Yesterday, we noted Battlefield Earth screenwriter J.D. Shapiro's mea culpa for penning, in his words, the suckiest movie of all time. (Which you can read in its entirety here.) Not to be outdone (and no doubt fueled by Avatar's still-stinging Best Picture snub), super-competitive director James Cameron has issued his own imaginary exclusive apology to Movieline.
"Let me start by apologizing to anyone who went to see Avatar. Because you probably suffered expensive dry-cleaning bills when your mind was blown out onto the back of your theater seat. Sorry. That happens when I make a movie.
It wasn't as I intended -- promise. I wanted 4-D, but ultimately had to settle for just three dimensions. No one (but me) sets out to make the cinematic equivalent of an orgasm injected directly into your cerebral cortex. Actually, comparing it to an injectable orgasm isn't really fair, because even the best orgasms only last a few fleeting seconds. Avatar was, like, four hours long. Four hours of toe-curling pleasure. You're welcome.
It started, as so many of my choices do, with my W'illi Maakto. (That is my Na'vi nickname for my penis.)
It was 1994, and I'd been having a hell of a time coming up with a follow-up idea for Titanic. But then, one day, I was visited by a gorgeous blue creature who claimed to be from a jungle planet called Pandora in a faraway galaxy, who told me they'd been monitoring me since Terminator 2, and invited me to the secret Hometree Centre in Los Angeles to learn about their culture and history. I thought, hey, it's probably full of hot blue ladies, so I accepted the invitation.
Touring the facility, I didn't find any eligible Na'vi females at first (they had all been "paired"), but I did meet Neytiri, an unimaginably beautiful woman who said she was a fan of Titanic. ("Who isn't?" I asked, because at the time that was the highest-grossing movie ever made.) We ended up talking for over two hours. She told me why their Hometree is so great. I told her that, when it comes to worshipping nature, anything magic trees do to reward, threaten, and try to control people (using an unknown like having your soul absorbed into its glowing branches) is dangerous.
Nevertheless, Neytiri called me a few days later and asked if I'd be interested in doing my next movie about the Na'vi. Eventually, I had dinner with Eytukan and Mo'at -- about 10 Pandorans in all. Eytukan asked me, "So, Jimbo, what brought you to the Hometree Centre?"
I told him. He smiled and replied, "We can make you a special braid with crazy little tentacle things wiggling around at the end for that." I didn't know if the braid would help me get laid with a giant blue lady or it if would stop me from thinking with my own human genitalia.
I researched the Na'vi before signing on for the movie to be sure that I wasn't making anything that would indoctrinate people into a tree-worshipping cult. I sat in on that weird thing they do where everyone in the tribe sits around in a circle and sways back and forth. You're supposed to reach union with the Tree of Souls (another damn tree!). I never did, but I was bored, so I told them I had a vision of Eywa. "What did she say?!" they asked, excitedly. "Pull my finger," was my response. They stared at me blankly. They were unfamiliar with human flatulence jokes.
Even after all my crass behavior, the Na'vi loved me (still starstruck about Titanic, I'm sure. Everyone is), so I agreed that their story would be my next movie.
I met with my old pals Jim Gianopulos and Tom Rothman at Fox and told them what's what. They, of course, loved it, because no one says sh*t to me. I tell them what I'm going to do, then I go do it. I wrote the first draft of the script in a few days of fevered, inspired creativity. Soon after I finished it, Eytukan called, told me he "loved it," and wanted to have dinner. At dinner, he said again and how much he loved it and called it the "Schindler's List of sci-fi." "Schindler's List can blow me," I told him right back. "And so can Spielberg."
Shortly after that, Eytukan officially attached himself as executive producer. Whatever, it's just a title, I threw him a bone. Fox came to me with a $100 million budget (haha!), which I rejected, because we're talking $300 mil easy. Maybe all the way up to $500 million! I got studio notes that were typical studio notes. Nothing too crazy. Still, I threw them out, as I always do.
Then I got another batch of notes. I thought it was a joke. I knew these notes, like all notes, would kill the movie. The notes said that there are no flying dragons on Pandora, nor six-legged horses (just four-legged ones -- a horse is just a horse, even there), and they'd never been invaded by humans. They actually love humans. I asked Tom and Jim where the notes had come from. "From us." But when I pressed them. they said, "From Eytukan, but we agree with them."
I refused to incorporate the notes. Nothing happened, because no one in this town has the balls to stand up to me. It's hard to argue with a billion-plus domestic before a word of Avatar was even written.
I have no idea why they wanted to take the movie in a disastrous, factual direction, but here's what I heard from someone in Eytukan's camp: They wanted a movie that accurately reflected their proud culture. You know what? Their culture is f*cking boring. They're just giant, blue, tree-hugging hippies. There's no movie without greedy corporations and the military trying to run roughshod over their planet in their search for "unobtanium" (from the Latin, "that which is hard to obtain" -- I love cool-sounding old words), and all the badass robot exoskeletons and spaceships and helicopters and whatnot. And explosions, huge f*cking explosions. In 3-D. And then the Na'vi's plucky, improbable victory of the much more advanced human aggressors. Have these people never even seen a movie?
So now, looking back at Avatar with fresh eyes, and after having watched it shatter all worldwide box office records with amazing speed, I can't help but be proud of it. Because out of all the awesome movies, mine is the awesomest. I don't care if they gave the Oscar to my ex-wife's movie that made about twelve dollars. It's a nice little film, don't get me wrong. But: twelve dollars.
In the end, did the Pandorans get me laid? What do you think? Yes, I'm married, but I explained it away to Suzy as "research." How could I write a movie with all sorts of hot Na'vi sex without having tried it myself? Exactly. And now I'm trying to figure out a way to sell Na'vi braids so everyone can experience it for themselves. I'll make a mint!
The Greatest of All Time,
Jim Cameron"