FEBRUARY 1998:

JIMMY CAN WRITE

Over the past few years, people looking for something bad to say about James Cameron's filmmaking abilities have focused on one area in which they think he's lacking. Is it his direction? No, he's proven time and again to be more than capable, able to pull off huge, difficult projects with infinitely more style than even 'A' list action directors can muster. Could it be his work with actors? Hardly. Sigourney Weaver got an Oscar nomination for ALIENS, a sci-fi action film - how rare is that? He's even coaxed good performances from Arnold Schwarzenegger, fer chrissakes. Does he make the same film every time out of the barrel? Nuh-uh. Cameron's films have consistently broken new technological ground without letting these breakthroughs constitute the entire appeal of the movie (JURASSIC PARK, anyone?). No, those critics who feel compelled to attack Cameron attack his skills as a writer.

In his review of TITANIC in the Los Angeles Times, critic Kenneth Turan wrote about the emotional impact of the film: "What really brings on the tears is Cameron's insistence that writing this kind of movie is within his abilities. Not only isn't it, it isn't even close... Cameron has regularly come up with his own scripts in the past, but in a better world someone would have had the nerve to tell him or he would have realized himself that creating a moving and credible love story is a different order of business from coming up with wisecracks for Arnold Schwarzenegger." I quote Mr. Turan because this is a pretty typical Cameron-bashing. Turan makes a lazy critic mistake here, assuming that since Cameron has written Schwarzenegger films (which are of course below any 'serious' critic's standards), and all Schwarzenegger films are of the same low-brow appeal, James Cameron must write crummy, one-note action films. This is like saying that all Woody Allen writes are New York-based comedies. Wait. Bad example.

Sure, it takes place on a doomed ship, but if you didn't care
about the love story it'd be just another disaster movie.

It's very obvious to anyone willing to actually watch Cameron's films that he's written scripts which contain exciting plotlines, clever twists, strong characters and deep emotions. And oh yeah - they're also shiny, glossy and fun! And it's this 'shiny, glossy, fun' trifecta that causes his critics to attack his writing skills. I mean, the TERMINATOR movies can't be good, they're about robots from the future. THE ABYSS can't be good, it's about underwater aliens. ALIENS can't be good, it's a science fiction sequel with tons of action. And TITANIC can't be good because... well, because it's not like all the other stuff he's done. But TITANIC is like all the other stuff Cameron's done. Because the TERMINATOR films, THE ABYSS, ALIENS and now TITANIC are big, lavishly presented movies which never lose sight of the fact that they're about people.

Okay, so the TERMINATOR films have cool robots
trying to blast anything that moves.
But so did crap like UNIVERSAL SOLDIER and SOLO.

ALIENS is widely regarded as one of the best sequels of all time, very often mentioned in the same breath as THE GODFATHER, PART II (the Holy Grail of sequels in serious critic-dom). What sets ALIENS apart is not just its stylish, intense action sequences - it's the characters. The smart-assed Marines whose human sides surface when things start going badly... Newt, the little girl who's managed to survive the alien onslaught after losing her entire family... and most notably Ripley, who is all the stronger here because of her vulnerabilities. And you know what? That was all Cameron's script. He inherited none of these things from the first ALIEN. Oh sure, he inherited the character of Ripley. But Ripley in ALIEN was a tough, smart, take-no-shit survivor. The Ripley of ALIENS is a tough, smart, take-no-shit survivor... whose emotionally vulnerable side is exposed when she discovers that her daughter, whose 11th birthday she had promised to return for, died two years ago at age 66. This serves to strengthen Ripley's feelings toward little Newt, who brings out her motherly instincts and motivates Ripley's battles with the aliens.

ALIENS is the rare sequel that's even better than a truly great original. Cameron isn't willing to settle for the conventions and cliches of the genre. He's smarter than that. For instance, in ALIEN Ripley nearly doesn't get off the self-destructing ship because she's looking for a cat. In ALIENS she nearly doesn't get out of the self-destructing atmosphere processor because she's looking for a child. Which sounds more consistent with the character of a tough, smart, take-no-shit survivor? Another indication of how strong Cameron's character work is can be found in the reaction to ALIEN3. Audiences felt angry and betrayed when characters from ALIENS were killed off before the credits were even over. They'd grown to care about these characters, and their deaths were a very large reason (among many) that ALIEN3 was such a notorious failure. The characters that died were not from the first film, but were characters created by Cameron.

Surprised by the love story in TITANIC? Then you
weren't paying attention to THE ABYSS, were you?

THE ABYSS contains one of the most gut-wrenching scenes of sacrifice in recent memory: Trapped in a submersible rapidly filling with water, a husband must watch his wife drown in the hopes that hypothermia will allow him to resuscitate her upon return to the main vessel. What makes this scene so effective isn't simply the power of watching another person drown in front of you - it's the emotions involved. This scene is great because there's another layer beneath the action... this is the scene in which these characters realize they still love and value one another. That a scene like this would have great visceral impact is a given (I mean really, who wants to drown?), but the emotional wallop it packs is not a given, not unless you truly give a damn about the characters.

And now we have TITANIC. I read and reviewed the script nearly a year ago (see my 'Script Reviews' page to read my incisive, oh-so-clever critique) and found it to be an involving, potentially spectacular piece of work. My only concern was whether audiences, anxious to see a big ship break in half and sink, would be willing to sit through the love story which is the true heart of the film. Obviously my concerns were unfounded. Way, way, way unfounded, as it turns out. The main reason for TITANIC's huge box-office success is the love story. Lemme tell you a little story... the theatre in which I saw TITANIC prides themselves on customer service - so much so that they force their mortified employees to make a speech saying as much before each screening. They also make their ushers line up outside each theatre as the show ends to say goodbye to the audience as they file out (kinda like stewardesses, only making minimum wage). Now, anyone who's worked this kind of job knows how much these ushers hate doing this. It's the crappiest part of a crap job... well, second crappiest. Crappiest is cleaning the floors following a kiddie matinee of FLUBBER after a theatre full of kids realize how much flubber looks like phlegm. But I digress. They hate it, trust me. But as I filed out of TITANIC I was stunned to see that the ushers were actually enjoying watching people come out of the theatre! Why? Because everyone filing out of the theatre did so with eyes swollen and red-rimmed from crying. And it cracked the ushers up! To top it off, it became obvious that this wasn't an isolated occurrence - audiences were walking out of every screening of TITANIC with swollen, red-rimmed eyes.

Cameron is one of the few writer/directors out there
who can make huge, technically groundbreaking films without
losing sight of the people that inhabit them.

Are audiences having such an emotional response to the film because the ship sinks? Because 1,500 people die horrifying deaths? Gimme a break! Nobody cried coming out of INDEPENDENCE DAY, and three-quarters of the world population bit the bag in that film. They're crying because they cared about the characters in the love story. They cared about Rose, and Jack, and they grew to like them. To root for them. Without that emotional connection to the characters TITANIC would be just another disaster film, like VOLCANO or THE POSTMAN (okay, so POSTMAN's a different kind of disaster). There are those, like Kenneth Turan, who think that Cameron comes by these emotions by using old cliches and storytelling gimmicks to achieve his goals. Well you know what? HE DOES! He uses them extremely well, which is what makes the film so effective. Looky here, this is a big, old-fashioned, three-hanky romance with a grand historical backdrop - what's he supposed to do, make it more Kenneth Anger than David O. Selznick? Roger Ebert put it best: "If its story stays well within the traditional formulas of such pictures, well, you don't choose the most expensive film ever made as your opportunity to reinvent the wheel." Let's also think back to how many filmmakers have tried to pull off grand, old-fashioned love stories in the past decade and failed miserably. They failed because it's a very hard thing to do in this day and age. It's the rare film that can cut through a modern audience's cynicism and touch their hearts, something TITANIC has obviously done.

James Cameron has proven time and again that he can make spectacular, larger-than-life entertainments that satisfy on every level - storytelling, character, imagination and ingenuity. That he also consistently breaks new technological ground, using these advances to compliment his stories rather than the stories complimenting the effects makes him one-of-a-kind. Still think he's a lousy writer? Do me a favor - go hang out with the ushers as audiences file out of TITANIC and ask all the red-eyed people staggering into the light what they thought of the writing.

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