Revenge is a dish best-served cold, the saying goes – but in the case of an infamous drug dosing on the set of Titanic, it came in the form of a hot bowl of clam chowder. In 1996, Titanic would become director James Cameron’s most ambitious and costly undertaking to that point, with a production schedule that included a massive, sinkable scale model of the doomed ship being built in Rosarito, Mexico, for the majority of shooting. First, though, Cameron would bring a smaller shooting crew and actors to Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. There, they would shoot the film’s present-day opening scenes in a location not far from the actual shipwreck, and Cameron would also dip submersibles beneath the ocean’s surface to film the wreck itself.
Working on a slated $200 million budget and armed with the extensive knowledge of underwater filming he had honed on an earlier movie, The Abyss, Cameron captained 85 crew members and a small cast of actors in Nova Scotia. While stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet weren’t present for this portion of shooting, Bill Paxton, an actor known for his joviality and likability, was there to balance out Cameron’s reputation as “the scariest man in Hollywood.” Indeed, Cameron was a taskmaster, but the fact that The Abyss, while profitable, hadn’t been a runaway financial success left Cameron under enormous pressure from Paramount Pictures to produce a blockbuster.
The Titanic Crew Ingested Heavily-Laced Chowder
On August 8, 1996, the Nova Scotia crew were on their last night of shooting in Canada, venturing from Dartmouth across Halifax Bay to remote Shearwater. The crew broke for lunch around midnight (normal practice on a night-shooting schedule), and a local catering company had prepared a heaping helping of hot clam chowder to keep the crew warm and well-fed for the last push of shooting. Soon after finishing his chow, Cameron found himself experiencing anxious and hallucinogenic effects. Cameron recalled being fearful he had ingested “paralytic shellfish neurotoxin, which is very dangerous.”
Meanwhile, a few grips and electricians were huddled in a room set aside for their equipment – when one began talking erratically, saying, “Do you guys feel okay? Because I don’t. I feel like I’m on something, and believe me, I would know!” Just then, Cameron ran by the room, shouting, “Get it out of me!” Cameron, fearing toxic poisoning, was smart enough to run back to his trailer and make himself vomit before the drug had fully taken hold of him.
The Titanic Cast and Crew Began to Experience Inexplicable Delirium
Cameron pulled himself together somewhat, eventually returning to set, which only added to the dissociative effects of the drug because the stage had been abandoned. Cameron recalled thinking he was in an episode of The Twilight Zone. He only had one bowl of the ‘choo-choo chowder,’ but part of the issue was how good the seafood soup tasted. Recalling the incident, standby painter Marilyn McAvoy (she made Jack’s famous sketches of Rose in Titanic) remembered, “The chowder was unbelievable.
People were going back for second bowls… people ate a lot more than usual because it was so delicious.”
To think of James Cameron, by all accounts, a control freak, suddenly losing control of his set is part of the hilarity of the suddenly psychedelic situation. But PCP, also known as phencyclidine or angel dust, isn’t exactly a ‘free love’ drug like LSD. It can induce massive anxiety and even lead to convulsions and violent behavior. Fearing the worst, the above-the-line crew members (with enough cognizance to do so) began rushing the crew, en masse, to Dartmouth General Hospital. The scene that would unfold there was something out of a much-later Leonardo DiCaprio picture, The Great Gatsby.
Cameron and Crew Were Rushed to the Hospital, Partying Ensued
Bill Paxton, a reputed stoner with a ‘just-go-with-it’ attitude, recalled the scene at the hospital, quipping that “Some people were laughing, some people were crying, some people were throwing up.” The hospital staff began attempting to confine the crew to individual cubicles. That didn’t last long, as grips began requisitioning wheelchairs to do wheelies down the hospital hallways, and according to Cameron, cinematographer Caleb Deschanel led a rapturous conga line of crew members who were suddenly enjoying the experience.
