James Cameron Cut A Shot From True Lies That Took Three And A Half Weeks To Film

Making a movie is hard. There are more moving parts than any lay person could possibly realize that are needed to make a production look professional and seamless. One of the most important components of any film production, especially when it comes to action films before the advances of CGI in the last two decades, is the special effects team. Such was the case on James Cameron's 1994 big budget action comedy "True Lies," starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis.

Cameron has always been on the cutting edge of visuals and effects, which is why, when it came to pulling off incredible set pieces and stunts in "True Lies," the effects team had to be the best of the best. Cameron is very famously a perfectionist, after all. So when the director approached them about a very specific, seemingly impossible, and fully practical stunt, they accepted his challenge.

It took them more than three weeks, but ultimately, the crew perfected the shot. That's an incredible amount of time to spend on a single moment in a film, and it took innovation and technological know-how to pull it off ... which is why we have to imagine they were at least a little bummed when it came time to actually film the stunt, only to have Cameron change his mind and decide he didn't need it anymore.

If you've never seen "True Lies," here's a quick synopsis: Schwarzenegger plays Harry Tasker, a super-spy whose wife, Helen (played by Jamie Lee Curtis), thinks he's just a boring computer salesman. Apparently the fact he's inconceivably jacked — a trait not overly common in sales — doesn't tip her off to the fact that not everything is as it seems. Eventually, Helen finds herself wrapped up in Harry's attempt to stop a terrorist attack, with her being held captive in a limo speeding along a causeway in the Florida Keys. This is where the fun begins with one of the most epic action set pieces of the '90s.

There are explosions and bad guy deaths galore, with Arnold ultimately hanging from a helicopter (naturally) to save his wife just before the limo plummets into the ocean (again, naturally). But that wasn't always enough for Cameron. Several of the vehicles in the high speed chase were trucks, for which the director initially envisioned bigger things. As Leslie Ekker, who worked on the mechanical effects for the film, told Befores & Afters: 

"He wanted to create a shot where the truck would come out of a cloud of explosion debris, land on the edge of the bridge, and teeter along like a skateboarder on the edge, fall off in front of camera and blow up."

It's an incredibly complicated stunt to pull off. But somehow, they managed. Unfortunately, it was all for nothing.

Ekker and the mechanical effects team worked diligently to perfect the stunt and not only make it look believable, but good. That's why it took them nearly a month to pull it off. But figure it out they did, thanks to the magic of miniatures. As Ekker explained:

"We made a track and we spiked the truck into the deck and we got it to, hopefully, slide. We worked for three and a half weeks to get that shot to work. Finally, we realized that the rubber wheel of the truck was tripping it and it would tumble. So I just made a plywood wheel and sprayed it black, and got a silver pen and drew a wheel on it, a hub, and put it on there. It worked. It now slid and fell off in front of camera."

And then, on the very day the crew finally nailed the shot, Cameron decided to cut it from the film. Such is life on the set helmed by a director who loves nothing more than innovating and crafting gigantic new ideas.