Director James Cameron says BP turned down help offer

Director James Cameron says BP turned down help offer

news.yahoo.com

Among the key issues that Cameron said he is interested in helping the government with are methods of monitoring the oil leak and investigating it.
"The government really needs to have its own independent ability to go down there and image the site, survey the site and do its own investigation," he said.

(visit the link for the full news article)

My thread was ridiculed and moved to belowtopsecret, but it turns out that I was not delusional. As a matter of fact Mr. Cameron emphasizes what I was saying in regard to "objective eyes" on the ground.

Here is the link to my thread:

www.belowtopsecret.com...

When I watched Mr. Cameron's TED presentation I knew that he was the perfect guy for the job. Unfortunately BP doesn't think so.

news.yahoo.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Probably because they don't want people to see the spill in 3D.

BP wants this to drag out as long as possible....to manipulate the publics' emotions to the maximum in order to implement some new law, tax or whatever.

I don't see the big deal. I would have turned him down also.

He is a film maker. He's not an engineer, scientist or anyone who could be of real assistance.

So he has experience in underwater filmmaking. I don't see how that equates to viable knowledge that would help stop this leak.

The people involved have been drilling, plugging, capping etc for 40 years and still no real progress.

Maybe Cameron just wants hands on experience for his oil disaster movie.

I guess the next time my hot water heater goes out, I'll call the a/v guy from highschool. He will be the one to stop the leak.

reply to post by ThaLoccster


Well, I guess he could be of some assistance. He does have $$$ after all. Avatar sold quite a few tickets.

Well, as someone that was relatively unimpressed by your BTS thread, I'll give you a star for feeling smug.

Sorry, I just didn't like the tone of the letter you used. "We the Navi..." sorry man, I just thought it sucked. Maybe if you'd have gone for:

We the undersigned, feel that your film Avatar and its approach to nature and planetary exploitation has struck a chord with us and.... blah, blah, blah.

It just sounded like it was written by an 11 year old girl, that had just decided to be a vegetarian because she likes cute animeals.

I'd give him the finger as well.

Everyone is an oil spill expert these days...

Yeah sure, lets deny help from someone with gobs of cash and who could help rally people to assist in this disaster!

BP is a goddamn joke and I'm glad their local stations around here were bought out by another gas station. People should rally together and BP should be taking all the help it can get to help this thing end or at least implement damage control.

However BP has apparently taken cues from our government; "Who are you? You got an idea to help? Who are you again? Oh yeah, you're nobody! Get out of our way!"

I don't understand the whole "he's got alot of $" argument.

BP has much much more money than James Cameron. Its not like they are asking for a financial bail out. Whats his money going to do?

I've stopped more oil leaks in my life than James Cameron has. Maybe I should offer my assistance, hell maybe the people at autozone can help. They've stopped a few leaks in their time.

I love his quote

"Over the last few weeks I've watched, as we all have, with growing horror and heartache, watching what's happening in the Gulf and thinking those morons don't know what they're doing,"

While I wouldn't go as far as to call them morons, although certainly inept, you can't hurl insults at people then expect them to graciously accept your "help".

The best thing he could do would be provide video. Outside of that what real viable assistance is he going to offer?

I think this whole argument is pretty stupid.

reply to post by KILLFOXX


This does not make any sense. It seems as BP continues to screw up, the public sentiment becomes increasingly anti-BP and anti-oil. Many of the people that were chanting "drill baby drill!" a year ago now want to see offshore drilling banned.

reply to post by jjkenobi


You are right in that everybody seems to be an oil expert. Every news show has some guy demonstrating his oil spill panacea in an aquarium with some motor oil in it.

The problem with the current situation is that people like me who have no expertise whatsoever do not seem that much more in the dark than BP. James Cameron may very well be just another Hollywood douchebag that thinks he knows everything because he directed a blockbuster, but he probably does not know much less about the spill than the top engineers at BP.

I think BP should accept help from anyone they can. They are obviously incapable of fixing the problem on their own.

Plus, hollywood has some inventive minds, maybe they can think of ways to fix the leak that the paper pushers at BP cant?

Cameron sounds like such a pompous idiot in this article...he thinks because he has filmed underwater scenes for 6 months that suddenly he is an oil expert...and he's calling the BP engineers, some who have no doubt done this their entire lives "morons." I want the gusher plugged as much as anyone else, but I don't really question that the BP engineers know what they're doing. Just because they work for a huge corporation that has fallen from grace, and is considered "evil" doesn't mean that the employees aren't well trained engineers...American citizens, human beings, that give just as much of a damn, if not more of a damn about the impact of the spill over some Hollywood billionaire using this disaster as a political platform to push his own agenda (which is made very clear in his Avatar film.)

[edit on 3-6-2010 by yellowcard]

Why is everyone on Cameron's case? If BP is truly as desperate as they say why would they turn down help? At the very least he could use some of his own underwater robots to give them a better view of the cut itself, or something, anything.

I don't think he had any ulterior motives in mind, and I read posts everywhere along the lines of "omg i feel so bad i wish i culd help ;_;". Well, he has the means to help and they turned him down, pretty stupid in my opinion.

To James' credit he did invent a few new underwater filming equipment. I still got the old documentary about Abyss where he invented this special camera. Perhaps he's offering the use of his invention.
I dunno

Originally posted by Cito
To James' credit he did invent a few new underwater filming equipment. I still got the old documentary about Abyss where he invented this special camera. Perhaps he's offering the use of his invention.
I dunno

That would make sense, but other than that, he needs to stay in his lane and STFU. What does he have to bring to the table about oil drilling?

Now, if it was Michael Bay.....I mean, he did that movie about drilling a hole on an asteroid.

reply to post by ThaLoccster


It's true BP does have much more cash. But as James Cameron pointed out, it is like asking a criminal for video evidence of his crime. What if the leak is much more than BP is telling us? We have a right to know how much exactly is pouring out, and other methods of plugging it up.

How many more times must BP fail before they try to scramble more experts together?

What if the next plan fails as well? It will be 2 months before the relief well is drilled, and even that has a chance of failure as spoken about in this thread:

Michio Kaku : oil could gush from the leaking BP deepwater well for years

"I heard BP turned down Cameron's help cos they really wanted Kathryn Bigelow." - Quoting @JohnFugelsang on Twitter

Cameron has done more hours of extreme underwater diving and has worked in such conditions more than just about anyone else on the planet. His brother is one of the very top engineers in the world developing undersea equipment for working in these kinds of conditions. The fact of the matter is, he is an expert on this sort of thing - maybe not oil specifically but he is when it comes to working in very difficult undersea environments.

Cameron and his brother work very closely on his projects and are, if memory serves, partners in a company that is geared towards building equipment for undersea work and research.

He's also an enormously creative person, so he (or his brother) may well come up with some ideas that nobody else has yet thought of. He's someone who even some very serious scientists I've known respect enormously for the ideas and level of hard-sci-fi concepts he brings to his stories. Yeah, he's an entertainer, but unlike most he comes at this from a place very different than most.