80 Unknown Facts About James Cameron

80 Unknown Facts About James Cameron

• He shouted, off-camera, "All ahead, full!" in Titanic.
• He stopped drinking caffeinated beverages after completing T2.
• In True Lies, the line "Yeah, she's got her head in his lap, Yahoo!" is his as well.
• His dog Wolfie appeared in The Terminator, and "Wolfie" was the name used in T2 to uncover the ruse of the T-1000.
• James Cameron has three Academy awards to his credit.
• He also has one Razzie. He won it under the ‘Worst Screenplay’ category along with Sylvester Stallone and Kevin Jarre for ‘Rambo: First Blood Part II’, though what he had written was completely different from what the final draft looked like!
• James Cameron sketched into Jack’s sketch book in ‘Titanic’. The hands sketching the nude portrait of Rose in the film were actually James Cameron’s!
• While filming ‘Piranha II’ in a mortuary, some real human blood got spilled and James Cameron stopped the production to mop it off the floor himself.
• He agreed to sell the rights to his film ‘Terminator’ to Gale Ann Hurd for just $1 under the condition that it won’t be directed by anyone but him. It may have cost him a fortune but it is one decision he will probably never regret in his life. He believes that one decision launched his career!
• James Cameron’s fascination with the sci-fi genre has always been evident. He gave even ‘Titanic’ a decoy title like ‘Planet Ice’ in the beginning.
• When he held advanced screening for ‘Titanic’ and wanted to keep the film under wraps, he labeled the copies as ‘Baby’s Day Out 2’.
• In his own words, James Cameron refused to direct ‘Terminator 3’ because ‘the original sense of guerrilla filmmaking was gone.’
• He was repeatedly told by everyone that a film as expensive as ‘Titanic’ would never be able to recover its costs. But Cameron believed so much in the film, he gave up the director’s fee which was approximately $8 million and a certain percentage of the gross profits to convince the studio to produce it.
• James Cameron cast his brother Mike in ‘The Abyss’. He featured as a drowned crewman in one of the scenes. You can see a crab crawl out of Mike’s mouth in the film.
• Cameron was attending a lecture of deep sea diving in school when he got the idea of making ‘The Abyss’.
• He agreed to appear as himself on ‘Entourage’ only under the condition that ‘Aquaman’, the film he was directing in the series had to be made into a huge hit.
• As Titanic was about to enter theaters, it was widely believed by pundits that the film's budget was simply too enormous ever to turn a profit. Cameron forfeited his $8 million director's fee and percentage of the gross profits to appease the studio.
• The scene in Terminator 2 in which an employee and supervisor talk about CyberDyne, which ends with "and we always get the same answer: 'Don't ask,'" was originally conceived for Aliens.
• His brother Mike Cameron built two custom remote vehicles to probe the interior of the Titanic for Cameron's 3-D IMAX documentary, Ghosts of the Abyss.
• He also cast Mike in The Abyss; Mike played a drowned crewman in the sunken submarine. A crab crawled out of his mouth.
• The idea for The Abyss came to Cameron in high school while attending a lecture on deep-sea diving.
• Although Titanic is one of his few non-sci-fi movies, the project started with an otherworldly decoy title: Planet Ice.
• When advance screenings were held for Titanic, the film cans were labeled with yet another decoy title: Baby's Day Out 2.
• Cameron decided against directing Terminator 3 because he felt that after T2, "The original sense of guerrilla filmmaking was gone."
• He executive-produced a documentary called The Lost Tomb of Jesus and wrote the introduction to The Jesus Family Tomb, a book on the controversial archaeological find.
• Avatar is Cameron's only sci-fi film not to have any reference to nuclear weapons.
• While working in a real morgue on Piranha II, he personally had to stop production and mop up real human blood that got spilled during shooting. Ick!
• He wrote a draft of Rambo: First Blood Part 2 for Sylvester Stallone early in his career, but Sly didn't like it and rewrote most of it.
• He sold the rights to Terminator to his producer (and later wife) Gale Anne Hurd for $1 with the promise that she would produce the film only if he directed it. He later said the decision was costly in financial terms, but as it ultimately launched his career, he considered the lost millions "the cost of a Hollywood education."
• At one point he considered making the liquid metal Terminator from T2 using claymation techniques.
• His voice is the one on Sarah Connor's answering machine at the beginning of Terminator.
• He provided the "voice" for the death screams of the T-1000 in T2.
• Cameron’s first film was a short film called ‘Xenogenesis’. It was only 10 minutes long. He managed to raise $20,000 from local dentists to make it happen!
• The voice on Sarah Connor’s answering machine in the beginning of ‘Terminator’ is Cameron’s.
• He was the one who shouted ‘All head, full’ in Titanic.
• James Cameron has had his share of struggle before becoming the best director of Hollywood. He used to steal bread and live off leftover food from room service trays at the place he was staying at.
• His first film, a 10-minute short called Xenogenesis, was made with $20,000 raised from local dentists.
• He landed his first major film job—as art director on Battle Beyond the Stars—by coming up with a unique model for the movie, which he described as "a spaceship with t-ts."
• He was also fired ... twice ... from that art director gig by Roger Corman, who hired him back both times.
• When working on Galaxy of Terror, doing second-unit shooting, Cameron used AC current to make mealworms move on cue over the surface of a dismembered arm. He supposedly caught the attention of producers who, when passing by, saw the fledgling filmmaker shout "Action!" and then "Cut!" at the larvae ... with the larvae seemingly responding.
• He named his special effects company Lightstorm after the time-travel effect from Terminator. Among their inventions: a palm-sized, 8-pound 35mm film camera used to shoot the "point of view" sequences in Strange Days.
• He wrote the story and co-wrote the screenplay for Strange Days, directed by ex-wife Kathyn Bigelow. He also did much of the editing, but was not credited because he was not a member of that union. (He did receive an editor credit for Titanic two years later.)
• Despite his way with animals, Cameron also famously went on to get fired from his first actual directing job on Piranha II: The Spawning.
• The guy who has created the two highest-grossing film in history was so poor at one time that he had to steal bread and eat scraps off of room-service trays at a pensione he was staying at.
• The idea for Terminator came to him during a fever dream, when his subconscious came up with the image of a chrome torso emerging from an explosion, dragging itself across the floor with kitchen knives.
• One of the stunt rats on The Abyss actually stopped breathing during the sequence where it was supposedly submerged in liquid oxygen, so Cameron revived it with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He kept the rat as a pet until its natural death a year later.
• Cameron nearly died during the filming of The Abyss, when while shooting an underwater scene he ran out of air and tried to make it to the surface. A safety diver gave Cameron a malfunctioning regulator, which pushed water into Cameron's lungs; the director had to punch the diver to free himself and made it to the surface. There he fired the diver and the assistant director whose job it was to monitor the air levels.
• While playing himself in the HBO series Entourage, Cameron asked the show runners to assure him that Aquaman (the film Cameron was directing in the series) would be portrayed as a box-office smash.
• James Cameron is a member of the Mars Society, a not-for-profit advocacy group that hopes to encourage manned missions to the Red Planet. Cameron acquired the rights to fellow Mars Society member Kim Stanley Robinson's trilogy about terraforming that planet.
• Born in Canada, Cameron revoked his application for U.S. citizenship after the re-election of George W. Bush in 2004.
• James Cameron has won three Academy awards (of the total of 11 won by Titanic), but only one Razzie. He shares "Worst Screenplay" honors with Sylvester Stallone and Kevin Jarre for Rambo: First Blood, Part II, though the finished script has little in common with Cameron's draft.
• James Cameron’s first job in films was on the sets of ‘Battle Beyond The Stars’. He was hired as  a model-maker and landed that job by making a mind-blowing model for the movie. He used to describe the model as ‘a spaceship with t*ts’.
• Roger Corman, the producer of the film, fired James Cameron twice from the sets. But, he was hired again, both times.
• He landed his first real directing job in ‘Piranha II: The Spawning’ but got fired from that too.
• James Cameron came up with the idea of ‘Terminator’ in a dream! "I was sick at the time. I had a high fever," Cameron said, "I was just lying on the bed thinking and came up with all this bizarre imagery ... I think also the idea that because I was in a foreign city by myself and I felt very dissociated from humanity in general, it was very easy to project myself into these two characters from the future who were out of sync, out of time, out of place." He visualized a chrome torso coming out of a massive explosive with knives in his hand, in his dream.
• The death screams of T-1000 you hear in T2 was actually James Cameron’s voice.
• While shooting ‘The Abyss’, one of the stunt rats stopped breathing while shooting underwater. James Cameron saved its life by giving it mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The rat stayed with Cameron as his pet ever since, until it died a year later.
• It was during an underwater sequence for ‘The Abyss’ that James Cameron almost died. He ran out of air and the water made its way to his lungs. The regulator his safety diver gave him was faulty and worsened his situation. He freed himself from the safety diver’s grip by punching him and rushed to the surface. The safety diver was fired. So was Cameron’s assistant director who had failed at monitoring the air levels.
• Inspired by the time-travel effect in ‘Terminator’, James Cameron named his special effects company ‘Lightstorm’. The company invented a really cool 35-mm camera that was about the size of a palm. Cameron used it to shoot PV sequences in ‘Strange Days’.
• The first draft of ‘Rambo: First Blood Part 2’ was written by James Cameron but Sylvester Stallone did not like it and changed it later.

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