In August 1996, the “Titanic” team’s final meal, while in Canada, took a turn that could have turned tragic. In question, poisoning linked to the ingestion of a hallucinogenic drug poured into the soup…
Released 25 years ago on our screens, Titanic was an authentic tour de force, shattering a number of records. Beyond its 1.8 billion dollars collected at the worldwide Box Office and its budget of nearly 250 million dollars, its eleven Oscars won from fourteen nominations, it was also the odyssey of a team of 300 people on board on a 160-day shoot spread over eight months.
In the end, James Cameron had enough to show twelve days of film non-stop. Filming under the auspices of a great filmmaker like him is not exactly an easy task, as he is notoriously known for being terribly demanding, even downright tyrannical.
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Still, the Homeric behind the scenes of the filming of Titanic have been widely documented and dissected since the film’s release. And then there are, on the side, the unusual stories, which have gone a little under the radar. Like the one surrounding the poisoning of the film crew during the final meal taken on set.
Spoiled food or expired expiration date? Not really. In fact, PCP, a hallucinogenic drug, was poured into the shellfish soup served during this meal… But how is this possible?
A final meal resembling the Last Supper
August 8, 1996. Final day of shooting for the film crew, which was then in Canada. On the meal menu: a thick shellfish soup, which keeps the body warm, lovingly prepared by the canteen service on board the shoot. She obviously seems very popular, as Marilyn McAvoy, painter on the set, recalled.
“The soup was amazing. People were coming back for a second bowl. I really thought about going back because it was so good. And I think that was part of the problem: people were eating a lot more than usual because It was so delicious.” she told the Vice site in 2017.
Barely 30 minutes later, the first effects began to be felt… Realizing that something was wrong with the soup without obviously knowing what it was exactly, James Cameron went directly to lock himself in the toilet to try to make yourself vomit. “It could have been a paralyzing shellfish neurotoxin, which is very dangerous” he will say.
“Some people started laughing, some cried, others vomited” will comment for his part Bill Paxton, in an interview given to Entertainment Weekly in 1996. “The first minute, I was fine. The second, I started having bursts of anxiety, so much so that I wanted to breathe by blowing into a paper bag. Cameron felt the same thing.”
Luckily, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet were spared, as they had no filming scenes planned on location. As for Gloria Stuart, she was also spared by a stroke of luck: that day, she was having lunch at a restaurant!
Cameron stabbed with pencil
All those who began to hallucinate were sent to Dartmouth Hospital, located in Nova Scotia. “We were all put in cubicles with curtains around us, but no one wanted to stay in those cubicles. Everyone was in the aisles and jumping into each other’s cubicles. People were wild. Some were in wheelchairs and were flying through the hallways. I mean, everyone was high!” says Marilyn McAvoy.
Cameron will even say that he was stabbed in the face with a pencil. But as he too was high, he mostly started laughing while his face was bleeding. Some started to actually start a Conga, a dance of Cuban origin…
The hospital’s medical team was finally able to counter the toxins by making the victims swallow a liquid containing activated charcoal. Although she thought at first that the team was the victim of a strange food poisoning, toxicological analyzes carried out by the Police pointed to the presence of PCP in the soup.
Twentieth Century Fox
A culprit never found
The question now was obvious: who could have put this drug in the soup? The first suspicions naturally fell towards the company responsible for preparing the meals. Earle Scott, the company’s director, tried to clear her of any responsibility, arguing that it was probably a Hollywood talent who had brought the psychotropic drug. “I don’t think it was done with the intention of deliberately harming anyone, but a party trick that went awry.”
Cameron had his own idea of who was responsible. “We had fired a team member the day before because he was causing problems with the catering services. So we thought the poisoning was this idiot’s plan to get back at the caterers, who of course we immediately fired the day after [de l’incident]” he explained in the columns of Vanity Fairin 2017.
Cameron seemed sure of himself. Because the Halifax police, who requested (and obtained) the list of all the people who participated in the filming on site, were never able to formally identify the person responsible. On February 12, 1999, the investigation was officially closed.