Slate V has posted a spirited chat with Rebecca Winters Keegan about her just-out book, The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron (Crown).

I’ve read about 85% of Keegan’s book over the last two or three weeks. I was mainly looking for stories of Cameron’s fights and goadings and tongue-lashings, which I love. (I heard some real wowsers about the making of Titanic.) But Keegan so admires Cameron that she either didn’t try to dig up stories of sturm und drang or she heard them but decided not to use them in the book. Whatever…it’s still a very cleanly written, highly interesting read.

Keegan wrote the book with Cameron’s cooperation. Cameron told…okay, hinted to me last summer that working with Keegan wasn’t exactly giving him orgasms, but that he felt it would be better to work with her than not. In other words, he thought it theoretically wiser to have the camel inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in. The irony is that Keegan didn’t turn out to be a camel. She’s a superb reporter and a good storyteller, but she’s more into praising than pissing.