The day James Cameron nearly died
jaimej78
The Big Picture
Shooting 'The Abyss': The day James Cameron nearly died
December 18, 2009
By Patrick Goldstein
As I mentioned the other day, I've been reading "The Futurist,"
Rebecca Keegan's new book, which offers an in-depth look at the trials
and troubles and tantrums that have marked James Cameron's 25-plus
years in the movie business.
With "Avatar" already poised to have a huge opening weekend, Cameron
should be feeling as if he's on top of the world again, the opposite
of where he was during the making of "The Abyss," a troubled
production that ended up being his biggest flop.
During the "Abyss" shoot, Cameron spent much of his time filming
underwater in a giant concrete bowl in South Carolina that held 7.5
million gallons of water. (The tank was so big it took the crew five
days just to fill it with water from a nearby lake.) While doing
underwater filming, all of the actors had safety divers (known on the
set as "angels") who would hover nearby, wearing long fins, able to
swim over and provide air if anything went wrong. But Cameron had no
angel. He was also weighted with an extra 40 pounds of equipment so he
could walk around the bottom of what was known as "A Tank" with his
camera. The filmmaker could go for roughly 75 minutes on a single tank
of oxygen. Since he tended to get absorbed in his work, he told his
assistant director to alert him when he'd gone an hour without a new
fill.
One day, a few weeks into production, Cameron was talking Mary
Elizabeth Mastrantonio through a shot when he took a breath and got no
air. Startled, he checked his pressure gauge, which read zero. He was
out of oxygen. The AD had forgotten to give him a warning alert. With
all of his extra weight, and no fins, there was no way for Cameron to
swim to the surface. His helmet microphone was still linked to the
underwater PA system, so Cameron called out to underwater
cinematographer Al Giddings, who was filming nearby. "Al...Al...I'm in
trouble."
Giddings, who was nearly deaf from a diving-bell accident 20 years
earlier, didn't hear him. Cameron tried to rouse his support divers,
using up the rest of the air in his lungs, saying, "Guys, I'm in
trouble." As Keegan writes: "Cameron made the sign for being out of
air, a cutthroat motion across the neck and a fist to the chest.
Nothing. At the bottom of a 7.5 million gallon tank, in the dark,
thirty-five feet from the surface, Cameron really was in trouble. He
knew he had to ditch his rig or die."
Up in the control room, the sound effects mixer realized something was
amiss when he heard the sound of Cameron's helmet being popped off and
all the expensive electronics inside flooding with water. By feel,
Cameron located the release of his buoyancy vest and slipped out of
it, beginning what divers call a "blow and go," a free ascent to the
surface. Cameron blew out a stream of bubbles on his way up, kicking
like mad because of his ankle weights.
Finally, a safety diver named George came to Cameron's rescue,
stopping him about 15 feet from the surface, as he was trained to do,
shoving his backup regulator into Cameron's mouth. Cameron purged,
then inhaled, but the backup regulator was broken, so Cameron simply
inhaled more water. Figuring he'd done something wrong, he tried
again, inhaling more water. Choking, about to black out, he tried to
pull away, but George, assuming the director was panicking, held him
even tighter, trying to make him breathe on the regulator.
Finally, Cameron did what any great action director would do -- he
punched George as hard as he could, right in the chops. Stunned,
George let Cameron go, allowing him to quickly swim to the surface
without blacking out. He managed to reach the dive platform and drag
himself out of the tank. The result? As Keegan writes: "By the end of
the day, [Cameron] had fired George and his AD. And he ordered the
divers at the surface to fish out his helmet and fix the microphone so
he could get back down in A Tank."
In Hollywood, the show must go on.
December 16, 2009
The Big Picture
James Cameron's greatest tantrums: Part 1
By Patrick Goldstein
It would be hard to find many people who've been fans of Jim Cameron
longer than I have. Way, *way* back in the 1980s, when I was a young
rock writer at the L.A. Times, the studios were putting out so many
movies that our team of film critics couldn't handle them all. So our
lead critic at the time, Sheila Benson, asked me if I'd pick up some
of the slack, figuring that since I'd gone to film school I probably
wouldn't completely embarrass myself writing a review or two each
week.
Of course, I got the dregs -- the movies that none of our other
critics wanted. That was OK, since I'd always been a fan of grind-
house movies and genre thrillers, which were exactly the kind of films
assigned to me. Most of them were pretty dreadful, but as any critic
knows, it's usually more fun to write an exuberant pan than a dutiful
appreciation.
And so it was that I ended up seeing "The Terminator," a sci-fi
thriller by James Cameron, then an unknown 30-year-old filmmaker whose
best known work was "Piranha II: The Spawning." The movie was so
unheralded that its distributor, Orion Pictures, only had one poorly
attended screening, where I had the pleasure of seeing a career in
early flight.
When I got back to the office, everyone was pretty incredulous when I
told them that it was one of the best movies I'd seen all year. But
they ran the review anyway, which went in part:
"['The Terminator'] is the kind of slam-bang B movie that's almost
disappeared from Hollywood, loaded with fuel-injected chase scenes,
clever special effects and even a welcome dose of sly humor.... This
ominous fantasy will prick up your ears -- it has the unsettling air
of a scare story that doesn't just send a shiver down your spine, but
deftly collides with your imagination."
Of course, Cameron has gone to much bigger and better things in the
past 25 years, culminating with the arrival this weekend of the much-
chattered-about "Avatar." I haven't been able to see it yet, since I'm
on the outs with 20th Century Fox, the studio releasing it. But it
seemed like an apt time to tell some great stories about Cameron, who
is infamous for his outrageous on-set behavior. Luckily, I just got
hold of "The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron" by Rebecca
Keegan, a Hollywood-based contributor to Time magazine. Keegan spent
time with Cameron on the set of "Avatar," but better still, has
collected a host of wonderful bigger-than-life Cameron tales.
One of my favorites unfolds during the making of "True Lies," which
Cameron shot over a six-month period in late 1993. Cameron ended up
using a new cinematographer, Russell Carpenter, who is now a star, but
at the time his biggest credit was "Pet Sematary II." After being
subjected to what Keegan calls Cameron's "merciless management style,"
Carpenter soon found himself on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
Carpenter recalls that one of his worst moments occurred when he was
seated with about 25 other people, watching dailies of that day's
shoot. Unhappy about the way Carpenter had lit Arnold Schwarzenegger
in a scene where the star looked at himself in the mirror, Cameron
growled: "I've got the highest-paid actor in this or any parallel
universe and I cannot see his eyes."
After a few more takes went by, Cameron erupted again, saying, "When
did you learn to read a light meter?" After dailies were over,
Carpenter called his wife and told her that he would probably be
fired. One of Cameron's regulars told Carpenter that the filmmaker
treated all his cinematographers the same way. So Carpenter phoned
Mikael Salomon, Cameron's director of photography on "The Abyss."
Salomon laughed, saying, "Did he use the line, 'Where did you learn to
read a light meter?' " The experience with Cameron didn't turn out to
be all that bad for Carpenter. He went on to win an Oscar in 1998 for
his work on Cameron's "Titanic."
Even Schwarzenegger wasn't immune to Cameron's fury. When the film was
shooting in Washington, D.C., the star kept the cast and crew waiting
one day when he and Tom Arnold went off on a quick tour of capital
monuments. "We come back around and Jim is standing in the middle of
the road, arms crossed," recalls Arnold. Cameron lunged in the
passenger door to get into Schwarzenegger's face. According to Arnold,
Cameron gave Schwarzenegger a serious tongue lashing. "He's like, 'Do
you want Paul Verhoeven to direct the rest of this [expletive]? You do
that [expletive] again and that's what's gonna happen."
Copyright 2009 "Los Angeles Times"
Jaime
PT
I thought it was when Linda Hamilton found out about his affair with
Suzy Amis.....
pt
> using up the rest of the air in his lungs, saying, "Guys, I'm introuble." As Keegan writes: "Cameron made the sign for being out of
I thought it was when Linda Hamilton found out about his affair with
Suzy Amis.....
pt