James Cameron revealed he narrowly survived a horrifying near-death experience while submerged 30 feet under water when filming the 1989 movie, “The Abyss.”
The famous filmmaker spoke about his ordeal at the film festival Beyond Fest at Regency Westwood Village in Los Angeles on Wednesday during a special screening of his film. During the question and answer segment, Cameron said the incident occurred during filming while he was scuba diving.
“We had the ‘angels,’ which were the safety divers that were right there, and each one was assigned to one or two of the actors and just kept them in sight the whole time,” Cameron said, according to Variety. However, he said, “They weren’t watching me.”
Cameron, an experienced diver, noted he “wore heavy weights around my feet, no fins, a heavy weight belt around my waist,” so he could move the camera.
He described the moment he realized his oxygen tank ran out of air.
“Everybody’s setting lights and nobody’s watching me. I’m trying to get [underwater director of photography] Al Giddings attention on the p.a., but Al had been involved in a diving accident, and he blew out both eardrums so he was deaf as a post,” Cameron said.
“And I’m wasting my last breath of air on an underwater p.a. system going ‘Al … Al …’ and he’s working away with his back to me,” the famous filmmaker said, per Variety.
Cameron said a diver interfered just as he was able to get most of his equipment off.
He “sticks a regulator in my mouth that he didn’t check,” which made his situation even more frightening. (RELATED: I Warned You Guys: James Cameron Expresses His Concern About An AI Takeover)
“It had been banging around the bottom of the tank for three weeks and had a rip through the diaphragm — so I purged carefully and took a deep breath … of water,” Cameron said.
“And then I purged it again, and I took another deep breath … of water.”
“At that point it was almost check-out point and the safety divers are taught to hold you down so you don’t embolize and let your lungs over-expand going up. But I knew what I was doing,” Cameron said, according to Variety.
“And he wouldn’t let me go, and I had no way to tell him the regulator wasn’t working. So I punched him in the face and swam to the surface and therefore survived,” he concluded.