Cameron Angle

Author Paula Parisi on James Cameron:

"I first met James Cameron in the fall of 1991. I was a beat reporter at The Hollywood Reporter, covering technology, an area none of the more established entertainment writers on staff deemed worthy of attention. Admittedly, it wasn't a very sexy subject at the time. Hollywood hadn't experienced its digital epiphany yet, so the tech beat consisted of covering news of flatbed editing machines and film projectors.

"One of my assignments was covering the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE). They were having their annual confab, with none other than James Cameron as the keynote speaker. I was thrilled that such a big fish was swimming into our murky little techno pond. Terminator 2 had been the blockbuster film of the summer of '91, and Cameron was a hot commodity in Hollywood. It surprised me that this in-demand director would spend a Saturday morning expounding the nuances of filmmaking to 300 or so buzz-cut, slide-rule-carrying SMPTE members - and me, the only member of the press who showed up.

"Cameron dazzled the crowd that morning with his vision of a new kind of filmmaking, one in which the computer was an integral element. He generously explained the technique that went into creating the screen's first digital star - the T-1000 character from T2. This was all so new, but we could sense that he was on to something big. Afterward, he was gracious enough to hang around in a cement-floored green room, sipping industrial brew coffee and patiently answering my many questions. As impressed as I was with his humble attitude, I was even more knocked out by the realization that more than being able to predict trends, this was a guy who through sheer guts and a wild imagination was going to chart the future. And he was inviting the rest of us along for the ride.