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James Cameron ‘running for antichrist’?


24 March 2010

Rightwing US pundit Glenn Beck once labelled James Cameron the antichrist. Yesterday, the Avatar director hit back with his own vitriolic volley at a press conference to promote the film's forthcoming DVD release, calling his nemesis an "asshole" and offering to debate with him on environmental and political issues.

Beck, a commentator for Fox News, first targeted Cameron following the film-maker's 2007 documentary The Lost Tomb of Jesus, which cast doubt on the resurrection of Jesus Christ and suggested that the ancient Tomb of the Ten Ossuaries belonged to Jesus' family. "Many people believe James Cameron officially has tossed his hat in the ring today and is officially running for antichrist," Beck told viewers at CNN, where he was working at the time.

Yesterday, Cameron returned the compliment. "Glenn Beck is a fucking asshole," he said. "I've met him. He called me the antichrist, and not about Avatar. He hadn't even seen Avatar yet. I don't know if he has seen it.

"He's dangerous because his ideas are poisonous," Cameron added. "I couldn't believe when he was on CNN. I thought, what happened to CNN? Who is this guy? Who is this madman? And then of course he wound up on Fox News, which is where he belongs, I guess."

Avatar, which has an anti-corporate, pro-environment message, is being released in the US on DVD on 22 April to coincide with Earth Day. Twentieth Century Fox, the studio owned, amusingly, by Fox News parent group News Corp, has promised to plant 1m trees across the globe by the end of the year.

"At this point, I'm less interested in making money for the movie and more interested in saving the world that my children are going to inhabit," Cameron said yesterday. "How about that? I mean look, I didn't make this movie with these strong environmental anti-war themes in it to make friends on the right, you know."

Warming to his theme, the film-maker suggested that his critics on the right were "just people ranting away, lost in their little bubbles of reality, steeped in their own hatred, their own fear and hatred. That's where it all comes from."

"Let's just call it out," he said. "Let's have a public discussion. That's what movies are supposed to do, you know. You can have a mindless entertainment film that doesn't affect anybody. I wasn't interested in that."

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