“Shut the fuck up!” – James Cameron has totally said this at least once
A friend recently got me listening to Joe Rogan again. Whatever your opinion about his venue, his guests or his personal biases, the dude is never boring. I had one of those Baader-Meinhof moments when he had Neil DeGrasse Tyson as a guest recently. Here’s a quick breakdown.
Tyson has an anecdote about how he teased and/or hassled James Cameron for a technical error committed during the making of Titanic. During the ending sequence when Jack is (unnecessarily) freezing to death in the North Atlantic, Tyson claimed that the stars in the sky were actually incorrect for that part of the world at the time in question. Maybe a bit pedantic, but this is the guy who got on Jon Stewart’s case for how The Daily Show globe rotated in the wrong direction. It’s kind of his thing.
The real punch line for me wasn’t just that they fixed it, but the details of how, which I now know thanks to Joe Rogan.
Cameron, after much haranguing and good-natured verbal fencing, released a Director’s Cut and contacted Tyson for information on what the sky should have looked like at the time. Since the stars were added in post production, it basically just took some editing work to fix the sky. But rather than generate it from scratch, the team in charge of revising the movie looked around their media archives for suitable stock footage to crib from.
You might’ve heard of a pair of movies about a teddy bear that came to life based on the earnest wishes of his owner. After this wish was granted, the two embarked on many wholesome and family-friendly adventures together. The scene where young John makes his wish turned out to be the best match for the updated version of Titanic. Considering Seth MacFarlane’s collaboration with Tyson on the newest version of Cosmos, I like the idea of him being the lynchpin of this entire comedy of patches. (Even if he had nothing to do with it)
I will throw out a recommendation to check out the Joe Rogan podcast. He casts a ridiculously wide net for who comes on his show and the format is basically a group sitting around for a couple of hours navel gazing about anything or nothing.
As always, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to add them here or address them to john@benedettitech.com.