Latest James Cameron Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• Everybody is always talking about droughts and sea level rise, but when human civilization, with more crowding and greater resource depletion, is under that much stress, it translates into wars and huge displaced populations. The Syrian refugee crisis is just a first taste of what it's going to be like. I don't want my kids growing up in that kind of world.

  James Cameron

  Growing Up, War, Stress

• Climate change is critical to me because I'm a parent; I feel a sense of responsibility to the future. I'm not going to be around to see its worst effects, which are going to be hitting in the 2030s, '40s, '50s, but my kids will.

  James Cameron

  Kids, Responsibility, Parent

• If it was up to the studio, everything would be shot with a camcorder.

  James Cameron

  Would Be, Shots, Studios

  James Cameron, Brent Dunham (2012). “James Cameron: Interviews”, p.205, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• I don’t feel that I’m making movies for iPhones. If someone wants to watch it on an iPhone, I’m not going to stop them, especially if they’re paying for it, but I don’t recommend it. I think it’s dumb, when you have characters that are so small in the frame that they’re not visible. I’m trying to make an epic.

  James Cameron

  Character, Epic, Thinking

  "James Cameron Interview AVATAR Blu-ray; Also talks TITANIC 3D and AVATAR 2". Interview with Sara Wayland, collider.com. March 24, 2010.

• I'm certainly not a fan of conversion when you could shoot the movie in 3-D.

  James Cameron

  Fans, Conversion

  James Cameron, Brent Dunham (2012). “James Cameron: Interviews”, p.205, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• Everybody's going to do the 3D slightly differently the same way that people are going to deal with color differently. Some movies downplay the color, some color is very vibrant. Color design is very different. We've got to think of 3D like color or like sound, as just part of the creative palette that we paint with and not some whole new thing that completely redefines the medium.

  James Cameron

  Thinking, Color, People

  "James Cameron, Alister Grierson, and Andrew Wight Interview SANCTUM". Interview with Sheila Roberts, collider.com. January 31, 2012.

• I don't just want to be associated with a few good 3D movies and the audience is saying all of the other ones are crap.

  James Cameron

  Want, Crap, Audience

  "James Cameron, Alister Grierson, and Andrew Wight Interview SANCTUM". Interview with Sheila Roberts, collider.com. January 31, 2012.

• Every time my cameras go out on a movie, we learn something new and then we take what we learn and we put it into the next generation of the cameras so we're constantly improving. It's kind of like building a race car, racing it, then running back to the shop and working on the engine some more and tinkering with it to improve it.

  James Cameron

  Running, Race, Car

  "James Cameron Interview, Sanctum". MoviesOnline Interview, www.moviesonline.ca. February 2011.

• We have nightmares because our brain is running simulations to put us in jeopardy to see what we'll do or to acclimatize us to that idea that something bad could happen. It's just how human beings are wired because the entire time we were evolving we had to jump quick or the leopard would get us or whatever it was. It's Darwinian.

  James Cameron

  Running, Ideas, Brain

  "James Cameron Interview, Sanctum". MoviesOnline Interview, www.moviesonline.ca. February 2011.

• The literature now is so opaque to the average person that you couldn't take a science-fiction short story that's published now and turn it into a movie. There'd be way too much ground work you'd have to lay. It's OK to have detail and density, but if you rely on being a lifelong science-fiction fan to understand what the story is about, then it's not going to translate to a broader audience.

  James Cameron

  Average, Fans, Details

  "James Cameron: The ‘Avatar’ sequel will dive into the oceans of Pandora". Interview with Patrick Kevin Day, herocomplex.latimes.com. April 20, 2010.

• Literary science fiction is a very, very narrow band of the publishing business. I love science fiction in more of a pop-culture sense. And by the way, the line between science fiction and reality has blurred a lot in my life doing deep ocean expeditions and working on actual space projects and so on. So I tend to be more fascinated by the reality of the science-fiction world in which we live.

  James Cameron

  Ocean, Reality, Space

  "James Cameron: The ‘Avatar’ sequel will dive into the oceans of Pandora". Interview with Patrick Kevin Day, herocomplex.latimes.com. April 20,2010.

• I probably spend more time writing than reading science fiction. I find that science-fiction literature is so reactive to all the literature that's gone before that it's sort of like a fractal. It's gone to a level of detail that the average person could not possibly follow unless you're a fan. It iterates upon many prior generations of iterations.

  James Cameron

  Reading, Writing, Average

  "James Cameron: The ‘Avatar’ sequel will dive into the oceans of Pandora". Interview with Patrick Kevin Day, herocomplex.latimes.com. April 20, 2010.

• I pick my feature film battles very carefully. They're going to be personal and they're going to take a lot of my energy. I'm not going to be some big production company and be Jerry Bruckheimer or something like that. It doesn't interest me.

  James Cameron

  Battle, Energy, Film

  "James Cameron: The ‘Avatar’ sequel will dive into the oceans of Pandora". Interview with Patrick Kevin Day, herocomplex.latimes.com. April 20, 2010.

• I tried [being a mogul]. It bores me. I don't really want to produce other people's movies. Because they're either grown-up filmmakers like Steven Soderbergh or Kathryn Bigelow that didn't really need me - and I've produced both of them. It's fun to sit around with them and be collegial, but they don't need me. They can make the film without me. I make my own stuff. There are tons and tons of other things I'm interested in that have nothing to do with movies or are documentary projects.

  James Cameron

  Fun, People, Needs

  "James Cameron: The ‘Avatar’ sequel will dive into the oceans of Pandora". Interview with Patrick Kevin Day, herocomplex.latimes.com. April 20, 2010.

• Here's my philosophy in life: If there's a fire, you put it out. If there's a flood, you fill sandbags and you build a dike. You roll up your sleeves and you get to work.

  James Cameron

  Philosophy, Fire, Flood

  "James Cameron: The ‘Avatar’ sequel will dive into the oceans of Pandora". Interview with Patrick Kevin Day, herocomplex.latimes.com. April 20, 2010.

• The nation that leads in renewable energy will be the nation that leads the world 10, 20 years from now.

  James Cameron

  Energy, World, Lead In

  "James Cameron: The ‘Avatar’ sequel will dive into the oceans of Pandora". Interview with Patrick Kevin Day, herocomplex.latimes.com. April 20, 2010.

• People of conscience in our leadership in Washington have been scared off by the right and the fossil fuel lobbies. They won't even use the term "sustainability" or "climate change" in an energy bill, which is ludicrous on its face. It completely ignores the elephant in the room that we're all dealing with. The average American doesn't even believe climate change is real, they think it's all a hoax.

  James Cameron

  Real, Believe, Thinking

  "James Cameron: The ‘Avatar’ sequel will dive into the oceans of Pandora". Interview with Patrick Kevin Day, herocomplex.latimes.com. April 20, 2010.

• I think "Avatar" is kind of a unique category where people are enjoying the unique theatrical experience even though they may have seen it on the small screen. They want to have that immersive, transportive experience. "2001: A Space Odyssey" played for three years at the Loews cinema in Toronto. I remember that. It just kept playing. People wanted to return to that experience. That may not be the best example because I think "2001" took 25 years to break even.

  James Cameron

  Thinking, Unique, Break Even

  "James Cameron: The ‘Avatar’ sequel will dive into the oceans of Pandora". Interview with Patrick Kevin Day, herocomplex.latimes.com. April 20, 2010.

• You can have a strong economy or you can help the environment, but you can't do both at the same time. That's ridiculous. In fact, as a sustainable vision for a healthy economy has to involve changing our energy policy and changing with respect to the natural world. Because we're hitting nature's thresholds, we're hitting nature's limits with respect to water and crop yields and energy use and fossil fuels heating the atmosphere at the same time we're past global peak and running out of that.

  James Cameron

  Running, Strong, Past

• I'm a curious guy. I can't turn away from an investigative story, when it comes to the forensic analysis. I've done 33 dives, to the titanic wreck site. I've spent over 50 hours piloting robotic vehicles at that wreck trying to piece together what happened during the disaster. How the ship broke up, comparing the historical record with the forensic record. Documentaries are kind of my new life. I love documentary filmmaking.

  James Cameron

  Guy, Historical, Trying

  "Cameron: Jesus tomb film is a "detective story". Today Interview, www.today.com. February 27, 2007.

• Action is a way of externalizing an emotional state. You might not be running, leaping, climbing and doing all that. But, the way you create that emotional state in a movie is by having the characters have physical jeopardy that they have to work against.

  James Cameron

  Running, Character, Emotional

  "Producer James Cameron, Director Alister Grierson & Producer Andrew Wight Interview SANCTUM 3D MOBILE EXPERIENCE". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. January 5, 2011.

• Usually, when you go to a movie, your consciousness floats above the film. 3D sucks you in and makes it a visceral experience.

  James Cameron

  Consciousness, Film, Visceral

  "Producer James Cameron, Director Alister Grierson & Producer Andrew Wight Interview SANCTUM 3D MOBILE EXPERIENCE". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. January 5, 2011.