Speaker 1: Everybody quite offset I've heard.
Speaker 2: It's the night of August eighth, nineteen ninety six. A
Speaker 2: crew in Halifax, Nova Scotia is working hard on the
Speaker 2: last day of filming at this location. After weeks of
Speaker 2: working overtime and several grueling night shoots, everyone could use
Speaker 2: a break. Around midnight, the crew breaks for a meal.
Speaker 2: It's a welcome respite from setting up cameras, positioning lights,
Speaker 2: and capturing tedious takes of the same scene. It's a
Speaker 2: chance to relax with colleagues and friends, if only briefly.
Speaker 2: But here's what the crew doesn't know. Within thirty minutes,
Speaker 2: all hell will be unleashed on set. It's an incident
Speaker 2: no one could have predicted because it had never happened before,
Speaker 2: or since it's the night the crew of James Cameron's
Speaker 2: Titanic was drugged. Every on set department was affected that night,
Speaker 2: from the grips and electricians to the set decorators and
Speaker 2: camera operators, from the assistant directors to the actors, and yes,
Speaker 2: even future Oscar winner James Cameron. As the chaos ensued
Speaker 2: that night, the mystery of who drugged the crew was
Speaker 2: ignited a multi year police investigation followed and one question
Speaker 2: haunted everyone impacted that fateful evening. Why Welcome to Very
Speaker 2: Special Episodes and iHeart original podcast. I'm your host, Dana Schwartz,
Speaker 2: and this is Boat Trip, the attempted sinking of Titanic.
Speaker 2: So I feel like, because this is our first episode
Speaker 2: of the show, we should throw in just like a
Speaker 2: little background info on like who we are, why people
Speaker 2: might know us. I'm Danish Schwartz, the person talking now.
Speaker 2: I host a podcast called Noble Blood, but I also
Speaker 2: have if my voice sounds familiar, also did the voice
Speaker 2: on the podcast Hayleywood, which was about Bruce Willis sort
Speaker 2: of buying up all the property in this tiny Idaho town.
Speaker 2: And this podcast called Stealing Superman about Nicholas Cage's incredibly
Speaker 2: expensive comic book collection that was stolen. So I guess
Speaker 2: this is a good entry point into Very Special Episodes
Speaker 2: because my niche has become weird celebrity celebrity adjacent scandals.
Speaker 3: Yes, cultural high points. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, I guess I should introduce myself. I'm Zaren Burnette.
Speaker 1: I have hosted Black Cowboys and currently I'm hosting Ridiculous
Speaker 1: Crime with my partner Elizabeth Dutton and we do pretty
Speaker 1: much stories like this, which is odd, weird cultural touchstone moments.
Speaker 4: And I am Jason English. I've worked with you on
Speaker 4: some of those shows. And the idea behind very special
Speaker 4: episodes is that we had so many ideas for podcasts
Speaker 4: and just decided we're probably not going to get around
Speaker 4: to making all these limited series, so let's just do
Speaker 4: one episode a week. It's our movie of the week.
Speaker 4: It's mister mcpheely coming over to mister Rogers and popping
Speaker 4: something in the VCR and learning about the crayon factory
Speaker 4: or I don't.
Speaker 3: Think they ever did a PCP.
Speaker 4: Episode on mister Rogers, but that's kind of what we're
Speaker 4: hoping is we can earn earn a spot in your
Speaker 4: weekly podcast listening routine, and we'll be back every every
Speaker 4: week with a good, weird, fun, sometimes felonious store.
Speaker 2: You know what I realized this podcast is, it's like
Speaker 2: when you are at a cocktail party or like out
Speaker 2: to dinner with like a group of your partner's friends
Speaker 2: and you don't know what to talk about and you
Speaker 2: just get to say I heard the craziest story on
Speaker 2: a podcast. That is every single one of these episodes.
Speaker 2: It is the fodder for you to say I heard
Speaker 2: the craziest story on this podcast.
Speaker 1: I love that because that's exactly what I do for
Speaker 1: a living. And then now I'm going to do when
Speaker 1: I'm just hanging out and be like, oh, I heard
Speaker 1: the best story today.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Basically, this show is called Very Special Episodes, but
Speaker 2: I feel like it also could just be called I
Speaker 2: heard it on this podcast.
Speaker 3: I like it. I like it.
Speaker 4: We'll get to some merch ideas later. But you know,
Speaker 4: there's a lot of words for a mouse path.
Speaker 2: But it's a little long, but you know, you say
Speaker 2: it fast.
Speaker 3: Yeah, run through those syllables.
Speaker 2: I also just wanted to say, Jason, We've known each
Speaker 2: other for a very long time. I like cold emailed
Speaker 2: you when I was in college as a freelance writer
Speaker 2: for Mental Floss the magazine. And I was freelancing for
Speaker 2: Mental Flaws and working at Mental Fluss right when I
Speaker 2: graduated college, and now it's nearly ten years later and
Speaker 2: we still get to work together.
Speaker 4: When that email came in, I'll say two things about it.
Speaker 4: One of them is a joke, but the earnest thing
Speaker 4: is you sent pitches in and it was like this
Speaker 4: person is playing a different sport than the rest of us.
Speaker 4: These are so well thought out, and I mean we
Speaker 4: got so much, so much inbound stuff, but these just
Speaker 4: really stood out.
Speaker 3: And and I.
Speaker 4: Remember talking to you at the end of the summer
Speaker 4: and saying, like, whatever you're doing is working, and ten
Speaker 4: years from now, I'm gonna pull you into doing this
Speaker 4: random podcast with me and and look like the long
Speaker 4: game it works.
Speaker 2: You're absolutely right, it was absolutely correct.
Speaker 3: Lived up to the promise. Zaren.
Speaker 4: We met because I called emailed you and said, I
Speaker 4: love what you're doing for for mail?
Speaker 3: Can we can we say mal? Do we not? Do
Speaker 3: we not reference mail? How we can say? We can
Speaker 3: totally say we can say rip?
Speaker 4: And said I'd just love to work with you on something,
Speaker 4: and that became Black Cowboys, And we've worked on a
Speaker 4: few things together since, and we've got some other side
Speaker 4: projects going for later this year.
Speaker 1: Normally I don't like cold things, but that was the
Speaker 1: best cold email of my life.
Speaker 2: I am so excited about this podcast because it is
Speaker 2: a little known I would say, cultural milestone in nineties history,
Speaker 2: like a major cultural moment my own like Zany slightly
Speaker 2: zany personal connection to Titanic is I used to be
Speaker 2: a writer at Entertainment Weekly, and sometimes they send us
Speaker 2: out on like weird press event meetings, and James Cameron
Speaker 2: was doing this like science fiction anthology show which I
Speaker 2: don't even remember, to be honest, but the result was
Speaker 2: I and another colleague for me W got to go
Speaker 2: to drive over to like the west side of Los Angeles,
Speaker 2: like I don't remember exactly where it was, but it
Speaker 2: was a schlep to James Cameron's studio slash like garage museum,
Speaker 2: and there were like fifteen of us like reporters and
Speaker 2: like random people that James Cameron like personally took us through,
Speaker 2: like all the props that he like kept in this
Speaker 2: like it's like an airport, a small airport hangar where
Speaker 2: he had the box crusher, the box lifter from from Aliens,
Speaker 2: like the the mechsuit. He had all like these plaster
Speaker 2: faces from Avatar that are all like the CGI. He
Speaker 2: had the model of Titanic, like the smaller detailed scale
Speaker 2: model that they filmed, and he had like the real
Speaker 2: car he had, like the car, the car from Titanic.
Speaker 2: Did you see Titanic?
Speaker 1: No, the sex car hand on don glass car, yes, hand.
Speaker 2: On glass Sex car. I was going through trying to
Speaker 2: find photos because I know I took photos, but like,
Speaker 2: the really embarrassing thing is I was like dating someone
Speaker 2: at the time that I went with, and I'm now
Speaker 2: I'm like horrified that I deleted all the photos and
Speaker 2: like a relationship purge, and I'm like, well, I wish
Speaker 2: I kept them.
Speaker 3: We gotta get back there.
Speaker 2: I wish I kept though I know I gotta get
Speaker 2: So hopefully he's listening to this, James Cameron, I'm sure
Speaker 2: you're listening to this podcast. Invite me back to your hangar.
Speaker 2: I won't bring a romantic partner ready to dive into
Speaker 2: the cold waters of the North Atlantic.
Speaker 3: Let's do it.
Speaker 2: Before we dive into James Cameron's epic Titanic, let's anchor
Speaker 2: ourselves with a quick history of the real RMS Titanic.
Speaker 2: On April tenth, nineteen twelve, the Titanic set sail on
Speaker 2: its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, en.
Speaker 5: Route to New York. It was the grandest ship of
Speaker 5: its time, designed to entice affluent passengers with it extravagance,
Speaker 5: first class cabins, fine dining, and special amenities. The RMS
Speaker 5: Titanic had a series of innovative safety features. The Titanic's
Speaker 5: builder said the ship would stay afloat even if the
Speaker 5: first four compared men's work, compromise, which made some people
Speaker 5: call it unsinkable.
Speaker 2: Just four days into the voyage, those people were proven wrong.
Speaker 2: Titanic's starboard side collided with an iceberg, triggering an inundation
Speaker 2: of water that sank the ship in just two hours
Speaker 2: and forty minutes. There were roughly twenty two hundred people aboard.
Speaker 2: Fifteen hundred died due to an insufficient number of lifeboats.
Speaker 2: The colossal tragedy captivated the world in nineteen twelve and
Speaker 2: has continued to fascinate people for over a century. One
Speaker 2: such fascinated person James Cameron. Long before James Cameron even
Speaker 2: dreamed of filmmaking, he was an artsy kid growing up
Speaker 2: in Ontario, Canada. He was born in nineteen fifty four,
Speaker 2: and although he grew up hundreds of miles from the sea,
Speaker 2: James became enraptured with the ocean.
Speaker 6: He was obsessed with the ocean, with Jacques Cousteau movies
Speaker 6: and fascinated by the story of Titanic.
Speaker 2: That's Rebecca Keegan, Senior Film editor at The Hollywood Reporter
Speaker 2: and author of the James Cameron biography The Futurist. The
Speaker 2: Life and Films of James Cameron.
Speaker 6: There is in nineteen fifties scripted fictional telling of the
Speaker 6: story of Titanic that he saw when he was a
Speaker 6: kid and made a huge impression on him, just in
Speaker 6: terms of the drama and the loss and how scary
Speaker 6: it must have been for the people who are on
Speaker 6: that ship.
Speaker 2: James's love of water inspired him to earn his scuba
Speaker 2: diving certification as a teenager at the local y. He
Speaker 2: became fascinated with deep sea submersibles, which could carry people
Speaker 2: to the depths of the ocean. James dreamed of exploring
Speaker 2: what he thought of as Earth's outer space. The tantalizing
Speaker 2: idea of exploring a shipwreck was a dream that would
Speaker 2: eventually come true, but before any type of deep sea
Speaker 2: exploration would be possible, James and his family moved to Brea,
Speaker 2: California when he was around seventeen. When James Cameron started
Speaker 2: working in Hollywood, he wasn't a wildly successful director yet.
Speaker 2: He was simply building models for low budget Roger Corman films.
Speaker 2: That's where he met actor Bill Paxton. James hired Paxton
Speaker 2: to help paint movie sets. While working for Roger Corman,
Speaker 2: James was offered the chance to take over as director
Speaker 2: for Piranha II the spawning. The gig didn't last long,
Speaker 2: and James doesn't like to include that in his filmography.
Speaker 2: The first feature film directing credit, he claims, however, was
Speaker 2: a movie he wrote about a cyborg assassin disguised as
Speaker 2: a as a human. Thus began the building of Cameron's reputation.
Speaker 2: The Terminator, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, was a small budget action
Speaker 2: film with impressive special and practical effects that went on
Speaker 2: to be a box office hit. Next was Aliens, the
Speaker 2: sequel to Ridley Scott's Alien. Aliens had a budget of
Speaker 2: eighteen million dollars. It went on to gross one hundred
Speaker 2: and thirty million dollars worldwide. For Cameron's next film, The Abyss,
Speaker 2: he turned an unfinished nuclear power plant into a movie set.
Speaker 2: He used groundbreaking CGI technology to create the film's water tentacle.
Speaker 6: Cameron's reputation was as a filmmaker who he did what
Speaker 6: he said he was going to do, in the sense
Speaker 6: that he would tell studios, yes, this is very very expensive. Yes,
Speaker 6: this is very ambitious, but I promise you it's going
Speaker 6: to work, and it did. He would make movies like
Speaker 6: True Lies, which was very very expensive, Terminator two, which
Speaker 6: had this like cutting edge technology in it.
Speaker 2: The Abyss was the most expensive movie Cameron had made,
Speaker 2: with a production budget of forty five million dollars. While
Speaker 2: it wasn't a box office juggernaut like The Terminator and Aliens,
Speaker 2: it still earned ninety million dollars worldwide.
Speaker 6: He would do new things and expensive things, and they
Speaker 6: would pay off enormously. At the same time that he
Speaker 6: had this reputation for really delivering both sort of commercially
Speaker 6: and creatively, he was also known to be very exacting,
Speaker 6: very demanding off his cast and crew. Part of that
Speaker 6: was because he could do a lot of the jobs
Speaker 6: on a crew himself.
Speaker 2: After Terminator two and True Lies, Cameron set his sights
Speaker 2: on a doomed life story. He pitched the film to
Speaker 2: twentieth Century Fox as a new take on a Shakespearean classic.
Speaker 2: It was Romeo and Juliet on the Titanic. But even
Speaker 2: with his star power as a director, the studios were nervous.
Speaker 6: This was not the kind of movie that the industry
Speaker 6: wanted to make anymore. It's a giant, expensive period movie.
Speaker 6: They wanted very specific things from James Cameron. They wanted action,
Speaker 6: they wanted true lies and Terminator a thousand and you know,
Speaker 6: things that he would be known for. So the idea
Speaker 6: that he wanted to do to a period romance. Oh, that,
Speaker 6: by the way, involved him personally going to the real
Speaker 6: Titanic and shooting it like this was, I think understandably
Speaker 6: to executives at box a little bit of a head scratcher.
Speaker 6: But it speaks to his stature in the industry at
Speaker 6: the time that he was able to talk them into
Speaker 6: that and ultimately to get the movie made.
Speaker 2: To get the green light, Cameron had to agree to
Speaker 2: forego a portion of his earnings. While a box office
Speaker 2: sensation would offset his reduced pay, such success was anything
Speaker 2: but guaranteed. He also agreed to a PG thirteen rating
Speaker 2: and a summer nineteen ninety seven release date, which was
Speaker 2: only a year away. For a film that would need
Speaker 2: a massive amount of special effects, practical effects, sound stages
Speaker 2: that could be flooded, and a giant hunk of the
Speaker 2: RMS Titanic, one year was ambitious, and that was without
Speaker 2: a mass poisoning event. Principal photography for Titanic began in
Speaker 2: July of nineteen ninety six. The first shooting location was
Speaker 2: Hall of Nova, Scotia, where the modern day footage would
Speaker 2: be filmed. The modern day story follows a team of
Speaker 2: treasure hunters searching for a diamond necklace lost in the
Speaker 2: wreckage of the Titanic. The lead treasure hunter is Brock Lovett,
Speaker 2: played by James Cameron's dear friend Bill Paxton. To bring
Speaker 2: the story to life, the production made use of the
Speaker 2: resources Halifax had to offer, which were vastly different from
Speaker 2: shooting in Los Angeles. While there weren't any famous Hollywood
Speaker 2: sound stages in Halifax, there was a harbor that was
Speaker 2: perfect for a film that takes place on the ocean.
Speaker 7: In Halifax, you're sixteen to twenty minutes away from the
Speaker 7: ocean in any direction.
Speaker 2: That's Claude Russell, one of the on set dressers from
Speaker 2: the Halifax crew.
Speaker 7: The kel desh was in the harbor and where the
Speaker 7: kel desh was stocked. There was a big, huge warehouse
Speaker 7: for building parts on boats. They had sets of the
Speaker 7: interior of the labs on the boat and I think
Speaker 7: the submarine too. They had models like an interior set
Speaker 7: of that.
Speaker 2: Although they were filming the interior set in a warehouse
Speaker 2: instead of a sound stage. It was the normal setup
Speaker 2: for the Halifax film community, a community that's much smaller
Speaker 2: than sprawling Los Angeles.
Speaker 7: The Halifax film crew, like the IA crew, were all
Speaker 7: pretty tight. Everybody knows everybody there may be at times
Speaker 7: enough to accommodate two to four productions. Maritimers just got
Speaker 7: a great reputation as far as meeting people, like getting
Speaker 7: along with people. You know, there's a lot of respect
Speaker 7: there and camaraderie there for sure.
Speaker 2: Word of James Cameron's notorious reputation made it all the
Speaker 2: way to Halifax.
Speaker 7: People from Elie that came here to were that were
Speaker 7: probably with them on other shows. We're saying, you know,
Speaker 7: you gotta be careful. You got to watch yourself because
Speaker 7: you won't put up with anything kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Right from the get go, the shoot was grueling. Like
Speaker 2: the Abyss, Filming a nautical movie presented challenges that a
Speaker 2: land based film didn't face. They were filming on an
Speaker 2: actual research vessel without an elevator. That meant the crew
Speaker 2: had to manually haul the equipment up and down ladders
Speaker 2: and staircases, a process that can be exhausting and time consuming.
Speaker 7: The unique thing about it was we were going on
Speaker 7: a boat, and so the boat would go about twenty
Speaker 7: five miles off the shore of the Coasta, Halifax. And
Speaker 7: they were long days, fourteen fifteen hour days. I started
Speaker 7: at my rate, but I had no turnaround in between
Speaker 7: the days, and I ended up working triple overtime for
Speaker 7: their whole show.
Speaker 2: Almost at the helm of the production was a director
Speaker 2: who knew how to make the impossible possible.
Speaker 7: Lots of people said he was hard on the crew,
Speaker 7: but my experience was I felt like I was working
Speaker 7: with somebody that knew exactly what they wanted. They knew
Speaker 7: exactly what they were doing, and he wasn't afraid. Like
Speaker 7: if I was moving at a table, all of a sudden,
Speaker 7: he just stopped new zoom, and he'd got the other
Speaker 7: end of the table with me, and he'd moved the
Speaker 7: table over and make a quick comment and then back
Speaker 7: to on his chair. But each swore a lot. We
Speaker 7: went through a lot of focus pollers. One week, he
Speaker 7: wasn't afraid to call people out and get rid of them.
Speaker 2: One person who had been fired was a crew member
Speaker 2: who clashed with the catering company on the second to
Speaker 2: last day of shooting in Canada. Toward the end of
Speaker 2: production in Halifax, the crew was working nights, arriving on
Speaker 2: set around five pm I'm filming as the moon glowed,
Speaker 2: and leaving early in the morning at sunrise. The conditions
Speaker 2: were so intense that for some crew members it was
Speaker 2: hard to distinguish what they were seeing at the end
Speaker 2: of each day was the sun rising or setting. After
Speaker 2: weeks of NonStop work, August eighth, nineteen ninety six would
Speaker 2: be their last night of filming. The crew arrived for
Speaker 2: their final call time between five and six pm. The
Speaker 2: shoot started like any other day, dressing the set, hair
Speaker 2: and makeup for the actors, framing each shot, the usual
Speaker 2: chaos that accompanies a movie set. At the meal break,
Speaker 2: a catering company served seafood chowder. Depending on who you ask,
Speaker 2: you'll get a different answer of what was in the chowder,
Speaker 2: either mussels, clams, lobster, or all of the above.
Speaker 7: It was midnight, I think they called lunch. Hating was
Speaker 7: outside in like a mobile unit. So we went up,
Speaker 7: got what you wanted, and then we went inside that
Speaker 7: warehouse where all the sets were, and there were tables out,
Speaker 7: so it was like any other show break for lunch,
Speaker 7: you have your hour lunch. It was shortly halfway through
Speaker 7: just something wasn't right. At first, you thought it was
Speaker 7: just yourself, but eve when you're talking to other people,
Speaker 7: you quickly realized, like, there's something going down here.
Speaker 2: There was an undeniable buzz as more and more people
Speaker 2: started to feel funny, and all of.
Speaker 7: A sudden, the ED got up and said, Okay, there
Speaker 7: seems to be an issue here. How many of you
Speaker 7: guys are feeling this way? You guys, you on that way?
Speaker 7: And so then he kind of started circtlly, you know,
Speaker 7: I said, okay, good crew on the left, Bad crew
Speaker 7: on the right. It was hilarious and we were all
Speaker 7: kind of laughing, you know. It was kind of hilarious
Speaker 7: because this is never happened. I don't know if in
Speaker 7: the history of productions, if anything's ever stopped like that.
Speaker 7: Immediately to address what was going down, we didn't proceed
Speaker 7: with shooting. It was a concern.
Speaker 2: Good crew meaning that no one was feeling strange in
Speaker 2: any way. Bad crew consisted of everyone who couldn't figure
Speaker 2: out why their sense of reality was shifting. While no
Speaker 2: one knew what was happening, it became clear what differentiated
Speaker 2: the good crew from the bad crew. The only people
Speaker 2: who were feeling strange were the people who had eaten
Speaker 2: the chowder. But knowing it was tied to the chowder
Speaker 2: didn't actually solve the mystery of why everyone started to
Speaker 2: feel weird.
Speaker 7: We didn't know what it was. My thought was food poisoning,
Speaker 7: because that seems to be common thing sometimes with seafood.
Speaker 2: Claude had a good, plausible guess at what was happening,
Speaker 2: so did James Cameron, who had also eaten the chowder.
Speaker 2: He recounted his thoughts to Rebecca.
Speaker 6: They were lining up a shot, I think with a
Speaker 6: stand in for Glorias Stuart, and she just keeled right over.
Speaker 2: Glorias Stewart was the actress playing one hundred year old Rose.
Speaker 2: This is her stand in, keeling right over.
Speaker 6: The stand in just passed out, and then other people
Speaker 6: on the set started to get sick, including James Cameron.
Speaker 6: So as people are starting to get sick, Cameron realizes
Speaker 6: what's happening and decides to run off to the bathroom
Speaker 6: and try and make himself throw up, thinking if I
Speaker 6: could get this stuff out of my system fast enough,
Speaker 6: at least I'll be okay and I'll be able to
Speaker 6: sort of steer this crew. He didn't entirely succeed. He
Speaker 6: comes back to set and his eyes are all bloodshot
Speaker 6: from making himself puke, which of course freaked everybody out
Speaker 6: and looked vaguely like a Terminator character, and they thought,
Speaker 6: oh my gosh, this is some kind of zombie virus.
Speaker 6: What's wrong with a gem? We're all dying.
Speaker 2: James immediately thought it was something called red tide, which
Speaker 2: long story short, can make shellfish in affected areas dangerous
Speaker 2: to eat. It was a good theory. However, the truth
Speaker 2: was more sinister. No one knew it yet, but the
Speaker 2: chowder had been laced with the drug fen cyclodine, better
Speaker 2: known as PCP or angel dust. The more chowder a
Speaker 2: person ate, the greater PCP side effects they endured, and
Speaker 2: it affected everyone differently.
Speaker 7: There was a range. People were kind of joking and laughing,
Speaker 7: you know, teasing each other. I don't recall us realizing
Speaker 7: that we were getting high, but we were definitely acting
Speaker 7: like it because nobody knew what the hell was going down.
Speaker 7: I remember one person. I think she was continuity and
Speaker 7: an ex hippie or still a hippie, but everybody was like,
Speaker 7: you know, how you doing. I guess she had maybe
Speaker 7: her drug days, had a bad experience, since she was
Speaker 7: like almost panicking, saying I don't know what's going on,
Speaker 7: I don't like this, feeling kind of like she was
Speaker 7: skinning wordy.
Speaker 2: Well, some people were enjoying the high, many others were terrified.
Speaker 2: It's jarring enough to have your reality unintentionally distorted. For
Speaker 2: someone who wasn't used to taking any kind of drug,
Speaker 2: the experience was even more startling. Of all, the way
Speaker 2: is to get a group of eighty plus people stoned.
Speaker 2: PCP is an interesting choice. It started as an injectable
Speaker 2: anesthetic in the nineteen fifties. It was originally used on
Speaker 2: humans and later on animals, but was banned when its
Speaker 2: side effects were determined to be too potent. Let us
Speaker 2: run you through the potential side effects of an inadvertent
Speaker 2: PCP dosing.
Speaker 8: Novous in the arms and legs. Nausea, vomiting and paranoia,
Speaker 8: maaker sweating, a racing harbeat, and increased blood pressure are
Speaker 8: likely serious. Sie effects may include delirium, psychosis, associate of hallucinations,
Speaker 8: feeling the attachment from the environment, and seizures. Filly doctor,
Speaker 8: if you're exhibiting violent behavior or wish to do would make
Speaker 8: the dolcohol. PCP could result in resiratory depression, coma or death.
Speaker 2: And on the set of Titanic, PCP caused a lot
Speaker 2: of unsuspecting people to panic. The surprise drugging presented a
Speaker 2: real challenge for the people on set who hadn't ingested PCP.
Speaker 2: The tight knit community of filmmakers was in extreme distress.
Speaker 2: It was the people they'd known for years, working side
Speaker 2: by side on multiple productions. They watched as their colleagues
Speaker 2: and friends struggled. Even though some people enjoyed the buzz,
Speaker 2: others were brought to tears, confused at what was happening
Speaker 2: to their bodies. Some were even physically ill and moaning.
Speaker 2: Some people tried to work but were too confused to
Speaker 2: do so, and others who initially made it into the
Speaker 2: good crew category slowly realized they were part of the
Speaker 2: bad crew. Through the madness, the crew handled the situation
Speaker 2: like they would on a regular day of filming on
Speaker 2: set by working together.
Speaker 7: Everybody was like you know how you doing. We were
Speaker 7: all talking. We were all like wondering what was going
Speaker 7: to be the next step, thinking maybe we have to
Speaker 7: go to the hospital, you know, especially if like one
Speaker 7: hundred people needed to use the bathroom simultaneously. We need
Speaker 7: to know what was clinta.
Speaker 2: Someone called nine one one. Paramedics from the local Dartmouth
Speaker 2: hospital arrived on the scene, along with the police. The
Speaker 2: good news was that no one was in mortal jeopardy.
Speaker 2: The bad news there wasn't much the paramedics could do.
Speaker 7: I just remember us all getting organized and ned Satas said, Okay,
Speaker 7: we're going to go to the hospital. It was just
Speaker 7: across the street, ironically, and so just organized to everybody
Speaker 7: in a line. We were all like feeling a little
Speaker 7: silly and stupid that, you know, we were all walking
Speaker 7: down the sidewalk and crossing the crosswalk and going into
Speaker 7: the hospital and dating a hospital.
Speaker 2: The people who were unaffected and hadn't eaten the chowder
Speaker 2: were instructed to stay on set until they were cleared
Speaker 2: to go home. Without a definitive time they could leave,
Speaker 2: they decided to kick back, relax and join in on
Speaker 2: the fun sort of. One of the departments had a
Speaker 2: bottle of vodka which they passed around. At the same time,
Speaker 2: dozens of crew members high on PCP, descended on the
Speaker 2: Dartmouth Hospital.
Speaker 7: I recall a lot of beige walls, like an old hospital.
Speaker 7: It's not a big hospital, the Dartmouth Hospital. So it
Speaker 7: was like they are trying to find chairs for us
Speaker 7: to sit down gripped, have found wheelchairs and were able
Speaker 7: to do wheelies down the hallways, and it was just
Speaker 7: so surreal at that point, I guess maybe we were peaking,
Speaker 7: and I was like, Wow, this is just like so
Speaker 7: cool in a bizarre way.
Speaker 2: James Cameron recounted the scene to Rebecca.
Speaker 6: So an enormous number of people are hitting this little,
Speaker 6: tiny emergency room, and it just got weird. In the
Speaker 6: emergency room waiting room. The cinematographer was like leading a
Speaker 6: conga line. People were not acting the way you do
Speaker 6: if you just have food poisoning. Something clearly weirder than
Speaker 6: that was going on.
Speaker 2: And Claude was enjoying the high.
Speaker 7: I just remember being stoned and having a good time
Speaker 7: with my colleagues. It was just so surreal, you know,
Speaker 7: like James Cameron, Bill Paxon, we're all going cross the streets,
Speaker 7: sitting in a hallway in a hospital. It was crazy.
Speaker 2: Yes, actor Bill Paxton had eaten the chowder as well.
Speaker 2: At some point, Bill Paxton ditched the hospital. In an
Speaker 2: interview with Larry King, he said he told James Cameron, Jim,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to hang out here. This is bedlam.
Speaker 2: I'm going to wander back down and drink a case
Speaker 2: of beer.
Speaker 6: At one point, Cameron told me he saw his I
Speaker 6: think it was his first ad woman who was just
Speaker 6: sort of really smart and on it and capable, and
Speaker 6: she was kind of trying to direct traffic in the
Speaker 6: midst of this emergency room. And she was also verly,
Speaker 6: clearly altered and perhaps didn't notice it. And so Karen
Speaker 6: was talking to her on the walkie talkie as he's
Speaker 6: sitting in the room with her, and at one point
Speaker 6: he says to her, where are you And she says,
Speaker 6: I'm taking care of people in the hospital, And he says,
Speaker 6: you realize I'm sitting right here and you're talking to
Speaker 6: me right here, And apparently she comes at him with
Speaker 6: a pen and like stabs him in the face with
Speaker 6: a pen. Again, this is beyond food poisoning. Something heavy
Speaker 6: duty is happening.
Speaker 2: Here when he wasn't getting stabbed in the face with
Speaker 2: a pen, James Cameron was.
Speaker 7: Riding the high I remember James kind of slouched back
Speaker 7: a bit and chair and just smiling in the kind
Speaker 7: of glaze smile and just looking up and down the
Speaker 7: hallway and saying, wow, you know, something like this is
Speaker 7: strange or I can't believe it. He was enjoying it,
Speaker 7: but we didn't know what was going down.
Speaker 2: Some people were sprawled out on gurney's wailing. The hospital
Speaker 2: staff did its best to take care of everyone, so.
Speaker 7: I remember nurses just kind of like kind of hurting
Speaker 7: cats almost, or kind of like okay, you sit down,
Speaker 7: or kind of like trying to calm us down. And
Speaker 7: then eventually they gave us a little It looked like
Speaker 7: a yogurt drink bottle, but it was black. It was charcoal.
Speaker 2: Liquid. Charcoal is used to treat overdoses and poisonings, among
Speaker 2: other less dramatic things. The charcoal is supposed to bind
Speaker 2: to anything that in a person's gut and help eliminate it.
Speaker 2: It's an effective way to get rid of a great
Speaker 2: many toxins, even if you don't know which toxin A
Speaker 2: person has taken, so who would be the metaphorical guinea
Speaker 2: pig to drink the charcoal first.
Speaker 6: The interesting thing, it sounds like Cameron remained Cameron in
Speaker 6: the sense that he, like everybody else, was feeling some
Speaker 6: weird symptoms. He was clearly a little bit off, but
Speaker 6: he was still kind of leader to the crew in
Speaker 6: that sense, and Cameron sort of led the crew and
Speaker 6: the drinking of the charcoal drink to expunge whatever this
Speaker 6: toxin was from their systems as quickly as possible.
Speaker 2: After everyone drank their dose of charcoal, there wasn't much
Speaker 2: else the hospital staff could do for the crew. Those
Speaker 2: who could be were discharged and sent home, and everyone
Speaker 2: who was still on set was cleared to leave as well.
Speaker 2: James Cameron stayed up late with Bill Paxton drinking beer,
Speaker 2: reflecting on the bizarre night and expressing relief that nobody
Speaker 2: got seriously hurt.
Speaker 6: It was certainly scary and weird, but they just kind
Speaker 6: of reflected back on this extraordinary movie, which had all
Speaker 6: of these problems and delays and complexities and expenses.
Speaker 2: There was one thing that would bring the cast and
Speaker 2: crew back together very soon. The PCP incident had put
Speaker 2: a wrench. In the final day of shooting in Halifax,
Speaker 2: with only half of the shooting schedule completed, the crew
Speaker 2: still needed to finish what they started. They were given
Speaker 2: these standard time off, which was long enough for the
Speaker 2: effects of PCP to wear off. The now sober cast
Speaker 2: and crew returned in the evening for the final time.
Speaker 2: The chaos of the event would inspire one crew member
Speaker 2: to grab their guitar and sing a song about it.
Speaker 7: I'm not picking on the grips, but I'm guessing it
Speaker 7: was one of the.
Speaker 2: Grips, and the absurdity of the situation would be commemorated
Speaker 2: with a souvenir.
Speaker 7: The person who hired me called me in Annie Fuller.
Speaker 7: She's not around on anymore, but she was an icon.
Speaker 7: She was really good at what she did. She kind
Speaker 7: of had a raspy smoker's voice, and she would do
Speaker 7: like ten things at once and kind of chaotic straightaway.
Speaker 7: But everybody loved her here in Halifax worked with her
Speaker 7: while all this was going down, So maybe it was
Speaker 7: while we were in the hospital. I drew the sketch
Speaker 7: of Bola chowder with a titanic kind of sinking down
Speaker 7: into bola chowder and on the bottom. I put good crew,
Speaker 7: bad crew, and Annie just flipped out. She said, oh man,
Speaker 7: I love that. She goes, could you fix that up?
Speaker 7: She wanted me to find I want to get T
Speaker 7: shirts made out of them, so like really, she goes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 7: yeah yeah. She got them embroidered, not so drm embroidered,
Speaker 7: which was a little higher in and she gave them
Speaker 7: out to a local people. I guess that worked on
Speaker 7: the show. I'm sure there's one exists.
Speaker 2: Somewhere, thankfully. The final day of shooting was smooth sailing
Speaker 2: until James Cameron called out, that's a wrap on Halifax.
Speaker 2: But as the shoot ended, a new challenge emerged. The
Speaker 2: identity of the person who spiked the chowder was unknown.
Speaker 2: The search for the person who poisoned the cast and
Speaker 2: crew began, and on a set full of longtime friends
Speaker 2: and colleagues, the investigation hit uncomfortably close to home. The
Speaker 2: poisoning of a film director and his cast and crew
Speaker 2: sound like the plot of a movie. In reality, James
Speaker 2: Cameron's on set nightmare that spurred an investigation. In the beginning,
Speaker 2: no one knew what mind altering substance the cast and
Speaker 2: crew had consumed, along with their seafood chowder. John Landau,
Speaker 2: a producer on the film and James Cameron's business partner,
Speaker 2: was the first to find out.
Speaker 6: There was a toxicology report which was given to producer
Speaker 6: John Landau, in which it was revealed that there was
Speaker 6: PCP in the chowder.
Speaker 2: According to Vulture, the toxicology report was from the Nova
Speaker 2: Scotia Department of Health, who handed the investigation over to
Speaker 2: the Halifax Regional Police Service. At first glance, there was
Speaker 2: a long list of potential suspects, like anyone who was
Speaker 2: on set that night. Over eighty people had been drugged
Speaker 2: and there were a bunch of others who hadn't been.
Speaker 2: At least one hundred people were present when the PCP
Speaker 2: chaos commenced. It happened to a close knit community of filmmakers.
Speaker 2: Could a longtime friend and colleague have gone rogue to
Speaker 2: get everyone stoned? And if so, why was it a
Speaker 2: prank that went too far with someone harboring a grudge
Speaker 2: against James Cameron? Could it have been an attempt to
Speaker 2: sabotage the final day of shooting or the production? Overall?
Speaker 2: The question of how the culprit acquired PCP added another
Speaker 2: layer of intrigue. They could have synthesized their own PCP,
Speaker 2: but they would have had to do it without catching
Speaker 2: the attention of law enforcement. The ingredients to make PCP
Speaker 2: are highly monitored, so much so that if you purchase
Speaker 2: enough of the ingredients to get started, there's a strong
Speaker 2: chance a police officer will knock on your door. But
Speaker 2: the Halifax Regional Police Service wasn't aware of someone working
Speaker 2: on the film who had purchased those ingredients, and the
Speaker 2: police weren't aware of anyone from Titanic purchasing angel dust
Speaker 2: from a dealer. Theories of who had done it swirled
Speaker 2: among the crew.
Speaker 9: I heard one where one guy wanted to go to
Speaker 9: Mexico because that's where they were going after Halifax, and
Speaker 9: the cater guy didn't want him, or didn't allow him
Speaker 9: or whatever, so he fired him and then I guess
Speaker 9: he got hired again the next day or something like that.
Speaker 6: One of the theories was that someone who had been
Speaker 6: fired from the set as disgruntled crew member had spiked
Speaker 6: the chowder sort of as revenge, maybe potentially to get
Speaker 6: the catering crew in trouble. Some people thought it was
Speaker 6: folks being angry at Cameron for his sort of intense
Speaker 6: leadership style. But it's all just theories.
Speaker 2: The CEO of one of the catering companies in question
Speaker 2: told Entertainment Weekly that it was the Hollywood crowd bringing
Speaker 2: in psychedelics and it was a quote party thing that
Speaker 2: got carried away. James Cameron's future wife, actress Susie Amos,
Speaker 2: didn't eat the chowder, which Cameron jokingly said made her
Speaker 2: high on the suspect list.
Speaker 7: Just what everybody else was talking. Somebody got pissed off
Speaker 7: with I don't know if it was the crew or
Speaker 7: the catering and so they just decided to sabotage the
Speaker 7: guy who was the caterer.
Speaker 2: Remember, the night before the PCP incident, a crew member
Speaker 2: who clashed with the caterer had been fired. The theory
Speaker 2: was that the now ex crew member was so upset
Speaker 2: they added PCP to the chowder to sabotage the catering company.
Speaker 2: The disgruntled crew member's plan worked, as the catering company
Speaker 2: was fired the next day. It's a theory that even
Speaker 2: James Cameron supported in an interview with Vanity Fair. Yet
Speaker 2: there was no no easy answer for the police, and
Speaker 2: their search continued despite the ongoing investigation, James Cameron had
Speaker 2: a movie to complete. Regrettably, this wouldn't be the last
Speaker 2: significant hurdle he'd face during production. After the Halifax shoot wrapped,
Speaker 2: James Cameron headed to Rosarito, Mexico to film most of
Speaker 2: the flashback scenes of Jack and Rose on the Titanic.
Speaker 2: News of other mishaps and hurdles while filming became public
Speaker 2: knowledge through the media, like rumors of James Cameron's temper
Speaker 2: on set and the perils of underwater stunt work. Kate
Speaker 2: Winslet told The Los Angeles Times about some of the
Speaker 2: harsh conditions she endured, which included chipping a bone in
Speaker 2: her elbow.
Speaker 6: Kate has talked about this, She's wearing this sort of
Speaker 6: flowing dress and a coat, and she's doing these underwater
Speaker 6: sequences where she's traveling through the ship and through all
Speaker 6: these little kind of tight spaces. If you ask Cameron
Speaker 6: about it, he says that they were always very aware
Speaker 6: of where she was and very focused on her safety,
Speaker 6: and certainly all ended well, but from her perspective, it
Speaker 6: was quite scary when at one point she did get
Speaker 6: caught on something with her costume, and I think the
Speaker 6: peril in some ways that you see on the faces
Speaker 6: of the actors during the sinking scene, there's a way
Speaker 6: in which they were actually feeling that. I mean, they
Speaker 6: were literally filling the set with water. That's not cig water.
Speaker 6: They're not sitting in a little swimming pool pretending with
Speaker 6: you know, CG ship behind them. It was a real
Speaker 6: ship that they'd built and they were filling it with water.
Speaker 6: And for the actors, you don't have to try too
Speaker 6: hard to seem terrified in that circumstance.
Speaker 2: The media latched down to the narrative of how unhinged
Speaker 2: James Cameron's set had become. In both Rosarto and Halifax.
Speaker 6: The PCP incident would have fed into a narrative at
Speaker 6: the time that this movie is just a hot mess
Speaker 6: and look at the crazy, ridiculous things that are happening
Speaker 6: on it.
Speaker 2: To make matters worse, Titanic was getting a bad press
Speaker 2: for its record sized budget. The film's original budget was
Speaker 2: estimated to be eighty million dollars, which turned into one
Speaker 2: hundred and ten million when the reality of how much
Speaker 2: it would cost sank in. But the production was so
Speaker 2: complex that the shooting schedule took much longer than anticipated.
Speaker 2: James Cameron's period piece Love Story was turning into the
Speaker 2: most expensive movie ever made.
Speaker 6: He had to get his release date pushed, which studios
Speaker 6: never liked to do, and with these big ideas he had,
Speaker 6: for instance, building the ship almost to scale in Mexico,
Speaker 6: and all these little details like the china was the
Speaker 6: correct china that was used on Titanic, and even if
Speaker 6: you flipped over a plate in the dining room, it
Speaker 6: said the right thing on the back of the plate
Speaker 6: that it would have said on Titanic. Now, normally movie
Speaker 6: sets are not that detailed. You're not necessarily going to
Speaker 6: bring a camera in and flip over a piece of china.
Speaker 6: He wanted that level of verisimilitude for his actors and
Speaker 6: to kind of put everyone in that historical moment. But
Speaker 6: with that came enormous expenses. Famously, the movie was being
Speaker 6: tracked by a lot of the Hollywood trade press and
Speaker 6: expected to be an enormous flop. Variety had a Titanic
Speaker 6: Watch column just kind of on a regular basis, sort
Speaker 6: of mocking the challenges that the film was facing along
Speaker 6: the way. So the expectations were all that this is
Speaker 6: going to completely tank, no pun intended. People were not
Speaker 6: expecting good things from Titanic.
Speaker 2: Despite the rabid negative media fodder, the two hundred million
Speaker 2: dollar budget, the cascade of onset mishaps, and rumors of
Speaker 2: James Cameron's intensity. When Titanic was released in theaters on
Speaker 2: December nineteenth, nineteen ninety seven, five months after its initial
Speaker 2: release date, the movie was more than a hit. Over
Speaker 2: the course of a few months, the most expensive movie
Speaker 2: ever made, became the highest grossing film of all time
Speaker 2: and the first film to gross over one billion dollars.
Speaker 6: When Titanic opened, it exceeded anyone's expectations for the film.
Speaker 6: It was such a cultural phenomenon. Not only the many,
Speaker 6: many Oscar nominations, the enormous box office receipts, but there
Speaker 6: were all these weird other sort of ripple effects, like
Speaker 6: cruises became more popular. There was a phenomenon of girls
Speaker 6: going to see the movie over and over again who
Speaker 6: were in love with Leonardo de kat and then having
Speaker 6: crying parties.
Speaker 7: At the time, it was just another big production, but
Speaker 7: the once it started to screen, in the popularity of it,
Speaker 7: it's like, wow, I was so part of that. I
Speaker 7: have all these great memories of different things that had
Speaker 7: nothing to do with the poisoning, just the whole working
Speaker 7: on the show. I was very proud of working on
Speaker 7: that show.
Speaker 2: At the nineteen ninety eight Academy Awards, Titanic earned a
Speaker 2: whopping fourteen Oscar nominations, tying the record for the most
Speaker 2: nominations beside All About Eve. It won in eleven categories,
Speaker 2: including a Best Picture and Best Director, tying Ben her
Speaker 2: for the winningest film in cinema history. James Cameron gave
Speaker 2: a controversial acceptance speech while holding the Oscar for Best Director.
Speaker 2: He quoted Jack saying I'm the king of the world. Well,
Speaker 2: Titanic reached unprecedented levels of success. The Halifax Regional Police
Speaker 2: Service was still investigating the PCP incident. There were no
Speaker 2: major breakthroughs in the case. At the same time, the
Speaker 2: people who had been on set that night were moving
Speaker 2: on to new opportunities.
Speaker 6: Well, the interesting thing about James Cameron is he did
Speaker 6: not make another movie for a very very long time
Speaker 6: after Titanic. He made an enormous amount of money from it,
Speaker 6: and that gave him the freedom to do other kinds
Speaker 6: of things for the next several years. That meant a
Speaker 6: lot of things that didn't have a lot to do
Speaker 6: with Hollywood. It meant dives and documentaries about the ocean. Interestingly,
Speaker 6: that first ad the woman who came at him and
Speaker 6: stabbed him in the face for their pen he ended
Speaker 6: up hiring her again on one of those documentaries that
Speaker 6: he filmed in Halifax. So obviously no hard feelings from
Speaker 6: the PCP incident.
Speaker 2: After Titanic, Bill Paxton continued to accrue a host of
Speaker 2: acting credits. He made his directorial debut in two thousand
Speaker 2: and one with the film Frailty, which he also starred in,
Speaker 2: and while the Halifax crew had an impressive movie on
Speaker 2: their resumes, life continued as normal in their special filmmaking community.
Speaker 2: The crew would go on to work on films and
Speaker 2: TV shows of varying sizes, although Titanic did draw a
Speaker 2: lot of awe and wonder.
Speaker 7: At any time any of my friends, they go, oh,
Speaker 7: you work on a film? Is this what films do
Speaker 7: you work on? So eventually I have to cite Titanic.
Speaker 7: As soon as I say Titanic, I got everybody's attention.
Speaker 2: As for the culprit behind the PCP spiked chowder, they
Speaker 2: were never caught in February of nineteen ninety nine, two
Speaker 2: and a half years after the crew was drugged, the
Speaker 2: Halifax Regional Police closed the investigation without a suspect. The
Speaker 2: case was officially cold, with no culprit and no motive.
Speaker 2: There's no answer as to why someone poisoned James Cameron
Speaker 2: and his crew. One thing that is certain, however, is
Speaker 2: that the mayhem the PCP culprit brought to Titanic didn't
Speaker 2: stop James Cameron from creating one of the greatest films
Speaker 2: of all time. Despite all of the onset issues and
Speaker 2: media articles claiming Titanic would fail, James proved his critics wrong.
Speaker 6: You know, one thing I've noticed about Cameron is I
Speaker 6: think he actually kind of gets a kick out of
Speaker 6: when people underestimate him. He is good at tuning that
Speaker 6: stuff out or sort of taking it in but not
Speaker 6: taking it on, if that makes sense. And I think
Speaker 6: he knew he was making something pretty special, and I
Speaker 6: don't think he put much stock in the media coverage
Speaker 6: of him.
Speaker 2: James Cameron would go on to surpass Titanic as the
Speaker 2: highest grossing film of all time with two thousand and
Speaker 2: nine's Avatar, followed by Avia the Way of Water. In
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two, all three films have grossed over two
Speaker 2: billion dollars over twenty six years later. It's unlikely that
Speaker 2: the PCP culprit will ever be named, but when it
Speaker 2: comes to Hollywood, anything is possible.
Speaker 6: It sounds like it should be the next season of
Speaker 6: True Detective or something like these Canadian cops trying to
Speaker 6: solve this twenty five year old mystery of who spiked
Speaker 6: the chowder on the Titanic set.
Speaker 2: Until then, the only things that remain of that chaotic
Speaker 2: night in Halifax are the memories of the people who
Speaker 2: lived it and the good Crew bad Cruise shirts that
Speaker 2: Claude helped make. I have to say, for like a
Speaker 2: story about spiked chowder with PCP, like, there are moments
Speaker 2: of this that are very heartwarming. There's like moments of
Speaker 2: love and friendship that I found very endearing. It's a
Speaker 2: more wholesome story than I expected.
Speaker 1: The moment when James ca gets stabbed in the face
Speaker 1: while he's high on PCP. You wouldn't think that would
Speaker 1: be a sweet moment, but it totally turns out to
Speaker 1: be this sweet moment because he then rehires the woman
Speaker 1: who stabbed him in the face with the pen. I mean,
Speaker 1: what a sweetheart, what a forgiving guy.
Speaker 2: That is what people say about James Cameron. People are
Speaker 2: constantly saying, James Cameron, huge sweetheart. That's like the only
Speaker 2: thing we hear about him.
Speaker 1: I think that's why they called him King of the World.
Speaker 1: Is like king of the sweethearts.
Speaker 3: Really, yeah, he's.
Speaker 2: The sweetest man in Hollywood.
Speaker 3: He moved that table. That's all I needed.
Speaker 4: Like, when I'm carrying a table, I want one other
Speaker 4: person just to help, and look, he did it.
Speaker 2: I really do like his relationship though with Bill Paxton.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh, come on, the two of them. I means,
Speaker 1: sitting there with that twelve pac trying to get down
Speaker 1: off of the high. They don't even understand. I mean,
Speaker 1: how amazing is that. You're like, hey, buddy, you got
Speaker 1: I got some beers. Let's go back to my place
Speaker 1: and we'll just wind this down. And they're both sideways.
Speaker 1: I mean almost like I could relate. That's all I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say. I could relate.
Speaker 4: So, Zarin, is Bill Paxon your very special character for
Speaker 4: this episode? We should do this each episode. Let's pick
Speaker 4: one person each.
Speaker 1: I would say, Yeah, Bill Pexston is my spirit character.
Speaker 1: And then also the whoever was who came up with
Speaker 1: the idea we should race wheelchairs in a hospital.
Speaker 3: That's my dude as well.
Speaker 2: My very special character is the nurses at the hospital
Speaker 2: who had to deal with this influx of people just
Speaker 2: absolutely tripping and confused and probably just got a crazy
Speaker 2: story for the rest of their lives.
Speaker 4: Truly, I would tell that to every patient after August
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety six would get that story if I if
Speaker 4: I had been there that night. My very special character,
Speaker 4: and it wasn't close for me. Great choices all, but
Speaker 4: for me it's the late Annie Fuller, the one who
Speaker 4: got the good crew, bad cruise shirt silk screened. She
Speaker 4: is the I'm sorry not silk screened, the embroidered better
Speaker 4: than silk.
Speaker 3: Screen Oh yeah, embroider.
Speaker 4: You got to make these things live on in fashion,
Speaker 4: in merch. And it reminds me that about two minutes
Speaker 4: after you all agreed to do this podcast, I was
Speaker 4: hitting you up for your hoodie sizes, for hat sizes.
Speaker 4: I just wanted, like, we got to move this from
Speaker 4: the podcast to the podcast adjacent clothing, and so be
Speaker 4: on the lookout. We're gonna get that headed your way
Speaker 4: real soon. Very Special Episodes is made by some very
Speaker 4: special people.
Speaker 3: This episode was written by Katie Maddie.
Speaker 4: Our producer, editor and sound designer is the Great Josh Fisher.
Speaker 4: Additional editing by John Washington, mixing and mastering by Baheed Frasier,
Speaker 4: Original music by Elise McCoy, Show logo by Lucy Kintonia,
Speaker 4: Research and fact checking by Marissa Brown, Austin Thompson and
Speaker 4: Katie Maddie. Very Special Episodes is hosted by Danish Schwartz,
Speaker 4: Zaren Burnett and me Jason English. I am your executive
Speaker 4: producer and we'll see you back here next week. Very
Speaker 4: Special Episodes is the production of iHeart Podcasts.