“Divergent” is a young adult dystopian science fiction novel, one of my favorite genres. Roth builds a world where citizens are divided based on their primary personality traits. A child of age may choose to join a different faction or remain with his or her family. Each tribe offers societal services compatible with their unique talents. The members of the Abnegation are selfless and modest. The people of Candor are honest and love to debate. Scholarly individuals go into Erudite. Hospitable, social members of the community are found in Amity.

The most intriguing faction, the Dauntless, crave danger and adventure.

The gaps between the buildings narrow and the roads are smoother as we near the heart of the city. The building that was once called the Sears Tower—we call it the Hub—emerges from the fog, a black pillar in the skyline. The bus passes under the elevated tracks. I have never been on a train, though they never stop running and there are tracks everywhere. Only the Dauntless ride them.

In a spellbinding story of action and adventure, Roth takes the reader on a train ride with the Dauntless, hand-in-hand with a girl from Abnegation struggling to find her place in society. “Divergent” examines the little boxes into which we organize ourselves and others, illuminating the young adult’s persistent dilemma of who am I? and where do I belong?

Today is the day before Visiting Day. I think of Visiting Day like I think of the world ending: Nothing after it matters. Everything I do builds up to it. I might see my parents again. I might not. Which is worse? I don’t know.

In spite of the narrow nature of each faction’s primary attribute, the characters are multifaceted and complicated. They surprise you. Themes of self-discovery and courage make the story a satisfying read.

So what’s my problem?

One of the plot developments is a power struggle between the Erudite (the scholars) and the Abnegation (the selfless). Due to their benevolent nature, the members of Abnegation make suitable leaders. I felt a little uncomfortable with this assertion. In my world, the scholarly people preach Marxism, and Harvard lawyers become politicians. But then I remembered that this is Roth’s world, and in a visionary society, politicians would have only the needs of the citizens in their hearts. So I pressed on. The Erudite want a little power for themselves. This is human nature, and it makes for a good conflict. No issue there. But I balked when Roth revealed the battle cry of the Erudite:

“Prosperity!”

The main character, Tris, cringes at the word:

“Prosperity. To me the word has a negative connotation. Abnegation uses it to describe self-indulgence.”

I beg to differ.

self-indulgence: indulging one’s own desires, passions, whims, etc., especially without restraint

The practice of self-indulgence actually hinders prosperity.

prosperity: The condition of being prosperous

prosperous: having or characterized by financial success or good fortune; flourishing; successful

prosper: to thrive, succeed, etc., or cause to thrive, succeed, etc. in a healthy way

antonyms: failure, hardship, loss, poorness, poverty

I fail to see the connection between self-indulgence and prosperity.

Tris’ brother, Caleb, appears to agree with me.

“Maybe it’s a good idea to have more than one faction in control of the government. And maybe it would be nice if we had more cars and… fresh fruit and…”

“You do realize there’s no secret warehouse where all that stuff is kept, right?”

Right. It has to be made or grown. Someone invests time and money into a factory or a farm; products and produce are thus created – created because individuals believe they will receive a reward if they work hard. Prosperity belongs to everyone participating in this system. Caleb’s vision of fresh fruit and a safe car beat empty shelves and a Moskvitch any day.

The houses on my street are all the same size and shape. They are made of gray cement, with few windows, in economical, no-nonsense rectangles. Their lawns are crabgrass and their mailboxes are dull metal. To some the sight might be gloomy, but to me their simplicity is comforting.

Comforting… like an apartment in the GDR. But you have to admit the writing is beautiful.

Roth is, herself, a young adult, which begs the question: what has happened in the last ten years that causes young people to see the government as benevolent and success as dirty? I sense a descent toward statism, and I can do nothing to stop it. So that is why I both love and hate this book.

Roth is a very talented new author. I truly look forward to more from her. “Divergent” is the first book of a trilogy, the second of which is slated to be released in 2012. Maybe one of those altruistic leaders will be caught in a government corruption scandal. Or people will realize that the absence of prosperity looks like this and this.

In spite of her revulsion to the word, I hope Roth has a prosperous career as a writer.

I hear the train horn. The train tracks loop around the Dauntless compound and then continue farther than I can see. Where do they begin? Where do they end? What is the world like beyond them?

Indeed. What will it be like?

‘In Time’ takes place in a future where physical aging has been genetically altered to end at 25. At that time, a year begins to count down on your arm. When your time runs out, you die. If you can earn or steal more time, you can extend your life infinitely. In this world, people are divided in time zones based on their wealth, and Timekeepers – half cop, half agents of order – ensure that no one breaks the rules and advances illegally.

Justin Timberlake plays Will, a struggling factory worker who has been gifted over a century of time by Henry (Matt Bomer), a man who has grown tired of living. With his new wealth and knowledge, Will goes to New Greenwich, the lap of luxury, intent on stealing time from the wealthy to distribute to the masses – time that has been stolen from them through manipulated markets that ensure the rich earn more time while the poor continually struggle to make it through each day. There, he meets Sylvia (Amanda Seyfried), the daughter of Philippe (‘Mad Men’s’ Vincent Kartheiser), who owns an eternity of time. When Timekeepers track Will to New Greenwich and try to arrest him for supposedly stealing the minutes and murdering Henry, he kidnaps Sylvia and goes on the run, racing against not only the Timekeepers but a dwindling clock.

Niccol both wrote and directed the film. There’s been some scandal over whether the premise was his or borrowed from a short story, but I’m inclined to believe it’s originally his. He has a history of writing provoking films, including ‘Gattaca,’ ‘Lord of War’ and ‘The Truman Show.’ Regardless of where it came from, ‘In Time’ is an intriguing and generally well-crafted story.

The film has a timeless aura, amplified by cars and clothes that could fit as easily in the 1920s as the 2010s. The story takes time to develop, and it matures along the way, as does Timberlake’s acting. Seyfried deserves kudos for taking the cliché role of a sheltered heiress and turning her into a sexy Patty Hearst-Bonnie Parker sidekick. Kartheiser is basically himself from ‘Mad Men,’ but wealth suits him, and he’s a good choice to play the villain.

The best character in the story is the Timekeeper Raymond (Cillian Murphy), whose unflinching dedication to his job, like that of Inspecter Javert in ‘Les Miserables,’ drives the film. Murphy is not the creepy Scarecrow here; instead he’s obsessed with the status quo.

If you’ve seen the trailer, you already know the basic political thrust of the film. The rich have gamed the system and the poor can’t survive in it. The mantra of the upper class is a Darwinian one – the many must die so the few may live forever. Will’s response is simple: If even one must die, then none should live forever. Accepted at its face value, the film seems to assert the liberal notion that we need to spread the wealth around because greedy corporations are hogging it all. In the film though, time is a finite, scarce resource. There’s a limited amount of it, and so letting anyone live forever means that many must suffer because of it. But with wealth, there’s no need for others to suffer, because wealth is generated through work, not just redistributed.

Then there’s Levi (August Emerson), a priest who runs a time bank where he literally gives his time away to those who need it. He’s the moral compass of the film, showing that good people exist in this dog-eat-dog future, and he also serves as Will’s Friar Tuck, his point-main in distributing stolen time to the needy.

Coupled with the fact that the film doesn’t really address whether it’s a one-world government or a series of businesses running the time-stealing scam, the film’s political message is cloudy. In the end, it’s really just a decent story that you can either discuss with your friends long after or simply write off as time that was – for the most part – well spent.

‘Attack the Block’ pits an unruly gang against a wave of aliens, and darned if the movie doesn’t touch on class envy as well as nature versus nurture arguments amidst the creature attacks. But writer/director Joe Cornish refuses to let sloganeering mar his feature film debut.

Cornish also risks audience sympathy by making heroes out of a gaggle of petty thugs. He’s piled so much on his plate it’s a small miracle a taut science fiction thriller emerges from the wreckage.

A group of toughs corner and mug a young nurse (Jodie Whittaker) as she dares to stroll through their decrepit South London neighborhood. They hardly have time to tally up their take when a space craft streaks down from the night sky and crashes nearby. The hoodlums end up tussling with a small, furry alien inside, killing the critter in self defense.

What the boys couldn’t know is a battalion of bigger, stronger aliens are heading to earth to recover the creature’s body. The gang, led by the stoic Moses (John Boyega), won’t let these beasties push them around no matter how big their teeth might be. This is their block, and they’re willing to put their lives on the line to defend it.

It’s hard to watch the gang members, their faces covered by handkerchiefs, and not think of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Both involve young men disconnected from their political systems while reaping the benefits of a sticky social welfare web. These kids aren’t the hardest of hard luck cases. Several characters are seen checking in with their concerned parents so they can stay out just a little longer.

Cornish and co. refuse to make excuses for the teens, but they also depict them in ways which soften our initial prejudices. It helps that ‘Attack the Block’ stages several gripping chase scenes on an obviously constrained budget. The creatures are nothing but inky mounds of fur with glow-in-the-dark teeth, but Cornish manipulates them in a way that gives them both power and screen presence.

Just be warned – the characters in this ‘Block’ affect an accent so thick you’re better off using the subtitle option if you want to understand half the syllables being said. Think Sacha Baron Cohen’s Ali G character, but even more incoherent.

‘Attack the Block’ wraps with a heavy-handed swipe against law enforcement, a jarring note but one that can’t derail a film which otherwise marries mayhem and commentary in near perfect harmony.

The DVD extras include  a ‘Creature Feature’ segment, filmmaker and cast commentaries plus featurettes on the youthful cast and why several key sequences had to be clipped in order to keep the project on budget. The ‘Behind the Block’ documentary lets the cast sing Cornish’s praises, particularly how such an “old guy” could approximate the complicated speech patterns of inner city youth.

As a retired Air Force veteran, I viewed this movie from a slightly different vantage point than one who has never served in our armed forces. And I loved every minute of this fast-paced, heart-stopping, riveting movie…silently cheering on the small platoon of courageous Marines, led by 2nd Lieutenant William Martinez (Ramon Rodriguez), sent out on what seemed like a suicide mission to rescue a few stranded civilians in Santa Monica before the Air Force was to completely level the entire city that had fallen to a devastating alien invasion.

What was originally reported to be meteors falling into the ocean along the Los Angeles coastline (as well as the coastlines of 20 other major cities around the world) was quickly determined to be a well-orchestrated invasion of a massive force of seemingly impossible-to-kill aliens… and they were everywhere… annhilating everything and everyone in their path.  As I watched the fast-paced, chaotic, and gripping action unfold, I often found myself holding my breath and sitting on the edge of my seat — myheart racing wildly, pulling for our heroes.  It has been a long time since I’ve been to a movie that left me exhausted like that, in a good way.

I appreciated how they introduced each member of the platoon and gave us a little insight into their frame of mind just prior to their embarking on this terrifying mission, setting the stage for some of the heart-wrenching actions and decisions that occurred throughout the movie.  It made them more real to me, as real as the stories and situations faced every day by our men and women deploying overseas into hostile combat zones.

The main hero of the movie, Staff Sergeant Nantz (Aaron Eckhart), was very convincing as a tough, no-nonsense, war-weary Marine.  In spite of having just gotten his retirement papers signed — a man who was struggling with some demons from his past (something not uncommon to our brothers and sisters who have served in a war zone) — SSgt Nantz displayed the kind of leadership, ingenuity, courage, selflessness, and compassion commonly found in the members of our military, most especially in our Marines, who are always on the front lines … and go where few dare to go.

I love that the movie producers hired members of our Marine Corps to serve as Technical Advisers during the filming of this movie to ensure every shot rang true to how Marines operate in battle and that the cast members had endured three weeks of intensive Boot Camp where they had no mobile phones, no television, no internet and no contact with the outside world.  They all slept in the same big tent, ate rations together, and acted like a cohesive Marine unit, wearing 40 pounds of gear at all times and staying in character between takes.

That rocks.

Coincidentally, I found myself relating to and rooting for the tough-as-nails Tech Sergeant Adriana Santos (Michelle Rodriguez) who was in Air Force Intel (I spent my 20 year AF career in this field), and kicked ass with the military hardware (pictured below with an M4A1 carbine).  Never fired one of those but have no problems handling an M-16 or a 9mm.

I thoroughly enjoyed the intensity and suspense of this movie, never knowing what to expect next.  Yet, according to Ebert:

“In a good movie, we understand where the heroes are, and where their opponents are, and why, and when they fire on each other, we understand the geometry.  In a mess like this, the frame is filled with flashes and explosions and shots so brief that nothing makes sense.”

 Clearly he has never been on a real battlefield.  War is hell.  And in today’s largely asymmetrical conflicts in the Middle East, it is every bit as chaotic and unpredictable as depicted in this movie.

It is no wonder the critics on the left panned this movie the way they did.  It is a pride-filled drama that highlights true heroism, military might, camaraderie, friendship, and forgiveness.  There were some very poignant moments in the movie that made my eyeballs sweat a bit and the popcorn hard to swallow having to negotiate its way past the large lump in my throat.  My heart swelled with pride at how these fine warriors took on every unpredictable, dangerous situation they encountered with uncommon valor — fighting for their families, their homes, their country.  They showed what true heroes are made of … and it made me think of all our brave men and women currently deployed who face unknown dangers, not knowing if they will ever see their loved ones back home again. 

God bless them.

I couldn’t help but notice some parallels in this movie to what we are experiencing right here in our own country.  These Marines faced an unknown, ruthless enemy who wanted our resources and were bent on destroying anything and everything standing in the way of achieving their objective.  There was a scene where one of the civilians being rescued, a young boy named Hector, told his father “Maybe we should try to talk to them.  Maybe they just want to be our friends”.  Sound familiar?  Sorry.  That doesn’t work when the enemy wants you dead…at all cost.

Honor, courage, service-before-self, love of country, and faith (love the close up shot of one of the Marines’ Bibles and the highlighted words “Through Christ comes freedom.”) …all things foreign and distasteful to the left and all the more reason for you to head to the theaters and enjoy.  As a strong proponent of promoting conservative art (music, films, etc.), I enthusiastically recommend this movie.  Go see it.  Let’s make it #1 for the third week in a row!

P.S.  And to our brothers and sisters in the Corps (the “ps” is silent for those who don’t know) …Godspeed and Semper Fi.

That’s how the initial treatment of Aliens (then called Alien II) tapered off after a mere twenty pages. Producers David Giler and Walter Hill had done little more than describe the basic setup: “Ripley and soldiers” versus the eponymous creatures. The rest, they decided, was for the guy who wrote The Terminator to flesh out.

Getting fired from Piranha Part Two: The Spawning, a schlocky job-for-hire, convinced James Cameron there was only one way he could make his Hollywood dreams come true. “I knew I was never going to be offered another movie,” he later explained about that time, “unless I came up with something myself. I had to write a film that made sense for me as a director. I thought it had to have effects that would justify my existence on the project, and I also had to not price myself out of the kind of budget that studios were likely to trust me with.”

So a guy who already specialized in sci-fi special effects and production art decided to add screenwriter to his list of talents. Using his fiery fever-nightmare about a killer robot as his jumping off point, and calling on many of the seminal sci-fi influences of his youth, he proceeded to write The Terminator. Each effect and action scene was thoroughly dissected on paper: Could I do this on a micro-budget? What special effect tricks could pull it off? Just like his early demo-film Xenogenesis, this would be a movie designed not just to entertain, but to show Hollywood what he could do.

What even he may not have realized is how much the script itself would benefit his career, irrespective of any movie made from it. I read it many years ago, and speaking from a screenwriting and filmmaking perspective, it was damn good — good enough, in my opinion, to take its place next to Chinatown as a script eminently worth teaching to students. Much of it consists of one-line images, each sparingly but evocatively worded. It’s not just descriptive, but cinematic — as line after line pile up, it reads as if you are watching the movie. Here’s a taste:

The bar customers are frozen in the weird tableau, cowering, gaping.

Sarah stops screaming.
Reese stand motionless, gun aimed.
In the sudden silence, the sound of him cocking the shotgun is abnormally loud.

ON TERMINATOR, very still.
Then he smoothly rolls to a crouch and slips the UZI machine pistol from beneath his overcoat, where it has been hanging on a shoulder strap. He doesn’t seem too impaired as he swings around to fire.

Reese rolls like a cat and comes up firing.
A burst from the UZI rakes the bar where he stood.
An orgy of shattering glass.
Total pandemonium.

SEVERAL ANGLES as patrons of the bar run, scream or dive for cover, depending upon their level of intelligence.

After he finished the screenplay, he was determined not to play the sap for anyone the way he had on Piranha Two. His agent read the script, said he hated it — and was promptly fired by Cameron. Various studios expressed interest, but (the eternal mantra from that crowd) “only if someone else directs.” Time after time Cameron turned them down, a broke wannabe leaving serious money on the table. With his producing partner (and future wife) Gale Anne Hurd, Cameron finally struck a meager deal at tiny Hemdale Pictures in London, only after having acting pal Lance Henriksen stalk into the company’s headquarters dressed as the Terminator, complete with gold foil on his teeth and a silent, menacing stare for the frightened office workers.

In hindsight, Cameron’s Terminator shoot ended up serving as a sort of grand pre-production process for Aliens. Actors Bill Paxton, Lance Henriksen, and Michael Biehn all found themselves graduating from the former film to the latter, as did special effects wizard Stan Winston. The guns, props, ships, and futuristic grit of Aliens all had their antecedents in elements of The Terminator’s production design. Perhaps most importantly, the script for Aliens was written during a key break in The Terminator’s pre-production, when producer Dino De Laurentiis executed an option in Arnold’s Conan contract to have him come back for a second turn as the world’s most famous fictional barbarian in Conan the Destroyer.

While waiting for his star to return, Cameron investigated other writing assignments to pay the bills. He got the job writing Rambo: First Blood Part II based on the quality of his Terminator script, and then took a meeting with David Giler and Walter Hill, both of whom had read The Terminator and came away impressed. At first, the meeting looked to be a bust: the producers thought Cameron might be suitable for writing a “Spartacus in space” movie they were developing, but the director wasn’t interested. On his way out the door, however, they mentioned another project they were sitting on: a sequel to Ridley Scott’s Alien.

That was different. Like with 2001 and Star Wars, Cameron the sci-fi fan had been blown away by Alien a half-decade earlier. The chance to take that world and do something new with it was alluring. He first crafted a forty-two-page outline, merging the producers “Ripley and soldiers” idea with his own futuristic, Heinlein-esque rebels from The Terminator, then added a Queen alien/breeding subplot culled from an old sci-fi script, written during his early days in Hollywood, called Mother.

He wrote at a fiendish pace, splitting his time between Rambo, Aliens, and last polishes on The Terminator. By the time Arnold was back from Conan the Destroyer, Cameron was only up to page ninety of Aliens (most scripts are 120 pages, with each equaling approximately a minute of screen time), but Giler, Hill, and the Fox executives were so impressed by them that they vowed to wait for Cameron to come back after his Terminator shoot to finish the job. Furthermore they said that, should The Terminator prove successful, he could direct Aliens. “At that point I really didn’t need to do an Alien sequel,” said Cameron, “but I liked what I had created, and once I had that imagery in my head I couldn’t get rid of it any other way but to go out and make the movie.”

In many ways, then, Aliens is the true spiritual sequel to The Terminator, far more than the risible Terminator 2: Judgment Day. There was so much similarity that, as Michael Biehn remembers, “Early on [in the Aliens shoot] I suggested to Jim that the character I was playing was too much like the character I played in Terminator, and he sat down with me and we talked about what we could do to make him different.” The final blessing bestowed upon Aliens by that earlier film was the most important of all: it convinced Sigourney Weaver to reprise her key role of Ellen Ripley.

Originally, she wasn’t interested. “I didn’t really want to do the sequel,” Weaver said in an interview at the time. “I was pretty skeptical of what I thought was an attempt to cash in on the success of the original. My question for Cameron was, ‘Why should I do this movie?’”

By way of an answer, Cameron sat her down and showed her The Terminator. “I found,” Weaver said, “that Jim and Gale wanted to make Aliens a character film as well as an action film.” Seeing Linda Hamilton’s turn as Sarah Connor gave her ideas about the new arc for her own character in Aliens — it wouldn’t be just a lesser retread of Scott’s movie. On top of that, the dystopian, devastated future, along with the impressive effects and action sequences, assured her that Cameron could come up with a cinematic visuals as interesting and compelling as Ridley Scott’s.

“I felt Jim and Gale were a kind of new breed of filmmaker that I wanted to be associated with,” Weaver said. “I found it was easy to talk to Jim. Jim told me that if I think of the first Alien movie as a fun house, I was going to think of Aliens as a roller-coaster ride.”

Previous posts in the series “James Cameron, Sigourney Weaver, and Aliens”

Part 1 | Part 2

FURTHER READING and VIEWING

Read Rebecca Keegan’s The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron. This is a fine book that tells the story of Cameron’s single-minded rise to Hollywood visionary. Time and again obstacles that would have stopped most of us are surmounted via an admirable combination of smarts, ingenuity, and toughness that any wannabe filmmakers would be wise to emulate as best they can. Cameron gets a lot of flack around here these days for his drift into typical Hollywood leftist fellow-traveling, but this book reminds us of the other side of his personality, the one that gave us some of the best movies of the 1980s.

ALIEN WAR: OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE FACT THAT ARMOUR PIERCING EXPLOSIVE-TIPPED ROUNDS FIRED FROM A FUTURISTIC SPACE RIFLE AT A LIKELY RATE Of 700-1200RPM WILL KILL ANYTHING, NEVER MIND AN ALIEN. Here’s a fun blog post that engages in scientific speculation about the aliens from the movie, their biology and physiology, and the “real-life” technology of the space marines fighting them.

Cameron was the oldest child in a Canadian family of five. Born in 1954 and growing up near Niagara Falls, he was just in time to catch the tail end of the atom bomb/Sputnik hysteria and to spend his teen years watching Vietnam play out on the nightly news. “In my youth I was an absolutely rabid science fiction fan,” he says. “I read all the classics, all the old Ace paperback novels. I was really into people like Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, and Kurt Vonnegut. When I read science fiction I saw stuff in my head that I had never seen in films.” He also loved the films of underwater pioneer Jacques Cousteau: “I began to think of the deep ocean as outer space. This was an alien world I could actually reach.”

Dad was a quiet, thoughtful electrical engineer who gave his son a healthy interest in hard science. With his younger brother Mike playing Igor to his Dr. Frankenstein (Mike would himself become an engineer, and later developed some of the equipment his filmmaker brother used to explore the depths of the sea) Cameron regularly engaged in scientific experiments. One day saw them constructing a submersible “out of a mayonnaise jar, an erector set and a paint bucket,” complete with a live mouse as crew, and sending it to the bottom of a river on a rope (the little critter survived). Another time, they had the fire department chasing (and bystanders reporting as a UFO) a hot-air balloon constructed with dry-cleaning bags and lofted into the air by the heat generated by on-board candles.

Mother, on the other hand, was an earthy, passionate, artistic influence. A nurse who spent off hours indulging in serious painting and sketching, she also served in the Canadian Women’s Army Corps, revealing her to be a gun-toting tough customer underneath the feminine exterior, just like Sarah Connor in The Terminator and Ripley in Aliens. Under his mother’s tutelage Cameron became an excellent artist in his own right, winning many prizes in local contests.

But this skill created an inner war with his formidable scientific side, causing no small amount of angst as both disciplines vied for his soul. “There didn’t seem to be any reconciliation possible,” he said later of that time. “You were either in science or you were in the arts. But I was interested in both.” Little did he know then that his drawing, painting, and conceptual skills would be a key ingredient in first fantasizing about and then bringing into existence deeply imagined science-fiction stories like Aliens using the hard technologies of cinema.

Clarity came with his first viewing of a movie so overwhelming that after the lights went up he staggered out of the theater and threw up. “As soon as I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey, I knew I wanted to be a filmmaker,” Cameron remembers. “That movie hit me hard on a lot of different levels. Until I saw that film, nothing in my life had ever lived up to my imagination. . . I just couldn’t figure out how [Kubrick] did all that stuff. But I knew I just had to learn.”

When he was sixteen his Dad scored a job in Orange County, California, and their family moved from Canada down to the States. Soon Cameron was married and driving lunch trucks for the local school district, all the while studying special effects at the USC library and fantasizing about how to break into Hollywood. The impetus for making a serious go of it was the thunderous appearance of another science fiction classic. “I walked into Star Wars and just went ‘Wow!’” Cameron says. “Star Wars was what I had been seeing in my head all along. I saw that all the things I had been imagining could now be done.”

It wasn’t long before he and a couple friends began making their own ambitious 35mm sci-fi movie, Xenogenesis (1978), using seed money acquired from dentists looking to invest in films as a tax shelter. Cameron remembers those days as exhausting but heady. “It was no problem staying up all night, every night for as long as it took. It was that young perspective where you’re willing to sacrifice everything for what you feel is important.”

Unfortunately the dentist money dried up long before principal photography was finished, so Cameron cut what little they had shot into a twelve-minute demo reel. Chock full of models, miniatures, and effects like laser blasts, explosions, and forced perspective cityscapes made out of cardboard, the end result wasn’t 2001 or Star Wars, but it was the beginnings of the style that audiences would later come to embrace in The Terminator and Aliens. “For a bunch of dumbshits who didn’t know what we were doing,” Cameron says, “it was pretty good.”

It was also enough of a résumé to finagle his way onto the effects crew of low-budget producer Roger Corman, where he soon was doing visual effects, set decoration, and art direction for such deathless masterpieces as Battle Beyond the Stars (1980 — Corman’s Star Wars) and Galaxy of Terror (1981 — Corman’s Alien). On the set of the latter film, Cameron first met a struggling actor (and, incidentally, the director of the cult music video “Fish Heads”) named Bill Paxton, and the two would become friendly, something for which lovers of Aliens will always be grateful.

The work was overwhelming and the pay minuscule, but Cameron stuck it out, took on every job he could (often to the chagrin of his less-ambitious co-workers) and began to catch the notice of other low-budget producers looking for people to help get their visions on-screen for pennies on the dollar. “I ran roughshod all over the place,” Cameron says.

It’s a culling process. Some people don’t want to deal with it, the fact that so much relies on personality and not logic. That it’s hype. That it’s the pitch. I knew you had to sell and you had to make your move. . . .

I got a lot of good experience from Roger. What I learned was just ‘Go for it.’ I learned that there was always a way to get it done and make it presentable. Roger’s kind of low-budget mentality teaches you that you can probably get by with a lot less than you think. With Roger, if push comes to shove and there’s a crunch, you can still shoot.

After contributing to the effects work on Escape from New York, he finally got a chance to direct with Piranha Part Two: The Spawning (1981). The experience was a disaster, resulting in the fledgling director’s firing a few weeks into the shoot as part of a nefarious plan by the film’s Italian producer to take over the reins himself. Depressed, disheartened, and broke, Cameron fell ill in Rome and spent a feverish night engulfed in a nightmare featuring a robotic monster rising menacingly out of flames. When he awoke, he hurriedly sketched the image before it melted away back into dreamland.

The Terminator had just stalked out of the war-torn future into our world, and the repercussions — both on sci-fi in general and on Cameron’s Aliens — would be incalculable.

Previous posts in the series “James Cameron, Sigourney Weaver, and Aliens”

Part 1

FURTHER READING and VIEWING

Watch James Cameron’s early demo film Xenogenesis (1978). If you’re someone who’s ever attempted to make a film by yourself, counting on your own ingenuity and long months of work to substitute for a million-dollar budget, you’ll understand how impressive this short film remains even today. A bigger budget only gets you so far, and Aliens could never have been made without the sort of cheap, scrappy techniques demonstrated in this movie.

As it happens, I’m acquainted with Scott Peters who developed and wrote the remake of “V” for ABC.  Mr. Peters was also the creator and executive producer of “The 4400” and a writer for “The Outer Limits.” As far as I know Mr. Peters has only made one mistake in his career and that was directing me in the low-budget film “Don: Plain and Tall” back in 2003. It was the story of my friend comedian Don McMillan’s life as a comic. I played myself in the film and the part was horribly miscast. 

When I started reading some of the rumors and theories about Mr. Peters’ latest show and the behind-the-scenes politics, I laughed out loud.  Let me try to shed some light on the “V” controversy.

The script was not written as a roman a clef or allegory for the Obama administration. The script was written by Mr. Peters during the Bush administration and started before Mr. Obama clinched the nomination. The author, Mr. Peters, is not some evil sleeper right-winger/Obama hater. Mr. Peters, besides being a talented writer and director is a gay man, legally married in California, very liberal politically and a dedicated supporter of the President’s campaign. If he’s a mole for some right-wing conspiracy he may be the most committed spy ever. Mr. Peters, who was born in Canada, recently became an American citizen; a process he tried to expedite so he could vote for Mr. Obama, a deadline he missed by two days.

Unfortunately for Mr. Peters, this isn’t the first time in his career that fans or critics saw things in his work he didn’t intend. Some fans of “The 4400” saw hidden meaning in those episodes too. At first, Mr. Peters would try to respond, but eventually he had to quit paying attention as the theories got more and more bizarre.

Mr. Peters’ replacement as showrunner by Scott Rosenbaum isn’t due to some political move at ABC. From reports I’ve received from informed sources, Peters is well-liked by the network. The show’s being produced at Warner Brothers and there appears to be some friction between the network’s vision for the show and Warner Brother’s. Mr. Peters’ replacement was being worked on well before the show aired and became a hit.

Sometimes we all, left and right, get it wrong. So next week just try to enjoy the show because to paraphrase Sigmund Freud, sometimes a TV show is just a TV show.

[Editor: This post was updated to correct a factual mistake. Mr. Peters did not donate to Barack Obama's campaign before becoming a U.S. citizen.]

1. Science Fiction/Thriller/Horror Channel

A short form/short film channel showcasing those genres. Independent producers, writers, creators could submit work to be aired. It wouldn’t have to be, nor should it be at the Sundance level of professionalism delivered on DigiBeta and starring Cameron Diaz doing a favor for the filmmaker because it’s her friend’s cousin, either.

We don’t want that. There’s plenty of that kind of venue and they turn down 99% of the stuff submitted anyway, mainly because it’s not the work of someone’s friend’s cousin. So forget that right away. It has to be underground, guerilla, shoestring and, most important, good. Very good. Damn good. But not expensive. How can you do that, you say? 

With writing.