‘Titanic’ Producer Jon Landau Remembered by Bill Mechanic

Veteran movie government Invoice Mechanic shares some recollections about producer Jon Landau, who died on July 5 on the age of 63, and the experiences they shared throughout the making of James Cameron’s 1997 epic Titanic, which was backed by Fox Filmed Leisure when Mechanic was that firm’s chairman and CEO.

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I all the time checked out Jon as a born movie particular person. His dad and mom, Ely and Edie, had been revered producers, and he knew all the things there was to find out about film manufacturing.

After I joined Fox, Jon was the pinnacle of manufacturing, that means he oversaw each movie we produced from the studio’s viewpoint. It was a shock — and a loss — for us when he left the studio to supply Titanic. But it surely was additionally nice understanding that we’d have somebody so educated engaged on a film that promised to be as bold as Jim’s image.

Nobody might have foreseen the difficulties that lay forward with that movie, however even on the hardest moments, Jon was somebody we completely trusted. When there have been arguments about easy methods to forge by to completion, he arbitrated — to the diploma anybody might — between the manufacturing and the studio, and once more made it simpler as a result of each side trusted that each greenback was being spent was within the pursuits of delivering one thing particular.

Reflecting again on that point, these of us closest to the movie believed it had an opportunity to turn out to be not solely successful, however one thing actually nice. There have been, nonetheless, no assurances. The stress stage was off the charts, and there was no query it weighed closely on Jon. However he by no means misplaced his humorousness or decency, as a result of he was a soldier. He remained assured and constructive, whatever the second, and he knew his craft.

All of us had a troublesome journey, nevertheless it’s a press release of how good Jon was that each the studio and the manufacturing felt he was the proper particular person for the job. That film required a lion, and he proved he might roar.