James Cameron reveals he almost died while filming The Abyss at Beyond Fest 

James Cameron is one of the most widely recognized directors in the world, especially after the success of his Avatar franchise. However, before all that, the director ventured into sci-fi with some underrated gems, including The Abyss. Cameron's The Abyss was a powerful tale and pushed the boundaries of what could and could not be shown on the screen.

On Wednesday, September 27, at the Los Angeles genre festival Beyond Fest, James Cameron gave a rare glimpse at the two-hour and 51-minute Special Edition of The Abyss while also taking questions about the film.

In this session, Cameron casually revealed that he was almost killed during the shooting of the film while filming an underwater segment. As moderator Jim Hemphill drilled down on the topic, James Cameron explained how he survived a huge accident by a fraction when failed equipment and miscommunications led to the near-death of the Avatar director.

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What happened to James Cameron while filming The Abyss?

The Abyss was not the easiest film to shoot. It was shot in an abandoned nuclear power plant in Gaffney, where the actors and the crew had to do their jobs under the water. Cameron was also required to stay underwater, hold the camera, and monitor the entire thing while 'angels,' as James Cameron termed them, were looking over them.

These 'angels' were safety divers that were assigned to most actors, but Cameron did not have one. They were working about 30 meters underwater, and Cameron had some heavy equipment on him. Though he was an experienced diver, his equipment failed him that day.

James Cameron recalled:

"When the tank gets low, you get a warning that you’re about to run out of air,...Well, this thing had a piston servo regulator in it, so it was one breath… and then nothing. Everybody’s setting lights and nobody’s watching me," he said.

I’m trying to get [underwater director of photography] Al Giddings attention on the p.a. but Al had been involved in a diving accident and he blew out both eardrums so he was deaf as a post, and I’m wasting my last breath of air on an underwater p.a. system going ‘Al… Al…’ and he’s working away with his back to me," he added.

He continued to narrate that he was able to get his gear off but then encountered this next obstacle: the angels, who were, due to a lack of communication, trying to help him stay underwater.

"The safety diver gets to be about 10 feet from the surface and he sticks a regulator in my mouth that he didn’t check. It had been banging around the bottom of the tank for three weeks and had a rip through the diaphragm — so I purged carefully and took a deep breath… of water. And then I purged it again, and I took another deep breath… of water," he continued.

"At that point it was almost check-out point and the safety divers are taught to hold you down so you don’t embolize and let your lungs overexpand going up. But I knew what I was doing. And he wouldn’t let me go, and I had no way to tell him the regulator wasn’t working. So I punched him in the face and swam to the surface and therefore survived," he added.

So, this is how James Cameron lived to tell the tale of a huge mishap that could have cost him his life and stopped the world from seeing many wonderful movies, including the Avatar franchise.

The Abyss remains a classic film that showed the world a lot of things, including the immense possibility of the medium and what could be done with it.