Big Picture Podcast: Back To TITANIC

All right, here we go. Hello, and welcome to the Big Picture Podcast, where we take a look at the latest movie news, the films of today and yesterday, and put them all in some sort of context. Seated across the microphone from me is Film Buff Online, Editor-in-Chief, and Chief, Tap-Dancer. Ah, rich trees.

And Seated across the microphone from me is Film Buff Online, Contributing Editor, and burgeoning Lindy Hopper, Natasha McGutsky. Hi, I'm Lindy Obla. We're going to get you there within the next two or three dances. Are you kidding me?

I was a Lindy Obid. I learned a little Chacha, I learned a little tango, and I was able to brush up on my waltz. Mm-hmm, which wasn't bad. All I'm saying is, and if anybody out there is a listening who has Lindy Hopper, Lindy Hopper, and Chacha has the exact same footwork, one is you doing it in the line, and the other is you're kind of putting a little funky balance to it and doing it in a circle.

How else have you been this week? Yeah, I know. You've been burning the candle at both ends. I took on a second job for this week to help with Valentine's Day, and I'm also rehearsing a play, and it's just, I'm exhausted.

We've got two short films, we have to get edit notes, and sit down with the editors on. And I'm prepping a table read for my newest script. Oh, yeah, that's eight days, isn't it? Oh, boy.

Yeah. We are busy folk. Yes, we are. But not busy enough that we couldn't stick our head out, go to the movies, even though there hasn't really been anything around for a while, and bring you a lovely Valentine's Day special.

Yes, a three-hour movie, too. We're so busy. Let's review something for this week. Look, I saw Avatar twice last month.

Let's take the longest movie we have. And that, of course, is the wonderful re-release of 1997's Academy Award Monster, Titanic. Oh, my God. I have so many thoughts.

I think, honestly, I saw it about four or five times, I believe, when it was out in theaters, and I maybe saw it once, all the way through, since then. So it's been a long time. So, yes, I was ready to go back to Titanic. It's been a couple years for me.

But I definitely watch it a lot more than you do. I've always just enjoyed it. It's a monster cinema, I grew up with it on two VHS tapes. Like, yeah, baby, and they're not marked.

So you just have to try to guess, OK, this one with the iceberg on it. I guess it needs the second tape, and this one where they're holding each other has to be the first tape. Great marketing there. Thank you, MCA, Universal Home Video.

But correct me if I'm wrong. You said this was the first time you've seen it on a big screen? Agreed. Yes, it is.

OK, so I guess, first of all, before we kind of dig into the movie itself, I want to talk to you about the experience, then, going from, you know, seeing it on a having an intermission, a self-imposed intermission where you have to switch VHS tapes to, I believe you also have to by now have the Blu-Ray. I've had the Blu-Ray for several years at this point. So you're getting an upgrade in visual quality, at least a bit. But you're going from, you know, a home screen, no matter how big or small, to a movie screen.

Yeah, I am 3D, anyway. Yeah, 3D, I forgot about that. 3D release, wow, I got that, it left me fucking speeches. And I, you know that I can't help this part of my brain.

I sit, watch a movie a few times, and I have it memorized. And I were talking facial reactions, lines of dialogue, just music cues, sometimes choreography. I can't stop myself. It just happens.

It just, yeah, and Titanic is one of those that has always been imprinted. So I could throw it on, clean the parlor for three hours and never even look up and still feel like I'm part of the experience. But that didn't compare to the other night. Yes, it was.

I felt like I was watching it for the first time. It was the epic scope to be seen on a big screen like that during the whole take her out to see Mr. Murdock, you know, let's stretch her legs, the whole king of the world section. I was beaming like the Cheshire cat from cheek to cheek.

And I was about ready to cry. Happy tears. It was just, oh my God, that soaring sweeping camera move over the whole ship during that was like, huh, like you don't really see the scope on 22 inches or 36 inches, whatever it is. And I feel like I missed so many small details in that movie that I caught the other night.

For example, I'm thinking about Rose's mom and Cal and completely new light than I've ever thought before. The majesty of it was so much stronger. When the iceberg hit the actual ship, that sound was like nails on a blackboard and it sent ice down my spine and the whole third act leaned over to my husband and I said, the director in me is watching the amount of organized chaos going on here and is getting very nervous. Yeah, the whole assistant director department deserves a lot of credit.

There's so much of an academy award. Honestly, they should have gotten their own Oscars. Yeah, there is so much going on with the idea of mob mentality and the panicking and just people crawling over each other. That could go wrong so quick and it ultimately did.

Yeah, but at the exact same time, I'm like, oh, my God, this is brilliant. And when the ship splits, that was the sharpest, the clearest, the most terrifying I think I had ever felt during that moment before. It was like, oh, there's David Warner with Blood on which technically it's perfect to lean, then it comes later on, but whatever. And thank you for getting that.

Okay, that reminds me because I know there was deleted scenes. But I'm like, I always was like, yeah, he's getting his come up and fuck you asshole. And then last night watching it happen or two nights ago watching it happen was traumatic. I was I spent a great deal of time during the movie, the other night, watching people's eyes.

And that's when my idea of how some characters are being portrayed in performances are a lot more layered than I ever thought before. I think I think it's a great 3D restoration. It is for a movie that was never shot to be intended to be seen in 3D. It looks really good.

It's sharp, it's grittier. There are certain images that definitely work with the 3D. I'm talking like there's one thing that really stuck out to me was there's an overhead shot of the lifeboats as they're being lowered and you get, you know, that really great depth of field. There's other stuff where there's not a whole lot of depth of field.

And that's okay though. Yeah, it should be overpowered. Yeah, exactly. I think I think they really kind of punch the 3D at those epic and scope moments to really drive home.

What is actually happening? Exactly. And honest, for me, 3D has never been about having things come flying at your face. It's about creating dimension to make it look more realistic and less like a flat surface.

Yeah. And I thought that for this film, it was done very well for a film that wasn't shot 3D. But even more so, it definitely felt, I think this movie Outlast Avatar. Really?

Think about it. It's had four re-releases in the past 20 years. Okay. Even Star Wars doesn't have major re-releases like that.

In the 70s and 80s it did. But then, but since then, since the special editions in 97, 98, 99, around there, yeah, we haven't had Star Wars back on the big screen. There was the 3D conversion release of the first movie. And then I think they also did Empire, but they did so poorly at the box office that they discontinued because their plan was to do all of them as 3D conversions.

I'm just, yeah. And then it fell off. I forgot about that. No, I'm just thinking about like major, major re-releases.

I'm not talking like something in New York or L.A. or a very small run. I'm talking a major theatrical release across the board. Now we're recording this on Sunday to 12th.

Titanic is in 3D, Titanic in 3D is out for at least a week. I think it's about a week. Yeah. It's only a week.

So, unfortunately, you know, this part of the conversation may be academic once you hear it and you want to go see it unless you catch it like right at the end of the run on Wednesday or Thursday of this week. However, just looking at the weekend box office, number 3 film of the weekend is Titanic. Yeah. With an estimated $6.4 million.

Want to guess what number 2 is? Avatar. Yep. With $6.884 million.

So, like I'm going to load him, Jimmy Cameron can pack a theater. Yeah. He's, you know, and he's, I think, personally, is a great technical director. He's an imaginative technical director.

He's great with knowing his solids. Yeah. Yeah. There isn't a single character in Titanic that I don't think gets a moment to shine.

Mm-hmm. And we're going to go back to this script because this script, the more I sat there and watched it, the more it functions like absolute clockwork is incredibly cheap. It's so good. It's insane how, I mean, people will say, yeah, the dialogue is kind of corny.

It really isn't. No, it's A. It's not. And B, even if it were, who cares?

Is so finely tuned, there's not a wasted frame of this movie. No. Absolutely nothing is wasted in this movie. So let's kind of dive in on that because that's the thing that really, you know, struck me this time around.

But really quick, I just want to finish up that thought. Sure. I think that this film will last Avatar. Avatar is its own machine now.

It's going to have multiple sequels, blah, blah, blah. Titanic will forever last because it's not reliant on its special effects as much. It is the last of the great ethics. And I'm not saying Return of the King because I consider Return of the King an adaptation.

I'm talking just its own original idea as an epic. Okay. That's actually a really interesting observation that I like. It's almost all practical.

You can feel that it's real. It pumps your heart like nobody's business and it's not shiny from special effects, which is something we're so reliant on now in big blockbusters that you can't have an epic and a blockbuster. The visual effects are all in service of the story. You can't actually sink a replica of the Titanic with people on board.

You can't drop a conning tower onto people trying to swim away. You can't bounce somebody off of a propeller. Did you ask? Yes.

Everyone does. Do you know who that is? No. The digitally scanned producer John Landau and he's the propeller guy.

Do you know how I found this out? How? I interviewed him two days after the Academy Awards when they won it because John Landau, his mother is from the Wilkes-Brenton area and he still had an aunt who was living in the area. So, when I was freelancing for a local paper, my boss, I walked in the day after the Oscars and my boss was like, hey, you want to interview John Landau?

Sure. How are we getting him? I had no idea about that connection and I just figured, oh, yeah, sure. And I'd also like to interview Groucho Marx, but he's dead and I have about as much of a chance.

Honest the line that if there's like two moments in that film that everyone always laughs their ass off that propeller man and the line about Dr. Freud. Oh, yes. Oh, the theory.

Well, it's made as an asshole anyway. No, I'm just talking about the preoccupation with size might be of great interest to you. Oh, yes. I think the car starts to smirk and everyone lost it at the end of the year.

Oh, yeah. Before we kind of get into the script structure and everything, I do want to say, and you know this, but I just wanted to reiterate, as a kid, I went through like a three, four, five-year phase where I was really interested in Titanic. I'd read the book by John Lord, a night to remember. He had his new book out called The Night Lives On, which kind of revisited theories about the Titanic and talked about other things, you know, what happened to some of these people and stuff like that.

There were some movies out readily available. There was the 1951. Well, Barbara Stanley. Barbara Stanley.

I hadn't seen that. A couple of years earlier, but that was a piece of crap and no one wanted to see that. And yeah, it's not worth seeing. And a night to remember.

Yeah. A night to remember the British, you know, adaptation of the book from this also from the 50s. And oh, and the musical film version of the musical, The Unsingable Molly Brown, which is good, which uses footage from a night to remember. That movie is good.

And it's solid. If you have a chance to see it. I've seen all of it. I actually saw Unsingable Molly Brown.

I think it might have been before I saw Titanic. Wow. So when Kathy Bates is sitting there at the table, I was talking about the night that her husband came home drunk as a skunk with a fire and she had hidden the money on the stove and I lost it, laughing my ass off. Exactly.

Yeah. So I had like a decent working knowledge. I'd written some term papers and stuff about it in like junior high and everything. And I had like this deeply buried working knowledge of it.

And I remember opening weekend sitting there in Titanic of watching it going, oh, yeah, that's right. Oh, yeah. Oh my God. This is and the way Cameron recreates all the events as we know them as we know them as historically have happened up while interweaving the story of two people and, you know, various surrounding supporting characters that didn't exist and weaving it into all of these events and with people who did exist and, you know, hitting these moments, it never feels like it's forced.

It always feels like, you know, they're the movement of Jack and Rose to the story gets them to a certain point where we know what historically was happening. And boom. And then we get that, you know, scene, it's, it's profoundly clever, but it also, yes. And it's also a brilliant way of teaching us moments as we go about the fact that there weren't enough lifeboats.

And this is why because Mr. Andrews was told not to. Yeah. And the fact that, you know, he's, they're standing there and someone brings EJ the iceberg warning and he's like, Oh, don't worry.

In fact, I've already lit the last four boilers. Oh, good. Not to worry. Very normal for this time of year.

And even when we cut back to the 90s and the present day, and he goes, and he had, he had the memo in his fucking hand. I'm sorry. His ham. And it's just like, yeah, it's brilliant.

Just kind of how they're using this to tell a historical story without boring your audience. Yes. If you just do it too historical, you're going to lose the interest of the audience. It's too big and too grand a story.

Yeah. You need this character. You need these two characters who move through because ultimately Titanic is the disaster and the tragedy of Titanic is, yes, it's man's hubris. It's a destruction of the guild, the optimism of the Gilded Age.

It's, it's a class story. It's a huge class. It's a huge class story. And the only way you can kind of move realistically in a narrative form, move through those various classes on the boat is with characters like this.

There was a version of Titanic done a couple of years ago with Linus Roche and actually pre Doctor Who, Jenna Coleman. Oh, that's right. And I had you. Yes.

Still with her. Yeah. And it's good. And it definitely focuses more on the, I would say the working class on the ship and the people who served and worked on the ship or helped build the ship like Mr.

Andrews and one of the other like iron, you know, welders and stuff and Jenny Coleman's Annie is like a maid or a lady's maid or a serving on the ship. You know, there's, that's an interesting play, but it was a, it was a TV movie mini series. And after a while, it's good, but it's not great. And I feel like it flounders on not having an emotional connection to any of the fucking characters because there's way too many of them and you don't have a centralized focus in order to navigate through them.

And I think Cameron does this brilliantly by creating Rose and Jack so he can connect all of the classes and all the people who were historically important from Ishmaelie and Andrews and, Molly Brown, all the way down to Isadore and Ida Strauss just for a moment. And just, I know I'm sorry. I was this time around, I'm sorry to interrupt, but yeah, this time around. I mean, well, first of all, Cameron really knows, yeah, this, this, this, this movie basically shows you twice.

What happens to Titanic before we actually get there? You see the sunken ship, you see all the damage done. You know, this is not any well, you get the forensic analysis when they bring Gloria Rose to the boat, to the ocean. By the way, the amount of PTSD going across her face when he's giving that forensic analysis, I was always wrapped up as a kid in what he was saying and just how he kind of turns it into like comedy, like more so right across the bottom, punch and holes as it goes.

And there's a big ass up in the air. We're talking to like 100,000 tons. This time, I know those lines. I watched her face.

They're not only asking her to relive her greatest love and her greatest sorrow, they're asking her to tell them these people who are have up and to a point, they really have no respect for what they're doing. It is all they're desensitized to it. It's just a record. Yeah.

They're putting on this facade that they're like explorers and historians, but they're fucking treasure hunters. Yeah, they don't really give a fuck about anything. As one guy says to Bill Paxton right in the beginning, he's so full of shit. Yeah.

But here it's, you can see it on her face. She is terrified to go back there, but it's telling that story one last time at that spot in the ocean. Yeah. And what ultimately was able to make her be able to pass her.

And of course, you know, Gloria Stewart did get an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actors. So good. And I didn't catch it when I was younger. I caught it last the other night and I was like, oh my God.

She's doing brilliant work. Yeah. But Cameron basically tells us twice, what's going to happen? And this way, we're not once we get there, once we strike the iceberg and everything starts to happen, we're not questioning what is happening so much.

We're not going, oh, where are they now? Why is there water here and stuff like that? We know. And he does a great job of even setting us up on like when they go to certain levels, we suddenly see deck E, you know, on a sign, you know, it kind of passes slowly by, but it registers.

Yeah. It's not like a decade. It's going to, it's not check off. Deck sign.

Yeah. He's much more casual about it, but it starts to register and we get a really good geography of the ship, which is also very important once it's a massive ship. Yeah. And, you know, it just, you know, he's setting everything up and it's fantastic how he does it.

So once we get to the actual sinking, we're also, you know, we can concentrate on Rose and Jack and we can, we know what's going to happen. You know, we're almost anticipating what's going to happen to them. And that creates a certain kind of tension, dramatic fear, you know, you know, it's something I didn't even think about until like, this time it's not a desensitized at the beginning because you're right. We're historically separated from these events.

Exactly. And that's how we look at these. And now they are the placeholders for the audience. And if you are, there is a couple, the absolute fear of holding the hand of the one that you love, trying to save them from certain death during that from a moment that when we sat down, we're just like, yeah, we know what happens.

The book fucking sinks, but then all of a sudden your heart starts pounding. And all you want to do is you want to grab the hand of the person sitting next to you. Jimmy, brilliant. It's fantastically set up.

And this is actually, I was thinking about this in the middle of the movie today because I saw it this morning. I was thinking, you really need to teach this screenplay and this movie in a college level course. Take a week and you know, read the script and then tear it apart and put it back together. And you can see how much this works.

It's phenomenal in how well scripted, every set up, every payoff. It's just fantastic. And then, you know, you probably do a whole, you can do a couple of weeks on this. If you started adding in like the historical elements and then going, well, we know this and the data.

And can we give extra credit, like extra kudos where it actually freaking belongs to for helping to create those palpitations within me, James Horner, this score, I would call his masterpiece. And I love like what he did with Braveheart. I loved what he did for Avatar and so many other movies. But he flows seamlessly.

He's creating mood. He's not creating a score with this movie. I have been in movies before where it's just like, okay, yeah, it's a really, really sweet score or it's almost barely noticeable. This is recognizable and it's perfect because you have moments of great majesty, like take her to see Mr.

Murdock or you have those romantic beats of like a hint of the sea or rose, like the actual theme for rose. And then you have Hard to Starboard, which is when they see the iceberg, bump, bump, bump. I was like, holy fuck, he like, it creates anxiety. You go from being Cheshire cat grinning to, oh my God, this is one of the most beautiful things ever to this is so romantic to holy fuck.

My heart is going, where's my pulse? Someone check it. And I'm only asking this humorously at first and then we'll kind of get into it. Who's the real villain of the sinking of the Titanic?

Are we talking fictional characters or historical characters? In terms of this movie. Oh, yes. This may is because, you know, of his basic arrogance greed and blatant disregard of any safety precautions whatsoever.

But who distracted the two guys in the crows nest with their making out on the deck and so they turned around and saw the iceberg late. Yeah, but they also, that was Jack and Rose. I mean, yes, but they also didn't have the binoculars, the binoculars, they hadn't seen since sound fountain and they had already, which is true, which is a historical fact. Yes.

And also, they did say there was no wind, which means it would make no breaking water at the base of the icebergs, therefore making them harder to see exactly that is the only sketchy special effect in this movie, by the way, is the iceberg. And I'm willing to forget it because of that detail, because there was no wind, because there was no breaking. You mean that first shot of the iceberg? Yeah.

Okay. It's sketchy, but I forget it because it actually looks sort of realistic and see through and really hard to see. Mm hmm. Yeah.

It was just a funny thought I had while watching the movie was like, Oh, yeah, they're over there making out in the two guys. Did you be looking for icebergs? They're going, Oh, look at that. Over there.

We are. Yeah. So it was, it was, it made me chuckle and then they turned around. Oh, iceberg.

Maybe if you weren't being such peeping toms, we wouldn't have had this problem. But anyways, um, one thing I really liked as we do, you know, the tour of the ship early on, like as it's going out to sea, we see, we get down into the engine room. We see the boilers. We see these giant pistons.

Yeah. And I think we look at that kind of giant machinery today and we look at it through, I think a cinematic lens of, yeah, I've seen stuff like this in Metropolis or chaplains, modern times. Modern times is a good reference for that. Yeah.

So maybe we always think, Hey, it's just crazy. You know, they're kind of exaggerated, big giant machinery to make a point about the industrial revolution, which is what is going on with those movies. But to see, Oh, no, this is actually what it was like. Yeah.

Was to me is something very awe inspiring. I was like, wow, we built shit that big. Look at those giant pistons. And then you're like, Oh, yeah, it's going to require a lot of power to move those, a lot of power to stop them.

And then you go down into the cold room and you see the people shoveling coal. Honest, I love that because we multiple times we get, like I said, we get a great journey through the class system of even just the people who were working on the ship from the captain all the way down to the people working in the boiler room. Like that is a brilliant. I mean, when David Warner's character is chasing Jack and Rose through the hallways down the, the elevator into the piston room.

And then yeah, I did that by the way, I was sitting in the theater. I knew it was coming and I couldn't stop myself. I'm like, yeah, right back. Sidebar just for a half second here.

David Warner is the sweetest, nicest guy I've heard. And he's just a delight to chat with for the minute or so I got to. But you know, you see him in movies like this sort of Titanic or Jack on hide or somewhere in time. And he's always a very mean son of a bitch.

And which is funny. Oh, grandpa, which is funny. Well, he was. Oh, yeah.

Wow. Sorry. I know. I know.

I know. I know. That's one of those ones I just don't like to. I loved him as Bob Cratch it, by the way.

Oh, OK. You forgot about that. Anyway, back to what you were saying as he's chasing. Yeah, as he's chasing them, you not only get into the boiler room, but where they end up freaking storage.

Yeah, like the baggage bay. Imagine where the baggage bay is actually located. It's it's not up on the upper decks. No, it's exactly where it struck.

That was one of I think like room one or room two where. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you see the guys, you know, the porters down there and they discover the car that Jack and Rose were in and then, you know, before they can do anything else. So bam, yeah, the water comes in, you know, and that's where you know, it's all going.

It's all not going to turn out well. And again, like I said, James Warner School, our holy crap, when that thing hits and you see the people in the boiler room running like crazy for those closing doors, it's like it invokes fear. And again, this kind of speaks to the idea of class because their lives did not matter. Yeah, it did not matter the survival of the ship and everybody, you know, above a certain deck on board, you know, was the designed, well, OK, if you know, we have to close off a couple of these air watertight hatches to, you know, contain any kind of like flooding.

Oh, well, you know, we might lose some guys. Oh, well, you know, obviously, the head Boilerman is there, you know, trying to get his people through and get him out. But you see that door come down and you see people still running up to it and you know they're fucked. Yeah, absolutely.

And that's I think like that's when I really started to get like, oh, man, this movie because that's when it really starts to hit. And I think, you know, going back to about two years later, that same idea for a brief moment was used in the mummy. And it still terrifies me. The idea of one of those doors coming down and you being trapped and both of those movies I saw before I turned like five or six and so the I could never put myself in a position because I saw those films where my life just meant that fucking little and I it's really interesting to see that on the screen and and and you're like I said, as an audience member, you're now immersed into this world, you are going on this journey and you're no longer desensitized to it.

In fact, they're breaking down your walls. I mean, I've always said, like, there's two moments that really hit me watching this movie when it was out initially, the spouses as they go back to, you know, you know, we live together, we're going to die together and they go back to lay down on their bed. And the mother telling the Irish courage to her two small children, both of those just kill me. And I was even before we were there, I was already just like, you know, in my eyes are starting to water.

I'm like, you know, kind of wiping away under underneath my glasses and my three glasses. So it was like a complete band got me the other night for the first time ever. The gentleman, it's been a pleasure or a privilege to play with you this evening. No, right after he says good luck, guys.

And you know, you can see the water starting to come up on the deck in front of them and everyone's running around and they had finally stopped playing anyone, you know, good luck and he knows at that point, they're not getting on a boat, there aren't any boats left. And he decides to start playing again near my God, did they? Yeah, which honest, it wasn't the song that did it. It wasn't the montage that did it.

It was the first person who started playing the violinist. And the reason why it got me was the realization that if I'm going to die, I'm going to die doing something that I love the band members, those musicians were not white star line employees. And I can't, they're like contractors. I can't remember what the exact designation was, but white star refused to give out survivor benefits to their families.

And that became a thing. Yeah, I know. Yeah. White star is like the corporate villain in all of this, they're the big, they're the big bad.

I do like me. That's why it's so low. I'm property. You're going to have to pay for that.

Shut up. You're like, Oh, yeah. That's great. Because again, you have, you have some guy.

It's a nice fucking unit of the company. A company that really deserves it. And it's funny because, you know, again, it's like somebody just saying, trying to enforce class structure. Yeah.

And a moment where you're going to, I too, dude, this is so not what you should be concentrating on right now. This is not your priority. Yeah. And, but I really, I would like to talk for a moment about Cal Billy Zane.

Okay. I don't think he gets enough credit for what he did in this movie. I just want to stand up and punch the screen whenever he's on the because I just, he's, I don't want to say he's everything I hate about humanity. But he, a lot of what he does, his very possessionist attitude towards Rose is very disregard for other people who he thinks are not his class.

He embodies a lot of really crappy qualities that I just do not like in people. Okay. I'm going to ask a very delicate question because I was thinking about this just yesterday after seeing the movie the other night. Do you think he's already had Rose?

Um, no, I do not. Everyone says that. I think he did. Okay.

Um, because during the, um, the patio scene, this first thing was, I thought you would, you would have come to me last night and she said, well, I was tired. I think he made his intentions, uh, earlier in the film about what he wanted from her. He just, he just wanted her as a sexual. I don't think so.

You think she's willingly? Okay. Let me rephrase that. Okay.

If she has had sex with cow before. It wasn't enjoyable. It probably was not enjoyable, but was it willing or not? I think it may have been willing for her mother's sake, for her sake.

I have a, let me, let me do my little, because I'm in rehearsing. Okay. Okay. Go ahead.

Okay. So yes, I think he has left with her. He could marry anyone, he could marry an heiress, someone who is going to bring him even more position and power and wealth than he already has, who is going to raise his station even more. He chooses someone who yes has a name, which is not, I wouldn't say particularly known in America, penniless and gives her a 65 karat diamond necklace that is extremely rare.

Yes, it is meant for royalty, but you don't go out and spend that much money on someone that you don't care about. Well, hang on. Again, she's not bringing anything to this marriage. There's no dowry.

Yeah. Yeah. This marriage is a marriage of convenience for her mother because they're for them. Her husband.

Her husband wrote that. What is he getting out of it? What is he actually getting out of it? Think strategy here.

He's getting a beautiful woman. And I think he had a million of them. I think he just, for some reason, became infatuated with her. I don't think he truly loves her.

I don't see that. I think he loves her in a way that he thinks he knows how to love. I don't think he truly understands the concept, but he understands that there is a feeling. There's a difference between not being able to love and wanting it, but not knowing how to show it.

He was willing to show it to her. He said, I would give you the world. There isn't anything I wouldn't give you or there isn't anything I wouldn't deny you as long as you didn't deny me. I think there is a part of him that actually does care deep down.

There is a small sliver. He is so wrapped up in his class structure and how he plays the game that I think within those confines, it is hard for someone to show that outright, and she wanted more, which is why I think he fucking had her. And like I said, that was probably what cemented their marriage was. She probably went to him willingly.

He had her. He may have convinced himself she could love me if she was willing to come to me. And that was all he wanted at that time, but he wanted more. When Jack came into the picture, oh my God, when she dumps that ship and comes back on board to run to Jack, I don't think he loses his shit because of, well, if, I don't know, I can't have her.

No one can't. I think in that moment, because I see David Warner put his hand on Billy's shoulder, look in his eyes, he just witnessed what true love is, and he will never have it from her, and that broke him. That is a really good analysis. And analysis I think a lot of people missed because when I was growing up, yeah, he's a shitbag, and I wanted to shoot him too.

He's playing the game with all the people on board, including when he grabs the kid, it was like, I got a child, please, I'm all she has in the world, he's playing the game. But with Rose, it's the only time he allows himself to really have angry vulnerability. And I think that's what hurts him so much. When he comes back on, on the Carpathia later on, and he's looking for her, he's not looking for a diamond.

He's not actively looking. You can tell he shell-shocked. He's only passively looking because he is still, he's gone at that moment. It hurt to watch him last night for some reason, with a complete new experience of his performance.

And that's great. I love it. I think, you know, I still think that you're saying he can't, he doesn't know how to love her properly. And that's that.

And that becomes, you're in my possession, because I have bought you, I purchased you with this ridiculous diamond. And that is, I think, something that does kind of fuel a lot of his actions. Yeah. Is the idea that anything can be bought and paid for, anything has a price, because that's how he was raised in that system.

The idea of love is not shown within anyone in the first class. The only person who has any sort of tenderness, of course, is Molly. And I wouldn't even call Mr. Andrews first class.

Oh, no, no. He's only driving first class because he works for the company. Exactly. If he wasn't working for the company, he wouldn't be seated at the first class table eating with the captain and all of them if it was, if he wasn't a worker, um, he's kind because he's not a part of that class.

He's in between. So he understands above and he understands below. Molly was kind of raised from the ranks. She understands what it's like to be a part of all of those.

Rose wants love. She wants passion. She wants a fulfilled life, which is not something that she would get in the first class. Of course, she's going to go once she finds someone who is willing to actually look at her and see her that's enough to make any woman fall in love, particularly when they are in a passionless marriage or what's looking to be a passionless marriage.

Yeah. Yeah, I'll grant you that definitely. And her mother, by the way, third act, great work from her and she doesn't say a damn word. Oh, yeah.

So it's a lot of, a lot of just right in the eyes with her performance so much. And the scene where she comes in and laces up Rose, of course, and they're talking about, you know, we're women. Our choices are never easy. Doesn't matter if it's unfair.

You got to do it. The realization that our fine things sold at auction and he working as a seamstress literally don't fucking matter. And class doesn't matter anymore. When Rose grabs her and says, mother shut up, don't you understand the water's freezing and there isn't enough boats, half of the people on this ship are going to die.

Cal is the first to go, not the better half, but if you look at her mother's eyes, that is the first time she fucking gets it. And I was reading something the other day where Kate Winslet or someone had said during that scene. It's like 4 a.m. There's crazy lighting, people screaming.

And she looked at Kathy Bates and was like, I got nothing. You got to thought anything and Kathy looked at her and goes, just remember, this is the first and the last time that you're seeing your mother. So when she says goodbye, that is a great moment. That's a great note.

That really is. Because it's true. As I was watching it the other night, it's there. That is the first time the pretense of class is dropped on her mother's face and she becomes a mom.

And then she spends the rest of the time in the lifeboat wishing to change everything and knowing that she can't, so she covers the ears and tries to shut it out. But looking up at the ship, her eyes of not watching everyone die, not the ship going on inside the lights going out, things breaking, it's the fuck that Rose is still up there and she has no clue what is happening to her daughter, not her possession, not her bargaining chip, her daughter. Unfortunately, it comes too little too late, but I'm really in performance, I was thinking of some discussion question source. And part of me was like, what do you think happened to Rose's mom?

I don't think Hartley took care of her. Not even for Rose's sake. No, he may have been too heartbroken, he may have been too angry, he may have felt in some ways and rightfully or wrongly that Rose's mother deceived him into their relationship knowing that she needed the money. So I think she was like, yeah, she died in a gutter as a paracetude with a heroin overdose or something like that.

I think she lost her mind and probably was locked in a mental asylum. That's what I foresee for her. And I think we got a little bit of that when she was, she's the only one who was doing anything physical as a reaction to what was going on on that ship. Even Ishmael was just kind of, or Ishmael was just sitting there.

It's a great shot. He kind of turns his entire back. Yeah. And then you have that rack focus from the ship to him.

Oh, the rack focus that was going on between him and Murdoch when he hops in the lifeboat? Oh, yeah. I was like, but no, I think she may have lost her mind at that point. Very conceivable.

Yes. Yeah. And you know, and for even though you have given me some good food for thought about cows, I don't want to accept redeeming cows character. I'm not trying to redeem him.

But I, all the best antagonists have something behind a performance other than I'm a dick. Yeah. Part of me, part of me does kind of look at him and goes, I'm glad you lost all your money and you ate a bullet. Yeah.

No, I mean, I am too. But like, I start thinking about the moment he had already paid for his seat on the lifeboat and Murdoch says, you know, anyone else, and he looks at him like, are you coming or not? And he turns around, God damn it, goes across to the other side of the ship to see Rose and Jack. He had a way out.

He had a fucking way out. He, he was playing the game, trying to get on a lifeboat the entire fucking time. And even though Rose said I would rather be his whore than your wife, spit in his face, ran off, he still went across to make certain that she was safe. Mm hmm.

And I don't think that came from a place of possession because the idea that he lied and said, yeah, Jackie will get off with me. And it was all bullshit. That's the game. But him going over there to make certain she got into the boat, that was protection.

He actually cared enough about her to make certain that she was safe before he even was. If he saw her as an object or a possession, he would let her drown. Yeah. After, after spinning in his face, that is the most degrading thing that a person can do to another person outside of a rape.

And she did that to him. That should have cut the tie completely between them at that moment. And yet, he still went back for it. So there, there is a part of me that is completely looking at Kalman who liked, maybe it's because I'm an actor, maybe it's because I play a lot of chess, so I understand things.

And I'm always willing to look forward. Yeah. Yeah. I'm actually glad we're talking about this because I don't want to say Kal comes off as a cartoon villain.

I think there are definitely layers to him. There's complexity to him. And this is just kind of exploring that complexity in a way that I hadn't considered before. So thank you.

You're welcome. I'm running out of things. The thing is that I've had like three conversations about Titanic in the last 48 hours since I saw it. And this is like the fourth conversation.

So I'm trying to hit the highlights of all the others that I was running in my head. And this film was a, I think it's the generational shift every, every 10, 20 years you have one that completely changes the side of what filmmaking can be and how it moves along cinema and becomes iconic. This movie didn't need an Academy Award for it to be cemented as one of the greatest of all time. Wizard of Oz, then I would say, gone with the wind in the same year, you know, two decades later, you have the time of the epics, you have been her, you have 10 commandments, then two decades later, you have Star Wars.

Yes. This is definitely throwback filmmaking to, to that period of the 60s, the wide cinema scale. Oh, God. Yeah.

And Titanic, I think, did it again, updated. And I think Avatar was meant to be the new Titanic when Jim was kind of creating it, it's it falls short. And the reason is is Titanic blurs the lines between old classic Hollywood epic cinema and a blockbuster and created something iconic. Avatar is just a blockbuster.

It's a beautiful blockbuster, but it's a blockbuster. And I think the smartest thing that Jim did in the past 10 years was creating Pandora World at Disney in order to make certain that he still kept it in everyone's minds while he was trying to make the next movies, because that creates the anticipation and makes people not forget about you. The next generational shift, I think we just recently saw it. I think it was everything everywhere all at once.

I think that is the, the film for, you know, millennials and gen Z Titanic definitely was more for Gen X into millennial. Okay. I know we've, we've had this little bit of a conversation before and I think you may be right, but I think we can't definitively say that until we get a couple of years past it. I would have to see the effects.

I would agree there. And, but I think we're already starting to see the effect of it. And, and I think it's because it's a breath of fresh air. It is a extremely profound film, simple idea at the core, but a profound film that blends between cinematic filmmaking and a blockbuster.

And it goes back to more, yes, it does have special effects, but it was made for a very small budget. It's extremely good film. And it does something that we haven't had in a while. It's not, it's original.

And I think all the best ones usually are. When we first got started though, obviously there were definitely more adaptations. But the last few have all been original ideas between Star Wars Titanic and everything everywhere all at once. And I think EEAO has that potential because we're getting tired of seeing Marvel movies and we're getting tired of seeing Star Wars.

We are the amount of people that I have talked to over the last few months. No, no, no, no. I will hold off on that. Please.

Let me finish on. Okay, go ahead. We're going to see these movies, but they do because we've been paddle-offed. We've been fucking trained that when a trailer for that drops, there really isn't anything else.

Of course, we're going to fucking watch it. We just want something to see, something that's going to entertain us, something that's going to happen. I think rests more on the fall to the studios, eliminating the mid-range, the mid-budget-range film, like say, Ticket to Paradise, which, okay, that actually got into theaters, but other films like that just go get shipped right off the streaming now. And that's been a significant shift, which I think is more the case of people getting upset about things.

I'm not sure I'm willing to say people are just tired of only Marvel movies and stuff because people are watching other stuff and streaming. Yeah, but we're talking in terms of theatrical releases. We're not talking streaming anymore. True.

I'm just talking theatrical releases. It's mainly what, honest, if I was to pull up like first showing net right now and go down the major releases for each month, there's usually one superhero film every couple months. Yeah. And those are your biggest 10-pole money makers of the year.

And then you have something like EAO come along, a sleeper hit that wasn't supposed to do anything like it did. You and I went and saw the critics screening. I've never seen a full audience critic standing ovation at the end of a movie. How many have you been to?

A lot of screeners. I've not seen a reaction like that, really. Now there were other people outside of just the critics there, but I think even looking around at some of the critics, I know we were all just applauding at the end because it was a great film. Now, and I think we're kind of drifting towards what would be a great subject for another time of the state of the theater going experience today.

I'm just saying that with Titanic sticking around, it is going to be because it is a generational 10-pole that is great filmmaking that will touch everyone no matter how old they are, no matter what. There's something for everyone in it. There is action, romance, history, everything. Okay.

I have a question for you. Okay. It was 85 years from the disaster to Jim Cameron's film. It was 41 years between the disaster and the Barbara Sandwick Clifton web film.

Obviously there were other Titanic films before that. Obviously there were news reel things and then in the 1943, this is the one people don't know about. Usually there was the Nazi Germany treatment of this story as a propaganda film. I heard of it.

I've never seen it. I'm Keyno Lorber put it out on DVD years ago. I've rented it somewhere and I've watched it and basically it's like, it certainly emphasizes the class difference and the heroic German Ensign working down in the boiler room is the hero of this movie because he says that is posed. He does what's needed to help save lives while the rich upper crust act indifferent to everything.

That was the thrust of the propaganda in this film and also apparently they were taking a lot of resources to make this at a time when the Nazis weren't doing so great in the war and Herman Gorring had the director removed from the movie and arrested it and then some reason the director wound up hanging himself and I'm using sarcastic air quotes here, hanging himself in his jail cell, which is unfortunate and tragic end to that person. But part of me is like, you were making Nazi propaganda films, but maybe you should have gotten out of a dodge when everybody else did in the 30s. Your question? Okay.

But yeah, let me circle back around. So obviously Hollywood waited, you know, four decades, basically before they tried to tackle this story in a manner that adds drama and somewhat fictionalizes certain things about it. Has there been any other more recent things and I'm thinking specifically, 9-11. Do you think we're only 22 years out from 9-11?

Do you think in another two decades we're going to see a 9-11 film that has a romance subplot into it? We already had one. Witch, witch, witch. It's called Remember Me with Robert Pattinson, Chris Cooper and Emil de Raven.

Ironically, I forgot it. But yeah, no, so what's the time frame? I can't even remember. I didn't see it.

I know I didn't see it. The movie takes place over a few weeks leading up to the disaster and you don't find out really until the last few frames of the movie that Robert Pattinson was in the tower when the painting. Oh, okay. I remember more of this now.

Yeah. And we've also had other movies about that tragedy that were not really the cage one. Yeah. World Trade Center and a few others.

Concentrate Flight 57 or whatever. 1993? I think maybe. Oh, this is bad that we can't remember on a couple of levels.

With the exception of Remember Me, I didn't see the others because I didn't want to relive that tragedy. Exactly. And I think those other two movies, because there was a race to get them out first, they deal more with the heroism of the day, rather than using it as a backdrop for something else. And I mean, Titanic very much, you know, shows us the heroism of a lot of the officers and a lot of the people that it shows us the horrible tragedy involved also.

But ultimately, I literally didn't know going into Watch Remember Me that it ended like that because they don't they don't ever advertise that in the trailer. Well, they certainly couldn't. I don't know. You don't know that.

Well, that's like the big fucking twist at the end is that he's calling her and literally you can see the shadow of the plane in the pane of the glass of a window looking out over the city. Like you can barely see like the shadow of it coming across the reflection and it's like, Oh, motherfucker. Now, now the fact that they kind of hid that to kind of spring, does that feel exploited to me? It was exploitative, but it made for a really good cinematic heartbreaking moment at the end of that movie.

Okay. So. Am I going to go back and watch it anytime soon? No, not even this conversation is going to end.

I actually thought about it for a second. I'm like, I can barely remember this movie. I can't remember that fucking moment, but it's not enough to make me want to go back. That's fair.

Yeah. So, okay. Obviously then Hollywood has kind of done something with 9-11 anymore, anymore, I want to say entertaining way because that sounds really wrong, but in a way that kind of moves past honoring the heroism that was evident on that day, you know, just the same way that we've had World War II movies being made during World War II, but it was always about the heroic American soldiers and things like that. It wasn't as, I don't know, say cynical as something like Kelly's heroes, 25 years later.

It's funny because, honestly, I think the best World War II movie that we've had in the last 20 years since Saving Private Ryan, I'm going to get a lot of shit for this. Oh, what? Letters to you with Gina. Okay.

Which I loved because we got to see the other side. I got tired of seeing, oh, American bravery, American heroism, blah, blah, blah, blah. It skews the bias of your audience in one specific manner, that they are evil and we are good. There is no- It's very much to carry over of what some feel is necessary propaganda stereotypes during wartime.

Yeah, but we're no longer in wartime. Everyone is, they're human. They're fighting for their country. I'm going to tell you right now, the Japanese fighting for the emperor was, for them, they were doing what we were doing.

They were fighting for their country. They were soldiers. They were taking orders. They were doing what they were told.