Hello. This is Susie Esman and Jeff Garland. I'm here, and we are the hosts of the history of Curb your enthusiasm podcast. Now we're going to be rewatching and talking about every single episode, and we're going to break it down and give behind the scenes knowledge that a lot of people don't know. And we're going to be joined by special guests including Larry David and Cheryl Pines, Richard Lewis, Bob Odenkirk, and so many more. And we're going to have clips and it's just going to be a lot of fun. So listen to the history of curb your enthusiasm on iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you happen to get your podcasts.

What up, guys?

Ola Catal, it's your girl cheekies from the cheekies and chill and dear Cheekies podcasts. And guess what? We're back for another season. Get ready for all new episodes where I'll be dishing out honest advice, discussing important topics like relationships, women's health, and spirituality. I'm sharing my experiences with you guys, and I feel that everything that I've gone through has made me a wiser person. And if I can help anyone else through my experiences, I feel like I'm living my godly purpose. Listen to cheekies and chill and your cheekies on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

A small town with secrets hidden for centuries.

You turn up in Danville, just as the town sees its first real crime.

In decades and a curious stranger who may be their only chance for survival.

I'm talking about the murder and disappearance.

In small town New Hampshire.

What do you think this is? Consumed, an all new supernatural audio thriller inspired by the novel by Aaron Manke.

I did not wake up this morning.

Prepared to deal with forces beyond my understanding.

Please, I call that breakfast.

Listen to consumed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Everybody quiet.

Offset it's the night of August 8, 1996. A crew in Halifax, Nova Scotia, is working hard on the last day of filming at this location. After weeks of working overtime and several grueling night shoots, everyone could use a break. Around midnight, the crew breaks for a meal. It's a welcome respite from setting up cameras, positioning lights, and capturing tedious takes of the same scene. It's a chance to relax with colleagues and friends, if only briefly. But here's what the crew doesn't know. Within 30 minutes, all hell will be unleashed on set. It's an incident no one could have predicted, because it had never happened before or since. It's the night the crew of James Cameron's Titanic was drugged. Every on set department was affected that night, from the grips and electricians to the set decorators and camera operators, from the assistant directors to the actors and yes, even future Oscar winner James Cameron. As the chaos ensued that night, the mystery of who drugged the crew was ignited. A multi year police investigation followed, and one question haunted everyone impacted that fateful evening. Why? Welcome to very special episodes, an iHeart original podcast. I'm your host, Dana Schwartz, and this is boat trip, the attempted sinking of Titanic.

So I feel like, because this is our first episode of the show, we should throw in just, like, a little background info on who we are, why people might know us. I'm Dana Schwartz, the person talking. Now, I host a podcast called Noble Blood, but I also have, if my voice sounds familiar, also did the voice on the podcast Hayleywood, which was about Bruce Willis sort of buying up all the property in this tiny Idaho town. And this podcast called Stealing Superman, about Nicolas Cage's incredibly expensive comic book collection that was stolen. So I guess this is a good entry point into very special episodes because my niche has become weird celebrity adjacent scandals.

Yes.

Cultural high points.

Yeah.

Now, I guess I should introduce myself. I'm Zarin Burnett. I have hosted black cowboys, and currently I'm hosting ridiculous crime with my partner, Elizabeth Dutton. And we do pretty much stories like this, which is od weird cultural touchstone moments.

And I am Jason English. I've worked with you on some of those shows, and the idea behind very special episodes is that we had so many ideas for podcasts and just decided we're probably not going to get around to making all these limited series. So let's just do one episode a week. It's our movie of the week. It's Mr. McFeely coming over to Mr. Rogers and popping something in the VCR and learning about the crayon factory, or I don't think they ever did a PCP episode on Mr. Rogers. But that's kind of what we're hoping is we can earn a spot in your weekly podcast listening routine. And we'll be back every week with a good, weird, fun, sometimes felonious story.

You know what I realized this podcast is? It's like when you are at a cocktail party or out to dinner with a group of your partner's friends and you don't know what to talk about, and you just get to say, I heard the craziest story on a podcast that is every single one of these episodes. It is the fodder for you to say, I heard the craziest story on this podcast.

I love that because that's exactly what I do for a living. And then now what I'm going to do when I'm just hanging out, be like, oh, I heard the best story today.

Yeah. Basically, this show is called very special episodes, but I feel like it also could just be called, I heard it on this podcast.

I like it. I like it. We'll get to some merch ideas later, but there's a lot of words for mousepad.

It's a little long, but you say it fast.

Yeah, run through the syllables.

I also just wanted to say, jason, we've known each other for a very long time. I cold emailed you when I was in college as a freelance writer for Mental Floss, the magazine. And I was freelancing for mental floss and working at mental floss right when I graduated college. And now it's nearly ten years later and we still get to work together.

When that email came in, I'll say two things about it. One of them is a joke, but the earnest thing is you sent pitches in and it was like, this person is playing a different sport than the rest of us. These are so well thought out, and I mean, we got so much inbound stuff, but these just really stood out. And I remember talking to you at the end of the summer and saying, whatever you're doing is working. And ten years from now, I'm going to pull you into doing this random podcast with me and look like the long game, it works.

You are absolutely right. It was absolutely correct.

Lived up to the promise.

Zarin, we met because I cold emailed you and said, I love what you're doing for Mel. Can we say Mel? Do we not reference Mel? We can totally say Mel.

Rip.

Mel riprip. And I said, I'd just love to work with you on something, and that that became black cowboys. And we've worked on a few things together since, and we've got some other side projects going for later this year.

Normally, I don't like cold things, but that was the best cold email of my life.

I am so excited about this podcast because it is a little known, I would say, cultural milestone in 90s history. Like a major cultural moment. My own slightly zany personal connection to Titanic is I used to be a writer at Entertainment Weekly, and sometimes they send us out on weird press event meetings. And James Cameron was doing this science fiction anthology show, which I don't even remember, to be honest. But the result was I and another colleague from EW got to go to drive over to the west side of Los Angeles. I don't remember exactly where it was, but it was a schlep to James Cameron's studio garage museum. And there were, like 15 of us, like, reporters and random people that James Cameron personally took us through. All the props that he kept in this. It's like a small airport hangar where he had the box crusher, the box lifter from aliens, like the mech suit. He had all these plaster faces from avatar that are all, like, the CGI. He had the model of Titanic, like, the smaller, detailed scale model that they filmed. And he had, like, the real car. He had, like, the car.

The car from Titanic. If you've seen Titanic, the sex car.

Hand on glass car.

Yes.

Hand on glass sex car. I was going through trying to find photos because I know I took photos, but the really embarrassing thing is I was dating someone at the time that I went with, and now I'm horrified that I deleted all the photos in, like, a relationship purge. And I'm like, well, I wish I kept them.

We got to get back there.

I wish I kept get. So hopefully he's listening to this. James Cameron, I'm sure you're listening to this podcast. Invite me back to your hangar. I won't bring a romantic partner. Ready to dive into the cold waters of the North AtlaNtic?

Let's do it.

Before we dive into James Cameron's epic Titanic, let's anchor ourselves with a quick history of the real RMS Titanic.

On April 10, 1912, the Titanic set sail on its maiden voyage from Southampton.

EnglaNd, en route to New York. It was the grandest ship of its time. Designed to entice affluent passengers. With its extravagant first class cabins, fine dining, and special amenities, the RMS Titanic.

Had a series of innovative safety features. The Titanic's builder said the ship would.

Stay afloat even if the first four compartments were compromised, which made some people call it unsinkable. Just four days into the voyage, those people were proven wrong. Titanic's starboard side collided with an iceberg, triggering an inundation of water that sank the ship in just 2 hours and 40 minutes. There were roughly 2200 people aboard. 1500 died due to an insufficient number of lifeboats. The colossal tragedy captivated the world in 1912 and has continued to fascinate people for over a century. One such fascinated person, James Cameron. Long before James Cameron even dreamed of filmmaking, he was an artsy kid growing up in OntARio, Canada. He was born in 1954. And although he grew up hundreds of miles from the sea, james became enraptured with the ocean.

He was obsessed with the ocean, with JACques COUSteau movies, and fascinated by the story of TitaniC.

That's RebeccA Keegan, senior film editor at the Hollywood reporter and author of the James Cameron biography the futurist. The life and films of James Cameron.

There is a 1950s scripted fictional telling of the story of Titanic that he saw when he was a kid and made a huge impression on him, just in terms of the drama and the loss and how scary it must have been for the people who were on that ship.

James'love of water inspired him to earn his scuba diving certification. As a teenager at the local y, he became fascinated with deep sea submersibles which could carry people to the depths of the ocean. James dreamed of exploring what he thought of as Earth's outer space. The tantalizing idea of exploring a shipwreck was a dream that would eventually come true. But before any type of deep sea exploration would be possible, James and his family moved to Brea, California, when he was around 17. When James Cameron started working in Hollywood, he wasn't a wildly successful director yet. He was simply building models for low budget Roger Cormann films. That's where he met actor Bill Paxton. James hired Paxton to help paint movie sets. While working for Roger Corman, James was offered the chance to take over as director for Piranha Two, the spawning. The gig didn't last long, and James doesn't like to include that in his filmography. The first feature film directing credit, he claims, however, was a movie he wrote about a cyborg assassin disguised as a human. Thus began the building of Cameron's reputation. The Terminator, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, was a small budget action film with impressive special and practical effects that went on to be a box office hit.

Next was aliens, the sequel to Ridley Scott's Alien. Aliens had a budget of $18 million. It went on to gross $130,000,000 worldwide. For Cameron's next film, the Abyss, he turned an unfinished nuclear power plant into a movie set. He used groundbreaking CGI technology to create the film's water tentacle.

Cameron's reputation was as a filmmaker who he did what he said he was going to do in the sense that he would tell studios, yes, this is very expensive. Yes, this is very ambitious, but I promise you it's going to work. And it did. He would make movies like true lies, which was very, very expensive. Terminator two, which had this, like, cutting edge technology in it.

The abyss was the most expensive movie Cameron had made, with a production budget of $45 million. While it wasn't a box office juggernaut like the Terminator and aliens, it still earned $90 million worldwide.

He would do new things and expensive things, and they would pay off enormously. At the same time that he had this reputation for really delivering both sort of commercially and creatively, he was also known to be very exacting, very demanding of his cast and crew. Part of that was because he could do a lot of the jobs on a crew himself.

After Terminator two and true lies, Cameron set his sights on a doomed love story. He pitched the film to 20th Century Fox as a new take on a shakespearean classic. It was Romeo and Juliet on the Titanic. But even with his star power as a director, the studios were nervous.

This was not the kind of movie that the industry wanted to make anymore. It's a giant, expensive period movie. They wanted very specific things from James Cameron. They wanted action. They wanted true lies and Terminator, a thousand and things that he would be known for. So the idea that he wanted to do a period romance that, by the way, involved him personally going to the real Titanic and shooting like this was, I think, understandably to executives at Fox, a little bit of a head scratcher, but it speaks to his stature in the industry at the time that he was able to talk them into that. And ultimately to get the movie made.

To get the green light, Cameron had to agree to forego a portion of his earnings. While a box office sensation would offset his reduced pay, such success was anything but guaranteed. He also agreed to a pg 13 rating and a summer 1997 release date, which was only a year away. For a film that would need a massive amount of special effects, practical effects, sound stages that could be flooded, and a giant hunk of the RMS Titanic. One year was ambitious, and that was without a mass poisoning event.

Hi, I'm Susie Esman.

And I am Jeff Garland.

Yes, you are. And we are the hosts of the history of curb your enthusiasm podcast. We're going to watch every single episode. It's 122, including the pilot, and we're going to break them down.

By the way, most of these episodes I have not seen for 20 years.

Yeah, me too. We're going to have guest stars and people that are very important to the show, like Larry David.

I did once try and stop a woman who was about to get hit by a car. I screamed out, watch out. And she said, don't you tell me what to do.

And Cheryl Hines, why can't you just.

Lighten up and have a good time.

And Richard Lewis, how am I going.

To tell him I'm going to leave now?

Can you do it on the phone? Do you have to do it in person? What's the canceling cable? You have to go in and he's a human being. He's helped you.

And then we're going to have behind the scenes information. Tidbit.

Yes, tidbit is a great word.

Anyway, we're both a wealth of knowledge about this show because we've been doing it for 23 years. So subscribe now and you could listen to the history of Kerber enthusiasm on iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you happen to get your podcasts.

What up, guys? Ola ketal, it's your girl. Cheekies from the cheekies and chill. And dear Cheekies podcasts. You've been with me for season one and two, and now I'm back with season three. I am so excited, you guys. Get ready for all new episodes where I'll be dishing out honest advice and discussing important topics like relationships, women's health, and spirituality. For a long time, I was afraid of falling in love, so I had to. And this is a mantra of mine, or an affirmation every morning where I tell myself it is safe for me to love and to be loved. I've heard this a lot. That people think that I'm conceited, that I'm a Mamona. And a Mamona means that you just think you're better than everyone else. I don't know if it's because of how I act in my videos. Sometimes I'm like, I'm a baddie. I don't know what it is, but I'm chill. It's cheekies and chill.

Hello.

Listen to cheekies and chill and dear cheekies as part of the My Coultura podcast network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Principal photography for Titanic began in July of 1996. The first shooting location was Halifax, Nova Scotia, where the modern day footage would be filmed. The modern day story follows a team of treasure hunters searching for a diamond necklace lost in the wreckage of the Titanic. The lead treasure hunter is Brock Lovett, played by James Cameron's dear friend, Bill Paxton. To bring the story to life, the production made use of the resources Halifax had to offer, which were vastly different from shooting in Los Angeles. While there weren't any famous Hollywood sound stages in Halifax, there was a harbor that was perfect for a film that takes place on the ocean in Halifax.

You'Re 15 to 20 minutes away from the ocean in any direction.

That's Claude Rossell, one of the onset dressers from the Halifax crew.

The Kaldesh was in the harbor and right where the Kaldesh was docked there was a big, huge warehouse for building parts on boats. They had sets of the interior of the labs on the boat and I think the submarine too has models like an interior set of that.

Although they were filming the interior set in a warehouse instead of a soundstage, it was the normal setup for the Halifax film community, a community that's much smaller than sprawling Los Angeles.

The Halifax film crew, like the IA crew, we're all pretty tight. Everybody knows everybody. There may be at times enough to accommodate two to four productions. Maritimer's just got a great reputation as far as meeting people like getting along with know there's a lot of respect there and camaraderie there for sure.

Word of James Cameron's notorious reputation made it all the way to Halifax.

People from LA that came here to work, that worked probably with him on other shows were know you got to be careful. You gotta watch yourself because you won't put up with anything kind of thing.

Right from the get go. The shoot was grueling, like the abyss, filming a nautical movie presented challenges that a land based film didn't face. They were filming on an actual research vessel without an elevator. That meant the crew had to manually haul the equipment up and down ladders and staircases, a process that can be exhausting and time consuming.

The unique thing about it was we were going on a boat and so the boat would go about 25 miles off the shore of the coast of Halifax. And there were long days, 1415 hours days. I started at my rate, but I had no turnaround in between the days and I ended up working triple overtime for the whole show.

Almost at the helm of the production was a director who knew how to make the impossible possible.

Lots of people said he was hardened crew, but my experience was I felt like I was working with somebody that knew exactly what they wanted. They knew exactly what they were doing. And he wasn't afraid. Like if I was moving like a table, all of a sudden he'd just stop what he was doing and he'd grab the other end of the table with me and he'd move the table over and make a quick comment and then back to on his chair. But eat swore a lot. We went through a lot of focus pullers one week. He wasn't afraid to call people out and get rid of them.

One person who had been fired was a crew member who clashed with the catering company on the second to last day of shooting in Canada. Toward the end of production in Halifax, the crew was working nights, arriving on set around 05:00 p.m. Filming as the moon glowed and leaving early in the morning at sunrise. The conditions were so intense that for some crew members, it was hard to distinguish what they were seeing at the end of each day. Was the sun rising or setting? After weeks of nonstop work, August 8, 1996, would be their last night of filming. The crew arrived for their final call time between five and 06:00 p.m. The shoot started like any other day, dressing the set, hair and makeup for the actors, framing each shot, the usual chaos that accompanies a movie set. At the meal break, a catering company served seafood chowder. Depending on who you ask, you'll get a different answer of what was in the chowder, either mussels, clams, lobster, or all of the above.

It was midnight, I think, when they called lunch, catering was outside in a mobile unit. So we went up, got what you wanted, and then we went inside that warehouse where all the sets were, and there were tables out. So it was like any other show. Break for lunch. You have your hour lunch. It was shortly, halfway through. Just something wasn't right. At first. You thought it was just yourself, but when you're talking to other people, you quickly realize, like, there's something going down here.

There was an undeniable buzz as more and more people started to feel funny.

And all of a sudden, the ad got up and said, okay, there seems to be an issue here. How many of you guys are feeling this way? How many guys feeling that way? And so then he kind of started circulating. He said, okay, good crew on the left, bad crew on the right. It was hilarious. And we were all kind of laughing. It was kind of hilarious because this has never happened. I don't know if in the history of production, if anything's ever stopped like that immediately to address what was going down, we didn't proceed with shooting. It was a concern.

Good crew, meaning that no one was feeling strange in any way. Bad crew consisted of everyone who couldn't figure out why their sense of reality was shifting. While no one knew what was happening, it became clear what differentiated the good crew from the bad crew. The only people who were feeling strange were the people who had eaten the chowder. But knowing it was tied to the chowder didn't actually solve the mystery of why everyone started to feel weird.

We didn't know what it was. My thought was food poisoning because that seems to be a common thing sometimes with seafood.

Claude had a good, plausible guess at what was happening. So did James Cameron, who had also eaten the chowder. He recounted his thoughts to Rebecca.

They were lining up a shot, I think, with a stand in for Gloria Stewart. And she just keeled right over.

Gloria Stewart was the actress playing 100 year old rose. This is her stand in, keeling right over.

The stand in. Just passed out. And then other people on the set started to get sick, including James Cameron. So as people are starting to get sick, Cameron realizes what's happening and decides to run off to the bathroom and try and make himself throw up, thinking, if I could get this stuff out of my system fast enough, at least I'll be okay and I'll be able to sort of steer this crew. He didn't entirely succeed. He comes back to set and his eyes are all bloodshot from making himself puke, which, of course, freaked everybody out and looked vaguely like a Terminator character. And they thought, oh, my gosh. This is some kind know zombie virus. What's wrong with Jim? We're all dying.

James immediately thought it was something called red tide, which, long story short, can make shellfish in affected areas dangerous to eat. It was a good theory. However, the truth was more sinister. No one knew it yet, but the chowder had been laced with the drug fencyclodine, better known as pcp or angel dust. The more chowder a person ate, the greater pcp side effects they endured, and it affected everyone differently.

There was a range. People were kind of joking and laughing, teasing each other. I don't recall us realizing that we were getting high, but we were definitely acting like it because nobody knew what the hell was going down. I remember one person, I think she was continuity and an ex hippie or still a hippie. But everybody was like, how you doing? I guess she had, maybe her drug days had a bad experience. And she was, like, almost panicking, saying, I don't know what's going on. I don't like this feeling. Kind of like she was getting worried.

While some people were enjoying the high, many others were terrified. It's jarring enough to have your reality unintentionally distorted. For someone who wasn't used to taking any kind of drug, the experience was even more startling. Of all the ways to get a group of 80 plus people stoned, PCP is an interesting choice. It started as an injectable anesthetic in the 1950s. It was originally used on humans and later on animals, but was banned when its side effects were determined to be too potent. Let us run you through. The potential side effects of an inadvertent pcp dosing.

Numbness in the arms and legs, nausea, vomiting, and paranoia may occur. Sweating, erasing heartbeat, and increased blood pressure are likely.

Serious.

Side effects may include delirium, psychosis, dissociative hallucinations, feelings of attachment from the environment, and seizures. Tell your doctor if you're exhibiting violent behavior or wish to. When mixed with alcohol, PCP could result in respiratory depression, coma, workout.

And on the set of Titanic, PCP caused a lot of unsuspecting people to panic. The surprise drugging presented a real challenge for the people on set who hadn't ingested PCP. The tight knit community of filmmakers was in extreme distress. It was the people they'd known for years. Working side by side on multiple productions, they watched as their colleagues and friends struggled. Even though some people enjoyed the buz, others were brought to tears, confused at what was happening to their bodies. Some were even physically ill and moaning. Some people tried to work but were too confused to do so. And others who initially made it into the good crew category slowly realized they were part of the bad crew. Through the madness, the crew handled the situation like they would on a regular day of filming on set by working together.

Everybody was like, how you doing? We were all talking. We were all, like, wondering what was going to be the next step. Thinking, maybe we have to go to the hospital. Especially if, like, 100 people needed to use the bathroom simultaneously. We didn't know what was going on.

Someone called 911. Paramedics from the local Dartmouth hospital arrived on the scene along with the police. The good news was that no one was in mortal jeopardy. The bad news, there wasn't much the paramedics could do.

I just remember us all getting organized, and the ad status said, okay, we're going to go to the hospital. It was just across the street, ironically, and so just organized. Everybody in a line. We were all, like, feeling a little silly and stupid that we were all walking down the sidewalk and crossing the crosswalk and going into the hospital and dating a hospital.

The people who were unaffected and hadn't eaten the chowder were instructed to stay on set until they were cleared to go home. Without a definitive time, they could leave. They decided to kick back, relax, and join in on the fun, sort of. One of the departments had a bottle of vodka, which they passed around at the same time. Dozens of crew members high on PCP descended on the Dartmouth hospital.

I recall a lot of beige walls, like an old hospital. It's not a big hospital, the Dartmouth hospital. So it was like they are trying to find chairs for us to sit down. Grips have found wheelchairs, and we're able to do wheelies down the hallways. And it was just so surreal at that point. I guess maybe we were peeking and that was like, wow, this is just so cool.

In a bizarre way, James Cameron recounted the scene to Rebecca.

So an enormous number of people are hitting this little, tiny emergency room, and it just got weird. In the emergency room waiting room, the cinematographer was, like, leading a conga line. People were not acting the way you do if you just have food poisoning. Something clearly weirder than that was going.

On, and Claude was enjoying the high.

I just remember being stoned and having a good time with my colleagues. It was just so know, like, James Cameron, Bill Paxton were all going across the street, sitting in a hallway in a hospital. It was crazy.

Yes. Actor Bill Paxton had eaten the chowder as well. At some point, Bill Paxton ditched the hospital. In an interview with Larry King, he said he told James Cameron, jim, I'm not going to hang out here. This is bedlam. I'm going to wander back down and drink a case of beer.

At one point, Cameron told me he saw his, I think it was his first ad woman who was just sort of really smart and on it and capable, and she was kind of trying to direct traffic in the midst of this emergency room. And she was also very clearly altered and perhaps didn't notice it. And so Karen was talking to her on the walkie talkie as he's sitting in the room with her. And at one point he says to her, where are you? And she says, I'm taking care of people in the hospital. And he says, you realize I'm sitting right here and you're talking to me right here? And apparently she comes at him with a pen and stabs him in the face with a pen. Again, this is beyond food poisoning. Something heavy duty is happening here.

When he wasn't getting stabbed in the face with a pen, James Cameron was riding the high.

I remember James kind of slouched back a bit in chair and just smiling in the kind of glaze smile and just looking up and down the hallway and know it's something like, this is strange, or I can't believe it. He was enjoying it, but we didn't know what was going down.

Some people were sprawled out on gurneys, wailing. The hospital staff did its best to take care of everyone.

So I remember nurses just kind of like, kind of herding cats, almost kind of like, okay, you sit down, or kind of like trying to calm us down. And then eventually they gave us a little. It looked like a yogurt drink bottle, but it was black. It was charcoal.

Liquid charcoal is used to treat overdoses and poisonings, among other, less dramatic things. The charcoal is supposed to bind to anything that's in a person's gut and help eliminate it. It's an effective way to get rid of a great many toxins, even if you don't know which toxin a person has taken. So who would be the metaphorical guinea pig to drink the charcoal first?

The interesting thing, it sounds like Cameron remains Cameron in the sense that he, like everybody else, was feeling some weird symptoms. He was clearly a little bit off, but he was still kind of leader to the crew in that sense. And Cameron sort of led the crew in the drinking of the charcoal drink to expunge whatever this toxin was from their systems as quickly as possible.

After everyone drank their dose of charcoal, there wasn't much else the hospital staff could do for the crew. Those who could be were discharged and sent home, and everyone who was still on set was cleared to leave as well. James Cameron stayed up late with Bill Paxton, drinking beer, reflecting on the bizarre night and expressing relief that nobody got seriously hurt.

It was certainly scary and weird, but they just kind of reflected back on this extraordinary movie, which had all of these problems and delays and complexities and expenses.

There was one thing that would bring the cast and crew back together very soon. The PCP incident had put a wrench in the final day of shooting in Halifax. With only half of the shooting schedule completed, the crew still needed to finish what they started. They were given the standard time off, which was long enough for the effects of PCP to wear off. The now sober cast and crew returned in the evening for the final time. The chaos of the event would inspire one crew member to grab their guitar and sing a song about it.

I'm not picking on the grips, but I'm guessing it was one of the.

Grips, and the absurdity of the situation would be commemorated with a souvenir.

The person who hired me called me in, Annie Fuller. She's not around. William Moore, but she was an icon. She was really good at what she did. She kind of had a raspy smoker's voice, and she would do like ten things at once. And it kind of chaotic straight away, but everybody loved her here in Halifax, worked with her while all this was going down. So maybe it was while we were in a hospital. I drew this sketch of bola chowder with a Titanic kind of sinking down into bowl of chowder. And on the bottom I put good crew, bad crew, and Annie just flipped out. She goes, oh, man, I love that. She goes, could you fix that up? She wanted to be goes, I'm going to get t shirts made out of them. So I was, yeah, yeah. She got them embroidered, not silk trained, embroidered, which looks a little higher end. And she gave them out to the local people. I guess that worked on the show. I'm sure there's one exist somewhere.

Thankfully, the final day of shooting was smooth sailing until James Cameron called out. That's a wrap on Halifax. But as the shoot ended, a new challenge emerged. The identity of the person who spiked the chowder was unknown. The search for the person who poisoned the cast and crew began. And on a set full of longtime friends and colleagues, the investigation hit uncomfortably close to home.

Hi, I'm Susie Esman.

And I am Jeff Garland.

Yes, you are. And we are the hosts of the history of Curb your enthusiasm podcast. We're going to watch every single episode. It's 122, including the pilot, and we're going to break them down.

By the way, most of these episodes I have not seen for 20 years.

Yeah, me too. We're going to have guest stars and people that are very important to the.

Show, like Larry David.

I did once try and stop a woman who was about to get hit by a car. I screamed out, watch out. And she said, don't you tell me what to do.

And Cheryl Hines, why can't you just.

Lighten up and have a good time?

And Richard Lewis, how am I going.

To tell him I'm going to leave now?

Can you do it on the phone? Do you have to do it in person? What's the canceling cable? You have to go in and he's a human being. He's helped you.

And then we're going to have behind the scenes information. Tidbit.

Yes, Tidbit is a great word.

Anyway, we're both a wealth of knowledge.

About this show because we've been doing.

It for 23 years. So subscribe now and you could listen to the history of Kerber enthusiasm on iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you happen to get your podcasts.

What up, guys?

Ola Ketal, it's your girl cheekies from the cheekies and chill. And dear Cheekies podcasts. You've been with me for season one and two. And now I'm back with season three. I am so excited. You guys get ready for all new episodes where I'll be dishing out honest advice and discussing important topics like relationships, women's health, and spirituality. For a long time, I was afraid of falling in love, so I had to. And this is a mantra of mine, or an affirmation every morning where I tell myself it is safe for me to love and to be loved. I've heard this a lot. That people think that I'm conceited, that I'm a Mamona, and a mamona means that you just think you're better than everyone else. I don't know if it's because of how I act in my video. Sometimes I'm like, I'm a baddie. I don't know what it is, but I'm chill cheekies and chill.

Hello.

Listen to cheekies and chill and dear cheekies as part of the My Coultura podcast network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The poisoning of a film director and his cast and crew sounds like the plot of a movie. In reality, it's James Cameron's on set nightmare that spurred an investigation. In the beginning, no one knew what mind altering substance the cast and crew had consumed along with their seafood chowder. John Landau, a producer on the film and James Cameron's business partner, was the first to find out.

There was a toxicology report which was given to producer John Landau, in which it was revealed that there was PCP in the chowder.

According to Vulture, the toxicology report was from the Nova Scotia Department of Health, who handed the investigation over to the Halifax Regional Police Service. At first glance, there was a long list of potential suspects. Like anyone who was on set that night, over 80 people had been drugged, and there were a bunch of others who hadn't been. At least 100 people were present when the PCP chaos commenced. It happened to a close knit community of filmmakers. Could a longtime friend and colleague have gone rogue to get everyone stoned? And if so, why? Was it a prank that went too far? Was someone harboring a grudge against James Cameron? Could it have been an attempt to sabotage the final day of shooting, or the production? Overall, the question of how the culprit acquired PCP added another layer of intrigue. They could have synthesized their own PCP, but they would have had to do it without catching the attention of law enforcement. The ingredients to make PCP are highly monitored, so much so that if you purchase enough of the ingredients to get started. There's a strong chance a police officer will knock on your door. But the Halifax Regional Police Service wasn't aware of someone working on the film who had purchased those ingredients.

And the police weren't aware of anyone from titanic purchasing angel dust from a dealer. Theories of who had done it swirled among the crew.

I heard one where one guy wanted to go to Mexico because that's where they were going after Halifax and the caterer guy didn't want him or didn't allow him or whatever, so he fired him and then I guess he got hired again the next day or something like that.

One of the theories was that someone who had been fired from the set as disgruntled crew member had spiked the chowder, sort of as revenge, maybe potentially to get the catering crew in trouble. Some people thought it was folks being angry at Cameron for his sort of intense leadership style, but it's all just theories.

The CEO of one of the catering companies in question told Entertainment Weekly that it was the Hollywood crowd bringing in psychedelics and it was a, quote, party thing that got carried away. James Cameron's future wife, actress Susie Amos, didn't eat the chowder, which Cameron jokingly said made her high on the suspect list.

Just what everybody else was talking. Somebody got pissed off with I don't know if it was the crew or the catering, and so they just decided to sabotage the guy who was a caterer.

Remember the night before the PCP incident? A crew member who clashed with the caterer had been fired. The theory was that the now ex crew member was so upset they added PCP to the chowder to sabotage the catering company. The disgruntled crew members'plan worked as the catering company was fired the next day. It's a theory that even James Cameron supported in an interview with Vanity Fair. Yet there was no easy answer for the police and their search continued. Despite the ongoing investigation, James Cameron had a movie to complete. Regrettably, this wouldn't be the last significant hurdle he'd face during production. After the Halifax shoot wrapped, James Cameron headed to Rosarito, Mexico to film most of the flashback scenes of Jack and rose on the Titanic. News of other mishaps and hurdles while filming became public knowledge through the media, like rumors of James Cameron's temper on set and the perils of underwater stuntwork. Kate Winslet told the Los Angeles Times about some of the harsh conditions she endured, which included chipping a bone in her elbow.

Kate has talked about this. She's wearing this sort of flowing dress and a coat. And she's doing these underwater sequences where she's traveling through the ship and through all of these little kind of tight spaces. If you ask Cameron about it, he says that they were always very aware of where she was and very focused on her safety and certainly all ended well. But from her perspective, it was quite scary when at one point, she did get caught on something with her costume. And I think the peril, in some ways, that you see on the faces of the actors during the sinking scene, there's a way in which they were actually feeling that. I mean, they were literally filling the set with water. That's not cg water. They're not sitting in a little swimming pool pretending, know, cg ships behind them. It was a real ship that they'd built, and they were filling it with water. And for the actors, you don't have to try too hard to seem terrified in that circumstance.

The media latched onto the narrative of how unhinged James Cameron's set had become in both Rosarito and Halifax.

Certainly the PCP incident would have fed into a narrative at the time that this movie is just a hot mess and look at the crazy, ridiculous things that are happening on it.

To make matters worse, Titanic was getting bad press for its record sized budget. The film's original budget was estimated to be $80 million, which turned into 110,000,000 when the reality of how much it would cost sank in. But the production was so complex that the shooting schedule took much longer than anticipated. James Cameron's period piece Love story was turning into the most expensive movie ever made.

He had to get his release date pushed, which studios never like to do. And with these big ideas, he had, for instance, building the ship almost to scale in Mexico and all these little details like the china was the correct China that was used on Titanic. And even if you flipped over a plate in the dining room, it said the right thing on the back of the plate that it would have said on Titanic. Now, normally, movie sets are not that detailed. You're not necessarily going to bring a camera in and flip over a piece of china. He wanted that level of verisimilitude for his actors and to kind of put everyone in that historical moment. But with that came enormous expenses. Famously, the movie was being tracked by a lot of the Hollywood trade press and expected to be an enormous flop. Variety had a Titanic watch column just kind of on a regular basis, sort of mocking the challenges that the film was facing along the way. So the expectations were all that, this is going to completely tank. No pun intended. People were not expecting good things from.

Titanic, despite the rabid negative media fodder, the 200 million dollar budget, the cascade of onset mishaps and rumors of James Cameron's intensity. When Titanic was released in theaters on December 19, 1997, five months after its initial release date, the movie was more than a hit. Over the course of a few months, the most expensive movie ever made became the highest grossing film of all time and the first film to gross over $1 billion.

When Titanic opened, it exceeded anyone's expectations for the film. It was such a cultural phenomenon. Not only the many, many Oscar nominations, the enormous box office receipts, but there were all these weird other sort of ripple effects, like cruises became more popular. There was a phenomenon of girls going to see the movie over and over again, who were in love with Leonardo DiCaprio and then having crying parties.

At the time, it was just another big production, but once it started the screen and the popularity of it, it's like, wow, I was a part of that. I have all these great memories of different things that had nothing to do with the poisoning, just the whole working on the show. I was very proud of working on that show.

At the 1998 Academy Awards, Titanic earned a whopping 14 Oscar nominations, tying the record for the most nominations beside all about Eve. It won in eleven categories, including best picture and best director, tying Ben Hur for the winningest film in cinema history. James Cameron gave a controversial acceptance speech while holding the Oscar for best director, he quoted Jack saying, I'm the king of the world. While Titanic reached unprecedented levels of success, the Halifax Regional Police Service was still investigating the PCP incident. There were no major breakthroughs in the case. At the same time, the people who had been on set that night were moving on to new opportunities.

Well, the interesting thing about James Cameron is he did not make another movie for a very, very long time after Titanic. He made an enormous amount of money from it, and that gave him the freedom to do other kinds of things for the next several years. That meant a lot of things that didn't have a lot to do with Hollywood. It meant dives and documentaries about the ocean. Interestingly, that first ad, the woman who came at him and stabbed him in the face with her pen, he ended up hiring her again on one of those documentaries that he filmed in Halifax. So obviously, no hard feelings from the PCP incident.

After Titanic, Bill Paxton continued to accrue a host of acting credits. He made his directorial debut in 2001 with the film Frailty, which he also starred in. And while the Halifax crew had an impressive movie on their resumes. Life continued as normal in their special filmmaking community. The crew would go on to work on films and tv shows of varying sizes. Although Titanic did draw a lot of awe and wonder.

Anytime any of my friends, they go, oh, you work on film business. What films do you work on? So eventually I have to say Titanic. As soon as I say Titanic, I got everybody's attention.

As for the culprit behind the PCP spiked chowder, they were never caught. In February of 1999, two and a half years after the crew was drugged, the Halifax regional Police closed the investigation. Without a suspect, the case was officially cold. With no culprit and no motive, there's no answer as to why someone poisoned James Cameron and his crew. One thing that is certain, however, is that the mayhem the PCP culprit brought to Titanic didn't stop James Cameron from creating one of the greatest films of all time. Despite all of the onset issues and media articles claiming Titanic would fail, James proved his critics wrong.

You know, one thing I've noticed about Cameron is I think he actually kind of gets a kick out of when people underestimate him. He is good at tuning that stuff out, or sort of taking it in, but not taking it on, if that makes sense. And I think he knew he was making something pretty special, and I don't think he put much stock in the media coverage of him.

James Cameron would go on to surpass Titanic as the highest grossing film of all time, with 2000 and Nine's avatar, followed by Avatar the Way of Water. In 2022, all three films have grossed over $2 billion. Over 26 years later, it's unlikely that the PCP culprit will ever be named, but when it comes to Hollywood, anything is possible.

It sounds like it should be the next season of true Detective or something like these canadian cops trying to solve this 25 year old mystery of who spiked the chowder on the Titanic set.

Until then, the only things that remain of that chaotic night in Halifax are the memories of the people who lived it and the good crew, bad crew shirts that Claude helped make.

I have to say, for, like, a story about spiked chowder with, like, there are moments of this that are very heartwarming. There's, like, moments of love and friendship that I found very endearing. It's a more wholesome story than I expected.

The moment when James Cameron gets stabbed in the face while he's high on PCP, you wouldn't think that would be a sweet moment, but it totally turns out to be this sweet moment. Because he then rehires the woman who stabbed him in the face with the pen. I mean, what a sweetheart. What a forgiving guy.

That is what people say about James Cameron. People are constantly saying, james Cameron, huge sweetheart. That's like the only thing we hear about him.

I think that's why they called him king of the world. He was like, king of the sweethearts. Really?

Yeah. He's the sweetest man in Hollywood.

He moved that table. That's all I needed. Like, when I'm carrying a table, I want one other person just to help. And look, he did it.

I really do like his relationship, though, with Bill Paxton.

Oh, yeah. Oh, come on.

The two of them.

I mean, sitting there with that twelve pack, trying to get down off of the high, they don't even understand. I mean, how amazing is that? You're like, hey, buddy, I got some beers. Let's go back to my place and we'll just wind this down. And they're both sideways. I mean, I was like, I could relate. That's all I'm going to say. I could relate.

So, Zarin, is Bill Paxton your very special character for this episode? We should do this each episode. Let's pick one person each.

I would say, yeah. Bill Paxton is my spirit character. And then also whoever was who came up with the idea we should race wheelchairs in a hospital, that's my dude as well.

My very special character is the nurses at the hospital who had to deal with this influx of people just absolutely tripping and confused and probably just got a crazy story for the rest of their lives.

Truly, I would tell that to every patient after August 1996 would get that story. If I had been there that night, my very special character. And it wasn't close for me, great choices all. But for me, it's the late Annie Fuller. The one who got the good crew bad crew shirt silk screened. I'm sorry, not silk screened. Embroidered. Better than silk screen.

Oh, yeah, embroidered.

You got to make these things live on in fashion in merch. And it reminds me that about 2 minutes after you all agreed to do this podcast, I was hitting you up for your hoodie sizes, for hat sizes. We got to move this from the podcast to the podcast adjacent clothing. So be on the lookout. We're going to get that headed your way real soon. Very special episodes is made by some very special people. This episode was written by Katie Maddie. Our producer, editor, and sound designer is the great Josh Fisher. Additional editing by John Washington. Mixing and mastering by beheed Frazier. Original music by Elise McCoy show logo by Lucy Quintanilla Research and fact checking by Marissa Brown, Austin Thompson and Katie Maddie. Very special episodes is hosted by Danish Wartz, Zarin Burnett and me, Jason English. I am your executive producer and we'll see you back here next week. Very special episodes is a production of iHeart podcasts.

Hello, this is Susie Esman and Jeff Garland. I'm here and we are the hosts of the history of curb your enthusiasm podcast. Now we're going to be rewatching and talking about every single episode, and we're going to break it down and give behind the scenes knowledge that a lot of people don't know. And we're going to be joined by special guests including Larry David and Cheryl Hines, Richard Lewis, Bob Odenkirk, and so many more. And we're going to have clips and it's just going to be a lot of fun. So listen to the history of curb your enthusiasm on iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you happen to get your podcasts.

What up, guys?

Ola Catal, it's your girl cheekies from the cheekies and chill and dear Cheekies podcasts. And guess what? We're back for another season. Get ready for all new episodes where I'll be dishing out honest advice, discussing important topics like relationships, women's health, and spirituality. I'm sharing my experiences with you guys, and I feel that everything that I've gone through has made me a wiser person. And if I can help anyone else through my experiences, I feel like I'm living my godly purpose. Listen to cheekies and chill and your cheekies on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

A small town with secrets hidden for centuries.

You turn up in Danville just as the town sees its first real crime.

In decades and a curious stranger who may be their only chance for survival.

I'm talking about the murder and disappearance.

In small town New Hampshire.

What do you think this is? Consumed, an all new supernatural audio thriller inspired by the novel by Aaron Manke.

I did not wake up this morning.

Prepare to deal with forces beyond my understanding.

Please. I call that breakfast.

Listen to consumed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.