What I learned from reading The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron by Rebecca Keegan and The Return of James Cameron, Box Office King by Zach Baron.

1 of the most unique things about this podcast is that I know the founder of every company that advertises on founders, all of them listen to founders, and so that makes building a relationship a lot easier.

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A few months after I started using 8sleep, I randomly ran into Matteo at a restaurant, and I was with some friends, and I went over to say, hi, When I got back to my table, my friend asked me who I was talking to and I said, oh That's Mateo the founder of 8sleep and my friend replied that oh He looks like he gets good sleep and that's because Mateo is a living and breathing his product I've never had the ability to change the temperature of my bed before I had an 8 Sleep.

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And just 2 more quick things before we jump into this episode on James Cameron.

I probably spent 50 times that amount reading and researching and living inside the mind of James Cameron.

So the first thing I wanna tell you about is I've made something that is exclusively for the enthusiasts of founders, for people that completely understand the benefit of this intense studying of the great people and the great work that came before us and how valuable that is to apply to whatever it is that you're working on.

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I've been making these short episodes every week based on questions that I get from other members.

If you become a member you'll be able to ask me questions directly.

There is a private email address that you get access to and I read every single 1 of these emails myself.

I don't have an assistant look over them.

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And the last thing that I wanna tell you about before we jump into this episode, my friend Jeremy just went on Invest Like the Best.

It's called Special Situations in Private Markets.

It's 90 straight minutes of insight after insight.

And his episode on Invest Like the Best is 1 I'm going to re-listen to many, many times in the future.

You can just search for it in whatever podcast player you're listening to this, but I will also leave a link down below.

After James Cameron's Avatar made $2.7 billion, the director found the deepest point that exists in all of the Earth's oceans and dove to it.

When Cameron reached the bottom of the Mariana Trench, he became the first person in history to descend the 6.8-mile distance solo.

Since then, others have followed, most prominently a private equity titan and former Naval Reserve Intelligence officer turned explorer named Victor Vescovo.

But Cameron is adamant that none have surpassed him.

Vescovo, Cameron told me, claimed that he went deeper, but you can't, so he's basically just making shit up.

I have a different scientific perspective, he told me, diplomatically.

Like Cameron, Vescovo has made multiple dives to the wreck of the Titanic, and while returning from 1 of them, he emailed Cameron.

I said, I watched Titanic at the Titanic.

And he actually replied, yeah, but I made Titanic at the Titanic.

It is perhaps illustrative of Cameron's gifts as a filmmaker that even his most determined rivals will admit that Cameron has written and directed some of the most successful films of all time.

It would be fair to call him the father of the modern action movie, which he helped invent with his debut The Terminator and then reinvent with his second Aliens.

It would be accurate to add that he has directed 2 of the 3 top-grossing films in history.

A camera that he helped design served as the model for 1 that is currently on Mars attached to the Mars rover.

And he's an adventurer, and not in the dilettante billionaire sense.

When Cameron sets out to do something, it gets done.

The man was born with an explorer's instincts and capacity.

The original Avatar required the invention of dozens of new technologies, from the cameras Cameron shot with, to the digital effects that he used to transform human actors into animated creatures, to the language those creatures spoke in the film.

For the sequel, The Way of Water, Cameron told me, he and his team started all over again.

They needed new cameras that could shoot underwater and a motion caption system that could collect separate shots from above and below the water and then integrate them into a unified virtual image.

They needed new algorithms, new AI, to translate what Cameron shot with what you see.

Nothing would work the first time Cameron and the production tried it.

Cameron showed me a single effect shot, numbered 405.

That means There's been 405 versions of this before it gets to me, " he said.

Cameron has been working on the movie since 2013.

If you ask James Cameron how expensive, He replies, very fucking.

But as Cameron worked late into the evening day after day solving the infinite problems that the way of water continued to present, he seemed to be enjoying himself.

And I think it's probably goes back to this idea that there's a lot of smart, really gifted, really talented filmmakers out there that just can't do the difficult stuff.

So that gives me a tactical edge to do something nobody else has ever seen because the really gifted people don't fucking want to do it.

Cameron and his fifth wife live year-round in New Zealand where they have owned a 5, 000 acre farm since 2011.

In the early days of the pandemic, Cameron and his wife gave up their home in Malibu and became full-time residents here.

I asked Cameron if he'd been lonely moving halfway around the world.

I don't have any friends, so it's okay, he said, with only a hint of a smile.

Cameron's Malibu compound was known for its survivalist vibe.

Fast cars, a security team trained in fighting wildfires, guns.

He had himself trained by 1 of the best championship shooters in America.

He's the guy that taught Keanu Reeves how to be John Wick.

I trained with him for 3 years, and so I'm a competition-grade shooter.

At 68 years old, Cameron wakes up at 4.45 a.m.

Cameron is proud to work at the biggest scale possible.

Terminator 2, True Lies, and Titanic were all among the most expensive films ever made at the time of their release.

To date, all of his films have made their money back, many of them spectacularly.

Self-doubt, in general, is not something Cameron has a lot of experience with.

Cameron was always the type of person whose confidence preceded his achievements.

That is an idea that you and I have discussed on multiple biographies.

The fact that belief comes before ability.

It was while working as a truck driver in his 20s that Cameron decided to become a filmmaker.

He'd go to the stacks at the library at the University of Southern California, which was home of the vaunted filmmaking program that Cameron couldn't afford.

I'd find somebody's 300-page dissertation on optical printing, Cameron said, and I'd be going through this and I'd think, well, I've got to get this.

So I'd pull out the staples and I'd photocopy the entire 300 pages.

And then I just kept doing the same thing week after week for about 6 months.

And I'm driving a truck, but I had these binders.

I was going through this stuff chapter and verse and making my own notes and all that.

I basically gave myself a college education in visual effects and cinematography while I was driving a truck.

The idea for the Terminator came to him in a dream.

So did the pivotal scene in his second film, Aliens.

Cameron has a rich dream life to this day.

I have my own private streaming service that's better than any of that shit that's out there and it runs every night for free, he said.

Avatar also originally came to Cameron while he was asleep.

I woke up after dreaming of this kind of bioluminescent forest with these trees that kind of look like fiber optic lamps and this river that was glowing bioluminescent particles and kind of purple moss on the ground that lit up when you walked on it.

I woke up super excited and I actually drew it.

Any successful film, there's always some freak with tinfoil under their wig that thinks that you beamed their idea out of their head and it turned out there were 10 or 11 of them.

And so I pointed at this drawing I did when I was 19 when I was going to Fullerton Junior College and said, you see this?

Do you see the glowing lizard that spins around that's orange?

Do you see the purple moss?" And everybody went away.

Zoe Saldana, who starred in the first Avatar and returns for the second, and who also works frequently in the Marvel universe, pointed out how comparatively unique Cameron's approach is in modern Hollywood.

The Marvel franchises are built by dozens of comic book artists and writers and directors who work together to create these stories.

By contrast, Avatar is the result of the vision of a single man.

Without Jim's heavy, heavy brain, This would all fall apart.

When Cameron moves, he moves fast and favors 1 side.

When I asked him what he'd done to give himself a limp, he looked at me curiously.

Cameron, in his nearly 40 years of filmmaking, has earned a reputation for having a temper.

Some would say he's earned this reputation several times over.

On more than 1 Cameron set, crew members have taken to wearing shirts that read, You can't scare me.

So I looked at it and I was like, alright, why am I getting so upset?

I'm not saying I don't get upset once in a while.

I mean, everybody I think is entitled to having a bad day.

But whereas before, it might have been once every couple of weeks, now it's like twice a year.

Cameron recalled working with Ron Howard, the famously nice director, on the visual effects for Apollo 13.

And I just watched what a great guy he was, and I'm like, I'm a total asshole compared to Ron Howard.

I have to get in touch with my inner Ron Howard.

But despite his famous temper, Cameron has always inspired loyalty.

The process of how Cameron builds the Avatar films is complex.

I asked if he knew of anyone else working this way, And he laughed.

I mean, like, if we hadn't made more money than any other movie in history, this is the last fucking thing that I'd want to be doing.

Cameron is famous for being able to do any job on a movie set.

Some say he can do most jobs better than the people he employs to do them.

"'But I'm not just some brain in a bowl, "'creative type sitting over in a tent someplace, "'saying, yeah, put that over there.'" It's a curious fact that Cameron has directed only 2 feature films in the last 25 years.

This is a part of the explanation for why Cameron has at times drifted away from filmmaking.

He said, there's a certain point where my mind wants to solve problems that are real-world problems.

For a while, his career in ocean exploration, which Cameron got serious about after making Titanic, nearly kept him away from directing a film ever again.

I didn't get back into making movies for 8 years, he told me.

And when he did decide to return to Hollywood with his idea for the first Avatar, Cameron's longtime studio, Fox, almost didn't want to make it.

Cameron has mellowed with time and age, but he is still a score settler, a keeper of grudges.

And this is what he said when Fox initially passed.

And I said, now just so you know, before your taillights are out of sight, I will be on the phone with Disney, who wants this, and we'll make a deal.

And you might look like a big dick if it makes a lot of money.

In the end, Fox did come back and Cameron made Avatar with the studio, but Cameron still remembers an executive at the company who will go unnamed because this is a really negative review.

This executive approached Cameron after a pre-release screening of the film and begged the director to shorten it.

I said something that I've never said to anybody else in the business, Cameron recalled.

I said, I think this movie is going to make all the fucking money.

And when it does, it's going to be too late for you to love the film.

The time for you to love the movie is today.

So I'm not asking you to say something that you don't feel.

But just know that I will always know that no matter how complimentary you are about the movie in the future when it makes all the money and that's exactly what I said in caps, all the money.

Not some of the money, all the fucking money, I said.

You can't come back to me and compliment the film or chum along and say, look what we did together.

And then of course, the film came out and made all the money.

I asked Cameron whether he had a theory about why.

I don't think I need a theory, " he said.

I think anybody that's seen the movie knows why.

It's a fucking gigantic adventure that's an all-consuming, emotional experience that leaves you wrung out by the end of the movie.

And it was groundbreaking visually, and it still holds up today.

After Avatar, Cameron again walked away for a while.

He dove to the Mariana Trench, to the deepest point on Earth, and there was a period there, about a year and a half, where I didn't even know if I wanted to make another Avatar film.

It basically took over my life for 4 years.

I had no other life for 4 years making that first film.

And I thought, do I really want to do this again?

It's the highest grossing film in history.

He knew, of course, that on some level, he was running out of time.

When you get into your mid-60s, you start realizing that the ax could fall at any moment.

Maybe it's next week, Maybe it's in 30 years.

Cameron said that in the end, the answer he landed on was this.

I'm a storyteller and there's stories to be told.

I'm not done until the big hook comes out from the side of the curtain.

So to me, everything, every idea is a work in progress.

The list of things that Cameron has failed at is short, but there are a few destinations that have eluded him.

He went to Daniel Golden, who was then the NASA administrator and overseeing the assembly of the International Space Station, and asked if he could go up to the American side of the ISS.

Golden offered Cameron a shuttle flight instead.

No ISS, but he'd see the planet from above.

Golden said the ISS at the moment was too difficult.

He said to himself, maybe everything that I've been doing over the last few years leads to this exact moment when the administrator of NASA is willing to make a solid deal to fly me on the space shuttle.

But he looked at his heart and he decided no.

He would only go to space on his own terms.

Are you seeing a theme here with James Cameron?

I want to stick to my plan, even if it can't happen.

On February 1st, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated, taking with it 7 souls.

Cameron went to their memorial service, but he never got to go to space.

I asked what level of regret he had about this, the fact that he never went.

And he's been on a planet of his own making ever since.

I was driving back to my hotel not too long after when the phone rang.

It was Cameron, wanting to talk again about the shuttle flight that he had turned down.

I forgot the punchline to the story Cameron said.

The punchline is, the shuttle mission that I refused, it was the Columbia.

I fucking saved my own life by choosing the higher path.

Okay, so that was a super long excerpt, not from the book that I'm gonna talk to you about.

This is from this unbelievable long form piece on GQ.

It is called The Return of James Cameron, Box Office King, and it was written by Zach Baron.

This episode that you're about to hear, I have never ever worked on an episode longer than this 1.

I've been in the mind and completely obsessed with James Cameron, starting with this incredible piece in GQ.

So I read this piece, I was like, oh my God, I have to learn more about this guy.

And so I immediately ordered a biography on him.

That biography, which I'll talk to you about today, and I'm gonna go over now, it's called The Futurist, the Life and Films of James Cameron.

It was written by Rebecca Keegan, and it was produced right after, the book's about 10 or 12 years old, it was produced right after the books about 10 or 12 years old produced right after the original avatar came out.

But what I would do is every night I'll leave the link down below.

They use this technology called Autumn and you can instead of reading, you can listen to the whole thing.

I would fall asleep as I'm reading this biography of James Cameron.

Every night, I would fall asleep listening to this article again.

And I probably listened to it, I don't know, 10 or 15 times.

He's just unbelievably impressive with not only how he approached his work but his absolute insistence on building his own world within the world.

So I wanted to read the excerpt from that article first because that's the order that this information on James Cameron was presented to me.

I think there's going to be a few of these things that's going to be repeated throughout the book, but I think it gives you that overview is going to give you a better introduction into Cameron and why he is a 1 of 1, an unbelievably unique individual who is unapologetically extreme.

That is 1 of the most most important things that I learned about him.

And 1 thing I'm going to take away, and I do think this guy's going to change my and change my approach to my own work, but also reinforce it.

So Let me jump in because I got a ton of stuff to talk to you about.

Just going to go over a brief overview and introduction real quick.

He's a truck driver who directed the highest grossing movie of all time.

He then ditched Hollywood to spend a decade of his life exploring the deep ocean and the heights of science.

He's a tinkerer and a dreamer who pioneered tools that revolutionized the way stories are told.

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#311 James Cameron