Earlier this week, it was reported that book publisher Henry Holt and Company had stopped production on Charles Pellegrino's "The Last Train From Hiroshima: The Survivors Look Back." The reason? Some of Pellegrino's sources were called into question, and subsequently the author himself. This is all significant because James Cameron had previously optioned the book for... something.
MTV's Larry Carroll ran into Cameron last night on the red carpet at the "Global Green" pre-Oscars party. And while the focus of the evening was on preserving the environment, we managed to get a question in about "Hiroshima." As you might expect, Cameron pretty much hit the buzz around Pellegrino and his book's authenticity right on the nose.
"It's only a story because I'm involved," he said. "If I wasn't involved it wouldn't be a story. Hopefully that story will go away after the Oscars." I would argue that the questioning of a non-fiction author's credibility is news no matter what, though Cameron is certainly correct in pointing out that his involvement contributed to the flare-up. Still, the filmmaker feels bad for his longtime collaborator.
"It's unfortunate for [Pellegrino], who is a friend of mine, that he got duped by a faulty source. It doesn't invalidate the other 99.9-percent of his book that's based on years of careful interviews with survivors of the two bombings," he said. Nor has the controversy impacted Cameron's desire to cover the topic of the Japan bombings in film.
"It's a subject that I've wanted to do a film about, that I've been wrestling with how to do it, over the years, and I don't have an answer yet," he explained. "[Pellegrino's] book is one of presumably many sources that I'll use for information to be as historically accurate as possible."
Cameron's follow-up comments are interesting. "Obviously on 'Titanic,' we were as historically accurate as we could be, not only on the movie but on the subsequent documentary films, on the Bismarck film I did. I'm really into archaeology, history, and the accuracy with which that's presented is critical."
Comparing "Titanic" with this gestating Hiroshima idea suggests that Cameron might have more of a fictional or dramatized treatment in mind than had previously been speculated. He does make a point of including the follow-up documentaries -- "Expedition: Bismarck" and "Ghosts of the Abyss" -- as well, so I wouldn't read too deeply into those words. Still, I wouldn't complain if Cameron chose to follow "Avatar" with a dramatized World War II story, along the lines of Clint Eastwood's "Letters from Iwo Jima" and "Flags of Our Fathers."
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