DiCaprio is a yes because he became the biggest star in the world; 2006, with Blood Diamond and The Departed, is the alternative. — Bill Simmons
The counterargument is that people do not associate DiCaprio primarily with Titanic, and The Departed era is offered as his better Apex. — Bill Simmons
Winslet is probably not, because of her mid-2000s run culminating in the 2008 Oscar for The Reader. — Bill Simmons
Cameron is a yes even though he later beat it, because the film was a critical and financial peak comparable to Gone with the Wind. — Bill Simmons
Billy Zane is a yes; for the name Fabrizio, the Godfather character who blew up Apollonia's car is preferred. — Bill Simmons
Expensive bad-buzz movies peak here, beating The Godfather; heroes from Wisconsin (Jack), icebergs, and disaster movies are yes, Picasso probably not. — Bill Simmons
Some people believe the spitting was improvised and that Billy Zane did not know it was coming. — Van Lathan
Jack and Rose are fictional, most supporting characters are accurate, and the wreck footage is real from Cameron's 12 dives; a J. Dawson gravestone was discovered after filming. — Bill Simmons
Captain Smith's death is disputed; there is basically no evidence third-class passengers were barricaded below deck; the band played ragtime rather than solemn music near the end. — Bill Simmons
The on-ship runtime of two hours 40 minutes matches the time from the iceberg to the sinking, intentionally. — Bill Simmons
The film omits the nearby SS Californian, which had its radio off, prompting the complaint that 20 seconds could have been spared for it. — Bill Simmons
The staircase flooding had to be filmed in one take; Cameron drew Jack's sketches; worn-out prints required replacement reels. — Bill Simmons
Crew disliked Cameron's alter ego, nicknamed Midge, Jim backward, and put on shirts; the ship and tank cost $150 million; a planned 138-day shoot ran to 160 days; the code name was Planet Ice. — Bill Simmons
Winslet skipped a wetsuit, got pneumonia and a kidney infection, and almost quit; many cast and crew were miserable. — Bill Simmons
Cameron gave backstories to around 150 extras, and a necklace used in the film was reportedly auctioned for $2.2 million for Princess Diana's charity. — Bill Simmons
The possibility that Rachel Lindsay has not seen Titanic is joked as the first aged-worst item. — Bill Simmons
The three-hour-15-minute runtime is daunting, and Danny Nucci's Italian accent as Fabrizio is questioned, though called better than Jared Leto's in the Gucci movie. — Bill Simmons
Billy Zane's Cal is called abusive and aged terribly; the performance is described as slightly sketch-comedy broad, the other host declares himself a lifelong Zane fan despite some overplaying, and the reply is that Zane dialed it up too much. — Bill Simmons
Robert Altman reportedly called the film the most dreadful work he had seen, which is laughed off. — Bill Simmons
William Goldman's critique of the Cal role and the Picasso scene as full of howlers is cited; the scene is now laughable and the film lacks subtlety, with Cal wrong about everything. — Bill Simmons
De Niro wanting to play Vincent, with Pacino aged up, seems true; Coppola did think about it. — Bill Simmons
Sinatra for Altobello is carried into the what-ifs alongside the names mentioned for Vincent. — Bill Simmons
The actor who played Willie Cicci (transcribed "Joe Spinelli") was supposed to work for Zasa but died before the movie, so the character was written out. — Bill Simmons
Paramount approached Sly Stallone, Scorsese, Cimino and Warren Beatty over the years; in the early 80s Stallone was to write and direct with John Travolta, and there is an internet rumor that Eisner took a run at the script.
Maddie's drug-overdose death is thrown in by the narrator with no payoff; no great poker scene despite the Oriental; faro is never explained; odd edits make the day unclear; the unexplained killing spree after Doc kills Johnny Ringo; the unnecessary Robert Mitchum narration; the Billy Zane and Dana Delaney characters are hard to understand
Maddie dying of a drug overdose is thrown in for no reason: she could have had a happy ending, or died in the middle so the heavily invested addiction plot paid off, rather than the narrator announcing it; one reading is that it exists to forgive Wyatt for running off with Dana Delaney, making him a widower anyway, and the real problem is that her character does not need to be in the movie.
Josephine, whom Wyatt ended up with, reportedly spent the rest of their life together trying to bury that part of his past, inserting herself into the Wyatt Earp story where Maddie had been.
It is upsetting that there is no awesome poker scene despite the Oriental, beyond the early game where a man gets stabbed; a heated Wyatt Earp, Powers Booth and Kilmer poker game would have been a better choice than the twelve-minute theater scene, and 1880s poker is what one host wants to watch.
Faro (transcribed 'Farrow'), the game the Earps actually came to make money on, a weird French game casinos no longer offer, is never explained in a film that over-explains everything; Kilmer's line that he does not play games of chance is noted, though he plays plenty of poker, which may be a natural game.
Weird edits make it night twice and unclear whether it is the same day, attributed to Cosmatos just trying to get the thing out; one host's only nitpick is how the others assessed Dana Wheeler Nicholson's performance.
The biggest problem: after Doc kills Johnny Ringo, an amazing scene, there is a lot of killing nobody understands, presumably hunting down Ike, the last third turning into a lynch mob like the end of Cobra where the heroes kill everybody; it all leads to Doc succumbing to TB, Wyatt's final sit-down with him and the happily-ever-after with Josephine, but that third-act interlude is strange.
Earlier asides: the Billy Zane and Dana Delaney characters are not totally understood, and Robert Mitchum's narrator is called completely unnecessary, the cliche of how a Western gets told.
The Saul Rubinick award (as transcribed) is given to Dana Wheeler Nicholson as well; one host refuses to accept that in a movie with Powers Booth, countering with Booth, and the pick is repeated as Dana Wheeler Nicholson; Booth is defended as good, if more Booth than needed, and Thomas Hayden Church (transcribed 'Daniel Church') is said to be closer to the award than he is.
The case against her: in bed after Wyatt gets back from the picnic, asked how she is feeling, she is so high she is laughing at her own misery, and that is not good acting.
The defender insists the other two are both wrong: calling her overacting in a film where Powers Booth wears a sash and sashays around town on opium shooting people in the chest, and in which Michael Biehn appears, makes no sense. — Chris Ryan
Further candidates: Billy Zane, who overacts in every movie and is not good, though in fairness that is literally the point of his character, an actor, and he played that same melodramatic man in his next nine movies, including as a serial killer on a boat; Sam Elliott overdoing the Western thing, rejected; and Robert Mitchum's completely unnecessary narrator, parked as a nitpick.
The dispute resumes during nitpicks: the hosts attacking her are told she is alive and reachable through her agent or Twitter, and that it is weird to be most bothered by a woman in three scenes while the men ham it up like boar's head; the defense is that the part is poorly written with no payoff since the narrator simply tells us she died; the attackers say the award is not a demerit and her laudanum-soaked scenes are just bad, with no emotional journey.
Sinise dials it up a couple of times, especially on the boat in the hurricane, literally screaming lines like 'y'all never sink this boat' and 'you call this a storm', possibly inventing the 'they knew' moment; the hosts enjoyed it but call it Ruffalo-y. The joke is that Ruffalo is a bad actor when it is really one scene, and he is great in Spotlight.
The other nominee is Wesley, Jenny's abusive boyfriend, whom Forrest beats up at the Black Panther party: he goes super evil like Billy Zane in Titanic and looks like a combination of John Lennon and Vladimir Lennon (as transcribed), literally like a communist. The award goes to him, since Sinise is good in the movie.
Kate Winslet's makeup clinging through the water; Leo's hair never out of place; Rose jumping off a lifeboat for a man she met three days ago; the heart of the ocean never falling out of the coat
The hosts combine picking nits with probably unanswerable questions, saying the two go hand in hand.
Kate Winslet's styling raises questions: very red lips and pasty makeup that cling to her through all the water, dark eyeliner exaggerating the paleness, and the hats, starting with her entrance from a carriage the hosts call a buggy.
She looks great in the first half and realistically soggy after two and a half hours of running through a sinking ship, except the makeup stays; one host prefers the second-half look, with the long red hair, the soaked dress and the big overcoat with the necklace that never falls out.
Leo, by contrast, barely has a hair out of place, even frozen; the only explanation offered is wanting the handsome man to look as handsome as possible, while Winslet was not yet famous enough for the same treatment, even though hers is the real emotional journey.
Rose jumping off a lifeboat for a man she met three days ago is questioned, with a joke that their earlier encounter went well; others read it as a callback to her wanting to jump off the ship, and as her choosing Jack at all times, just as her spit at Billy Zane echoes Jack teaching her to spit.
Earlier, a host noted the heart of the ocean never falls out of the jacket at any point in all that water, a bigger problem than whether Jack fit on the board.
