Is Strange Days 1995 about James Cameron's personal life?

Blender Dumbass
November 07, 2025

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So in 1989 James Cameron divorces his second wife, the film producer Gale Anne Hurd, opening for her an ability to marry Brian De Palma that just divorced Nancy Allen. The same year Cameron marries Kathryn Bigelow ( the director of 1995 Strange Days ). They make the 1991 Point Break kind of together. But then that same year in 1991 they divorce. Yet, his script Strange Days about strange love dynamics and stuff ends up being actually made by Bigelow in 1995 ( four years after their divorce ). Hm...

The main hook of the film revolves around this futuristic technology that allows people to record their vision and senses into a digital file, so later you can play it back. It's like recording a first person video. But using the person's own eyes for it. And also recording the whole emotional state in the same time. Our main character Lenny Nero ( Ralph Fiennes ) is an underground smuggler of some rather extreme clips. The film opens with a group of gangsters robbing a place. Which has a record of the whole thing and the feeling of fear and Adrenalin of the whole ordeal.

You can imagine that this sort of thing lands itself quite well to some rather interesting direction. And Kathryn Bigelow being a damn good director, directs it quite well. Like, the first shot of the film is technically a oner ( because it is an unbroken POV shot ) of a robbery. But it's also an action scene. This already sounds super-complicated to make. And yet it is way worse. Today we can strap a Go-pro to the actor's head and that will be it. In 1995 they shot on film. They had to strap a small film camera to the actor's head. And for that they pretty much had to make their own little camera for this to work.

The non-playback sequences are also held quite amazingly. I mean, come on. This is the director of Point Break. What do you want? She knows how do direct. But something about her directing style is kind of weird. I can read her style much better than I can read Ridley Scott's Gladiator. But her style seems to be rather rough around the edges. Which isn't bad at all. It makes the movie feel quite cool. I would say she directs kind of sort of like Michael Mann. Specifically his Miami Vice movie feels like something Kathryn Bigelow-esque.

Technically the movie is rather impressive. But what makes me think about it a lot is the plot. Or rather the psycho-sexual aspects of it. So our main hero Lenny is in love with this rock-star girl Faith ( Juliette Lewis ). By the way she was already interesting from the directing perspective. Juliette Lewis is very motherfucking hot in this movie. A part of it is Juliette Lewis being very motherfucking hot. But another part of it is Kathryn Bigelow directing her such that it amplifies her hotness. Bigelow seems to understand whatever men want from a female body. And seems to be able to deliver those images rather successfully.

So Lenny is in love with Faith, who dumped him to pursue her singing carrier. She is now dating ( or sleeping with for business reasons ) with this rock-star manager type of dude Philo ( Michael Wincott ). This Philo guy seems to be a playback-addict.

In any case, this Faith ends up in some gang-related police brutality cross over of a trouble. From which Lenny ( being an ex-cop ) is trying to take her out. And a different woman is helping him. Her name is Mace. She is played by Angela Bassett. And the emotional twist is that she is in love with him. And she is trying to help him save a girl who he is in love with. That is some strong emotional stuff.

Now let's think about it. James Cameron divorces from Kathryn Bigelow. And then writes a movie about how much a guy loves a woman who doesn't love him back. Yet where another woman is in love with him. And he doesn't even notice it much.

Of course, it seems like Cameron intended for Bigelow to be director of this film from the very beginning. So maybe he gender-swapped everything. Maybe he feels like Mace. A woman who is in love with a man that doesn't notice her. Who pursues this other girl. Maybe he thinks Lenny is kind of a representation of Kathryn. Then who is Faith?

Maybe I'm reading too much into this. Maybe James Cameron is Faith. She is sleeping with a guy, because that guy is a producer that can help her get bigger rock-gigs. James Cameron was married to Gale Anne Hurd. Who ended up producing his films The Terminator, Aliens and The Abyss. He kind of sort of needed her to be close to kick start his carrier. And so it is possible to say that he "slept with her" for the business side of things. He also worked on the same projects ( this time as a producer ) with Kathryn Bigelow. Who coincidentally also was his wife for some time.

Maybe if Cameron is Faith and Gale Anne Hurd is Philo ( the playback-addicted producer dude ) than Lenny is Bigelow? I mean maybe Cameron thinks Bigelow is in love with him, while he needs to be with Hurd in order to make his movies? But then why is there Mace? Who is Mace? Maybe Mace is there just so that Bigelow will want to make the film. Maybe I'm reading too much into it. Maybe there are slight hints from the real world, but the story is on its own. Maybe there isn't anything to read into. But it is still rather interesting.

Wait... The film has 2 police-officers antagonists. One is played by "private pile" Vincent D'Onofrio and the other by the young William Fichtner who will end up being a frequent collaborator with Michael Bay. And their first movie together will be the 1998 film Armageddon. Obviously the biggest producer on that film was Jerry Bruckheimer, but there was another producer that is quite interesting to this discussion. The other producer is Gale Anne Hurd. Hm...

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