Ryan Luetzow (R.L.): The Oscars are 97 years old. From “Wings” to “Anora,” movies have changed a lot in that time. That's why I'm looking back at one Best Picture winner from each decade to try and understand the movies that were at one time called the best. This is The Best Picture Show. Welcome to The Best Picture Show, the show about the very best hands on windows. My name is Ryan Luetzow, and today we're talking about “Titanic” a real capital M movie, which is why today I have with me somebody who has seen a lot of movies, Blake Douglas. Hi, Blake.

Blake Douglas (B.D.): Hello. 

R.L.: Welcome to the show. Blake, how many movies have you logged on your Letterboxd? Like 4000?

B.D.: I just reached 4000.

R.L.: 4000. But you haven't seen “Titanic?”

B.D.: Well, I have.

R.L.: Now you have.

B.D.: I have this aversion towards things where, like, well, I know how it ends, which you shouldn't have that aversion. 

R.L.: The thing with "Titanic" is, like, it tells you, like, right away in the opening, which I think is really smart about the movie. 

B.D.: Yeah, it's Shakespearean. I want to talk about that framing device. I don't necessarily want to say I hate anything right away. There’s things I wrestled with throughout the whole of this beautiful, purposeful film. When watching a historical film about a tragedy, at what point, does tragedy just become this spectacle? Because they were making a movie about the “Titanic” a literal month after the thing sunk. They actually got a woman who survived the Titanic to help co-write a script. This film's mostly lost now, but people are mad at Gilbert Gottfried. Talk about too soon. That was too soon. You know there’s theme park rides themed around the Titanic. It's a spectacle. It's its own thing, and if you watch like a holocaust movie, well, the problem with a lot of them is that they become very melodramatic and they have a very closed ending. The audience is left saddened, but they're able to walk away, kind of like that's in the past. James Cameron was almost putting to rest the quote, unquote, legend of the Titanic. This thing keeps getting called a legend. That's a word that's used a lot when it's not a legend, it's a thing that happened. And at what point.

R.L.: The Bill Paxton character, I think, is modeled, I think, after James Cameron on his little boat, you know. And he's like, so obsessed with the Titanic, but he's like, looking past, like the human story of it. All he cares about is trying to find, like, the literal thing. And the money, I think it's James Cameron kind of, like, looking at himself critically, and being like, this guy is the bad parts of me that are interested in Titanic. 

B.D.: And then there's also that guy in the “Watchmen” shirt talking about the worst day of Rose's life, as if it's like an action movie. 

R.L.: Yeah, I think that's the point. He's not a likable character. 

B.D.: No, no, absolutely. 

R.L.: The two nitpicks that people always make are the Jack on the door at the end thing, it's a buoyancy issue. 

B.D.: Yeah. 

R.L.: He can't get on. Just because there's space, it'll flip over. He tries. Anyways, and then also the heart of the sea, like the diamond. Why'd she throw it in at the end? Like she could just give it to the guy and he would get the money. I'm like, “Is your heart at the bottom of the sea?” If you're making that criticism, that's my question. It’s romantic, you know, it's like, it's not literal.

B.D.: It’s very cinematic. This whole thing is just I realized, like, he is very much reviving the classical Hollywood melodrama, just with a $200 million budget. There are points where I'm like, they are saying, this is murder, which I noticed it once when the boards are popping up. Did you notice this? They use the exact same sound effect when the boards are cracking on the ship deck that they used for the gunshots. 

R.L.: Interesting.

B.D.: It's like, it's positing that these people are being murdered, just the same.

R.L.: Yeah. I mean, like, the imagery of them, like, of Jack and Rose like, through the like, lower decks, and the people are, like, clawing out and, you know, like, it's horrifying.

B.D.: It's a very underrated point of the movie that this is a horror film. 

R.L.: The second half of this movie is horrifying. I think if you're going to have a really long movie, it obviously has to have like segments that are different. I think usually this movie is very delineated in the halfway point of when the ship actually starts thinking, like, I had a friend who hadn't seen this movie, and they're like, “Oh, it's whatever. It's romance.” I'm like, “This is the best disaster movie of all time.” And then, and also, people are like, “Oh, it's just a disaster movie.” It's very human and beautiful. This is something that I love, that he does in “Way of Water,” the same location, completely in a different context. Like, at first, there's like the research ship that's trying to harvest the brain fluid from cocoons. It's just like a normal research ship. And then once Payakan, hero of the day, jumps over it and crashes it to save the life of Lo’ak, his Na’vi friend, it turns into, like, this horrifying, like death trap, where everyone's like, trying to escape, and then, like, some of them are stuck on board, and they have to keep going back. And it's the same location, but like he uses the same objects and manipulates them in different ways. And that's this whole movie, you know? The first half is just setting up all these things on the ship, and then just the context is completely changed by the fact once it starts crashing. 

B.D.: Have you ever seen “Avatar” merch? Ever? 

R.L.: Well, I have, but I'm weird about “Avatar.”

B.D.: Billy Zane. Billy's great. He definitely fulfilled his role exactly. At the same time, I don't like that he is the villain. I feel like the villain of “Titanic” is just faceless bureaucracy in American capitalism, ultimately.

R.L.: Yeah, class.

B.D.: Have you seen “A Night to Remember?” 

R.L.: This is the only Titanic movie I've seen. 

B.D.: There were a lot of them. 

R.L.: And there’s the animated one with the seal. There’s like three of those. 

B.D.: They were Italian, right? I think they were Italian. “A Night to Remember” is the best example of the vignette style Titanic story where everything just ends horribly. No happy endings at all. It doesn't let you walk away satisfied, which I think is how I prefer a disaster movie, a tragedy movie, to be done because it's like, this could happen again. This will happen again. Like, the reason the Titanic did not have many lifeboats, obviously, as they noted in the film, but wasn't completely hit upon, was because they were worried about crowding the vessel, and because the safety officer was worried about losing his job. 

R.L.: I think the movie does do a good job of like, in the first half, you know exactly what's going to happen. And even if you didn't know the history, they told you, it's like in “Home Alone” how in the first 20 minutes, it's like all of these things are going wrong. And you know the premise of the movie, because it's called “Home Alone,” and you're like, “Oh, all these little things are going to mean that this guy's going to get left home.” I mean “Home Alone” is brilliantly written, I think. And all the little decisions everyone's making are, like, less lifeboats and like, we're going to crowd all these people down there, and we have to go faster than the ship's able to go. And like, all these things are just like, oh. The first half has, secondary to the romance, all this, like, tension built into it. 

B.D.: It has a great power kick.

R.L.: This movie has every feeling. I love when movies are able to do that. You know, like every feeling you can feel is basically in this movie. 

B.D.: Long as I'm making it 100% clear, I love this movie. No, it's great. I just feel like there's so many interesting things to talk about with it still to this day, because of just how many doors it opens. The future of Academy Award winning filmmaking, it's going to be more brutalist. Us filmmakers, we’re getting pressured to make smaller and smaller movies with the threat of AI replacing us all. Studio filmmaking is probably just going to continue to be blockbuster stuff, the mid budget stuff's going to be straight to streaming. And, you know, I’m ultimately fine with that, as long as we get to keep making movies. But “Titanic” is a beautiful, intentional piece of filmmaking that we might not get another of because James Cameron and Ridley Scott are all pulling the ladder out from behind him, kind of, and they're going to die. So, rest in peace.

“I just feel like there's so many interesting things to talk about with it still to this day, because of just how many doors it opens. The future of Academy Award winning filmmaking, it's going to be more brutalist. Us filmmakers, we’re getting pressured to make smaller and smaller movies with the threat of AI replacing us all. Studio filmmaking is probably just going to continue to be blockbuster stuff, the mid budget stuff's going to be straight to streaming. And, you know, I’m ultimately fine with that, as long as we get to keep making movies. But “Titanic” is a beautiful, intentional piece of filmmaking that we might not get another of.”

R.L.: Sad. But James Cameron says he's training somebody to make more Avatars after he's gone.

B.D.: The allegations that James Cameron's maybe, he's kind of a hack who isn't kind of a hack.

R.L.: Oh I don't think he's a hack at all. 

B.D.: I've heard hack allegations and allegations that he's more focused on the spectacle. Like yes, he did pitch “Titanic” to the execs on the spectacle he pitched “Alien.”

R.L.: He's a good pitcher. That’s a dollar sign.

B.D.: The idea that he doesn't focus on the small things, I don't think are true. He just makes the small things feel big.

R.L.: Everything feels big in this movie. This is like one more thing that I love about “Titanic,” that it's called “Titanic,” and not “The Titanic.” Calling it “Titanic,” it’s like, we're literally calling this movie big. 

B.D.: Oh yeah. 

R.L.: I don't think you can call him a hack, because his movies are so personal. Like he just does the stuff that he loves, and he makes them, like, the biggest movies of all time. Because, like, I mean, obviously he loves water and the ocean like that was, he wanted to be a marine biologist. 

B.D.: Someone was pointing out how he's still repeating stuff from “Pirhana II,” his first film. In the new “Avatar” films, he's ripping stuff from “Pirhana II.”

R.L.: Yeah, he reuses stuff. I mean, his whole career is he's trying different things, kind of putting them together in different ways. I think he uses a lot of the same actors again and again. I think he's like, just a quintessential auteur.

B.D.: Does he use the same actors?

R.L.: Yeah, well, Bill Paxton, Signorney Weaver, Kate Winslet’s back. Arnie. 

B.D.: Oh Kate Winslet’s back?

R.L.: She's in the newest “Avatar.” She was in two and then she's going to be in all of them, which is crazy, because she had such a bad time working on this movie. 

B.D.: I know because James Cameron's an asshole. My favorite story is when he visited Ron Howard on the set of “The Paper,” and he was just struck by, “Why are you being so nice to me?” 

R.L.: No one's ever had a good time making a water movie.

B.D.: “Water World?” Dude. No, yeah, no, I can't imagine any of those were very fun productions. 

R.L.: I mean, “Aquaman,” they probably had fun, but there's no real water. 

B.D.: No, they’re just sound[stages]. Did they have fun making “Aquaman?” I don't know.

R.L.: Well, you can't make “Aquaman” and not have fun. It's just pure cinematic emotion, and that's just exactly what I love. You can say, like the dialogue is not realistic, or whatever, like, I could not care less. It's obviously not just one guy's vision, so many people worked on it, but I just think it's James Cameron, like, taking a piece of his brain and turning it into something that so many people love. And I just think everyone is so good in it, and it makes me feel so many feelings, and I love it so much. And I think the fact that he manages to turn this gigantic tragedy into a movie that feels tragic but also like beautiful and like life affirming to me. And it has a happy ending, I love that it has a happy ending. Like, maybe people don't like that, but the fact that it's like her, she goes back and he's able to end the movie with Leonardo DiCaprio in the shot. And I love it. And I just love it so much. 

B.D.: Personally, mixed feelings towards having a happy ending about anything that's a tragedy.

R.L.: No, totally understand it.

B.D.: But you know what? I get it. It's Hollywood.

R.L.: Leonardo DiCaprio. Some people don't like this performance. 

B.D.: At first I didn't like it, but I'm like, I'm like, I'm starting to realize, like, no, he is the idolized version of a lover, still.

R.L.: He’s the memory of the perfect memory.

B.D.: He’s the memory of Jack. Is he the last movie star? 

R.L.: People say that about Tom Cruise. 

B.D.: People say that about Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise is not a guaranteed box office draw anymore. 

R.L.: The last thing he made that wasn't “Mission Impossible,” or “Top Gun.” 

B.D.: It was “American Made,” which was an infamous bomb. Yeah, I do feel as though Leo is the last movie star in the vein of Paul Newman, like Timothée Chalamet, sure. 

R.L.: I was just about to say, I mean, he's taking after Leo, I think with what he does. He said, like, Leo actually gave him the advice, like, do not sign on a superhero movie. Like, when he was younger, when superhero movies were still making a lot of money, he's like, if you're going to do a franchise, make sure you're what people are coming to see, which is what he did with, I mean, obviously “Dune,” people love “Dune.” But most people were like, it's a Timmy movie. So, yeah. I mean, Leo, ever since the 2000s he like, only works with big directors, basically, and I think that's what makes him different than pretty much every other actor. 

B.D.: As far as performances go. He may not have always been the best actor, but he was always the best actor for the projects.

R.L.: I think it's just also Kate Winslet. I mean, she's playing a much more multi dimensional character in this movie, because, like, obviously, it's, like, her perspective. So I think people will say he's not as good in this because she's, like, so good, but I don't know. I think that's unfair. 

B.D.: And because he's a little, he's a smarty little kid, he and he reads, like, one, because he is one. He is basically playing himself at this point. All the performances in here.

R.L.: They're big. 

B.D.: Yes, they are big. 

R.L.: Because the movie's called big. 

B.D.: It's “Titanic.” This movie was the, like, the first time I watched a James Cameron movie where I'm thinking, like, he could have directed this in 1950.

R.L.: He has zero we now call like, irony poisoning, but that wasn't really a thing in the 90s. 

B.D.: He's genuine. 

R.L.: So genuine, so sincere, maybe to a fault. 

B.D.: To the point that it comes off as corny, which I think is fine.

R.L.: That's his thing. 

B.D.: The sincerity and genuine emotion being conveyed so outwardly is something that's right, like people have started to mistake the exaggeration that comes with melodrama and comes with a lot of genres for poor writing. The emotions that we are experiencing with melodrama are very real. As Andy Warhol said, the reason movies feel more real than reality is because they are putting everything out there that we simply don't say. 

“The sincerity and genuine emotion being conveyed so outwardly is something that's right, like people have started to mistake the exaggeration that comes with melodrama and comes with a lot of genres for poor writing. The emotions that we are experiencing with melodrama are very real. As Andy Warhol said, the reason movies feel more real than reality is because they are putting everything out there that we simply don't say.” 

R.L.: I think something's changed about the way people talk about “Titanic.” I feel like when I was, like, first getting into film, “Titanic” was not talked about as, like, one of the best movies of all time. People were like, it made so much money. Everyone remembers it, but not like, one of the best movies of all time. And I kind of feel like it is discussed like that now.

B.D.: You're so right, because it was a meme. 

R.L.: Yeah. And people were like, “Oh, Jack should have fit on the boat,” or like, the sex hand. 

B.D.: I didn't know the sex hand was a thing, but that was a great shot. 

R.L.: People love the sex hand.

B.D.: The lack of sex in modern movies, I worry about just because people seem to forget, like sex is the culmination of a whole long series of emotions. It can be, at least, and that's what it is in this.

R.L.: “We are creatures of love.” David Byrne.

B.D.: I was wondering that too. This movie is a PG-13. What happened to all the partial nudity in PG-13 movies? Where are they?

R.L.: Yeah. I mean, technically not allowed.

B.D.: I don't know what happened with PG-13. 

R.L.: I think it's kind of pointless to be honest, because now, now PG just means G and then PG-13 means PG.

B.D.: Yeah. Where’s the G rating? 

R.L.: There are none.

B.D.: “Toy Story 4” was G.

R.L.: But that's just because the “Toy Storys” have a tradition of being G. Like, if “Toy Story 4” was unrelated to anything, it would probably be PG. Yeah. MPA is weird.It doesn't make any sense.

B.D.: I don't care. 

R.L.: No, I don't care. I cared a lot when I was in middle school and I had to convince my parents, like, “Common Sense Media says this is a 14.”

B.D.: Oh I was on Common Sense Media all the time. Like, look, “Scream,” not any sex stuff in this movie, just violence. 

R.L.: Movies still become cultural touchstones. They become a meme. It's quote, unquote. This is probably the last time we'll see a $200 million blockbuster become as much of a phenomenon as it ever has. 

B.D.: I mean. Maybe the occasional Nolan picture.

R.L.: I was going to say, like, the closest thing, I think, is “Oppenheimer.

B.D.: Yeah.

R.L.: “Oppenheimer” made a lot of money. Populist, people like it, critics like it, and then it won Best Picture. Like that hadn't really happened since “Titanic,” really. So I think that was pretty special. I mean, “Oppenheimer” also had the help of “Barbie.” 

B.D.: Those movies definitely helped each other.

R.L.: I just mean, it wasn't like an individual thing where “Oppenheimer” solely took over the world. 

B.D.: Movies are about to reignite like a phoenix from the ashes. That's what I believe. All art forms are going to in this advent of AI. We are going to see a new Hollywood like no other Hollywood. I believe in this, because I have to believe in this. But we are never going to see another “Titanic.” Never. And that's why I will continue to look back upon this fondly, even though I never lived through it. After having just finished directing my own short film, which was sort of the culmination of my four years at this school, it was very refreshing to sit down and watch something big and be reminded of what filmmaking can truly be, which is why I'm doing this. It was refreshing to watch something full of people putting things in front of cameras, not people putting people in front of green screens or whatnot. That's what I'm interested in, seeing actors and prosthetics and effects and what have you in front of a cinematographer and filming.

R.L.: Of course this is a podcast about movies. Are you a plane guy or a train guy?

B.D.: I would rather be a train guy, because trains are better.

R.L.: Yeah. 

B.D.: Yeah. 

R.L.: Well, the music's playing and they're yanking me off the stage with a cane. I never say this, but the best guest award goes to you. Blake Douglas, thank you so much for being on the show.

B.D.: Oh why I thank you. 

R.L.: Yes, of course.

B.D.: Oh, my God, that cane is so long. 

R.L.: I know it's like I'm craning my neck. 

B.D.: Oh, my God, they're breaking your neck. Oh, my God, this is horrifying. 

R.L.: Okay, so say if you have any plugs for the audience.

B.D.: My short film, “Tasting Room,” is probably circling through the festival circuit right now, perhaps maybe on streaming, and maybe I have a podcast out. I don't know at this point, but you can follow me at blakeyo123 on pretty much any social medias. That's Blake y o, 123, at letterboxd, Twitter.com, which I'm not on anymore, but Instagram, that's all I got for you. Thank you all for listening. 

R.L.: Thank you.

R.L.: The Best Picture Show is a podcast hosted by Ryan Luetzow and produced by ROAR studios. Opinions and ideas expressed in this podcast are those of individual student content creators and are not those of Loyola Marymount University, its board of trustees or its student body. You can subscribe to us on Spotify and Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to follow us at watch listen roar. This episode was produced by Ryan Luetzow. Special thanks to Emma Russell for technical guidance and Associate Producer Emma Singletary. Thank you to Blake Douglas for joining us and thank you so much for listening. Play us out.