The night the crew of the ‘Titanic’ was drugged with clam chowder

This 2022 was the 25th anniversary of the premiere of ‘Titanic’ and the 26th of a very particular and mysterious night: who drugged the film crew with clam chowder? This story that Vulture recovered to commemorate the anniversary is probably the craziest and funniest of that recovery.

It was the night of August 9, 1996 and ‘Titanic’ was filmed on the sets of Halifax in Nova Scotia, in particular the scenes of the expedition team in search of the ship’s remains and the discovery of Rose’s necklace were recorded there. Dinnertime came and the caterer served clam chowder, but not regular chowder, a PCP-flavored soup, also known as angel dust, peace pill, or herb, Come on, phencyclidine. Their effects? Primarily hallucinogenic. “We had a room for handymen and electricians and one of the guys started talking really, really fast.”recalls Jake Clarke, the technician of the film, “He’s a big guy, almost six feet tall, and he says, ‘Are you okay? Because I’m not. I feel like I’m high, and trust me, I would know.’ out like this and just as he was saying this, we saw James Cameron running out the door and an extra running after him. She said “There’s something in me! Take it off!”

Neither Leonardo DiCaprio nor Kate Winslet were involved in that part of the movie, so they weren’t on set that day, but the one who was around and ate the magical dinner was Bill Paxton: “It Was True Love”recalls the decorator Claude Roussel at Vulture, “He sat next to me in the hospital corridor and sat enjoying the high. Meanwhile, workers wheeled down the aisle in wheelchairs.” Roussel has only one way to describe it all: “It was a strange experience.”

So surreal that it can only be true

When Cameron spoke about this anecdote with Vanity Fair in 2009, he said: “People started moaning and crying, wailing and collapsing on tables and stretchers. And the cinematographer, Caleb Deschanel, was leading part of the crew down the aisle on a very loud conga. You can’t make things up like that.”

Authorities never discovered who had put the drugs in the soup, and much of the team ended up in Dartmouth General Hospital. Clarke was one of the few who didn’t eat soup, so she stayed in the studio until 4am. When the showdown was coming and the euphoria was waning, the technician met with Cameron and Paxton: “They had beet red eyes, it was amazing, Jim (James Cameron) had a bottle of scotch and Bill Paxton a lot of joints because he was a real stoner. I laugh because I didn’t eat the soup and ended up there in the trailer smoking a joint.”

In addition to celebrating a quarter century of ‘Titanic’, Cameron just released “Avatar: The Sense of Water” this year, the belated sequel to “Avatar” 13 years later, and you already have it in theaters.