Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
Speaker 1: much for tuning in. Let's hear it for our guest
Speaker 1: super producer, the one and only Ben the Sleeping Dog Hacket.
Speaker 1: Have you heard this nickname, Noel?
Speaker 2: Well, I know Ben's musical output and his incredible record
Speaker 2: songs for sleeping Dogs, So I guess it makes sense
Speaker 2: if that's what you're referring to.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, as we always want to say when we're talking
Speaker 1: about the legendary mister Hackett, this is an appellation that
Speaker 1: you have chosen yourself. Correct Ben, just a little easter egg.
Speaker 2: Checkout Ben's record. It's really really good. Boy, oh boy, Ben,
Speaker 2: we got a topic today. I think we broke our
Speaker 2: rule for this topic.
Speaker 3: It's so good.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we went. We went a little bit closer
Speaker 1: to the modern day, just bite two years, but just
Speaker 1: by two, just by two right. Uh so uh, we
Speaker 1: want to of course, uh, we want to of course
Speaker 1: identify ourselves. This is the legendary Noel Brown you're hearing
Speaker 1: things with with those dulcet tones.
Speaker 3: You're the legendary Ben bowling with also bringing the Tones, dulcet.
Speaker 2: To oh Geezhus credit game recognized game. We also need
Speaker 2: to recognize. Speaking of recognizing game, Jordan the nickname TBD
Speaker 2: run Dog, who brought us this amazing topic that I
Speaker 2: was tangentially familiar with. Boyle boy as he often is,
Speaker 2: wont to do. Did he bring the heat as far
Speaker 2: as details around the case of the infamous seafood dosing
Speaker 2: on the set of James Cameron's Titanic.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, let's get to it, all right. So the
Speaker 1: gist is this one night during the filming of this
Speaker 1: epic Titanic, which is based on a true story about
Speaker 1: a ship that was considered unsinkable and spoiler alert, did sink? Yeah? Also,
Speaker 1: Abe Lincoln didn't have a great time at the play whatever.
Speaker 3: No, I don't know if I'd have quite the reach.
Speaker 2: And the Titanic, by the way, did sink, in fact,
Speaker 2: on April fifteenth of nineteen twelve.
Speaker 3: So we're going to use that as our date, our
Speaker 3: benchmark date for this nice nice Okay, yeah, that's perfect,
Speaker 3: all right. Our buddy James Cameron is often confused with filmmakers.
Speaker 3: He's mainly a dude who uses film to support his
Speaker 3: weird underwater explorations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, fair, fair, that is a reasonable criticism. He
Speaker 2: is a bit technology forward and scuba diving and underwater
Speaker 2: exploration minded.
Speaker 3: But he's made some bangers. I think Terminator Too.
Speaker 2: Is quite good. Many bangers. Yeah, but he's also no
Speaker 2: one's friend. I'll tell you that right now.
Speaker 1: Is that true? Have you spoken with Jimmy?
Speaker 2: He's a real pill, not a nice tame apparently a
Speaker 2: little difficult to work with. No, that's sort of the
Speaker 2: that's sort of the thrust of today's story is that
Speaker 2: he is, in fact runs his film sets like a
Speaker 2: bit of an iron fisted tyrant, and that God has
Speaker 2: the way of rubbing some people the wrong wing.
Speaker 1: Sure. Sure, yeah, a lot of egos in Hollywood, But Nol,
Speaker 1: you're my canary in the cavern for a lot of
Speaker 1: diplomatic stuff. If you say someone is difficult, you're you're
Speaker 1: just so nice, So I would I would take your
Speaker 1: word over theirs.
Speaker 2: It is not me alone, my friend saying that this
Speaker 2: person is difficult.
Speaker 3: It is a known thing.
Speaker 2: He's actually described in a source that our buddy Jordan
Speaker 2: found as the scariest man in Hollywood, which, boy, yeah,
Speaker 2: scariest livid. That's right, But to your point, then they
Speaker 2: are filming some of the wrap around pieces. You'll remember
Speaker 2: if anyone's seen this film. There's the main story of
Speaker 2: Rose and Jack and the door and the door.
Speaker 3: There really was room on the door.
Speaker 2: But then there's also the wrap around frame story of
Speaker 2: Bill Paxton, the underwater explorer and maybe James Cameron esque
Speaker 2: figure if he's casting a sort of a similar person
Speaker 2: to what he's all about, and the the the elderly
Speaker 2: Rose and this idea of finding this very important diamond artifact,
Speaker 2: the heart of the sea, the heart of the ocean,
Speaker 2: one of those kind of nice yeah. Yeah, they're filming
Speaker 2: those bits in Nova Scotia, Halifax in fact, right, And
Speaker 2: people are just really enjoying a little break because, as
Speaker 2: we're gonna get to Cameron didn't really go for breaks
Speaker 2: too much, even maybe you know, union mandated.
Speaker 3: Ones, and not much else.
Speaker 2: And there is just a delicious stew perhaps of muscles, clams, yeah,
Speaker 2: perhaps lobster, described often as a seafood bisk or a
Speaker 2: seafood chowder or a clam chowder, and people are just
Speaker 2: loving it. They're going back for multiple bowls. They're just
Speaker 2: having a good old time enjoying this yummy, this piping
Speaker 2: hot dish, and before long people start acting a little funny,
Speaker 2: feeling a little funny.
Speaker 1: Yes, just so, and there is a mystery afoot at
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 1: So, as I established earlier, you know what, I'm fine
Speaker 1: seeing it on air. I believe in Noel Brown. And
Speaker 1: if Noel Brown says you are a pill, then I
Speaker 1: will trust Noel over you. People say that James Cameron
Speaker 1: has a reputation, as you alluded to earlier, He's a
Speaker 1: guy with a lot of enemies. He is not the
Speaker 1: best with his bedside manner, which means in the rarefied
Speaker 1: era of production that there may be people seeking what
Speaker 1: we would call petty revenge. The headline is this, someone
Speaker 1: unidentified for the purposes of our show at this point,
Speaker 1: sought petty revenge on James Cameron by assaulting innocent people
Speaker 1: with hallucinogens via crafty and crafty is just our term
Speaker 1: for it's our term for where you eat when you're
Speaker 1: doing some kind of production TV or film. He is
Speaker 1: a iron fist, as you said, Noel, he is an
Speaker 1: iron fist director, producer, a tour we could say. And
Speaker 1: he's very intense. He wants everyone to work around the clock.
Speaker 1: He's a micro manager. He at this point is using
Speaker 1: the production budget of the Titanic film to launch expeditions
Speaker 1: under the water to see the actual wreckage of the Titanic.
Speaker 1: He's going deep in the water. He built a full
Speaker 1: scale model, or I should say his production folks built
Speaker 1: a full scale model of the ship off the coast
Speaker 1: of Mexico, and they built it to be repeatedly sinkable.
Speaker 1: Jordan wants everyone to know that is a story all
Speaker 1: its own. The production overall, it costs more than two
Speaker 1: two hundred million US dollars in nineteen to the.
Speaker 3: Most expensive production to date at the time. If I'm
Speaker 3: not mistaken.
Speaker 1: At the time, you're correct, yeah, yeah, yeah, And all
Speaker 1: right we are establishing context.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: You are working for this guy, James Cameron. As you said,
Speaker 1: he's kind of like a Kubrick level a tour. He
Speaker 1: yells at people, he's smacking people. He has a schedule
Speaker 1: of an eighty hour, six day work week. Later people
Speaker 1: will describe it as quote the closest thing to slavery
Speaker 1: that I've ever laid my eyes upon. No breaks. People
Speaker 1: are having medical problems due to it as. I love
Speaker 1: that you mentioned this military aspect because he's got an
Speaker 1: editor named Mark Goldblatt, and Mark says, you don't just
Speaker 1: join one of James's films, you sign on for a
Speaker 1: tour of duty. And Cameron didn't bucket this. He said,
Speaker 1: filmmaking his war a great battle between business and aesthetics.
Speaker 1: Can you give us the name of the or give
Speaker 1: us the slogan of the T shirt he made?
Speaker 2: I could do that time means nothing in the face
Speaker 2: of creativity.
Speaker 3: That's not true, Jim. Time means everything.
Speaker 2: Time is the only currency that we as human beings have,
Speaker 2: and you are taking.
Speaker 3: It from all of us.
Speaker 1: I always say that.
Speaker 3: Currency. You sure do, man, you sure do.
Speaker 2: And it is not something that Cameron seems to respect,
Speaker 2: or at the very least he believes that it all
Speaker 2: belongs to him. But this is not a secret. All
Speaker 2: of this stuff is an open secret in Hollywood. From
Speaker 2: earlier productions of James Cameron, The Abyss obviously the first
Speaker 2: Terminator movie, which was sort of his like.
Speaker 3: You know, kind of almost DIY esque film.
Speaker 2: It was a very low budget. He came from a
Speaker 2: background painting models in the Roger Korman school of filmmaking,
Speaker 2: So he really does have a background as a hands
Speaker 2: on craftsman, which I've always appreciated and respected about the guy.
Speaker 2: And he definitely has a forward thinking mind. A lot
Speaker 2: of the stuff that he depicts in the Terminator film,
Speaker 2: specially T two Judgment Day, about artificial intelligence and sentient
Speaker 2: machines and such, certainly seem to be coming to pass
Speaker 2: in some way, shape or form.
Speaker 3: So I would call him a futurist.
Speaker 2: I would call him a technologist, And to your point,
Speaker 2: been a lot of those things often take precedent over
Speaker 2: the fact that he is a filmmaker. People did not
Speaker 2: believe that Avatar was going to be a big hit.
Speaker 2: People thought it's too expensive, it's blue smurf people, it's
Speaker 2: a ripoff of the plot of Dances with Wolves. And
Speaker 2: yet the first one was the highest grossing movie of
Speaker 2: all time, and then decade or more goes by, and
Speaker 2: then all now, I'm releasing sequels to Avatar.
Speaker 3: Why would you do that, James Cameron? People have forgotten
Speaker 3: about Avatar. Not true.
Speaker 2: The second one made an insane amount of money as well,
Speaker 2: and they're fun movies. He's got a whole wing of
Speaker 2: the Universal Studios theme. Parks No sorry, Disney World theme
Speaker 2: park devoted to Avatar, so he seems to know what
Speaker 2: he's doing. But in order to do that, often people
Speaker 2: with that kind of vision can be a bit tyrannical,
Speaker 2: So time means nothing in the face of creativity. The
Speaker 2: crew actually had their own counter t shirts printed, saying,
Speaker 2: Jim's a hands on director and I have the bruises
Speaker 2: to prove it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You can see a New York Times profile on
Speaker 1: our buddy Jim that was published during the production of
Speaker 1: The Titanic, and it says that he is uncompromising. It's
Speaker 1: diplomatic when they call him a perfectionist. They they note
Speaker 1: that he as a megaphone and a walkie talkie, and
Speaker 1: he's often yelling at people. And there's another relatively concurrent
Speaker 1: piece in Premiere magazine where someone says, I can't even
Speaker 1: tell the difference between yelling and not yelling anymore. It's
Speaker 1: more it's just what does he want and what do
Speaker 1: we have to do to get it done. The headline
Speaker 1: of that article in Premiere, by the way, is quote
Speaker 1: inside the punishing dictatorship that was James Cameron's Titanic set,
Speaker 1: and we have to put ourselves back in this era.
Speaker 1: Titanic is by all metrics, a phenomenal success. Don't roll
Speaker 1: your eyes. It's it's a phenomenal success. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a blockbuster. I think we got Celine Dion singing some songs, right,
Speaker 1: didn't you do?
Speaker 3: What was that song? She sure did the love theme
Speaker 3: from Tipitanic, My Heart Will go.
Speaker 1: On, My Heart Will go On. And I guess that's
Speaker 1: what That's what the crew was thinking. Look, there's a
Speaker 1: weird energy on the set. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: people who are not happy, rightly so with the way
Speaker 1: they are being treated. And this guy James is, as
Speaker 1: you said, kind of scary. So before they head to
Speaker 1: Mexico to shoot the back in time scenes in nineteen twelve,
Speaker 1: before they head there, Cameron takes a smaller casting crew
Speaker 1: to Nova Scotia and they're filming what we described as
Speaker 1: wrap around scenes right the frame of our story that
Speaker 1: takes place in the present day of the universe of
Speaker 1: the film. This is where we see Bill Paxton. Right,
Speaker 1: Bill Paxton, legendary actor undersea treasure hunter, contacted by not
Speaker 1: Rose Prime, but the older Rose, and he has found
Speaker 1: a sketch of her and he's asking kind of for
Speaker 1: the story of this sketch, the wrap around stuff classic
Speaker 1: Cameron in terms of dictatorship and tyranny. It's just after midnight,
Speaker 1: the last day of filming, August ninth, nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 1: Finally this dictator gives the crew and the cast a
Speaker 1: break to eat some chowder.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: By all accounts, everyone says the chowder was fantastic. Marilyn
Speaker 2: mcavey or McAvoy. I wonder if she's related to the
Speaker 2: other macavoy there. So there are some like NEPO situations
Speaker 2: going on in the story. We've got a Deschanel, the
Speaker 2: elder Deschanel, Zoe's dad in the mix as well, but
Speaker 2: she's a set painter and.
Speaker 3: Says the chowder was unbelievable.
Speaker 2: This is according to a Vice piece on this debacle
Speaker 2: that came out in twenty seventeen. People were going back
Speaker 2: for second bowls. People ate a lot more than usual
Speaker 2: because it was so delicious. That's when things start going south.
Speaker 2: As I mentioned at the top, about fifteen minutes in,
Speaker 2: we get.
Speaker 3: The kick in.
Speaker 2: People start acting a little funny, people start feeling a
Speaker 2: little funny, struggling.
Speaker 3: To do their work.
Speaker 2: We really start to see things enter crisis mode when
Speaker 2: a stand in actress actually passes out, then everyone begins
Speaker 2: to scream starts throwing up. We have a comment from
Speaker 2: a crew member in one of these oral histories of
Speaker 2: the events saying they didn't have experience with drugs, but
Speaker 2: the others were saying that it was like the beginning
Speaker 2: of an acid trip. I don't know anything about PCP.
Speaker 2: All I know is that it has a history of
Speaker 2: putting people in like rage hulk mode where they can
Speaker 2: get like hit by cars and stuff and they just
Speaker 2: go limp like. It does not seem pleasant. Every time
Speaker 2: you hear about angel dust or PCP, it's usually involves
Speaker 2: somebody doing some crazy violence or injuring themselves, or you know,
Speaker 2: just being kind of like some sort of like zombie
Speaker 2: type situation. So this is not what I would argue
Speaker 2: a particularly fun time party drug.
Speaker 1: No, Yeah, that's on base.
Speaker 3: Roughly.
Speaker 1: The issue here is that for any hallucinogen, your experience
Speaker 1: is going to be defined by scene and setting, right,
Speaker 1: It's going to be defined by your cognitive state at
Speaker 1: the beginning before ingestion, and it's also going to be
Speaker 1: informed by the environment in which you encounter a hallucinogen,
Speaker 1: and most importantly, it should be consensual. These are innocent
Speaker 1: people who are not allowed to consent to whatever happens.
Speaker 1: One crew member ask as co workers, hey, you guys
Speaker 1: feel okay? I don't I feel like I'm on something,
Speaker 1: and this guy classic says, believe me, I would know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you would.
Speaker 2: A lot of people on the set were certainly experienced,
Speaker 2: as the Grateful Dead might say, there is an analog
Speaker 2: here with another topic that you and I have discussed
Speaker 2: pretty much, pretty at length on our other show stuff
Speaker 2: they don't want you to know with our buddy Matt Frederick.
Speaker 2: And this was something that the US government actually did
Speaker 2: quite a lot of non consensually dosing civilians with hallucinogenic
Speaker 2: substances in Operation Midnight.
Speaker 3: Climax or MK Ultra.
Speaker 2: I'm kind of interchangeably referred to that program, which was,
Speaker 2: you know, an absolute horror show, because anytime that you
Speaker 2: are doing this to someone without their knowledge, the immediate
Speaker 2: thought can often me I am am I losing my mind?
Speaker 2: Am I having an absolute psychotic break? Which could lead
Speaker 2: to some very horrific consequences.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we we see multiple reports from people in the
Speaker 1: crew who drank this h or let's say it this way.
Speaker 1: They had this experience, right, and at first they can't
Speaker 1: explain it. One guy says, or one person says, I
Speaker 1: feel toxic and beside myself. Yeah, and that's a very
Speaker 1: honest one. And Bill Paxton says, one minute I felt okay,
Speaker 1: the next minute, I felt so beat me here, Ben,
Speaker 1: I felt so anxious. I wanted to breathe in a
Speaker 1: paper bag.
Speaker 2: And I actually saw an interview with Paxton talking about
Speaker 2: this where he is experienced, and he talks about it
Speaker 2: thus in that way. He just kind of was like,
Speaker 2: you know what, I'm just going to ride this out.
Speaker 2: And he just cried the six pack and started smoking
Speaker 2: joints because he was like, I know what this is.
Speaker 2: I don't know exactly what substance it is, but I
Speaker 2: know the only way to get through it.
Speaker 3: The only way forward is through.
Speaker 2: So that's exactly what Bill Paxton did as a as
Speaker 2: experienced you know, hallucinogen user and stoner.
Speaker 1: And we see people having visual hallucinations. Imagine you're the
Speaker 1: steadicam operator and you see colors and fog, right, and
Speaker 1: your job is to look at things. So how's that
Speaker 1: going to work?
Speaker 3: Streaks in my frame.
Speaker 1: Geez, oh my gosh. So James will be furious, right
Speaker 1: if he was not one of the people affected by
Speaker 1: the chowda. He's feeling suddenly and distinctly woozy, and of course, naturally,
Speaker 1: since these folks are not all, you know, hallucinots, a
Speaker 1: word I just made up, that's very kind of you.
Speaker 1: This is a lot of people are naturally saying what
Speaker 1: happened to me earlier, and they're concluding, maybe they got
Speaker 1: some bad chowda, maybe they got you know, some bad shellfish.
Speaker 3: Yeah, James refers to I believe.
Speaker 2: He starts shouting as he was wont to do about
Speaker 2: some sort of neurotoxin potentially in play, a paralytic shellfish neurotoxin,
Speaker 2: because again he's a bit of a science minded fellow,
Speaker 2: so he may or may not know a little bit
Speaker 2: about what he's talking about, and he's trying to get
Speaker 2: out of there so that he can make himself induce vomiting.
Speaker 2: But unfortunately, all of a sudden, he realizes he's so
Speaker 2: discombobulated he can no longer find his way out of
Speaker 2: this labyrinthine set, to be fair, which he had been
Speaker 2: shooting in for weeks.
Speaker 1: He can't find a place to puke.
Speaker 2: You can't find a place to puke. I would just
Speaker 2: do it where you stand, buddy. I mean people were
Speaker 2: certainly doing that on the Titanic itself. This is something
Speaker 2: that is really causing him distress, and Ben, you gotta
Speaker 2: do it.
Speaker 3: The thing he.
Speaker 2: Screams is classic camera and it sounds like a line
Speaker 2: from Aliens truly.
Speaker 3: In fact, it could well be.
Speaker 1: There's something Eddy, get it out.
Speaker 3: Then the chest burster bursts forth.
Speaker 2: His pal Louis Abernathy Lewis to his friends who played
Speaker 2: the character who named after him, Lewis Bodine in the film.
Speaker 2: I don't remember that character, but he's apparently here. Suit
Speaker 2: he has a line that says, she's a very old liar.
Speaker 2: By the way, I have to give Jordan and his
Speaker 2: podcast too much information TMI a shot, because they do,
Speaker 2: like I believe, a three part history, oral history on
Speaker 2: the filming of Titanic, So not just the clamshowder incident,
Speaker 2: but like all of this other stuff that was very
Speaker 2: much worthy of its own series of episodes, just the
Speaker 2: whole chaotic mess that was the filming of Titanic. His
Speaker 2: buddy Lewis Bodine said, I was just shocked at the
Speaker 2: way he looked talking about camera. One eye was completely red,
Speaker 2: like the terminator eye.
Speaker 3: A pupil, no iris beat red.
Speaker 2: This is already a scary dude, and now he's coming
Speaker 2: at you looking like that.
Speaker 3: The other eye looked like he'd been sniffing glue since
Speaker 3: he was four. That is a very descriptive line.
Speaker 1: Let's spend some time on that, because it is an indication,
Speaker 1: as any medical professionals in the audience tonight will know,
Speaker 1: it is an indication of something going to ry if
Speaker 1: your pupils are not matching in diameter, and that can
Speaker 1: imply some very dangerous, very scary and possibly life changing
Speaker 1: events in your brain. All right, it can indicate brain damage.
Speaker 2: Well, let's just again mention that PCP isn't some happy,
Speaker 2: fun time party drug. It is like it's often referred
Speaker 2: to as a hallucinogen, but it's hard stuff. It is
Speaker 2: a serious street drug and often you know, enjoyed by
Speaker 2: kind of scary people. In my experience, at least, you know,
Speaker 2: as I've read about it, and seeing I've never encountered
Speaker 2: the stuff in my life.
Speaker 3: Well, I've certainly run in some sketchy circle.
Speaker 1: Well, Ben, right, you and I were talking offline earlier.
Speaker 1: You smoked a lot of wet.
Speaker 2: Right, if I'm not mistaken. There's wet, which is yeah,
Speaker 2: that's right. There is the old joint dipped in PCP,
Speaker 2: and then there's also the shurm stick of lore, which
Speaker 2: would be a joint dipped in embalming fluid. But you're
Speaker 2: right then the wet is definitely a thing and again
Speaker 2: kind of scary people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is not the thing you should do to
Speaker 1: your friends. You should never dose people with drugs. It's
Speaker 1: not let alone people in a professional environment. James Cameron,
Speaker 1: by the way, is not having his first psychedelic rodeo.
Speaker 1: He was talking, as Jordan points out in Oral History
Speaker 1: of Terminator two on the thirtieth anniversary of that film's publication,
Speaker 1: and he says, look, when I came up with the
Speaker 1: plot idea of Terminator two, I was on ecstasy. I
Speaker 1: remember this is a quote. I remember sitting there once
Speaker 1: high on e writing notes for Terminator and I was
Speaker 1: struck by Sting's song that I hope the Russians loved
Speaker 1: their children too, And I thought, you know what, the
Speaker 1: idea of a nuclear war is just so antithetical to
Speaker 1: life itself. That's where the kid came from. James amazing,
Speaker 1: but also ecstasy. I don't know, I'm so square, man,
Speaker 1: I'm scared of that stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't think of ecstasy as a hallucinogen either, honestly,
Speaker 2: like a clubby kind of party drug. I guess it was,
Speaker 2: and I didn't think it was super popular in the
Speaker 2: era in which Cameron would have been writing this stuff.
Speaker 2: I would have thought it'd be much more likely that
Speaker 2: he'd have taken a tab of acid or something. But
Speaker 2: there you go straight from his mouth to the Ringer's ear,
Speaker 2: which I do love podcasts from the Ringer Network. When
Speaker 2: Cameron went back to the set, he found that everyone
Speaker 2: had left and it was a really eerie, spooky kind
Speaker 2: of ghost town of a scene. He described it like
Speaker 2: an episode of the Twilight Zone when talking to Rebecca
Speaker 2: Keegan for her book The Futurist, referring to James Cameron.
Speaker 2: Of course, in an effort to mitigate some of this chaos,
Speaker 2: and assistant director had herded everyone into the dining area
Speaker 2: where I bet that was a scene, y'all, and divided
Speaker 2: them into two groups. We've got good crew and bad crew.
Speaker 2: Are you a good crew or are you a bad crew?
Speaker 2: It was described like a game of Red Rover. As
Speaker 2: soon as someone on the good crew started feeling funny,
Speaker 2: they'd switch over to the bad crew side. You gotta
Speaker 2: respect the assistant director production assistant mind did organization here
Speaker 2: in this situation, right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the folks who identify, whether they self identify
Speaker 1: or are identified as bad crew, we're looking at sixty
Speaker 1: to eighty five people. Again, this is a huge production.
Speaker 1: These folks who are not feeling well are loaded into vans.
Speaker 1: They are taken away to Dartmouth General Hospital. They are
Speaker 1: losing their minds, moaning, crying, wailing, and it's not too
Speaker 1: long after they arrive that one of the attending doctors
Speaker 1: immediately clocks there must be something afoot. There's clear evidence
Speaker 1: of non consensual intoxication of some sort. So the staff
Speaker 1: begins distributing liquid charcoal, which, by the way, don't get
Speaker 1: in a situation where you need liquid charcoal, but if
Speaker 1: you are in a situation, remember that can kind of help.
Speaker 1: So the nurses are going to soak up the toxins.
Speaker 1: That's the idea, right, So the nurses are hoping this
Speaker 1: will counteract the drug. Whatever substance has been dosed onto
Speaker 1: the crew. The issue is the time window right the
Speaker 1: ingestion of the body, the delivery of the drug. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: these people are already not in the best place, so
Speaker 1: a great many of them refuse to follow the doctor's
Speaker 1: orders to consume this liquid charcoal. They stay in their beds,
Speaker 1: tripping hard. This is a hospital crew that is understaffed,
Speaker 1: kind of a skeleton night crew, and they are not
Speaker 1: equipped to deal with this like this small army of
Speaker 1: people showing up at one am.
Speaker 2: Yeah, whacked up out of their gorge on substances at
Speaker 2: the time unknown Marilyn McAvoy again the I believe set
Speaker 2: painter I recalled in that interview with a vice. We
Speaker 2: all got put in these cubicles with the curtains around us,
Speaker 2: but no one wanted to stay in their cubicles.
Speaker 3: This is truly our hurting cat situation.
Speaker 2: Everyone was out in the aisles and jumping into other
Speaker 2: people's cubicles.
Speaker 3: Aha. People had a lot of energy. Some were in
Speaker 3: wheelchairs flying down the hallways. What a scene. I mean.
Speaker 2: Everyone was high. Packson reportedly was a stabilizing influence. As
Speaker 2: I had mentioned, a set decorator named Claude Russell would
Speaker 2: recall the beloved star of Twister and Apollo thirteen sitting
Speaker 2: next to me in the hallway of the hospital and kind.
Speaker 3: Of digging it.
Speaker 2: Like I said, the only way out is through, and
Speaker 2: he was just kind of taking it as it came.
Speaker 3: Good Old Bill Porri p love that guy.
Speaker 1: And here Jordan points out a Cracked article. We love Cracked.
Speaker 1: You can check out the creator of Crack dot com
Speaker 1: on several episodes of Ridiculus his history. Shout out to
Speaker 1: Jack and Miles. You can also check out their show
Speaker 1: Daily Zeitgeist Anyway Cracked great writing. A writer named j
Speaker 1: M McNabb says the following, and Jordan wants us to
Speaker 1: read this in full because it is a hilarious description. Noel,
Speaker 1: this is a longer quote, so let's round robin it
Speaker 1: now'll kick us off.
Speaker 3: Sure. Great.
Speaker 1: Everyone was so friggin high that they started racing wheelchairs
Speaker 1: down the hallway and formed a spirity conga line led
Speaker 1: by legendary cinematographer Caleb Deschanel.
Speaker 3: Zoe's dad yep Yeah mentioned that earlier. For sure.
Speaker 2: Caleb, famous cinematographer, as documented in the Camera and biography
Speaker 2: The Futurists and We had also referenced the director used
Speaker 2: his walkie talkie to radio his ad assistant director while
Speaker 2: she was standing directly in front of him. The then
Speaker 2: leapt at Cameron and stabbed him in the face with
Speaker 2: a pen before being dragged away by hospital staff. All
Speaker 2: while Cameron sat bleeding and laughing.
Speaker 1: Paxton, freaked out by the bedlam, quietly ducked out of
Speaker 1: the er with a teamster, I love our teamsters, don't
Speaker 1: get us guys, and went back to the set, where
Speaker 1: he drank an entire case of beer, which he later
Speaker 1: told the La Times quote seemed to help.
Speaker 2: The mania in the hospital eventually died down and evolved
Speaker 2: into a game of hacky sack. As you know, these
Speaker 2: things tend to do. That's the only that's the only
Speaker 2: possible outcome as the collective high mellowed.
Speaker 1: So these people ride the wave and they go back
Speaker 1: to their they go back to their billets, they go
Speaker 1: back to their sleeping places, and they all realize this
Speaker 1: is how crazy production is. They all realize when they
Speaker 1: come back to ground and that they have to go
Speaker 1: to work the next day. Right, you can file a grievance,
Speaker 1: but you have to accomplish the mission. One guy says,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm gonna grab my guitar real quick. I'm
Speaker 1: going to write a song about this, which I you know, Ben,
Speaker 1: I think you would love this aspect of making a song.
Speaker 1: It's not even a protest song. It's an acknowledgment of
Speaker 1: the event.
Speaker 3: Story song. Very Troubadour esque.
Speaker 2: According to Jake Clark, one of the few folks who
Speaker 2: actually didn't get laced because of a shellfish allergy, James
Speaker 2: Cameron and Bill Paxton were spotted back on set at
Speaker 2: four in the morning with beat red eyes. He says, unbelievably,
Speaker 2: Jim had a bottle of scotch and Bill Paxton had
Speaker 2: a bag of joints because he was a real stone
Speaker 2: in the morning.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, you know, whenever smoke two joints, and especially
Speaker 3: you know this is a special occasion. Let's just say.
Speaker 2: Another actor on set who didn't partake was Susie Amos,
Speaker 2: who plays Old Rose's granddaughter.
Speaker 3: Thankfully Old Rose. By the way, the actor who played her.
Speaker 2: Either didn't eat that much or skipped it, or there's
Speaker 2: varying accounts that she may have been dining off campus
Speaker 2: and so she was okay, because that could have really
Speaker 2: done a number on an older person. Amos, however, went
Speaker 2: on to marry James Cameron, and Cameron would later joke
Speaker 2: around with Vanity Fair that she's always been high on
Speaker 2: my list of suspects, which leads us.
Speaker 3: To the who done it of it all?
Speaker 1: Get it high on my list of suspects? So the
Speaker 1: good news is that no one suffers any long term
Speaker 1: debilitating injuries. This is not going to haunt people for
Speaker 1: the rest of their lives. The big questions are what
Speaker 1: happens to the principal actors here the Leonardo DiCaprio is
Speaker 1: the Kate Winslets. What happens to the mystery? Do we
Speaker 1: ever locate or identify the person who poisoned the chowder? Look,
Speaker 1: luckily we do have the police show up, They test
Speaker 1: leftover chowder and they verify that it is laced with PCP.
Speaker 1: Also shout out to Billy Zane, another actor who plays
Speaker 1: like the bad guy boyfriend. He later will say, I
Speaker 1: wish I was there. Those kids had all the fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you say so. Billy didn't sound like much
Speaker 2: fun to me, but I hear you. Billy, of course
Speaker 2: was in the past parts of the film, as were
Speaker 2: the leads Leo and Kate, so they were gracefully, you know,
Speaker 2: not subjected to this horror show. The Halifax Police Department
Speaker 2: investigated the case for two and a half years. They
Speaker 2: actually issued a warrant for the Department of Health records
Speaker 2: and got a list of every single person who had
Speaker 2: worked on the set and they can compile the ten
Speaker 2: page report, which was actually heavily redacted, but no suspects
Speaker 2: were ever identified.
Speaker 1: Ultimately, as a result of this redactive report, however, we
Speaker 1: want to say it, nothing shakes out. This mystery remains
Speaker 1: unsolved today. No suspects were ever identified by HPD. The
Speaker 1: case gets closed in February of nineteen ninety nine. There
Speaker 1: are a couple of theories, and I know we're running long.
Speaker 3: But.
Speaker 1: Folks, fellow ridiculous historians, I think it's important to you
Speaker 1: just give a couple of pieces of speculation, right.
Speaker 2: One that maybe seems a little obvious and that maybe
Speaker 2: I had alluded to at the top of the show,
Speaker 2: is this idea of a disgruntled production crew member. Cameron
Speaker 2: himself endorsed this theory for years, saying that he has
Speaker 2: a good idea of who did it, even though he
Speaker 2: couldn't prove it. We had fired a crew member the
Speaker 2: day before because they were creating trouble with the caterers.
Speaker 2: Interesting he told this to Vanity Fair. So we believe
Speaker 2: the poisoning was this idiot's plan to get back at
Speaker 2: the caterers, whom, of course we promptly fired the next day.
Speaker 2: So it worked, okay, Yeah, man, what a bummer though,
Speaker 2: Like the caterers, by all accounts, the clam chowder was
Speaker 2: deliciously They're kind of unfair to blame the caterers if
Speaker 2: someone dosed the I mean, like I guess, at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, someone's got to take the fall.
Speaker 1: It sticks, though, because why did this occur? Cameron himself
Speaker 1: acknowledges the motive, or the suspected motive behind this incident,
Speaker 1: and he says in that interview we mentioned earlier from
Speaker 1: Vanity Fair the following quote, of course, the operating theory
Speaker 1: was that I was such a psycho maniac that the
Speaker 1: perpetrator was trying to get back at me. He actually sorry,
Speaker 1: nailed it, Jim let me a mendez. He didn't say
Speaker 1: that to Vanity Fair. He said this on the Q podcast,
Speaker 1: which was hosted by Tom Power, and he.
Speaker 3: Said and then caveat at the f out of you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he said, I reject that theory out of hand
Speaker 1: for obvious reasons, And we don't know if he was
Speaker 1: yelling at Tom off.
Speaker 2: Mike, I'm reading this in a yelling voice because I
Speaker 2: no longer know the difference between yelling and not yelling.
Speaker 2: After with this character, we've also got a disgruntled member
Speaker 2: of the catering crew as a potential suspect. There's also
Speaker 2: the possibility that one of them had it in for
Speaker 2: Jimmy c If you guys ever seen the episode.
Speaker 3: Of Home Movies where they go.
Speaker 2: To camp Camp Campingston Falls and they might be giants
Speaker 2: or in it, there is a drama teacher in that
Speaker 2: episode who talks about having worked in the film worked
Speaker 2: in the biz. I worked in craft services for jim
Speaker 2: James Cameron.
Speaker 3: He likes fruits.
Speaker 2: I'd ever see him every day and said, I go, hey,
Speaker 2: mister fruit, how about some more fruit.
Speaker 3: I'll always remember that. And that is clearly a reference.
Speaker 2: To this incident without actually talking about drugs on a
Speaker 2: relatively kid friendly show.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, caterer, disgruntled caterer.
Speaker 1: M Yeah. The theory being that the theory being that
Speaker 1: this ought tour yelled at someone in crafting. He was
Speaker 1: given a cup of soup that he thought was too hot,
Speaker 1: and again this is anecdotal. He threw the soup on
Speaker 1: the floor and said, don't you ever serve me boiling
Speaker 1: soup again? This is oh my god, Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: not This is not Cannon, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: This may be Cameron, but it is not Cannon.
Speaker 3: Doesn't that remind you of that?
Speaker 2: I think you should leave sketch where he drinks the
Speaker 2: gaspacho soup and says, it's burning, it's burning my mouth.
Speaker 1: Let me explain something to you. When you expect cold
Speaker 1: soup and it's room temperature, it's room timp it's room tis.
Speaker 1: He should have gone with the wall.
Speaker 2: That's very much James Cameron moment there.
Speaker 3: Don't you ever serve me blowing souper?
Speaker 2: Beginner's also an excellent clip of Metallica in the studio
Speaker 2: with their producer Bob Rock and the drummer who's the
Speaker 2: pain in the butt drummer, Lars. The producer's talking to
Speaker 2: him about the drums and he accidentally rolls over Lars's
Speaker 2: foot with his chair, and he goes.
Speaker 3: Don't you ever do that to me again? And then
Speaker 3: the guy goes, wear's some shoes.
Speaker 2: It's a really funny moment. It reminds me of this
Speaker 2: exchange as well. However, Earl Scott, the CEO of the
Speaker 2: local catering company in question here, who provided the chowder,
Speaker 2: he stuck up for his people, as you do.
Speaker 3: When you're leader.
Speaker 2: He spoke to Entertainment Weekly and blamed the production. A
Speaker 2: lot of Spider Man fingerpointing going on here, Ben claiming
Speaker 2: that it was the Hollywood crowd bringing in their psychedelic shit.
Speaker 2: I don't think it was purposefully done to hurt somebody.
Speaker 2: We like, it just slipped. Whoops, my PCP fell in
Speaker 2: the soup. Better not say anything. It was done like
Speaker 2: a party thing that got carried away.
Speaker 3: That is absurd.
Speaker 2: Again, PCP not a party thing, not for consumption of
Speaker 2: the general partying audience.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't hold chowder for me and I think
Speaker 1: for a lot of us. The third theory we need
Speaker 1: to know is the speculation that there was a disgruntled
Speaker 1: local who pulled a prank, who wanted to get over
Speaker 1: on Hollywood just for the lulls. There's no evidence to
Speaker 1: support this. As we're recording now on July third, beautiful
Speaker 1: Thursday here in twenty twenty five. The case remains closed.
Speaker 1: The perpetrator has not been found. There are a couple
Speaker 1: of folks who have tried to get more information from Halifax.
Speaker 2: Right Tricia Ralph, Commissioner reviewed the redactions and concluded the
Speaker 2: Halifax Police were not justified and withholding information related to
Speaker 2: law enforcement tactics and inter governmental affairs, especially since the
Speaker 2: material exceeds the fifteen year protection window. However, some of
Speaker 2: that personal data will go on to remain redacted. Ralph
Speaker 2: ordered the remaining details to be made public. The police
Speaker 2: were expected to release details in May of twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: but so far have not done so curious.
Speaker 1: We do have one kind of cool update from our
Speaker 1: research associate, Jordan. I just can't say enough good stuff
Speaker 1: about this guy. He's a regular Ben Hackett, Ben's sleeping
Speaker 1: dog Hackett, this guy. Horden notes that the production team
Speaker 1: had an update of their own. They made T shirts.
Speaker 1: I love it when people make T shirts. And the
Speaker 1: T shirt shows an image of the Titanic sinking into
Speaker 1: a big bowl of chowder, and the logo says bad Crew.
Speaker 1: Going back to what I was saying earlier about good
Speaker 1: and bad crew.
Speaker 3: Be divided crew bad crew. Yeah, yeah, Do you want
Speaker 3: to give the sun Stairs situation?
Speaker 1: Yeah? You want to give the final word to Jimmy
Speaker 1: c himself.
Speaker 2: I guess we must, since he is the boss. He
Speaker 2: told the Canadian podcast Q with Tom Power that we
Speaker 2: referenced before in twenty twenty three, a bit of a
Speaker 2: mixed message here, not gonna lie. He said, you haven't
Speaker 2: lived until you've been high on PCP, which, by the way,
Speaker 2: I do not recommend anyone beautiful. Really, what do you
Speaker 2: really mean, Jim, What are you really thinking? Yeah, he's
Speaker 2: an odd character that Jim Cameron. Not happy with the
Speaker 2: way Christopher Nolan portrayed the atomic bomb. He's been, you know,
Speaker 2: very outspoken recently, saying he thought it was a cop
Speaker 2: out the way that Nolan failed to his mind adequately
Speaker 2: show the horror and literal fallout of you know, Oppenheimer's creation.
Speaker 2: I know I haven't seen the movie actually, but apparently
Speaker 2: there is a scene that sort of art Sallee kind
Speaker 2: of shows some charred bodies in the audience, says Oppenheimer's
Speaker 2: giving a big keynote address of some kind and I
Speaker 2: guess that was a choice, but Cameron didn't like that.
Speaker 2: But we also know that Cameron's someone who is really
Speaker 2: spent a lot of time thinking about nuclear holocaust, so
Speaker 2: I could see that.
Speaker 1: Are you Accusie James Cameron of being outspoken?
Speaker 3: He has a bit outspoken.
Speaker 2: I do highly recommend listening to the interviews that he
Speaker 2: did with The Ringer. He's been on a couple of
Speaker 2: the different shows I want to say, the big Picture,
Speaker 2: and then of course there is this oral history that
Speaker 2: Jordan was referencing.
Speaker 3: But he's we got some really interesting takes.
Speaker 2: On the state of AI and I think he's coming
Speaker 2: from a pretty educated place on that.
Speaker 3: So do check it out.
Speaker 1: And thank you for checking out this episode of Ridiculous History.
Speaker 1: Big big thanks to our super producer Audit Ventures, mister
Speaker 1: Max Williams, Big big thanks to the legendary Ben the
Speaker 1: Sleeping Dog Hackett, our guest superproducer, Big thanks to aj
Speaker 1: Bahama's Jacobs Jonathan Strickland aka the Quister, who, by the way, folks,
Speaker 1: I made sure I could say this on air. Just
Speaker 1: had a birthday like a person.
Speaker 3: Yeah it happens. Happy New Year, as you would say Ben.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks to Christoph Rasiotis and Eves Jeff Coates here
Speaker 2: in Spirit. Oh and again just another huge thanks to
Speaker 2: Jordan run Talk who just absolutely killed it on this episode.
Speaker 2: Outline and do check out his podcast DMI Too.
Speaker 3: Much Information, which is a lovely and educational listen. Agreed,
Speaker 3: We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.