Rewind to almost 20 years before Titanic. James Cameron was a young Canadian upstart working as a visual effects supervisor and second unit man for Roger Corman’s exploitation productions. And as an oompa loompa toiling in the Corman Factory, he cut his teeth on such films as Battle Beyond the Stars (1980) and Galaxy of Terror (1981), a shameless B-movie rip-off of Riddley Scott’s Alien (1979). In 1981, he was famously fired from what was supposed to be his directorial debut in Piranha Part Two: The Spawning, a sequel to the Joe Dante-directed shameless B-movie rip-off of Jaws (1975). Apparently, overseeing producer Ovidio G. Assonitis was frustrated with Cameron’s slow progress on the film and took over principle shooting midway through the production, beginning the long-standing rumors of Cameron’s bossy perfectionism on set. Now, it’s only fair to say that plenty of prestige directors started their careers with Corman—most notably, Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, and Francis Ford Coppola—but it is also important to note that Cameron was specifically involved in the art direction and cinematography, a.k.a. the surfaces. In any case, while he may have graduated from Roger Corman’s University of Schlock, he never really took off his class ring.