Titanic's Special Effects Team Expected the Film to Fail

A few years after I had graduated, NYU invited alumni in LA to go visit a special effects studio called Digital Domain.  The company had offered the tour to us, and it was a fun time.  Digital effects were new, so it was unusual to see so many computers creating the images.  The one I remember passing was a sailboat being passed by the Titanic.

We went into one room where they had very recently done the effect of the Titanic hitting the iceberg.  The model of the ship had been attached by a chain to one truck, and the iceberg was attached to another truck by a chain, and the two trucks drove quickly in opposite directions, crashing the two props together.  So high tech!

Afterward, they took us into their meeting room, which they called "the whale's belly."  It was a big wood structure that was supposed to look like a whale's belly.  There, they told us the real reason they wanted to give us this tour.  They closed the door and were very secretive about it.  They said the movie they were working on was going to fail miserably.  They had been working for James Cameron for a while, and they believed this was going to be his downfall.  When it happened, they were prepared to start their own production company, and they wanted to have projects ready to go.

Since they were a special effects studio already, they wanted projects that would heavily involve special effects.  So they asked us to gather up our ideas for movies and/or TV shows that would involve a lot of special effects.  I immediately started thinking of something.  It made sense to do so; after all, it had been Star Wars that got me interested in making movies to begin with.

I began running this through my head, and I continued to think about it as we went to dinner at The Rose next door.  What I came up with were the very first inklings of the ideas that would become Relic Worlds.  It was nothing like it's become since then, but it was the initial idea.

I pitched the concept with some scenes and a summary to them soon after.  The man who had initially told us to pitch ideas to him, Steve, responded saying it sounded good, and he wanted to speak with me further about it after the release of the movie.

Titanic, of course, wound up being a huge hit.  Steve stopped responding to me; and to this day, I'm sure he denies ever having said Titanic would fail.

The Hollywood Reporter and Titanic

I worked at The Hollywood Reporter as a temp for a couple years.  While there, I listed films that were being made, as well as box office results on Mondays.  The most interesting of these was when Titanic came out.

First, as it was coming close to release, everyone was certain it was going to be a failure.  I mean everyone, including people who would deny it today.

One might think that this was proven wrong on opening weekend, but it wasn't.  Titanic was not a huge success when it released.  In fact, its initial numbers were... adequate, but certainly nothing amazing.  All those reporters and editors who had predicted its failure chuckled and went on wondering what would be the next big film to come out to fail or succeed.

The next weekend, Titanic did just sort of okay, and they dismissed it.  It was slowly sinking, just like the ship.

The problem is, it stayed put more like a buoy.  The following weekend it did okay.  Then the next weekend it did okay.  Then the next, and the next.  It stayed at about 20 million each weekend.  That's not great results for an opening, but for a fifth week, sixth, seventh... unheard of.  It just kept making a basic, steady amount of money, never dropping.  And from remaining like this for such a long time, it wound up being the largest money maker of all time.

It should serve as a lesson to those who only look at opening weekend box office, but does it?  Most assuredly not.

M. Knight Shyamalan Martial Arts Pic from NYU

 When I was at NYU I was hired for a short time to take photos around campus.  Supposedly it was for a yearbook they were doing, but I don't remember seeing any such yearbook.  At any rate, it was experience and a small amount of pay, so I did it.

At one point I was photographing the fencing team, a sport of which I partook.  A small martial arts class took place on the other side of the room, and the coach approached me and asked me to photograph his team.  I did, and I exposed the photo and sent it on.  I don't know if they used it or not, but years later I noticed something interesting.

I read an article that said M. Knight Shyamalan had been in a martial arts class at NYU.  I thought, hmm, I wonder... I looked at the photo and found that he was in the martial arts pic.

Update on Tales & Lives of the Vietnam War

The nonfiction story I've been working on for the past few years has been Tales & Lives of the Vietnam War.  By "working on" I mean gathering stories as I tell people I'm working on it when in fact I keep putting it off.  I finally decided on Veteran's Day last year that I couldn't put this off anymore.  So I started actually pecking away at it.

To be honest, it's very difficult to get through.  The subject matter is obviously depressing, but it's also been depressing for me ever since Two Gun didn't do very well.  If that was a subject that didn't catch people's attention, I don't see why this one should.  From everything I've seen, people want to bury this part of history and never hear about it again.

But hearing these stories, I can't help but realize how important it is for people to hear them.  So I push on.

So far I've finished Lance Block's story and Wally Turner's.  This was the story of an infantryman and a priest.  I've started on the next ones and am expecting to speed up a bit.  I want to have it done by Memorial Day

Writing Projects I'm Working on This Year

I've got a lot of writing projects backed up that I need to get to, and I'll be going through them as quickly as I can this year.

First are the two RPG Storytime projects I'm working on for my Youtube channel.  The main RPG Storytime series will be Star Wars, but I want to have something from Start Trek during the new season of that series, and something from D&D to go along with the last season of Game of Thrones.

Next, I NEED to finally finish the book about stories from the Vietnam War.  This is an important book that describes some of the incredible experiences of people during that trying time.  I keep putting it off partly because of the subject, but mostly because doing nonfiction is a lot of work, and the last effort that took me eight years or so had little to no payoff.  So there's a voice in the back of my head that keeps asking "what's the point of all this effort?  Why not at least do something fun?"  But every time I work on it, I realize how important it really is.

I then have a Star Wars fan fiction series I'm doing for two reasons.  One, it's the series that inspired me, and I feel like it's gone off the rails starting way back with Return of the Jedi, and two it's to get people to know my work and hopefully go check out Relic Worlds.

I then have several books I want to pitch to mainstream publishers; and the way to do that is to write a first chapter which gets their attention, then hopefully they'll green light you to write the entire book.  I want to do this with a story from Hurricane Katrina, one about the making of Lord of the Rings, and one about stories from people who escaped Iran.

I then need to finish the latest Relic Worlds novella, which is going to replace a Relic Worlds group of short stories this year.

I then want to start a podcast for RPG Storytime where I tell the stories from role playing games in podcast form.  This is partly because RPG Storytime on Youtube hasn't been doing very well, and I'm hoping people listening to podcasts on their way to work will increase those numbers.

I then want to write some pilot episodes for screenplays in hopes to get those to agents and managers.

Then I'll get to the RPG Storytime series for Star Wars on Youtube.  This will be an epic undertaking in terms of story, but I'm sort of hoping it won't be an epic amount of narration.

And then at last I'll be writing the story about my childhood and growing up with Ryan.  That's going to be a huge, personal story for me, one that I'll be going to Nebraska to write.  It's one I don't expect to do well, but it's very important to me.

It's Difficult to Move on to the Next Project When You've Failed

I've failed a lot of times.  So many times it's hard to imagine succeeding anymore.  I would even say that being this used to failure gets in the way of success because I'm expecting to fail.

But hope is always on the horizon when you have that project coming up that's supposed to be the big success.  What happens, though, when that project comes and goes and it still wasn't a success?

That's when true depression and lack of confidence kicks in.

I recently heard Dan Harmon wax poetic about what an artist does when they've gotten everything they want.  I couldn't help but ask, what happens when an artist has done everything they expect to work, and they still can't succeed?  That is the true existential crisis of an artist.

I've been going through that crisis lately.  It affects everything I do.  Any time I sit down to write, there's a voice in my head that says, "Why are you bothering?  You tried this before and it didn't work?  What's the point?"

I don't have an answer to that.  I hope I do soon, because my vacation of self-pity needs to be over and I have to get back to work.  But even on a night like tonight when I have a ton of time and my girlfriend's gone so there are no distractions, I'm having difficulty turning that part of my brain off and getting to work.

Writing While Holding a Job

In LA, when someone asks what you do, you either tell them about the job you do to pay the rent, or the job you do as your passion. I love writing. That's my job. Unfortunately, it's not the job that pays the rent. I guess that makes it my "passion job." There are some people who pay their rent with their writing work. Most of them write things they don't care as much about; that's why they're able to make a living at it. They're more malleable because it doesn't mean much to them, so they're able to do the work that needs to be done. There are others who get to make money writing what they really love. Those people are called the luckiest people on Earth. The rest of us need to find some sort of work that pays the rent, allows us to live a life, and doesn't get too much in the way of our writing. For me that's been transcribing. The main thing about transcribing that gives me the freedom to write is that I can do it at home. I get up, go to my computer, transcribe, then I switch over to my writing without much effort. No hour-long commute, and I don't get so exhausted at work that I can't write. Also, I can travel and still work from wherever I am; so when I want to write in another area where I'll get more inspired for the specific story I'm writing, I can do that. I'll be writing a very personal story this August in Nebraska this year. I don't believe I could write this story anywhere but Nebraska. Having my transcription job allows me to continue doing my day job while I do my passion job where I need to do it. The down side is that, as a transcriber, I'm at the mercy of the industry. sometimes it slows down and we have no work. At the time of this writing, for instance, we've hardly had any work for seven weeks. Without my girlfriend supporting us right now, I'm not sure how I'd pay rent, let alone take care of other bills. However, had I planned better during the months when it was busy, I could have done more work and made more money. So it can pay off if you do a better job than I have planning. Plus, while a lot of my books don't do great, some of them make a little bit of money. So I often let their profits pile up on their bank account until these desperate times in which I withdraw them to carry me through these rough patches. Thus the life of a writer.