celebrity gossip, academic style

Cameron and His Raw Clay

James Cameron makes huge, monstrous movies. I’m not going to delve (too deeply) into the critical melee concerning his most recent film - I saw it; it’s tremendously striking and aesthetically pleasurable, it’s also ridiculously, embarrassingly ideologically f-ed. (You wonder why this film is doing so well internationally? Because it makes Americans look destructive, one-minded, intolerant, profit-minded, and controlled by roided-up guys with bad scalp scars. I’m just sayin’.) Jonathan Gray at The Extratextuals has a compelling take on Avatar’s ‘anti-fans’; Maria Bustillos at the always dourly and smarmily entertaining The Awl shreds the film’s progressive claims; I appreciate the balance of appreciation and critique at work in David Denby’s review.

But what few people are talking about — in part because they’re too busy arguing how Avatar will or won’t change the way that films are made forevermore — is the fact that James Cameron has further established himself not as a director, or an innovator, or a somewhat derivative writer, but as a tremendously skilled star maker.

Before we get to Sam Worthington, let’s take a trip in the wayback machine. Remember these kids?

Leonardo DiCaprio was sorta kinda a rising star when Cameron cast him in Titanic. That is, if you can call a head-turning performance in This Boy’s Life, an Oscar nom for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and a recurring role in Growing Pains credentials for the mantle of ’rising star.’ Remember: Cameron cast him before he appeared in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet. Cameron knew what could happen with this kid. As for Kate Winslet, she was, at that point, pure arthouse. She had attracted attention for her roles in Heavenly Creatures and Sense and Sensibility (including an Oscar nom) and starred in Jude and Kenneth Branuagh’s Hamlet, but she was certainly no household name. She didn’t have a Cameron Diaz body; she didn’t star in action films; she wasn’t funny. And while Winslet has mostly kept with arthouse fare (Hideous Kinky, Smoke, Quills, Iris, Finding Neverland, Eternal Sunshine, Little Children, The Reader, Revolutionary Road, to name only half) and wouldn’t be trusted to open a film, she’s a hot prestige commodity. As for DiCaprio, following a few manic years of “Leo-mania” post-Titanic, he has managed to tread the line between action star and prestige commodity (not to mention Scorsese’s new muse).

Most importantly, Titanic — and Cameron’s selection of them to star in it — effectively made their careers what they are today.

Go back a little further and you’ll find Cameron’s most brilliant find: Arnold Schwarzenegger. See The New Yorker‘s profile of Cameron from a few months back for details, but suffice to say that Cameron not only convinced Schwarzenegger, then known only for Conan the Barbarian, to take the role, but also wrote the lines that would allow his particular enunciative qualities to endure in American culture for decades.

And then there’s Avatar. How can you make stars out of ‘Real-D’ digitally rendered characters? THAT ARE BLUE AND LOOK LIKE CATS? You don’t. But with a human component, you don’t have to make the cat smurfs themselves stars. The Na’vi and their likenesses can be synergistic moneymakers — can you imagine how many kids are going to dress as Na’vi next Halloween? — but Cameron also knew that he needed human bodies to make this film profitable. As was the case in Titanic, most of the roles in Avatar are purely utilitarian, put in place simply to advance the narrative: what do we know about the Colonel (Stephen Lang), the asshole corporate guy (Giovanni Ribisi), the pilot (Michelle Rodriguez), the nerdy scientist (Joel Moore) or the other nerdy scientist (Dileep Rao) other than clipped statements or actions that establish them clearly as good or bad guys?

The character of Neytiri, voiced by Zoe Saldana and modeled on her facial features and body movements, is a unique case. Zoe Saldana herself has been a long struggling Hollywood actress — please recall both Center Stage and Crossroads — and is coming off a key franchise role in Star Trek. She has a handful of biggish movies in post-production; she’ll be in Neil LaBute’s Death at a Funeral and several action-esque movies that make ample use of her midriff. My guess is she’ll end up a star, if not a huge one — but not necessary because of Avatar. Her face is too absent from the film.

Sam Worthington, however, is another story entirely. Here’s a guy who, as has been well-rehearsed in publicity for this film and Terminator, was LIVING IN HIS CAR before he was cast in Avatar. He apparently went to an audition to an acting school with his then-girlfriend; he got in, she didn’t, they broke up. When he was 30, he wanted to “reboot” his life, so he sold all of his belongings, netted $2000, bought a car, and ended up living in said car. He tried out for an unnamed project with no director’s name attached; a few days later he received a call from Cameron, who wanted him to come in for six months of auditions. He eventually got the part. While Cameron was endlessly tinkering in post, he “sent” Worthington to McG, who was directing the fourth installment of Cameron’s former baby, Terminator. Granted, Terminator: Salvation was no tremendous success, but it put Worthington’s name (and face) on the map. In essence, Cameron was prepping the market for his new star.

With both Terminator and Avatar on his resume, Worthington was cast in three big films, each of which are now in post and scheduled for release within the year: espionage thriller The Debt (with Helen Mirren and Tom Wilkinson); quasi-rom-com Last Night (with Keira Knightly) and, most significantly, CGI-orgasm Clash of the Titans, in which 300 meets Avatar meets Grand Theft Auto. He’s basically establishing himself as a Matt Damon/Russell Crowe hybrid — equally adept at action, thrillers, drama, fantasy, and historical epics.

I mean, the guy’s a babe. He has that sweet hint of Australian accent sneaking out in his speech (you can hear it distinctly in the voiceover for Avatar); he has big arms; he’s got that look of the innocent and the slightly busted and the huge-hearted, all of which are crucial to pulling off the action/heartthrob role. (See Daniel Craig and Crowe for exemplars in this vein). He kinda looks like Tom Brady, which is to say he kinda looks like he wants to be America’s hero; he’s genial in interviews; he has a fantastic ‘origin story’ (I mean seriously, living in your car? Only Hilary Swank can compete!); and he’s hungry. He appeals to men and women, which is, of course, crucial. Even older women like him, as emphasized by this fawning EW blogger.

He’s not as pretty as Leonardo DiCaprio, but he’s pretty enough. His muscles aren’t as big as The Terminator’s, but they’re big enough. He’s just unique enough to be interesting, but not crazy or volatile and thus uncastable like Colin Farrell or old school Johnny Depp and Robert Downey Jr.. His image was completely malleable going into the publicity for Avatar, which was exactly what Cameron wanted. Just as in the case of the technology he uses in his films, Cameron molds his tools — and that includes his stars — to fit his purpose. Worthington will most likely go on to huge success following this film. But he did it on Cameron’s terms, and Avatar will always be the ground note of his stardom. Cameron isn’t doing anything novel — star makers such as Selznick, Mayer, Henry Willson, and others have long practiced this sort of career manipulation.

Ultimately, it’s fascinating to me that we, as media studies academics, film critics, and informal industry observers, make such noise about everything to do with Cameron — his bombastic filmmaking style, his visionary use of technology, his insistence on playing by his own set of rules, his rejection of the maxims of contemporary conglomerate Hollywood — yet fail to see the very clear ways in which he operates very much like an independent producer, and star maker, of classic Hollywood style.