Vlad Bunoan

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Yong Chavez

ABS-CBN News North America

<div><span class="fr-video fr-deletable fr-fvc fr-dvb fr-draggable" contenteditable="false" draggable="true"><iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/w3Fny11PVuk?&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0" frameBorder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable"></iframe></span><br/></div><p>“I was a school bus mechanic. I was a bus driver. I was a delivery truck driver. I used to deliver all the meals to the school system in the Brea Olinda School District in Orange County,” a grinning James Cameron shared one recent morning as we sat down to talk about his latest film.</p><p>Before the submarines, before the awards, before his films conquered the global box office, Cameron was piloting delivery routes in California, carting school lunches across the Brea Olinda School District. A generation of children in the ‘70s had no idea that their meals were delivered by a future Oscar winner.</p><p>A truck may be an unlikely station for a cinematic revolutionary, but that’s the thing about Cameron: the more unlikely the path, the more he seems compelled to walk it.</p><p>“It left my imagination free,” he says, describing the eight-hour shifts that demanded nothing of his mind except showing up. The rest of his hours were spent thinking, writing, drawing. Until, eventually, that imagination barreled past the guardrails of his blue-collar life and into the parking lot of the University of Southern California where he wasn’t even a student.</p><p>He scoured their library stacks anyway. Studied what he didn’t know. Taught himself filmmaking from books he didn’t technically paid the tuition to open. And that is the fundamental truth of James Cameron: he works very hard, and he finds a way.</p><p>At a swanky Beverly Hills hotel floor that’s been transformed into a Pandora outpost for the &quot;Avatar: Fire and Ash&quot; press day, Cameron was gracious, warm, and chatty.</p><p>When he talks about the early days of &quot;Avatar,&quot; it isn’t with the swagger of a prophet who knew he was right. It’s the memory of a man who took “a gigantic leap of faith” — from the test reel, to creating blue creatures, to the digital rainforest.</p><p>He recalls how it all started: “My founding partner, Stan Winston, did a Michael Jackson video where he moonwalked and we captured his motion. And I was okay, I&#x27;m hooked. This is a way to create characters like we&#x27;ve never done before, but we weren&#x27;t ready to do a movie as ambitious as &#x27;Avatar&#x27; at that time. And then I came back from a Titanic expedition in 2005 and I reread the script that I had written. It was about 80 pages long. &#x27;This is a good movie. We should make this.’&quot;</p><div><br/></div><div><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:960px;display:block" width="960"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/17649241961492249481526.jpg" style="width:960px;display:block;height:auto" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/><span class="fr-inner" style="text-align:left"><em>Handout</em></span></span></span></div><p>The thing about Cameron is he literally dreams in plot devices. &quot;The Terminator&quot; arrived in his sleep, the dystopian story that birthed unlikely heroes. &quot;Avatar’s&quot; bioluminescent forest was a vision he woke from and immediately painted, long before it became a world that millions would inhabit in 3D glasses.</p><p>“It’s not about getting the message intellectually. It’s about feeling,” he says, describing &quot;Avatar&quot; as “almost like a dream state.” His movies aren’t designed to follow logic, he admits without hesitation.</p><p>As for his film’s message? “It’s there between the lines,” he says. “We all feel it.”</p><p>He splits his life between two worlds: cinema and science. Or more precisely, cinema and the bottom of the ocean. Since the beginning, Cameron has chased the literal and metaphorical deep. He had gone to the Titanic wreckage, on trench dives, and has long-range expedition plans that he hints at with the excitement of a kid describing a treehouse he hasn’t built yet.</p><p>“I like to keep one foot in science and one foot in Hollywood,” he says. The bridge between them is documentary filmmaking. “I&#x27;ve only made nine feature films, but I&#x27;ve made 12 documentary films as either director or producer.”</p><p>And then there’s AI, another Cameron prophecy.</p><p>I mention that the world of &quot;Terminator&quot; is slowly coming true.</p><p>“Not so slowly. It’s happening very fast. We’re living in a science-fiction world right now,” the writer-director says. If he ever returns to &quot;Terminator,&quot; it will be to address what’s happening right now.</p><p>He shares that telling stories is how he wrestles with his own fears as an artist and as a father.</p><p>“I work out my angst. I work out my fears, my fears as a parent,” he says. The words land with surprising vulnerability. “I’ve got five kids. When I wrote &#x27;Avatar&#x27; 2 and 3, I wrote it from the perspective they were in their teen years when I wrote it. They&#x27;re all now in their 20s and early 30s, but I was processing being a father and processing my own teenage years, you know, through the writing. I mean, that&#x27;s what artists do, right? They process their own stuff.”</p><div><br/></div><div><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:960px;display:block" width="960"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/17649242317482249477518.jpg" style="width:960px;display:block;height:auto" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/><span class="fr-inner" style="text-align:left"><em>Handout</em></span></span></span></div><p>Before this interview, together with a small group of select journalists and Hollywood actors like Joseph Gordon-Levitt who all wanted to watch Cameron direct a performance capture scene with Sam Worthington and Sigourney Weaver, we witnessed him block, rehearse, and show the raw choreography of actors who know they will eventually become something blue and otherworldly.</p><p>But what Cameron wants you to understand is that none of it is trickery. “It’s a full physical performance,” he says. “We couldn’t get the results we’re getting any other way.”</p><p>At the interview, he asked me if watching the demonstration spoiled the movie for me, I said, no, because truthfully it enhanced the film experience, especially seeing a master like him at work.</p><p>When my interview time was up, when I stood to shake his hand, Cameron instinctively shielded my head from the boom mic overhead, a small but genuinely kind gesture from a man known for towering ambition.</p><div><br/></div><div><em>Here in Hollywood comes out every Friday. Have a question about Hollywood celebrities? Contact Yong on Instagram: @yongchavez</em><em></em><br/></div>

<p>As '<i>Avatar: Fire and Ash'</i> rolls out, James Cameron revisits the origins of his biggest ideas — from dreams that became blockbusters to the technology that changed filmmaking — and why he still keeps one foot in science and one in storytelling.</p>

As ' Avatar: Fire and Ash' rolls out, James Cameron revisits the origins of his biggest ideas — from dreams that became blockbusters to the technology that changed filmmaking — and why he still keeps one foot in science and one in storytelling.

Here in Hollywood: How a mechanic and driver became the director of ‘Avatar’, ‘Terminator’ and ‘Titanic’

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Here in Hollywood: How a mechanic and driver became the director of ‘Avatar’, ‘Terminator’ and ‘Titanic’

Yong Chavez,

ABS-CBN News North America

Published Dec 05, 2025 05:01 PM PHT

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Here in Hollywood

James Cameron

Avatar Fire and Ash

Yong Chavez

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