Piranha 3D producer issues response to James Cameron

James Cameron famously said that Piranha 3D “cheapens the medium of 3D” in the latest issue of Vanity Fair, and while his vast fortune might allow him to pay Thai ladyboys to eat Beluga caviar out of Porta-potty toilets while he pleasures himself, no amount of money can make Piranha 3D‘s producers take a cheap shot like that lying down. Today producer Mark Canton fired back in a scathing rambling 1,400 word response that was nothing if not long.  Consider yourself warned:

[...] “Jim, are you kidding or what? First of all, let’s start by you accepting the fact that you were the original director of PIRANHA 2 and you were fired. Shame on you for thinking that genre movies and the real maestros like Roger Corman and his collaborators are any less auteur or impactful in the history of cinema than you. Martin Scorcese made Boxcar Bertha at the beginning of his career. And Francis Ford Coppola made Dimentia [sic] 13 back in 1963. And those are just a few examples of the talented and successful filmmakers whose roots are in genre films. Who are you to impugn any genre film or its creators? [he's James Cameron. -Ed.]

“Having been deeply involved, as either an executive or as a producer, on Tim Burton’s original BATMAN and the first MEN IN BLACK, as well as 300, and now IMMORTALS, [NAME DROPPING, LOUD NOISES! -Ed.] one of the things that has been consistent about all of the filmmakers involved in these landscape-changing global films is that, in each and every case, all of the directors were humbled by their predecessors, their colleagues and by their awareness of the great history of film that came before them. The enjoyment and the immersion of an audience in a movie theatre, as they had and will have with the above-mentioned films, and as audiences are experiencing with PIRNAHA 3D now, comes from the originality and the vision of the filmmaker, and not just from the creation of the technology. [yep, originality, that's what separates Piranha 3D from the rest... -Ed.]

[...] “Let’s just keep this in mind Jim….you did not invent 3D. You were fortunate that others inspired you to take it further. The simple truth is that I had nothing but good things to say about AVATAR and my own experience since I actually saw it and didn’t damn someone else’s talent publicly in order to disassociate myself from my origins in the business from which we are all very fortunate [uh... what?]. To be honest, I found the 3D in AVATAR to be inconsistent [oh snap!] and while ground breaking in many respects, sometimes I thought it overwhelmed the storytelling. Technology aside, I wish AVATAR had been more original in its storytelling. [Full letter at Movieline]

Jeez, you’d think the producer of a movie where guy gets his wiener bitten off and spit out by piranhas would have a better sense of humor. In any case, thanks, Mark, we are all whinier pussies for having read that.