THIS DAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IN HISTORY.
Hollywood.
1998
James Cameron’s Titanic wins 11
Academy Awards By the time James Cameron
took the stage to accept his Academy Award for Best Director on
the night of March 23, 1998, the Oscar
dominance of his blockbuster film Titanic was all but assured.
Titanic tied the record for most
Oscar nominations with 14—joining 1950’s All About Eve—
and by night’s end would tie with
Ben Hur (1959) for most wins by sweeping 11
categories, including the coveted Best Picture.
With Aliens , The Abyss and the first two
Terminator movies under his belt,
Cameron had already proved himself a master of
the action-packed science-fiction blockbuster genre.
His ambition reached new heights with Titanic,
based on a true story, retelling of the ill-fated 1912 voyage of the
unparalleled passenger steamship, which sank in
the North Atlantic after striking an iceberg.
Cameron’s films were notorious for going long over schedule and
way over budget, and Titanic was worse than most.
Originally budgeted at $100 million,
the film eventually topped out at about $200 million,
more than any other film in history; it also missed its original release date,
making the studio executives sweat as they
envisioned another Heaven’s Gate (the infamous
big-budget flop that sank United Artists in the early 1980s).
Personally, Cameron was known for his
dictatorial style, hot temper and obsession with detail.
For his reenactment of the historic ship’s sinking,
the film’s crew constructed a 775-foot (90 percent scale)
replica of the RMS Titanic and
put it in a tank containing 17 million gallons of water.
Production was done in Mexico, and
members of the cast and crew later complained
about the harsh conditions, including shooting
days of more than 20 hours, much of that time
spent standing in cold, murky Pacific Ocean
water.
Released just before Christmas in 1997,
Titanic became a monster hit and continued to earn steadily at
the box office over the next six months until it became
the first movie ever to gross more than $1 billion internationally.
Critical response to the film was divided.
Many reviews were positive, but some critics praised
the visual effects and action sequences—especially the
last hour of the three-hour-plus movie, which
depicts the epic sinking of the luxury liner—even
while pointing out the weakness of the
screenplay, which Cameron penned himself. In
one particularly memorable pan, Kenneth Turan
of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the film
“reeks of phoniness and lacks even minimal
originality.” Cameron famously fired back in a
letter to the editor, demanding (unsuccessfully)
that the Times “impeach Kenneth Turan.”
On Oscar night, Cameron echoed Leonardo
DiCaprio’s character in Titanic by shouting
“I’m the king of the world!” upon accepting his Best Director statuette.
While accepting Best Picture
(as the film’s producer), the filmmaker was
slightly more subdued, asking for a moment of silence in
remembrance of the more than 1,500 people who drowned on the Titanic.