Sophia Michaels
It’s been five years, and James Cameron is still haunted by it — three minutes of late-night television that aired one October night on NBC in 2017… OK, not really, though you could say the filmmaker protested a bit too much when someone finally asked him about that famous Saturday Night Live sketch about the decision to use Papyrus as the font for the Avatar logo.
The sketch in question aired during the Season 43 SNL premiere and starred Ryan Gosling as a man completely tormented by the peculiar graphic design choice for the 2009 movie. In a new interview with BBC Radio 1 to promote the long-awaited Avatar sequel, Cameron was finally asked about the bit and was quick with a deadpan quote from the sketch itself, “It’s haunted me” — before quickly adding, “Not really.”
We’ll definitely take Cameron’s word for it, but to be honest, for someone who claims he hasn’t spent much time thinking about the sketch, he sure had some pretty on-the-nose criticisms. “I’m just astonished that they spent that much money on a little cinematic vignette that’s around such a wispy, thin concept,” he said.
Cameron went on to crack, “I said, ‘Alright guys, we are now doubling down. We’re using Papyrus for everything.’ … The funniest thing about that whole story is, I didn’t even know it was Papyrus, nobody asked me! I just thought the art department had come up with this cool font.”
So, there you have it: At the very least, James Cameron thinks Papyrus is a cool font.
