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I'm Jane Pauley, and this is Sunday morning. After a long weekend of Thanksgiving feasting, many of us are hoping to get a bit more exercise in the days ahead, to burn off a few of those newly consumed calories. That could mean hitting the gym, riding a bike, or or for the most adventurous perhaps even rock climbing in the great outdoors. Rock climbing, of course, is not for the faint of heart. But this morning Lee Cowan will introduce us to an avid climber who's become one of the best under somewhat unusual circumstances.
Nice, come on. On just about any weekend, you can find Jesse Dufton hanging by his fingertips off the face of a cliff somewhere. To him, it's just a walk in the park. It's for me. going climbing is totally normal.
Yeah. I do it as much as I possibly can. I've done it loads. It's not out of the ordinary. His walk in the park though isn't what you might think.
Ahead. on Sunday morning. From her breakout role in Mean Girls to Mamma Mia. her award-winning performance in the dropout, actor Amanda Seifret has been making hits for more than two decades, and this year it seems she's busier than ever. as she tells our Ben Mankowitz.
This is Polly. She's so sweet. Hi, Polly. Down on the farm or up on the screen, Amanda Cyfred captures our attention. In the roles she plays, and in her blunt honesty.
Do I still make mistakes? Uh-huh. Yeah. Do I still make bad choices? Yeah.
But I'm human and I'm like doing the best I can and I'm nice. And I'm Nice. Amanda Cyphert, later on Sunday morning. Speaking of making hits, few people in Hollywood have created more blockbusters than writer-director James Cameron. His movies have grossed nearly nine billion dollars.
But what he's most proud of are his film's artistic and technical achievements. as Jonathan Vigliotti discovers in our Sunday profile. This is the power loader, the actual one we use in the movie. His career is quite literally the stuff of science fiction, and the genre itself was his inspiration to make movies. How did you go from blue collar to Hollywood?
Watching Star Wars. Oh. If the things I'm seeing in my mind can be the same things that are in a number one movie in movie history. Then I've got a sailable imagination. We had to build an ocean inside the mind of James Cameron coming up on Sunday morning.
Luke Burbank shares a very different side to the heavy metal band Metallica, lending a helping hand to those in need. Plus Nancy Giles on a New Life for Leftovers. a Thanksgiving history of these United States, and more, on this Sunday morning for the final day of the month, November 30th, 2025. We'll be back after this. Yeah.
For most of us, the idea of rock climbing is a daunting challenge. Lee Cowan introduces us to a man who faces that challenge. and then some. The British explorer Sir Edmund Hillary. who conquered Mount Everest.
One said it's not the mountain we conquer. But ourselves. I guess I'm going for a big swing round the corner next. 40-year-old rock climber Jesse Dufton from Loughborough, England. knows that empowering feeling well.
It makes him almost giddy. Yeah. I did my first rock route when I was two years old. Two years old. Two years old.
And obviously by... Yeah, I know. Come breathe. Come for it. But in this high stakes, high strength, often high altitude sport.
Nice.
Sometimes man wins and sometimes The mountain does. Yeah. Climbing teaches you a lot about who you are. and how you deal with stressful situations. I'm safe.
I'm safe. I can't overstate the mental side of climbing is just It's huge. He has had a bit of practice at being mentally tough. Losing your eyesight? tends to do that.
As I'm talking to you, I can't see you at all.
So I can kind of tell that there are some windows out to my left and that they're lighter. But even if I hold my hand up in front of it, I can't see the silhouette of my hand.
So yeah, when I'm climbing I'm not getting any useful information out of my eyes. I can't see any of the handholds, any of the gear. His day job is working as a fuel cell engineer at a clean energy company. But almost every weekend he's out climbing. To keep up with him, we needed some expertise.
So we asked Alastair Lee to meet us at a crag in the Lake District up in northwest England. He's an accomplished climber and documentarian who's made two films on Jesse. including this one. Uh Of his record-breaking climb of a daunting 450-foot sea stack. Off the coast of Scotland.
This is what I can really do with being able to see. You know, doing this stuff without the use of your eyes, it's really hard to put it on any comparable scale because we have nothing to compare it to. It's not like there's 10 other climbers we can go, yeah, he's doing a similar level or he's a better level than them. He's kind of out there on his own. Look where you sat now.
Where am I now? Jesse was born with a rare genetic condition called rod cone dystrophy. It slowly but predictably left him in the dark. His dad, an avid climber himself, Made sure a young Jesse though. Dead Sea.
that his potential was limitless. I realize what a massive positive influence his optimism and positivity had on me. He never. saw my disability as a reason not to do something like climbing. These days his climbing partner Is Molly.
Down right, one A, that's it. I know it's 10 to C, left one. They're perfectly matched, both in their passion for the sport and their athleticism. They're fingertip string. He's off the charts.
They met at their college climbing club. All Jesse told Molly at first is that he wasn't so good in the dark.
So anyway we did this route and I hadn't really Like we didn't notice anything different. We got to the top and he was like, Yeah, I can't see now. And I was like, What do you mean you can't see? And he's like, Yeah, I can't see anything. It's like totally pitch black.
And I was like, Oh my god. You go up that left crack first.
Okay. Ever since she's been Jesse's pair of eyes. In 2017, on the top of a previously unclimbed mountain in Greenland. Jesse dug into his climbing pack. and pulled out a ring, And did you do the whole nine yards?
Get down on one knee, everything? You did, yeah.
Well, I thought he'd fallen over. Molly is Jesse's connection. Oh nice excellent park. It's calm. is confidence.
Yeah you good, I've got you. But the climbing courage. Bloody brutal. That They both share. Oh my god, Jesse.
Sometimes just getting to the climb itself is the hardest part. This is like your nightmare terrains. Pretty much. He instinctively knows how to correct. Way to go.
Good save. Good save. It is all remarkable. Nice, come on. But what makes Jesse truly singular is that he doesn't follow anyone up.
He leads the crime. meaning he's responsible for finding the root. and placing the protection. When there's cracks in the rock, you can take this gear. and place it into the rock and run your rope through it.
Come on. What the f is it? Where the f is it? For me, you put it in and I'm like, well, I think that's good. There's always that little nagging doubt at the back of your mind.
Yeah. Is it better that you can't see how high you are? Is it better that you can't see the bottom? No. No, I don't think there's anything about climbing.
Wait, it's not far now. Radio transmitters on their helmets help them communicate. Molly talks him through the moves. Does he have a feel around on that back wall somewhere? Yep.
But. She can only do that to a point. You see I'm trying to like read the rock, trying to work out where he needs to go next, trying to work out where I'll put the gear.
So you almost don't have capacity to think about anything else.
So in a weird way, I don't really get scared when I have to have to concentrate so hard. But if he were to go round a corner or something and I couldn't see him, then that's when your mind starts to wander a bit and you think, Oh God, is he okay? or Have you had people in the climbing community that Suggest that you shouldn't be doing this, that it's too dangerous? Most of the time they won't tell me. Yeah, I mean he is safe.
We've climbed, I don't know, over 2,000 reaps together, probably. We haven't ever broken anything, we've had no danger incidents. I hate. when My climbing is portrayed as this guy doing a kind of a stunt or a challenge. I'm like Guys.
I've been climbing for over 20 years. And I've done thousands of routes. It's not like a one-off, you know, and I don't do it for a for like the attention or that's totally not why I do it. After all these years together, Jesse says he only really has one regret. and that's that he can no longer make out the contours, Of Molly's face.
When you hear Jesse say that one of the things he misses the most is being able to See your face. What do you think? Um I don't want to start crying. It really is amazing.
Sorry. When I was 18 and kind of deciding what I was going to do at university, I did consider. Should I go into medicine and trying to you know, fix my eyesight. And I decided no, I shouldn't do that. um because I didn't want my whole life to be about my eyes.
Jesse Dufton has learned that very little in life is really out of reach. Good work, me too. Not the top of it. He doesn't climb for anyone but himself. And yet, in a way, He elevates us all.
Yes, I am disabled, but I don't want the thing that everyone remembers about Jesse Dufton to be the fact that oh yeah, he was disabled. I don't want that to be the thing that people remember. I'd rather people remember the decisions that I'd made and that's the thing I think I should be judged on. You know who's looking fine tonight? Seth Mosakowski.
Okay, you did not just say that. What? He's a good kisser. He is your cousin. Yeah, but he's my first cousin.
Amanda Seifred has been acting almost non-stop since her standout role in Mean Girls some 20 years ago.
So where does she go to get away from it all? to the spot where she's in conversation with Ben Mankowitz. I have an idea. Here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna hold this.
And wait, wait, don't put it. No, I'm not going to go. I'm going to go in. Wow. And I'm going to put it on the hill.
Breakfast is served on Amanda Seifred's upstate New York Farm. I could have thrown it there. You know what? You coulda. Which means feed the horses.
Hi. And that's Billy. They just want to be scratched. The goats. They just want to be loved.
And Cliff. This pony is 35 years old. You like this, right? I love it. love it because nothing else matters because they need to get fed.
It's a responsibility that like keeps me focused on like what's important. Hi. What's up goats? What is it about this place that makes you feel whatever it is that makes you feel? You know, I don't know if you know this, but Hollywood is very uh It's tricky.
And it's got a lot of personalities and there are a lot of people that are working in a way that doesn't necessarily Make it feel like a safe place. This is exactly what I've always wanted. And this is Polly. She's so sweet. Is that Polly?
You're not putting on a show for these cameras. You like this. This part of the day is good, right? I don't know any of these guys. No, no, yeah, this is it.
Last night it was raining. It was pouring, and I was doing the same. I just didn't look this nice. Wouldn't it be funny if it was so cold that the Gator didn't start? This is where Cyfred lives, but she goes where the work is, and there's been plenty of it.
As Karen. I have a good sense. Memorably clueless in mean girls. It's like I have ESPN or something. And now I know what they mean.
Later as Sophie in the mega hit Mamma Mia. We makes me do this. A big change of pace came in 2020, starring as early Hollywood actress Marion Davies in Manck. When my own mother heard he was one of the richest men in America, She said kick a little higher. The film earned Seifred an Oscar nomination.
You want to be challenged. Yeah. Yeah, badly. Badly, because here's the thing, the challenge is within certain parameters. I have had enough therapy and enough insight and perspective to know what happens when I may fall too deep into something.
And I have enough tools and support to not let that happen.
So every time I say it's a challenge, it's really hard. And I look back and I'm like, I wouldn't want to do that again. But when I'm in it, it's more than a challenge. It's a new life. I'm being born into something, a new version of myself.
I'm just gonna say I think you might be overqualified for the moment. Her commitment is right there on the screen in two movies out next month. I want you to feel safe here. The psychological thriller The Housemaid. I do.
Co-starring Sidney Sweeney. I hunger and and the dramatic musical, The Testament of Anne Lee. I hungry. Cypher plays Ann Lee in this 18th-century story of the founder of the Shakers. There, she caught the eye of a man of the same faith.
Abraham. A religious sect that embraced equality and chastity. even inside a marriage. Her conviction was everything. The coolest thing about her is that she created a utopia.
The idea that we're better off working together as equals, it still rings true to this day. Like, if you take away power and control of each other, There there's nothing we can't do. The role has made Seifert an Oscar contender. The cast received a long-standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival. I worked my ass off in this specific experience and I've worked my ass off throughout my career and I've stayed true to who I am.
I've definitely changed and evolved and become a better person. Do I still make mistakes? Uh-huh. Yeah. Do I still make bad choices?
Yeah. But. I'm human and I'm like doing the best I can and I'm nice. And I'm Nice. Because there's no other reason not to be.
I can testify. She is. Nice.
I feel like I should have helped with that. And refreshingly honest. Raised in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Seiford studied acting and music as a kid. Did some modeling too. He's not so bad.
In high school, she was a regular on a soap opera. I guess I kinda feel sorry for him, losing his mom and all. What soap opera? All my children. And uh how long were you on that?
Ten months. Why'd you leave? Why did I leave? Why did Megan McTavish write me off? I don't know.
Ask her. Getting fired, even at 17, hurt. She figured acting was over, so she enrolled at New York's Fordham University.
Sort of. I took the elevator up and then I stood there looking at the elevators and then I took the escalator down. And then I went home. That was my time at Fordham. First day and last day, same day.
Yep. Yeah. Immediately after college, she landed an audition for Mean Girls, her first big break. Girl, watch that scene. Mamma Mia was her second.
It led to a sequel. And maybe a trilogy? And you're going to do a third one. Yeah, absolutely. Do we know anything about the story?
Are they going to? No, I think if we all decide that we'll do it for free, they'll be like, cool, let's do it tomorrow. I know Judy Kramer, who created it, is working. furiously on a script. I just assume it'll happen.
exactly 10 years from when we shot the last one, which is 17, so we'll shoot it in 2027. Out in 2028. Out in 2028. 208. Every 10 years.
I just don't know how they get Meryl back. Yeah, that's the tricky part. Because her character is dead. Evil twin?
Okay. There it is. Go back to your soap opera days. There it is. There it is.
Boom. If you understand that early that you're at risk.
Some character traits stay with Cyprus. And we'd like to see a world in which every person like the voice of Elizabeth Holmes, the Theranos founder convicted of fraud in the dropout. What do you dream will be true by 2025? The role, one ciphered and Emmy. That less people.
have to say goodbye too soon to the people they love. How would Elizabeth Holmes tell her daughter, clean a room or no screen time? Mommy said that you can't have any more screens if you don't. Clean a room. I don't know.
I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I don't look anything like her, but it was, it's like she just speaks very differently.
Well, I have, I've, I've had some practice. Lately, it's her own way of speaking. She can't change it. Seifert is candid about everything, including battling serious anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder. obstacles she believes help her as an actor.
I've been diagnosed with. I've been able to channel them in the right ways and take the right medication to use it to my advantage and to like shut it up when it's no longer helpful for the most part. And that has helped me. Self-loathing, self-judgment, all that at times helped me keep my sh ⁇ . Together.
Seifred, who turns 40 this week, is married to actor Thomas Sadowski. They have two children. Her daughter was close by during our conversation. I don't know if it's tuned, I played it yesterday. As was a guitar.
Plastica. All my hairs It's one of many instruments she plays. Didn't I show you that? She was looking right at her daughter as she sang. Taking out his big birthday surprise.
At my sister's house last Sunday. Seeing her in her own house, this farm upstate, surrounded by family and animals. He's such a very nice guy, correct? Reveal's a grounded movie star. I love him so much.
Living a grounded life. Thank you. It's my world now. Like, I've been in it for 25 years or whatever, and I totally feel at home in it. And people know me well enough.
I don't feel like I have anything to prove. I'm nice to people. I'm not trying to cover up any scandals. And I'm not trying to yet wait. And I'm not trying to.
you know, hide any or like run away from any bad press.
So it's like I've made it easy for myself.
So far. The days after Thanksgiving are prime time for leftovers. But what about the rest of the year? Nancy Giles has some food for thought. Oh, that is nice.
So we're going to bring this up to a simmer. For chef and recipe developer Chris Morocco, leftovers are a family affair. It's a big piece of jalapeno, my friend. Ingredients are here. He's the food director of Bonapa T and Epicurus.
But at home, maybe just a pinch of salt. He's a dad, catering to the tastes of discerning preteens. On the menu tonight, last night's potatoes with a twist. Simply reheating an already roasted potato. Isn't that compelling?
So with a little ingenuity, leftover mashed potatoes become creamy potato soup. Oh my goodness, that's good. Flatten, and we want to press down until it's a little bit more. Leftover boiled potatoes are transformed into delectable potato nachos. That started out as like a pretty sad, let's face it, boiled potato.
And they have like totally been reborn. Nobody wants to sit down to cook dinner on a Tuesday night and have to start from absolute scratch.
So leftovers, I think, can factor into how you can get dinner on the table just that much faster. The urge to salvage food scraps is evident as far back as the Gospels. After a satisfying meal, Jesus said to His disciples, Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost. In the Tudor era, food is seen as this kind of ultimate gift from God.
So ultimately, to waste food is seen as a sin. Eleanor Barnett is a food historian and author of a book on the history of leftovers. There's creatures who tell these stories about if you do waste your food, you're going to end up in hell and that kind of thing. What does the history of leftovers say about who we are as a people? What we choose to discard, I think, shows us what we value.
and what we perhaps don't value. A third of the food we produce globally today goes to waste, and that can only be because we don't appreciate it. We don't see the value in it in the way that our ancestors certainly did. Nonetheless, today there are leftovers cookbooks, leftovers tips on social media. Essentially what you did, you took a veal marsala dish and you turned it into a deconstructed bun me sandwich.
Amazing. Thank you. Even a leftovers themed cooking show. I cannot believe you turned your tamale into a gnocchi. It's so tasty.
Sure, Chris Morocco can whip up leftovers in his kitchen. But how would he fare on someone else's turf? Let me show you what I've got here. All right, yeah. Behold, my fridge.
There's pork and plantains and yellow rice with black beans. Let's pop the lids and let's see what's under the hood there. Chris has agreed to transform my leftover Cuban food into entirely new dishes.
Next, let's sort of bring this cabbage back from the dead. And after a few false starts, I'm not good at cutting onions. I tend to do it wrong somehow.
Okay. Not that there's any wrong way, but dinner is served. Pasta and bean soup with kale, and pork and cabbage stir-fry with rice. I'm so blown away by it. I just love how all the textures of these things feel completely different from where they started out.
I really like manipulating the things I have on hand, and I really like pulling the feeling of like, yeah, I pulled a rabbit out of a hat here, or at least dinner out of a hat.
So whether it's Thanksgiving weekend or any old weekend, the sky's the limit. When you look at last night's leftovers in a whole new Light. Give yourself a head start when it comes to how you cook throughout the week. Think about how basic prepared ingredients can become multiple things. And I just think you will be a happier cook for it.
Okay. Not bad, right? Members of the band Metallica are renowned the world over as kings of heavy metal. But as Luke Burbank explains, a special few give thanks to them. for a very different reason.
It's a manual.
Okay. This is the best one on the Aliyah. This is your favorite? Yeah, this is my favorite. Carmen DeBerry is a newly minted commercial delivery driver in Baltimore, Maryland.
Is that track there? That means makes our tractor move, of course. You're threading a needle here, Keith. I really am, too. DeBerry says having this new job has completely changed her life.
It feels awesome, you know? I take care of my daughter and I also take care of my mother. The commercial driver's license, like the type DeBerry got at the Community College of Baltimore County, can cost up to $7,500, money she didn't have. Which is where four kind of unlikely guys from the Bay Area stepped in. Yes, we are talking about the guys from the band Metallica, one of the most commercially successful bands of all time.
With more than 180 million records sold. I mean, to be honest, I didn't know when I first saw it. Signed up that it was through Metallica. They just called it a scholarship. A Metallica scholarship, to be precise.
Part of the over $10 million, that's right, $10 million, the band's charity, All Within My Hands, has donated to workforce education, mostly in the form of grants through trade schools and community colleges. Not everyone is built for college, and not everyone needs college. Metallica lead singer James Hetfield should know, he himself is the son of a truck driver, something he hasn't forgotten. It was very evident during COVID. You know, when we weren't able to go out and do our thing, entertainment service went.
But the plumber, the electrician, the truck driver. The people that needed to help keep America running We're there. And thank God for them. You know, my thought is that the next millionaires will be the tradesmen. We all came from.
I mean Pretty humble beginnings. Robert Trujillo, Metallica's bassist, worked in construction before he became a professional musician. At a certain point, you realize, like, hey, you know, we're selling tickets, we're doing well. The ship's not sinking. What can we do to make people's lives better?
The band's philanthropy actually began with the simple question of what to do with their leftover food backstage at the sports arenas and stadiums they'd been playing. They started donating it to local food banks. Then they started donating sizable checks to those food banks as well, which turned into disaster relief. is a bit profound for us because one of the first things That happened. was in maybe 2017, we had the Northern California fires.
That affected so many people in the Bay Area. When disaster struck in the band's backyard, that's when it hit home for guitarist Kirk Hammett. And we were able to like jump in and like really help people right off the bat. And there's been other instances where there's been earthquakes, you know, disasters, people in need of food and medicine, and we've been able to step up and send money. And not just a pittance, but like enough money that makes a difference to a good group of people who need it.
but actually talking about their charity work publicly Well, that didn't come as easily, says drummer Lars Ulrich. We had never screamed from the rooftops about it. I think instinctively You just wanna Help. I mean we all Depend on each other. You know, if you really want to break it down, then you go.
Humans are herd animals and really thrive. You know, the flock. Does better when everybody's doing well. Thank you so much for all the help and support you've given us to our foundation and all the people that we get to help all around the world.
Now, if all this doesn't sound very Metallica-like, well, in a way, neither does the annual fundraiser concert that they've been putting on in Los Angeles. Last year, it raised $3.5 million and brought in some big, literally, Metallica admirers, like Aquaman himself. Jason Momoa. They've kind of been the soundtrack of my life, man. I've kind of discovered them probably when I was 10 years old.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think these are your heroes. These are my heroes. It might come as a surprise to some that a band with songs like Nothing Else Matters I damn it.
Let's get now to today. And Seek and Destroy spends so much time thinking about how to better other people's lives. But for Hetfield, it's a thought process that comes with age. It seems clearer that we have a purpose, and that purpose is. to bring joy to people on this planet.
Yeah. To see a line I'm supposed to do. absolutely still blows my mind that there's three generations out there Be an old. rocking out to master a pump it's like really? You like this song?
Okay, that was written when I was 22 years old and I was pissed off. But beyond what we've done in the music thing, As you get older, you start to see the world in a different light. You know, my philosophy is you're climbing to the next layer of the high rise, and the older you get, the better the view is of the world and what you get to see and where you can be of service. And this is certainly one of them. Hello.
No Carmen on these videos. Oh, you're Carmen. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. Up until now, Hetfield had never actually met a Metallica scholar.
But that all changed backstage before a show in Landover, Maryland, when a very appreciative Carmen DeBerry stopped by. And actually, I really think that your scholarship, me telling them about your scholarship is what got me the job. Because once I told them that I got the Metallica scholarship, they were like, what? That got their entrance, and they took a chance with me, and I appreciate it. Right on.
I'm curious, you're about to go out and play to thousands and thousands of people, and yet you just had a moment of getting to talk to somebody whose life has been significantly changed from. All within my hands charity work. What does that feel like?
Okay. It is so amazing. We get to go make some people smile out there, deliver the goods by playing songs that saved us in our lives, and then to create a foundation that's giving back to. you know, the blue collar America, we get to go from Thousands that are making big noise that we know were impacting, but to get a one-on-one, you know, heart-to-heart with somebody whose life you've changed. It changed his mind.
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A record that stood until another James Cameron film, Avatar, came along.
Now the writer director returns with the third film in that otherworldly series. Jonathan Vigliotti has our Sunday profile. Much of what we see from the Earth-like moon of Pandora, the fantastical setting for the Avatar franchise, comes from this.
Well this is stage 18, this is where we built our tank. Scenes from the second and third movies were filmed on this soundstage in Los Angeles. We had to build an ocean. As the movie's director, James Cameron showed us. and we could make a two meter swell.
flow across the tank. We could make it crash onto a shoreline if we built a shoreline. Sigourney Weaver, Zoe Zeldanya, and other actors in the films shot their underwater scenes in the nearly 250,000-gallon tanks. Digital artists then took those shots, called performance captures, as a template to render the final versions of the characters we see on screen. What is performance capture?
So performance capture, we use a whole bunch of cameras to capture the body performance of the actor and we use a single camera, or now we use actually two, to video their face. They're in a close-up 100% of the time. But there's a beautiful thing about being in a close-up 100% of the time. It's very much like theater rehearsal. You're just exploring.
Now that's interesting. We must fight! Avatar, Fire and Ash, is the third Avatar film. It tells the story of the indigenous Navis fight to defend their paradise from colonizing humans. Cameron created these stories and this world.
He's always been a dreamer, even as a kid in rural Canada. I lived in a world of my imagination. It was comic books, it was science fiction. I read a lot, it was movies, TV shows. And you know, I mean, I had a pretty fertile imagination.
Cameron moved to Los Angeles with his parents as a teen. He briefly attended community college, where studies included marine biology, before dropping out and picking up odd jobs, including truck driving. How did you go from blue collar to Hollywood? Watching Star Wars. I used to put my headphones on and listen to fast electronic music and imagine space battles.
Hyperkinetic space battles with all kinds of maneuvers and energy weapons, and people going through debris fields and all that. If the things I'm seeing in my mind, Can be the same things that are in a movie that's the number one movie in movie history. then I've got a saleable imagination. He returned to school, although not in an official capacity.
So I started to study visual effects. And the way I did it was I didn't have the money to go to USC or anything like that.
So what I used to do is I'd go down to USC, I'd go bury myself on a Saturday when I wasn't driving a truck in the stacks. And I'd read everything I could find on optical printing, on front screen projection, and sodium processed traveling mats. It's all self-taught. It's all self-taught. I'd Xerox all these scholarly papers, put them all in binders.
I had this shelf full of black binders that had essentially a graduate course in visual effects and cinematography. He found jobs in visual effects departments and production design, rising through the ranks quickly due to his technical knowledge. Then The early nineteen eighties, Cameron, inspired by a literal dream of a robot exoskeleton. co-wrote and directed The Terminator. The movie put him on the map.
Yeah. and proved he could turn his imagination into reality. This is a film where CGI makes a ton of sense, but it wasn't available at the time. This was through puppeteering larger. Yeah, and we just figured out how to do it all practically.
So, this is where we have all the props from all the movies. We go back all the way back to the first Terminator. He showed us around his private museum in Los Angeles, full of movie props from his film. Get away from her, you b ⁇ Including Aliens, where Puppeteers brought Sagoni Weaver's powerlifter and the Alien Queen to life. her head.
had I think seven or eight different axes of movement that were controlled by cables that went basically out her butt. And we had to hide all that stuff.
So there was a lot of steam and smoke and backlight and things like that. Cameron's first use of CGI came with the science fiction movie The Abyss. Oh wait, it's okay. It was also his first cinematic foray into another one of his fascinations. Pretty cool.
The deep sea. Flying. His second venture into an oceanic film Titanic. Can I have one for Titanic? It became the then highest grossing movie of all time.
Cameron took home three Oscars himself. I'm the king of the world! But the film itself was never the priority for Cameron. What I have heard. is you wrote that script.
To explore the Titanic. It was a little bit of a means to an end. I thought, I can just go do this. All right, a news story.
Okay, Romeo Juliet. You know, young doomed love on the Titanic. Boom. Like instantaneous. When I think of scientific exploration and investors, I don't necessarily immediately think Hollywood, but you found a way to use Hollywood to invest in scientific exploration, which has always been a passion of yours.
Yeah, exactly. And then I had so much fun on my expedition that was to shoot Titanic for the movie. I'm going to explore these front cabins. That I basically took an eight-year hiatus from Hollywood, an eight-year sabbatical, and I did subsequently six more expeditions for a total of seven before I started Avatar. Cameron wrote the treatment for Avatar before Titanic, but it wasn't until 2005 that he thought the current technology could support his vision, and even then, he wasn't sure the business of Hollywood would go along.
For years, there was this sense that, oh, they're doing something strange with computers and they're replacing actors, when in fact, Once you really drill down and you see what we're doing, it's a celebration of the actor-director moment. I mean, I would do both. I mean, I'd just slap that mask on, breathe, breathe. Go to the other end of the spectrum, and you've got generative AI where they can make up a character, they can make up an actor, they can make up a performance from scratch with a text prompt. No, that's horrifying to me.
That's the opposite. That's exactly what we're not doing. All I have. Is my faith. Cameron's avatar, Fire and Ash, releases next month.
We're a few weeks away from the premiere of the film, and I wonder what's going on in your mind. Nervous. Are you nervous? Is that your name? Always, always.
Despite the uncertainty, at 71, Cameron is still undaunted and enamored. By the unknown. I'm attracted, in case you haven't noticed, by things I don't know how to do because you grow and you learn. If I'm still making movies when I've got an oxygen tube up my nose and I'm an 87 or whatever, should I be that lucky, I want to still be doing things I don't know how to do. And that's how we end the piece.
And now, another chapter in the story of these United States. When it comes to the origins of Thanksgiving, We all know the story of the pilgrims and Native Americans sitting down for a harvest feast in 1621. though it's often called the first Thanksgiving. That tale comes with a party helping of mythology. The real story begins with Sarah Josepha Hale.
best known as the author of Mary Had a Little Lamb. She spent decades campaigning for a unifying and permanent National Day of Thanksgiving. like the harvest celebrations long held in New England. Uh Her efforts finally broke through in 1863. after the unimaginable bloodshed of Gettysburg and a turning of the Civil War's tide toward the Union.
It was then that President Abraham Lincoln embraced the idea. On October 3, 1863, he issued a proclamation establishing a National Day of Thanksgiving. Presidents continued the tradition for decades, issuing annual proclamations. Until December 1941, the M. Just 19 days after the United States entered World War II, Congress and President Franklin Roosevelt.
made Thanksgiving a permanent federal holiday. On the fourth Thursday of November. Back in 1998, our own Charles Osgood shared a Thanksgiving message. that still rings true to day. Yes, we Americans have a lot to be worried about, I suppose, and a lot to be impatient with, and critical of, and even angry or sorry about.
But isn't it just as true that we have as much to be pleased with and happy about and hopeful. Yes, I'm grateful. Most important among these are the people we love. our families and close friends. If we have these in a world where there are so many sad and lonely people, We are the lucky ones.
We should be thankful not only for what is on the table, but especially for those seated around it. Thank you for listening. Please join us when our trumpet sounds again next Sunday morning. You think you understand how this business works, but you don't. Landman, TV's biggest phenomenon, returns to Paramount Plus.
From Taylor Sheridan, co-creator of Yellowstone, starring Billy Bob Thornton. You have to know the rules of the game and bend them, and you really have to know them to break them. To me more. I want success. Get it for me.
Andy Garcia, Allie Larder, and Sam Elliott. You don't even know the game you're playing, do you? Landman, new season, now streaming. Only on Paramount Plus. This November, action is free on Pluto TV.
Go on the run with Jack Reacher. Every suspect was a train killer. Then buckle up for drive. World War Z. Every human being is saved.
Swell as fights. And Charlie's Angels. Damn, I hate to fly. Launch into sci-fi adventure with the fifth element and laugh through the mayhem in Tropic Thunder. What is going on here?
All the thrills, all for free. Pluto TV. Stream now. Hey, never.
