BEAUTIFUL NIAGARA.COM

Tonight the film industry will celebrate its biggest night, the “Academy Awards”. This year marks another milestone in the history of the “Oscar” as it celebrates its 80th Birthday.

Here in Niagara “Oscar” night holds a special meaning for it is on this night in 1997 that our favorite son of the film industry, James Cameron, stole the show with his Academy entry, “Titanic”.

James Cameron was born in Kapuskasing, Ontario, Canada, grew up in the small village of Chippewa, now a part of Niagara Falls. The house is on Parkway Dr. The village is very proud of having been the home of this celebrity, and commemorates this on both the street sign for Parkway Drive which is decorated to look like a film strip, and the village’s welcome sign which is decorated with the words “Home of James Cameron”.

Despite being in very close proximity to Niagara Falls one of the most popular tourist sites in the world, Chippewa still remains a very quiet area of the city.
“James Cameron Homecoming”, can be viewed by clicking on the link below;

http://archives.cbc.ca/IDC-1-68-2083-12950/arts_entertainment/academy_awards/clip7

James credits the film, 2001: A Space Odyssey for awakening his fascination with the motion picture industry. “As soon as I saw that, I knew I wanted to be a filmmaker.” “I just couldn’t figure out how he did all that stuff and just had to learn.”

The learning process began with experimentation with his father’s Super8 camera. James began to write sci-fi stories and fantasized instead of doing his homework. Apparently he wrote a short story during a biology class in high school which would later become the movie, “The Abyss”.
The dream of becoming a director seemed unrealistic, as the young Cameron didn’t believe it was possible. “I couldn’t see myself as a future film director. In fact, there was a definite feeling on my part that those people were somehow born into it, almost like a caste system. Little kids from a small town in Canada didn’t get to direct movies.”

In 1971 his father informed him that the whole family would be moving from Chippewa to Orange County, California. James’ father, Philip had been offered a job there and the family relocated.
Time went by. Cameron had dropped out of college and had married a young waitress named Susan Williams. Cameron earned his living by working as a truck driver but he still hadn’t quit on his dreams of becoming a movie maker.One day in 1977 Cameron went to the movies to watch this new film, a new sci-fi adventure. “I went from being a bum who liked to smoke dope and hang out by the river drinking beer and race around in a fast junk-heap cars to this completely obsessed maniac” – James Cameron on his transformation. The movie was “Star Wars”. James felt lousy after watching the movie. He felt that this was the movie he had always wanted to make. It was at this time in his life that he decided to fully pursue his dream. He became completely obsessed, reading everything about movie making that he could get his hands on. He bought movie equipment, took it home and took it apart to find out how everything worked.James Cameron finally got involved in his first real movie in 1979. Some dentists wanted to invest their money in movies as a tax shelter. William Wisher, a screenwriter, asked James if he would help him with this project.