James Cameron almost got into a fight with Harvey Weinstein at the 1998 Oscars.
The 63-year-old filmmaker’s blockbuster ‘Titanic’ scooped 11 prizes at that year’s Academy Awards but the director remembers the ceremony most because he almost came to blows with the disgraced producer – who has been accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women – and only the fact the event returned from a commercial break stopped things getting serious between them.
He said: ”I remember almost getting in a fight with Harvey Weinstein and hitting him with my Oscar.
”[In retrospect there are probably a lot of people] that would’ve preferred I had played through on that one.
”It was happening on the main floor at the [theatre]… And the music had started to play to get back in our seats. The people around us were saying, ‘Not here! Not here!’ Like it was OK to fight in the parking lot, you know, but it was not OK there when the music was playing, and they were about to go live.”
Cameron was infuriated with Weinstein – had enjoyed success at the ceremony with Miramax’s ‘Good Will Hunting’ – because of problems his friend Guillermo Del Toro had had on ‘Mimic’, which was also distributed by the company.
He explained to Vanity Fair magazine: ”It’s kind of a long story, but it has to do with Guillermo del Toro and how badly he was dealt with by Miramax on ‘Mimic’.
”Harvey came up glad-handing me, talking about how great they were for the artist, and I just read him chapter and verse about how great I thought he was for the artist based on my friend’s experience, and that led to an altercation.”
Del Toro recently spoke of how much he hated working with Weinstein on the horror film.
He said: ”I really hated the experience. My first American experience was almost my last because it was with the Weinsteins and Miramax.”
He explained how Miramax ordered him not to depict violence against animals or children – so he filmed a scene which killed two children and a dog just to rebel.
He added: ”I don’t know if this is much of an achievement but it felt like one.
”I lost casting battles, I lost story battles but the one thing ‘Mimic’ is visually exactly what I wanted. The movie is visually gorgeous and it has a couple of sequences I’m very proud of.”
