Maureen Dowd: You want Canada to be the 51st state.
James Cameron: Deny.
Kate Winslet snitched earrings from the set of “Titanic.”
I don’t mind. I took the ship’s wheel. I kept it in my office for years.
Rose had enough space on the wood plank to save Jack.
Deny. We did an entire science experiment.
You drew the picture of Rose that Jack drew in “Titanic.”
Confirm. I not only drew the original drawing, but I had to do the drawing of the drawing for the movie. I’m Leo’s hand in the movie. My 42-year-old hand was doubling for his 20-year-old hand.
You told Leonardo DiCaprio to only date supermodels.
Deny. Deny. Deny. He came up with that himself.
When you were editing “Titanic,” you had a razor blade taped to the side of the editing computer with the instruction written underneath, “Use only if film sucks.”
Confirm. True story.
The Na’vi are all left-handed, like you.
I made all the Na’vi left-handed, but I didn’t realize I was doing it. I just said, “OK, this is how they draw a bow.”
You’ve discovered species of sea cucumber, squid worm and giant single-celled amoeba.
Confirm.
A species of frog, Pristamantis jamescameroni, was named after you for your work in promoting environmental awareness and advocating for veganism.
Confirm. I got a frog.
You hope that whoever buys Warner Brothers makes sure to compensate its chief executive David Zaslav appropriately.
I’ve never said that. Deny.
Tom Cruise is the greatest actor of all time.
I don’t think there should be such a category.
You’re a romantic.
I’m absolutely a romantic, and all of my movies are love stories.
Donald Trump once asked you to direct his biopic.
Deny. He should ask Oliver Stone.
Trump pitched you on buying Greenland and turning it into a movie studio lot.
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Deny.
Arnold once pitched you a “Pumping Iron” reboot.
Deny.
If a phone goes off on set, you nail it to the wall with a nail gun.
I will deny that, because I’ve only threatened to do it.
Your spirit animal is an anglerfish.
Deny. I prefer to think of my spirit animal as a manta ray.
You’d rather spend a year in a submersible than a week on the Icon of the Seas.
The Icon of the Seas looks kind of cool, actually.
You wanted to take a submersible to the Edmund Fitzgerald, the most viral shipwreck these days; it sank 50 years ago with its entire crew in Lake Superior.
I did want to dive it at one point. And I have a big six-foot-long model of it and all that sort of thing, but we never really got that expedition going. It’s torn in half, and one half is flipped over on the bottom. It’s like, what could do that? They must have hit a wave 100-feet tall. They vanished like that. They just disappeared. There was a guy on another ship who looked over and saw their lights, and he looked away and he looked back, and they were gone — a 600-foot ship.
You almost cast O.J. Simpson as the Terminator.
Deny. It was never even considered for a split second.
The night you won Best Picture for “Titanic,” you almost hit Harvey Weinstein with your Oscar, because he fired your friend, Guillermo del Toro, from “Mimic.”
Confirm, but he attacked me. It was self-defense.
You really are the King of the World.
Deny. Deny. Deny. See, nobody’s ever really done the entire quote. The quote was directed to my parents in the back of the theater. It was, “Mom, Dad, there is no way that I can express to you what I’m feeling right now. My heart is full to bursting. Except to say, ‘I’m the king of the world!’” I was just joyful.
Maureen Dowd is an Opinion columnist for The Times. She won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary. She is the author, most recently, of “Notorious.”
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