DisruptiveLA(LOS ANGELES) — James Cameron has paid his respects to the late composer James Horner, stating in an essay posted by The Hollywood Reporter on Tuesday that the first time that he heard Horner play the score for his movie Titanic, he cried.
Cameron said, “Then he played Rose’s theme and I was crying again.”
He recalled, “They were so bittersweet and emotionally resonant. He hadn’t orchestrated a thing, and I knew it was going to be one of cinema’s great scores. No matter how the movie turned out, and no one knew at that point — it could have been a dog — I knew it would be a great score. He thought he had done only five percent of the work, but I knew he had cracked the heart and soul.”
Titanic eventually won 11 Oscars, including Best Original Dramatic Score and Best Original Song for “My Heart Will Go On.” Horner was scheduled to write the scores for Cameron’s future Avatar sequels, as he did for the 2009 original movie, for which he earned an Oscar nomination.
The agency that represented Horner confirmed Tuesday that he died the previous day at the age of 61 when the single-engine plane he was piloting solo crashed in a remote area of northern Ventura County, California.
The Gorfaine/Schwartz Agency said in a statement, “A shining light has been extinguished, which can never be replaced. It has been an honor and a privilege to have worked with James since the inception of our agency. For more than three decades, his unique creative genius made an indelible imprint on each of our lives and on those of the entire Hollywood community. “
