Titanic and the Making of James Cameron: The Inside Story of the Three-Year Adventure That Rewrote Motion Picture History (Paperback)

by Paula Parisi (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Paula Parisi, who spent a decade covering tech-heavy films for The Hollywood Reporter, is among the very, very few journalists whom the notoriously thin-skinned director James Cameron trusts. He granted her amazing access to Titanic, the costliest film ever made. Parisi puts you there on that fascinating, top-secret set, while Kate Winslet flirtatiously calls out from the dark, moody grotto of the 100-foot water tank to Leo DiCaprio, "Darling! Come join me on the debris!" We get privileged glimpses of Cameron shaping his star's performance, right down to his gait in his crucial entrance to the high-society dinner--"You're a little too funky chicken there, Leo ... don't nod to the waiter!"

She has great details about the infamous incident in which some jerk poisoned the crew with the terrifying hallucinogen PCP, sending 56 people to the emergency room. PCP transformed Cameron into a replica of Schwarzenegger in his film Terminator. "Life imitates art," Cameron's pal Lewis Abernathy tells Parisi. "One eye was completely red, just like the Terminator eye. A pupil, no iris, beet red. The other eye looked like he'd been sniffing glue since he was four ... I'm thinking call an organ donor bank, next of kin ... And he puts on this big ol' grin and says, 'Finish the movie, Lewis, you know what to do!'"

The set medic tamed panic with pop music, just like the Titanic orchestra--only Roy Orbison instead of ragtime. Star Bill Paxton made a daring escape from the hospital and got back to the set in time for the conga line.

Cameron's ego is so damn can-do that he feels he could have saved the passengers of Titanic if he had been the captain. To save everybody, Cameron tells Parisi, the captain simply should have loaded everybody aboard the iceberg! "They would have been cold, but they would have lived."

Parisi is the opposite of the typical scorpion-like showbiz reporter; she is pro-Cameron. To get to her unrivalled inside scoops, you have to wade through gushing sentences such as, "The symmetry and perfection of the room are as awesome as anything out of Kubrick's Barry Lyndon or The Shining." She does not dwell on the script's weaknesses, as most of the press and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences did.

But if you have a scintilla of interest in how this infinitely difficult and technically innovative film was made, Parisi's is the book to buy. --Tim Appelo

From Publishers Weekly
In the wake of James Cameron's Titanic (14 Academy nominations, 11 Oscars, a billion-dollar worldwide box office), Parisi traces the development of project "Big Boat" from inception to conclusion in a tribute to "the man who did more than any other to revolutionize the look of film as we enter the new millennium." Written in a breezy, reportorial style, the book details the execution of Cameron's vision of Titanic "as a kind of living history." Cameron's notorious perfectionism prompted the building of a 750-foot replica of the Titanic and the building of Cameron's own film studio in Mexico. Called the 100 Day Studio, it was the first built by one of the Hollywood majors since the 1930s. Taking responsibility for his excesses, Cameron (in an unprecedented move) reassigned his profit-sharing back to Twentieth Century-Fox. Surpassing Waterworld's gigantic budget, Titanic became the most expensive movie ever made. Staffers wore T-shirts proclaiming: "You Can't Scare Me I Work for James Cameron." But Mr. Action King pulled it off. At the cost of $1 million per minute, Titanic became the highest-grossing film ever in the U.S., exceeding Star Wars. There is an old-fashioned feel to the story of the making of Titanic, and Parisi's lively portrayal recalls the egomaniacal geniuses of yore, particularly D.W. Griffith, whose daring innovations founded the movies as an art form by 1912. Is Cameron the D.W. Griffith of the 21st century? Time, the greatest Titan of all, will tell. 16-page color photo insert not seen by PW.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 234 pages
• Publisher: Newmarket Press; 1st THUS edition (June 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1557043655
• ISBN-13: 978-1557043658
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #134,660 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The InterWorkings of a movie mastermind, June 27, 2000

By	Kristy (Bristol, Tennessee) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Titanic and the Making of James Cameron: The Inside Story of the Three-Year Adventure That Rewrote Motion Picture History (Hardcover)

This book brought the movie into a new perspective. It made it very easy to explain certain scenes to our kids, so that they could truly understand the complexity of the movie and thus of the disaster. The actors/actresses speaking of the fear they felt on the set just trying to recreate the worst maritime disaster in history-gives us a small glimpse of what the passengers/crew faced that nite. Also, it gave us a new respect for all the hard work, long hours, difficulties that had to be overcome to delivery the greatest movie of all time to the public. Also, we get to see that James Cameron is human, he gets frustrated and upset just like everyone else, that in and of itself was reassuring, because he is so often portrayed as larger than life.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Inside Scoop, April 26, 2000

By	seagull496 (Brooklyn, New York) - See all my reviews

This book is the closest thing to actually being there whilethe film was made. Parisi's exclusive access to the set and Cameronpermits an over the shoulder view describing details and nuances that went into making a movie of epic proportions. Many facets of directing are not generally known and we are made aware of the struggle and persistence to get things done. Thus we have insight into the genius of Cameron and respect for the author's ability to translate the enormity of making this masterpiece. I enjoyed being a fly on the wall thanks to Parisi's book.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Kind of biased and not historically correct, January 25, 2004

By A Customer

If you are looking for a book on the movie Titanic that includes quotes from the stars, this is not the book for you. The author rarely quoted Leo and Kate and even put in some criticizing facts, like Leo playing video games everyday and Kate calling in sick everyday. While these may be true, she seemed biased because she turned around to praise Cameron. At times it seemed more like Cameron's biography than a book on his movie.
This author is also not an expert on Titanic. What little historical information that is included is wrong. For example, she says the Titanic hit the iceberg at 10:30 pm and sank in 2 hours and 40 minutes, at 2:20 am. It should be that the Titanic hit the iceberg at 11:40 pm and sank at 2:20 am. If she had done her research on the event as well as the movie and it's making, she would have known that.
This book is okay. I would not recommend buying it because I have read better books on the making of this great movie.