January 31, 2024 • 53 mins
On the last day of filming in Nova Scotia, someone poisoned the cast and crew of James Cameron’s Titanic with PCP. Bedlam ensued on a tight-knit set. Everyone became a suspect. Almost three decades later, we unravel a ‘90s Hollywood mystery.
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Very Special Episodes is a new podcast where we tell one incredible story every week. Stranger-than-fiction tales about normal people in extraordinary situations. Stories that make you say, “this should be a movie!” Follow us down a different rabbit hole every Wednesday.
Hosted by Dana Schwartz, Zaron Burnett, Jason English
Written by Katie Mattie
Produced, Edited and Sound Designed by Josh Fisher
Additional Editing by John Washington
Mixing and Mastering by Baheed Frazier
Original Music by Elise McCoy
Research and Fact-Checking by Marisa Brown, Austin Thompson, and Katie Mattie
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Executive Producer is Jason English
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Everybody quite offset I've heard.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
It's the night of August eighth, nineteen ninety six. A
crew in Halifax, Nova Scotia is working hard on the
last day of filming at this location. After weeks of
working overtime and several grueling night shoots, everyone could use
a break. Around midnight, the crew breaks for a meal.
(00:30):
It's a welcome respite from setting up cameras, positioning lights,
and capturing tedious takes of the same scene. It's a
chance to relax with colleagues and friends, if only briefly.
But here's what the crew doesn't know. Within thirty minutes,
(00:50):
all hell will be unleashed on set. It's an incident
no one could have predicted because it had never happened before,
or since it's the night the crew of James Cameron's
Titanic was drugged. Every on set department was affected that night,
(01:12):
from the grips and electricians to the set decorators and
camera operators, from the assistant directors to the actors, and yes,
even future Oscar winner James Cameron. As the chaos ensued
that night, the mystery of who drugged the crew was
ignited a multi year police investigation followed and one question
(01:38):
haunted everyone impacted that fateful evening. Why Welcome to Very
Special Episodes and iHeart original podcast. I'm your host, Dana Schwartz,
and this is Boat Trip, the attempted sinking of Titanic.
(02:02):
So I feel like, because this is our first episode
of the show, we should throw in just like a
little background info on like who we are, why people
might know us. I'm Danish Schwartz, the person talking now.
I host a podcast called Noble Blood, but I also
have if my voice sounds familiar, also did the voice
on the podcast Hayleywood, which was about Bruce Willis sort
(02:24):
of buying up all the property in this tiny Idaho town.
And this podcast called Stealing Superman about Nicholas Cage's incredibly
expensive comic book collection that was stolen. So I guess
this is a good entry point into Very Special Episodes
because my niche has become weird celebrity celebrity adjacent scandals.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
Yes, cultural high points. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Now, I guess I should introduce myself. I'm Zaren Burnette.
I have hosted Black Cowboys and currently I'm hosting Ridiculous
Crime with my partner Elizabeth Dutton and we do pretty
much stories like this, which is odd, weird cultural touchstone moments.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
And I am Jason English. I've worked with you on
some of those shows. And the idea behind very special
episodes is that we had so many ideas for podcasts
and just decided we're probably not going to get around
to making all these limited series, so let's just do
one episode a week. It's our movie of the week.
(03:22):
It's mister mcpheely coming over to mister Rogers and popping
something in the VCR and learning about the crayon factory
or I don't.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Think they ever did a PCP.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
Episode on mister Rogers, but that's kind of what we're
hoping is we can earn earn a spot in your
weekly podcast listening routine, and we'll be back every every
week with a good, weird, fun, sometimes felonious store.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
You know what I realized this podcast is, it's like
when you are at a cocktail party or like out
to dinner with like a group of your partner's friends
and you don't know what to talk about and you
just get to say I heard the craziest story on
a podcast. That is every single one of these episodes.
It is the fodder for you to say I heard
the craziest story on this podcast.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
I love that because that's exactly what I do for
a living. And then now I'm going to do when
I'm just hanging out and be like, oh, I heard
the best story today.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Yeah. Basically, this show is called Very Special Episodes, but
I feel like it also could just be called I
heard it on this podcast.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
I like it. I like it.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
We'll get to some merch ideas later. But you know,
there's a lot of words for a mouse path.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
But it's a little long, but you know, you say
it fast.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Yeah, run through those syllables.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
I also just wanted to say, Jason, We've known each
other for a very long time. I like cold emailed
you when I was in college as a freelance writer
for Mental Floss the magazine. And I was freelancing for
Mental Flaws and working at Mental Fluss right when I
graduated college, and now it's nearly ten years later and
we still get to work together.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
When that email came in, I'll say two things about it.
One of them is a joke, but the earnest thing
is you sent pitches in and it was like this
person is playing a different sport than the rest of us.
These are so well thought out, and I mean we
got so much, so much inbound stuff, but these just
(05:20):
really stood out.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
And and I.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
Remember talking to you at the end of the summer
and saying, like, whatever you're doing is working, and ten
years from now, I'm gonna pull you into doing this
random podcast with me and and look like the long
game it works.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
You're absolutely right, it was absolutely correct.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Lived up to the promise. Zaren.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
We met because I called emailed you and said, I
love what you're doing for for mail?
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Can we can we say mal? Do we not? Do
we not reference mail? How we can say? We can
totally say we can say rip?
Speaker 4 (05:57):
And said I'd just love to work with you on something,
and that became Black Cowboys, And we've worked on a
few things together since, and we've got some other side
projects going for later this year.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Normally I don't like cold things, but that was the
best cold email of my life.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
I am so excited about this podcast because it is
a little known I would say, cultural milestone in nineties history,
like a major cultural moment my own like Zany slightly
zany personal connection to Titanic is I used to be
a writer at Entertainment Weekly, and sometimes they send us
out on like weird press event meetings, and James Cameron
(06:36):
was doing this like science fiction anthology show which I
don't even remember, to be honest, but the result was
I and another colleague for me W got to go
to drive over to like the west side of Los Angeles,
like I don't remember exactly where it was, but it
was a schlep to James Cameron's studio slash like garage museum,
(07:00):
and there were like fifteen of us like reporters and
like random people that James Cameron like personally took us through,
like all the props that he like kept in this
like it's like an airport, a small airport hangar where
he had the box crusher, the box lifter from from Aliens,
like the the mechsuit. He had all like these plaster
(07:21):
faces from Avatar that are all like the CGI. He
had the model of Titanic, like the smaller detailed scale
model that they filmed, and he had like the real
car he had, like the car, the car from Titanic.
Did you see Titanic?
Speaker 1 (07:38):
No, the sex car hand on don glass car, yes, hand.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
On glass Sex car. I was going through trying to
find photos because I know I took photos, but like,
the really embarrassing thing is I was like dating someone
at the time that I went with, and I'm now
I'm like horrified that I deleted all the photos and
like a relationship purge, and I'm like, well, I wish
I kept them.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
We gotta get back there.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
I wish I kept though I know I gotta get
So hopefully he's listening to this, James Cameron, I'm sure
you're listening to this podcast. Invite me back to your hangar.
I won't bring a romantic partner ready to dive into
the cold waters of the North Atlantic.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
Let's do it.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Before we dive into James Cameron's epic Titanic, let's anchor
ourselves with a quick history of the real RMS Titanic.
On April tenth, nineteen twelve, the Titanic set sail on
its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, en.
Speaker 5 (08:38):
Route to New York. It was the grandest ship of
its time, designed to entice affluent passengers with it extravagance,
first class cabins, fine dining, and special amenities. The RMS
Titanic had a series of innovative safety features. The Titanic's
builder said the ship would stay afloat even if the
(08:59):
first four compared men's work, compromise, which made some people
call it unsinkable.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Just four days into the voyage, those people were proven wrong.
Titanic's starboard side collided with an iceberg, triggering an inundation
of water that sank the ship in just two hours
and forty minutes. There were roughly twenty two hundred people aboard.
Fifteen hundred died due to an insufficient number of lifeboats.
(09:30):
The colossal tragedy captivated the world in nineteen twelve and
has continued to fascinate people for over a century. One
such fascinated person James Cameron. Long before James Cameron even
dreamed of filmmaking, he was an artsy kid growing up
(09:51):
in Ontario, Canada. He was born in nineteen fifty four,
and although he grew up hundreds of miles from the sea,
James became enraptured with the ocean.
Speaker 6 (10:03):
He was obsessed with the ocean, with Jacques Cousteau movies
and fascinated by the story of Titanic.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
That's Rebecca Keegan, Senior Film editor at The Hollywood Reporter
and author of the James Cameron biography The Futurist. The
Life and Films of James Cameron.
Speaker 6 (10:22):
There is in nineteen fifties scripted fictional telling of the
story of Titanic that he saw when he was a
kid and made a huge impression on him, just in
terms of the drama and the loss and how scary
it must have been for the people who are on
that ship.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
James's love of water inspired him to earn his scuba
diving certification as a teenager at the local y. He
became fascinated with deep sea submersibles, which could carry people
to the depths of the ocean. James dreamed of exploring
what he thought of as Earth's outer space. The tantalizing
(10:59):
idea of exploring a shipwreck was a dream that would
eventually come true, but before any type of deep sea
exploration would be possible, James and his family moved to Brea,
California when he was around seventeen. When James Cameron started
working in Hollywood, he wasn't a wildly successful director yet.
(11:24):
He was simply building models for low budget Roger Corman films.
That's where he met actor Bill Paxton. James hired Paxton
to help paint movie sets. While working for Roger Corman,
James was offered the chance to take over as director
for Piranha II the spawning. The gig didn't last long,
(11:47):
and James doesn't like to include that in his filmography.
The first feature film directing credit, he claims, however, was
a movie he wrote about a cyborg assassin disguised as
a as a human. Thus began the building of Cameron's reputation.
The Terminator, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, was a small budget action
(12:10):
film with impressive special and practical effects that went on
to be a box office hit. Next was Aliens, the
sequel to Ridley Scott's Alien. Aliens had a budget of
eighteen million dollars. It went on to gross one hundred
and thirty million dollars worldwide. For Cameron's next film, The Abyss,
(12:36):
he turned an unfinished nuclear power plant into a movie set.
He used groundbreaking CGI technology to create the film's water tentacle.
Speaker 6 (12:49):
Cameron's reputation was as a filmmaker who he did what
he said he was going to do, in the sense
that he would tell studios, yes, this is very very expensive. Yes,
this is very ambitious, but I promise you it's going
to work, and it did. He would make movies like
True Lies, which was very very expensive, Terminator two, which
had this like cutting edge technology in it.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
The Abyss was the most expensive movie Cameron had made,
with a production budget of forty five million dollars. While
it wasn't a box office juggernaut like The Terminator and Aliens,
it still earned ninety million dollars worldwide.
Speaker 6 (13:30):
He would do new things and expensive things, and they
would pay off enormously. At the same time that he
had this reputation for really delivering both sort of commercially
and creatively, he was also known to be very exacting,
very demanding off his cast and crew. Part of that
was because he could do a lot of the jobs
(13:50):
on a crew himself.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
After Terminator two and True Lies, Cameron set his sights
on a doomed life story. He pitched the film to
twentieth Century Fox as a new take on a Shakespearean classic.
It was Romeo and Juliet on the Titanic. But even
with his star power as a director, the studios were nervous.
Speaker 6 (14:18):
This was not the kind of movie that the industry
wanted to make anymore. It's a giant, expensive period movie.
They wanted very specific things from James Cameron. They wanted action,
they wanted true lies and Terminator a thousand and you know,
things that he would be known for. So the idea
that he wanted to do to a period romance. Oh, that,
(14:40):
by the way, involved him personally going to the real
Titanic and shooting it like this was, I think understandably
to executives at box a little bit of a head scratcher.
But it speaks to his stature in the industry at
the time that he was able to talk them into
that and ultimately to get the movie made.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
To get the green light, Cameron had to agree to
forego a portion of his earnings. While a box office
sensation would offset his reduced pay, such success was anything
but guaranteed. He also agreed to a PG thirteen rating
and a summer nineteen ninety seven release date, which was
(15:26):
only a year away. For a film that would need
a massive amount of special effects, practical effects, sound stages
that could be flooded, and a giant hunk of the
RMS Titanic, one year was ambitious, and that was without
a mass poisoning event. Principal photography for Titanic began in
(15:54):
July of nineteen ninety six. The first shooting location was
Hall of Nova, Scotia, where the modern day footage would
be filmed. The modern day story follows a team of
treasure hunters searching for a diamond necklace lost in the
wreckage of the Titanic. The lead treasure hunter is Brock Lovett,
(16:16):
played by James Cameron's dear friend Bill Paxton. To bring
the story to life, the production made use of the
resources Halifax had to offer, which were vastly different from
shooting in Los Angeles. While there weren't any famous Hollywood
sound stages in Halifax, there was a harbor that was
(16:38):
perfect for a film that takes place on the ocean.
Speaker 7 (16:43):
In Halifax, you're sixteen to twenty minutes away from the
ocean in any direction.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
That's Claude Russell, one of the on set dressers from
the Halifax crew.
Speaker 7 (16:55):
The kel desh was in the harbor and where the
kel desh was stocked. There was a big, huge warehouse
for building parts on boats. They had sets of the
interior of the labs on the boat and I think
the submarine too. They had models like an interior set
of that.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Although they were filming the interior set in a warehouse
instead of a sound stage. It was the normal setup
for the Halifax film community, a community that's much smaller
than sprawling Los Angeles.
Speaker 7 (17:27):
The Halifax film crew, like the IA crew, were all
pretty tight. Everybody knows everybody there may be at times
enough to accommodate two to four productions. Maritimers just got
a great reputation as far as meeting people, like getting
along with people. You know, there's a lot of respect
(17:48):
there and camaraderie there for sure.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Word of James Cameron's notorious reputation made it all the
way to Halifax.
Speaker 7 (17:57):
People from Elie that came here to were that were
probably with them on other shows. We're saying, you know,
you gotta be careful. You got to watch yourself because
you won't put up with anything kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Right from the get go, the shoot was grueling. Like
the Abyss, Filming a nautical movie presented challenges that a
land based film didn't face. They were filming on an
actual research vessel without an elevator. That meant the crew
had to manually haul the equipment up and down ladders
(18:31):
and staircases, a process that can be exhausting and time consuming.
Speaker 7 (18:37):
The unique thing about it was we were going on
a boat, and so the boat would go about twenty
five miles off the shore of the Coasta, Halifax. And
they were long days, fourteen fifteen hour days. I started
at my rate, but I had no turnaround in between
the days, and I ended up working triple overtime for
(18:58):
their whole show.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Almost at the helm of the production was a director
who knew how to make the impossible possible.
Speaker 7 (19:07):
Lots of people said he was hard on the crew,
but my experience was I felt like I was working
with somebody that knew exactly what they wanted. They knew
exactly what they were doing, and he wasn't afraid. Like
if I was moving at a table, all of a sudden,
he just stopped new zoom, and he'd got the other
end of the table with me, and he'd moved the
table over and make a quick comment and then back
(19:29):
to on his chair. But each swore a lot. We
went through a lot of focus pollers. One week, he
wasn't afraid to call people out and get rid of them.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
One person who had been fired was a crew member
who clashed with the catering company on the second to
last day of shooting in Canada. Toward the end of
production in Halifax, the crew was working nights, arriving on
set around five pm I'm filming as the moon glowed,
(20:02):
and leaving early in the morning at sunrise. The conditions
were so intense that for some crew members it was
hard to distinguish what they were seeing at the end
of each day was the sun rising or setting. After
weeks of NonStop work, August eighth, nineteen ninety six would
(20:24):
be their last night of filming. The crew arrived for
their final call time between five and six pm. The
shoot started like any other day, dressing the set, hair
and makeup for the actors, framing each shot, the usual
chaos that accompanies a movie set. At the meal break,
(20:44):
a catering company served seafood chowder. Depending on who you ask,
you'll get a different answer of what was in the chowder,
either mussels, clams, lobster, or all of the above.
Speaker 7 (20:58):
It was midnight, I think they called lunch. Hating was
outside in like a mobile unit. So we went up,
got what you wanted, and then we went inside that
warehouse where all the sets were, and there were tables out,
so it was like any other show break for lunch,
you have your hour lunch. It was shortly halfway through
(21:22):
just something wasn't right. At first, you thought it was
just yourself, but eve when you're talking to other people,
you quickly realized, like, there's something going down here.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
There was an undeniable buzz as more and more people
started to feel funny, and all of.
Speaker 7 (21:41):
A sudden, the ED got up and said, Okay, there
seems to be an issue here. How many of you
guys are feeling this way? You guys, you on that way?
And so then he kind of started circtlly, you know,
I said, okay, good crew on the left, Bad crew
on the right. It was hilarious and we were all
kind of laughing, you know. It was kind of hilarious
because this is never happened. I don't know if in
the history of productions, if anything's ever stopped like that.
(22:04):
Immediately to address what was going down, we didn't proceed
with shooting. It was a concern.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
Good crew meaning that no one was feeling strange in
any way. Bad crew consisted of everyone who couldn't figure
out why their sense of reality was shifting. While no
one knew what was happening, it became clear what differentiated
the good crew from the bad crew. The only people
(22:32):
who were feeling strange were the people who had eaten
the chowder. But knowing it was tied to the chowder
didn't actually solve the mystery of why everyone started to
feel weird.
Speaker 7 (22:46):
We didn't know what it was. My thought was food poisoning,
because that seems to be common thing sometimes with seafood.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Claude had a good, plausible guess at what was happening,
so did James Cameron, who had also eaten the chowder.
He recounted his thoughts to Rebecca.
Speaker 6 (23:05):
They were lining up a shot, I think with a
stand in for Glorias Stuart, and she just keeled right over.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Glorias Stewart was the actress playing one hundred year old Rose.
This is her stand in, keeling right over.
Speaker 6 (23:21):
The stand in just passed out, and then other people
on the set started to get sick, including James Cameron.
So as people are starting to get sick, Cameron realizes
what's happening and decides to run off to the bathroom
and try and make himself throw up, thinking if I
could get this stuff out of my system fast enough,
at least I'll be okay and I'll be able to
(23:41):
sort of steer this crew. He didn't entirely succeed. He
comes back to set and his eyes are all bloodshot
from making himself puke, which of course freaked everybody out
and looked vaguely like a Terminator character, and they thought,
oh my gosh, this is some kind of zombie virus.
What's wrong with a gem? We're all dying.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
James immediately thought it was something called red tide, which
long story short, can make shellfish in affected areas dangerous
to eat. It was a good theory. However, the truth
was more sinister. No one knew it yet, but the
chowder had been laced with the drug fen cyclodine, better
(24:25):
known as PCP or angel dust. The more chowder a
person ate, the greater PCP side effects they endured, and
it affected everyone differently.
Speaker 7 (24:37):
There was a range. People were kind of joking and laughing,
you know, teasing each other. I don't recall us realizing
that we were getting high, but we were definitely acting
like it because nobody knew what the hell was going down.
I remember one person. I think she was continuity and
an ex hippie or still a hippie, but everybody was like,
you know, how you doing. I guess she had maybe
(24:59):
her drug days, had a bad experience, since she was
like almost panicking, saying I don't know what's going on,
I don't like this, feeling kind of like she was
skinning wordy.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Well, some people were enjoying the high, many others were terrified.
It's jarring enough to have your reality unintentionally distorted. For
someone who wasn't used to taking any kind of drug,
the experience was even more startling. Of all, the way
is to get a group of eighty plus people stoned.
(25:32):
PCP is an interesting choice. It started as an injectable
anesthetic in the nineteen fifties. It was originally used on
humans and later on animals, but was banned when its
side effects were determined to be too potent. Let us
run you through the potential side effects of an inadvertent
(25:53):
PCP dosing.
Speaker 8 (25:55):
Novous in the arms and legs. Nausea, vomiting and paranoia,
maaker sweating, a racing harbeat, and increased blood pressure are
likely serious. Sie effects may include delirium, psychosis, associate of hallucinations,
feeling the attachment from the environment, and seizures. Filly doctor,
if you're exhibiting violent behavior or wish to do would make
the dolcohol. PCP could result in resiratory depression, coma or death.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
And on the set of Titanic, PCP caused a lot
of unsuspecting people to panic. The surprise drugging presented a
real challenge for the people on set who hadn't ingested PCP.
The tight knit community of filmmakers was in extreme distress.
(26:31):
It was the people they'd known for years, working side
by side on multiple productions. They watched as their colleagues
and friends struggled. Even though some people enjoyed the buzz,
others were brought to tears, confused at what was happening
to their bodies. Some were even physically ill and moaning.
(26:53):
Some people tried to work but were too confused to
do so, and others who initially made it into the
good crew category slowly realized they were part of the
bad crew. Through the madness, the crew handled the situation
like they would on a regular day of filming on
(27:15):
set by working together.
Speaker 7 (27:19):
Everybody was like you know how you doing. We were
all talking. We were all like wondering what was going
to be the next step, thinking maybe we have to
go to the hospital, you know, especially if like one
hundred people needed to use the bathroom simultaneously. We need
to know what was clinta.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Someone called nine one one. Paramedics from the local Dartmouth
hospital arrived on the scene, along with the police. The
good news was that no one was in mortal jeopardy.
The bad news there wasn't much the paramedics could do.
Speaker 7 (27:53):
I just remember us all getting organized and ned Satas said, Okay,
we're going to go to the hospital. It was just
across the street, ironically, and so just organized to everybody
in a line. We were all like feeling a little
silly and stupid that, you know, we were all walking
down the sidewalk and crossing the crosswalk and going into
(28:14):
the hospital and dating a hospital.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
The people who were unaffected and hadn't eaten the chowder
were instructed to stay on set until they were cleared
to go home. Without a definitive time they could leave,
they decided to kick back, relax and join in on
the fun sort of. One of the departments had a
bottle of vodka which they passed around. At the same time,
(28:41):
dozens of crew members high on PCP, descended on the
Dartmouth Hospital.
Speaker 7 (28:50):
I recall a lot of beige walls, like an old hospital.
It's not a big hospital, the Dartmouth Hospital. So it
was like they are trying to find chairs for us
to sit down gripped, have found wheelchairs and were able
to do wheelies down the hallways, and it was just
(29:11):
so surreal at that point, I guess maybe we were peaking,
and I was like, Wow, this is just like so
cool in a bizarre way.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
James Cameron recounted the scene to Rebecca.
Speaker 6 (29:24):
So an enormous number of people are hitting this little,
tiny emergency room, and it just got weird. In the
emergency room waiting room. The cinematographer was like leading a
conga line. People were not acting the way you do
if you just have food poisoning. Something clearly weirder than
that was going on.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
And Claude was enjoying the high.
Speaker 7 (29:45):
I just remember being stoned and having a good time
with my colleagues. It was just so surreal, you know,
like James Cameron, Bill Paxon, we're all going cross the streets,
sitting in a hallway in a hospital. It was crazy.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Yes, actor Bill Paxton had eaten the chowder as well.
At some point, Bill Paxton ditched the hospital. In an
interview with Larry King, he said he told James Cameron, Jim,
I'm not going to hang out here. This is bedlam.
I'm going to wander back down and drink a case
of beer.
Speaker 6 (30:18):
At one point, Cameron told me he saw his I
think it was his first ad woman who was just
sort of really smart and on it and capable, and
she was kind of trying to direct traffic in the
midst of this emergency room. And she was also verly,
clearly altered and perhaps didn't notice it. And so Karen
was talking to her on the walkie talkie as he's
(30:39):
sitting in the room with her, and at one point
he says to her, where are you And she says,
I'm taking care of people in the hospital, And he says,
you realize I'm sitting right here and you're talking to
me right here, And apparently she comes at him with
a pen and like stabs him in the face with
a pen. Again, this is beyond food poisoning. Something heavy
duty is happening.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Here when he wasn't getting stabbed in the face with
a pen, James Cameron was.
Speaker 7 (31:06):
Riding the high I remember James kind of slouched back
a bit and chair and just smiling in the kind
of glaze smile and just looking up and down the
hallway and saying, wow, you know, something like this is
strange or I can't believe it. He was enjoying it,
but we didn't know what was going down.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
Some people were sprawled out on gurney's wailing. The hospital
staff did its best to take care of everyone, so.
Speaker 7 (31:32):
I remember nurses just kind of like kind of hurting
cats almost, or kind of like okay, you sit down,
or kind of like trying to calm us down. And
then eventually they gave us a little It looked like
a yogurt drink bottle, but it was black. It was charcoal.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Liquid. Charcoal is used to treat overdoses and poisonings, among
other less dramatic things. The charcoal is supposed to bind
to anything that in a person's gut and help eliminate it.
It's an effective way to get rid of a great
many toxins, even if you don't know which toxin A
(32:12):
person has taken, so who would be the metaphorical guinea
pig to drink the charcoal first.
Speaker 6 (32:21):
The interesting thing, it sounds like Cameron remained Cameron in
the sense that he, like everybody else, was feeling some
weird symptoms. He was clearly a little bit off, but
he was still kind of leader to the crew in
that sense, and Cameron sort of led the crew and
the drinking of the charcoal drink to expunge whatever this
(32:41):
toxin was from their systems as quickly as possible.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
After everyone drank their dose of charcoal, there wasn't much
else the hospital staff could do for the crew. Those
who could be were discharged and sent home, and everyone
who was still on set was cleared to leave as well.
James Cameron stayed up late with Bill Paxton drinking beer,
reflecting on the bizarre night and expressing relief that nobody
(33:09):
got seriously hurt.
Speaker 6 (33:12):
It was certainly scary and weird, but they just kind
of reflected back on this extraordinary movie, which had all
of these problems and delays and complexities and expenses.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
There was one thing that would bring the cast and
crew back together very soon. The PCP incident had put
a wrench. In the final day of shooting in Halifax,
with only half of the shooting schedule completed, the crew
still needed to finish what they started. They were given
(33:43):
these standard time off, which was long enough for the
effects of PCP to wear off. The now sober cast
and crew returned in the evening for the final time.
The chaos of the event would inspire one crew member
to grab their guitar and sing a song about it.
Speaker 7 (34:04):
I'm not picking on the grips, but I'm guessing it
was one of the.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
Grips, and the absurdity of the situation would be commemorated
with a souvenir.
Speaker 7 (34:13):
The person who hired me called me in Annie Fuller.
She's not around on anymore, but she was an icon.
She was really good at what she did. She kind
of had a raspy smoker's voice, and she would do
like ten things at once and kind of chaotic straightaway.
But everybody loved her here in Halifax worked with her
(34:33):
while all this was going down, So maybe it was
while we were in the hospital. I drew the sketch
of Bola chowder with a titanic kind of sinking down
into bola chowder and on the bottom. I put good crew,
bad crew, and Annie just flipped out. She said, oh man,
I love that. She goes, could you fix that up?
She wanted me to find I want to get T
(34:54):
shirts made out of them, so like really, she goes, yeah, yeah,
yeah yeah. She got them embroidered, not so drm embroidered,
which was a little higher in and she gave them
out to a local people. I guess that worked on
the show. I'm sure there's one exists.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Somewhere, thankfully. The final day of shooting was smooth sailing
until James Cameron called out, that's a wrap on Halifax.
But as the shoot ended, a new challenge emerged. The
identity of the person who spiked the chowder was unknown.
(35:30):
The search for the person who poisoned the cast and
crew began, and on a set full of longtime friends
and colleagues, the investigation hit uncomfortably close to home. The
(35:52):
poisoning of a film director and his cast and crew
sound like the plot of a movie. In reality, James
Cameron's on set nightmare that spurred an investigation. In the beginning,
no one knew what mind altering substance the cast and
crew had consumed, along with their seafood chowder. John Landau,
(36:13):
a producer on the film and James Cameron's business partner,
was the first to find out.
Speaker 6 (36:20):
There was a toxicology report which was given to producer
John Landau, in which it was revealed that there was
PCP in the chowder.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
According to Vulture, the toxicology report was from the Nova
Scotia Department of Health, who handed the investigation over to
the Halifax Regional Police Service. At first glance, there was
a long list of potential suspects, like anyone who was
on set that night. Over eighty people had been drugged
(36:49):
and there were a bunch of others who hadn't been.
At least one hundred people were present when the PCP
chaos commenced. It happened to a close knit community of filmmakers.
Could a longtime friend and colleague have gone rogue to
get everyone stoned? And if so, why was it a
(37:10):
prank that went too far with someone harboring a grudge
against James Cameron? Could it have been an attempt to
sabotage the final day of shooting or the production? Overall?
The question of how the culprit acquired PCP added another
layer of intrigue. They could have synthesized their own PCP,
(37:33):
but they would have had to do it without catching
the attention of law enforcement. The ingredients to make PCP
are highly monitored, so much so that if you purchase
enough of the ingredients to get started, there's a strong
chance a police officer will knock on your door. But
the Halifax Regional Police Service wasn't aware of someone working
(37:56):
on the film who had purchased those ingredients, and the
police weren't aware of anyone from Titanic purchasing angel dust
from a dealer. Theories of who had done it swirled
among the crew.
Speaker 9 (38:10):
I heard one where one guy wanted to go to
Mexico because that's where they were going after Halifax, and
the cater guy didn't want him, or didn't allow him
or whatever, so he fired him and then I guess
he got hired again the next day or something like that.
Speaker 6 (38:24):
One of the theories was that someone who had been
fired from the set as disgruntled crew member had spiked
the chowder sort of as revenge, maybe potentially to get
the catering crew in trouble. Some people thought it was
folks being angry at Cameron for his sort of intense
(38:45):
leadership style. But it's all just theories.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
The CEO of one of the catering companies in question
told Entertainment Weekly that it was the Hollywood crowd bringing
in psychedelics and it was a quote party thing that
got carried away. James Cameron's future wife, actress Susie Amos,
didn't eat the chowder, which Cameron jokingly said made her
(39:12):
high on the suspect list.
Speaker 7 (39:15):
Just what everybody else was talking. Somebody got pissed off
with I don't know if it was the crew or
the catering and so they just decided to sabotage the
guy who was the caterer.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
Remember, the night before the PCP incident, a crew member
who clashed with the caterer had been fired. The theory
was that the now ex crew member was so upset
they added PCP to the chowder to sabotage the catering company.
The disgruntled crew member's plan worked, as the catering company
(39:51):
was fired the next day. It's a theory that even
James Cameron supported in an interview with Vanity Fair. Yet
there was no no easy answer for the police, and
their search continued despite the ongoing investigation, James Cameron had
a movie to complete. Regrettably, this wouldn't be the last
(40:12):
significant hurdle he'd face during production. After the Halifax shoot wrapped,
James Cameron headed to Rosarito, Mexico to film most of
the flashback scenes of Jack and Rose on the Titanic.
News of other mishaps and hurdles while filming became public
(40:34):
knowledge through the media, like rumors of James Cameron's temper
on set and the perils of underwater stunt work. Kate
Winslet told The Los Angeles Times about some of the
harsh conditions she endured, which included chipping a bone in
her elbow.
Speaker 6 (40:51):
Kate has talked about this, She's wearing this sort of
flowing dress and a coat, and she's doing these underwater
sequences where she's traveling through the ship and through all
these little kind of tight spaces. If you ask Cameron
about it, he says that they were always very aware
of where she was and very focused on her safety,
(41:12):
and certainly all ended well, but from her perspective, it
was quite scary when at one point she did get
caught on something with her costume, and I think the
peril in some ways that you see on the faces
of the actors during the sinking scene, there's a way
in which they were actually feeling that. I mean, they
were literally filling the set with water. That's not cig water.
(41:34):
They're not sitting in a little swimming pool pretending with
you know, CG ship behind them. It was a real
ship that they'd built and they were filling it with water.
And for the actors, you don't have to try too
hard to seem terrified in that circumstance.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
The media latched down to the narrative of how unhinged
James Cameron's set had become. In both Rosarto and Halifax.
Speaker 6 (41:59):
The PCP incident would have fed into a narrative at
the time that this movie is just a hot mess
and look at the crazy, ridiculous things that are happening
on it.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
To make matters worse, Titanic was getting a bad press
for its record sized budget. The film's original budget was
estimated to be eighty million dollars, which turned into one
hundred and ten million when the reality of how much
it would cost sank in. But the production was so
(42:31):
complex that the shooting schedule took much longer than anticipated.
James Cameron's period piece Love Story was turning into the
most expensive movie ever made.
Speaker 6 (42:45):
He had to get his release date pushed, which studios
never liked to do, and with these big ideas he had,
for instance, building the ship almost to scale in Mexico,
and all these little details like the china was the
correct china that was used on Titanic, and even if
you flipped over a plate in the dining room, it
(43:06):
said the right thing on the back of the plate
that it would have said on Titanic. Now, normally movie
sets are not that detailed. You're not necessarily going to
bring a camera in and flip over a piece of china.
He wanted that level of verisimilitude for his actors and
to kind of put everyone in that historical moment. But
(43:27):
with that came enormous expenses. Famously, the movie was being
tracked by a lot of the Hollywood trade press and
expected to be an enormous flop. Variety had a Titanic
Watch column just kind of on a regular basis, sort
of mocking the challenges that the film was facing along
the way. So the expectations were all that this is
(43:48):
going to completely tank, no pun intended. People were not
expecting good things from Titanic.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Despite the rabid negative media fodder, the two hundred million
dollar budget, the cascade of onset mishaps, and rumors of
James Cameron's intensity. When Titanic was released in theaters on
December nineteenth, nineteen ninety seven, five months after its initial
release date, the movie was more than a hit. Over
(44:19):
the course of a few months, the most expensive movie
ever made, became the highest grossing film of all time
and the first film to gross over one billion dollars.
Speaker 6 (44:33):
When Titanic opened, it exceeded anyone's expectations for the film.
It was such a cultural phenomenon. Not only the many,
many Oscar nominations, the enormous box office receipts, but there
were all these weird other sort of ripple effects, like
cruises became more popular. There was a phenomenon of girls
(44:56):
going to see the movie over and over again who
were in love with Leonardo de kat and then having
crying parties.
Speaker 7 (45:03):
At the time, it was just another big production, but
the once it started to screen, in the popularity of it,
it's like, wow, I was so part of that. I
have all these great memories of different things that had
nothing to do with the poisoning, just the whole working
on the show. I was very proud of working on
that show.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
At the nineteen ninety eight Academy Awards, Titanic earned a
whopping fourteen Oscar nominations, tying the record for the most
nominations beside All About Eve. It won in eleven categories,
including a Best Picture and Best Director, tying Ben her
(45:42):
for the winningest film in cinema history. James Cameron gave
a controversial acceptance speech while holding the Oscar for Best Director.
He quoted Jack saying I'm the king of the world. Well,
Titanic reached unprecedented levels of success. The Halifax Regional Police
(46:05):
Service was still investigating the PCP incident. There were no
major breakthroughs in the case. At the same time, the
people who had been on set that night were moving
on to new opportunities.
Speaker 6 (46:19):
Well, the interesting thing about James Cameron is he did
not make another movie for a very very long time
after Titanic. He made an enormous amount of money from it,
and that gave him the freedom to do other kinds
of things for the next several years. That meant a
lot of things that didn't have a lot to do
with Hollywood. It meant dives and documentaries about the ocean. Interestingly,
(46:42):
that first ad the woman who came at him and
stabbed him in the face for their pen he ended
up hiring her again on one of those documentaries that
he filmed in Halifax. So obviously no hard feelings from
the PCP incident.
Speaker 2 (46:54):
After Titanic, Bill Paxton continued to accrue a host of
acting credits. He made his directorial debut in two thousand
and one with the film Frailty, which he also starred in,
and while the Halifax crew had an impressive movie on
their resumes, life continued as normal in their special filmmaking community.
(47:16):
The crew would go on to work on films and
TV shows of varying sizes, although Titanic did draw a
lot of awe and wonder.
Speaker 7 (47:26):
At any time any of my friends, they go, oh,
you work on a film? Is this what films do
you work on? So eventually I have to cite Titanic.
As soon as I say Titanic, I got everybody's attention.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
As for the culprit behind the PCP spiked chowder, they
were never caught in February of nineteen ninety nine, two
and a half years after the crew was drugged, the
Halifax Regional Police closed the investigation without a suspect. The
case was officially cold, with no culprit and no motive.
(48:00):
There's no answer as to why someone poisoned James Cameron
and his crew. One thing that is certain, however, is
that the mayhem the PCP culprit brought to Titanic didn't
stop James Cameron from creating one of the greatest films
of all time. Despite all of the onset issues and
(48:21):
media articles claiming Titanic would fail, James proved his critics wrong.
Speaker 6 (48:28):
You know, one thing I've noticed about Cameron is I
think he actually kind of gets a kick out of
when people underestimate him. He is good at tuning that
stuff out or sort of taking it in but not
taking it on, if that makes sense. And I think
he knew he was making something pretty special, and I
don't think he put much stock in the media coverage
(48:48):
of him.
Speaker 2 (48:50):
James Cameron would go on to surpass Titanic as the
highest grossing film of all time with two thousand and
nine's Avatar, followed by Avia the Way of Water. In
twenty twenty two, all three films have grossed over two
billion dollars over twenty six years later. It's unlikely that
(49:11):
the PCP culprit will ever be named, but when it
comes to Hollywood, anything is possible.
Speaker 6 (49:18):
It sounds like it should be the next season of
True Detective or something like these Canadian cops trying to
solve this twenty five year old mystery of who spiked
the chowder on the Titanic set.
Speaker 2 (49:28):
Until then, the only things that remain of that chaotic
night in Halifax are the memories of the people who
lived it and the good Crew bad Cruise shirts that
Claude helped make. I have to say, for like a
story about spiked chowder with PCP, like, there are moments
(49:51):
of this that are very heartwarming. There's like moments of
love and friendship that I found very endearing. It's a
more wholesome story than I expected.
Speaker 1 (49:58):
The moment when James ca gets stabbed in the face
while he's high on PCP. You wouldn't think that would
be a sweet moment, but it totally turns out to
be this sweet moment because he then rehires the woman
who stabbed him in the face with the pen. I mean,
what a sweetheart, what a forgiving guy.
Speaker 2 (50:13):
That is what people say about James Cameron. People are
constantly saying, James Cameron, huge sweetheart. That's like the only
thing we hear about him.
Speaker 1 (50:20):
I think that's why they called him King of the World.
Is like king of the sweethearts.
Speaker 3 (50:23):
Really, yeah, he's.
Speaker 2 (50:24):
The sweetest man in Hollywood.
Speaker 3 (50:26):
He moved that table. That's all I needed.
Speaker 4 (50:28):
Like, when I'm carrying a table, I want one other
person just to help, and look, he did it.
Speaker 2 (50:33):
I really do like his relationship though with Bill Paxton.
Speaker 1 (50:36):
Oh yeah, oh, come on, the two of them. I means,
sitting there with that twelve pac trying to get down
off of the high. They don't even understand. I mean,
how amazing is that. You're like, hey, buddy, you got
I got some beers. Let's go back to my place
and we'll just wind this down. And they're both sideways.
I mean almost like I could relate. That's all I'm
gonna say. I could relate.
Speaker 4 (50:52):
So, Zarin, is Bill Paxon your very special character for
this episode? We should do this each episode. Let's pick
one person each.
Speaker 1 (51:00):
I would say, Yeah, Bill Pexston is my spirit character.
And then also the whoever was who came up with
the idea we should race wheelchairs in a hospital.
Speaker 3 (51:09):
That's my dude as well.
Speaker 2 (51:10):
My very special character is the nurses at the hospital
who had to deal with this influx of people just
absolutely tripping and confused and probably just got a crazy
story for the rest of their lives.
Speaker 4 (51:23):
Truly, I would tell that to every patient after August
nineteen ninety six would get that story if I if
I had been there that night. My very special character,
and it wasn't close for me. Great choices all, but
for me it's the late Annie Fuller, the one who
got the good crew, bad cruise shirt silk screened. She
(51:45):
is the I'm sorry not silk screened, the embroidered better
than silk.
Speaker 3 (51:48):
Screen Oh yeah, embroider.
Speaker 4 (51:50):
You got to make these things live on in fashion,
in merch. And it reminds me that about two minutes
after you all agreed to do this podcast, I was
hitting you up for your hoodie sizes, for hat sizes.
I just wanted, like, we got to move this from
the podcast to the podcast adjacent clothing, and so be
(52:10):
on the lookout. We're gonna get that headed your way
real soon. Very Special Episodes is made by some very
special people.
Speaker 3 (52:19):
This episode was written by Katie Maddie.
Speaker 4 (52:22):
Our producer, editor and sound designer is the Great Josh Fisher.
Additional editing by John Washington, mixing and mastering by Baheed Frasier,
Original music by Elise McCoy, Show logo by Lucy Kintonia,
Research and fact checking by Marissa Brown, Austin Thompson and
(52:42):
Katie Maddie. Very Special Episodes is hosted by Danish Schwartz,
Zaren Burnett and me Jason English. I am your executive
producer and we'll see you back here next week. Very
Special Episodes is the production of iHeart Podcasts.
Everybody quite offset I've heard.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
It's the night of August eighth, nineteen ninety six. A
crew in Halifax, Nova Scotia is working hard on the
last day of filming at this location. After weeks of
working overtime and several grueling night shoots, everyone could use
a break. Around midnight, the crew breaks for a meal.
(00:30):
It's a welcome respite from setting up cameras, positioning lights,
and capturing tedious takes of the same scene. It's a
chance to relax with colleagues and friends, if only briefly.
But here's what the crew doesn't know. Within thirty minutes,
(00:50):
all hell will be unleashed on set. It's an incident
no one could have predicted because it had never happened before,
or since it's the night the crew of James Cameron's
Titanic was drugged. Every on set department was affected that night,
(01:12):
from the grips and electricians to the set decorators and
camera operators, from the assistant directors to the actors, and yes,
even future Oscar winner James Cameron. As the chaos ensued
that night, the mystery of who drugged the crew was
ignited a multi year police investigation followed and one question
(01:38):
haunted everyone impacted that fateful evening. Why Welcome to Very
Special Episodes and iHeart original podcast. I'm your host, Dana Schwartz,
and this is Boat Trip, the attempted sinking of Titanic.
(02:02):
So I feel like, because this is our first episode
of the show, we should throw in just like a
little background info on like who we are, why people
might know us. I'm Danish Schwartz, the person talking now.
I host a podcast called Noble Blood, but I also
have if my voice sounds familiar, also did the voice
on the podcast Hayleywood, which was about Bruce Willis sort
(02:24):
of buying up all the property in this tiny Idaho town.
And this podcast called Stealing Superman about Nicholas Cage's incredibly
expensive comic book collection that was stolen. So I guess
this is a good entry point into Very Special Episodes
because my niche has become weird celebrity celebrity adjacent scandals.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
Yes, cultural high points. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Now, I guess I should introduce myself. I'm Zaren Burnette.
I have hosted Black Cowboys and currently I'm hosting Ridiculous
Crime with my partner Elizabeth Dutton and we do pretty
much stories like this, which is odd, weird cultural touchstone moments.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
And I am Jason English. I've worked with you on
some of those shows. And the idea behind very special
episodes is that we had so many ideas for podcasts
and just decided we're probably not going to get around
to making all these limited series, so let's just do
one episode a week. It's our movie of the week.
(03:22):
It's mister mcpheely coming over to mister Rogers and popping
something in the VCR and learning about the crayon factory
or I don't.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Think they ever did a PCP.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
Episode on mister Rogers, but that's kind of what we're
hoping is we can earn earn a spot in your
weekly podcast listening routine, and we'll be back every every
week with a good, weird, fun, sometimes felonious store.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
You know what I realized this podcast is, it's like
when you are at a cocktail party or like out
to dinner with like a group of your partner's friends
and you don't know what to talk about and you
just get to say I heard the craziest story on
a podcast. That is every single one of these episodes.
It is the fodder for you to say I heard
the craziest story on this podcast.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
I love that because that's exactly what I do for
a living. And then now I'm going to do when
I'm just hanging out and be like, oh, I heard
the best story today.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Yeah. Basically, this show is called Very Special Episodes, but
I feel like it also could just be called I
heard it on this podcast.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
I like it. I like it.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
We'll get to some merch ideas later. But you know,
there's a lot of words for a mouse path.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
But it's a little long, but you know, you say
it fast.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Yeah, run through those syllables.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
I also just wanted to say, Jason, We've known each
other for a very long time. I like cold emailed
you when I was in college as a freelance writer
for Mental Floss the magazine. And I was freelancing for
Mental Flaws and working at Mental Fluss right when I
graduated college, and now it's nearly ten years later and
we still get to work together.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
When that email came in, I'll say two things about it.
One of them is a joke, but the earnest thing
is you sent pitches in and it was like this
person is playing a different sport than the rest of us.
These are so well thought out, and I mean we
got so much, so much inbound stuff, but these just
(05:20):
really stood out.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
And and I.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
Remember talking to you at the end of the summer
and saying, like, whatever you're doing is working, and ten
years from now, I'm gonna pull you into doing this
random podcast with me and and look like the long
game it works.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
You're absolutely right, it was absolutely correct.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Lived up to the promise. Zaren.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
We met because I called emailed you and said, I
love what you're doing for for mail?
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Can we can we say mal? Do we not? Do
we not reference mail? How we can say? We can
totally say we can say rip?
Speaker 4 (05:57):
And said I'd just love to work with you on something,
and that became Black Cowboys, And we've worked on a
few things together since, and we've got some other side
projects going for later this year.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Normally I don't like cold things, but that was the
best cold email of my life.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
I am so excited about this podcast because it is
a little known I would say, cultural milestone in nineties history,
like a major cultural moment my own like Zany slightly
zany personal connection to Titanic is I used to be
a writer at Entertainment Weekly, and sometimes they send us
out on like weird press event meetings, and James Cameron
(06:36):
was doing this like science fiction anthology show which I
don't even remember, to be honest, but the result was
I and another colleague for me W got to go
to drive over to like the west side of Los Angeles,
like I don't remember exactly where it was, but it
was a schlep to James Cameron's studio slash like garage museum,
(07:00):
and there were like fifteen of us like reporters and
like random people that James Cameron like personally took us through,
like all the props that he like kept in this
like it's like an airport, a small airport hangar where
he had the box crusher, the box lifter from from Aliens,
like the the mechsuit. He had all like these plaster
(07:21):
faces from Avatar that are all like the CGI. He
had the model of Titanic, like the smaller detailed scale
model that they filmed, and he had like the real
car he had, like the car, the car from Titanic.
Did you see Titanic?
Speaker 1 (07:38):
No, the sex car hand on don glass car, yes, hand.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
On glass Sex car. I was going through trying to
find photos because I know I took photos, but like,
the really embarrassing thing is I was like dating someone
at the time that I went with, and I'm now
I'm like horrified that I deleted all the photos and
like a relationship purge, and I'm like, well, I wish
I kept them.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
We gotta get back there.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
I wish I kept though I know I gotta get
So hopefully he's listening to this, James Cameron, I'm sure
you're listening to this podcast. Invite me back to your hangar.
I won't bring a romantic partner ready to dive into
the cold waters of the North Atlantic.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
Let's do it.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Before we dive into James Cameron's epic Titanic, let's anchor
ourselves with a quick history of the real RMS Titanic.
On April tenth, nineteen twelve, the Titanic set sail on
its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, en.
Speaker 5 (08:38):
Route to New York. It was the grandest ship of
its time, designed to entice affluent passengers with it extravagance,
first class cabins, fine dining, and special amenities. The RMS
Titanic had a series of innovative safety features. The Titanic's
builder said the ship would stay afloat even if the
(08:59):
first four compared men's work, compromise, which made some people
call it unsinkable.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Just four days into the voyage, those people were proven wrong.
Titanic's starboard side collided with an iceberg, triggering an inundation
of water that sank the ship in just two hours
and forty minutes. There were roughly twenty two hundred people aboard.
Fifteen hundred died due to an insufficient number of lifeboats.
(09:30):
The colossal tragedy captivated the world in nineteen twelve and
has continued to fascinate people for over a century. One
such fascinated person James Cameron. Long before James Cameron even
dreamed of filmmaking, he was an artsy kid growing up
(09:51):
in Ontario, Canada. He was born in nineteen fifty four,
and although he grew up hundreds of miles from the sea,
James became enraptured with the ocean.
Speaker 6 (10:03):
He was obsessed with the ocean, with Jacques Cousteau movies
and fascinated by the story of Titanic.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
That's Rebecca Keegan, Senior Film editor at The Hollywood Reporter
and author of the James Cameron biography The Futurist. The
Life and Films of James Cameron.
Speaker 6 (10:22):
There is in nineteen fifties scripted fictional telling of the
story of Titanic that he saw when he was a
kid and made a huge impression on him, just in
terms of the drama and the loss and how scary
it must have been for the people who are on
that ship.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
James's love of water inspired him to earn his scuba
diving certification as a teenager at the local y. He
became fascinated with deep sea submersibles, which could carry people
to the depths of the ocean. James dreamed of exploring
what he thought of as Earth's outer space. The tantalizing
(10:59):
idea of exploring a shipwreck was a dream that would
eventually come true, but before any type of deep sea
exploration would be possible, James and his family moved to Brea,
California when he was around seventeen. When James Cameron started
working in Hollywood, he wasn't a wildly successful director yet.
(11:24):
He was simply building models for low budget Roger Corman films.
That's where he met actor Bill Paxton. James hired Paxton
to help paint movie sets. While working for Roger Corman,
James was offered the chance to take over as director
for Piranha II the spawning. The gig didn't last long,
(11:47):
and James doesn't like to include that in his filmography.
The first feature film directing credit, he claims, however, was
a movie he wrote about a cyborg assassin disguised as
a as a human. Thus began the building of Cameron's reputation.
The Terminator, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, was a small budget action
(12:10):
film with impressive special and practical effects that went on
to be a box office hit. Next was Aliens, the
sequel to Ridley Scott's Alien. Aliens had a budget of
eighteen million dollars. It went on to gross one hundred
and thirty million dollars worldwide. For Cameron's next film, The Abyss,
(12:36):
he turned an unfinished nuclear power plant into a movie set.
He used groundbreaking CGI technology to create the film's water tentacle.
Speaker 6 (12:49):
Cameron's reputation was as a filmmaker who he did what
he said he was going to do, in the sense
that he would tell studios, yes, this is very very expensive. Yes,
this is very ambitious, but I promise you it's going
to work, and it did. He would make movies like
True Lies, which was very very expensive, Terminator two, which
had this like cutting edge technology in it.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
The Abyss was the most expensive movie Cameron had made,
with a production budget of forty five million dollars. While
it wasn't a box office juggernaut like The Terminator and Aliens,
it still earned ninety million dollars worldwide.
Speaker 6 (13:30):
He would do new things and expensive things, and they
would pay off enormously. At the same time that he
had this reputation for really delivering both sort of commercially
and creatively, he was also known to be very exacting,
very demanding off his cast and crew. Part of that
was because he could do a lot of the jobs
(13:50):
on a crew himself.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
After Terminator two and True Lies, Cameron set his sights
on a doomed life story. He pitched the film to
twentieth Century Fox as a new take on a Shakespearean classic.
It was Romeo and Juliet on the Titanic. But even
with his star power as a director, the studios were nervous.
Speaker 6 (14:18):
This was not the kind of movie that the industry
wanted to make anymore. It's a giant, expensive period movie.
They wanted very specific things from James Cameron. They wanted action,
they wanted true lies and Terminator a thousand and you know,
things that he would be known for. So the idea
that he wanted to do to a period romance. Oh, that,
(14:40):
by the way, involved him personally going to the real
Titanic and shooting it like this was, I think understandably
to executives at box a little bit of a head scratcher.
But it speaks to his stature in the industry at
the time that he was able to talk them into
that and ultimately to get the movie made.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
To get the green light, Cameron had to agree to
forego a portion of his earnings. While a box office
sensation would offset his reduced pay, such success was anything
but guaranteed. He also agreed to a PG thirteen rating
and a summer nineteen ninety seven release date, which was
(15:26):
only a year away. For a film that would need
a massive amount of special effects, practical effects, sound stages
that could be flooded, and a giant hunk of the
RMS Titanic, one year was ambitious, and that was without
a mass poisoning event. Principal photography for Titanic began in
(15:54):
July of nineteen ninety six. The first shooting location was
Hall of Nova, Scotia, where the modern day footage would
be filmed. The modern day story follows a team of
treasure hunters searching for a diamond necklace lost in the
wreckage of the Titanic. The lead treasure hunter is Brock Lovett,
(16:16):
played by James Cameron's dear friend Bill Paxton. To bring
the story to life, the production made use of the
resources Halifax had to offer, which were vastly different from
shooting in Los Angeles. While there weren't any famous Hollywood
sound stages in Halifax, there was a harbor that was
(16:38):
perfect for a film that takes place on the ocean.
Speaker 7 (16:43):
In Halifax, you're sixteen to twenty minutes away from the
ocean in any direction.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
That's Claude Russell, one of the on set dressers from
the Halifax crew.
Speaker 7 (16:55):
The kel desh was in the harbor and where the
kel desh was stocked. There was a big, huge warehouse
for building parts on boats. They had sets of the
interior of the labs on the boat and I think
the submarine too. They had models like an interior set
of that.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Although they were filming the interior set in a warehouse
instead of a sound stage. It was the normal setup
for the Halifax film community, a community that's much smaller
than sprawling Los Angeles.
Speaker 7 (17:27):
The Halifax film crew, like the IA crew, were all
pretty tight. Everybody knows everybody there may be at times
enough to accommodate two to four productions. Maritimers just got
a great reputation as far as meeting people, like getting
along with people. You know, there's a lot of respect
(17:48):
there and camaraderie there for sure.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Word of James Cameron's notorious reputation made it all the
way to Halifax.
Speaker 7 (17:57):
People from Elie that came here to were that were
probably with them on other shows. We're saying, you know,
you gotta be careful. You got to watch yourself because
you won't put up with anything kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Right from the get go, the shoot was grueling. Like
the Abyss, Filming a nautical movie presented challenges that a
land based film didn't face. They were filming on an
actual research vessel without an elevator. That meant the crew
had to manually haul the equipment up and down ladders
(18:31):
and staircases, a process that can be exhausting and time consuming.
Speaker 7 (18:37):
The unique thing about it was we were going on
a boat, and so the boat would go about twenty
five miles off the shore of the Coasta, Halifax. And
they were long days, fourteen fifteen hour days. I started
at my rate, but I had no turnaround in between
the days, and I ended up working triple overtime for
(18:58):
their whole show.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Almost at the helm of the production was a director
who knew how to make the impossible possible.
Speaker 7 (19:07):
Lots of people said he was hard on the crew,
but my experience was I felt like I was working
with somebody that knew exactly what they wanted. They knew
exactly what they were doing, and he wasn't afraid. Like
if I was moving at a table, all of a sudden,
he just stopped new zoom, and he'd got the other
end of the table with me, and he'd moved the
table over and make a quick comment and then back
(19:29):
to on his chair. But each swore a lot. We
went through a lot of focus pollers. One week, he
wasn't afraid to call people out and get rid of them.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
One person who had been fired was a crew member
who clashed with the catering company on the second to
last day of shooting in Canada. Toward the end of
production in Halifax, the crew was working nights, arriving on
set around five pm I'm filming as the moon glowed,
(20:02):
and leaving early in the morning at sunrise. The conditions
were so intense that for some crew members it was
hard to distinguish what they were seeing at the end
of each day was the sun rising or setting. After
weeks of NonStop work, August eighth, nineteen ninety six would
(20:24):
be their last night of filming. The crew arrived for
their final call time between five and six pm. The
shoot started like any other day, dressing the set, hair
and makeup for the actors, framing each shot, the usual
chaos that accompanies a movie set. At the meal break,
(20:44):
a catering company served seafood chowder. Depending on who you ask,
you'll get a different answer of what was in the chowder,
either mussels, clams, lobster, or all of the above.
Speaker 7 (20:58):
It was midnight, I think they called lunch. Hating was
outside in like a mobile unit. So we went up,
got what you wanted, and then we went inside that
warehouse where all the sets were, and there were tables out,
so it was like any other show break for lunch,
you have your hour lunch. It was shortly halfway through
(21:22):
just something wasn't right. At first, you thought it was
just yourself, but eve when you're talking to other people,
you quickly realized, like, there's something going down here.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
There was an undeniable buzz as more and more people
started to feel funny, and all of.
Speaker 7 (21:41):
A sudden, the ED got up and said, Okay, there
seems to be an issue here. How many of you
guys are feeling this way? You guys, you on that way?
And so then he kind of started circtlly, you know,
I said, okay, good crew on the left, Bad crew
on the right. It was hilarious and we were all
kind of laughing, you know. It was kind of hilarious
because this is never happened. I don't know if in
the history of productions, if anything's ever stopped like that.
(22:04):
Immediately to address what was going down, we didn't proceed
with shooting. It was a concern.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
Good crew meaning that no one was feeling strange in
any way. Bad crew consisted of everyone who couldn't figure
out why their sense of reality was shifting. While no
one knew what was happening, it became clear what differentiated
the good crew from the bad crew. The only people
(22:32):
who were feeling strange were the people who had eaten
the chowder. But knowing it was tied to the chowder
didn't actually solve the mystery of why everyone started to
feel weird.
Speaker 7 (22:46):
We didn't know what it was. My thought was food poisoning,
because that seems to be common thing sometimes with seafood.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Claude had a good, plausible guess at what was happening,
so did James Cameron, who had also eaten the chowder.
He recounted his thoughts to Rebecca.
Speaker 6 (23:05):
They were lining up a shot, I think with a
stand in for Glorias Stuart, and she just keeled right over.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Glorias Stewart was the actress playing one hundred year old Rose.
This is her stand in, keeling right over.
Speaker 6 (23:21):
The stand in just passed out, and then other people
on the set started to get sick, including James Cameron.
So as people are starting to get sick, Cameron realizes
what's happening and decides to run off to the bathroom
and try and make himself throw up, thinking if I
could get this stuff out of my system fast enough,
at least I'll be okay and I'll be able to
(23:41):
sort of steer this crew. He didn't entirely succeed. He
comes back to set and his eyes are all bloodshot
from making himself puke, which of course freaked everybody out
and looked vaguely like a Terminator character, and they thought,
oh my gosh, this is some kind of zombie virus.
What's wrong with a gem? We're all dying.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
James immediately thought it was something called red tide, which
long story short, can make shellfish in affected areas dangerous
to eat. It was a good theory. However, the truth
was more sinister. No one knew it yet, but the
chowder had been laced with the drug fen cyclodine, better
(24:25):
known as PCP or angel dust. The more chowder a
person ate, the greater PCP side effects they endured, and
it affected everyone differently.
Speaker 7 (24:37):
There was a range. People were kind of joking and laughing,
you know, teasing each other. I don't recall us realizing
that we were getting high, but we were definitely acting
like it because nobody knew what the hell was going down.
I remember one person. I think she was continuity and
an ex hippie or still a hippie, but everybody was like,
you know, how you doing. I guess she had maybe
(24:59):
her drug days, had a bad experience, since she was
like almost panicking, saying I don't know what's going on,
I don't like this, feeling kind of like she was
skinning wordy.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Well, some people were enjoying the high, many others were terrified.
It's jarring enough to have your reality unintentionally distorted. For
someone who wasn't used to taking any kind of drug,
the experience was even more startling. Of all, the way
is to get a group of eighty plus people stoned.
(25:32):
PCP is an interesting choice. It started as an injectable
anesthetic in the nineteen fifties. It was originally used on
humans and later on animals, but was banned when its
side effects were determined to be too potent. Let us
run you through the potential side effects of an inadvertent
(25:53):
PCP dosing.
Speaker 8 (25:55):
Novous in the arms and legs. Nausea, vomiting and paranoia,
maaker sweating, a racing harbeat, and increased blood pressure are
likely serious. Sie effects may include delirium, psychosis, associate of hallucinations,
feeling the attachment from the environment, and seizures. Filly doctor,
if you're exhibiting violent behavior or wish to do would make
the dolcohol. PCP could result in resiratory depression, coma or death.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
And on the set of Titanic, PCP caused a lot
of unsuspecting people to panic. The surprise drugging presented a
real challenge for the people on set who hadn't ingested PCP.
The tight knit community of filmmakers was in extreme distress.
(26:31):
It was the people they'd known for years, working side
by side on multiple productions. They watched as their colleagues
and friends struggled. Even though some people enjoyed the buzz,
others were brought to tears, confused at what was happening
to their bodies. Some were even physically ill and moaning.
(26:53):
Some people tried to work but were too confused to
do so, and others who initially made it into the
good crew category slowly realized they were part of the
bad crew. Through the madness, the crew handled the situation
like they would on a regular day of filming on
(27:15):
set by working together.
Speaker 7 (27:19):
Everybody was like you know how you doing. We were
all talking. We were all like wondering what was going
to be the next step, thinking maybe we have to
go to the hospital, you know, especially if like one
hundred people needed to use the bathroom simultaneously. We need
to know what was clinta.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Someone called nine one one. Paramedics from the local Dartmouth
hospital arrived on the scene, along with the police. The
good news was that no one was in mortal jeopardy.
The bad news there wasn't much the paramedics could do.
Speaker 7 (27:53):
I just remember us all getting organized and ned Satas said, Okay,
we're going to go to the hospital. It was just
across the street, ironically, and so just organized to everybody
in a line. We were all like feeling a little
silly and stupid that, you know, we were all walking
down the sidewalk and crossing the crosswalk and going into
(28:14):
the hospital and dating a hospital.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
The people who were unaffected and hadn't eaten the chowder
were instructed to stay on set until they were cleared
to go home. Without a definitive time they could leave,
they decided to kick back, relax and join in on
the fun sort of. One of the departments had a
bottle of vodka which they passed around. At the same time,
(28:41):
dozens of crew members high on PCP, descended on the
Dartmouth Hospital.
Speaker 7 (28:50):
I recall a lot of beige walls, like an old hospital.
It's not a big hospital, the Dartmouth Hospital. So it
was like they are trying to find chairs for us
to sit down gripped, have found wheelchairs and were able
to do wheelies down the hallways, and it was just
(29:11):
so surreal at that point, I guess maybe we were peaking,
and I was like, Wow, this is just like so
cool in a bizarre way.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
James Cameron recounted the scene to Rebecca.
Speaker 6 (29:24):
So an enormous number of people are hitting this little,
tiny emergency room, and it just got weird. In the
emergency room waiting room. The cinematographer was like leading a
conga line. People were not acting the way you do
if you just have food poisoning. Something clearly weirder than
that was going on.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
And Claude was enjoying the high.
Speaker 7 (29:45):
I just remember being stoned and having a good time
with my colleagues. It was just so surreal, you know,
like James Cameron, Bill Paxon, we're all going cross the streets,
sitting in a hallway in a hospital. It was crazy.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Yes, actor Bill Paxton had eaten the chowder as well.
At some point, Bill Paxton ditched the hospital. In an
interview with Larry King, he said he told James Cameron, Jim,
I'm not going to hang out here. This is bedlam.
I'm going to wander back down and drink a case
of beer.
Speaker 6 (30:18):
At one point, Cameron told me he saw his I
think it was his first ad woman who was just
sort of really smart and on it and capable, and
she was kind of trying to direct traffic in the
midst of this emergency room. And she was also verly,
clearly altered and perhaps didn't notice it. And so Karen
was talking to her on the walkie talkie as he's
(30:39):
sitting in the room with her, and at one point
he says to her, where are you And she says,
I'm taking care of people in the hospital, And he says,
you realize I'm sitting right here and you're talking to
me right here, And apparently she comes at him with
a pen and like stabs him in the face with
a pen. Again, this is beyond food poisoning. Something heavy
duty is happening.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Here when he wasn't getting stabbed in the face with
a pen, James Cameron was.
Speaker 7 (31:06):
Riding the high I remember James kind of slouched back
a bit and chair and just smiling in the kind
of glaze smile and just looking up and down the
hallway and saying, wow, you know, something like this is
strange or I can't believe it. He was enjoying it,
but we didn't know what was going down.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
Some people were sprawled out on gurney's wailing. The hospital
staff did its best to take care of everyone, so.
Speaker 7 (31:32):
I remember nurses just kind of like kind of hurting
cats almost, or kind of like okay, you sit down,
or kind of like trying to calm us down. And
then eventually they gave us a little It looked like
a yogurt drink bottle, but it was black. It was charcoal.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Liquid. Charcoal is used to treat overdoses and poisonings, among
other less dramatic things. The charcoal is supposed to bind
to anything that in a person's gut and help eliminate it.
It's an effective way to get rid of a great
many toxins, even if you don't know which toxin A
(32:12):
person has taken, so who would be the metaphorical guinea
pig to drink the charcoal first.
Speaker 6 (32:21):
The interesting thing, it sounds like Cameron remained Cameron in
the sense that he, like everybody else, was feeling some
weird symptoms. He was clearly a little bit off, but
he was still kind of leader to the crew in
that sense, and Cameron sort of led the crew and
the drinking of the charcoal drink to expunge whatever this
(32:41):
toxin was from their systems as quickly as possible.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
After everyone drank their dose of charcoal, there wasn't much
else the hospital staff could do for the crew. Those
who could be were discharged and sent home, and everyone
who was still on set was cleared to leave as well.
James Cameron stayed up late with Bill Paxton drinking beer,
reflecting on the bizarre night and expressing relief that nobody
(33:09):
got seriously hurt.
Speaker 6 (33:12):
It was certainly scary and weird, but they just kind
of reflected back on this extraordinary movie, which had all
of these problems and delays and complexities and expenses.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
There was one thing that would bring the cast and
crew back together very soon. The PCP incident had put
a wrench. In the final day of shooting in Halifax,
with only half of the shooting schedule completed, the crew
still needed to finish what they started. They were given
(33:43):
these standard time off, which was long enough for the
effects of PCP to wear off. The now sober cast
and crew returned in the evening for the final time.
The chaos of the event would inspire one crew member
to grab their guitar and sing a song about it.
Speaker 7 (34:04):
I'm not picking on the grips, but I'm guessing it
was one of the.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
Grips, and the absurdity of the situation would be commemorated
with a souvenir.
Speaker 7 (34:13):
The person who hired me called me in Annie Fuller.
She's not around on anymore, but she was an icon.
She was really good at what she did. She kind
of had a raspy smoker's voice, and she would do
like ten things at once and kind of chaotic straightaway.
But everybody loved her here in Halifax worked with her
(34:33):
while all this was going down, So maybe it was
while we were in the hospital. I drew the sketch
of Bola chowder with a titanic kind of sinking down
into bola chowder and on the bottom. I put good crew,
bad crew, and Annie just flipped out. She said, oh man,
I love that. She goes, could you fix that up?
She wanted me to find I want to get T
(34:54):
shirts made out of them, so like really, she goes, yeah, yeah,
yeah yeah. She got them embroidered, not so drm embroidered,
which was a little higher in and she gave them
out to a local people. I guess that worked on
the show. I'm sure there's one exists.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Somewhere, thankfully. The final day of shooting was smooth sailing
until James Cameron called out, that's a wrap on Halifax.
But as the shoot ended, a new challenge emerged. The
identity of the person who spiked the chowder was unknown.
(35:30):
The search for the person who poisoned the cast and
crew began, and on a set full of longtime friends
and colleagues, the investigation hit uncomfortably close to home. The
(35:52):
poisoning of a film director and his cast and crew
sound like the plot of a movie. In reality, James
Cameron's on set nightmare that spurred an investigation. In the beginning,
no one knew what mind altering substance the cast and
crew had consumed, along with their seafood chowder. John Landau,
(36:13):
a producer on the film and James Cameron's business partner,
was the first to find out.
Speaker 6 (36:20):
There was a toxicology report which was given to producer
John Landau, in which it was revealed that there was
PCP in the chowder.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
According to Vulture, the toxicology report was from the Nova
Scotia Department of Health, who handed the investigation over to
the Halifax Regional Police Service. At first glance, there was
a long list of potential suspects, like anyone who was
on set that night. Over eighty people had been drugged
(36:49):
and there were a bunch of others who hadn't been.
At least one hundred people were present when the PCP
chaos commenced. It happened to a close knit community of filmmakers.
Could a longtime friend and colleague have gone rogue to
get everyone stoned? And if so, why was it a
(37:10):
prank that went too far with someone harboring a grudge
against James Cameron? Could it have been an attempt to
sabotage the final day of shooting or the production? Overall?
The question of how the culprit acquired PCP added another
layer of intrigue. They could have synthesized their own PCP,
(37:33):
but they would have had to do it without catching
the attention of law enforcement. The ingredients to make PCP
are highly monitored, so much so that if you purchase
enough of the ingredients to get started, there's a strong
chance a police officer will knock on your door. But
the Halifax Regional Police Service wasn't aware of someone working
(37:56):
on the film who had purchased those ingredients, and the
police weren't aware of anyone from Titanic purchasing angel dust
from a dealer. Theories of who had done it swirled
among the crew.
Speaker 9 (38:10):
I heard one where one guy wanted to go to
Mexico because that's where they were going after Halifax, and
the cater guy didn't want him, or didn't allow him
or whatever, so he fired him and then I guess
he got hired again the next day or something like that.
Speaker 6 (38:24):
One of the theories was that someone who had been
fired from the set as disgruntled crew member had spiked
the chowder sort of as revenge, maybe potentially to get
the catering crew in trouble. Some people thought it was
folks being angry at Cameron for his sort of intense
(38:45):
leadership style. But it's all just theories.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
The CEO of one of the catering companies in question
told Entertainment Weekly that it was the Hollywood crowd bringing
in psychedelics and it was a quote party thing that
got carried away. James Cameron's future wife, actress Susie Amos,
didn't eat the chowder, which Cameron jokingly said made her
(39:12):
high on the suspect list.
Speaker 7 (39:15):
Just what everybody else was talking. Somebody got pissed off
with I don't know if it was the crew or
the catering and so they just decided to sabotage the
guy who was the caterer.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
Remember, the night before the PCP incident, a crew member
who clashed with the caterer had been fired. The theory
was that the now ex crew member was so upset
they added PCP to the chowder to sabotage the catering company.
The disgruntled crew member's plan worked, as the catering company
(39:51):
was fired the next day. It's a theory that even
James Cameron supported in an interview with Vanity Fair. Yet
there was no no easy answer for the police, and
their search continued despite the ongoing investigation, James Cameron had
a movie to complete. Regrettably, this wouldn't be the last
(40:12):
significant hurdle he'd face during production. After the Halifax shoot wrapped,
James Cameron headed to Rosarito, Mexico to film most of
the flashback scenes of Jack and Rose on the Titanic.
News of other mishaps and hurdles while filming became public
(40:34):
knowledge through the media, like rumors of James Cameron's temper
on set and the perils of underwater stunt work. Kate
Winslet told The Los Angeles Times about some of the
harsh conditions she endured, which included chipping a bone in
her elbow.
Speaker 6 (40:51):
Kate has talked about this, She's wearing this sort of
flowing dress and a coat, and she's doing these underwater
sequences where she's traveling through the ship and through all
these little kind of tight spaces. If you ask Cameron
about it, he says that they were always very aware
of where she was and very focused on her safety,
(41:12):
and certainly all ended well, but from her perspective, it
was quite scary when at one point she did get
caught on something with her costume, and I think the
peril in some ways that you see on the faces
of the actors during the sinking scene, there's a way
in which they were actually feeling that. I mean, they
were literally filling the set with water. That's not cig water.
(41:34):
They're not sitting in a little swimming pool pretending with
you know, CG ship behind them. It was a real
ship that they'd built and they were filling it with water.
And for the actors, you don't have to try too
hard to seem terrified in that circumstance.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
The media latched down to the narrative of how unhinged
James Cameron's set had become. In both Rosarto and Halifax.
Speaker 6 (41:59):
The PCP incident would have fed into a narrative at
the time that this movie is just a hot mess
and look at the crazy, ridiculous things that are happening
on it.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
To make matters worse, Titanic was getting a bad press
for its record sized budget. The film's original budget was
estimated to be eighty million dollars, which turned into one
hundred and ten million when the reality of how much
it would cost sank in. But the production was so
(42:31):
complex that the shooting schedule took much longer than anticipated.
James Cameron's period piece Love Story was turning into the
most expensive movie ever made.
Speaker 6 (42:45):
He had to get his release date pushed, which studios
never liked to do, and with these big ideas he had,
for instance, building the ship almost to scale in Mexico,
and all these little details like the china was the
correct china that was used on Titanic, and even if
you flipped over a plate in the dining room, it
(43:06):
said the right thing on the back of the plate
that it would have said on Titanic. Now, normally movie
sets are not that detailed. You're not necessarily going to
bring a camera in and flip over a piece of china.
He wanted that level of verisimilitude for his actors and
to kind of put everyone in that historical moment. But
(43:27):
with that came enormous expenses. Famously, the movie was being
tracked by a lot of the Hollywood trade press and
expected to be an enormous flop. Variety had a Titanic
Watch column just kind of on a regular basis, sort
of mocking the challenges that the film was facing along
the way. So the expectations were all that this is
(43:48):
going to completely tank, no pun intended. People were not
expecting good things from Titanic.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Despite the rabid negative media fodder, the two hundred million
dollar budget, the cascade of onset mishaps, and rumors of
James Cameron's intensity. When Titanic was released in theaters on
December nineteenth, nineteen ninety seven, five months after its initial
release date, the movie was more than a hit. Over
(44:19):
the course of a few months, the most expensive movie
ever made, became the highest grossing film of all time
and the first film to gross over one billion dollars.
Speaker 6 (44:33):
When Titanic opened, it exceeded anyone's expectations for the film.
It was such a cultural phenomenon. Not only the many,
many Oscar nominations, the enormous box office receipts, but there
were all these weird other sort of ripple effects, like
cruises became more popular. There was a phenomenon of girls
(44:56):
going to see the movie over and over again who
were in love with Leonardo de kat and then having
crying parties.
Speaker 7 (45:03):
At the time, it was just another big production, but
the once it started to screen, in the popularity of it,
it's like, wow, I was so part of that. I
have all these great memories of different things that had
nothing to do with the poisoning, just the whole working
on the show. I was very proud of working on
that show.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
At the nineteen ninety eight Academy Awards, Titanic earned a
whopping fourteen Oscar nominations, tying the record for the most
nominations beside All About Eve. It won in eleven categories,
including a Best Picture and Best Director, tying Ben her
(45:42):
for the winningest film in cinema history. James Cameron gave
a controversial acceptance speech while holding the Oscar for Best Director.
He quoted Jack saying I'm the king of the world. Well,
Titanic reached unprecedented levels of success. The Halifax Regional Police
(46:05):
Service was still investigating the PCP incident. There were no
major breakthroughs in the case. At the same time, the
people who had been on set that night were moving
on to new opportunities.
Speaker 6 (46:19):
Well, the interesting thing about James Cameron is he did
not make another movie for a very very long time
after Titanic. He made an enormous amount of money from it,
and that gave him the freedom to do other kinds
of things for the next several years. That meant a
lot of things that didn't have a lot to do
with Hollywood. It meant dives and documentaries about the ocean. Interestingly,
(46:42):
that first ad the woman who came at him and
stabbed him in the face for their pen he ended
up hiring her again on one of those documentaries that
he filmed in Halifax. So obviously no hard feelings from
the PCP incident.
Speaker 2 (46:54):
After Titanic, Bill Paxton continued to accrue a host of
acting credits. He made his directorial debut in two thousand
and one with the film Frailty, which he also starred in,
and while the Halifax crew had an impressive movie on
their resumes, life continued as normal in their special filmmaking community.
(47:16):
The crew would go on to work on films and
TV shows of varying sizes, although Titanic did draw a
lot of awe and wonder.
Speaker 7 (47:26):
At any time any of my friends, they go, oh,
you work on a film? Is this what films do
you work on? So eventually I have to cite Titanic.
As soon as I say Titanic, I got everybody's attention.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
As for the culprit behind the PCP spiked chowder, they
were never caught in February of nineteen ninety nine, two
and a half years after the crew was drugged, the
Halifax Regional Police closed the investigation without a suspect. The
case was officially cold, with no culprit and no motive.
(48:00):
There's no answer as to why someone poisoned James Cameron
and his crew. One thing that is certain, however, is
that the mayhem the PCP culprit brought to Titanic didn't
stop James Cameron from creating one of the greatest films
of all time. Despite all of the onset issues and
(48:21):
media articles claiming Titanic would fail, James proved his critics wrong.
Speaker 6 (48:28):
You know, one thing I've noticed about Cameron is I
think he actually kind of gets a kick out of
when people underestimate him. He is good at tuning that
stuff out or sort of taking it in but not
taking it on, if that makes sense. And I think
he knew he was making something pretty special, and I
don't think he put much stock in the media coverage
(48:48):
of him.
Speaker 2 (48:50):
James Cameron would go on to surpass Titanic as the
highest grossing film of all time with two thousand and
nine's Avatar, followed by Avia the Way of Water. In
twenty twenty two, all three films have grossed over two
billion dollars over twenty six years later. It's unlikely that
(49:11):
the PCP culprit will ever be named, but when it
comes to Hollywood, anything is possible.
Speaker 6 (49:18):
It sounds like it should be the next season of
True Detective or something like these Canadian cops trying to
solve this twenty five year old mystery of who spiked
the chowder on the Titanic set.
Speaker 2 (49:28):
Until then, the only things that remain of that chaotic
night in Halifax are the memories of the people who
lived it and the good Crew bad Cruise shirts that
Claude helped make. I have to say, for like a
story about spiked chowder with PCP, like, there are moments
(49:51):
of this that are very heartwarming. There's like moments of
love and friendship that I found very endearing. It's a
more wholesome story than I expected.
Speaker 1 (49:58):
The moment when James ca gets stabbed in the face
while he's high on PCP. You wouldn't think that would
be a sweet moment, but it totally turns out to
be this sweet moment because he then rehires the woman
who stabbed him in the face with the pen. I mean,
what a sweetheart, what a forgiving guy.
Speaker 2 (50:13):
That is what people say about James Cameron. People are
constantly saying, James Cameron, huge sweetheart. That's like the only
thing we hear about him.
Speaker 1 (50:20):
I think that's why they called him King of the World.
Is like king of the sweethearts.
Speaker 3 (50:23):
Really, yeah, he's.
Speaker 2 (50:24):
The sweetest man in Hollywood.
Speaker 3 (50:26):
He moved that table. That's all I needed.
Speaker 4 (50:28):
Like, when I'm carrying a table, I want one other
person just to help, and look, he did it.
Speaker 2 (50:33):
I really do like his relationship though with Bill Paxton.
Speaker 1 (50:36):
Oh yeah, oh, come on, the two of them. I means,
sitting there with that twelve pac trying to get down
off of the high. They don't even understand. I mean,
how amazing is that. You're like, hey, buddy, you got
I got some beers. Let's go back to my place
and we'll just wind this down. And they're both sideways.
I mean almost like I could relate. That's all I'm
gonna say. I could relate.
Speaker 4 (50:52):
So, Zarin, is Bill Paxon your very special character for
this episode? We should do this each episode. Let's pick
one person each.
Speaker 1 (51:00):
I would say, Yeah, Bill Pexston is my spirit character.
And then also the whoever was who came up with
the idea we should race wheelchairs in a hospital.
Speaker 3 (51:09):
That's my dude as well.
Speaker 2 (51:10):
My very special character is the nurses at the hospital
who had to deal with this influx of people just
absolutely tripping and confused and probably just got a crazy
story for the rest of their lives.
Speaker 4 (51:23):
Truly, I would tell that to every patient after August
nineteen ninety six would get that story if I if
I had been there that night. My very special character,
and it wasn't close for me. Great choices all, but
for me it's the late Annie Fuller, the one who
got the good crew, bad cruise shirt silk screened. She
(51:45):
is the I'm sorry not silk screened, the embroidered better
than silk.
Speaker 3 (51:48):
Screen Oh yeah, embroider.
Speaker 4 (51:50):
You got to make these things live on in fashion,
in merch. And it reminds me that about two minutes
after you all agreed to do this podcast, I was
hitting you up for your hoodie sizes, for hat sizes.
I just wanted, like, we got to move this from
the podcast to the podcast adjacent clothing, and so be
(52:10):
on the lookout. We're gonna get that headed your way
real soon. Very Special Episodes is made by some very
special people.
Speaker 3 (52:19):
This episode was written by Katie Maddie.
Speaker 4 (52:22):
Our producer, editor and sound designer is the Great Josh Fisher.
Additional editing by John Washington, mixing and mastering by Baheed Frasier,
Original music by Elise McCoy, Show logo by Lucy Kintonia,
Research and fact checking by Marissa Brown, Austin Thompson and
(52:42):
Katie Maddie. Very Special Episodes is hosted by Danish Schwartz,
Zaren Burnett and me Jason English. I am your executive
producer and we'll see you back here next week. Very
Special Episodes is the production of iHeart Podcasts.
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