James Cameron's epic Titanic finally set sail on December 19, effectively sinking all its competition.
Of course we've all heard the horror stories about the making of Titanic: the long hours, the ruthlessness of the filmmakers, the monstrous budget, and the unsafe working conditions. "Nothing could be further from the case", asserts director Cameron in a letter to the Los Angeles Times.
He points out that the Screen Actors Guild investigated all those rumors, and found the Titanic's producers "have taken extraordinary measures to ensure the health and safety of the cast and crew".
But that's not to say that Titanic's journey has been easy. "Logistically it was a very tough film," lead actress Kate Winslet told the L.A. Times, "for him as much as anyone."
Cameron seemed to agree. "The budget overages threatened to consume our very sanity," he explains. "The scope of the thing was overwhelming. But something kept us going."
The story begins ten years ago, when Cameron saw the National Geographic documentary Secrets of the Titanic. He jotted down a few ideas for a film, then filed them away in the back of his head. Then, in 1994, he watched the British film A Night to Remember, which was a historical drama of the Titanic sinking. That was when he decided to pitch the movie to Twentieth Century-Fox studio execs.
"They were like, 'Oooooohkaaaaaay-- a three-hour romantic epic?'" Cameron recalls in Entertainment Weekly. "'Is there a little bit of Terminator in that? Any Harrier jets, shootouts, or car chases?' I said, 'No, no, no. It's not like that.'"
The first item of business was to dive down to the real Titanic wreck to gather footage. His brother Mike outfitted a small robot with a movie camera so that it could venture inside the ship and film what it saw. After a two-hour fall in a tiny cramped submersible, they arrived at the wreck. "I sat on the deck of the great ship and saw through the tiny viewport of the sub the places where all the dramas had played out, the heart-wrenching goodbyes, the heroism, the terror of the final plunge," Cameron said. "I vowed to myself to make a film that honored this great tragedy. . . of the people who survived it, and the far greater number who perished."
Next, he started looking for actors. The problem was that many of the characters, including the leads, Rose Dewitt Bukater and Jack Dawson, were both relatively young, in their late teens and early twenties. It was not easy finding actors that young. For Rose, he looked at people like Claire Danes and Gwyneth Paltrow. Then, although Kate Winslet's screen test had impressed him, he wasn't quite sure. But Winslet was adamant; she sent him a card with a single red rose and called him up several times, begging for the part. Now Cameron was sure; he hired her, much to her delight.
For Jack, it was not so easy. Cameron had looked at Chris O'Donnell and Matthew McConaughey, but they were too old and didn't quite have the charisma to pull it off. So then he stumbled on Leonardo DiCaprio. But DiCaprio was less than interested; when Cameron asked him to read with Winslet, he goofed off and hardly concentrated at all. Cameron saw what he was looking for in DiCaprio, and offered him the part, but DiCaprio, who had so far played mostly more-or-less psychotic characters, wanted to make Jack "interesting"-- meaning dark and sinister. Cameron refused, but DiCaprio eventually signed on.
Another tough role to fill was Rose at age 101; she would tell the story in flashbacks. Cameron wanted an actress who was "still viable, not alcoholic, rheumatic, or falling down", according to The New York Times. He considered several well-known actresses before coming across Gloria Stuart, who had appeared in such classic films as Airmail, The Prisoner of Shark Island, and The Invisible Man, but had left Hollywood in the 1940's and not acted since. According to Cameron, she had a quality that Rose needed and that the other actresses lacked, and she eagerly accepted the role. She met with Winslet, and the two watched each other's screen tests to study each other's body language and acting styles. "I was always aware that I was playing this beautiful, feisty, angry young girl," Stuart told The New York Times.
But she didn't look nearly old enough to look 101. Solution: a two-hour-long daily makeup session, with layers and layers of latex, wrinkles accentuated with a paintbrush, and a white wig. And another hour at the end of every day to get rid of the makeup.
But at long last, it was time to start shooting. First came the present-day scenes, which were shot off the coast of Nova Scotia. There the cast and crew had quite an unexpected-- and unpleasant-- surprise.
On the evening of August 9, the cast took a dinner break, as usual. But afterwards, havoc struck. "There were people just rolling around, completely out of it," actor Lewis Abernathy told Entertainment Weekly. "Some of them were seeing streaks and psychedelics." And Cameron was one of them. "One eye was completely red, like the Terminator eye," Abernathy recalls. "A pupil, no iris, beet red. The other eye looked like he'd been sniffing glue since he was 4."
It didn't take too long to find out what caused it: lobster chowder laced with PCP. The production was put on hiatus for a whole day as victims recovered; the culprit is still a mystery.
Now came the 1912 scenes. Fox had built a whole new studio just south of the border in Rosarito Beach, Mexico, just to shoot this movie. The first day of shooting was one of the most emotionally complicated: where Jack draws a nude picture of Rose. One of the lines called for Jack to say, "All right, get down on the couch." But DiCaprio flubbed it: "Get on the bed. . . er, the couch."
Whoops. Freudian slip. "You know what was going through his mind," quipped James Cameron on The Tonight Show. But the line worked in the context of the scene, so he left it in the final film.
Some of the shooting was quite complicated. For example, when the ship leaves port, on the set the ship could only move in one direction: the wrong direction. So they built the set backwards (note the backwards lettering on the White Star Line building), and the picture was flipped for the final film.
But the most difficult-- and expensive-- part of the shoot was still ahead: the sinking. One scene called for a wall to collapse, sending a wave of water rushing through a hallway. That wave would sweep up Rose and Jack, and slam them into an iron gate. But while they were shooting it, Winslet's heavy coat got caught on the gate, and she was pulled under.
"I had to sort of shimmy out of the coat to get free," Winslet told the L.A. Times. Once she'd done that, Cameron called out his orders.
"Take two!"
"It didn't come to me until about ten minutes later that she was actually very shaken," Cameron recalls. "She was never in physical danger, but she perceived that she was."
The last week of shooting was the most dangerous, both for the actors and the filmmakers. First came an underwater scene, where Rose and Jack are trying to swim to the surface after the ship has sunk. Winslet was weighed down below water so she would stay in a fixed position in the closeups; she would have to breathe through an air regulator during the shoot. "Looking back, I can't believe I allowed that to be done to me," she reflects. "After three takes, I simply. . . couldn't do it anymore."
The last scene showed Captain Smith bravely awaiting his fate, standing on the ship's bridge. Then the windows break in, flooding the room with water and drowning the captain. Shooting the scene dictated that thousands of gallons of water be thrust through panes of glass, a huge safety hazard for both cast and crew. But Cameron was just as brave as the captain himself; he put on a wet suit and shot it himself. All went well, and Titanic wrapped on March 22, 1997.
The first thing on Winslet's calendar was a vacation in Scotland with her family. "One evening I fell asleep and stayed asleep for thirteen solid hours," she told the L.A. Times. "I would have slept longer if someone hadn't awakened me."
But while Winslet was resting, Cameron was still working as feverishly as ever, editing the film and adding the 500+ special effects. Almost immediately, it was obvious he wouldn't make the July 2 release deadline. After intense negotiation (one, at the Cannes Film Festival, almost caused a fistfight), they decided give up on the summer season and release the film on December 19.
Now that Titanic is all said and done, Winslet, DiCaprio, and Cameron are all riding the latest wave of stardom. Winslet and Cameron have been nominated for both Oscars and Golden Globes for Titanic (along with the film's other twelve nominations), and DiCaprio has been featured in countless magazines and feature articles. Meanwhile, Titanic has become one of the highest-grossing and most critically acclaimed movies in history.
