James Cameron Is Still Triggered By Amy Poehler’s Perfect Golden Globes Roast
When Saturday Night Live legends Tina Fey and Amy Poehler hosted the 71st Golden Globe Awards in 2013, they inadvertently began a grudge that would last nearly as long as production on Avatar 2.
Compared to the more stiff and prestigious awards ceremonies in American entertainment, the Golden Globes have always had a reputation for playing it a little more fast-and-loose when it comes to comedian hosts. Self-styled provocateur Ricky Gervais is, of course, both famous and infamous for bringing a biting edge to his hosting duties, but, historically, every comedian tapped by the Hollywood Foreign Press has treated the master/mistress of ceremonies position as an opportunity to throw out a handful of absolutely hilarious – and occasionally below the belt – burns of the esteemed audience.
Fey and Poehler were absolutely iconic in their multiple performances as Golden Globes co-hostesses, but one Hollywood legend is still seething over one of their more pointed jabs during the 2013 ceremony. In a recent interview with The New York Times, prolific director James Cameron said that Poehler’s joke about his three-year marriage to fellow filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow was an “ignorant dig,” claiming that the comic took the bit “too far.”
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Imagine being a victim of CIA torture and hearing that the aggrieved party in this punchline is James Cameron:
“Amy Poehler’s remark was an ignorant dig, at an event which is supposed to be a celebration of cinema and filmmakers, not a roast,” said Cameron, who, apparently, missed the previous three Golden Globes ceremonies when Gervais gleefully bullied Hollywood's best and brightest on national television.
“I’m pretty thick-skinned, and happy to be the butt of a good-natured joke, but that went too far," Cameron claimed, "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.”
Moreover, Cameron insists that, despite the reaction to Poehler's divorce dig at the Golden Globes, he is one of Bigelow's biggest fans, and he was ecstatic when his ex beat him out for Best Director at the Oscars in a prior year. “I was the first one on my feet applauding,” Cameron said of Bigelow's win for The Hurt Locker at the 82nd Academy Awards. “Kathryn and I thought the whole meta-narrative around us was pretty funny. I was a little concerned that it would just take away from her credibility as a filmmaker. It started to turn into a conversation that wasn’t about her film, and that bothered both of us.”
Despite Cameron's supposedly thick skin, Poehler's torture joke was honestly a surface-level dig for any divorced woman who made a movie like Zero Dark Thirty. But, in fairness to him, that kind of audience reaction to a roast of your failed marriage is probably more hurtful than the words themselves – I'd probably be mad at anyone who burned me so bad they made Jessica Chastain gasp like that, too.
