The director James Cameron has no interest in working with: “Do your thing, just don’t do it with me”
The relationship between writer and director is a complicated one. Sometimes, it’s civilised and straightforward; one person uses a pen, and the other uses a camera; a line is drawn, and both parties respect that line. But this often isn’t the case, with years of quarrels and feuds between writers and directors who have not respected that line, interfering with the craft of another person and sometimes leading to legal battles, lawsuits and the use of mediators who have to awkwardly ask “OK… but did you actually write it?” But what does this struggle represent? Where is the line between conflict and collaboration? Or is creative conflict the mark of strong vision and direction? And perhaps, we can find answers through the work of James Cameron.
After the groundbreaking triumph of Terminator, Titanic and then Avatar, Cameron has firmly rooted himself in cinematic history for his pioneering of new digital technology to heighten and enrich his stories, forging a new path towards progress that always works in favour of complete cinematic immersion and the experience of the audience. When working on Titanic, Cameron even spent weeks underwater to observe and film footage of the sunken Titanic vessel, fascinated by its very existence and his desire to accurately portray its haunting beauty through the visual effects.
Cameron is known for his precision and passion, apparently using a staple gun to nail actors’ phones to the walls on the set of Avatar to avoid distraction and famously over-budget and behind schedule during the production of Titanic in his effort to capture his vision perfectly. Since then, Cameron has collaborated with many other Hollywood screenwriters, directors and producers, working with Ridley Scott on the Alien sequel and Independence Day director Roland Emmerich on an abandoned project that later became a source of contention.
Reflecting on that period, Emmerich stated in a recent interview that “Cameron was overbearing, and so at one point I just gave up”.
When asked about this, Cameron replied, “If that conversation took place, it was extremely short, and, by the way, his version of it, which I have read is, ‘Cameron was overbearing’. Yeah, I’m not going to produce it like a bank. I’m not just going to write you a cheque – I’m going to have an actual opinion, considering that we spent years developing the script. And that’s cool. Some directors just have to do their thing and that’s fine. Roland’s a writer, so haul off dude, do your thing, just don’t do it with me.”
Interestingly, Cameron hasn’t refuted that he isn’t overbearing; in fact, it seems as though this is something that is integral to his creative process, that honesty and opinion are something that he values within any collaboration. This leads me back to my earlier point: is creative conflict the mark of strong direction? In the case of Cameron, this appears to be true. No one would be able to change the production of films as we know it without being assertive and uncompromising in their vision, even though it might come across as abrasive or overbearing to some.
So where is the line? Does the conflict between writer and director come down to a clashing of power and ego? Or is it necessary for the shaping of a film vision? Like everything, it’s a little bit of both – the perfect balance of ego, conflict and resolution is needed to sustain a project of the scale that Cameron is known for, and whilst it might not work for everyone, it certainly has worked for him.
