James Cameron is recalling a joke from the Golden Globes where he was the punchline, and he doesn’t have a good memory of it.
During a recent interview, the director of Avatar: Fire and Ash recalled a joke Amy Poehler told at the 2013 Golden Globes.
That year, Kathryn Bigelow was nominated as director for her film Zero Dark Thirty. During the opening monologue of the award ceremony, Tina Fey and Poehler joked about the film’s controversial depiction of torture.
“When it comes to torture, I trust the lady who spent three years married to James Cameron,” Poehler joked.
In an interview with The New York Times recently, Cameron 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. 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.”
Cameron mentioned that Hollywood has tried to pit the two filmmakers against each other, noting the 2009-2010 award season, when Avatar and The Hurt Locker faced off, most notably at the Oscars. Bigelow won the Oscar for Best Director for The Hurt Locker, which also won Best Picture.
“I was the first one on my feet applauding,” Cameron said about Bigelow’s Oscar win. “Kathryn and I thought the whole meta-narrative around us was pretty funny. I was a little concerned that it would just take away from her credibility as a filmmaker. It started to turn into a conversation that wasn’t about her film, and that bothered both of us.”
Cameron and Bigelow were married between 1989 and 1991. The filmmakers worked together with the Titanic director, executive producing Bigelow’s Point Break (1991), and co-wrote her film Strange Days (1995).