Blank Check with Griffin & David - Titanic with Emily Yoshida and Katey Rich - Part One

Episode Date: November 4, 2016

Emily Yoshida (Spin Magazine) and Katey Rich (Vanity Fair) return to discuss 1997’s epic romance Titanic with special guest Charlie “the baby” Rich! Thats right, Blank Check has brought IN the women and children to our podboat to dive deep into some ice-cold analysis. But how important is water in Cameron’s life? What about Bill Paxton’s huge earring? Whats the artist’s name something Picasso? Together they examine Leo mania, the performances of Kate Winslet, Billy Zane, Victor Garber and the panel’s first time seeing this film including a diary entry and private planetarium date.

Jack, I want you to pod me like one of your cast girls. No. Yeah, okay, okay. I mean, this is a felony. I had to because everyone has been saying. Has been saying that should be the title. Which we weren't going to do because we're gentlemen, but, you know, time and place. Hey, everybody.

Oh, boy. Ben, level that one out. My name is Griffin Newman. I'm David Sims. This is a podcast called Blank Check with Griffin and... David. I kept waiting. I wasn't sure when you were trying to hand that off to me.

We are hashtag the... Two friends. Good. And this is a series where we study... Movies. I was going to say filmographies. Directors. Yes. where we study. Movies. I was going to say filmographies. Directors.

Yes. Yeah. Directors who have had huge success early on and get a series of blank checks to make whatever they want and sometimes the check's clear and sometimes they bounce.

Sure. And sometimes people are worried they'll bounce and then they really clear. Yeah, but what we always find interesting is David and I we're connoisseurs

of context. Okay. Right? We love movies but we love context. This is new. We like looking at thenoisseurs of context. Okay. Right, we love movies, but we love context. This is new. We like looking at the context in which the movies were made. We like zooming out and looking at the career, you know, and tracking the ups and downs and marrying it to it

and trying to find good in every movie. So we're making the bio longer for the podcast? That's what we're doing right now? We're going to do more? Well, this is a supersized episode. That's true. In that it's a two-parter as if it was two vhs tapes right let's dive in okay to the ocean yeah that's a good pun right

to pick up the ruins search we're searching for a diamond of an episode it's the heart of the podcast uh-huh where my point is we is, we've been doing a miniseries called Podnator, colon Judgment Cast. That's his point. I got one point to make and this is the point. We've been doing a miniseries

called Podnator, colon Judgment Cast. Sure. It's about the films of Slippery Jim Cameron. Maybe we should have called it Podtanic. We could have.

Maybe we should have done that. This is Podtanic. Let's call this episode Podtanic. Okay, so this is the big one. We're talking about the movie. I'm podcasting, Jack. I'm podcasting.

So many. Maybe we should do a whole episode of just. Intros? Yeah, just lines that we could turn into podcasts. I'm the podcast. Josephine on your podcast machine. Oh, my God. Women and podcasts don't mix.

But we should actually prove that wrong, right? We're going to prove that wrong. Because we have Two guests We got three guests today We have three guests I'm sorry This is a super sized episode Talk about Titanic

I feel like this is an episode That has been anticipated By us In this room For months Yes I don't know if it's been Anticipated by our

Listening public But Let's say this I'm sure it has I'm sure it has For both of us And for two of our Three guests in the studio right now,

they had said, as previous guests, fan favorite guests, they had said, if you ever do James Cameron, let's go back to Titanic. Right. Right? Yeah, 3D. I'm ready to go back to Titanic. Yeah. 3D, re-release 2012.

12, I believe. It's been 85 years. Well, no, it's only been four years since the 3D re-release. Just felt like 85 years. Yeah. And that was, I think, somewhat of an incentive for us to do Slippery Jim himself. Absolutely. No, this is what I've been waiting for.

Yeah. I really think so. So we got a lot more to talk about. We have two guests who demanded that they be in studio to discuss. Right. And then a third guest who apparently slept through most of the movie. Rude. A little rude.

Okay. So first up, I want to do like a dream team. What's the movie? What's the team name? We talked about it. Podtanic. 1997. Podinator colon judgment cast is the point I'm trying to make.

God damn it. Don't you guys love how long and languorous these episodes are? Yeah, we got some advice. We got some advice recently that was like, they're like this? Yeah. They're like this. Yeah, they were like, your podcast should be half an hour long. Griffin, can we keep nothing secret on this podcast?

I mentioned nothing else. No, let's carry on. I got some secrets. No. Buried at the bottom of the ocean. Right. They're my opinions on the film Titanic. A woman's heart is an ocean of secrets.

Damn it. A woman's podcast is an ocean of secrets. A woman's heart is an ocean of podcasts. A podcast's heart is an ocean of secrets. A podcast's podcast is a podcast of podcasts. Our first guest. Yeah. I was going to try to do the Chicago Bulls intro music, but I forgot how it went.

I started doing the Sigur Rós. Okay, so I was trying to do that, but then it sounded like the We Bought a Zoo song. Michael Jordan. Yeah, okay. Our first guest on the podcast today. You know her from The Verge. Sure. The Dearly Departed podcast.

Girls in Hoodies. It's true. But also. No longer at The Verge, I should point out. Oh, really? No. Where do we know you now? Just riding the rails, baby.

Free agent. Rail rider. Tumbleweed blown in the wind. Yes, a true tumbleweed blown in the wind Yes A true tumbleweed Blown in the wind She's the The boxcar Bertha podcast And you know her most of all

From her appearances on The podcast reawakens True And Speed Racer Yes Ladies and gentlemen Emily Yoshida Hi guys

Hey Emily How's it going? I'm excited to talk about The movie Titanic Should we just start? Oh wait We got two more guests That's not start oh wait we got two more guests that's not how this works

we got two more guests okay you should call the third guest the man in the middle that's what they used to say about Luke Longley and they introduced him the man in the middle

go ahead our next guest you know her from Vandy Fair and the Little Gold Men podcast and most of all you know her from

the Sixth Sense episode. We're also fighting in the war room. Oh, fighting in the war room, but also most of all, the Sixth Sense episode. Where we talk box office for a solid hour. It was a great episode. Hot night, Shamacast, ladies and gentlemen, Katie Rich. Hi, guys.

And last. The man in the middle. The man in the middle. You know him most of all from being a baby and being Katie Rich's baby and also from our pod dogs episode. What? He's going to be the guest when we do old

dogs. Oh, okay. It's going to be that far in the future that he'll be able to be on the podcast? Ladies and gentlemen, Charlie. Let's see if be that far in the future that he'll be able to be on the podcast? Ladies and gentlemen, Charlie. Let's see if we can make some noise in the microphone. Nope. Oh, yeah. I think we're picking up some vocalization. It sounds like he's barely breathing.

I promise he's fine. Hey, Charlie. Yeah, we have a baby, guys. We have a baby on this one. I'd like to note that he's wearing a little onesie with headphones on them. Indeed. Very appropriate for his first podcast. He doesn't get his own set of headphones for this.

It's not his first podcast at all. No, he's been on Fighting in the first podcast. He doesn't get his own set of headphones for this. Or it's not his first podcast at all. No, he's been on Fighting in the War Room. He's been on more podcasts than I've been on. He's an expert. He's currently eating on Mike. Which is very good. He's got a bottle. That's true, yeah. I didn't get him a bagel which I feel like is...

Bagel with scallion cream cheese. He handled that in three months. He'll be eating that on the Old Dogs podcast. Old Pods. Now, you know, Emily commented on Charlie's onesie with the headphones.

And they always say dress for the job you want. Sure. And the job that Charlie wants, clearly, what he's messaging to us is that he wants to be a producer.

An engineer, if you will. A producer. A banducer. Do we have one of those? He wants to be a poet laureate. He wants to be a producer. An engineer, if you will. A producer. A benducer. Do we have one of those? He wants to be a poet laureate. He wants to be our finest film critic. He wants to have a birthday. Sure.

He wants to be a tiebreaker. We all want to have a birthday. He does not want to be Professor Crispy. No. He does want to be the fudge master. I think he kind of does. He doesn't understand words yet. I just don't want to assign that label to a baby.

It's not about him processing it. It's I don't want him beyond Mike calling a baby anything other than The Fudge Master. Even you have a line. It's good to know. He is White Hot Baby. He is Dirt Bike Baby. If you see him in the streets, wish him a hello fennel. Definitely.

What is it? It's a Polaroid. It's fine. He's baby positive. Sure. Okay, fine. And of course, the baby wants to someday graduate.

Remember that note we got about shorter? They said the intro should be 30 minutes. Just lazy Sunday podcasting, man. I know. It is a nice lazy Sunday. Nobody in the office. 60 degrees and sunny. We all know the baby's probably. It's a beautiful day outside. It know. It is a nice lazy Sunday. Nobody in the office. 60 degrees and sunny. We all know that baby Charlie.

It's a beautiful day outside. It is. It's really, really nice. It's going to be over by the time we get out of here. Oh, it'll be dark. Yeah. It'll be very dark. Can we please keep this on topic?

All these sidebars are dragging me a little bit. No, I'd like to talk about the weather today. Beautiful day in New York City. About 59. Yeah, yeah. Crisp. There was a little rain yesterday. Beautiful fall leaves everywhere.

The leaves have finally begun to turn. Oh, this is... I like watching Griffin get sidetracked. And his little face, yeah. Crisp. There was a little rain yesterday. Beautiful fall leaves everywhere. Leaves have finally begun to turn. Oh, this is, I like watching Griffin get sidetracked. And his little face, his eyes narrow. It's great. My little face. We all know that baby Charlie wants to someday graduate to different titles over the course of different miniseries. Yeah.

This is why I was getting frustrated, guys, because I knew this was coming. I feel like people forget. Go on. Go on. Do them. I don't know. I don't know. Such titles hypothetically as Producer Ben Kenobi, Kylo Ben, Ben Nye Chomelon, Ben Say

Benny Thing. Okay, right. You're not putting the baby in those. Right. Alright. And a future title for Cameron. We gotta think about that. There's one suggested recently which I really like with T-Ben Thousand. T-Ben Thousand was okay. I don't know. I feel like I still want to think about this. Okay. Ben Tanic.

Yeah, Producer Ben. Is who Charlie Ben Tanic. Yeah, producer Ben. Who Charlie wants to be. Yeah, but producer Ben is not on mic today. We have two guests. Yeah. And also he doesn't care about Titanic. Right. And baby Charlie has four mics right now.

So Ben can't be in the studio. So Ben's a walkie talkie. Maybe he'll come in if he has a point to make. Let me do my impression of what Ben thinks about this movie. I like that the ship was big. That's do my impression of what Ben thinks about this movie. I like that the ship was big. That's Ben's comment. There's some good old technology in Titanic.

It's a very wet movie, too. It's a very wet movie. He likes things wet. Actually, this might be Ben's favorite movie. I think he said his favorite movie. He's not on mic, but let's just declare it now. This is his favorite movie. This is Ben's number one favorite movie, and he can't say anything about it. Right.

The year is 1997. James Cameron's last film was 1994. Yeah. True Lies. True Lies. Which was the first film in his 500 million dollar deal

with Fox. 20th Century Fox. Indeed. His Lightstorm Entertainment shingle. Yep. His uh. You got it.

That's it. I was trying to think of a different term. I think shingle is the right thing. Shingle. Yeah it's a shingle. He makes his first film True Lies. Costs 150 million dollars was trying to think of a different term. I think shingles. Shingle. Yeah, it's a shingle. He makes his first film, True Lies. Costs $150 million.

Most expensive movie of all time. Pow. It's a hit. Sure. Arnie. The SAG nominations roll in. Yeah. One of them.

The first year of the SAGs. Really? Yeah, 95. Kicked it off with a bang. That's why. They weren't going to do an award show, and then they watched True Lies, and they were like, I mean, someone's got to rep Jamie Lee. And she won a Golden Globe, Jamie Lee.

But anyway, we're moving on. That doesn't count, though. Golden Globes aren't real. By my account. We'll just let that hang in the air. I was doing some research today because there was a performance in a film I really liked of Bill Paxton's Beardo associate. Sure. Who was a friend of James Cameron's, a diving buddy.

He was also sort of a pulpy genre director and writer himself. He directed House 4. Sure. House, of course, the original is Ding Dong, You're Dead. And then they made three more of them, apparently after the titular. This is not the cult Japanese film House. No.

We're talking about the crappy American horror franchise. Apparently there were four of those. And apparently this guy, I forgot to look up his name, it's something Abernathy. Well, yeah, that's right. Louis Abernathy.

Louis Abernathy. And he plays, what's his name? Louis Bodine. Right. See, this is what Katie's here for. I literally looked up IMDB before we started.

Okay, so Louis Abernathy was Diving Buddies with Cameron. Oh, here are two guys in the film industry who both like going down into the under the sea. Right. They both like Little Mermaid in it. Right. And they start bonding over like their shared love of movies of aquatic life of all of this. And apparently one year for his birthday, Louis Abernathy buys James Cameron or doesn't buy him,

gifts him a joke script he read for a Titanic movie. He wrote a Titanic script. Okay. And then was like you should make a Titanic, like there's never been a great Titanic movie made. And that lights a fire under Jim's butt. Which is not true by the way, there is a great Titanic movie from the 50s called A Night to Remember

that is a fantastic film. Yes. But anyway, carry on. But they were very obsessed with sort of the details of how the ship went down. All the technical aspects. And he did a dive. Yes. In 95, I think. And he got some footage, the first footage of the wreck that's in the movie. Yeah.

So that fueled this. And he just said, this is what I'm going to do. He spends about a year and change writing the screenplay. He likes water. Loves water. Piranha 2 The Spawning. The Abyss. Those are the two. And how and change right in the screenplay. He likes water. Loves water. Piranha 2 The Spawning. The Abyss. Those are the two.

And how many people drown in this movie? I mean, a couple people drown in The Abyss, but holy shit. A lot of drowning. All of the people. Also, death from sudden impact, I would imagine. Many different kinds of death. Lots of death. Very deadly movie, yep. Right.

And also, let's not forget, in Terminator 2 Judgment Day, the T-1000 is made of liquid metal. Wow. Okay. Okay? Yeah. All right, so. Have you guys gotten to the bottom of Cameron's obsession with water over the course of this podcast?

I mean, it didn't begin with, did he fall in love with water on the set of Piranha 2 The Spawning? Did he see water for the first time and think, he's never seen water before? He's never seen it before. Love it. Give me more of that. Here's what I know. He grew up in Ontario, in Chippewa, Ontario. Chippewa Falls?

Chippewa Falls. Which is not Chippewa Falls, but I believe is how he was inspired in naming Jack Dawson's birthplace. And near Niagara Falls, right? I believe so. Right across the border. And I think he would go ice fishing and stuff. Maybe I'm literally just transposing his bio with Jack Dawson's, though.

I'm not sure. But, you know, a lot of water around, some great lakes. Maybe that's where the water comes from. It's no ocean. It's no ocean. No, it's probably a little bit of a fishing town. But not a diving city. But then he moves to Hollywood, California, which is on the ocean.

Yeah. If you think about it. It's one of those famous ocean towns. It's famous as a seaside town. It's one of those famous ocean towns. It's famous as a seaside town. I kind of always thought of him as one of those guys who would rather live in the Revenant era when there was the Wild West and things to explore

and then the bottom of the ocean is the last thing left. I think that's what he actually says. He seems to kind of have that explorer vibe about him. He wishes he could go to Mars. You are the only one of us who has talked to James Cameron. Indeed. I talked to him on the phone just a couple months ago, but a PSA he did with Arnold Schwarzenegger. So you have,

I feel like, you know, you've touched, you've brushed the surface of his madness. That 10-minute phone conversation, like, I really, I really learned a lot. He did go to, he went to high school in Niagara Falls. Hey, water! Yeah, I don't know. Water! But then it is, I mean, we talked about it in the

Piranha episode, it is crazy how good and cool the underwater scenes are in that movie. And then everything else is utter trash. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. In the abyss, obviously. I mean, that's the deep sea diving part. Like, right.

That's where that's really getting fleshed out. That's the thing. I mean, answer your question, Emily. I feel like I've been searching throughout doing this miniseries for what was the Rosetta Stone. You know, like I want the clean narrative moment, Cameron style, where the thing is set up. It's so easy to assign to someone like Shyamalan or Cameron Crowe,

but he's harder. He hasn't made autobiographical movies the way he does have. I feel like The Abyss is his most autobiographical movie, as we talked about, his big divorce movie. Yeah. I think the Paxton character in this is very autobiographical.

Definitely. Oh, yes. Even the way that he ends up with Susie Amos, it's implied at the end of the film. It's pretty implied. Did Cameron have an earring back then? Did Cameron have an earring? Bill Paxton is rocking an earring in this movie.

I think he does. Opinions on Bill Paxton's earring in the movie Titanic. Sure. With the fisherman sweater? Yeah. It works. Era appropriate. I think it's great. He's tan. You sense that the fisherman sweater? Yeah. Sure. It works. Era appropriate. I think it's great.

He's tan. You sense that he's lived multiple lives. So this is his Northern Atlantic expedition look. He's got a weathered handsomeness. Yes. But you can imagine his chest is very tan if he was to take off the sweater. Yeah. He's got sort of the frosty, not just the tips, but yeah.

It's kind of funny how handsome he is in this movie when he's usually not handsome. I feel like he's an actor who likes to look weird. Yeah. Or dorky. He looks like such a creep in True Lies. Yep. I'm thinking about him in Big Love. I feel like he doesn't-

Oh, but he's fresh off Twister with this. He is, that's true. And he's really in a good rogue adventurer period of his career. Yeah, he's in his rough neck. Yeah. Right. And he gets the and Bill Paxton. Oh, he does?

Really? He does. He gets and Bill Paxton. Wow. So Twister was his real sort of traditional matinee idol movie, right? That was the one time they sort of put him at the forefront of a big sort of blockbuster like that. Well, Mighty Joe Young, though.

Oh, right. Right. And I think after that, he was like, I don't want to be this guy. And a simple plan, although that's not. But he is the lead. That's a blockbuster. Yeah. No, I was saying that kind of like a...

Him as lead. Him as lead. He's great in a fucking frailty. In a popcorn movie, though, I'm saying. Yeah, totally. Where you want someone to look as sort of traditionally handsome as possible. I think he looks better in this than he does in Twister. And I wouldn't say it's traditionally my type of look.

I'm just appreciating his filmography. It's an interesting filmography. Yeah, it is. Yeah. U-571 is in there, which I maintain is like a decent underrated little movie. Weird science. He's like just above that guy status. Like he's a name.

You know who he is. He still has a that guy career. He definitely does. And I do feel like almost all his most memorable roles are the Cameron roles. Yeah. Yeah. Probably. But then if you look at the other huge movies he's been in, I mean, you include Apollo 13. feel like almost all his most memorable roles are the Cameron roles. Yeah. Probably.

But then if you look at the other huge movies he's been in, I mean, you include Apollo 13. Apollo 13 and Twister, those mid-90s. Twister. He's probably the least interesting in Apollo 13, right? Yeah. Apollo 13 power rankings is like Harris, Hank, Sinise, Bacon, Paxton, and Quinlan's in there somewhere. And also that old lady who's not interested in Neil Armstrong. Guys, let's watch Apollo 13 right now.

I love that movie. Yeah, but you were... Okay, so David was hitting his hand on the wall and ranking them vertically. And I think you've got to put the bacon on top. Well, yeah, you do want some bacon on top. Right, because that's what he is. He's an embellishment. Right.

Here's the interesting thing. He's maybe the least interesting actor in Titanic as well. Kevin Bacon? No, Bill Paxton. We've talked about him a long time. an embellishment. Here's the interesting thing. He's maybe the least interesting actor in Titanic as well. Kevin Bacon? No, Bill Paxton. We've talked about him a long time. We're basically treating this like it's a Bill Paxton film.

Part one of the episode is just Bill Paxton and then part two of our Titanic episode is everything else. No, Jeanette Goldstein. I do, at some point

in this podcast, I do want to rank the non-Jack and Rose element of this one. Like, who is the most... Oh, definitely. Yeah.

Performance review. You guys haven't done this in a while. We haven't done... Look, guys, I feel like we should do everything. Any idea, just throw it out there and we'll do it. But we all agree there's a clear winner for best performance in this movie, right? With no qualifications, there's one performance that's better than every other performance in the entire movie.

Are you going to Billy Zanus right now? We we're all gonna say it in unison on three one two three victor garber i actually agree with you i just couldn't tell if you were doing a bit i wasn't doing a bit i thought you were gonna say billy zane victor garber's unreal in this movie i think garber's great but i think no i don't agree with you you think it's zane it's kate winslet it's kate winslet no i said outside of no No, sure. Outside of the leads. I love Zayn. I love Zayn. He's so dialed into what this movie is.

Yeah. I think he's fantastic. I think Garber's great, though. I mean, Garber's one of those all-timer, like, four-scene performances. Give Bernard Hill some credit as Kevin Smith. He's good. He's good. Stoic.

I think Garber tops Winslet. Garber's fantastic. I think he tops Winslet. No, no, he doesn't. I said without qualifications. I think Garber's the best performer. I think he tops Winslet. I said without qualifications. I think Garber's the best performer. But that's apples and oranges. Do you remember the scene that they played at the Academy Awards for Kate Winslet being nominated?

What was her clip? I don't remember her clip. Her clip is so underwhelming. It's like, you know, nobody was going to actually take it seriously. But it's just the one on the deck when she does her speech about, you know, I know what you're thinking, poor little rich girl, et cetera, et cetera. Fine, you know. There's so many more, like, waterworks, fireworks

scenes you could pick. I don't know. She really brings it home in, like, the last 40 minutes, too. I think her best acting is sort of when she hits survival mode. Oh, yeah. In the hallway with the axe. Yes. Yeah. That should have been her clip.

It was just her with the axe running down the hallway. That was when my grandma walked out of this movie. Really? Wow. Why? She had had enough. Too intense? She didn't want to watch more drowning? She didn't like it. Wasn't into it. It's more upsetting the older you

get. Oh absolutely. And your grandma was on the Titanic. She could have been. She wasn't that old. But I remember we were like, do you see Titanic? And she was like, I walked out of it. And we were like, you walked out of Titanic? We were kind of impressed because that did take some balls. And she was like, you know, she was swinging the axe at the handcuffs.

And I was just like, all right. She missed a lot of the good stuff. That's maybe my favorite scene in the movie, too, though. That's the scene that always jumps out to me, is the handcuffed act scene. That scene is ballsy, I would say. Where it's like the ship's already sinking. We need this, but he's like, no, we need this. Guys, we're already at the ship sinking.

We might hit 30 minutes at this rate. Yeah, that's true. We're done, basically. Anyway, in conclusion, Titanic. Okay, B+. Let's get back on track. Bill Paxton, okay? The movie opens.

Under the sea. The movie opens under the sea. No, there is the thing I think we should do with Sebastian. There is the thing I think we should do, because I think it's important with this movie, and we want to hit all the things. Three times that there's a thing you think we should do without saying what the thing is.

There's one thing that I think we should do. Uh-huh. I think we should all talk about our experiences seeing this movie. Well, for sure. We do that a lot, and I think for this movie, it's especially important. David, would you like to go first? Yeah, I saw this film opening weekend at the Rio Cinema in Hackney in London, which is a still-standing, very cool, giant sort of picture house in London.

still standing, very cool, giant sort of picture house in London. So my friend Niall and his mother, and I walked out of it, and it was an extremely overwhelming and important experience. I walked out, and I was like, that's the best movie I've ever seen. And I went home, and I told my parents, it's the best movie ever made. And they went and saw it a few days later, and they came back, and I was like, wasn't it good? And they were like, eh, it was okay. They were not that pumped about it. But was huge for me it was I think it was

it was a huge grown-up movie for I mean by comparison to the shit I was I was 11 years old I love this movie power forward Emily Yoshida um I saw this movie at the Lakewood Mall in Tacoma Washington uh as seen on uh the television show Cops many times um it uh I saw it movie at the Lakewood Mall in Tacoma, Washington, as seen on the television show Cops many times. Cool. All right. I saw it with a big group of friends. No parents. No parents. I was in seventh grade, so we were kind of... I think the first movie I went to go see in a big group with no parents that I recall, that stuck in my memory,

was probably A New Hope when they did the re-release. So we were now exercising our muscles. No, no, no. I guess that wouldn't be right. No, I guess it was that summer. New Hope is re-released that summer. So it's the same group of friends that I go see. This film came out

in the winter. That was January, February, March of 97 was the Star Wars re-release. This film premiered in Tokyo on November 1st, 1997, but it came out December 19th, 1997. It's a long lead up. Isn't that weird? Just like the Carly Rae Jepsen album, Emotion, Japan got a month-long lead on it. Anyway, so I saw this. This is what I remember about this movie, which was that, of course, all of my friends

were crying and weeping during it. I was not so moved by the love story. I was definitely trying to be like Adaria about it. A little bit too cool for it. I did think that all the ship stuff was very cool, but I remember so clearly I walked out of the theater and I vomited.

Wow. And then I had a stomach flu for about a week. Titanic gave you a stomach flu? Yes. And then I used to joke like, oh yeah, like, I don't care about the movie, it made me barf.

I mean, good joke. It's a good joke. But I mean, I liked it. It's not that I didn't like it. It was, I think it was a lot of movie.

It was also a crowded movie theater filled with like middle schoolers and there was probably more than one pathogen floating around in the air. So yeah, that's it. So is there a point where you then start loving it? I mean, how does your relationship change

with the movie over the years? Well, I could tell you guys- You still vomit every time you watch it. I could tell you guys about the second time I saw this movie. I think you gotta. It's a two-parter. I think you gotta.

Davidson, have I told you this story? Quite possibly. Please use my full name every time you watch this. I will. I have to call you Davidson. I know, I know why you have to call me um but uh so this is an amazing story okay okay so um and i hope my mom doesn't mind me telling this story uh so we listen to this podcast she listens every week she sends us tweets and has some future guests she's active on amazing um she was on a wild hogs episode

you never know you never know uh so so we had moved to Iowa, to Iowa City. And we were- Right this year? Like right around now? We moved in 1998. So it was out on video at this point. And there was a guy, I don't remember his name, but he worked in the astronomy school at the University of Iowa.

Okay. And he had access, 24 access, to the big theater, like planetarium theater. So he was trying to woo my mother. I have heard this story. He invited me and my mom to a private screening of Titanic in the astronomy theater at the University of Iowa. And I was like, Mom, that's the most romantic thing I've ever heard of.

But, you know, nothing ever came of it. Now, when you say private screen, do you mean literally no one else? Nobody else is there. Oh, my God. In a planetarium. Mm-hmm. Oh. Yeah.

I can't even imagine. We should do that right now. Katie's face is lit up with delight. 98. That is the direct route to a woman's heart in 1998. Own a planetarium.

I'd marry that guy. I know, right? Today I'd marry him. I wish I could remember his name. I would go and thank him. Jack Dawson. You're listening. Maybe,

can we get him back together with your mom now? Yeah. He's listening and we can parent trap this whole thing. Yeah. He's also a past

and future guest. He was on the album The Chipmunks The Roadship episode. Stop making all these Walt Becker jokes. I'm retconning the Walt Becker miniseries

so people demand it. I cannot wait to hear how the Redditors respond to us having a baby on the podcast. The Redditors, they're going to love it. Well, this is,

I made the observation that of course this is the episode in which you bring the women and children onto the podcast. Right, right. Which I said, we're pulling an anti-Titanic. We're keeping them on the boat. We you bring the women and children onto the podcast. Right. Which I said we're pulling an

anti-Titanic. We're keeping them on the boat. We're saying women and children please come in. This is being recorded on the lifeboat? This is the lifeboat. You're Molly Brown. I'm Izmay. Ben is Johan Griffith. Just looking for us. Looking for any signs of life off in the distance.

It's Johan. Johan Griffith. But I thought it was Griffith. Even though it's dud. But you sort of say it in the distance. It's Yon. Yon. Yon. Griffith. Griffith. But I thought it was Griffith. It's Griffith. Even though it's dud. But you sort of say it like Griffith. Like you say it with a heavy th at the end. I've always viewed him as competition. And he's got his Welsh accent in this movie.

Yeah, he does. Which he later sanded away because obviously, you know, nobody wants to hear that. Yeah. I love the Welsh. I love the Welsh accent. Wow, some harsh Welsh jokes. I grew up in Britain and the English are trying to train to be mean to the Welsh, which is

cruel. We shouldn't be so mean to the Welsh. They're great people. Okay, Charlie Rich, tell us about your first time watching the movie. It was yesterday, right? He's still upset. He still can't believe that they didn't end up together. I'm going to try and talk about my first time without Charlie interrupting it. So the story begins in 1992.

It turns out. Wow. Whereas a second grader- We're all trumping each other. I became obsessed with the Titanic for reasons I don't really know, but I got Bob Ballard's book about discovering the Titanic,

read it front to back, knew all the stats about the Titanic. It was my thing as a weird seven-year-old. I feel like it's a common thread. I knew other kids too. There's something so fascinating about it as a kid. Well, sunk ships are something that is like, cool. I mean, I think

from Little Mermaid, maybe. Sunk ships are very important and very romantic. It's definitely the idea of the sunken treasure on the ship. And also just wrestling with death, but in a way that you... Oh boy, you're really taking this to a dark place. But I think it's true. It's like an early thing that kids can

deal with that is like death. Yeah, it happened a long time ago. So I got a cool shipwreck involved. So I was really into Titanic as a seven-year-old and then cut to 1997 when the movie comes out. I'm very excited about Titanic. I see it the day after my last day of school before Christmas break. I was in eighth grade.

Saw it with my three best friends and a guy who wound up going with us that I don't know why but he was there. Shout out to him. Worked at a plant area. Thanks, guys. And it was amazing. And we had a great time.

And then I brought a journal entry from December 26, 1997. Oh, shit. Right. In which I write about, let's see, today is the 26th and I went to see Titanic again. I swear no movie has ever hit me so hard or ever gotten me closer to crying. I didn't cry in movies much. And even now. You were closed off. I know.

But I loved it. Were you 13-ish? 13, yeah. 13. Let's see. It's been haunting me ever since Monday when I first saw it. It's so wonderful, especially considering my lifelong obsession with the Titanic. That's a good journal entry.

I think I saw it twice over the course of Christmas break and eventually I think seven times with my family and theaters. Yeah, no, my family went. My dad went out of town. My mom took all three of us just for fun on a Tuesday night. So you were one of the many Americans who just saw it over and over and over again. Yeah, no, that's just what we did. And it was – so my town still had a downtown theater at that point. It was not like an old movie palace like it was built in the 60s, but it was like we could ride our bikes there and go see Titanic.

And it closed like a while ago, but it was in that theater from December until May. I went to see it when school got out at the end of that semester. It was a full semester's worth of 8th grade of going to see Titanic. Who can tell me the movie that knocked Titanic off at the box office is Lost in Space,

which I also saw in theaters. I also saw that in theaters. Good movie. William Hurt, Heather'll do it one day. Heather Graham. That movie is out of its fucking mind. Matt LeBlanc. Mimi Rogers. And Gary Oldman.

Yep. Jared Harris. Don't forget Jared Harris. Or Lacey Chabert. I'm curious. So we were all in the age range of- Yeah, sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade. Yeah, yeah.

We were kind of, yeah, in a succession of years. I'm wondering how much you guys were aware of parents being anti this movie, not wanting you to go see it, being a little concerned because of the nudity. That was not an issue with me. Well, ready for my story? Oh, baby of the podcast. Baby of the podcast. Second baby.

Second baby. So, Griffin, you were probably about seven or eight years old. I was in fourth grade, I believe. Sure, sure. I did not see this movie in theaters. My parents saw it early and they came home and they went, it is bad, not worth seeing. Oh, my God.

That's how my parents basically reacted. Right. Now, I also, you know, like, as I've talked about in the past and also as a parent from all my behavior as a human being, my parents were, like were very protective media-wise when I was growing up. You weren't allowed to see cynical films, as we've discussed on this podcast. Titanic is maybe the least cynical film.

It is the most earnest movie ever made. It is literally a story of cynics on a fucking boat who are hunting for treasure, having their cynicism pulled out of them by an old magic lady. David F is a story about hubris and about how like the industrial like the dark side of the industrial revolution and like class stratification all that but like cameron is one of you know a few handful of filmmakers i think who would approach this

story and be like but it was so cool. Like, it was so awesome. I mean, the Billy Zane character, he's investing the sort of, like, these rich people having their toys and their power, like, stripped away from them in that character. But yes, he is also like, but wasn't it amazing that they built this giant boat? Look at the engines, look at the turbines.

That's what's so amazing about this movie, is that it is so in love with the Titanic, even though it's also acknowledging, like, it was a horribly built thing like it didn't make any sense. It was a bad idea. Bad ship would not ride again. But it looked so good. It looked good.

It looked great. Alright so you didn't see the film in theaters. Can I just give a little side shout out? Katie Rich goddamn pro. That was incredible.

Because the whole she was reading pulling up diary entries on her phone talking off the dome not missing a word doing like ninja mom moves. You can't describe it, but there was like four different- James Cameron with your love of mothers?

Yeah. Guys, women can have it all. I'm going to use it. Tis the season. Podcast babies. Podcast guest appearances. But there was like, let's try the pacifier. No, let's shift to the bottle.

Let's do some rocking, change positions. Out missing a beat. It was unbelievable. Meanwhile, just trying to praise Katie, you almost knocked your microphone over. I punched my microphone. All right. Okay. So you didn't see the film in theaters.

Right. So at the time- Did you want to or did you just take that on board? I think there was a little bit of like, not Stockholm syndrome, but like conditioning where it was like, if I want to see something that all the cool kids like, my parents were like, you can't see that. I'd be like, I don't want to see that. My parents told me it's stupid.

Right. I was the same way. I had to play the elitist thing. So you were non-rebellious and instead were like, you can't see that. I'd be like, I don't want to see that. My parents told me it's stupid. Right. You know, I have to play the elitist thing. So you were non-rebellious and instead, right, you dialed into whatever, being like a fake grown up.

But like, wouldn't saying my parents had a big night, speaking of Tucci. But isn't that like the opposite of the cool kids? Like my parents told me not to see it?

Well, see, I wouldn't frame it as that. Tucci and Campbell Scott. Oh, you're like, oh, I heard it was bad.

Like I read a review. We're just having two person conversations yes I would do that I would like I would high road them not by being like my parents told me it's bad

but be like I don't know that movie looks uninteresting to me you know I would like do that so at that point they didn't say

I couldn't see it I could have gone to see that movie but they said it was bad we were like seven you were pretty little all my friends saw it every one of my grades saw it.

Alone? Without a parent? I was eight. I was eight. He went to hippie Brooklyn private school. Let's not forget. Excuse me. Yeah, you know, my sister was in fourth grade, and she saw it, and all her friends saw it.

My brother did not see it. Also, at this point, I was in hippie- Manhattan? Yes. Lower East Side. Sorry, you were not yet at hippie Brooklyn private school. Please, big difference. But all my friends saw it.

It was like the movie, definitely. Everyone I knew had seen it when I went to summer camp. Everyone I knew had seen it. But I just was like, I heard it's corny. I heard it's overwritten. Me and my friend Gavin loved the movie. This is like a friend I had when I was in primary school. And would play My Heart Will Go On on my sound system and dance around to it.

We were 11-year-old boys, maybe 12. Isn't that crazy? Isn't that like with no, with abandon. We were so happy to do this. That's so charming. Is it? Do you guys remember, I don't know if they did that. I imagine they did this at every radio station,

but they would play the mega mixes of My Heart Will Go On with the dialogue over it. Yeah, yeah. You jump, I jump. I'll never let the dialogue over it yeah you jump I jump I'll never let go and it like echoes I'll never let go alright

so when did you see Titanic probably like one of your cast girls so when I was like 15 or 16 at the height of my own cynicism

I was like in this thing I think I talked about this in the past where I just was like homework is stupid I'm only gonna watch movies and so I just like every night would just try to I'm only going to watch movies. And so I just, like, every night

would just try to watch a different movie I hadn't seen before on TV. And, like, Titanic was playing that night, and I was like, I'm going to watch Titanic. You know, at this point. So this is years later. It's been, like, eight years since the movie had come out. This was 19, this was 2005, maybe. And I was like, I'm going to watch it. I watched it, you know, full

screen, like, standard def on my little bedroom TV. With commercial break? No, it was on, like, you know full screen like standard def on my little bedroom tv no it was on like you know cinemax or whatever um yeah it was on like a movie channel was interrupted but it was like not not a good format low def on a crt i had a really small tv in my room and i was like this is dumb watch the whole thing because i liked cameron a lot right after it hit the iceberg i was like the ship stuff's cool rest the movies of the movie's dumb. That was the classic boy, I would say. As a boy, it was like, yeah, well, you know, all the romance

stuff's boring, but then it's cool because everyone dies. But here's the thing that's kind of interesting, okay? Yeah. That's the most stereotypically male thing that has ever happened in my life. I don't mean to cut this up. I felt that way about Titanic at the time, which was kind of usually off from how I felt about things.

I was at 15 or 16 mostly interested into romance movies. Like that was. All right. All right. I loved like love stories. I was like, this is corny. It's like overall. It's, you know, lacking in specificity. It's just like kind of like pablum.

So the watch it was like, you know, technical accomplishment. Don't care. Right. And then like six months later, I was with my buddy, Derek Simon, who I've talked about before. Lived in Long Island. We would make little short films together. He's about to go to his house.

He's about to be married next weekend as we're recording this. I went to his house for the weekend to like make a little short film. And then we like saw Titanic was on TV and we never finished our movie because we were like, let's just watch Titanic. We both just sat there and we're like, this is dumb. This movie sucks. Right. So he blows. Watch the entire thing, right?

Then another time Derek and I ended up doing the same thing where we were supposed to make a movie and we watched the entirety of Titanic on TV. It does that. No, it does. It's dumb. I mean, it's got good stuff in it, but it's not a good movie objectively.

And then cut to 2012, the 3D re-release, right? Now in between these two things, right? Watching with Derek and the 3D re-release, right? Now, in between these two things, right, watching with Derek and the 3D re-release, I had gone to a Goodwill, and I saw that they had the Titanic, the VHS set with the two tapes. And I was like, I like this stuff after they hit the iceberg. I'm just going to buy the second tape. Oh, my God. That's obnoxious. I think the iceberg hits before the second tape begins, if I remember correctly.

It must, because the second tape couldn't be, because the iceberg hits about two hours in. Also, they showed it in my theater with an intermission, so I might be thinking of where the intermission started. Where was the intermission? I think it was in different places. For us, it was right when they send the flare out, and it's like the big shot into the blackness.

That's where the intermission was. Because I don't think there was a studio suggested intermission. I think some theaters just chose to place an intermission. Probably true. And buy more stuff. I would watch, A, I was kind of a jerk

because I bought only the second tape of Titanic, which means someone was stuck only buying the first tape of Titanic. A 10 reel film, by the way. Oh my God. A 10 reeler. Wow. I would watch just the second tape a bunch

with my friends. I liked that. And then when the 3D release happened, I was like, I gotta see this thing, like, you know. Yes, Griffin. Alright, wrap this story up. So I went and saw it in 3D. I was like, I need to see this on a big screen and, like, the proper dimensions, all of that. Like, see if I can get it. And the movie starts, right?

3D. I was going on a second date with a relationship that did not go anywhere. Okay. But it was someone I liked a lot at the time. And so I was, like, into that. I was going on a second date with a relationship that did not go anywhere. Okay. But it was someone I liked a lot at the time. And so I was like into that. I was like jazzed about the fact that I was like with her. The lights go down. There's the black.

And then as it like fades in on the sepia, you know, footage of the Titanic and the first stream, I immediately hear people cry. Right? That's how I reacted just when I rewatched it just now. Right? And I went, oh, I get it. Like, already I get it.

Seeing it with a crowd is huge. So that was the thing. I saw it like, the 3D remaster was like good. It's obviously not the ideal format of the movie, but I thought it was well done. But I was seeing it in widescreen

in a big sold-out theater on a Friday night and it was like a date night. I think they opened it right around Valentine's Day. Yep. And I just, the whole time was like, I get this. I get this 100%. And the stuff that I previously thought corny, it was like a date night. I think they opened it right around Valentine's Day. Yep. And I just the whole time was like I get this. I

get this 100 percent. And the stuff that previously thought corny I was like this is so effective. This is like I mean it's like immaculately designed like strategic attacks on your heart. Right. And it's so well done. And then the stuff after they hit the iceberg I was like even better than it was for me before

because now I got the emotional investment. I probably watch it one more time since then. I own it on Blu-ray. You watch movies now and then you watch Titanic and you're like fuck, they'll never do stuff like this again in movies. Titanic's the best. I love it now. I own it. I've watched it a couple times since then. Remember watching it in Videology? Yeah, the best. I think we've talked

about this on the podcast. That's a fun place to watch Titanic. It was playing before trivia and so there was a huge crowd assembled. Titanic was finishing and then in that last scene, you know, we'll get to it, but the last literally scene in the movie, everyone just starts screaming. Do you remember that? It was really... The scene with Old Rose?

The dream she has. Or is it a dream? Or is it a dream? That's what wins the film Best Picture. To me, that's what wins the film a billion dollars plus worldwide that's why people see it again because it has a happy ending somehow even though it's about the sinking of the titanic it's insane um but to your point what you said i mean even just i watched this on blu-ray because a lot of times with this podcast especially when it's like re-watching

movies i've seen a bunch of times that we're covering i'll download it onto my amazon kindle fire which is a great product right shit non Shit non-HD Amazon Kindle Fire. It was $40. It's not HD. I should probably upgrade. You probably should. Jeff Bezos won't give me one. I've texted him a lot, and he goes, new phone, new disc.

And a lot of times I'll watch it on Netflix or whatever on my laptop in my bed when I'm trying to fall asleep and watch a piecemeal or whatever. For this, I was like, I'm going to sit down. I'm going to watch the entirety of Titanic on Blu-ray, on my TV, and was just taken aback by, like, this still looks like the biggest movie ever made. It's true. It's very seamless.

He's made little tweaks and fixes, I think, but it's very seamless. It still looks like the most expensive movie ever made. Like, I don't know if there's a movie that feels larger to me than Titanic. And what's the actual most expensive movie ever made now? Is it like Pirates of the Caribbean 3 or something? Or like 5.

No. Or maybe 4. What's the last movie they made? 4. Yeah. On Stranger Tides. He has never disclosed, no one has ever disclosed

the actual final budget for Avatar. Avatar, right, yeah. The common belief is that Avatar is the most expensive movie but they've never admitted how much it costs.

Right, but the highest reported budget is on Stranger Tides. Pirates of the Caribbean 4, $378 million. It's all on the screen. Johnny Depp got $300 million. Who can tell me what that movie is about?

Pirates. Some Stranger Types. Okay. We're done talking about us seeing the movie. We're going to talk about the movie. Bill Paxton. Okay. So the movie starts with an abyss ship.

First, there's the sepia montage. We see the footage. Which is essential. The sepia montage, that seems like something that at the end they were like, Jim, you need to have something in the beginning. I can't just start on a spaceship. I mean, first there's the sepia montage. We see the footage. Which is essential. The sepia montage, like, that seems like something that at the end they were like, Jim, you need to have something in the beginning. I can't just start on a submarine. Right, right. They came here for a romance. Set the tone. I do,

I will say the entire prologue until you finally do the like, okay, back to 1912. The sheets that Irvin slept in? Oh yeah, with that. But like, building up to it, it takes its time. It must be, like, almost a half an hour or something. I think it is, yeah.

I thought it was more. It's, like, 20 minutes. Okay. But it's so well-paced. I think they give you just enough, like, morsels of, like, you know that you're walking and you've seen the poster. You know that it's Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, like, having a hot, sexy time on a boat. And they give you these little. Very accurate.

It's literally steamy. Actual flashes. boat and they give you these little, like, actual steamy actual flashes like, you know, I get chills when I see the shot of or when she is looking at the submarine footage and you get those little, like, flashbacks. The music. Yeah, you see him at the top of the stairs

and all that. Like, it's almost like it's more rewarding going back. Guys, I want to watch Titanic again. Going back and watching it. We need to go back to Titanic. Going back and watching it, even, you know, the fourth or the sixth time or whatever, when you see that and you've already seen the movie several times, you're like, yes, I'm watching Titanic. Like, that's the feeling.

Yeah. But it is huge. Because, like, think about it. The amount they have to convey. It's like, you see them diving and they're in the ship and he's like, these windows are a foot thick or nine inches thick. It's so deep. And you see inside the wreck and it's the real wreck. And you're like, right?

His little robot's going through the doorway. Duncan. And then they don't find whatever they're looking for. Yeah, Duncan, right. And then they find the nude picture. And then you see Gloria Stewart and Susie Amos at home looking at it and then they fly on

and they're explaining who she is. Like, that is a lot for 20 minutes. And there's a lot of jokes in that sequence which I think is really important because you're signing up

for historical romance. Well, and Abernathy kills it. Yeah, yeah. Abernathy's great. You get Bill Paxton being like the ghost ship rising from the darkness and immediately

that guy calls him on his shit. You're like, okay, so we're all agreeing that there's like humor in this. And when they open the safe and the diamond isn't in there and they go, don't worry, the same thing happened to Geraldo and that only on his shit. You're like, okay, so we're all agreeing that there's humor in this. And when they open the safe and the diamond isn't in there and they go, don't worry,

the same thing happened to Geraldo and that only ruined his career. But this speaks to how big this movie is, not just on a technical scale production level, but even just the epicness of the storytelling in this movie is that I'm not just using a modern day explorer

as a quick intro into the movie. He's setting up an arc for this guy. That's the thing. The first 20 minutes of this movie, it's like, we're not taking... It's him, right? We're not rushing. Right, it's him.

He's the treasure hunter who then realizes, no, this is human, this is people. 100%. But I also think the way, as you said, that they construct it, where it's like, first we're seeing the technical thing, then we're sort of meeting the characters then we're understanding the

struggle of what he's looking for then we're introduced to old Rose like all of that he's saying like sit back like this is gonna take some time sure I got a picture here that's what ultimately made it I think you know even if guys would scoff and say oh I only care about the ship that at least like doesn't turn

them away right like you know like you realize oh this is somebody who does care about like the historical significance and like what's it like to go on a dive and all that and you got some classic cameron roughnecks in the opening who are speaking kind of like the guys who are being dragged on date night who are just like look i just want to find that diamond i want to get rich i want to smoke a cigar i got one earring yeah like this chick's probably lying that she was on the Titanic. She's a very old lady. Goddamn liar.

Right, these teenage boys sit there, they don't want to see the movie, and then immediately the movie tells them all women are liars, and they go, now... Red pills! Red pills! Two years before The Matrix, so they weren't yet woke. But the MRA movement was alive and well. It was, of course. But also,

there's just magic to the sight of the real rep that is inescapable. And Paxton's eyes are magic. It's so well lit that I didn't think at first that it was actually from the night. Some of it is real and some of it isn't. They recreated some parts of it. I think the interiors are fake, right? Some of them are real. If you listen to James Cameron's commentary, which I highly recommend, he will tell you exactly which shots are real.

Wow. Okay. All right. Before we get off of the intro, there's a master, not that we're getting off immediately. No, we're getting off. But there's a masterstroke that I think is the key to the entire movie working as well as it does, which is planted in the opening. So, you know, they're looking for the diamond.

They don't find it. They go on TV. She hears the newscast. She goes to them. Wasn't I a dish? Right. But also Paxton's like, I don't think this is going to pan out. They go, I think you want to talk to this person.

And then Abernathy is like, look at the signs. The name. There's no listing for her in the registry. It says she used to be an actress. Looks like she's just looking for attention. She'd have to be 101 years old. All this stuff, right? So they're like setting it up like this isn't going to work she gets there and the first thing they do

is they mansplain to her the sinking of the Titanic and the CGI remodel that he shows you thank you very much for your forensic analysis so A it's great because it encapsulates the entire thing the movie is trying to do which is the balance between the emotions of the actual people

who experience this thing and the spectacle of this crazy horrific thing that happened right but also because they have this scene which is like they make it part like of the sort of text of the movie which is her trying to find her own independence not wanting to live the life that everyone wants her to have and she's in a world of mansplaining constantly

right they also now in detail explain to you exactly how to do it. Yeah, what's going to happen. It's so crucial. Which is brilliant. Because then you understand what's happening when... Yeah, nobody would be able to say like, yeah, nobody would be able to explain the compartments

or like how it's going to split in half or everything. You just have to chart. It would be great if someone was still like falling back. Oh, it must be that the bow is sinking out. But you like... Can't help like the pressure of the

go on sorry he gets it done so quickly at the beginning of the film he has Abernathy do it so it's kind of funny

she's got a big ass in the air right right because he's making jokes out of it so it feels like character development her response is telling

you everything you need to know about her already and setting the stage for her lifelong battle but then it also is now when the ship sinks all we have to track are the emotions

but it's also an incredibly like cocky move to be like i think i can tell the audience everything that's going to happen the joke is like twist ending the ship sinks right that's what everyone the joke everyone made when the movie came out right why do i need to see it i know what happens right but he's like doubling down on that it's like i'm going to tell you exactly how the ship sinks you're going to know every beat of Once Things Go Wrong, and you're still going to be invested in this thing. There is no real reason for them to show her the animation. No, it's kind of like aggressive. Like, oh, what's your PTSD doing?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now that you see that, it's almost bizarre. This is you. But that's what I like is the fact that Abernathy is the one who's showing her. They did that previs. So, I mean, they just wanted to show it off. But I also think it works because that character is the one guy who'd be like, she'd want to see this, right? Right, right, right.

She'd probably love to see this. Forensic. Forensic. But, you know, people always talk about, like, you know, this was famously, like, one of the only Best Picture winners to not be nominated. For screenplay. I think maybe the only one in history, maybe. No, Braveheart, I think. Or was it nominated?

I'll look it up. But to not even be nominated is like a very rare thing and everyone's like, well, the dialogue's hokey, this and that. People focus too much on dialogue.

Braveheart not nominated. Okay. People focus too much on dialogue when they talk about screenplays because the thing this movie's got going for it is just the structure.

So good. It's insane. Especially for an epic movie, which I feel like is hard to pull off in this era of Hollywood. It's a perfectly designed movie from a writing standpoint. It has everything in the right order to pay off maximally. Also, it doesn't really, I mean, because it is a love story, I guess,

but it doesn't fall into the thing I think you would think a movie would fall into, being a three-hour movie about the Titanic, which is just like, oh, it's going to be like Alt-Mini. There's just going to be a million people running around. Sure, which is the night term. Right, yeah, exactly. And those people are there, but it's just like you're allowed to also kind of focus on,

like to have a movie that you trust to really essentially two characters the entire time and it's three hours long and it takes place on the Titanic just feels like. And to constantly be looping in like, oh, but here's the captain or here's Molly Brown or here's Ismay. Like here are the real people. And I've made sure to like, you know, give them all their proper names. I mean, little side dishes.

Even you look at the way, like, you know, I always think that Jeanette Goldstein's part's bigger than it is because it leaves such an impact. Three scenes, maybe? Three very brief scenes? Three scenes that are each like 15 seconds long. You see her her entering you see her when she's saying to her kids like well the you know first classes mommies and daddies have to go right like you know yeah and then the final scene but but there is like you know as much as cameron gets kind of raked

over the coals for not having a sense of sort of like um you know specificity you know, specificity, you know? Or sort of like realism to his sort of characters. It's like, oh, he writes it very large. They speak their emotions and all of that. Well, I mean, no one better exemplifies this than fucking... What's the Italian guy? Oh, yeah. I can see the Statue of Liberty!

The actor's name's Danny Nucci. The character's name is not Enzio. Fabrizio! I mean, that's my... I'm not going to go to New York and be in a van to call the Strokes. If you'd said that, then the movie would get six stars for me. That would guarantee a screenplay nomination. I'm going to date the Drew Barrymore. He's just...

I mean, like... anymore he's just i mean like i cameron's fetishization of of white immigrants to america yeah especially the irish and the italians in this movie is a little much i would say even for this movie uh but nothing is more much than fabrizio he almost says mama mia when he dies like i mean you almost remember him saying that even though he doesn't. But I think the key to it is as you said, so he doesn't take an alt-mini approach, right? It really is these two

characters. Everyone else is sort of like an adversary. The other major characters, right? Or adversarial forces. But it's like he's got the upstairs-downstairs approach. That's his hook, right? And those human elements like he writes them really big and really unsubtle in the first half of the movie. Totally. And they don't go down easily, but they stick in your craw.

Especially their initial introductions are so broad. Like when they're getting on to the shit. Her being like, Titanic, I guess it's big. And even Molly Brown. All that sort of stuff. It's like, okay, the first half of the movie, you're like, this is kind of clunky. But the second half, when we don't have time to like have character moments, and Jimmy really cuts it down to the bone and does a lot of these big emotional beats

just through looks or actions or stuff like that, it helps to be like, I know Fabrizio. He's climbing up the ropes and trying to cut them now. I know that guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know the Irish guy. Right. Like that all pays off later. Because as much as...

Tommy Ryan. That's his name. As much as it isn't, like, a kaleidoscopic ensemble kind of film, it's, like, the fact that the captain gets this big of an emotional moment. Sure. You know, Garber, Fabrizio. Murdoch. All these characters.

Yeah. It's crazy. I mean, I want to say, and this is going to sound kind of dismissive. Nitpick. But it is, it is, they are settings still. They're not really characters but they're there to,

I mean, the thing is that they're really, it's a really well fleshed out setting. So they are very, you need all of these elements to fully realize like this is the world that they live in.

This is like, and the ship is a microcosm of the world and their love is a microcosm of the ship and all that. And so like, you have to have this kind of Greek chorus of

the Irish kids and the snobby ladies in first class. Absolutely, the countess. The quartet. And individually, those things I think are probably a little weak. The corny. A little corny.

A little easy, I'll say. But I think that the sum of them all together and just like, also just the rhythm of going back and forth, you know, going from the dinner to going down to the rowdy party downstairs. I feel like he's very clear about it, too. I was noticing it on

my rewatch for this podcast. It's like, he really makes sure to take you down methodically every time and then back up. He loves to take you through the decks of the ship one by one and really communicate how much difference there is. And of course, everything is very broad. And that is part of how I communicate. Katie has reentered the studio with a newly quieted Charlie.

What did she do to him? We'll see how long we last. We're going to see if this takes. I feel like Charlie doesn't like our commentary. He disagrees with all of our points. He doesn't like our analysis. Yeah, he has a lot to say about Titanic guys, as he's been trying to tell you. So we should actually talk about the introduction of

these characters and maybe the plot of who they are. Basically, I want to talk about Billy Zane. Lewis plays the video. It's like, does that seem, you know, like what you remember? And she's like, you know, it was 75 years ago. And they're like, oh, great, old lady. She's not going to remember anything.

Bill Paxton's like, anything you can remember. Just whatever. You know, sense memory maybe. Is there a color that you associate? I remember it like it was yesterday. Boom, Bill Paxton. Boom. By the way, I really want to say Gloria Stewart is someone who's incredible in this movie.

And I remember as a kid, I dismissed her and thought it was hacky that she got an Oscar nomination. I was like, what? She's an old lady. Now you watch it. It's a remarkable performance. She's an old silent movie actress. She was the leading lady in The Invisible Man. Right.

The original Universal Monsters movie. Cameron wanted Fay Wray, they say. He wanted an old actress. And it is such a clever idea to link it back to that era. Yeah. The type of film he's trying to make end, obviously, the period he's trying to recreate. I think she was 86 when they filmed it. She was not 101 years

old or whatever. And they said she looked too young, so they had to apply old age makeup to her. The makeup's really good. She looks real wrinkly. I did not know that. Yeah, she is very wrinkly. And the liver spots, too, are really well done. She died five or six years ago at the age of 100. Wow. James Cameron was at her 100th

birthday party. That's her in her glory days. It's also good because she was like... One of the Marx Brothers? I feel like I made that up, maybe.

Are you writing Gloria Stewart slash fiction? Yeah. Garetha Marx once interviewed her. Oh, okay. Maybe I knew that she was... I was into the Marx Brothers in 1997, so I feel like maybe I was aware of that. She once...

In 1972, she drew a painting of the Watts Towers. Oh. She became an artist after 1945. That's what you were thinking of. She didn't date a mark. She painted the Watts. That's it. Alright. That's what it is. I remember it like it was yesterday. She made decoupage.

She made bonsai artwork. She was a smoker. Was diagnosed with lung cancer at 94. Dang. Still held on for six plus years. Give me six more. Yeah. Six more and I'm good.

Holy shit. A lifelong Democrat. Yeah, she was married twice. The second guy they were married for like 40 years. That was James Cameron, right? Avid environmentalist. I do think it's smart. Funny man.

Thank you. avid environmentalist. I do think it's smart. Funny man. Like, thank you. I do think it's smart because like, you know,

Fay Wray is even a little more iconic than Gloria Stewart. I think it was smart to get someone who was like part of that era but not like. Right,

that doesn't stick out. Right, and it was kind of like a nice, like we're giving her one last shot. Like she never was huge in her heyday

and here she gets this late in life Oscar nomination. She is really excellent in it. Also, when we did our Matrix episode and I kept on singing the praises yeah you kept calling uh gloria foster is that her name yes gloria stewart by accident i love that performance so for the rest of this episode i'm gonna call gloria stewart gloria foster try to level out i'm trying to level it out please don't all right so she takes us back to that daniel she reveals that the picture is of

her the drawings of her yeah okay the the picture couldn't survive in the water. Is that true? Because somebody said, that's horseshit. And I was like, no, but it was in a safe. Something with the leather though, right? Isn't it like a leather bound artist book? He's got a little folio. It's salt water.

And also when they open up the safe, everything else that comes out as like muddy sludge and when you see the safe it's all paper it's like how this one thing unless he was drawing on like I don't know even vellum is probably yeah anyway and they also clean it off they clean it off when they clean it off they clean it off with

water and it's like this would deteriorate it even further they're like washing it Katie and Charlie are leaving the studio she'll be back. I googled, could the picture have survived? But obviously now I'm just getting a lot of things. They're like, Jack and Rose

totally could have both survived. So I don't know. I looked it up on Yahoo. The thing I was saying before we started recording is that any question you want to ask about Titanic, if you start to type it into Google, it starts to fill it in for you because everybody has asked any possible question. That's how you know

you're in the zeitgeist. Like, could rats have gotten on the ship? Indeed, they could have. How did they get on the ship? When the ship was being built in the shipyard, rats would get in and stay in. As well as dead bodies? Dead bodies would go in?

What? There's lots of things that were already in the ship. Could blood pressure pills actually make John Travolta's face look like that? That's old dogs questions.

When you're in the zeitgeist. Enough with the old dogs jokes. I will kill you. That autofills. I swear to God that autofills if you search for it. So Rose DeWitt Bucator.

Bucator. Yeah. Rose DeWitt Bucator. A weird ass. Yeah. Rose DeWitt Bucator. A weird ass name. It's a pretty weird name. Yeah. So she's- 17 years old.

She's 17. She's got a killer hat. Society girl from Philly. From Philadelphia. Uh. Yep. Philadelphia. Uh.

She put the uh in Philadelphia. She's engaged to a 30-year-old tycoon. And what a shmoe this guy is. A gem of a man. The heir to a Pittsburgh steel fortune. The turd of the ocean, I call him. Called Cal Hockley, although his first name is apparently Caladon.

I did not know that. If you asked me, I'd guess that he was the heir to a toupee fortune. He's got real floppy hair. But he's not the only person on this boat who will have floppy hair. That is true. Floppy hair was apparently all the rage in 1912. Right.

Yeah. Okay, so Katie, your impression, I mean, sorry, Emily, your impressions of Rose's first scene. Kate Winslet's first scene. Okay. Stepping out of that car. The hand, the gloved hand on the edge of the car. And the hat brim flip up is like one of the best introductions of a character

in any film. It's epic. They're telling you this character matters. When I rewatched it just now that is the first time that I started crying. I cried four times I believe through my rewatch. It is the greatest, absolute greatest You know why it's good though? It's good because of Gloria Stewart. Because she

sells you on this real kind of longing about being a young girl, even being an unhappy young girl. And so when we get to actually see that again through her eyes, you're like, oh, man, time. And she's... Time is brutal. And she did the thing, she does the monologue about, you know, you can still smell the fresh paint.

Yeah. And then he does the monologue about, like, you know, you can still smell the fresh paint. Yeah. And then he does the first morph. He likes that morph effect, you know, where the ship turns into. Yeah, you see the undersea wreckage. Pretty cool. Ship looks great. It was. They called it the ship of dreams.

It was. It really was. And then you get Rose. I mean, the movie's just really pumping you up in appropriate and normal ways. I think also he could have had her be just as wowed by the ship as everybody else. I guess that's kind of like part of her character is that she's not.

She's hard to impress. It's also, I think she's sick of ostentatiousness. Right? Like, right? She's unimpressed by all of the sort of typical dressing of her, like aristocratic. She likes it real. She likes it gritty.

Yeah, she's not into it. She'd love the Zack Snyder DC universe. You know, she wants like the street level, like the grimy. Emily, do you have any thoughts just to cut that off? She loves Suicide Squad. She thought the Suicide Squad was so twisted. So her fiance is really excited about the ship.

Oh, also, this is something that other David pointed out correctly. Wonderful future podcast guest, David Reed. That the line about it being a slave ship would not hurt. It's not age well. That one clunks, right? Because it's not Kate Winslet's character saying it, because that you could forgive, because you're like, oh, look, it's 1912.

What the fuck does she know? But Gloria Stewart in voiceover says it was like a slave ship and you're like ooh taking me in chains yes

to be fair she does say to me it was no of course so it's like I was young and dumb and didn't know how privileged I was

maybe but you couldn't assign as much as you want that line is like an iceberg crashing against the hull of the ship they try to port around it.

But it's not the only reference to slave ships in this movie. Is that right? When's the other? Leo says that when he's going back down to third class when he's leaving dinner. He's like, I'm going to go row with the other slaves. Right, right, right. But that's a pretty funny line. And there's also that scene with that line.

That's a funny slavery, right? He got a good burn in on those Richie Riches. There was that scene where he goes down to the lower class rooms and they're all watching Amistad on VHS. There's that scene. Which had just come out. It's the only thing I have on video, though. It's the only anachronism, but I think it's a good one. That's a good thing, too, because the movie was already running so long and then Jim Cameron decides to just put like 25 minutes of Amistad

in the middle of it. But the courtroom scenes for some reason. Yeah, the Hopkins really pops in those. They did just the tracking. So that's... Should we talk about Cal? Cal's the performance that I really loved when I was a teenager.

It's so big. Well, he's playing to the cheap seats. It's so dialed into the grandest, silliest vibe of this movie. I mean, you could place this performance in an episode of Kenan and Kel and it would track. You know, this is... I mean... He's got his hat? He has one of the best...

He's got a cane? Yeah. Yeah. Well, sorry. You can go ahead. No, no. He has one of the best... Please, go ahead.

He has one of the best lines early in the film, not in that scene, but when... Can we just have a whole 30 minutes to talk about art in this movie? Oh, yeah. By the way, apparently all Western art was lost in the Titanic. Right, right. All modernist art. Every Major Monet. The original cut of Magnificent Ambersons.

But I love... Okay, so I was tweeting about this the other night, and I didn't realize another really good one is in this movie which is Picasso he won't amount to a thing the winky history line I love it I believe your tweet was also about the fact that Jesus invents a chair

in the Passion of the Christ and they say it'll never work which does happen in that movie chairs, they'll never catch on he's like, I'm just a simple carp. It's really the best. Chairs. They'll never catch on. Because he's like, yeah, I'm just a simple carpenter. Here's my latest invention, a chair. And everyone's like, chair? Why do you need a chair?

Sit on the floor. This is the worst idea you've had since that Christianity bullshit. Two flops in a row? I think the Pharisees are just fine, and I think the floor is just fine. But just to continue with painting, because I don't want to go back to this subject because I could talk about it forever. But also when Jack comes back to their room later and checks out the Monet, one of my other favorite lines is, look at the use of color here. Look at the use of color. And Cameron tracks his hand moving across the painting.

He's a true artist. He knows where to look. He's an empath. He knows where the eye goes in the frame. That would be a good CBS procedural is the person

who can like read art. You know? That's their superpowers. They can like read art and crack the case. Or like x-raying art which is a real thing. That would be good.

Yeah, well, so Dark the Khan of Man. Oh my God. Kitty Rich, okay, stepping up her game. She's wrapped him up now. She's wrapped him up.

He's in a bundle. He's in a bundle. He's in a bundle. In a bundle. He's in a bundle. Much like the Blu-ray DVD bundle that I bought. Four discs. It's a four disc combo pack. Plus digital copy. And it has two discs for 3D because each half of the movies can only fit on one disc.

Okay, so let's talk about this kid playing a poker game with his Italian buddy. We talked about Kate's intro, but we got... I mean, yeah, I've been listening. You were talking about the Degas, and he's not going anywhere. I love that you just took your headphones out and have just been listening to the podcast while trying to quiet down Charlie. Oh, I've been hovering. No, I didn't take that.

I've been just hovering. Oh, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. I've been hovering in the hallway. Can I say one more thing about the art before we move on to that scrappy young stowaway? You can stop whispering, but yes. Okay, but I want to because this is dramatic. I love the fact that he says, who's this bi?

And she goes, I don't know, something Picasso. At least they were cheap. Yeah, if you want to be even a little bit elegant and respect the intelligence of your audience, you go, I don't know, Pablo something? That's almost worse. Picasso being the part you remember something picasso no one's the ultimate audience flattering line though because there's nobody in that crowd who's gonna be like oh who is that guy who's that everyone in history was so stupid man they just didn't get it it is such

a james cameron the thing where he's like trying to he like, don't you get it? Rose is smart. She gets that Picasso's cool before anyone else in high society. At least they were cheap. There's the joke. I love that line. At least they were cheap. At least they were cheap. He says it to Lovejoy, and Lovejoy's like, I don't care.

I'm a Terminator. I have no opinion on art. For the listener at home, David is doing a great Billy Zane face when he's saying the line. He's doing a really good facial impression. I just love that she has 50 suitcases. She does in present day too. She always has her pictures.

She brings her pictures. The way he puts the... They drop this in, which he's going to do two and a half hours later, where he handshakes the guy with the money and says, I put my faith in you, sir. I love that. I love that it comes back around. In the original Toy Story, Mr. Potato Head's character introduction,

as he turns around and goes, look, I'm Picasso, because his face is in a weird order. And I laughed at that joke, because I was like, I can tell that's a joke, but I didn't know what it meant. My mom got me into art through Toy Story.

Oh my God. She bought me Picasso books, because it was like, I would only like things if they had an association to Toy Story. You were a weird kid. I was a weird kid. Your mom must have been so excited, though, to get you into Picasso. She loved it.

I was all about Picasso because I was like, that guy's in Toy Story. He's the only painter in Toy Story. He rules. How old were you when you saw Toy Story? Six. Okay. I mean, it was right there. I mean, it seems like it's your Little Mermaid because Little Mermaid, I'm realizing more and more as I get older,

it's like, the ocean. It's a movie for me. It's my Rosetta Stone. That's why I come back. I'm wearing Toy Story sneakers right now. He is. They're actually really cool. You should check them out later.

They're very subtle. They're very subtle and sophisticated and adult, and I'm a grown up. Katie, do you have any Zayn takes before we move on to Jack? Oh, I mean. I mean, or Kate Winslet takes, obviously. I mean, what else has Billy Zayn been in? The Phantom.

Back to the Future. Part two and three. Importantly. And one. He's in all three. Yeah. has Billy Zane been in? The Phantom. Back to the Future. Part 2 and 3. Importantly. He's in all three. Zoolander. He did a remake of Ed Wood's Glen or Glenda. He's in Dead Calm, which is pretty cool. Obviously, it is crazy.

Orlando? Yes. He's in the Sally Potter movie Orlando. The adaptation of the Virginia Wolf novel. He's in the Sally Potter movie Orlando, the adaptation of the Virginia Woolf novel. He's in Tombstone. He's in The Silence of the Hands. Whatever that is. Oh, that's a Dom DeLuise parody.

I remember the poster for that movie. Yeah, I think that's what we all remember. He's in The Tales from the Crypt Presents Demon Knight. Can we do just Billy Zane? Yeah, and he had just been in The Phantom, which is a terrifically strange little superhero movie. That was that weird period where Batman did really well and they were like, oh, the thing they like is pulpy.

Very, very old school 30s pulpy shit. Let's do a Dick Tracy movie. They didn't make other superhero movies. They did The Phantom, they did The Shadow, and they did Dick Tracy. They went to other sort of early 1900s pulp stuff, but then didn't adapt other... It's very interesting to me.

He keeps being in movies. His filmography is just so deep. He makes, like, five movies a year, all of them straight to DVD these days. But it is funny to watch this movie and be like, look, you know, Leo, Kate, Billy Zane. Like, I mean... But it was also this example of, you know uh high tide rises all ships where like zane had such a cultural moment like it didn't translate to him like doing a lot as an actor afterwards i hope you enjoy your time together i just remember that like when this

won best film at the mtv movie awards zane accepted it sure because leo was like hell no everyone else had sort of distance like i think because le Leo had gone into his hibernation mode, right? Where he couldn't deal. And I think Winslet was in a similar kind of like... Well, she just moved to London and smoked cigarettes and made Hideous Kinky. Right, but Hideous Kinky was two years later. She didn't come home for two years and she got married and had a baby. I think both of them sort of retreated.

And Billy Zane became the spokesperson for the movie. I just remember I hadn't seen the movie. Zane and Nucci. Zane and Nucci. But Zane was was doing the press tour when they were like, Titanic's number one for a 16th week in a row and here on the Today Show is Billy Zayn.

And Zayn would just be doing the victory lap. Listen to your friend Billy Zayn. Yeah. Just FYI, we're an hour and 12 minutes. We haven't even introduced Leo DiCaprio. It's a two-parter, baby. At what point in the movie does Leo get introduced?

Like 40 minutes in? Probably right. I mean, yeah, because it's after we've already introduced everybody before they've gone on the ship. Yeah, I think you're right. We don't have this,

the Picasso scene, right? No, no, no. We have Kate's introduction and Billy Zane and Francis Fisher and all those people. Yeah, because the Picasso scene is after the big triumphant

leaving King of the World. No, King of the World comes later, sorry. King of the World is when they're leaving Cherbourg. Of course. Let's take it to see Mr. Murdoch. There's the poker scene.

They go straight from poker. They run on board some fiddle music plays. And then they run straight up to the top deck and they go all the way to the front. Okay, so it is because there's two like Titanic leaving scenes. Like it's when they leave the dock and then it's when they like go out into the open ocean. So I couldn't remember. Take it sea, Mr. Murdoch. They're running late because by the time they win the tickets in the

poker game... All life is a game of luck. Yes. That comes later. I know, but I'm just reminding you guys. That all life is a game of luck, which is important to remember. It's not really a game of luck. It's kind of a game of skills.

There's some luck involved. Anyway, I don't want to linger too long on the poker game. We got time. The poker game scene is ridiculously cheesy, even by Titanic standards, I would say. And I hate his stupid Simon Cowell bit where he's like, you're not going to, I'm sorry for being serious. You're not going to see your mother for a living. Oh, that is so Simon Cowell. Oh, that's such a perfect call. Because we're going to, I'm sorry for being so, you're not going to see your mother for a long time. Oh, that is so Simon Cowell.

That's such a perfect call. We're going to America, baby! Can I just put one editorial position out here, just like at the top of this podcast? I like how you balanced Katie's book on your lap. Oh, yeah, sorry. I was paging through. Emily is nursing the book.

I am, I know. I feel a little empty right now. She's got a sling. I feel very envious. Ambient noise is what this podcast is all about. This book is making my biological clock. But I just want to put this out there, and this is not exclusive to Titanic, but it is related to Titanic. I do not enjoy any Leonardo DiCaprio performance ever in history. Including this one? Including this one.

Not a one. Nope, I do not. And that was one of my bad dude, like, 7th grader takeaways from this movie. Like, Leonardo DiCaprio isn't that good. I still don't think he's that good. I think Leo's good, although he can be bad.

I think Griffin and I agree on the best Leo performance, and we should do the best line from it right now. One, two, three. We are duly appointed federal marshals. I don't think it's his best performance. I do think it's the best line he's ever done. To me, that's my favorite Leo. What's your favorite Leo?

Catch Me If You Can is up there, too. Yeah, I like the ones where he's having fun. Wolf of Wall Street, man. having fun Wolf of Wall Street man I think that's maybe his best I think that's his best Emily's making a great face right now Titanic's top 5 for me because I I think he's fine in Titanic

He's not consistently great but I think he's got What he's able to do well in Titanic Very few actors can do well You know what I'm saying? He's charm He doesn't seem like he's trying anything. Yes. Oh, I would disagree.

In Titanic? In certain scenes, I think he's pushing it hard. In other scenes, I think he's got a very light touch. Yeah. And you think of his later performances where he's just working. You see the work. He's showing you the long division on the paper. Blood diamond man.

Yeah. He's always felt like a little boy in a big coat trying to do acting. Which is why I think What Departed is one of his best performances because that's about a little boy in a big coat

trying to do acting. And Wolf of Wall Street too. Yes. I agree. I think it's best, but Shutter Island is the best one of them all because that is what

that movie is about. He is so fucked up that a whole island is pretending like he's a cop just to try and make him feel better. I love that movie. That's what making a movie

starts like, right? That's what Shutter to try and make him feel better. I love that movie. That's what being a movie star is like, right? Right. That's what Shutter Island is. It's about filmmaking. Shutter Island's the greatest movie. Just Kevin Connolly is hanging out with you and Lucas Haas. Pussy Patrol.

Pussy Posse. Pussy Posse. Calvin McGuire just got divorced. Pussy Posse's back. I know. Golden age. It's not just Leo and Lucas. Let's be clear.

It's a posse, not a patrol. Nobody is patrolling. I didn't mean to say patrol. I'm sorry, guys. I'm just trying to keep everything on track right now. We're so on track right now. Do you have a Leo? Katie, what's your Leo?

A Leo take? Yeah, what do you think of Leo? Did you like Leo? Oh, yeah. No, I mean, I wasn't obsessed with Leo. Some people were obsessed with him. I was a little Dario. You were more into the ship.

Yeah, into the ship, but also into the movie. I started reading Entertainment Weekly. I was into the box office and the Oscars but also into like the movie I started reading Entertainment Weekly I was into like the box office and the Oscars which just all makes sense for what I do now it was such a movie movie in terms of all the

like sort of cultural like seepings that a movie can have yeah like it it encapsulated everything that can come out of a movie

yeah to its most extreme yeah and I got into like the Hollywood side of it and like Leo no I liked Leo but I never saw

Man in the Iron Mask or The Beach like I kind of, I didn't feel the need to follow him after that. You had a funny post. I had seen Romeo and Juliet in theaters. I think that's the only Leo performance I had seen before. Had you? No? Yeah. Yeah. Oh. I'd seen that. You just said oh. Well I mean I like that movie a lot. I think

he's okay in it. I think he's pretty good in it. I think it's a young performance but I mean it works. Yeah, it's fine. Well What's Eating Gilbert Grape is what you really want to go back to. That's the best it. I think he's pretty good in it. I think it's it's a young performance but I mean it works. Yeah it's fine. Well What's Eating Gilbert Grape is what you really want to go back to. That's the best one. Well sure.

So my mom and my sister and I watched all of his other movies. I also think he's lovely in The Quick and the Dead. I've never seen that movie. Not a great movie but he's very charming. The crazy thing about Gilbert Grape

I feel like went on a tangent like that performance made his career like that is what put him on the map. Yeah. No one could do that performance anymore. That performance would never work. Never happen. And he is a very big modern movie star whose career is built

on a performance that would be completely unacceptable it's very true yeah and it's also interesting where it's like that's one of the few performances of that kind that still holds up yeah like they wouldn't let him do it today but it's one of the few times that someone has played a mentally challenged person and not made it feel sort of mawkish. You know it feels like he's playing it realistically without sort of any sentimentality. Which is like you can't say that for Sean Penn you know.

Does Rain Man hold up? I haven't watched it. It's a little cartoony I think. Rain Man holds up. Tom Cruise holds up. Dustin does. I think it's a good performance in a vacuum. I think it's like a little problematic a vacuum. I think it's a little problematic held against the real world. All right. Leo's on the ship.

Kate's on the ship. He's the king of the world. He's the king of the world. I do think you're going to punch me in the face for saying this. I am going to fucking punch you in the face. Budging. Sorry. Forking.

Yeah, we're back in here now. Good place. I do think we should talk about Leo mania a little bit because that was a result of this movie that hasn't really happened since then. Listen, I can sum up the Leomania around this movie. Leonardo DiCaprio, like teenage or teen playing Leonardo DiCaprio. He was, I believe, 22 when he shot this movie. 21, somewhere around there.

He was a very wet actor. And this movie put him in the perfect setting. He actually was not only wet and in water, but he got a little frosty too. That's it. That's the entire... Frosted tip. He literally gets frosted tips in this movie. His hair looks incredible

wet. He's so dewy. He's just the dewiest actor ever there was. His Romeo and Juliet performance and his Gilbert Grey performance, both of which involve a lot of crying, are both very wet performances. I'm on board with this. I defy you stars, like on his knees in the rain, like that. He's playing like the best boyfriend of all time.

A lot of rain. And then like Tybalt gets shot and falls in a fountain. A lot of water. That's what we're doing, Romeo and Juliet podcast. There's a scene where Juliet drinks a glass of water. I, so we're doing a Romeo and Juliet podcast now? Is that scene where Juliet drinks a glass of water? I signed off on this conversation. Okay, so Ben walked in, said, I signed off on this conversation, and walked out.

That was great. He looked good, too. He looked great. Ben looks really good these days. He's been getting into fashion lately. I don't know. Yeah, have you guys heard Ben's fashion tips? I have heard about Ben's fashion.

I mean, I don't know them specifically, but I know that he's been getting into fashion. If you tweet at Ben Hosley on Twitter he'll give you fashion tips he's been doing it I've been watching him do it yeah some of our blankies oh I forgot

that's your biggest credit is you're the mother of blankies oh yeah you're welcome you know we have a subreddit called backslash r backslash blankies you're welcome

reddit I gotta read that subreddit before this episode comes out because I don't want to read anyone talking about me but I want to read what everyone else is saying absolutely

you gotta check it out we'll tell you if Charlie gets upvoted a lot of conversation happening on Reddit. A great website where nothing bad ever happened. Totally sign off on Reddit. Please talk about me on Reddit. I will never read it. That's the thing. You can say whatever you want. You'll never read? I'm sorry.

Mother of blankies. What was I going to say? You want to talk about Leomania. I feel like it's pretty obvious stuff. Leomania, Dewey about Leo mania. I feel like it's pretty obvious stuff. Leo mania, Dewey, Frosted Tips. I feel like no one in this room had Leo mania, though. No. It was a phenomenon. I should call my sister and ask her.

Because I think Leo was her first movie star crush. I had Jonathan Taylor Thomas before Leo, so it was like a second round. Is your sister older or younger? Younger. So yeah, she was like fourth, fifth grade at that point. I remember the Olsen twins sitcom Two of a Kind which I watched every episode of. Me too. Great show. Christopher Siebert

was on it. He's a great actor. Great show. Ends in a cliffhanger. It's a real bummer. You never know if they're going to get together or not. Him and the babysitter. Doesn't matter. I thought you and Ashley were going to get together. But in that show, they have a Titanic and a

Leo poster on their wall, and it was like, that show came out in 98. Question about Leo mania, has there been examples since then of someone who's become like a boyfriend? Not even on the scale, but someone who actively rejects it and has no interest in it. I think there's one that came close. I think there's one that came close, but this is the

reason I want to talk about this, because it is sort of such an anomalous thing that hasn't really happened since then. My sister has seen Titanic, but was born the year after it came out. My sister was born March 1998, so she was born like four months after. It was still number one at the box office. Yeah. And so I was

trying to sort of explain the whole Titanic culture to her, and what an impact it had, and the Leomania thing, which is kind of anomalous. And I was like, I don't even know if there's a point of reference, something I could equate it to, because it was like suddenly everyone's talking about this guy. And I remember TV would do primetime

specials interviewing the parents. Robert Pattinson, a little bit. And it's true in the same way that he rejected it. In the rejection, definitely. But I think it went away a lot faster. And also he's kind of wet. Dewy, very dewy. Kind of skinny.

Definitely. I think the difference with Robert Pattinson is that there was a pre-existing character that people had already latched onto. Right, yeah. You know, he sort of walked into a space. Definitely. And also, I feel like it just died down faster. Much faster. But he made

the same choices. He was like, I'm not making commercial movies anymore. Like, I'm only working with, like, cool directors. It didn't work as well. No, it didn't work as well. He's okay. I think he's a good actor. I mean, I like him, actually. I contend. I never liked him. I like him. I don't think he's always good. I think when he is good, he's particularly good. Well, here's

the other thing, You're not going to find another phenomenon exactly like this because there aren't going to be actors in this sort of role that isn't based on a prior property. It's very similar like Daniel Radcliffe would maybe be another one

like older Daniel Radcliffe and he's done a similar thing as Pattinson. But all these are franchises built in like very calculated in a way like there wasn't a Titanic the novel. Right.

There wasn't anything like that. Yeah, there weren't people like dying to find out what Jack Dawson would be compared to their imagination. Yeah. Right. Who's going to be Jack Dawson?

And then people being like he's not what I imagined. Yeah. And there's that thing where it's like people were choosing to fall in love with Pattinson's version

of Edward Cullen but that wasn't Edward Cullen period. The biggest difference is that Twilight fans, when his casting was announced, were mad because he was in Harry Potter. Right. So there was already a pre-existing. They were like, I don't like him in Harry Potter,

the other pre-existing franchise that he's coming from. How would you not like him in Harry Potter? He's great in Harry Potter. He's lovely. So I'm not going to go into a whole tight tangent on this. No, we're done with the tangent. I contend that Rob Pattinson is really good in the first Twilight

because he's doing a weird vaguely Nicolas Cage performance of like a vampire like he's kind of playing it realistically I could be sold on that call

I've never seen any of the other ones from the sequels on he starts having to just be milquetoast I think his detachment is also like I have to stand off

the rough edges because there's too much at stake and then he gets boring but the first one he does all these weird sort of wincy things where it's like,

this feels- Well, he's like nauseated by her. He's like always on the brink of puking. Because she stinks, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the premise of Twilight. Which is so amazing.

She stinks so hard that he falls in love with her. Can you imagine how fucked up you would be? I'm sorry, fudged up you would be now as a young woman if you had been brought up on, like that had been your touchstone of like sexual awakening. It's been like almost 10 years yeah well how's romilly doing she didn't like oh she didn't okay so it didn't work for her

yeah i just think all the weird stuff about like you know your virginity and being stinky and like oh my god you know like romley's whole thing is that like the i i hope i'm not blowing up her spot here but like certainly growing up her whole whole thing was that the actors that she'd have movie star crushes on were real kind of dad actors. Like Patrick Stewart. The one she was huge on was Hugh Grant. Sure. You know? She loved Hugh Grant when she was eight and all the other girls were into, you know.

Teeny. Teeny actors. But she's always sort of gone for the guys who are just like, oh, he seems like he'd be a good husband. She famously said that she thought Ed Helms was cute. And we were like, Ed Helms? I was like, yeah, he dresses well. He seems like a nice guy. All right.

He plays the banjo. He's got glasses. Checks off all the boxes. She's just looking for a comfortable. I always said that Romley fantasizes about her first divorce. Like, that's the storybook divorce. I'm cutting you off. Everybody's on the boat.

They're on the boat. He's the king of the world. That's very early. I can't remember exactly where it is. No, go ahead. No, I just wanted to know what happens after. He's the king of the world. She's got the Picasso.

Yes, then she unpacks all of her stuff. And then what else? What's the next? I feel like the first big thing is her trying to jump, right? Is there any other major thing in between? No, he gives her the diamond after she tries to jump, right? No, it's before, right? No, it's after.

It's after. She's upset. He's like, I was going to save this for our wedding night. Well, he's on the lower deck and he sees Kate on the upper deck and she looks beautiful and Tommy's like, you're never going to get her. Right. And then it's the dinner scene where she then runs away and tries to jump. And we've seen her also be hostile and drop a Freud reference. Oh, right.

Yeah, yeah. We've met Ismay. We got a little punchy. Yeah, okay. I was going to say, Ismay is important and we've met Ismay. I was going to say, Ismay is important. We've met Molly Brown. Well, for all you shipheads out there, we learned that they're going to go faster than they should, which is just bad news.

Just don't do it. They want to make headlines. Bernard Hill, this is his last sale, right? Don't they say that he's about to retire? He's about to retire. Right, this is his last voyage. Also, we learn a little bit, I think, here and more later, Rose is a big shiphead. She's just like us.

She's just in it for the ship. Oh, yeah. Mr. Andrews is like, ah, you're a good one right there. Nothing escapes you. The original shipper. A literal shipper. Oh, boy. But I think it is important that you meet his mate you see her mock him

no bits pro shits sure so I'd say Rose has two of her best dresses in these scenes like the one where she's eating the lamb

like the green that was a good one and then the jump one the suicide one is a suicide dress that is it's so 90s it's so anachronistic

her makeup look is like every single makeup tutorial in Seventeen Magazine in 1997 like the dark lip like very Tori Amos yeah very drawn in brown

yeah very pale too and like the Empire waist too is also very it's like a baby doll look except long like it's so it's very very 90s her entire

it's a good dress it's good it's a great dress yeah I'm not no I'm not dissing the dress I'm just saying it's one of these things.

Who did the costumes for this? Because there is this element of knowing when to modernize just enough to bring in a current day audience. That people know. That you're like, oh, I understand you. You're not this weird alien from another time. Well, like Leo's hair is a big one. Oh, yeah. Like every boy in my middle school had that haircut.

I'm trying to find the costume. The overlap in the Venn diagram between like what's historically accurate and then fitting into like modern standards of beauty and cool so that it's still like this is impressionistically how you would feel if you looked at this person at that time. Like you need he needs to be the bad boy. He's floppy.

Debra L. Scott. Debra Lynn Scott. Won an Oscar. She won an Oscar. This film won every Oscar it was nominated for except for actress supporting actress, and makeup. Lost to Men in Black. Yeah, which is a great win.

Oh, she did the Back to the Future costume design. Well, she's Hall of Fame. She did Avatar. She's done some Transformers movies. She did The Island. She's done a lot of Michael Bay. She does all of Michael Bay's movies. She did Wild Wild West. She did Heat.

Great costuming. Wild Wild West actually has great costumes too. That's a highlight of that movie. Yeah. She did Minority Report which has fantastic costumes. Oh yeah. That's got really good future dress both in the... Wow. She's got range. Casual. That's great. She's got range.

She's got the range. So I'm looking at IMDb right now because I wanted to make sure we covered all the main characters. It's like, okay, we got Hal, we got Molly Brown, we got... We met Molly Brown played by Kathy Bates, real person. The unsinkable Molly Brown. There's a musical about her that I grew up on. Debbie Reynolds, right? Debbie Reynolds, yeah. You're gonna cut her meat

for you, Cal? Yeah, you're gonna cut her meat for her too, Cal? She's so good. Sometimes you kind of forget that Kathy Bates is in Titanic. I'm just so glad she's in it, though. Like, that character is great, and she is great. I thought I read somewhere that there aren't more real passengers on the Titanic who are characters in the film because of, like, estates or something.

Is that true? But you've got Aster, Gracie, and Guggenheim. But they're not, like, the Aster is, like, barely there. But they do, they reference him, and then you see them die. I mean, Guggenheim you see die, Aster, Gracie, and Guggenheim. But the Aster is barely there. But they reference him, and then you see them die. I mean, Guggenheim you see die, Aster you see die, and Gracie you see die. I'm hoping I'm getting this right, but I think what I learned from James Cameron's commentary is that Murdoch's family, so he, jumping ahead a little bit. Well, this was hugely controversial. Oh, okay, so you're going to get to this?

Oh, this was a huge thing? In Britain, it was like a national controversy because he is a Scottish hero. Wow, so do you want to get into this then? Murdoch, who's played by Ewan Stewart, who I don't know that actor at all, but he's really good in the movie. He's the actor who shoots. He's the character who shoots himself.

He shoots Tommy. He accidentally shoots Tommy, who's a made-up Irish saint of a character. He has some of the best reaction shots I've ever seen from an actor. He's the one Cal bribes and then he rejects the bribery. But he plays trauma really, really well. That guy is a very famous hero in Scotland. He's like the hero

of his town Dalbeady and like, I don't know, like whatever. He was this famous person on the Titanic who died supposedly rescuing people. Some people on the Titanic said they saw someone shooting passengers. There were like lots of eyewitness accounts of that, but it's 1912. And that does happen in this movie. Yeah, well he's the one you see shooting passengers. There were lots of eyewitness accounts of that, but it's 1912.

And that does happen in this movie. He's the one you see shooting passengers. He's the only one. You probably have Cameron's take on it, but basically there's no actual evidence that Murdoch did this or that he shot himself. Some people said maybe they saw Murdoch doing it. Some people said they didn't.

The eyewitness accounts from the survivors of the Titanic are all over the place. Which is why no one even knows if it actually split above water. Right. Because it was pretty fucked up. Yeah, there was a lot going on. They weren't taking notes. I mean, first of all, it was pretty fudged up. Second of all, it is important that it'd be hard to keep count of everything that was happening

because they were all busy watching Jack and Rose. There's this amazing love story unfolding in front of them. It's true. That's why they hit the iceberg in the first place. It was so distracting. Literally turned all the way back at the wheel. 50% the rudder was too small. 50% Jack and Rose making out on the poop deck.

Oh, yeah. And pooping on the make-out deck. Do you guys know the most recent theory as to why they didn't see the iceberg? Because you know it was a clear night right but it was there was no water

breaking around the it was still water right go ahead please go please my pin tweet on twitter

for a long time was related to this so yeah so I watched so when I watched this movie with my boyfriend

for the first time for him he he had never seen it before. Humblebrag. Congrats on having a boyfriend. I say humblebrag whenever anyone mentions a significant other. Is my baby the ultimate humblebrag for you? Bringing it here is the ultimate. Yeah, just showing it off. You're real Robin in my face.

So after we saw this movie, which was a somewhat significant release at the time that it came out. And so my boyfriend saw this in 2016 and was like, oh, wow, the Titanic is really interesting, huh? Sure. I can see why so many people were interested in the ship. So then we went on Netflix or whatever and just did a search for Titanic and watched, like, two Nat Geo or some other off-brand Nat Geo impression documentaries about the sinking of the Titanic, and one was about what actually caused them to hit the iceberg.

Are we going way ahead? Are we getting way ahead of ourselves here? You're in the story now. I like this story. Okay, yeah. You know how a mirage is when you've got a hot ground and the heat warps our perception of light and mirrors the sky? I didn't know that.

That's what it is. So it's just that the pressure or whatever, the air bends differently because of the temperature difference. So there had been a warm front that came in, but the sea was really, really cold at that time. Charlie hates this theory. I know, I know. I'm just telling, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to cliff-snotes it. Go ahead, go ahead.

I'm going to cliff-snotes it. So the air was warmer than the sea, which made there be a reverse mirage. So you saw a reflection of the sea. Oh, sure. So it was just darkness, essentially. So you didn't, they couldn't see the iceberg because,

not because it was cloudy or misty or whatever. Right, because it wasn't. There was no moon that night, though. It was a new moon. It was a new moon. But... But not,

the twilight's not a new moon. They would have, they should have been able to see it, but there was this, the theory is now that because of the odd weather at the time, there was a mirage and the air was a lens the air was a lens that was my pin i was my mind was so blown by this that there could be such a thing as a reverse mirage so the air is a lens so emily what you're saying is that it's about the sky. Oh, boy.

You're bringing up my favorite pet theory for all movies. That they're about the sky? Every movie's about the sky. You thought this was a movie about the sea. It's not. It's about the sky. So we're an hour and a half in. Should that be our drop-off point? Let's just talk about Aloha now.

I just dropped the mic. Tune in next week, guys, for Titanic Part 2. Okay, but I might need you to give me a line for the thing. Which one are you doing? Wait, there's so many lines. You don't have one? Well, it's hard to choose. There's the one I think I want to do.

Hold on. Let me scan. I need to pick the best you had 45 minutes to pick this shit I was eating a spiked caesar salad it was spiked with injecting what line would you guys go for I put the diamond in the code

and I put the code on the podcast I tweeted both that I mean I texted that to both of you I love that and I yelled it at Joanna and Joanna was like I tweeted both that. I mean, I texted that to both of you. I love that. And I yelled it at Joanna. Joanna was like, put the coat on her. Wait, let's see. I'd rather be his whore than your podcast.

Ben, you're recording all this, right? The one my family always quotes for no reason is, and our two at the most that Mr. Andrew says. That's good. I don't know why. No one else likes that line. All life is a game of luck. My favorite line in it, which happened right before I stopped watching it this morning,

is just when they do the iceberg right ahead and the guy on the other end of the line goes, thank you. He's so good, that guy. The stiff upper lip British guy. Not Murdoch. It's the other guy. The guy who says, I'll shoot you all like dogs. Yeah, that guy. Thank you. Thank that Murdoch? Not Murdoch. It's the other guy. The guy who says, I'll shoot you all like dogs. Oh, yeah, yeah, that guy. Thank you.

That's my favorite sequence in Titanic is the iceberg scene. And he goes, well, water? Water here? I want to do him. And then there's Yohan Griffith. Yohan Griffith. Is anyone alive out there? He's great, man.

What a movie star, that guy. Wait, that's him? Yeah, man. Oh, I never put that together. Wait, that's him? Yeah, man. Oh, I never put that together. Mr. Fantastic himself. I love you, Owen. Mr. Forever. I love you, Owen Griffith.

Yeah, I do. I do, too. Not so much in Fantastic Four, but it's not on here. Sir, she's made a podcast, I assure you. She can sing. But she will. She will sing. Okay, are you ready for the one I chose?

Okay. Ben's putting all that at the end of the episode, okay? Here's the one I chose? Okay. Ben's putting all that at the end of the episode, okay? Here's the one I chose. This has been a UCB Comedy Production. Check out our other shows on the UCB Comedy Podcast Network.