The movie of 1997 (actually due to its December release, the movie of 1998). It was a darling of most critics at the time, a commercial splash, won 11 Oscars including Best Picture, and quickly became a source of many Stock Parodies. Unadjusted for inflation, it's the second-highest-grossing movie ever, recently beaten out by Cameron's own Avatar. (If you adjust for inflation, Titanic drops six slots, but even so it's still one of the highest-grossing films ever - the seventh, in fact!) In all likelihood, Cameron now has enough money to raise the Titanic and fire it toward Pandora.In case you don't remember '97 or you were living in a cave at that time, Titanic tells the story, in Flashback, of the two fictional Star-Crossed Lovers Jack Dawson and Rose DeWitt Bukater. Unfortunately, they both happen to be aboard the ill-fated ocean liner of the title, which, as we all know, struck an iceberg and sank on its maiden voyage in 1912. There's also a Love Triangle involving Rose's evil Disposable Fiancé Caledon "Cal" Hockley, who decides the best solution is to literally Murder the Hypotenuse , Jumping Off the Slippery Slope in the process. This more-or-less leads to the film's Downer EndingBittersweet Ending.Launched the A-list careers of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.
This film provides examples of:
Accidental Aiming Skills: Rose with the axe. Not only was her aim bad, but her eyes were closed.She even hit Jack's wrist if you look carefully.But the chain broke anyway.
Action Girl: Rose has occasional glimpses of it when she doesn't have Jack around.
Anyone Can Die: Once the ship starts going down, supporting characters start dropping like flies including Jack himself.
Artistic License - Astronomy: The end scene has an inaccurate night sky that is composed of the same half-sky mirrored in the middle. This results in seeing constellations that shouldn't have been there at all in duplicate. James Cameron replied: "Last time I checked, 'Titanic' sold $1.3 billion worth of tickets, worldwide. Imagine how many more tickets we would have sold if we'd gotten the sky right." But it was still corrected for the DVD.
Auto Erotica: A thousand beds on board, and they consummate their love in the back of a car?
Well, Cal was going through the entire ship, with an idea of exactly what to look for and where to find it.
Plus, the Ford Model T was first produced in 1908. The concept of "Auto Erotica" itself was only four years old.
Award Bait Song: "My Heart Will Go On". And James Horner had to wait for a proper moment to present it to the hot-headed James Cameron...
Big "Shut Up!": Rose does this in the second half when she's had enough of her mother's self-centered attitude.
Jack and Rose do it to a White Star employee who complains about them breaking down the door to free themselves from a sealed portion of the ship. Did he know the ship was sinking?
It's possible he in fact did not know. It's been reported, with varying degrees of credibility, that not only were many passengers unaware the ship was doomed up until the bow actually went under, but many on the lifeboats actually believed the stern section was going to remain afloat after the expansion joints broke and the ship snapped in half. When you consider the fact that there are entire towns that are nowhere near as big or populous as the Titanic, and that it took around two hours for the disaster to reach its zenith...
Bittersweet Ending: Jack freezes to death, but Rose meets him again when she finally passes.
Or did she? That scene is called "A Promise Kept" in the DVD, so it's plausible to assume that Rose died. Though the title could refer to all those pictures seen next to her when she is in bed, showing that she promised to do all the things Jack told her to do. Or possibly both. Since it's not explicitly said whether she died in that moment, we'll never know unless James Cameron ever tells us.
According to Word Of God, it really can be interpreted as either (a) Rose lucid dreaming or (b) Rose dying and being reunited with Jack in the afterlife.
The band members certainly deserve this, at least.
Rose, the high society waif, picking up a fireman's axe to break Jack out of his handcuffs.
He gets a substantial downgrade from his Real LifeBadass status (and from the opposite-direction exaggerated version portrayed in the 1954 film A Night To Remember, made with the help of Fourth Officer Boxhall only two years after Lightoller's death) but Second Officer Lightoller still gets a small moment where he faces down a crowd rushing the lifeboats with a pistol and demands they keep order—then turns to order Fifth Officer Lowe into the boat, while showing him that he'd just bluffed the angry crowd with an unloaded revolver.
Chekhov's Skill: Earlier in the film, Jack teaches Rose how to "spit like a man," and she doesn't do too badly for a first try. Much later in the film, when the ship is sinking, Cal grabs her by the arm and refuses to let her go to Jack. So what does she do in order for him to let go of her? She goes spittin' like a man.
It's actually a Throw It In, as Rose was scripted as simply jabbing Cal with a hatpin before Cameron realized the spitting would be a neat callback.
Chekhov's Gun: Rose and Jack's first conversation is about how the fall from the ship won't kill Rose but Jack mentions about how cold the water is. Guess what ends up killing him.
Also literally with Lovejoy's pistol, which he shows to Cal when Cal is emptying the safe.
That safe itself is full to bursting with Chekhov's guns.
Crazy Cat Lady: Averted. Nice old lady Rose has a cute little white Pomeranian dog, showing that she's affectionate and soft, but without the implications of a cat.
Crying Little Kid: Played straight and subverted at the same time. Cal finds a crying, abandoned child and takes her onto a lifeboat—in the process lying that he is her father in order to get himself a seat on that same lifeboat.
He never actually says he's her father—he says "I have a child" (true, he's certainly holding one) and "I'm all she has in the world" (apparently true as whoever was responsible for her left her sitting behind something on the deck bawling. What the Hell, Parent/Guardian?) If Cal hadn't grabbed her to use as his ticket on the lifeboat, she'd have sat 'til she drowned.
True enough, but Cal is shown having noticed the crying girl before and simply moving on. Only when he realised she was his ticket off the boat did he come back for her.
Dark Reprise: The music that plays during the sinking (aside from that played by the actual musical trio, of course) consists heavily of the main theme of the movie, but in a darker and more frantic tone.
In fairness, this is pretty much a James Horner trademark—create one melody and score the entire movie literally as a variation on the theme, preferably heavy on Our Lady of Soundtrack Sorrow. Listen to his score for Apollo13 for a really blatant example.
Dawson Casting: Kate Winslet (21 during the filming) was portraying a seventeen-year-old.
Very unfortunately for posterity, Jack Dawson doesn't quite fall into the Dawson Casting range. The character was envisioned as 20 years old; DiCaprio was 22 years old at the time of filming.
Demoted to Extra: Remember the blonde chick who dances with Fabrizio in 3rd class? She was written as a opposite counterpart to Rose, a girl who finds her love interest in her class and follows her strict parents' orders without question (down to refusing to go with Fabrizio once the ship begins to sink, despite the fact that he knows the way to the lifeboats better). She's also the blonde girl who hangs on the railing before falling to her death.
Determinator: Jack didn't give up where many people did. And as a result, Rose survives thanks to his efforts.
Did Not Do the Research: Although Cameron was rumored to have been extremely picky about some fine details of the set of the Titanic, there were some things he missed...
The big ship set that Cameron had built is not entirely accurate. They made it a bit shorter than the real ship (Most noticeable: The A-Deck promenade windows. There are quite a few missing). The funnels of Cameron's ship are also smaller than in real life, as well as the lifeboats and the davits (necessary to make the proportions of the smaller ship match again).
Remember how Jack said he used to go to Lake Wissota? Well it was man-made. You can guess where this is going. Since the construction of Lake Wissota began in 1915, Jack must be a time traveler.
In Cameron's defense, the scene was improvised by the actors. What Jack said was all Leo.
The name of the lake, however, came from Cameron. In the commentary he says that he just looked at a map and picked a lake without doing any further research.
You see those paintings that Rose and Cal argue over? The ones we see submerged in the Stateroom as the ship goes down? They're all well known, surviving paintings by Monet and Picasso, including Picassos Le Demoiselles d'Avignon-which is currently sitting in MMoMA, and which Picasso never sold in his life.
Might qualify as Fridge Brilliance, as back in the days before making prints and other reproductions of paintings wasn't possible due to the technology to do so not existing yet, it was fairly common practice for an artist to repaint the same painting several times so that copies could be sold. For example, there are several different versions of Van Gogh's Sunflowers known to exist. Just because we see famous paintings going down with the ship doesn't mean that they're the ones we know now, they may be copies of the ones we know. Or the ones we know may be copies of the ones we see going down with the ship.
Molly Brown is a historical figure whose life is surrounded by myths and exaggerations (understandable, as she did lead a pretty remarkable life). Kathy Bates's version is only a little more accurate than Debbie Reynolds's. Cameron stated his intention to portray her more accurately, and yet she was still referred to as Molly (a name she never went by when she was alive), tells the story of her husband accidentally lighting a match to money hidden in their stove (Leadville wasn't using paper money when the Browns lived there), and generally portrayed as a Fish out of Water ex-hillbilly that the wealthy secretly resent (she was extremely well-read and generally liked by everyone she met). Brown had such a huge role in helping the Titanic survivors that one wonders why Cameron didn't focus on that rather than the many fabrications that have been told about her.
Because Reality Is Unrealistic. So much so that had Molly been portrayed accurately on top if the other things they got right, the credibility of the whole film would've floundered.
Jack states that they would be sucked down when the ship sank. Maybe he wouldn't know that, but it actually didn't, for some reason. The Chief Baker (who survived) actually said it was more like riding an elevator, and he sank without even getting his hair wet.
Bonus points for actually SHOWING that baker riding the stern into the water alongside Jack and Kate. He also survived the longest in the water (more than 2 HOURS) because he'd had a lot of whiskey prior to this, and the inebriation helped him fend off hypothermia long enough to be pulled into a boat.
Alcohol accelerates hypothermia, it doesn't delay it. Being a bit on the pudgy side might have saved him, though.
Being drunk might (and in reality probably did) help stave off panic, which also would go a long way to surviving in that situation—he was high enough not to stop and think what an insane survival strategy it was.
Jack was thinking what most people were thinking. Something the size of a skyskraper was bound to displace a lot of water, and suck everything nearby down. Think about how the windows on deck broke and people were pulled into the staircase area. This is the real life reason why the lifeboats started rowing right away. They thought they would be pulled under. Though admittedly they were supposed to wait a few minutes so they could fill the lifeboats up first.
J. Bruce Ismay is portrayed as a Dirty Coward who snuck onto a lifeboat the first chance he could. Really, he was one of the last people to leave the ship.
Although to be fair to the historical record, most people at the time thought he was a coward as well, because of the old maritime rule that "women and children go first" (although again to be entirely fair, numerous contemporary witnesses stress that Ismay made sure that there were no more women and children around before taking his seat), and he was heard to have demanded the ship be pushed to full speed in the inquiries set up after the disaster.
Apart from that, the boat that he took place in wasn't even half full by the time it was lowered into the water. As many of the life boats in fact were.
Cameron also changed or omitted many details concerning the Titanic's departure from Southampton, probably due to Rule of Drama. The weather was actually cloudy that day. The gigantic wave caused by Titanic's movement within the port overcame some of the piers and threatened to wash people away. The gigantic wake caused by the Titanic then caused another ship to break away from its moorings and drift dangerously close... so close that it missed the Titanic by mere inches. As an eerie piece of foreshadowing, that other ship was called the SS New York. The legend goes that some people saw that as an omen that the Titanic would never reach New York City and disembarked at the next stops.
Double Standard: A historically justified one - if you have a Y chromosome, and you aren't a big-shot, you're likely to be summarily left behind to drown, even if there's room for you.
Not that things were all that much better for big-shots with Y chromosones mind; only a third of men in in First Class survived.
Enforced Method Acting: The water during filming was deliberately cold, so Leo shouting "Oh shit, this is cold!" is real as well as Kate's gasp when she gets chest-deep in the water. The scene where Jack and Rose are swept away by a rush of water in the hallway is also real.
"No sir, we're dressed in our best and going down as gentlemen."
"But we would like a Brandy!"
The band. Made all the more touching when you remember that this particular movie death is a reconstructed historical fact.
The couple portrayed holding each other in bed as the room floods are Isidor and Ida Straus. This was based on actual events, where Ida refused to leave her husband when offered a lifeboat seat. They gave her seat to their maid, and remained on the ship together.
Fake Irish: Victor Garber (Jewish Canadian) as Belfastman Thomas Andrews.
Fanservice: While teenage girls and their mothers squee over Leonardo DiCaprio, their boyfriends/brothers and fathers have to settle for... Kate Winslet naked. Sounds fair.
Flipping the Bird: Rose to Lovejoy, as she and Jack are escaping him in the elevator.
Follow the Leader: Pearl Harbor, which has a similar romance-against-epic-tragedy-of-the-20th-century concept, and like most following works, has almost no understanding of why it worked here. It works in both directions too - Cameron decided to make Titanic after seeing the 1958 movie A Night to Remember, to the extent that they have a lot of scenes in common.
Foreign Cuss Word: From some Swedish background passengers—"Jävla helvete, det är vatten på golvet!" ("Bloody hell, there's water on the floor!")
Fabrizio curses quite a bit in Italian, especially when Tommy dies.
Foot Focus: Although not bare; during the scenes where Rose is planning to jump off the back of the ship. Her beaded heels, his dirty big ol' boots...
Old Rose too near the end of the film.
The dance sequence during the ship holding scene. Rose's stocking feet are shown a few times.
The ship sinks; you'll know this even if you're totally clueless about history as the sunken ruins are shown and discussed in the opening.
Rose survives, since it's her who is telling the story 84 years later. That certainly cuts some of the tension in that scene by the flooding hallway.
Foreshadowing: You could make a drinking game out of how many times the cast mentions that it would be very, very bad if the Titanic sinks.
Fourth Date Marriage: "When the ship docks, I'm getting off with you" Rose announces to Jack after having known him for what, two days?
Somewhat understandable in that Rose (the character) is only 17, and doesn't really understand what she would be in for. She is also desperately unhappy in her life, and Jack is a way to escape it.
Grande Dame: Rose's mother and a number of the other female passengers are tragic variations on the character type, while "Molly" Brown is a subversion.
Heroic BSOD: Captain Smith realizes just how many people there are still on board while almost all of the boats are gone.
Ship designer Andrews, having apologized to Rose for "not building you a stronger ship", stands alone in the stateroom and had taken off his life vest. He takes a moment to adjust with almost loving gentleness a timepiece on the mantle. Based on real-life account of a witness who last saw Andrews in the stateroom just staring at a clock as the Titanic reached its death throes.
Jack and Rose finally make out in the back seat of a car held in storage (yes, there really was one on the Titanic... but it may not have been fully assembled). As cars were still novelties in 1912, the implication is that Jack and Rose are the first young couple to use a car for love-making ever.
Historical Villain Upgrade: William Murdoch goes from an upstanding officer to shooting two men trying to rush the lifeboats. Second Officer Lightoller becomes a nervous martinent instead of a hero who kept a couple dozen people alive on an overturned life raft. J. Bruce Ismay is shown displaying total disregard for safety by pushing for a speed record White Star already knew it couldn't win. The entire purpose of the three massive luxury ships was to beat Cunard and other rivals on luxury and technological novelties, not speed, as they knew they couldn't do that. Pretty much all the crew except Smith (who ironically held the most responsibility for not understanding how to captain a vessel Titanic's size) are depicted as incompetant at best and outright negligent or cruel at worst.
Honor Before Reason - The fathers and husbands doing whatever it takes to let their wives and children live even if they freeze and drown, which also happened in Real Life.
About three times you also see a curly-headed girl named Cora, who doesn't look much older than 7. You don't see her death on-screen, but in the final scene where Rose is surrounded by all those who perished on the Titanic, she's the first person you see. A deleted scene shows her and her parents, crying and screaming, being submerged by water. Cameron explains it was cut because it was just a bit too upsetting.
Insert Cameo: James Cameron is a real-life artist, as he was the one who sketched Kate Winslet with the Heart of the Ocean.
It's All JunkThe "Heart of the Ocean" now really is the heart of the ocean. Also, passengers are seen hauling luggage and other prized possessions with them to the lifeboats early on, but once the danger becomes obvious the only things people struggle to take along are life vests.
Fridge Horror or Tear Jerker (or both): most people lugging suitcases and bags are Third-Class passengers. Many in real life did try to drag along their bags and were reluctant to go without them because everything they had in the entire world was in those bags.
Jerk With A Heart Of Jerk: Cal's single act of kindness was ensuring that an orphan girl would get on a lifeboat. But even then, that was just so he could also get a spot on the boat. A later scene shows him pushing people away who are desperately trying to get on the boat.
Murder Suicide: William Murdoch shoots and kills a fictional third class Irish passenger, then commits suicide from guilt. This is a Historical Villain Upgrade, as the real William Murdoch was regarded as a hero and was last seen helping passengers.
Nipple and Dimed: Subverted: Kate Winslet nude for Jack's painting of Rose only earned a PG-13. Reportedly, Cameron worked with the editors and the MPAA to determine just how many seconds he could get away with and keep it PG-13.
It helps that despite immense sexual tension, nothing actually happens in the scene (later in the cargo hold, on the other hand...)
Nostalgia Heaven: Rose apparently dies and goes to the Titanic as it once was.
Oh Crap: Andrews, Ismay, and Captain Smith poring over the blueprints of the ship after the collision with the iceberg, each coming to the realization that the ship will sink and there is nothing they can do to stop it.
witnessing the water rise within the ship as it is sinking.
Older than They Look: Many people only hope I can look as good as Rose does when they hit the big 100. The actress who played Rose was 86 at the time of filming, however.
Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: There are Irish characters in this film. And you will be in stitches when they start talking.
Oops I Dropped The Keys: Rose and Jack are trapped underneath the ship by a metallic gate as it floods. One of the cabin crew fumbles the keys while trying to help, before uttering this line and running away. Cue Jack attempting multiple times to retrieve them and open the gate while the freezing cold water rises.
Pretty in Mink: This was likely more for historical accuracy than anything else. Also, a poster for "Ghosts of the Abyss" showed a woman wearing an ermine cape and muff.
Reality Is Unrealistic: There have been constant complaints about how hard to believe is that the lights were on up to the ship's breaking in two, or that the guys in the machine room kept working while the ship sank, how they "screwed up" the turning orders, or even that the Statue of Liberty shouldn't be there; well, when you do the proper research, it turns out that all these things happened in Real Life and the movie got them right.
Say My Name: Ye gods. Make a Drinking Game out of the number of times Jack and Rose say each other's names, (Rose saying Jack's name = 80 times/Jack saying Rose's name = 50 times) and you'll be dead by the first hour. Start at the ship sinking, and you'll be dead within minutes.
Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Cal tries to play this. Doesn't work. However, there's also a deleted scene of a possible Real Life case where a wealthy couple (in that lifeboat with twelve people in it) bribe the oarsmen to not go back and pick up survivors.
To be precise, it was Lord and Lady Duff-Gordon.
Science Marches On: The breaking up of the ship is now thought to not have happened as depicted in the movie.
Also, the French Blue (the royal diamond that in the film was recut into the Heart of the Ocean) was real, and newly-discovered records and a lead jeweler's model of it have shown that in all probability it was, as theorized, cut down after its theft into what is now known as the Hope Diamond.
Cameron and the set designer's conducted exhaustive research on the ship, from the measurements of the individual rooms, to the carpet designs to the china patterns, even going to Harland and Wolff - the builders themselves - to look up rare blueprints and never-before-seen photographs to make sure they had every possible detail. In fact, Ken Marschall-the foremost expert on the Titanic design and the painter of almost every painting of either the Titanic wreck or the sinking in the past 30 some-odd years (seriously, he seems to be on-call whenever a documentary needs a painting) is quoted saying that he didn't call their set a set, to him it was the Titanic.
According to one of the tie-in books, Cameron personally logged more time with the (now-sunken) ship than did her actual passengers.
In fact, the movie set may even have provided an alternative theory to why the Grand Staircase is missing from the wreck: when the set was flooded during filming, the staircase set piece (which was supposedly built just like it was in real life) began to break away from its framework. If the construction of the set is accurate, then it may suggest that the real Grand Staircase simply floated out of the ship during the sinking, rather than being eaten by microbes afterward.
Furthermore, there has been some debate as to why Funnel No. 1 fell first, when there were many reasons in the design that would have made that impossible: The funnels were designed to lean backwards, so they should have fallen forward at the same time if at all, or they should have fallen to the side, but only if the ship was listing considerably. During filming, they discovered that in order to place Collapsible Boats C and D into position, some of the guy-wires, that hold the funnels in place, had to have been removed, thus removing needed support later on as the ship went down by the bow furthermore.
It is, however, worth noting that Cameron and the others were pretty good in designing the sets. The ship sank so fast, it sucked people down when it was described as riding an elevator.
The Swedes who loses their tickets to Jack not only speak fluent Swedish, but also use an appropriate accent for a working class person in the early 1900's.
Significant Sketchbook: Rose first sees Jack as he is sketching on the deck, and he shows her some of the drawings. Later, there is the famous scene where she requests that Jack sketch her in the nude (her, not Jack).
Spectacle: The film is heavily reliant on this for its emotional impact; it loses a lot when not seen in a movie theater.
Technology Porn: Who gets more screen time, Kate Winslet or the Titanic?
Well, the film is named after the most vital participant, the ship herself.
Tempting Fate: Cal Hockley said that "God Himself could not sink this ship." Guess what happens at the film's climax?
In truth, the phrase is credited to an unknown deck hand on the ship, who said that in response to a question on whether or not the Titanic was actually unsinkable.
Jack saying to Rose "Lie down on the bed, I mean couch" was entirely accidental, but James Cameron thought that was natural, so he left it in. You can see Di Caprio almost swearing to himself, thinking he's ruined the take, but it comes off as a nervous 20-year-old thinking how much he just embarrassed himself in front of the girl he loves.
All the crewers aboard the research ship and its submarine are, well, actual research-ship-and-submarine crewmembers. Cameron hired the Akademic Mstislav Keldysh to visit the wreck, and kept them on payroll for use as set and extras once the production phase started.
Together in Death: The film ends with Rose dying and being reunited, not just with Jack, but everyone who died that fateful night... and even those who didn't. Pay close attention, and you can see Cal among the applauding crowd, not looking to happy at all. A Fate Worse Than Death?
Also noteworthy is Ida Straus, the elderly woman who decides to die with her husband Isidor instead of taking a place on a lifeboat, a course of action that will almost certainly result in her having to live on without him. Their last scene is of them in a bed, holding hands, as the water begins to pour in. This is based in a Real Life example of the trope.
Unreliable Narrator: Old Rose, if we assume all the 1912 scenes are visual representations of the story she's telling to her granddaughter and the research vessel crew. If they are meant to be this, Old Rose describes scenes and conversations for which she wasn't even present, including scenes known to be historically inaccurate ("Molly" Brown's argument with a crewman in her lifeboat, Smith and Ismay in any way discussing racing for the record, an idea that had been discarded before Titanic even launched) and all the scenes with the lifeboats and Cal's leaving the ship, and which she couldn't possibly know about since it's implied she never spoke with anyone in those scenes who survived again. Since the film as a rule averts Did Not Do the Research this could be an example of Rose making up details or coloring events (or padding the movie.) That, or she's lying about not contacting anyone (and since the real Maggie Brown was in fact a charity patron of actors in New York, it's entirely possible Rose ran into her again.)
This troper personally thinks that what the audience saw is what actually happened, while in the present, Rose's granddaughter and the crew were getting a much more abridged, purely Rose-centric version of what we're seeing.
Unwitting Pawn: In the universe of this film, it was quite literally Jack and Rose's fault that Titanic sank. How so you ask? Had the two young lovers NOT made such a loud and passionate scene kissing on the deck and attracted the attention of BOTH lookouts on the crow's-nest, they would have spotted the iceberg 15 seconds earlier, screamed for help 15 seconds earlier and allowed the ship to steer clear by a WIDE margin.
Not quite. At least one of the lookouts is keeping watch, until the other one nudges him to enjoy the sight. They then both turn back up to continue their watch, and look for several seconds, still without seeing the iceberg. And even then, it takes them some time to realize what they are seeing (in real life, the iceberg would not have been even that visible at night - it's just slightly silhouetted so the audience can see it) and start making the call to the helm, which does not pick up very quickly either).
Uptown Girl: Rose DeWitt Bukater hated the uptown life so much that she contemplated suicide though it took a few scenes before she sums up the nerve to leave Cal for working class Jack.
Villainous Breakdown: Cal, on account of being such a Yandere. By the end of the scene, he's giggling when he realizes the irony of him losing the Heart of the Ocean.
What Could Have Been: Like Avatar, this was written as a 4 hour-long movie and cut down to a 3 hour-long film.
Cameron originally wanted Drew Barrymore to play Rose, but execs told him that she wouldn't be right for the role.
Johnny Depp also admitted in an interview that he was offered the lead role in the movie but turned it down, and considers it a big regret.
Cameron offered the role of Old Rose to Fay Wray, who turned it down thinking it would have been "a tortuous experience altogether."
What Happened to the Mouse?: The fate of a surprising number of minor characters and extras can be known either by reading the script or really paying attention to the background in the movie. Or looking into a real Historical book, in case they are not fictional. The drunk cook that Rose meets on the stern just before the ship went under? Charles Joughin, who really was a cook, and who really did go back to his cabin to drink after the lifeboats were gone. He was one of the very few survivors that were taken from the water.
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