Remember James Cameron, of The Terminator and 'king of the world' fame? He's back in the public eye with a controversial documentary that claims to have found Christ's casket, writes Shane Hegarty
On Monday, James Cameron beckoned the world's media to him. He wanted to show them something very special. Something we thought we would never see again and that would shake the world. So the media held its collective breath. And the public wondered if it would finally get an answer to a question it has been asking for what seems like an aeon: just what is James Cameron up to these days? Instead, James Cameron announced that he has found Jesus. Literally.
He was joined at the press conference by documentary maker Simcha Jacobovici, the man who actually tracked down what he claims are the burial caskets of Jesus, Mary Magdalene and their son. Given the apparent magnitude of the claim, and the fact that they'd brought along the stone caskets for a bit of show and tell, the affair was a little ho-hum. A claim of this type hasn't been made in, oh, at least a couple of weeks.
The Lost Tomb of Jesus claims that the discovery of 10 burial boxes, known as ossuaries, in a Jerusalem suburb led the film-makers to the final resting place of Jesus and his family. It claims that the names on the ossuaries appear to correlate with the names of Jesus and several individuals closely associated with him - there is a Jesus, son of Joseph, a Mary Magdalene, another Mary, plus Matthew and Yose - who they say were two of Jesus's four brothers - and son Judah.
Some DNA evidence, using residue in the boxes, suggests that this "Mary Magdalene" and "Jesus" were not related on the maternal line and so must have been married.
Many archaeologists, New Testament scholars and, predictably, Christian groups have rubbished the claims. The point out that, while the ossuaries are probably from the first century, the names on the tombs were among the most popular of the time.
Among the criticisms was that the film was jumping on an extremely crowded post-Da Vinci Code bandwagon. Lawrence E Stager, professor of archaeology of Israel at Harvard, told the New York Times: "One of the problems is there are so many biblically illiterate people around the world that they don't know what is real judicious assessment and what is what some of us in the field call 'fantastic archaeology'." But the world allowed itself a brief spasm of curiosity, largely because, even if Jacobovici has a reputation for big archaeological claims (pushing back the date of the Jewish exodus by two centuries; stumbling upon a true image of the Ark of the Covenant), most of the attention was on Cameron, executive producer of the resulting documentary.
Here's a man who once specialised in proper fiction. In The Terminator, he gave cinema one of its most quoted lines ("I'll be back"), one of its most iconic characters (the relentless cyborg from the future), and one of its biggest stars (the relentless cyborg from Austria). With Aliens and True Lies he made intelligent shoot-'em-ups that raked in millions at the box office. And with Titanic, he melded chick-flick with action thriller to create the highest grossing movie ever.
The last time many people would have seen him was punching the air and yelling "king of the world!" when Titanic won best director and best movie Oscars. But this week, anyone tuning into the US's evangelical TV stations were greeted by such headlines as: "Is James Cameron the anti-Christ?" Although, in the chain of command that might be considered a promotion.
HE HAS NOT spent the 10 years since Titanic lazing on a beach, smoking rolled up twenties. While there was an unsuccessful TV series, Dark Angel, his focus has largely been either several fathoms deep, or firmly on the stars. He has made several documentaries on the wonders of the ocean, with his experience and footage from the Titanic shoot resulting in such films as Ghosts of the Abyss and Aliens of the Deep. There was a recent Channel 4 documentary in which he taxied Tony Robinson (Blackadder's Baldrick) to the famous passenger liner, and he has also made a film about the sunken Bismarck.
In the meantime, he has been serving on Nasa's advisory panel, and at one point seriously talked about doing some filming in space. His "relaxations" include flying jets, scuba-diving, and riding motorbikes with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
"Ghosts of the Abyss," for Imax theatres, was a 3D extravaganza using some of the 900 hours of footage taken in several dives to Titanic, and epitomised an interest in technology and science that has seen him use his personal wealth to indulge in an Indiana Jones-type lifestyle. He owns submersibles and designs robots. He developed the 3D graphics to make Titanic look a little more like people expect it, because he recognised that not everyone would be as excited as he. He calls it the "big pile of rusty crap" problem.
He is, he says, "a nerd from Kapuskasing". He grew up in that Canadian town, where his father was an electrical engineer and his mother an artist, so it's easy to see that he picked neither attribute up off the street. "What finally attracted me to film in such a definitive way was it was the only place I could reconcile the need to tell stories and to work in a visual art medium, and the desire to understand things at a technological level - and my fascination with engineering and technology." He was born in 1954, and spent his childhood peering into microscopes as well as gazing at cinema screens. Moving to California at age 17 brought him geographically closer to Hollywood, but he first studied physics at university and only gradually moved towards film-making as he hit his mid-twenties.
Seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey inspired him, and Star Wars galvanised him.
"Not to take anything away from George [ Lucas's] creation, because it's obviously a phenomenal milestone, but my reaction to it was not, 'Oh, wow, that's cool. I want to see more.' It was, 'Oh, wow, I better get off my butt because somebody is doing this stuff, you know, and they're beating me to it'." Daddy wasn't impressed. "I would say that my father was completely unsupportive in any way, shape or form, and was really sort of just sharpening his knives waiting for me to fail so that he could say, 'Ah ha, I was right. You should have gone into engineering.' And it was also this sort of attitude of, 'Well, you know, one of these days you'll get a real job and this film thing, you know, will pass as a fad'. So there was zero support there. And I actually think that it made me angry enough that I had to succeed."
HE TOOK A job with Roger Corman's low-budget studio, and says he knew he should become a director when watching another in action and realising that "I may not be very good at this but I know I'm better than that guy". His first full feature was Piranha II: The Spawning. It did not break any box office records.
Then he had a dream, that one day a cyborg would come from the future to kill him. After which, he made The Terminator, a low-budget, violent, industrial sci-fi that pulled in decent money at the box office, made Arnold Schwarzenegger a superstar and has proven remarkably influential.
He also began to develop the reputation for being a demanding man to work for. The actor Bill Paxton, who worked with Cameron on his next movie, Aliens (sequel to the chest-bursting space horror) and on several movies since, calls him an idealist. "He's strong-willed and doesn't tolerate fools lightly. I think he really appreciates just how brief our lifespan is on this planet."
"You don't just join one of his films," says film editor Mark Goldblatt, "you sign on for a tour of duty." His crew wear T-shirts saying: "I shoot with James Cameron - you can't scare me." He must be just as tough to live with. He has been married five times, including a third marriage to director Kathryn Bigelow (1989-1991), followed by an equally short stint with Terminator star Linda Hamilton (1997-1999). Since 2000 he has been married to another actor, Suzy Amis.
His professional approach paid off spectacularly with Titanic. Having already gotten his feet wet with the spectacular but relatively unsuccessful aliens-underwater flick The Abyss, he returned to the pool for what would be a punishing shoot. It was the most expensive movie ever made and ran well over budget, and the release was delayed as story after story emerged from the Mexican set. A gangster, it was rumoured, was planning to assassinate Cameron. Eighty people had already gone to the hospital after someone put angel dust into the lobster chowder. The electricity shorted and cut the film off when he tried to show Fox's owner, Rupert Murdoch, what he was getting for his money.
And in the near distance, the press took the role of lurking iceberg, ready to punch a hole in Cameron's hubris.
He says that he barely avoided personal disaster, having pumped much of his own money into the project. So, with the $1.8 billion (€1.37 billion) return on the $200 million (€150 million) now looking like sound business, Cameron's enjoyment of the film's success was understandable.
His Oscar speech now gets dragged out every year as an example of how not to celebrate, however. "I'd like a few seconds of silence in remembrance of the 1,500 who died when the great ship died," he told the audience. "I'd like you to listen to the beating of your own heart, the most precious thing in the world." The auditorium fell silent for a second. Then: "Now let's go party till dawn!" That was 1998; finally, Cameron is back in the film studio, working on Avatar, a project talked about for more than a decade but now due for release in 2009. It'll feature aliens, and battles, and ground-breaking special effects.
Is there pressure? Yes, he says, but there's pressure every time he makes a movie. "It's quite a challenge - and for that reason, I embrace it." After which, he's likely to go off on another Boy's Own adventure, in his quest to turn the world nerdy. "There's this thought that you can't do both, that the human brain just can't hold the arts and the sciences at the same time," he says. "That's just not true."
TheCameronFile
Who is he?Blockbuster film-maker, best known for breaking box office records with Titanic.
Why is he in the news?He is producer of a documentary that claims to have found the burial caskets of Jesus, Mary Magdalene and their son. It's caused a little controversy.
Most appealing characteristic?He evangelises about science, meaning that he spent recent years making cutting-edge documentaries on subjects he considers almost as fantastical as his movies.
Least appealing characteristic?He's not considered the easiest man to work with.
Least likely to say?"My next film is a small, indie-minded romantic comedy."
Most likely to say?"My next film is a small romantic comedy. Set on a giant ship. In space. With aliens, and cyborgs, and ground-breaking special effects, and a $200 million budget."