James Cameron has called out Amy Poehler’s for an “ignorant” joke she made about him at the Golden Globes, saying it went “too far”.
The Titanic director, whose new Avatar sequel is in cinemas now, was mocked by Poehler at the 2013 ceremony, when the filmmaker’s ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow was nominated for Zero Dark Thirty.
Poehler, addressing the controversy surrounding Zero Dark Thirty’s torture scenes, quipped: “When it comes to torture, I trust the lady who spent three years married to James Cameron.”
Now, Cameron – who was married to Bigelow from 1989 to 1991 – has revealed that he didn’t find the joke funny, and was disappointed that others in the room did.
Speaking to the New York Times, he said: “Amy Poehler’s remark was an ignorant dig at an event which is supposed to be a celebration of cinema and filmmakers, not a roast.
“I’m pretty thick-skinned and happy to be the butt of a good-natured joke, but that went too far,” he continued. “The fact that people found it funny shows exactly what they think of me, even though they have no idea who I am or how I work.”
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Poehler’s joke is in reference to Cameron’s reputation for being a perfectionist on set. Titanic star Kate Winslet once claimed Cameron had “a temper like you wouldn’t believe”, while Avatar’s lead Sam Worthington said if a mobile phone went off, on set, “he’d nail it to the wall with a nailgun”.
Cameron himself has responded to rumours regarding his reputation, telling the Independent in 2013: “Would I nail a cellphone to the wall with a nailgun? Absolutely, if it went off in the middle of a take, but it doesn’t mean I would be emotionally enraged. I would do it in a calculated theatrical way. But when the story gets told later, it sounds like somebody who’s constantly off at the deep end.”
He also said that people would not continue to work with him if he were as bad as is reported. “The reality is passion for the work – the reality is that I have people who are very loyal to me and come back project after project, so I can’t be that bad.”
In 2021, he further addressed claims he’s “cruel” on film sets, saying, “I could’ve listened more. I could’ve been less autocratic. I could’ve not made the movie more important than the human interaction of the crew.’”
Cameron is currently promoting Avatar: Fire And Ash.
Picking up after events in Avatar: The Way Of Water, the third film follows Jake Sully and Neytiri’s grief-stricken family, who encounter an aggressive new Na’Vi tribe, the Mangkwan clan, that threatens the future of Pandora.
In a three-star review of the new film, NME says it’s “hard to argue you don’t get your money’s worth” with Avatar: Fire And Ash, even if it does “retread extremely familiar ground”.