Jeff Vespa/WireImageWhen James Cameron was crowned "King of the World," James Horner was the one who provided the soundtrack.
Cameron paid his respects to the late composer in The Hollywood Reporter today, remembering how, at certain times over the last 30 years, he felt that he just had to have Horner compose the music for his movies.
Horner died yesterday at 61 when the single-engine plane he was piloting solo crashed near Santa Barbara, Calif. The cause of the crash remains under investigation. He had been slated to write the scores for Cameron's two planned Avatar sequels, as he did for the 2009 original, for which he received his last of 10 Oscar nominations.
"I was doing a lot of thinking about James when I heard the news and I checked online. The beginning and end of his filmography are films that he did, or would have done, with me. It's a curious bookend," Cameron said, the bookend being 1980's Battle Beyond the Stars, for which Horner did the music and Cameron directed the special effects, and Avatar 2 and 3.
Horner was "the obvious choice" to do Aliens, Cameron continued, but he didn't enlist him to score another film for him until Titanic. And we know how that turned out.
"We had this very cautious meeting where we were falling all over ourselves to be polite," he said. "We laughed about it so much in subsequent years. But we developed a very transparent means of communication which made for a great working relationship. He totally committed himself to the movie."
And when he heard Horner play the eventual blockbuster's score for the first time, he cried.
"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 went on to win 11 Oscars, including Best Original Dramatic Score and Best Original Song, the latter of which Horner shared with Will Jennings, for "My Heart Will Go On."
Cameron's big regret? That he didn't spend more time with Horner at the time. Read his whole tribute on THR.com.