James Cameron says a decade-old Golden Globes punchline still rankles. In a recent interview, the filmmaker called a 2013 joke by Amy Poehler an “ignorant dig,” arguing it crossed the line at an awards show meant to celebrate cinema rather than turn into a roast.
Poehler, co-hosting that year’s ceremony with Tina Fey, referenced the public debate around torture depictions in Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty and then linked Bigelow’s authority on the subject to her past marriage to Cameron. The line drew a loud laugh in the room. Cameron said he’s “pretty thick-skinned” and can handle a friendly jab, yet he felt this one “went too far,” and he bristled at what the reaction signaled about how his peers see him. “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,” he said.
Cameron and Bigelow were married from 1989 to 1991. He stressed that the attention around their personal history risked pulling focus from Bigelow’s work on the night she was nominated, and he said both of them worried it could undercut her credibility as a filmmaker. Cameron has continued to praise Bigelow publicly, including applauding her 2010 Oscar win for The Hurt Locker, the first best director victory for a woman.
The comments surfaced as Cameron promotes Avatar: Fire and Ash, due in theaters this Christmas, and speaks candidly about old industry flashpoints. In a separate recent dispute, he has argued he deserved screenwriting credit on Point Break, which Bigelow directed in 1991. The film’s credited writer, W. Peter Iliff, said Cameron and Bigelow contributed material and described that kind of rewriting as common on studio pictures, while noting Writers Guild arbitration still awarded Iliff sole screenplay credit. Iliff added that Cameron “helped give me a long writing career and I am forever in his debt.”
