There’s a good chance you owned a double-VHS of Titanic back in the day.
The general public remembers James Cameron‘s Oscar-winning blockbuster as that tear-jerker starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.
But for the folks behind the lens, those who worked closely in bringing the director’s vision to life on screen — it wasn’t exactly a walk in the park.
Producer Jon Landau‘s new memoir The Bigger Picture hits shelves Nov. 4 and shares new insight into the “challenging” process of the costly ordeal, which spawned countless bad rumors around Hollywood while production trucked on.
Excerpts from Landau’s upcoming book were published by media outlets including Variety and The Hollywood Reporter on Tuesday, Oct. 14, which give fans of the 1997 movie a closer look at how it all started.
“We spent many months in postproduction. Entire plot devices, scenes we took great care to shoot, fell away as we pieced together the film,” Landau, 63, writes in his memoir, per THR. “All the while, the press continued to hound. Reporters would infiltrate and ingratiate in search of scoops. Rumors spiraled. Articles reported we’d spent $200 million. Others speculated we’d spent even more. They compared Titanic, still months away from release, to Ishtar, Waterworld, and Cleopatra, the most notorious flops in Hollywood history. Whenever you try for something great, you risk everything. Your reputation, your career, your livelihood — important things are on the line.”
Landau continues, “The buzz inside the studio was just as bad. It, too, was all rumors. They said the movie was too long. They said the effects didn’t work. They said the acting was weak. None of it was true, but gossip takes on its own life. Perception becomes reality. You end up chasing phantoms, which can be deadly.”
The film producer goes on to say that one advanced screening — where attendees didn’t even know what movie they were going to see — saved the Titanic team from all the bad press, having proved to the small audience that the whole agonizing process was well worth the astonishing end result.
