Name: The Titanic drug poisoning.
Age: 28.
Appearance: A psychedelic clam chowder.
No whimsy, please. But that’s exactly what it was. There was some clam chowder, and it was psychedelic, and it sent a bunch of people to hospital.
Because it was too groovy? No, because it was deliberately laced with PCP during the production of the movie Titanic.
Is this true? You haven’t heard the story?
No. It’s a doozy. In 1996, during the filming of Titanic, about 80 people including James Cameron and Bill Paxton ended up in hospital after some of the food on set was spiked with the hallucinogenic drug PCP. It was reported at the time that Cameron shouted, “There’s something in me! Get it out,” while a conga line formed around him.
This cannot be true. It really is! It’s a matter of record. Police in Halifax, Nova Scotia, closed the case in 1999, but its information and privacy commissioner Tricia Ralph has just ordered the police to release all the information it has about the incident.
It hasn’t already? No. Police created a 10-page rapid incident report, but passages from witness testimony were redacted. Ralph has asked that the redactions be removed. If the police complies, we might know the truth about the poisonings by mid-May.
What are the leading theories? It depends who you ask. At the time, the man in charge of the catering company blamed Hollywood in general, saying: “It was the Hollywood crowd bringing in the psychedelic shit … It was done like a party thing that got carried away.”
But that might not be the case? No. Last year Cameron told a Canadian radio show that it might have stemmed from someone wanting to get the caterers into trouble, after having an argument with them. “Of course, the operating theory was that I was such a psycho maniac that [the perpetrator was] trying to get back at me, but I reject that theory out of hand for obvious reasons,” he said.
This is almost as big a mystery as the sinking of the Titanic itself. Let’s be sensible here. The sinking of the Titanic didn’t involve anyone dancing the conga in a hospital – this is better.
Wait a minute, were Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet drugged too? No, because they weren’t on set that day. As such, their relationship with clam chowder remains relatively unchanged.
At least the drug passed through Cameron without leaving a mark. You say that, but the man has spent the last few decades making a number of films about blue alien hippies who have sex by plugging their hair into each other. Maybe the half-life of PCP is longer than we knew.
Do say: “I’m the king of the world!”
Don’t say: “No, really, I ate three bowls of chowder and now believe myself to be a literal monarch.”