Titanic It was one of the biggest movies ever made, but it is said to have been a bit of a nightmare. One of the most famous behind-the-scenes stories from the film’s production, is that period when everyone got a dose of PCP and the production became a drug-fuelled nightmare for a few hours. 25 years later, no one is sure who was responsible for drugging the chowder during production on the party scene. On August 6, 1996, a production “lunch” break during late-night filming went awry when the cast and crew were served seafood soup and drugged.
According to a new report recalling the night’s events, an assistant director became aware of some strange behavior on set, and split the crew into two groups: those who showed signs of sedation, and those who weren’t. Some headed to the hospital as a precaution, as cast and crew members began to feel the effects in the waves and sober crew members scrambled to find out how it all happened.
“We had room for knobs and electricians, and one of the guys started talking a lot,” said crew member Jake Clark. Eagle said. “He’s a big guy, like a six-four, and he says, ‘Are you guys feeling alright?'” Because I don’t feel like it. I feel like I’m on to something, and believe me, I’ll know it. He was just talking like that. And as he was saying this, we saw James Cameron running by the door and this extra running after him. He said, “There’s something in me!” Get him out!”
On the other hand, the late Bill Paxton seems to have been pretty quiet about the whole thing, which was presumably when the actors had the most downtime to have fun in this huge shoot.
“Bill Paxton was a true sweetheart,” says Claude Roussel, the film’s set designer. “He was sitting next to me in the hospital hallway, kind of enjoying himself humming. Meanwhile, the handles were going down the hallway on a wheelchair.”
Between 50 and 80 people were taken to Dartmouth General Hospital in Nova Scotia, where they had a high level of BCP. And just as you slowly began to feel the effect of the cast, the symptoms got bigger and more crazy over the course of a few hours as the medications kicked in and things got increasingly noisy and difficult for the hospital staff to control.
“People moaning and crying, sobbing, collapsing on tables and stretchers,” Cameron said Tell Vanity Fair About the 2009 incident. “DP Caleb Deschanel leads a number of the crew down the hall in a loud line. You can’t make this stuff up.”
“Some people were laughing, some people were crying, some people were throwing up,” Paxton said. Entertainment Weekly Back in 1996. “One minute I felt good, the next I was so anxious I wanted to breathe into a paper bag. Cameron was feeling the same.”
Luckily for him, Clark was allergic to seafood, and he didn’t participate. So he has a fairly clear memory of that night that went down in “weird Hollywood trivia” history.
“Their eyes were incredibly red like beets. Jim had a bottle of scotch, and Bill Paxton had a bag of knuckles because he was a real stoner,” Clark said. “I kind of laugh about it because I haven’t eaten clam chowder, and then I’m out there in the trailer smoking a joint.”
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