I can't open it from out here!
Finler!
Cut the hose!
Finler!
As fans, we often romanticize the idea of having a vision.
An auteur who stops at nothing to see their work
created and represented in the absolute best way possible.
While the cost of that vision is often
tangible in money or time spent, sometimes it's
measured in a very real but more ethereal mental toll.
In the case of The Abyss, one has
to consider whether the mental and physical trials justified
the ends and how far our romanticization would
go if the auteur had died for their work.
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Released in 1989, The Abyss was writer and director James
Cameron's fourth feature film.
While he did technically start working
in his preferred environment of water
with his debut film 1982's Piranha II The Spawning,
The Abyss would be the first of his films
to truly tap into Cameron's love of the deep sea world.
But that love caused two famous Hollywood actors
to vow never to work with Cameron again
and almost literally killed the director
before the film's release.
I'm sorry.
No pulse.
The story is classic Cold War science fiction.
A scientist and a group of Navy SEALs
take up base on an underwater drilling platform
in search of a US submarine that sinks into the Caribbean sea
after it makes contact with an unidentified submerged object.
Throw in the external conflict of a hurricane that
keeps them pinned thousands of feet below water.
There's a goddamn hurricane coming!
He switched off.
It's unbelievable.
And the ticking timer of oncoming Russian
subs, and you have a pretty pitch perfect weird thriller.
That idea of weird is used here more as genre than feeling.
Weird lit was described by writer John Clute
as "used loosely to describe fantasy,
supernatural fiction, and horror tales embodying
transgressive material."
Cameron had originally started his career as a special effects
artist for Roger "the King of Cult" Corman,
working on weird films like Battle Beyond the Stars
and even did special effects for the cult masterpiece Escape
From New York.
He was only brought on to handle the effects for Piranha II
but was promoted after the film's first director was
fired.
While Cameron would eventually prove himself
as one of the most successful and beloved directors
of our time, he has never really left the weird science fiction
genre he sprang from.
He followed the hired gun gig with his first big hit
1984's The Terminator, a time travel love story wrapped up
with murderous robotic AI.
That blending of genre and trope as a narrative device
would be something he latched onto for the rest
of his career.
Well there's lots of room to talk about predetermination,
free will, and choice with Terminator,
The Abyss is simply a story about rekindling romance
and the sacrifices we make for love,
with aliens and geopolitical conflict.
So still pretty weird.
Cameron began to shop The Abyss's script in treatment
with producer and wife Gale Anne Hurd,
but they were separated during pre-production.
While it is nobody's business but their own on why,
the air of disjointed love hangs heavy
over the two central characters of the film--
Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as Dr. Lindsey Brigman and Ed
Harris as Virgil Bud Brigman.
The two are estranged when the movie begins,
but as the story progresses, we see how much they still
care for one another.
And while it seems neither Cameron nor Hurd have spoken
publicly about whether there's any truth in if the plot
of the film did reflect a personal moment,
it's hard to imagine it didn't.
Writers often treat the world around them
like fodder, something to consume and regurgitate
on the page.
You don't live with someone, love someone without their tone
and cadence being reflected in the people you write.
Come on, something really important is happening here.
I'm trying to keep the situation under control.
I can't allow you to create this kind of hysteria.
Who's hysterical?
Nobody's hysterical.
Shh.
Where Aliens, a sequel to Ridley Scott's weird haunted house
story on a spaceship Alien was more concerned
with the parental love between Ridley and Newt.
Abyss stayed laser focused on a romantic love.
Not the youthful flash in a pan love
we would later see in Titanic, but the grown up, life is hard,
things get in the way sort of love.
But being Cameron, it is wrapped in genre.
And after the success of Aliens, Cameron had a lot more money
to expand that genre.
While reports of the budget vary from 43 million to 70 million,
it is twice as high as Aliens' $18.5 million budget.
It's easy to see where the money went too,
as the makers of Waterworld would eventually find out,
shooting on and underwater is not a cheap endeavor.
Just to allow dialogue to be recorded directly to tape,
the production company had to build its own communication
equipment.
They converted a nuclear power plant
to house over 17 million gallons of water
to shoot many of the underwater scenes.
That enormous amount of water sprung a leak
on the first day of filming, forcing
Cameron to call in dam repair specialists
to fix the leak that was bursting out 150,000
gallons of water a minute.
In addition to recording the dialogue,
Cameron had to commission Western Space and Marine
to make helmets that remained clear
under the giant tarp spread over the water's surface
to block out the sun and give the illusion of being
so deep the sun doesn't exist.
State of the art microphones were also
rigged into the helmets so the audio would sync properly.
The helmet sort of brought us into the 20th century in that
I could speak to everyone.
Of course, they couldn't speak back to me,
so this was a director's dream come true.
Like all new tech or workarounds,
things were constantly breaking down.
That tarp we mentioned was torn in a lightning storm.
They realized it would be too costly
and time consuming to repair, so they opted to shoot at night.
That constant breaking down did not
help to alleviate the immense amount of stress
the actors were under either.
In total, the cast worked six days a week
over six months, often clocking in over 70 hours a week.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly,
Ed Harris told a story about co-star Mastrantonio
storming off set shouting "we are not animals"
after her numerous takes of her very physically and emotionally
taxing resuscitation scene.
Bear in mind she was soaking wet as Harris
did his best to gently shake her and pound her chest.
For a lot of that scene, it said Harris was simply
yelling into the void as she refused to film any more takes,
forcing Cameron to splice the footage together.
While the actors voiced their own complaints,
Cameron seemed none too patient regarding
the actors' experience.
In an article from The New York Times,
Cameron stated "for every hour they
spent trying to figure out what magazine to read,
we spent an hour at the bottom of the tank
breathing compressed air."
After a screening at Beyond Fest this year, Cameron
participated in a Q&A where he recalled a moment
where he genuinely almost died.
After his oxygen tank ran out of air,
he had to discard the weights keeping him
on the converted set's floor only
to be grabbed by what they called angel divers--
professional divers meant to watch over the cast and crew
in case of an emergency.
As the diver swam to Cameron, the regulator
had a tear in the diaphragm, and unbeknownst to the diver,
pumped water into Cameron's mouth when he took a breath.
He struggled against the diver, who
simply thought Cameron was in a panic
until the director punched the diver in the face
and made it to the surface.
It was conflict after conflict with this film, up to
and including some of the most memorable CGI that
would put Cameron on the path to direct Terminator 2
Judgment Day.
Trust me.
Cameron opted to work with Industrial Light and Magic
to create the water tentacle creature capable of mirroring
the actors' faces.
In order for 75 seconds of film to be made,
it took six long months.
Every single frame of this movie is a task,
a moment to be conquered.
Whether it's the personal emotional beats, arduous work
of pumping water and learning to dive,
or creating flat out new technology,
The Abyss was started as a short story
Cameron had written at 17.
A response to reading H.G. Wells's "In the Abyss."
He later attended a lecture about breathing fluids.
I breathe this myself.
Going to be fine.
No, man.
She's going to drown.
Look, look.
She's freaking out.
And was then influenced by the philosophical questions
of The Day the Earth Stood Still.
All of these moments led to The Abyss.
It's not impossible to see how that trek made
the trials of filming the movie pale in comparison.
No matter what problems presented themselves,
they could be conquered, and conquering and overcoming
is something Cameron obviously takes a skewed sense of pride
in.
Nobody ever said I can't do that on this film.
And I think they should all be proud of themselves for that.
In that same screening at the Beyond Fest,
Cameron was asked why his work always
tended to be a mish mash of scope and genre.
He answered, "I think I write myself into a corner,
so I have to write something cool.
It probably comes from an insecurity as a writer,
as an actor's director, and I have to do some big hat trick."
That hat trick has led to some of the most
thoughtful and boundary pushing work of any filmmaker.
In the end, whether something was worth all the effort,
money, and life threatening circumstances is subjective.
What isn't is the influence Cameron has had
on spectacle and blockbusters.
Whether those ends are justified probably
depends on if you were involved with the making of The Abyss.
So what do you think?
What are some other films whose creation seemed too far
stretched for the end results?
Let us know down in the comments below.
And as always, thank you for watching.