The worst peacetime maritime disaster in history occurred 35 years ago today - the sinking of the passenger ship MV Doña Paz (known as “Asia’s Titanic”) in a collision with an oil tanker off the Philippines. Over 4,000 people are believed to have died; the exact number is unknown because many passengers on the Doña Paz weren’t listed on the ship’s manifest.
A movie was made about the disaster, though it is probably less well known than Titanic and doesn’t feature in U.S. TV reruns.
I was fascinated by the sinking of the Titanic when I was young—well before it was found on the bottom—and as I recall, there were differing accounts as to whether or not the ship had broken in two or not. A Reader’s Digest compendium that I read noted that some witnesses reported that the ship had indeed broken in two (with sketches!), but others did not report this. I came away with the impression from the article that the ship had probably not broken in two, and that the witnesses who reported this were incorrect.
Of course that was wrong. I remember being surprised when the wreck was found in two pieces.
The grandmother of one of my best friends was a Titanic survivor, so I knew a lot of the real story from him. The movie left me cold when you know what it was really like. It felt disrespectful to the survivors and the deceased. Oh, and Billy Zane was such a mustache-twirling villain he was laughable rather than intimidating. The special effects were good, but the melodrama was over-the-top soppy, and I usually love a good sob story! I also hated that Cameron said he based Winslett’s character on Beatrice Wood. What an insult to Wood. I enjoyed the costumes and the sets.
You’re assuming that it’s an ordinary door, and that there are no special attachments designed to make it work better for the purposes of the filming. I do not think that those are safe assumptions to make with regard to anything on a disaster film set. YMMV, of course.
There’s a “cough and you’ll miss it” line of dialog that says Cal’s company supplied steel for the Titanic.
Since the common thinking is that the steel got brittle in the cold water (or was improperly made to begin with) and that allowed the damage to be worse than it should, Cameron is actually making Cal directly responsible for the sinking! Tweet! 15 yard penalty for piling on.
I went through a Titanic phase when I was ten or so, and retained enough interest in the story to really want to see the movie when it came out. Although I thought it was overlong, I really enjoyed it, and saw it twice. Fine cast, interesting story, amazing sets and fine costumes. Decent score, although I got a bit tired of “My Heart Will Go On.”
Favorite production factoids:
Only one side of the ship was fully built. For scenes set on the other side, the sailors’ caps would have the ship name reversed, and characters’ hair would be parted on the other side, so that the film could simply be flipped, with starboard thus becoming port.
The same actress played the Irish mom, tucking her doomed kids in for the night, who’d played Vasquez in Aliens and John Connor’s foster mom in Terminator 2 (both also Cameron films).
Cameron told his CGI wizards that, for the long, swooping shot of the entire ship as seen from above, he wanted it to look like what the White Star Line would have done, had they made a promotional video.
I remember an article at the time about high school boys who knew, to the minute, when Kate Winslet would appear naked in the movie’s screening in their local octoplex, and would show up just to see her before going on to see another film.
Yes, he does (or did). RTT! was one of my favorite novels for awhile.
I recommend these books, too:
Was that because a rich girl and a poor young artist had sex in the back seat? 
The exterior was fine, but the stains on the seat…!
To film period movies, they’ll often use cars owned by collectors of classic automobiles. The result of that is that all of the cars in the “1930s” are just a little too uniformly clean and perfect, with no dust or spots from normal, regular use. And they’re all just a little too colorful and fancy, for the time period. Instead of feeling realistic - those are all real cars, after all - the movies feel like stage shows with set dressing.
My general feeling of Titanic was the same - everything was just a little too perfect. So while I appreciate that the movie is about lots of people dying and the special effects have all been done to perfectly show what the reality of it would look like, the breaking up of the ship and how the water interacts with it isn’t really the most important part of selling that.
The high quality of the special effects of Bruce the shark isn’t what sold people on Jaws, it was the acting and semi-realistic presentation, as contrasted with most horror movies of the time.
Bad special effects can take someone out of a film and ruin what the actors are doing but, with some quick edits, shaky cam, and darkness you can often hide all of that. Ultimately, it’s the part that you can see clearly, the quality of the acting, and the quality of the story that gets you.
If the movie was making you cry within the first few minutes then I’d question whether it’s the movie or the actual tragedy that moved you? People really did die and that is, by all means, worth grieving. But your tears for them doesn’t mean that Cameron’s movie is the best movie that could be made on the same subject or the only one that could have produced such a response from you.
In general, I’d put the film Titanic as something like a stage performance of Grease filmed on a green screen, with a high definition documentary of the tragedy of the sinking of the Titanic, superimposed into the background.
The juxtaposition is just too ludicrous to take seriously. So while, yes, I should feel some tugging at my heart strings, for the deaths of all the normal folk who died that day, I simply don’t when I watch Titanic. The disjoint between the presentation of the characters and their comically horrible daytime TV drama and what’s happening around them is simply too large. When they fall in the water - well, good riddance. And that’s nothing against Winslet, Zane, or DiCaprio - all of whom have been in good parts and good movies. Cameron has done some great films, as well. But, for this film, it was just all rubbish. It detracted from the tragedy and took me out of it.
I’d have preferred that he kept it at a documentary, just following some of the characters through the day, without the tacked on story. That would have been a better memorial to the people who did not survive.
What was really dumb about that was that the actual full size half-hull in Mexico was only like 90% the length of the actual ship. But the cg model was 100% size. So they had to do (IMO needless) correction matching the two together. Jimmy: you’re spending more money that had ever been spent on a film! Splurge for the other 10%!
I don’t think they had time. What with running from the police, and driving over a hydrant. 
Well, not the first time. But every time since I bought the soundtrack. Sometimes, just from listening to the soundtrack.
In answer to your post, it moves me for the tragedy, sure, but fictional characters dying also can move me, if they are characters you have come to care about, See: Spock. I get sad for both real and fictional characters and their story. How we face death is as important as how we face life, and since I haven’t been near death yet, I can only live vicariously through real stories and well crafted fiction.
And this is fighting against Cameron’s biases. As I said, he really hates the rich people on the ship. He chose to make Benjamin Guggenheim show panic when the water was coming in. I took that to mean, “look the rich: for all their nobility, are just babies crying for their mommies at the face of death.” I’m like, FU Cameron, you’d be the same. In some ways, Jack is a jerk, yet he’s the hero, because Cameron likes people like him. Maybe he sees himself in Jack.
Rose cheats on her fiance, and she’s the hero. Cameron cheats on his wife…hero, at least in his mind?
If you over analyze the film, you start to have trouble with it. If you take it at face value, “people are people” and this is just their story and not some treatise on class, it’s an awesome emotional film of a famous tragedy.
I love the ending when Rose is reunited with all the people she knew on the ship. It’s happy that all the pain is gone, and people can enjoy their afterlife.
But, you may ask, where’s her husband, the father of her children? “Hey I’m right here! Who’s that kid?” I don’t know where he is, and Cameron never bothered to say.
I’d like to think that scene is just the introduction to the afterlife. They aren’t all staying there forever (that would be hell!). It makes the transition easy. Like Heimdall welcoming spoiler alert into Valhalla in the T:L&T post credits scene. After the party, Rose gets to see her husband, mom, dad…etc.
eta: I agree with Rose dropping the stone in the ocean. It’s hers! Fuck Brock and his grave robbing ass. And I like how she died right where Jack did.
I think the idea “Screenplay = dialogue” really caught steam with Tarantino films and his many imitators.
There are parts of the screenplay I think are weak, but you’re 100% right about the beginning explaining how the ship sank. It’s a stroke of genius.
+1 
Yeah, although I hear it didn’t stay down there long (at 2:10): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ene9uJmOBV0
It’s a great film. I’m a middle-aged man who loved it sincerely since I was a teenager.
But it wouldn’t have been a worse movie if it had less clunky dialog. No art is perfect, the Titanic included.
That’s a good observation. Another solution would simply have been to leave the audience in the dark, just like the characters don’t know what’s going to happen but that’s less satisfying for the audience.
Agreed.
In another part of the Cameron interview (or maybe an earlier interview) he makes a better point. Jack died for story reasons. The piece of wood was never going to be anything other than big enough for Rose but too small for Jack and Rose together. If that door was too big to fit the story, Cameron just would written that Rose was on a headboard or something else.
But the Titanic was showroom fresh on its first voyage with passengers. It would be shiny and new. And the cars in the hold would have been freshly cleaned and polished for their voyage by the wealthy occupants drivers.
Or scale the CG model to 90%. That would have been easier.
I told my husband and daughter (who was 10 at the time) - ‘we just HAVE to see this on the big screen.’ We enjoyed it very much, though my daughter was a bit embarrassed at the nude drawing scene. I’ve watched it on cable TV ENDLESSLY over the years, it’s like comfort food, often just on in the background.
Exactly!
Cameron was so proud of his “rivet counter” accuracy. But yet…he couldn’t get the CG model and the real model to match up?
Incidentally, during a late night while the movie was being filmed, clam chowder was served to many of the cast and crew, but someone had spiked the chowder with PCP. It’s still not known who was responsible. The story is here on Variety.
Oh, it’s on in 10 minutes, 5 p.m. EST, on Spectrum cable 
As said, my issue was with everything that wasn’t the ship. The humans, their costumes, their dialogue, and their acting were all a bit…fakeish and simple.
Splicing Bugs Bunny on top of footage from a biologist’s research of mold formation - bland as factual as that may be - doesn’t make Bugs suddenly become more realistic and plausible.
We don’t buy many movies, but Titanic is one of 7 always available in our Amazon library. We’ve gotten our money’s worth out of that purchase, along with the others. We’ve watched it many times.