SmartLess

"SmartLess" with Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, & Will Arnett is a podcast that connects and unites people from all walks of life to learn about shared experiences through thoughtful dialogue and organic hilarity. A nice surprise: in each episode of SmartLess, one of the hosts reveals his mystery guest to the other two. What ensues is a genuinely improvised and authentic conversation filled with laughter and newfound knowledge to feed the SmartLess mind.

New episodes on Mondays for free. Listen 1-week early and to all episodes ad-free with Wondery+ or Amazon Music with a Prime membership or Amazon Music Unlimited subscription.

"James Cameron"

Mon, 19 Dec 2022 08:01

It’s raining Skittles this week, as the ultra-cool James Cameron shows us how to swim. We dive into the abyss of invented reality… a world of deep sea chicken, where Roombas order Chinese food, and you never need to bail out your dog. Come with us if you want to live - it’s SmartLess, baby.


Please support us by supporting our sponsors!

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Listen to Episode

Copyright © © 2021 SmartLess LLC

Read Episode Transcript

I'm like, I'm on the top of some mountain and I have all I have is me and my altimeter and it says I'm super super super high and I've been really really nervous. I, oh wait a minute, I'm I'm at the top of the Beverly Center shopping mall. Alright, welcome to Smartless. Wait, first of all, Jay, tell us how it's going. You're started your film. Uh, yes. It's good. You don't want to hear boring work crap. I appreciate you asking, but I have, can I just have never thought about directing? Is that bug grabbed you yet? He's coming with gas today. Let's buckle up. Yeah. It's how's your work? You're getting ready to start your rehearsals. Yes. Oh, right. Stop now for six months. But let's go. I'll back to you for a second. Nice deflection. Back to you. You're doing movie with Terran Edgerton, right? And what's it called? Are you a fan? It's called Terry on. It's started this week. So I spent the day with Danny D's today. Okay. Let's talk. Sweet Pete Jowls, Danny D's and in our good friend golfing. Roblo, yeah. Oh, yeah. Hey, guess what? I tried pickle ball for the first time. Did you? Yeah. Did you? My neck is snapping all over the place. Let's just keep switching subjects. Oh, wait a minute. But did you play golf with them? Well, I sure did. Yeah. So I played pickle ball. I think at the same place you guys played golf. Probably not. And they wouldn't dare let. Oh, really? Okay. It's fun. Uh, it is fun. Who'd you play with? Who'd you play with? I play Kevin Carey. Who you know? Oh, yeah, sure. They're nice peeps and like Kevin Carey. Yeah. And I just don't like the sound it makes. Got it. There's such a great sound to a tennis ball hitting a tennis racket right in the middle of the strings. Yeah, but that whiffle ball hit in a wood. It's, uh, I don't mean to sound like a purist. A lot of communities on the East Coast are now not letting people build pickable courts at home because they're too loud. Huh? That's too loud. Yeah. It's just like hitting a whiffle ball. I don't think. No. Yeah. Speaking of speaking of noise pollution, uh, and the West Coast versus East Coast, uh, I hear that here on the West Coast, they are outlying, uh, gas blowers for leaves that you can only use an electric one now. So is that what you're going to use? Yeah. I mean, it's, I, I just redid. Uh, I just read about the engine on, uh, on my last one. Uh, but, and, you know, gas is getting so expensive. So this is going to be good. But, um, I'll be upside down for a while. Okay. Good. Oh, I miss heard. I was thinking about, I was thinking about pros who hang around gas stations. Oh, that was like, that's been outlawed for a while. But you've heard it blow and, uh, gas and everything. Yeah. Listen, you've got it. You've got a Saturday record here. And you got it. And it's a 430 star late a day. Everyone's a little punchy. Yeah. But wait, Jason. So do you still, you fly home every weekend from the shoot? I do. Wow. No, isn't that, isn't that exhausting? Well, no, you sleep on the plane. And, um, you know, the excitement and the love that you feel approaching your family, uh, supersedes any fatigue, Sean. I don't know. Sure. I got it. Sure. And, um, get ready. How was the, how was the fight? It was good. It was good. Do they serve a meal on that? Well, no, you got to pay extra for that. And if you want to, if you want Wi-Fi or you want to watch a movie or something like that. So what I do is I just bring on my sleep mask. Right. Um, and, uh, you've got a neck, you've got a neck pillow. I got a neck pillow that's got blinders on it too. So it just sort of sends up a signal. Yeah. Please don't speak to me. I've got, uh, I've got sleep issues. Sean, this, uh, I wanted to know, um, right behind you, is that's a television? That's a television. Yeah. Yeah. And that's your desk in your office, right? Your home office? Yes. Um, so what's the point? Because I was podcasting off my dining room table. Don't say podcasting. I was doing this. It's not a verb. Okay. Here you go. Ready? Oh, here we go. Sorry. No, you're ready to start. Why are you letting? I'm just saying that that TV, I mean, it's pointed at the back of your head. Well, I would turn around. I'm on a swivel chair. I would turn around or I would sit on the couch behind me that you can't see. It's never happened. And happened. What? And happened once and have been why? Well, why aren't you wearing white? What happened? Uh, usually, well, because you know, I wear white often when we do it in the morning, I wear like a long sleeve white t shirt, uh, around the house and to bed and stuff. You know that you know, but why do you wear long sleeves? Because I, why do you wear long sleeve t shirt? Because that's a new thing. It's like the last 18 months, because I might room to be very cold, but I don't want to have the sheet, the, the covers on me. You don't want your elbows to get chilly. Yeah. Hey, Sean, hang on. What's in your queue to do? Let's have in on the conversation. I'm excited. I, I found somebody that, that gets that. Yeah. So that's exactly right. It's a new thing. I'm learning all these things. I feel like I'm, firmly getting older because I'm like, I'm happy with this. Yeah, I'm happy doing it like this. This is the way I like to do it now. You're talking to guys who weren't pajamas for the last year. I know. I know. I can't believe that you would pass judgment on anybody. I'm not, it's not past judgment. I'm wondering if I can welcome you into my, uh, you know what I've got on now, because we've been to fall. I'm now, well, this is, this is basically this, they're the flannel pants. Yeah. And I've got, now I've got my burks on and socks. Yeah. I'm in no position. No, I was just, I was wondering if I can welcome you to Granddad land yet. I guess I can. So I'm wearing it, but I was out. So I'm not wearing white because I just like I said, I just got back from playing golf. I wasn't looking for four minutes on this. Okay, wait, let's go. Let's go. Wait. I don't want to keep our guys. Let's start podcasting, right? I'm sorry. We got to, we got to set up. But now we're podcasting. Let's get podcasting. Okay. Come on. Ready? Here we go. Okay. I'm super excited. You guys, this, this one's big today. Oh, fuck, sorry. Did I fucking be open? I keep you. No, it's big. Super excited. Okay. I'm super excited. I want to pick this guy's brain. He's been on my smart list since the day we started. He's also been on my personal list of people I've always wanted to meet and work with since I was a teenager. What's your Volta? Will he's from your homeland, which means he's nice and probably ice skates. Let's see. Guys, we're dealing with a major player here in Hollywood. So I'll hold off on all his credits because you'd get you'd guessing. To say yes. Well, I'll just say he worked as a janitor before making the film industry. He also lived in his car while creating a very famous film. He loves the ocean so much that he built his own submarine. And he may have written dialogues such as I'll be back from his car. He's responsible for directing two of the three highest-grossing films of all time. It's the brilliant James Cameron. Oh, right. What's up, guys? Are you? This is a mistake. What's up, guys? I got to put my glasses on so I can see who's talking. Wait, it really doesn't matter. That didn't, that didn't help at all. It doesn't matter. Hey, can we swear on this thing? Sure. Yeah, you can at least. Do we just beat it out later? Good. I know. James Cameron, you really have been on my smart list list since the day we started. You've been a part of my nerd childhood from Terminator to Aliens to the Abyss, which is one of my favorite movies, Titanic, of course. And now my adult nerd adulthood with Avatar and the 17 sequels. So thank you for being on today. This is huge for us. I've just been a massive, massive fan from my whole life. Well, thank you. Welcome to Welcome to podcasting. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. I've never done it before. It seems pretty straightforward. You just sit around and dribble on about inconsequential bullshit for a while. Exactly. I got it. I got it. It's kind of like directing, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. A little bit. Except not at all. You look very healthy and rested for a guy who's been doing the some of the toughest work the town has to offer for the last 30 years. Yeah. We're in the home stretch of five years of continuous production. I believe. Yes, Sigourney was just on and it's about that. And remind me, you're not shooting off five avatars at the same time, correct? Now, the thinking was to be semi sane and shoot the first couple. And then if that actually worked finish them out, but it's also we have a young cast and they would have aged out of their characters if we had waited to kind of just do them a couple of years apart. Right. So we shot all there a bit. Well, but with the you're talking to a real moron here, but the because it can't see him, but it's Jason talking. If he if he or she starts to age out, can't you kind of offset that a bit with some of the computer manipulation that you're doing anyway with their faces or no? Yeah, you're 100% right. Except that I've got one young young character who's supposed to be 15, 16 in the story and he's a human kid who's in with the Navi kids and we shoot him photographically. But you're right. Some of the Navi kids, they could come back at 22, 23 and still do their 17-year-old character because the character doesn't age unless we age the characters. Right. Yes. Yes. Yes. Fascinating. Your brain is fascinating. Okay. So try and live in it. Yeah. I know I do your Canadian. That's you know, you learn a little something every day. So I wanted to get into your Toronto, right? I'm from Toronto. Where are you from? Yeah. Chippewa, Niagara Falls. Oh, fantastic. Okay. So very close. Yeah. How long what year did you sort of move from Canada to do leave Canada? I live with my parents at 71. I was 17 and rocked up in Orange County. Then later obviously moved down to LA Proper and yeah, that was 47 years ago, 48 years ago. Do you feel any connection anymore to Canada in that way? Yeah. Yeah. You do. Yeah. We have a couple of businesses and Saskatchewan. So I mostly get back to Canada to work on that stuff. Like running booze or what? Yeah. Right. Bootlingers. Bootlingers. No. We grow yellow peas and phava beans and lentils and we do plant-based protein. We built a factory there for plant-based protein. That's why you look so healthy. I know it's true. So why me do this? So you're a young guy who grew up in the Niagara Falls area of... Yeah. So that's not New York. That's not Buffalo. It's close to it. There's a good Niagara Falls and a bad Niagara Falls. The good one just happens to be in Canada. That's right. I got it. So there's plenty of falls to go around. Lots of falls. You should learn some stuff. But so you grew up in Ontario near Niagara Falls, Ontario. Yeah. How... When you were a young man living there, did you have aspirations to be a director at that time? Was there something that grabs you and said, I want to do this when you were living there? Yeah. I like movies and I was making little films just with a super-rate camera, stuff like that. But the idea that I could actually go and do it for real was so alien and bizarre. It never really occurred to me. But when my parents asked me if I wanted to move to Los Angeles because my dad had gotten the opportunity to do a transfer there, I said, isn't that near Hollywood? My mom said, well, we're not really sure, sweetheart, but we think that Hollywood is actually in Los Angeles. I said, I'm in. How about that? How about that? Do you remember the moment that the technology that is specific to some of the parts of movie making really grabbed you and you're like, I'd love to incorporate that into some of the more traditional sort of filmmaking techniques and stuff. What was it? Wasn't like the... Why you tell me? I was just fascinated by all of it. Just grabbing a camera, running around town, shooting neon signs, and cutting it together, and all kinds of crazy ways. I mean, all the stuff you do as a film student, just trying to express yourself, figure out what you have to say if anything. Sure. But I remember 2001, a space out, as you which I saw in 68, really kind of just tweaked my brain about what was possible. And then after that, I got really interested in how things were done, you know, on big movies. Sure. And you worked at... What did you do on Escape from New York, which I love that movie? John Carson's Great Movie, yeah. Wasn't you like the visual effects, what photographer or something? I was the co-supervisor of visual effects with another guy named Robert Scotak, who was a palamine back then. And we did it all really old-school stuff, paintings on glass and things like that. Yeah, that's so cool. Dennis Borgnein was in that, yeah. Yeah. Do you know Jason has a real connection with Ernest Borgnein? Yeah. Do you have any ability to prove the fact that Will's got a theory that Ernest Borgnein? He gave an interview. Yeah. What are your views? Jason lives in Ernest Borgnein's old house. Wow. And Will has convinced that? Not convinced. He said in a couple interviews that somebody asked what was the key to his longevity. And he claimed that it was a ritual of daily masturbation. And I said, Jason, when you're in your house, do you imagine Ernest, you know, in different parts of the house, just kind of leaning over the banister up against the wall, the dining room, whatever. You're performing this act in an exercise that keeps you standing up. Why is he? Because he's trying to stay older. He's trying to live longer. Anyway, James Cameron is here. I think it's a good plan. You know, it's a good plan. See any of that on a set of escape from the area. The beauty of his plan is there's no downside. You either live longer or you don't, but at least you're enjoying it every day. That's right. That's right. I say live for every day, right? So there you go. There you go. Thank you for asking. He's also also it's a victim list. Did I see him wanking on the set now? Yeah, I can't help you with that. Right. You never came back. You never came back to base camp and cut Ernest Borgnein snapping one off. James. Just saying, God, I wish I was at home. Hey, so James, I wanted to ask you, sorry, I wanted to ask you. So was and please do correct me. Was the first film that you directed Piranha 2? Oh, I was going to see Terminator. Oh, Piranha 2. Right. Well, the first big big big studio movie you did. No, so here's here's to clarify the first film I got hired to direct was Piranha 2. I got fired about eight days into shooting because the producer just wanted to take over. Yeah, that was his plan the whole time. I was like, I was like a sacrificial lamb. And the first film that I actually fully directed was the Terminator. So that's that's the only one I put on my resume. Is that true that you were living in your car when you wrote it and all that? Not really. I had an apartment in Tarzanah, but I used to go out to do Pars on Ventura Boulevard late at night 3 a.m. and just write you just rock up in a booth and just write, you know, just to keep that kind of kind of dark film. You turn that into a Sephora now. It's a Sephora now. Yeah, all right. Oh, baby. Yeah, that's great. Where did you get the idea? Like the idea is so incredible about sending somebody from the future in the back to stop somebody before they get it before they, you know, the whole thing is so amazing. Where does that come from? I kind of backed into it because it was like, all right, what kind of film will they let me direct? It's got to be something I could shoot on the streets of present-day LA where I live. It's got to be a little budget. We can't do a lot of stuff. Maybe we can do a car chase. And they know you've just been fired off the fish movie. I had to factor that in too. So it wasn't going to be a big budget. So then I thought, all right, so how can I get it, but I wanted to also sort of make it make my unique skill set valuable as an effects guy. So I thought, all right, so what kind of effects science fiction story can I tell in the streets of LA? Well, there's only two ways to get something extraordinary here that's either from space or from somewhere else in time, right? So now all of a sudden boom, okay, it's a time travel story. Something comes with the future. Why? Okay, and then you go into the grandfather paradox and figure out, you know. So it kind of just kind of dominoed from the kind of parameters of my life and what I needed to do. Yeah, I mean, because it's not nothing of it looks low budget, by the way. I mean, especially at the time, and I read and I've seen it lately. At the time, it was pretty incredible. And I read somewhere that you like you kind of, you didn't have permits and you kind of shot stuff illegally. And like, yeah, what does law enforcement say to James Cameron before he's James Cameron? Caught? Yeah, yeah, we so we're out in the desert doing the final shot of the movie. And you know, we got a little wooden platform set up, who was me, my wife at the time, actually we weren't married at the time, Gail heard, who produced it and her secretary. And we had built this little camera platform to shoot the plate for the last shot. And there's not nothing visible for 20 miles in any direction. And this little glint on the horizon pulls up and it's a cop. I'm like, you got to be fucking kidding me. And he he walks up to it and says, you have a permit to be doing this. Oh boy. And I said, no, but I'm just a student at UCLA. I think I was 29 at the time. I said, do we need a permit? I didn't know that. He goes, well, get that, get that off the road. We were on the road by like a foot. And he drove away. So that was it. I just pushed it my way out. And so you cast and your cast is, of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who at the time had been doing the Conan movies and stuff. He wasn't like, he wasn't this huge, international, Conan, Conan, whatever it is. He wasn't this huge, international superstar that he ended up becoming. Terminator was really the sort of seminal role in his career at that point. That was the thing that really shot him forward. What was that like as a 20-year-29-year-old, young filmmaker who's trying to make his mark with a guy who's coming from doing these films that weren't necessarily mainstream in big movies, did you see, was it like the perfect combination in a lot of ways for you guys? Yeah, we clicked right away. I mean, Arnold Arnold is just all about discipline and all about perfection and trying as hard as you can mentally and physically. And he saw kind of kindred spirit in me because we were trying to move mountains to make this movie. He loved the film. I mean, they had the acts all sharpened up and poised to chop me off on day two. If I tripped up, they had another director waiting in the wings. And Arnold really kind of had my back on that movie. That's great. That's amazing. Wow. And we will be right back. People often ask me, they say, will they say, what sets GMC trucks apart? And I tell them, it's not just the announcer and their commercials, okay, even though that guy is absolutely tremendous. And he happens to be professional grade. You know what it is? It's GMC's commitment to building premium and capable trucks that set them apart. Case in point, the first ever, all-electric GMC Sierra EV Denali Edition 1. It's powered by multi-em battery technology and it delivers incredible agility, power, and capability. And for next level versatility, there's a new multi-pro midgate that can fold down for astounding bed space and flexibility. That's what makes the GMC Sierra EV Denali Edition 1, the Denali of EVs. And that is what sets GMC apart. It's kind of a long answer, what it happens to be true. So that obviously, all of that and also their sweet announcer just voiced like a like a nightingale who ate like a pound of gravel. GMC Sierra EV Denali Edition 1 available in early 2024 by reservation only. Sierra EV Denali available spring 2024. Smartlist is sponsored by BetterHelp. So I talk about therapy a lot. I know you guys are used to that. And hopefully you're taking advantage of BetterHelp because it really, really helps. But like for example, I have a lot of stress as you know, as I openly share with you guys. And you know, part like this is sound so stupid, but on my right pinky, I have 10 to 9-10. And as you know, I play the piano and it's freaking me out. I'm stressed out. There's a lot of pressure and stress coming up at the show I'm doing. I'm Broadway. And so I was the first thing I talked to last time in therapy. I was like, how do I cope with this? And you know, calm down first. You got to take a step by step. And she helped me walk through, especially when you get that stressed out. You can't take on the whole world all at once and all your problems all at once. It's got to be step by step day by day, inch by inch. So you can feel like you can control it and attack it with the right plan that works for you. And that's just stuff I learned through therapy. If I had to work on this on my own, I'd be lost. But because me and my therapists are like more of a team, it really, really helps. And I know I know it's somebody that I can count on who's going to listen to me and give me the right advice, just not something I want to cure, right? As the world's largest therapy service, better help has matched three million people with professionally licensed and vetted therapists available 100% online. Plus, it's affordable. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to match with a therapist. If things aren't clicking, you can easily switch to a new therapist anytime. It couldn't be simpler. No waiting rooms, no traffic, no endless searching for the right therapist. Learn more and save 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com slash smartless. That's betterhelpaglp.com slash smartless. We're brought to you in part by Athletic Greens. So listen, I started taking AG1 because of a lot of reasons because of the convenience. I don't have like the row of bottles and you know, things on my kitchen counter. Like this pill, that supplement, that vitamin. It's all in one great tasting thing called AG1. But also it's great for gut health because I don't know if you know this, but a lot of scientists call your gut your second brain. So if your gut is in good shape, that means your brain is in good shape. And I felt the difference drinking AG1. I mean, it better mood. It just lifts your spirit. Like it takes care of all that stuff. Look, we all can work on disciplining ourselves. But one thing I'm working on and displaying myself is getting up every morning and taking this because it's right there. It's so easy and it's fast and it's so good for you. This blend of ingredients supports your gut health, your nervous system, your immune system, your energy recovery, focus and aging. Sustainable routines are key. AG1 is my daily micro habit that makes it easy to absorb key nutrients, lead a healthy lifestyle and feel my best no matter what the day holds. One scoop, one minute, once a day, every day. Right now, it's time to reclaim your health and arm your immune system with convenient daily nutrition. It's just one scoop in a cup of water every day. That's it. No need for a million different pills and supplements to look out for your health. Athletic greens is going to give you a free one-year supply of immune supporting vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com slash smartless. Again, that's athleticgreens.com slash smartless to take ownership over your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance. And now back to the show. How far do you think we are from completely replacing actors with computer-generated people? Because they're kind of doing that or, well, they are doing that online, right? With deep fakes and stuff like that that are really, really convincing. Is that not that, you know, I'm looking to get actors out of movies. Nobody's stretching. Nobody. Being one, but I'll bet you that there are moments like if you need to fill in crowds and stuff like that. There's already that, you know, the tiles. We do all that. Yeah. Yeah. But like actually, actually putting somebody in the foreground on a mark saying lines, you know, you're doing that to a certain extent when you're, no? It's not what we do. Like with the Avatar films, it's a very actuarous, centric, actor-driven process. We're not trying to replace the actor. We're trying to to perfect what they did in a character that doesn't resemble them as much physically, right? So, in a sense, it's more like makeup. It's a 100% actor-driven. And we always honor the performance and the nuance of that performance. And you'll see it in the new film. That's my pitch. I'm done. But the kicker is, I would have said never when I made the first film. Today with what I know about AI and the developments in artificial general intelligence and all the work that's being done, I would say if you converge the tool set that we have created for Avatar and focused it, literally put money into that and focused it in terms of getting it closer to a real-time process. And you added AI to that, you could fake anything. You just can't do it yet. You can't do it in real time. You can do it with a one month or five month lag right now perfectly, which is kind of what we do. We have 3,200 shots in Avatar 2 that prove that. But do you think there's any value in pursuing that and going down that direction? I think that it has more to do with do we want to have photo real avatars that we can wear or project within into a metaverse type environment or a gaming environment. I don't think it has anything to do with how we would create our entertainment. It's still just so much easier and by the way more fun to just work with actors. Yeah, what about for like a little reshoot though? You know, like to say your actors going off and cut their hair and you got to do a little, a little bit of the digital thing, right? Yeah, but you'd still do it with the actors. See, so like we got this human kid and our story, if I need a pickup with him for Avatar 3, he's already aged out of the part by miles. You know, he's a foot and a half taller, he's too octave down. You know, we can repitch his voice, but we can't change his body and face aging. So if I need that pickup, I'll have him come in, we'll capture it. We have his model and we'll basically just put him in the movie as a human. Oh, all right. So I have like a little bit of a long so hang in there. This is what I love about you, James Cameron, Jim now. Now we can call you Jim, right? Easy. Yeah. So what I love about you is you're a total like a figure it outer, right? So really quick, super fast story. When I was, I, my production company, we made a show called Grim and I remember pitching Grim for like seven years over and over. We'd pitch it. People wouldn't like kind of not get it. We'd put it on a shelf. We'd pitch it again. And I was in this one meeting at this one network and this high level executive was like, gosh, because there's a lot of special effects in it. They would say they said to me, gosh, that seems so hard to do. That seems really, really hard to do every week in the episode, episode to which I sarcastically replied, well, then let's just not do it. Like meaning, meaning everything is hard, right? So for you, which I'm, this is what blows my mind about you, where did the ability come from to because movie after movie after movie is like, where did the ability come from to trust your ideas so deeply that you're seemingly willing to sacrifice almost everything to see it through? Like, for example, I remember reading decades ago about the studio writing check after check for Titanic because somehow you convinced them that all this is going to work and obviously it did, but you succeed in this philosophy over and over again. Where do the balls come from to just be like, I got this. Trust me. I got this, you know? Well, I think there's a thing of when you see it in your head, it's kind of like you're watching the movie. So you know, then that the movie's good or not good, right? I mean, within with some degree of accuracy. And secondly, once you're down the path and you find out how hard it is, you know, you can't really pull out. I can't pull out studio, can't pull out. So we just got to play it through. And then I think there's something that happens that, all right, well, your standards of excellence better go up then because you can't screw this up. I think that's part of it, you know, but look, every, every artist of any kind actor, a figurative artist, whatever has to have the confidence in what they have to say to call themselves an artist in the first place. And if they get positive feedback with their first few works that are out there, then that confidence goes, goes up, right? Yeah. You learn to trust your instincts. You also have such a, such a full understanding of what is possible through technology as well. In other words, you know, you can pitch something in a studio ahead might say, well, that sounds really expensive. No, no, we can do that with computers, blah, blah, blah, blah. How are you able to stay current with what is possible and cost effective based on how easy it is for that technology to be accessed, etc. Are you the one that's that's actually driving? What is now possible technologically as opposed to making sure you read the right article to make sure you stay up to date on what's possible? Yeah. It's both. I mean, when we evaluate a project going into it, we'll look at what the state of the art is and we'll identify the areas where we have to, you know, up the game. And that's where we'll put our R&D money and we'll look at the, we'll look at our schedule and say, all right, we've got two years to come up with water simulations, you know, computational fluid dynamics, Sims for ocean water. We've got X amount of time and it just becomes a budget line item. So do you then have, do you have people who are writing code for that who work for you? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So and you're, and you're, you're directing them saying, okay, guys, this is what we want to do. We want to do the water thing or whatever it is. And they go great. And they start to model it out and they start writing code for it. Which is really easy. Yeah. I mean, the studio, and then the studio, sorry, sorry, Sean, the studio then is financing the, the R&D, the R&D, the making of that for that one film, are they then not to get in the weeds of all the stuff I apologize, but are they then in line to reap the profits of that technology going forward for other projects at other studios? Kind of yes, kind of no. It works like this. If we develop something for Avatar and usually that's in the form of an asset like a creature or, a setting or something like that, that exists digitally and sits in a server. They can reap the benefit of not having to recreate that every time. So the movies have a kind of economy of scale over the over the greater arc, which is why I've seen doc. Yeah, exactly. It's like a digital scene doc. It's exactly that. And your creatures and so on. You can just call that stuff back up. So that's part of the argument for doing three or four films kind of back to back. Of course. Of course. The technology that you would use, let's say for to make water better today than it was five years ago, let's say studio X funded that movie during which you developed the code that made water better now in five years or a year later, you know, Universal does something that has to do. They need to use it now. Does studio X get reimbursed for that for that? Having developed that code? Not really. No, they just kind of they spend the money to make that movie. You see the thing is we're leaving out an entity, which is the visual effects company. So we work very closely with wetter visual effects right down down here in New Zealand, where I'm right now. Oh, wow. They will develop they'll develop that code now. They'll use some of the money from what we pay them. They'll use some of their own internal resources to do it. And then we can go back to them anytime we want and take advantage of it. And it's proprietary for them. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. I'll explain it to Jason later. So Jim, let me ask you about. Let me out a lot today. Well, well, we could have just done it in a second. So Jim, let me ask you this. Can you, can you, can you, can you, can you, can you, can you, can you not play well today? I do not think you do. I did. I had a grumpy day. Um, so, so Jim, did you, God, you, I hate that you know that. Uh, Jim, can you tell me what happened when you got into all this stuff with, uh, uh, actual underwater stuff when you were, yeah, when submarines and doing all that kind of stuff. I mean, I had like a nine hour list of questions about all that. Yeah. Yeah. Now I love that stuff. That's, I mean, I sort of reached a point when I made Titanic where I was making the movie because I wanted to dive to the wreck. I had done a lot of, I had done thousands of hours underwater by then on scuba, right? But I hadn't done anything with submersibles. I'd made a movie about subs and about ROVs called the abyss. But, and we built all this stuff for the movie, but we never took it in the ocean. So I wanted to go do something for real with, with deep diving. And then so Titanic was a way of kind of serving both of my greatest interests, someone project and worked out great, made a bunch of money. And then I spent eight years doing expeditions, building robots, building underwater cameras, building submersibles and just kind of turn my back on the whole filmmaking thing for about eight years. That's amazing. And then you come back to making the films and doing this like super ambitious stuff with the avatars, but is there part of you that's like, do you prefer one to the other? Do you wish you were just doing more exploration or is the filmmaking just kind of subsidize that in a way? Yeah, kind of. I mean, it has so far it's worked out that way. You know, I have a term made a bunch of money. So then I built a sub to go to the, you know, the deepest places on the planet and worked on that for several years after, after Avatar made those dives in 2012. So yeah, for me, it's a full life. It doesn't really make sense to a lot of people looking at it from the outside because in the entertainment business, we always put that first like it's the most important thing in the world and everything is all very self referential within that reality bubble. But I was on the NASA Advisory Council. I've been in lots of environments where they don't even think about movies. We don't even exist for them. Maybe on a ship when you're out doing something really important, somebody will throw in, you know, a VHS, you know, of some comedy. That's all that's dealing on the air. But it's not the center. Well, luckily, it's not for me either because I've only made really bad movies and terrible TV shows and everything's been cancelled. But it's okay. I'm not successful in that way, but I'm good at a dinner party, Jim. So I got that. I'll keep that in mind. It's so fascinating. It just occurred to me that you are incredible at creating fake life and you are incredible at exploring the real raw, you know, building blocks of real life, you know, checking out like, you know, the depths of the earth. Where the the the the boring stuff, I guess, in comparison, the stuff in the middle, the stuff where the rest of us live, right, domestic sort of life. How did you, are you comfortable with the amount of time you spend in that lane as well? I'll bet you are. Well, I got five kids. Yeah. And that's that's that's its own whole epic journey. Yeah. You guys have kids, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've got three generations got to. Yeah. Yeah. I got a dog. Yeah. Well, it's similar. Yeah. That's true. They scream and shit everywhere. Yeah. Except you never have to come down and bail out your dog. Yeah. This is true. Yeah. But that's yeah. That's it's such an interesting. You're you're so incredible. Both of those poles. And we just never hear about how awesome you are right there in the middle. But I'll bet you are. But that's where we live. That's where we really live. Right. So the new then with the new Avatar sequels, I thought like the way I brought that around. Yeah. I wanted to talk about the the shit that I'd been living for years as a father, as a husband and all that sort of thing and the the dysfunction in families, the power and the strength that comes from being in a family and what that all means. And then put that back into you know, what I do as a director. In the same way, I wanted to bring the underwater stuff into the directing, which I did on prior films. I wanted to do family. So that's the so these Avatar films are about family told from the parents perspective and from the kids perspective. Yeah. By the way, you can talk about Avatar all you want. I'm one of my favorite. I'm obsessed. I can't believe I'm talking to you. All right. So you've been to the deepest part of the ocean. First of all, where do the love of the ocean come from? Why? Why are you obsessed with it? And is it true that you went down? You've been down deeper than any other human. Is that true? I've been down as deep as a couple of other humans. Like seven miles. Yeah. It's almost seven. Just one or more foot. Well, the problem is that when you get that deep, it's actually hard to know how deep you really are with great accuracy like to within a foot. You can't do it within a foot. You can do it within kind of 30, 40 feet, something like that. And it was seven miles, you say? Yeah. It's almost seven miles. 35,000. Amazing. 35,000. I know how in the world did you, how in the world does something exist that can survive the pressure of that? We built it. Yeah. We built it. We built it. You went so deep and then you got to get a question from somebody who's so shallow. Jim, Jim, can you, can you? There's a club. There's a club. You do a lot of, so you've made a living doing a lot of these great things. And of course, you've done, no, we call the deep sea. And you do all the, and a lot of, I guess I hate to use the term science fiction because it feels almost too broad or it feels good. But is that what interests you, if you're going to watch, I mean, if you're on a long plane ride down to New Zealand, for instance, I imagine you work all the time. But if you were to take the moment to watch other films and watch, or those, do you watch science fiction or do you watch dramas or do you watch comedy? Everything, everything, everything. Yeah, I probably lean more toward drama science fiction, historical fiction, that sort of thing. Comedy more when I'm with the family. Sure. Because I don't do it, you know, but there's always that aspect when you watch a movie and you get really enthusiastic about it. You know, you're learning something that you can apply back to your own. I'm going to pitch you a really great, so you're comedy series about a guy who's got the bends. But we'll get into it later. Where do you land on the beach? Sure, to be very sure. It's very sure. It's very sad, actually. They're going to be sad. Where do you land on documentary? Because I bet you've got a lot of footage of just your expeditions that you've played with. Well, you can't even join one. That was easy. They were all funded by the document, like so the documentaries help pay for the expeditions. Right? So I think I've done right now as producer and or director somewhere like 11 or 12 documentaries. Yeah. And you know, one of the best ones called Deep Sea Challenge. That's the one where you built yours on summering. Yeah, I love that. Deep sea challenge. And then there was Ghost to the Abyss, which was about Titanic, but but you know, 3D documentary about the wreck and so on, stuff like that. Do you enjoy sort of again, the polarity of, you know, sitting in an editing room and seeing what you got and shaping something from that? Yeah, it's more the typical documentary experience. And then in Avatar, you've got to not only have a script, but you're creating a lot of things digitally. So the amount of planning where there is almost zero surprise about creating in the editing room. I would imagine in comparison to the process of documentary filmmaking. Again, like where is that middle lane? Do you have any interest in that? You know, well, I love editing. And I think I learned more editing documentaries than I did from editing features. But I think what I brought back into editing, let's say on Avatar 2, it is it's an exploration. Just because you got all this footage doesn't mean you're a slave to it. You know, and the story will reassert itself in the editing process. It's almost like a new draft of the script, if you will. Yeah. Is it ever tempting as I hear they do an animation to completely recreate a scene, an act as opposed to going back, rewriting, reshooting? You can almost take an animated approach with it. I'm asking. Now, not what we're doing. I mean, Pixar could do that all day long. But once again, it's an actor-centric process. So I'd literally have to rewrite the scene and get the actors back together, you know, capture it again. Gotcha. Now, I could take a line from another scene and I could recreate the setting that I need and drop that line, drop that actor's performance if it worked, you know, and you'd have to do it. And we've done that a couple of times. But the fun with the CG is I can take a scene that was shot supposedly as a day scene and make it night and make it rain just like in like that. Wow. Okay, guys, we're making that scene night. I love the skip night. Sean, he could, Sean, he could, Sean, he could shoot a scene with you and he could probably paint out the skittles so they wouldn't be in your, in your head right next to you. You could also make it rain skittles, which would be amazing. You know, it's interesting. You use all this technology. No, no, you use the technology. You're an innovator when it comes to technology. And it's funny that Terminator and the Terminator films are about a sort of a cautionary tale of, of, of technology gone awry, if you will. Are you afraid of the machines? Oh, absolutely. Well, I'm not afraid, but I'm certainly pretty, pretty concerned about the potential for misuse of AI. Yeah. I think AI can be great. I also think it could, you know, it could literally be the end of the world. I mean, you talk to all of the AI scientists, and I know a bunch of them. And they, every time I put my hand up at one of their, you know, their seminars or something, they just start laughing. That's kind of, yeah, sure. We really want to hear from you. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, the point is that no technology has ever not been weaponized. Yeah. Yeah. And do we really want to be fighting something smarter than us that isn't us on our own world? I don't think so. I mean, look at AI. I could have taken over the world and already be manipulating it. And we just don't know because it would have control over all the all the media and everything. And what better explanation for how absurd everything is right now. It doesn't make a damn better sense to me. I don't know about you guys. No, that's exactly right. Well, yeah, I mean, you're, you're there. But as you know, here we're, we're living in a place that we're just seems very upside down and people are believing seemingly everything. And, and it's a great point, which is potentially if the AI is smarter than us and has the potential to be smarter than us, why would it let us know that it was beating us because that would be, that would be foolish of it to do that. That's right. It would be so easy to cover up. It would be so easy to cover up. But do you feel a responsibility? Have you ever felt or do you feel increasingly a responsibility to, to have more of a message? I don't know, I was going to say, I don't know, in your films, do you try to, yeah? Well, I mean, the avatar films are about the environment. I'm not dealing with AI. Yeah, you know, if I were to do another terminator film and maybe try to try to launch that franchise again, which is in discussion, but nothing's been decided, I would make it much more about about the AI side of it than, than kind of bad robots gone crazy. Yeah, please do. I would watch that. Because the AI thing, not, not, not to put the audience to sleep because I've done that before talking about the subject, but just for clarification for me, because you, you, you know this answer, I'll bet you, AI is, it's about a computing speed, right? It's an ability to absorb a bunch of information, process it, and spit it back out. I think it has more to do with, with understanding human consciousness so that we collectively, human technologists can create an intelligence that functions the way we do. Meaning they call it, generally they call it, agi, artificial general intelligence, that it's not just designed to play chess and beat your ass at chess. It's designed to solve all kinds of problems. So it, it needs more of a consciousness the way we view and react to the world. And that's made possible just because it's able to absorb so much information now. Fast amounts of data. Yes, you're right. So, so there's AI and there's agi. So AI learns, AI is, is more simple, more, more directed functions. And what they do is they just shove a whole bunch of training data into it. All the books in the world. Yeah, kind of, or all, or, or, you know, all the YouTube, all the, all the Twitter, you know, everything. And they just, they just force feed it vast amounts of what they call training data, right? And from that training data, they pose it a problem and says, all right, try a million different things and see what works better than what and then try another million things. And it basically is just throwing processing time at the problem. Well, and there's so much computing power, you know, and in all our devices, Sean probably doesn't want me to tell this, but his, his roomba has been listening to him in just order Chinese food last night. Learning, it's going to serve. It's learning. Yeah. Well, you know who's going to be vacuuming the room in about five years? Ain't going to be a roomba. No, it ain't going to be a roomba. It's going to be us for the, for the machines. Yep. We'll be right back. SmartLess is supported by FedEx. This holiday season, be ready for what's next with picture proof of delivery from FedEx. Picture proof of delivery provides photo confirmation of your delivered package. So both consumers and businesses can have greater peace of mind. FedEx express and FedEx ground are the first nationwide carriers to provide picture proof of delivery without requiring an account or login for residential deliveries. It's available for free on the FedEx website and app. Best part is you don't have to enroll in any program. You can simply track shipments online or subscribe to notifications. So like for me, I love this because when I send an email to somebody, I want to know they got it. So I have a couple, I have a few friends in my life that I'm like, look, if I email you, you don't have to email back like a long thing, just go got it, you know, or just like received. And so I do that and like with some people in business too. And I love that because you want to know it's like when you get a gift for somebody, you're not looking for a thank you. You just want to know they got it, right? That's why I love picture proof of delivery. Thank you FedEx. My God. So ship with FedEx and be ready for this holiday season with picture proof of delivery FedEx. Be ready for what's next. SmartLess is supported by Audible. You don't ride an elevator for the music. I hope not or pick an airline for the movies. I hope not. So when it comes to audio entertainment, doesn't it make sense to choose Audible? I mean, it's in the title and the word of their company. It's the home for stories told by the biggest stars like Ethan Hawke, Carrie Washington and Kevin Hart. It's home to epic adventures, chilling mysteries and camp miscomories. Audible is the home of storytelling and let your imagination soar with audiobooks, podcasts and originals. So for me, I know shock or sci-fi. I actually listened to a brief history of time. I actually read the book a long time ago and then I just listened to it again. Talk about transporting yourself to another world. This transported me to another universe. Get it? Because it talks about the universe. Audible is the home of storytelling with all your audio entertainment and one app. Find the best of what you love or something new to discover. Audible has an incredible selection of audiobooks across every genre from bestsellers and new releases to celebrity memoirs, mysteries and thrillers, motivation, wellness, business, so much more. As an Audible member, you can choose one title month to keep from their entire catalog, including the latest bestsellers and new releases. Members also get full access to a growing selection of included audiobooks, audio originals and podcasts. You can download or stream their included titles all you want. Let Audible help you discover new ways to laugh, be inspired or be entertained. New members can try it for free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash smartless or text smartless to 500-500. That's audible.com slash smartless or text smartless to 500-500 to try audible free for 30 days. Audible.com slash smartless. Smartless listeners. This episode is brought to you by Zell. When anyone sends you money or if you need to get paid back, always ask for Zell. With Zell, the money goes straight into your bank account. You don't have to download another app because it's probably already in your banking app. It's in over 1600 different banking apps and it works even if the sender banks are somewhere different than you in the United States. Jason Willen, I use Zell all the time to pay each other back. So we're going to do like these business Christmas corporate gifts thing and we haven't decided who is going to go buy them and then but whoever does is going to pay the other people back using Zell. We haven't decided who's going to go out and buy them but it doesn't matter because we have the confidence of using Zell to get the other person paid back what they deserve. So the bad news is we don't know what we're doing for gifts but the good news is when we do we got Zell. Look for Zell and you're banking app today. All right back to the show. No wait but Jim did you ever see the movie X Machina? Yeah it's great. It deals with that issue yeah. It's that same issue about creating a robot or an AI that actually figures out how to mimic everything that is human so that the human is fooled. Well what they say to people that are on the spectrum to say fake it till you make it. It's like just figure just watch behavior and then learn from it and then you'll fit in better and that's just what they'll do. That's what AGI will do. I heard somebody told me a couple years ago that maybe you've probably heard that you've been at a lot of these these conferences and symposiums or whatever gatherings. Yeah. That this is at least two years ago this person said to me that somebody at alphabet or Google whatever had said to them that they were not concerned but they said it is the algorithm is already doing things on it so that they don't understand how it knows how to do. That's right and that's the big problem with using AI to solve any problem is you may get a good result but it can't tell you what it did because because it's just randomly problem solving hundreds of millions of times and then just course correcting within that and it doesn't necessarily know why it's better to do it this way versus that way it just knows that it is and so it'll just keep doing that and iterating so it can't tell you how it's solving the problem because it doesn't know. That's crazy. It's going to start making movies. Jim you've taught it to make movies now it's going to start making movies and it's not going to know why. One me man. What about crypto? I want to know because do you believe in crypto? No. No good for you. With all of this intelligent stuff do you do anything that's real dumbass? What's the stupidest thing that you do? I could I could tell you some really stupid things but it'll get back to my kids and then see that. What about like a dumb hobby like I do you low playing marbles. You and Moody bats. Yeah. Gene Simmons of kiss taught me to bowl at his birthday party about 30 years ago and I actually enjoyed it. It's like who knew bowling was fun. Are you what have you balled a perfect game yet? No. Have you gotten close? I have gotten real drunk bet everybody like a lot of money that I would throw a strike and thrown it and then walked out of course that was a mic drop because I knew I could never do it again. Do you are you a sports guy? Do you follow any sports at all? No. Not interested. I have limited RAM and I need to use it for what I need to use it for. Do you think it's a waste of time? I watch a lot of sports. Am I wasting my time? No, if you're having fun you're not wasting your time. Okay. Now how do you like it? What are you doing down there in New Zealand? You still working on the on the movie? We're just finishing up. We're mixing the last couple of reels. As we speak finishing up we started out with 3,250 shots down to 12. Wow. Yeah. Exactly. How do you zoom out and have perspective on something like that? I'll get back to you on that. When is the first one coming out? Okay. So Avatar the Way of Waters coming out in December and then two years later Avatar 3, you know we haven't officially picked the title yet. Which you've already shot. We've shot it and we're opposed on it. I've seen a cut of the film but we still have to finish all the effects. It's that 3000 shot thing starts again. Is that what's driving the two year gap between it or was that intentional to have it be two years? Yeah, it's just the finish work. It takes us about two years to finish a movie that's otherwise all shot and edited. So are you kind of guy? It strikes me that you might be that you're up at sort of 5 a.m. looking at stuff. You're working all day. You sleep a few hours and then you're back and you wake up because you're bothered by unfinished business. Sometimes I'll wake up with the answer to a problem. I don't usually wake up because I'm bothered by it but everyone's in a while there's a eureka moment, right? Yeah. But I know I get up at 5 every day. I work out. I noodle around for a while, family stuff and then I go to work at 8 and work 12 hours. Where do you do your best thinking? Are you a walker? Are you stared at a wall? Do you? Where do you like on planes? Some people really see clearly. Yeah, planes are good. Walks are good. Dreams are good. Dreams are good. I do a lot of work in in dreams and it's not any kind of trained kind of lucid dreaming. It's just sometimes solutions just work themselves out. Really? You'd be a great person to take us into that that that unknown place. You know, what dream where they come from where thoughts come from. I think it's amazing. Yeah. Why don't we do that? Next. Please do that. I was trying to answer a question. Another filmmaker had asked me in one of these kind of staged interview things on a magazine like, you know, about the screenwriting process and I said, where everybody is screenwriting every night? Yeah. We've got an engine in our head that tells the story in the form of a dream every single night. Yeah. You know, it's like I think when we're screenwriting, we're just formalizing that process or giving that engine, you know, more more power or more dominance over our consciousness. Yeah. Have you ever actually legitimately had a dream and you've written it down and just become the nucleus of like an idea of a natural film? Really? Absolutely. Terminator. Yeah. Terminator. I had an image in a dream of this metal skeleton coming out of the fire. It's like boom, worked that down. Avatar, you know, I saw the luminous forest in a dream with the little spinning lizards and all that stuff. Drew it. I didn't write it down. I drew it. I painted it. And I always think I was 19 when you had an album. Yeah. I was just saying. Really? Yeah. And so that way, so Avatar was something that was always there kind of in the back of your back of your mind. It was this thing that you this for a year. Yeah. This thing for years he wanted to do that. Yeah. For for you know, I mean, at this point, that was half a century ago, but it wasn't in the form of Avatar. It wasn't in the form of that story. It was just random imagery, you know, and so the way I write, I don't know how you guys write, but the way I write is I start going forward from character and I start working backward from just shit I want to see. And then there's all the middle bit where I get the characters into the places that I want to see. Right. No way. Really. That's very fascinating. Yeah. It is. Sometimes I felt like mature, what's this doing that unrestive album? He'd think up like the most genius sort of crazy stuff. He'd just write backwards and make it plausible that we would arrive at that point. Yeah. Exactly. Well, if you know you're ending, you can just write the whole thing, right? Yeah. So now, I want to just we got to let you go like in just a couple of minutes, but and I'm sorry to go way back, but I did have tons of questions about the ocean. Yeah. And I knew because I think it's just as fascinating as space. I don't ever want to go down the ocean. I mean, it scares the shit out of me, but because I've seen too many movies, I do. I just I can't swim. So there's a whole thing. Hey, man, do I know that? That I can't swim. Well, I went into the ocean with you a couple of months ago. But I, but we only only went up to our waist. Like, I don't want to go in. But did we have we had this conversation? You truly do not know how to swim. I don't kind of know how to swim. No, not really. What? And I'm colorblind. Okay. So like a French bulldog. You just go right to the bottom, huh? Let's just all list all the stuff we can't do and at our deficits. Well, hang on. I know. I mean, just in front of you. So good. It'll be so good. They name the Rolex watch out of him. He goes so deep. You know, name it. Okay. Wait a minute. I do have this question. So because I read and in anticipation of this, I don't know the story. I read that you took a chicken in a cage when you went down to the bottom when you did that long thing. A, Y, B, what happened? Oh, I did chicken. Oh, it's not a live chicken. Yeah. No, it was just a chicken, right? You know, like a like a broiler from the kitchen. The cage. It wasn't anywhere. Let's hold it in your hand. Yeah. He was outside the sub. He was actually on a robotic lander. And it was just in a wire fray. Why do I feel so persecuted here? No, I want to know. I want to know. Like, what was the result? Because we wanted to film this sucker getting ripped apart by these, these little amphopods that live down there that are like, like the deep ocean piranha. And in, you know, in like a, like a five minute time lapse, they come in and strip it to the bone. Wow. Wow. So if you've ever, you know, you've ever seen a burial at sea, you know, with the flag and the guy goes out from under the flag, he's of skeleton in about 20 minutes. Now, can I ask you, can I ask you why, how did you arrive at a chicken? Did you just think, well, they're going to freak out because they've never, they never smelled or tasted anything from land. In other words, like, why do you use a dead fish? They'd, they'd ripped that apart too. Would you think chicken, oh, they're going to love this? They, they'll eat anything. They don't care. Cause the, the protein for them is like mana from heaven. It just falls from above. There's nothing really much that's very big down where they live. And they just scavenge on whatever falls out. So sometimes it could be a whale or a dolphin or a fish or whatever. I don't think they're very picky. I read some occasional human. Sure. Haven't helped Sean Hayes if he ever gets out there. He'll be right down there. You can just hang it outside my door. All right. You have a pool at your house. Yeah. How do you not swim? I know. Well, I, I doggy paddle. I'm going to tell you tonight. We'll pool together. We're going to put, we're going to get you some swim lessons. You're going to hold me up. We're going to go. Yeah. Jim, what do you think at the, when it's, when you're all, when you're done with all of this and because you've done so much, the breadth of which is really pretty astonishing, whether it's filmmaking or all this oceanate oceanic stuff, et cetera, et cetera. What do you want to be remembered for? What do you, what, what's your legacy? Because it's pretty remarkable. I'm still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. Yeah. I love that. I love that. Yeah. You could qualify for a bunch of legacy things there. What you, if you had to pick one. I think like, explore filmmaker storyteller, I think it explores the storyteller. You go, you go someplace and you come back and you tell the story. Right? Yeah. So a documentary filmmaker, the storyteller, you know, scripted filmmakers, a storyteller. You know, I don't know. I mean, I, do I have to choose? No, no, no. We'll do it. Believe me. But it is, it is really remarkable. You haven't you discovered a species or two as well, perhaps? Yeah, few. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm really. You have. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you, you, you, you see a lot of stuff, no one's ever seen when you get down there. I'll bet. Yeah. Yeah. Mostly small, mostly small stuff, but, but definitely, you know, Sigourney Weaver said once she's, you know, because of all your diving, she said, they as a cast kept thinking, I hope you survived to make another movie. Yeah. That's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, saying thinking about her career again. I can't imagine how difficult it must be to make your deal on all this stuff. It must be so complicated. I was just thinking about the lawyers of it all. Oh, you just said that the risky things that he does. I love the part that where they tell me I can't fly in a, in a private plane or a helicopter. And they forget to put that I can't take a sub seven miles down. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. But that, that's my point is like you do all this stuff. It's super risky and also like in the technology is proprietary and it's stuff that you're coming up with and you're, you're like, hey, man, we were, what happened today? Like your kids might be the dad, what'd you do? Well, we were shooting some stuff and I discovered three new species and, and I built a submarine. The kids, my kids couldn't care less about what I do during the day. No, I know how old are your kids? What are the ranges? 15, 18, 21, 29 and 34. Nice. So, but the teenagers, they couldn't care less. Right. Whatever, whatever your parents are doing is not interesting by definition. Yeah. Yeah. No, Jason and I know we have teenagers and they just couldn't, I have a 14-year-old boy. He has a 15, 15 or 16, 16-year-old girl. Our kids just do not care. They're so non-plot. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you are the king of the world. You really are. You're remarkable. Yeah. Until I walk in the front door. Yeah. Exactly. In every house, put yours. Truly, it's, it's been such a huge, huge honor to meet you and, and listen to all of this today. It's just I, you, you were such a pivotal part of my childhood and my adulthood and just I just think you're incredible. You're 52. I'm 68. Don't, don't put that on you. Don't part. But I was growing up and I was like, I would watch those over and, by the way, I can't not want by that you know my age more than my own father does. But, um, but I can't believe, yeah, I've got somebody we'd like to put in a submarine, actually, speaking of that. I can do it. Yeah, that's true. I'm not going to say that you're part of my child. I'm going to say you're a tremendous peer. I like considering you a peer. I've had a good time hanging out with you guys. It's been great. Well, thank you for all your hard work. Yeah, you're a remarkable, you're a remarkable artist and adventurer and thank you for everything. All right. Cool. This has been great. I'm with the film. Can't wait to see it. All right. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Take care. All right. Back to the mix. Pretty cool. Wow. You know what I kept thinking though is like, it's just a testament to his tenacity to just believe in. That's why I asked that long-winded question about like, how do you not go just kidding? Like when the when the dollar amount gets to remember when Titanic was the most expensive film ever made. Yeah. And then Avatar was. Yeah. These two probably are. I mean, how does he convince you to? I know. It's like $200 million, which is what Titanic was at the time. Was it real? How are you not like, okay, never mind just kidding. And then it was the first one to make a billion. Yeah. That right. Yeah. What a role the dice over and over and over again. But then like, you know, you do something like Avatar and you you you you he spawns like ancillary thing like a blue man group, you know, or think actually a blue man group inspired Avatar. No, they know what? No, they just really hoping I'd get you on that one. Wait, what? For two seconds, I was like, I don't remember reading that. You imagine if they're trying to suit you. But the part is that even when they testify, they don't say anything. They're just drumming and shit. And they just missed it and give that line to David Cross and interested. Like while he's all made up in the blue stuff, he went and read for Avatar. I mean, I think that there's some people are just wired differently. And he is just he's just wired in a different way. So did you ever see, did you ever see the making of the Abyss? Or have you ever seen the Abyss? No, you have. Yeah. I love the Abyss. Yeah. You got it. I've seen the making of it like five times. It's it's mind blowing that he built this tank and then they forgot to put salt in it. So it was all fuzzy or something like that. And so then they had a it was problem after problem after problem for a year and a half, two years. And they only had so much time to breathe under water. And then they couldn't see the faces. So they put lights in the helmets and it was just nice. Yeah. The amount of knowledge he has to have like from from computer technology to like engineering to I mean, just I don't know how you get it all in there. But Jay, you know, it's funny. You say that I think that part of it must be that he's willing to take a risk and he's willing to make a mistake. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Like he's not nervous. He didn't get it first try. Right. Stuff he came up with. It would be trial and error. And he seems to be the kind of guy who has the confidence to go like, yeah, I don't know how to do it, but we're going to figure it out. Yeah. We'll keep going. That's and there's something there's a real lesson in that because we're all I know I am. You get nervous. You have those moments where you're like, I don't want to fuck up or I don't want to look stupid or whatever. And truly creating great things comes out of these, you know, if you have the frame of mind of like willing to fall on my face. Yeah. And being able to be convincing and articulate your vision, your plan and and lead. Yeah. He's he's clearly one of our best, I guess. What if the why was an eye in that movie title? Oh, Harry comes. Harry comes get ready. Get ready. Well, would it would be? Oh, gee, I don't know. What do you mean? We'll be called the abyss. I buy. They're always the worst. I know. Always just terrible. I know because he always wants to go to buy and switch. It's the same way that he switched subjects just on a dime. We're just getting somewhere. We're having a conversation. We're wrapping up talking about the incredible Jim camera. And you and Jim can't mention, mention chicken, the ocean chicken in the ocean. And you're like, I gotta go find a deep fried chicken somewhere. You're just thinking about a bobbing chicken. And you're like, so many ocean questions. I want that animator to do. Jim taking a chicken down into the end down to seven. All right. All right. We'll listen. Happy Saturday. Happy Saturday. Love to you and yours. Is that by or we did we did we buy it out? I think we I buy a we have a we have a best we have beat we have Iced list. I didn't think it was the greatest sign off, but you know what? I'm biased. Yes. That's just it's bad. What we've what we've done for the audiences, we've done our own audio documentary on the making of a bite. Is that work? Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. List is 100% organic and artisanally handcrafted by Bennett Barbaco, Michael Grant Terry, and Rob Umgerf. Smart. Less. Our next episode will be out in a week wherever you listen to podcasts or you can listen to it right now early on Amazon music or early and add free by subscribing to Wondry Plus in Apple podcasts or the Wondry app. When the doctors told me that I would never walk again after a devastating on the field injury that left me paralyzed, I knew it was not going to be my last play. Miraculously walking back on the football field was my only option because one thing that I is don't account for is the will to overcome. I'm Ryan Shays here from an NFL pro-border in Coles, a don't call it a comeback and new podcast from Wondry alongside me is my man, David Demeshake, former Jimmy Kimmel Live, writer and NFL network analyst. On don't call it a comeback we'll cover the greatest comeback stories in the past week of sports, stories like Tom Brady, Umretiring and Quest, but yet another Super Bowl ring. Our pool host is resurgence to join the 700 club and major culture moments like Rihanna returning to music's biggest days, the Super Bowl halftime show. Fourth and goal with a minute left, no time outs. Down by six, this podcast is your weekly reminder that it isn't over until it's over and who doesn't love an upset from an underdog. Nobody saw coming. Follow don't call it a comeback wherever you get your podcast and you can also listen ad free on Amazon music or the Wondry app.