Was the entertainment press “gunning” for “Titanic” to fail?
Just because someone says something confidently on social media doesn’t make it accurate. Which is why we need critics and other reporters who are well-versed in Hollywood history to be gainfully employed.
Nobody in Hollywood likes getting a bad review.
They are inevitable, though, if you work enough. It’s hard to make good art (ahem, commercial entertainment) and a lot of it is … not good. Sometimes that’s because larger factors are shaping which projects studios are willing to greenlight. And the prevailing mindset among executives at the moment seems to be: Why back original ideas when there is always more intellectual property (IP) to be regurgitated instead.
Remakes aren’t bad necessarily, says Time film critic Stephanie Zacharek in her recent piece on “Freakier “Friday,” but “as the number of remakes and sequels remains steady if not increases year over year, why does our current era feel staler than ever?” She takes a look at the film itself (“humiliating to everyone involved”) as well as a broad overview of our current moment. It’s worth a read.
Most actors grumble in private about less-than-glowing notices. But the movie’s star Jamie Lee Curtis made a different choice and responded on Instagram: “SEEMS a TAD HARSH. SOME people LOVE it. Me being one.”
She’s entitled to her feelings. But the idea that anything but praise equals being a “hater” — and should be scolded — has been one of the odder trends on social media.
It doesn’t help when celebrities publicly endorse this point of view at the same time that outlets are shedding their critics, all of which is terrible if you’re interested in anything resembling substantive conversations about movies and pop culture history.
On social media, these conversations tend to have a winding quality, where foggy memories become nested in a series of dubious quote-posts and screenshots. It can get weird!
Recently, the critic Angelica Jade Bastien pushed for more scrutiny in how we talk about big budget movies, considering the amount of money involved.
I agree. Scrutiny is something we should all want and expect — dare I say, demand — when it comes to pop culture, otherwise we’re just swimming in an endless ocean of PR and marketing.
(Angelica is a sharp critic and if you don’t already read her work, both at Vulture and her newsletter, you should! She’ll always make you think more deeply about whatever she’s writing about.)
There were all kinds of responses to Angelica’s post, and at least one gave me pause:
This was the exact attitude that caused film journalism to collude in trying to destroy both “Waterworld” and “Titanic” in the 90s with a barrage of endless negative press and doomsaying.
They were both deemed to be car crashes in the making doomed to a studio destroying level of failure.
(People fire off posts without thinking much about word choice, but it’s important to note that whatever happened, I don’t think “collusion” — a conspiracy between two or more parties to defraud someone else — is accurate. “Film journalism” is also broad and vague, and who exactly did “film journalism” collude with here, and to what/whose benefit?)
The above post was screenshotted by someone else who said:
nobody remembers HOW MUCH the entertainment press was legit gunning for "TITANIC" to fail, but it was 100% a thing.
So let’s get into it.
Media coverage of the film’s making
Those two above posts are conflating some things. That’s probably because neither person stopped to do the research and check their facts. Fine. That’s the role of critics and other journalists, so here I am doing just that. But my larger point: Just because someone says something confidently on social media doesn’t make it accurate. Which is why we need critics and other reporters who are well-versed in Hollywood history to be gainfully employed.
So, let’s talk about “Titanic.”
The film shoot itself was extremely chaotic — cast and crew were getting sick and hurt — and, yes, that made the news. Reporting what happened isn’t “colluding” or “gunning for” the movie to fail.
It’s important to remember this in hindsight. Labor issues matter regardless of whether the movie is a hit or not.
But reports of trouble on set can take on a life of their own, and it’s true that ahead of the movie’s 1997 release, the accumulation of news didn't inspire confidence from either professional prognosticators or Hollywood insiders themselves, especially competitors who might have been fueling some of the negative buzz.
Hollywood has a long history of backstabing and spin-doctoring. Sometimes that happens in ways that become visible to the public.
It’s always healthy to probe and critique media coverage. Let’s also be accurate (there’s that word again) about how some of this played out.
Collectively, the Hollywood trades — which at the time included Variety and The Hollywood Reporter — drive a lot of what we tend to think of as “media coverage” of the entertainment industry. (The two outlets are currently under the same ownership; that wasn’t the case 30 years ago when they were competitors.)
The field has since expanded to include Deadline, The Wrap, The Ankler, etc. and they provide a combination of dogged reporting, fawning profiles, casting and deal announcements, industry analysis, box office/viewer data, plus TV and film reviews. (I don’t work at a Hollywood trade and never have, but I do read the reviews and I don’t sense that their critics are pressured to give a specific response to grease the wheels of their outlet’s access journalism demands).
Sometimes there are off-the-record calls that happen between entertainment reporters and industry power players (agents, executives, etc.) who offer up gossip, ego-flattery or leaks in order to press an advantage, or undermine a third party. It’s up to the reporter to separate out what’s true, and not just be a mouthpiece for someone else’s agenda. The late Nikki Finke (who founded Deadline in 2006 before ultimately being forced out after selling it) was one of the more notorious players of this game, and her reporting was often shaped not only by these phone calls, but her personal biases as well. It could be juicy at times, grimey at others. Ideally, the job should be: You get information and confirm as much of it as you can. Then it’s a judgement call about whether it’s trustworthy and newsworthy.
So was the entertainment press “gunning” for “Titanic” to fail?
There was a lot written about the movie before it came out that could be termed “negative.” That’s because concerning things were happening on set, so much so that and even outlets beyond the Hollywood trades were covering the story. A sample headline from the Tampa Tribune in April of 1997: “Titanic” film following ship — a sinking disaster.
(To be sure, the trades were absolutely invested; Variety even created a “Titanic Watch” logo for its ongoing reporting.)
James Cameron has a reputation for being a demanding perfectionist and he is notorious for being … not an easy person to work for. The reports coming out of “Titanic” went beyond that.
The cast and crew were drugged after being served a meal spiked with PCP by an unknown person, for reasons that also still remain unknown.
Several actors were injured while shooting the prolonged sinking scene “after they fell and struck parts of the ship,” according to CBS, with injuries ranging from broken bones to ruptured organs.
Kate Winslet got hypothermia and came down with pneumonia after filming her water scenes without a wetsuit under her costume
Winslet almost drowned “while shooting a scene inside in the sinking ship when her coat snagged on a gate she was running past and pulled her under the water.” She also chipped a bone in her elbow and told the Los Angeles Times that she had so many bruises on her body that she looked “like a battered wife.” She said the water in the tank they filmed in was so contaminated that “actors splashing around in it got kidney infections.”
Over at the Golden Globes website, there’s a rundown of the saga, which includes reporting from Kim Masters for Time magazine that described “80-hour six-day work weeks, lunch breaks that were skipped routinely, no bathroom breaks under penalty of being fired.” Masters also quoted a set rigger saying, “I think it’s the closest thing to slavery that I’ve ever laid my eyes on.”
Before filming the sequence that required thousands of gallons of water to break through the glass dome at the top of the ship’s staircase, “The stunt coordinator’s written assessment of hazards associated with the sequence included ‘risk of drowning,’ but a crew member says exhausted workers actually fell asleep during a morning safety meeting meant to minimize the danger.”
These are labor issues. It’s a mistake to equate that with “the press was out to destroy the movie” because it erases the reality that cast and crew are entitled to basic workplace protections. Guess who that erasure benefits? Not workers!
(The public rarely learns of safety issues or other abuses that might exist on a set; the accidental shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in 2021, while making the Alec Baldwin Western “Rust,” is a notable exception. A Hulu documentary about the tragedy was released in the spring; I wrote about that here.)
An irony too tempting to pass up
As for “Titanic,” there was also an irony too tempting for some journalists to pass up: The making of a movie about an infamous disaster was becoming a disaster itself. A story in the New York Daily News reported: “The voyage of ‘Titanic’ is turning out to be nearly as harrowing for the crew of James Cameron’s movie as it was for the passengers of the ill-fated ocean liner.” The tastefulness of this phrasing is debatable!
Cameron ended up doubling the budget from $100 million to $200 million. That kind of thing is usually framed as a negative, regardless of the project, because it’s considered irresponsible not to stay on budget, even if audiences rarely care.
So taking all of this into account, were Hollywood pundits convinced the movie was going to flop? That was the consensus, for sure. Was it a conspiracy? I don’t see one. I think it’s subtler than that. When people who cover (or work in) the industry smell blood in the water, there can be schadenfreude at play. At the time, “Titanic” was the most expensive movie to be made and it seemed like Cameron’s ambitions had finally gotten the best of him and skepticism about the film’s prospects became conventional wisdom in the run up to its premiere.
But listen, even the studio was pessimistic about the movie ahead of its release.
So was Cameron, telling The Hollywood Reporter:
“The business heads at Paramount acted like they’d been diagnosed with terminal cancer — a lot of grim faces and a triage approach to releasing the movie. Everyone thought they were going to lose money, and all efforts were simply to make sure the hemorrhage was not fatal.
“Nobody was playing for the upside, myself included, because nobody could have imagined what was about to happen next.”
The illustration of Jack and Rose at the top was created for this newsletter by Phineas X. Jones. More of his work can be found at www.octophant.us