“It was like I got a taste of coke”: James Cameron’s $2.2B Titanic Raised Director’s Ego, Claimed He Witnessed a Higher Power After the Oscars
Based on the current tale of the Titanic‘s sinking in 1912, renowned director James Cameron’s widely praised and critically acclaimed film Titanic, which starred Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio in the title roles, was released in 2012. According to rumors, the director was inspired to make the film as a result of his passion for shipwrecks.
The film received a lot of praise for the actors’ performances as well as for its visual appeal, directing, score, story, and how masterfully it was able to touch everyone’s heart. Before James Cameron’s other smash success, Avatar, in 2009, Titanic was the first film to gross one billion dollars and one of the highest-grossing films of all time. One thing that fans of the director recall is his Oscar-winning speech.
James Cameron’s Academy Awards speech reflected his highly developed ego
Filmmaker’s successful movie Titanic, which starred two great actors, Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio as Rose and Jack, was nominated for 14 Academy Awards at the 70th Academy Awards which tied the record set with Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s All About Eve, which was released in 1950.
Titanic won 11 awards out of 14 including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, etc., and when James Cameron appeared on stage to accept the award, towards the end of his speech he said, “My heart is full to bursting, except to say, “I’m the king of the world!” The ending of the speech did not sit with the right people and fans as they said that his comment seemed like he had developed a higher power ego.
During one of the interviews with Playboy magazine, he was asked about his comment, to which he said,
“Titanic was wildly celebrated on every possible level, so sure, I knew how good that felt. It was almost like back in the 1980s when I got a taste of coke. That door opened a crack, and I saw a glimpse of what it was like to have something more powerful than you that you have to answer to. I put it down in, like, a week when most people—everybody around me—didn’t. Getting a glimpse through that door and seeing that accolades can be so capriciously withdrawn made me know I didn’t want to base my self-value on that.”
James Cameron on people’s reaction to his speech
The director, however, very excited and thrilled at the Academy Awards, realized that a part of his acceptance speech did not sit well with the audience and it was instantly met with backlash.
He shared with THR, “I’ll tell you exactly when I first realized it [was going to be a problem]: when I walked backstage and Warren Beatty had this look on his face like, ‘What the f**k did you just do?’ He was just looking at me like, ‘You poor boob, what the f**k did you just do?’”
Cameron, who thought his comment was simply a celebration of how he felt realized that it was maybe not really cool of him to say that, adding that he understood that the problem with it was that it was too self-referential and seen as hubristic.
He later clarified his comment by saying,
“What I specifically wasn’t saying is, ‘I’m showing all y’all motherfuckers how it’s done, and yes, I’m the king of the world! I’m all that!’ That’s not what I was saying. But, of course, that’s what they heard. I’m supposed to be better than that. I’m supposed to know what the audience hears — how the line actually lands is actually part of the art form.”
He said he was simply talking to his parents who were at the back and was not trying to sound like someone who was showing off.
James Cameron on why the idea of Titanic interested him
During an interview, he was asked about how he decided that climbing into submersibles and filming a documentary starring sunken ships was his thing rather than making movies with DiCaprio, to which the director said,
“I made Titanic because I wanted to dive into the shipwreck, not because I particularly wanted to make the movie. The Titanic was the Mount Everest of shipwrecks, and as a diver I wanted to do it right. When I learned some other guys had dived to the Titanic to make an IMAX movie, I said, ‘I’ll make a Hollywood movie to pay for an expedition and do the same thing.’ I loved that first taste, and I wanted more.”
He further added,
“Titanic was about “f**k you” money. It came along at a point in my life when I said, ‘I can make movies until I’m 80, but I can’t do expedition stuff when I’m 80.’ My father was an engineer. I had studied to be an engineer and had a mental restlessness to live the life I had turned my back on when I switched from the sciences to the arts in college.”
The movie is still one of the most loved movies of all time especially the chemistry between the actors.
Source: Playboy Archives
