The movie scenes that made James Cameron cry with laughter
The cinematic achievements of James Cameron are almost endless. The director has provided serious developments in the science fiction genres with the likes of The Terminator, Aliens and Avatar, and has also helmed one of the biggest movies of all time in the shape of 1997’s romantic historical drama Titanic.
Quite simply, Cameron has delivered some of the most explosive and memorable experiences in cinema history over the past 50 years and has rightfully established himself as one of the biggest names in the film industry and is the second-highest-grossing director of all time.
During a feature with Empire, Cameron once noted some of his favourite cinema experiences and pointed out two in particular that he could not help but weep with laughter. The first came from George Roy Hill’s 1969 western buddy film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, written by William Goldman.
It tells of two outlaws, Paul Newman’s Butch Cassidy and Robert Redford’s Sundance Kid, on the run from a set of bounty hunters after they rob several trains and flee to Bolivia. The scene Cameron loves sees the pair trapped at the edge of a cliff with the posse bearing down on them.
“They have no choice but to jump 100 feet down into a raging rapid,” Cameron explained. “Robert Redford won’t do it, admitting that he can’t swim. Paul Newman throws back his head and laughs uproariously, then says, ‘Hell, the fall will probably kill you!’ And they jump together, yelling ‘Shiiiiiiiiiit’ all the way down, to huge laughter.”
Hill’s film is not the only one that caused Cameron to erupt in laughter in the cinema, though, as he also noted the hilarity of Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat, although he can’t quite remember the exact scene because his view was momentarily obscured by the tears of joy that fell from his face.
Borat is Larry Charles’ 2006 mockumentary black comedy in which Baron Cohen plays a Kazakhstani journalist who travels to the United States to make a documentary about American culture and society, with Cohen interviewing a series of Americans under the impression that he has no idea about their customs.
“I’ve laughed harder in theatres since then (after three viewings, there’s one scene in Borat I still haven’t seen because of the tears in my eyes) — but that one from 1969 is a fond memory,” Cameron said. The two films are starkly different, but they provided some of the director’s favourite comedy moments at the cinema.
