipulate images and create computer generated content.  It’s like being God, or a god, and messing with how reality is perceived. (Zizek has an essay about how the camera is God’s eyeball.) However, like the bad graphics from the 80′s, it’s good to remember that new technology does not result in better art.  It actually poses a great temptation to go overboard.
I just saw this video at the Matador Network. It’s by some students and an emerging rap artist in New York.  This little production will no doubt launch Nyle into more of a spotlight and bring some musicians and directors to the attention of deep-pocketed producers.  It just goes to show what some enthusiasm, talent and coordination can do.   This was done in a single take with some masterful use of lighting.

I think of M. Knight Shyamalan’s “Signs” and how not seeing the aliens is more powerful.  We fear what we don’t understand.  Leave it to the imagination.  Probably some other good maxims to apply here, but I’m out.

So, question #1: In film and video production, is less usually more?   With a limited budget, less has to equal more.  But how much more can we get with how much less?

And one more question (#2):  What’s the lowest (inflation adjusted) budget film to reach the big screens on at least a semi-wide release?