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Have you ever worked hard on a project, put your heart and soul into it, spent an ungodly amount of time on it...only to have someone ignore all of the hard work and overall superb job you did, find one small insignificant error and make a point of pointing it out?
James Cameron, the creator and director of the 1997 Oscar winning movie, Titanic, spent about ten years and hundreds of millions of dollars creating that film. He was meticulous in getting the ship and the era right in every detail. He drove people that worked for him crazy with his minute persnickitiness.
This blockbuster film, that scored the biggest box office in the history of the movies up till that time, was lauded for its masterful historic detail, if not its dialogue. (Any dialogue that has the two main characters propped on the stern of a ship as it's about to plunge headlong, story after story, into an icy death gripping sea, only to have Jack look at Rose in that moment and ask, "Trust me, Rose?" while she responds "I trust you" simply cannot be considered great. I'm sorry. Oh my God, you're about to plunge into the sea and probably die-you would not be saying that! Ok, I'm better now.)
Cameron was hailed as a visionary and an innovative genius for how he pulled off this incredible technical and historic feat.
Meanwhile, in some little theatre, watching this film with an apparently ultracritical eye, was one of America's leading astronomers, Neil deGrasse Tyson. You recall the scene toward the end of the movie when Rose was floating on a piece of driftwood. At one point she stares off into the star studded sky.
DeGrasse Tyson went right to a computer. He "sent me quite a snarky email," Cameron tells the British magazine, Culture. "He said that, at that time of year, in that position in the Atlantic in 1912, that is not the star field she would have seen, and with my reputation as a perfectionist, I should have known that and I should have put the right star field in."
Really? All of this painstaking detail, this brutal work and phenomenal achievement in cinema, and all deGrasse Tyson points out is a wrong star field? The star field that was in the movie for all of a few seconds?
Cameron's response?
"So I said," Cameron finishes the story to Culture, "'All right you son of a b**ch, send me the right stars for the exact time, 4:20am on April 15, 1912, and I'll put it in the movie.'"
You may have heard that Cameron just released a 3D version of the film. This shot of the stars is the only shot Cameron changed from the original movie.
But then I'm sure someone will find another insignificant detail to complain about...the smoke from the smokestacks missing one billow perhaps?
Leaders: Praise the good, correct the bad, ignore the insignificant. Don't overburden your employees' minds with unnecessary criticisms.
Capish?
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