10 Troubled Shoots That Resulted In Great Films
7. James Cameron Got Angry (Again) And Almost Killed His Actors - The Abyss
If you thought the arduous shoot for James Cameron's Titanic sounded bad, then you haven't heard what happened on the set of Cameron's other underwater epic, The Abyss.
Due to the number of underwater scenes required, filming took place in an abandoned nuclear plant and involved two massive (and leaky) water tanks. The filming process was gruelling for everyone. Principal photography took six months, the cast and crew put in 70 hour work weeks, mainly underwater and in isolation, and scenes were usually painstakingly slow to film. Everyone was pushed to the brink of a mental and physical collapse, and destroying hotel room furniture soon became the routine de-stressing activity of choice.
Inbetween all this, Cameron was his usual jerkass self. He reportedly told actors to urinate in their wetsuits instead of going to the toilet as this will save time between takes. The lead actress, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, rightfully yelled "we're not animals!" at Cameron. He also made Ed Harris and Leo Burmester do a long underwater swimming scene without any scuba gear before moving their breathing tubes further away from their finishing point, without telling them, in order to make sure that the shot looked good.
It's no wonder why the film crew commemorated the film shoot with a shirt that had the slogan "Life's Abyss, And Then You Dive."