Welcome back for what has to be the final time to Your Favorite Movie, in which we ask the question—you guessed it!—what is your favorite movie, and why?
Today, we travel back to September 20, 2019, when the interviewee was my own mother. We gathered in a shore house during the first night of Irish Weekend, around the table with some pizza and beer and family and friends, and discussed what Mom said was her favorite movie of all time—Titanic.
The movie needs no introduction (and not just because there was already a published YFM interview for this movie). It's one of the most popular movies of our lifetime, and if you were born before like 1992, then you are already familiar with its existence.
Perhaps the context of the interview needs some explaining, though. After all, it's been over two and a half years since the interview took place (like, a sixteen-month-old Willow is in this, and she just turned four a couple weeks ago in our present-day timeline). It's been a while. Why wasn't this interview published at the time?
To be frank, probably because it sucked. It was the wrong place to conduct the interview (loud music, at the beginning of a weekend, too many people involved, everyone distracted with priorities elsewhere, a crying baby). I probably didn't do a good job articulating what exactly I was trying to achieve with this interview. Maybe I didn't even have a firm grasp myself at that point as to what I was trying to achieve, I dunno. Due to all this, it was a very surface-level and scattered interview, with a lot of silence, and a lot of one-word answers.
But I also didn't like the idea of a recording just sitting in the vaults, so here you go. You can finally read the lost Titanic interview, at last dredged up from the bottom of the ocean. Let's get it out there for posterity, and then let's come back tomorrow to officially wrap up this whole movie interview project. See you then.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Joe: I want us to start in 1997. Paint us a picture of what it was like then, that the country fell in love with a boat movie. How did that happen?
Mom: 1997. Let's see. I'm guessing... I mean, I think it was just a good love story.
Joe: It had nothing to do with the time it was released?
Mom: No. It was a love story. A bunch of girls went—[to Dad] you didn't go with me, right?
Dad: We had tried to go to see it several times, and it never worked out.
Joe: I guess me and Jenny went with you guys at one point.
Mom: To see Titanic?
Joe: And I don't know... I mean, the day we went to see it, it was like the sixth or seventh week that it was out.
Mom: But yeah, it didn't have anything to do with the time it came out.
Dad: It was just a blockbuster movie.
Joe: But you personally... those six weeks leading up to when you finally saw the movie for the first time... what made you want to see it so bad? What were you told? Do you remember?
Mom: I don't really remember.
Joe: Like, you talked to friends and family, and—
Dad: People said it stayed with them for days. I remember Uncle Hoof saying, "You gotta see it!" That it was a timeless classic, breaking all attendance records. Commercials on TV.
Mom: The music too!
Sarah: And Leonardo DiCaprio too! As a young teenager, I had a huge crush on him.
Pam: I feel like he was also... that wasn't his first movie, right?
Joe: I think Gilbert Grape was his first movie.
Pam: Yeah, but he wasn't "big" in that. Did this put him on the scene? [Editor: I'm not a Leo expert by any means, but at least two movies discussed on this blog since this interview have tracked his rising stardom—The Basketball Diaries, and Sean's Romeo + Juliet interview.]
Mom: And I remember Aunt Maggie and everyone in the family talking about it because of all the stuff about Ireland. The Irish coming over. Grandmom's family supposedly made the linens for the Titanic? [Editor's note: the names of ships also use italics, so you're going to have to use context clues to figure out if the transcript is referring to the ship itself or the movie. Like, in this case, I'm 99% certain that distant family in Ireland made linen for the ship, not the movie set. Right?]
Joe: Was that something Grandmom used to say?
Mom: Mhmm. Grandmom, her cousin sent over linens from Ireland to her. Oh, is the pizza here?
Joe: [audible sigh] Pause.
[pizza break, kind of, plus lots of live music heard in the background]
Mom: I forgot that you guys saw it in theaters.
Joe: I could've sworn we saw it with you.
Mom: We only saw it the once. Then we bought the... DVDs.
Joe: No, the double VHS tapes, right?
Mom: I guess.
Joe: I don't remember where the cut-off was, like when in the movie you had to switch it over. Does anyone remember?
Pam: It stopped right after they hit the iceberg, I think. They were on the deck. Because the climax of the first act is them hooking up. And after they hook up, they come out of the carriage thing, and they hear, or feel, the ship shake.
Joe: Aren't they on the deck when it hits?
Pam: Maybe they had just come out when it hits.
Mom: Yeah. I haven't seen it in years.
Joe: It was good! I was surprised how affecting it was, even 20 years later.
Pam: I don't know if I'm proud to admit this or not, but it was a craze. It was in theaters when I was in seventh grade, and I went to see it three times.
Jenn: What movie was that?
Everyone: Titanic!
Pam: That was the most I'd ever seen any movie in theaters.
Dad: Pizza is here.
Pam: Are we actually pausing the tape?
Joe: I don't know... I also forgot to get everyone's permission to tape...
Mom: You didn't have to.
Willow: [sneezes]
Pam: God bless you.
Dad: [at least three minutes of fake sneezing for Willow's benefit]
[actual break to get pizza]
Mom: Okay, so we established that it didn't have to do with the year it came out.
Joe: But do you think that Titanic would be as successful as it was then if it was released today?
Mom: I think so.
Joe: Because it's a timeless love story.
Mom: Right.
Joe: Okay. It's actually interesting—this is probably the only time I'll talk to someone whose favorite movie is one that I saw for the first time with them.
Mom: Ah, that's cool.
Joe: I remember a lot of my friends being very excited about Kate Winslet's topless scene.
Dad: Oooh, yeah. Uh huh.
Mom: Joe, you're on tape.
Dad: Oh yeah... [laughter]
Joe: And how you guys made me cover my eyes in the theaters.
Mom: Did we really?
Joe: I peeked. How old was I?
Mom: '97?
Joe: Nine years old.
Dad: We took you to see Titanic?! At nine?
Joe: Yeah! Did you peek, Jenn?
Jenn: ...No. [laughter]
Dad: Wasn't it rated R?
Pam: It was PG-13.
Joe: Was it PG-13?
Pam: It wasn't R. I went to see it!
Chris: I don't have to be in this.
Joe: Sure you do. What are your thoughts about Titanic, Chris?
Chris: [no answer]
Joe: Who do you think the villain is of this story?
Pam: Oh, Billy Zane. And his henchmen. Also, just, ya know... the class system?
Mom: Okay.
Joe: I was kind of thinking that Rose's mother was the villain.
Pam: They're all together.
Willow: Mama! Mama!
Joe: The mama. Yup. You're right. I agree. Because the mother kind of forced this life upon Rose, right? So the sort of "breaking free" of her hold was—
Pam: Weren't they broke, though?
Mom: That's right.
Joe: Then think about that. Is that right? You want your daughter to be unhappy just so you can get some more money? He was a jerk, that was established, and yet she was still going to force that marriage upon Rose.
Mom: And that was... yeah, that was the whole moral. Like we were saying early, you can have all the money, but then... yeah.
Pam: And in the end, the epilogue I guess, when they're talking about Cal, he says that he killed himself anyway. [Elderly Rose impression] "I heard that he put a pistol in his mouth."
Mom: He lost all his money.
Joe: So that wouldn't have been a happy ending, had she stayed. She at least would've gone broke. Her and the mom would've gone broke too, right?
Pam: Eventually, yeah.
Joe: Or... is Jack the villain?
[silence, assuming eye rolls are happening]
Pam: Jack the villain?!
Dad: He's the hero!
Joe: [laughter] Think about it from Cal's perspective! "Some riff raff is gonna make my wife cheat on me!"
Pam: They're not married!
Joe: "—is gonna make my fiancée cheat on me!"
Pam: But Cal also slapped her too!
Joe: Okay, fine, Jack would not have done that.
Pam: No!
Joe: Do you think it would've worked out for Rose and Jack, if Jack lived?
Mom: I think it would have. Absolutely.
Sarah: If only she would've made a little room on that door. She had to move over just a little bit!
Bob: She says "I'll never let go" and then she immediately lets go.
Chris: I don't understand it either.
Joe: Has anyone seen the MythBusters episode where they proved that they both could've been on that door?
Mom: Yes.
Sarah: I don't even need MythBusters to tell me that.
Joe: I don't know though. Jack seems very impulsive! I don't know if it would have worked out long-term for them.
Pam: Can I go back to the door thing?
Joe: Sure.
Pam: I feel like that's something you would do. I'd be like, "C'mon, just get on the door," and you'd be like "No! No! You go ahead." [laughter] "I'm fine! I'm fine!" And we'd fight about it!
Joe: With my dying breath? We'd fight to the literal dying breath?
Pam: You would freeze to death!
Dad: Most men would do that!
Pam: He'd be like, "No, I'm fine, I'm fine."
Joe: I mean, she let him chill in the water, so... it's kinda on her too. I dunno, though. Rose, 80 years later, has such a romantic... Jack is the romantic ideal, even when she is a senior citizen. Would that have been ruined, had she seen more than three days worth of Jack. Like, I'm thinking about the ending to The Graduate, when Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross are on the back of the bus, they make their grand escape, and then they have this look on their faces like, "Oh man, what's next? Did we do the right thing?"
Mom: Right, right.
Joe: Would that have happened to Jack and Rose?
Pam: That's why the ending was so good!
Mom: Because—yeah. Ya know. Maybe the excitement of the boat, once they got off.
Chris: Maybe she would've gotten tired of him. Because if she was with Jack, would she have had all the adventures that she had otherwise?
Mom: Exactly. Exactly.
Joe: Yeah, I don't know. This is all hypotheticals. Do you think Leo was a good actor in this?
Mom: He was okay.
Chris: He's become a good actor.
Pam: He's come a long way.
Mom: This was the early part.
Dad: I can't imagine anyone else doing that part!
Joe: I guess not.
Chris: Her too. She's really good in this.
Mom: Yeah.
Joe: So Kate Winslet was nominated for Best Actress, but Leo DiCaprio was not nominated for Best Actor.
Mom: I forgot he was snubbed at the awards.
Chris: Probably because he came from television. He used to be on TV!
Joe: What was he on? Facts of Life?
Chris: Facts of Life was George Clooney [Editor's note: he did indeed guest star in seventeen of the 201 episodes of Facts of Life]. He was on the one with Michael J. Fox.
Mom: Oh.
Dad: Family Matters.
Mom: No, that was Urkel. What was that show?
Chris: I forget.
Joe: It wasn't Facts of Life? Alex P. Keaton?
Mom: Family Ties! [Editor's note: Chris is right that Family Ties is the show with Michael J. Fox, but wrong in that Leonardo DiCaprio was ever in it. She's probably referring to Growing Pains, which featured Leo in Season 7 as a recurring character, a homeless kid that the family takes in. I know nothing about any of this, clearly.]
Joe: Okay. I guess his acting took me out of Titanic a little bit. I'm not saying he's a bad actor. I'm not saying he deserved an Oscar either. A lot of his line readings are like, [bad Leo impression] "C'mon Rose! You gotta breathe, Rose!"
Pam: That's what his lines were!
Joe: Psh. He was just readin' the script.
Pam: Well, even if he didn't deserve the Oscar here, his career was just starting.
Chris: He was really good in The Aviator.
Joe: Maybe I saw that too young, but I thought that was a dumb movie. He's just pissing in jars.
Chris: He actually did that, Howard Hughes. I looked it up.
Joe: I'm sure Leonardo DiCaprio did the method acting for that. He peed in jars for a year. He might've!
Pam: What was his method acting preparations for Wolf of Wall Street?
Joe: I guess we'll talk about that tomorrow.
Pam: [laughter] No we won't.
Sarah: He did text me today about it! [Editor's note: Yes, this interview took place the night before the Ant S. Wolf of Wall Street interview. We're joking here that Ant, who has a history of not showing up when he says he's going to show up, was probably not going to show up to the interview. You, being a huge fan of Your Favorite Movie, already know that he shows up.]
Joe: Leo didn't win an Oscar for Wolf of Wall Street either.
Chris: The Revenant is a really good movie.
Mom: Okay, what else you got?
Joe: Kate was nominated for Best Actress. But Helen Hunt won for As Good as It Gets. Okay, so this was actually the first time that two different actresses were nominated for an Oscar for playing the same character. The old lady was nominated for Best Supporting Actress, for playing Rose.
Pam: Didn't you say that—
Mom: She won, didn't she?
Joe: No, Kim Basinger won for L.A. Confidential. What were you saying, Pam?
Pam: What about The Godfather? Wasn't DeNiro nominated for playing Corleone? Same character!
Joe: Right, right. This was the only time two actors were nominated in the same year for playing the same character.
Pam: Oh, gotchya.
Mom: What about... I have a question. What about how she kept the necklace all those years. And she never gave it to her grandniece... was it her grandniece?
Pam: I think it was her granddaughter.
Mom: She could've been... that was the whole idea, they were looking for the necklace, and she had it the whole time. [Editor's note: Willow screaming in the foreground, tough to hear at this point.]
Pam: That could've been her... I mean, if she was with Jack, she would've had the money still!
Joe: So ditching the necklace meant letting Jack go.
Mom: She was letting him go, finally.
Joe: Finally accepting the fact that Jack was the villain of this story?!
Mom: No.
Dad: Didn't Cal claim the insurance money for that necklace? So, if she had turned it in, or whatever, she would've been charged with a crime.
Chris: And then he would've been able to find Rose too. That's why.
Pam: That's right.
Joe: I never thought about it that way.
Pam: I think they said it in the current day story. "This was claimed by that person," ya know, they went through it, and she was like, "I know of the necklace."
Mom: And she had it the whole time.
Joe: She was a little reckless, though. To dump a fifty-million-dollar artifact into the ocean.
Dad: But she accidentally dropped it. She just went, "oops."
[laughter]
Joe: It did seem like that, didn't it?
Mom: No, I think that it was her letting it go. Letting everything out.
Chris: Do you think the old lady died at the end?
Mom: I think so.
Pam: That whole movie was such a craze, that it was in that Britney Spears song! "I got you this necklace," and she's like, "I thought the old lady dropped it in the ocean at the end!" and he's like, "Well, baby, I went down and got it." That's who much it was in pop culture.
Joe: It had a pretty big song attached to it, right?
Pam: Oh my god. Yeah.
Mom: Céline Dion became famous from that. Didn't she?
Joe: She was famous before that, wasn't she? [Editor's note: Yeah, pretty much. I know less about Céline than I do Leo, but I do know that "My Heart Will Go On" was her third Billboard #1 hit, so yes, she was famous before this, but I wouldn't know how to compare them.]
Mom: But that really...
Pam: She was untouchable.
Dad: Now it's tough to get tickets in Vegas.
Joe: Is she still in Vegas?
Chris: She looks like a walking skeleton. She really does! Really thin.
Joe: Wasn't there just a headline yesterday, something like "Celine Dion Begs Drake Not to Get a Face Tattoo"?
Chris: Who did what?
Joe: I guess Drake gets tattoos of famous people on his body. Celine Dion said "please don't do one of me."
Bob: Who?
Joe: Drake.
Bob: Oh.
Pam: Is Drake Canadian?
Joe: Yeah!
Pam: Because she's French Canadian.
Joe: Is she?
Mom: Oh yeah, that's right.
Chris: Her husband discovered her when she was fourteen or fifteen.
Joe: What do you mean?
Pam: He was her agent or whatever.
Chris: He got her teeth fixed.
Joe: And they go married?
Pam: When she turned eighteen. [Editor's note: 24 years old, actually. And thankfully.]
Dad: He was older. [Editor's note: his name was René Angélil, and he was 26 years older, to be specific.]
Chris: Way older.
Pam: He's dead now. [Editor's note: Died in 2016.]
Joe: Does... does her heart still go on for him...? [no laughter]
Pam: I mean, I think she was pretty devastated when he died.
Mom: One of my favorite scenes was when they went downstairs to the lower decks, to the poor Irish people.
Pam: When they're dancing.
Mom: And they all thought she was going to be snobbish. And she did the whisky shots, and... I love that. Stood on her toes.
Joe: I guess we can relate more to those scenes. To the people having fun. I guess on Irish Weekend...
Chris: Those stuffy people, the rich people...
Joe: We would've had to break down the gates though. Those scenes, they kind of affected me.
Chris: It really happened!
Mom: And when you think about it, with the mom reading the stories... that could be you reading Willow her stories, because you know this is it, just to keep her mind off it...
Joe: Every scene with like a two-year-old was like... it hits me in the gut now. Because of this crying little sneak!
Chris: [Editor's note: literally cannot hear what she is saying here because of Willow screaming.]
Pam: Oh yeah.
Mom: Are you done, Willow?
Pam: I hope so!
Chris: Have you ever heard of the Wideners? Or Lynnewood Hall?
Joe: No.
Chris: It's right around you guys. That was Widener, the one who died on the Titanic. He had built that hall. It's up for sixteen million dollars now.
Mom: Where is that?
Chris: It's near the Cheltenham post office.
Joe: I did see that everything about this movie was real. Except for Jack and Rose.
Chris: You should see inside of that building.
Mom: Musicians playing till the ship goes does.
Chris: Beautiful marble.
Joe: I remember seeing a promotional movie or something, whatever, from 1997, and they showed a picture that they had recovered from the ship, a drawing, of a kid playing with a top. Then they showed the part in the movie where the kid was playing with the top, it was pretty cool.
Mom: And the picture of us, we haven't talked about that.
Joe: That's right! I have had many people ask me about that, referencing the Titanic movie.
Chris: Which one?
Joe: In the living room in Rockledge. From a cruise ship, near the cruise ship's main steps. [laughter]
Mom: Is that what it was supposed to look like when they took the picture?
Joe: Maybe! We all survived, so that's good. [Editor's note: I can't find a copy of the photo that is still, to this day, hanging above my parents' mantlepiece. Probably for the best. Kinda talked about it HERE though, if you wanna read more about the cruise.]
[Editor's note: three minutes of everyone being distracted by Willow.]
Dad: Don't put any of that in.
Mom: He is going to include you talking about your favorite part.
Dad: What?
Mom: Kate Winslet topless! [laughter]
Joe: Is that still your favorite part of the movie? It's my favorite part of the movie.
Pam: What is your favorite part, though?
Dad: I mean, it's gotta be when they are at the front of the ship going "I'm on top of the world!" right?
Joe: It's actually...
Dad: "I'm on top of the world!"
Joe: Nevermind.
Chris: How about the chef when he's drunk?
Joe: Oh, when the ship's going down?
Chris: Yeah.
Dad: That's pretty cool though, to see the ship going down.
Sarah: The worst part is the old couple in bed together.
Joe: True, that was sad.
Willow: [crying]
Joe: This is the last interview we ever do with Willow present. [Editor's note: I think that's actually true. I believe Martha might've been present for a couple, but was very young and sleeping. The only other one that features Willow is the Your Favorite Movie interview that doesn't count.]
Pam: This is the first interview with Willow!
Joe: And the last, for sure.
Dad: Who wants pizza?
Mom: Bob, did you eat your five slices?
Joe: What would be a good sequel to Titanic?
Mom: A good sequel? I don't think there can be.
Joe: There was! Titanic II!
Pam: What?
Joe: Yeah! It was a Syfy channel original. They built a ship for the 100th anniversary of the H.M.S. Titanic, and it was also unsinkable.
Mom: And it sunk?
Joe: Yeah. A hurricane hit it or something. It was a story about climate change.
Chris: Didn't they just build a ship that is bigger than Titanic?
Joe: It's my understanding that most cruise ships today are bigger than Titanic.
Chris: The United States is big, right? The one on Columbus Boulevard?
Joe: I have no idea. [Editor's note: I still don't, because I don't feel like doing research on ships along the Delaware River. This article mentions a U.S.S. United States, but I don't know if that's still there. This is a very boring subject to me, I'm sorry.]
Chris: You can tour it.
Dad: I thought it was gutted.
Chris: True, it's empty. It's a shame, they... it should go out for scrap.
Mom: [talking on the phone, trying to give my sister Brianna directions to the house]
Chris: I had a lot of books about the Titanic.
Joe: Yeah? You were into it?
Chris: When we went to Vegas, we went to see the display they had. What's the one with the triangle? The hotel with the triangle?
Joe: Oh, the pyramid one. The Luxor?
Chris: It was cool because they had a piece of the ship there.
Joe: Yeah?
Chris: It was as big as this table.
Mom: This is the first time Brianna has ever gotten here before dark.
Willow: [gibberish]
Mom: What do you want? All done your food?
Chris: Mommy wants you to sit there till she's back from the bathroom.
Mom: Is she done food?
Joe: We usually give her a little bit more.
Mom: Aunt Bri Bri is here! She has to stay in this high chair?
[silence]
Joe: Alright... I think...
[turns recorder off]
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