The well-endowed spaceship that launched James Cameron’s career: “Hopefully the one and only”
Directing is one of those careers that doesn’t have a set pathway, with many of the industry’s foremost auteurs having wildly different roads to the top. Unless something drastic changes, though, James Cameron will be the only one who owes his ascent to the top of the ladder to a well-endowed spaceship.
Cameron always wanted to be a director, with his first credit coming from the 1978 short film Xenogenesis, which he co-wrote and produced. In what would be a sign of things to come, it was an ambitious sci-fi story, which would become his stock in trade through The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, and Avatar.
Armed only with a thrifty budget of $20,000, Cameron learned on the fly, taking an active role in creating the visual effects. It would be another four years before he was able to helm his first feature, but his handiwork was instrumental in getting his foot in the door to begin with when he was invited to sit under the Roger Corman learning tree.
Cameron worked as a miniature designer and art director on Battle Beyond the Stars, he was a matte artist and visual effects supervisor on John Carpenter’s Escape from New York, and served as the production designer and second unit director on Galaxy of Terror, in addition to offering his expertise as a design consultant on 1982’s Android.
Just one of many future legends to serve a filmmaking apprenticeship under Corman, there’s a sense of serendipity in how Cameron ended up directing his first feature. Corman sold the sequel rights to Piranha off to producers Chako van Leeuwen and Jeff Schechtman, who enlisted Cameron as visual effects supervisor on The Spawning. Left up shit creek without a paddle on short notice when original director Miller Drake was fired, the chance to steer his debut picture ended up in his lap unexpectedly.
In an interview with Kenneth Turan, Cameron detailed the domino effect that brought him from Corman to Piranha. “I presented myself as a special effects cameraman because I had done some matte work and some miniature work,” he explained. “Well, they had that covered, so they hired me as a model builder. I built the model of the main character’s ship. It was a very goofy design: a spaceship with tits. Hopefully, the one and only spaceship with tits.”
Battle Beyond the Stars boasted a peculiarly buxom spacecraft made by Cameron’s hands, and the next thing he knew, the aspiring auteur was calling the shots. “I guess maybe that’s why I got Piranha II,” he mused. “I guess the producers figured the guy who could come up with the spaceship with tits must be able to do something with a flying piranha.”
Even though Cameron tried his hardest to disown Piranha II in the years that followed, instead pointing to The Terminator as his true debut, he’s since acknowledged it as part of his filmography. He’s directed three of the four highest-grossing movies ever released, and by his own admission, it might not have happened if it wasn’t for a spaceship with tits.
