James Cameron had a selfish reason for making Titanic, said Chris Heath in Men’s Journal. The director had been obsessed with deep-sea exploration since elementary school, and as a child once built a miniature diving bell using a mayonnaise jar and an Erector Set. He put his pet mouse in the contraption and lowered it into a nearby creek. “The mouse went to the bottom of the river, sat there for half an hour, and came back up,” he remembers, still satisfied with his achievement. Cameron went on to have a hugely successful Hollywood career, directing blockbusters like The Terminator and True Lies. But he always wanted to return to the water and explore what he calls the “ultimate shipwreck,” the Titanic. There was just one problem—how would he fund such a hugely expensive dive? “I don’t think the studio executives believe it, but I wanted to make Titanic because I wanted to dive the wreck.” So the biggest-grossing movie in motion picture history was the side effect of a personal whim? “Exactly,” he says, before reconsidering the question. “It’s not a whim. A whim implies, ‘I think I’ll go play
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