Defying, once and for all, Randy Newman’s infamous pronouncement that “Short people got no reason to live,” James Cameron has revealed at least one: Appearing as extras in his movies, to make his sets look extra big and fancy.
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That’s per an interview Cameron gave to the L.A. Times this week, as he makes the rounds promoting the new 4K remaster of Titanic. (You can read Cameron’s conversation with our own Matt Schimkowitz, discussing his thoughts on cinematic historical accuracy, Kate Winslet’s ax work, and Barbie, right here.) In the Times piece, Cameron reveals some of his money-saving ideas for Titanic (which he did have, despite the film being famously expensive), including, hilariously, setting a height limit for the movie’s extras.
“We only cast short extras so it made our set look bigger,” Cameron says. “Anybody above 5’8”, we didn’t cast them. It’s like we got an extra million dollars of value out of casting.”
Other cost-cutting measures: Only building one tilted version of the ship’s set, instead of multiple angles—and, out of obvious necessity, waiting until last to film the actual sinking, a massive effects shot the studio apparently fought him on. “The smartest thing we did was do the sinking last,” he says in the piece. “It wasn’t because of strategy — it was simply because you sink the set last because otherwise it doesn’t look so good the next morning when you bring it back up.”
(Also, if you think Cameron is above loaning out his priceless treasures to famous friends or spending time and money proving haters on the internet wrong, the interview includes both the reveal that he let singer Adele borrow the movie’s Heart Of The Ocean prop for a birthday party in 2018, and the fact that the upcoming box set of Titanic will include 2023 NatGeo special Titanic: 25 Years Later With James Cameron, a TV special that seems to have been ordered, at least in part, specifically so that Cameron could grab some scientists and prove, once and for all, that there was no room for Jack to fit on that damn door at the end of the movie.)