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Comment by bjarneh | Hacker News Reader

> Sigourney Weaver trained to hold her breath for 6 and half minutes in her 70s!

That is crazy. It seems Kate Winslet broke Tom Cruise's old record while filming Avatar 2; over 7 minutes(!) in her case:

https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/kate-winslet-beat...

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This is nuts. I remember reading that Hollywood gave up on underwater filming after near death accidents on sets of The Abyss and especially Waterworld making such productions too risky and expensive so they resorted to VFX faking long underwater scenes after that. Obliviously Cameron didn't get the memo.

Obliviously [...]

I love that, thanks! :D

I'm making it my new email sign-off.

These actors and actresses don't have to do it, are well compensated for the risk, and likely sign the most air tight waiver that can ever be forged.

> the most air tight waiver

I see what you did there.

James Cameron, maker of The Abyss, probably got the memo. But the memo read “You’re going to need to make much more successful movies before they let you do that again.”

Your username is great.

Thankyou! The advantage of having been around a long time: short great usernames were still available!

Jody Foster would like a word..

James Cameron is considered a subject matter expert on deep sea submersibles.

Which a bunch of people found out as soon as they started bitching about why some random Hollywood asshole was commenting on the Oceangate disaster.

If anyone can manage underwater filming safely it's probably him.

He has also confessed that his ulterior motive for making Titanic was to get a studio to pay for an expedition to the Titanic. Which they did.

James Cameron has done a huge number of truly amazing things, but he and Ed Harris both nearly drowned during filming of The Abyss. Hopefully he learned from his mistakes.

[1] https://collider.com/james-cameron-the-abyss-movie-productio...

Yeah not to say some of his knowledge isn’t hard won. Niels Bohr approved.

Looks like in Cameron’s case it was a double fault situation. No alarm on the primary, and the safety person didn’t check his emergency gear. That guy shouldn’t have been punched he should have been fired. And had his license suspended.

> ..near death accidents on sets of The Abyss

What a great movie that is! Who can forget that rat breathing liquid oxygen (or whatever they called it), and the water creature making her face to say hello. It seems sort of forgotten now (perhaps it's just me?) compared to other good films from the same era.

> Who can forget that rat breathing liquid oxygen (or whatever they called it)

I remember seeing the movie as a child with my parents and I was quite appaled by that scene (I hate seeing animal abuse). My father ensured me that was just some kind of effect trickery (I think he believed so himself). Later I found out that it was indeed real.

The liquid is called fluorocarbon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_breathing#Films_and_tel...

> Later I found out that it was indeed real.

Wow, we do learn something new everyday :-)

The effects were so good for their time as well, a semi-forgotten gem that film.

Whoever wrote the production portion of the wikipedia page for the Abyss did a really good job capturing the sort of bleak "the best way out of this situation is forward" circumstances that arise from taking on a project at the limit of your capability like that.

Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio has a great line: "'The Abyss' was a lot of things. Fun to make was not one of them."

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