“I’m either vilified or put on a pedestal”: the duality at the heart of James Cameron
There is often truth in the fact that the most celebrated and successful artists are the ones with controversy attached to their names. In the world of cinema, many of the greats have legacies that paint them as demanding, abusive, tiring, or challenging. From Stanley Kubrick to Alfred Hitchcock, many directors have been accused of being hard to work with, and James Cameron, the brain behind Titanic and Avatar, has been criticised for his working methods over the years.
Cameron rose to prominence in the 1980s, releasing The Terminator in 1984. The movie became a cult classic, and he followed it with Terminator 2: Judgement Day in 1991, not before making two more sci-fi movies, Aliens and The Abyss. The filmmaker helped to advance the genre significantly, becoming a key player in that post-New Hollywood era. Auteurs like Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and Steven Spielberg had helped to transform the landscape of cinema a few years before him, making way for more creative productions and spawning the blockbuster as we now know it.
It wouldn’t be long before Cameron began making huge blockbusters, too, finding major popularity with Titanic. The film was years in the making, with Cameron making the movie in conjunction with his obsession with the shipwreck, visiting it various times in order to study the disaster and capture footage. ‘Dedicated’ doesn’t feel like a strong enough word to describe Cameron’s relationship with the film. It was an expansive production made on a budget of $200million, yet its box office earnings far exceeded Cameron’s hopes. Titanic grossed over $2billion, making Cameron one of the richest directors ever.
While the film was successful, Cameron’s dedication led him to become a little tyrannical. Main star Kate Winslet claimed that the director frightened her at times. She once reported that he “has a temper like you wouldn’t believe.” It has become a well-known fact that Cameron’s intense working methods—always wanting to be in control—have given him a reputation in Hollywood.
At the same time, Cameron’s dedication has often been praised because, evidently, his hard work pays off. The Avatar filmmaker has changed Hollywood forever with his movies, creating more than one that became the highest-grossing project of all time for a period—that’s nothing short of impressive.
Thus, in a 1998 interview with Rolling Stone, the filmmaker reflected on the reputation he garnered following Titanic’s release. “It’s been such a bizarre ride. I’m either vilified or put on a pedestal – sometimes both simultaneously. And yet, I’m not either one of those. I’m just me; I’m the same schmuck I always was.”
Cameron cleared up rumours that, at least in his opinion, he doesn’t “torture” the actors he works with. “I am pretty unrelenting in the search for the best possible way of doing a scene,” he admitted before stating, “Everybody seems to forget that I wrote these fucking characters. I have a great creative investment in the acting process.”
It seems as though some people believe Cameron to be a dedicated cinematic genius, while others think he is a power-hungry auteur who invests every fibre of his being into his films. For Cameron, one thing is for certain: “I’ve been to the bottom of the ocean, and I think Hollywood is stranger.”
