The Darker Side of James Cameron

I love the line "You can't scare me, I work for James Cameron." 🤣

It's weird to think that he's still managed to develope friendships with his cast and crew despite of all his onset antics. Him and Arnold got into a lot of arguments in their movies together and not only did he return for more of Cameron's films, they're still friends to this day lol. Same with Sigourney Weaver.

Guys...just imagine if Klaus Kinski was ever cast in a James Cameron movie. Talk about an unstoppable force colliding with an immovable object.

I met somebody who worked closely with him on two of his films. There wasn't a single person on set who didn't hate Cameron, in fact one thing which brought everybody together was their contempt for him

The cast of The Abyss took to referring to the movie as “The Abuse”.

Ron Howard was an actor for twenty years before he began making films, I'd bet he treats his cast and crew they way he wanted directors to treat him as an actor.

You talked about The Abyss but somehow without bringing up the crew's alt-name for the project, The Abuse.

I do find it interesting that actors like Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Kate Winslet and others keep returning to play in James Cameron's sandbox, despite his demanding reputation. These are all mensches that everyone seems to like working with and don't have a history of on-set drama. Maybe they enjoy the challenge and appreciate his 110% attitude toward everything? It's hard to say. Perfectionists do to tend to appreciate and empathize with other perfectionists. One thing you can't say about Cameron though is that he doesn't give it his all. He's always been a very in-the-trenches kind of director and if you see any behind the scenes footage of Titanic, he is right there in the middle of it with all the actors directing his ass off, willing to be up to his neck in water alongside them. It's hard not to respect that.

I don't think the way he behaved was necessary at all. But, you can't deny his results. Very informative and well edited. Excellent video 👀

Honestly I would bet a pay check the worst day on James Cameron’s set is better than the worst day in retail

“Bad acting call the police” funniest thing that ever came out of James Cameron’s mouth. The entire T-shirt is it gold mine.

Getting a good picture is never an excuse for abusive behavior. I’ve delt with someone almost exactly like this, no bathroom breaks and all. I don’t care how successful he is, he has no excuse to be abusive.

He's a good director, but I have no time for this mentality that the end justifies the means. Denying toilet breaks is nothing short of an abuse of power - this is why we need Unions.

It is reported that James Cameron's motivation for visiting the most hostile location on Earth at the bottom of the Mariana trench was that he had acclimatized to being under bone-crushing pressure and needed some place to chill out before he worked on Avatar 2, otherwise he'd get the bends from depressurizing too quickly. With that out of the way, he could safely mellow out his directing style.

I've read stories about allot of those things, he's a damn good director but geez no bathroom break for 10 hrs. That stuff wouldn't go over these days.

There's an old saying "harmony is more important than the objective". Hope Cameron learned it.

Cameron felt restricted by cast and crew in a physical space, so he got rid of everyone and and everything, and made his film in one fully controllable virtual set where he can hand everything off to CG teams.

Glad he’s mellowed out. No piece of art is worth risking others’ safety and physical/mental health.

Jim: let's have bathroom breaks this time Film takes 13 years to make.

I've met a couple of actors who've worked with Cameron and the general concensus was that he's tough but incredibly driven and it really shows in the quality of the work he produces. He's a filmmaking genius and proud of his achievements, but it's good to see that he's also more open-minded and respectful now, as being the best also requires being humble too.