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Bill Paxton on the Story of the Titanic

Bill Paxton: You know, it was a story that Jim and I had talked about many times before. We both were scuba divers and I’ve been on a lot of, you know, scuba expeditions with him. We drove in Truk Lagoon with the Japanese fleet that sink there, and seen human remains in wrecks and stuff. It was one of those stories – I think both of us were really affected by “A Night to Remember.” So what people don’t remember is the Titanic had kind of been regaled to the dustbin of history by the time this book came out. You know, we’re reaching the hundred-year anniversary here in a couple of weeks, but you have to remember there had been two World Wars, there had a been a world depression, we had entered the Atomic Age… And it was really this book written by Walter Lord, “A Night to Remember,” that was published in 1955, the year we were both born, that really hit the zeitgeist, and I think it inspired guys like me, like Jim, certainly Dr. Ballard who discovered the wreck. And it was almost I guess kind of like “The Da Vinci Code” of its time, it was one of those books that just everybody read, and it started this whole obsession and kind of fascination with “where is the wreck? Will they ever find it in the North Atlantic in this deep, deep water?” So I think that’s kind of where it came from, and I wanted to be an oceanographer growing up. And that was another common ground when Jim and I met each other in 1980. He was a art director, I was a set dresser. One of the first things we started talking about was oceanography. We were both huge fans of Jacques Cousteau, and Jim’s just coming back from this record dive that he just made to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Unbelievable.
Bill Paxton: You know, it was a story that Jim and I had talked about many times before. We both were scuba divers and I’ve been on a lot of, you know, scuba expeditions with him. We drove in Truk Lagoon with the Japanese fleet that sink there, and seen human remains in wrecks and stuff. It was one of those stories – I think both of us were really affected by “A Night to Remember.” So what people don’t remember is the Titanic had kind of been regaled to the dustbin of history by the time this book came out. You know, we’re reaching the hundred-year anniversary here in a couple of weeks, but you have to remember there had been two World Wars, there had a been a world depression, we had entered the Atomic Age… And it was really this book written by Walter Lord, “A Night to Remember,” that was published in 1955, the year we were both born, that really hit the zeitgeist, and I think it inspired guys like me, like Jim, certainly Dr. Ballard who discovered the wreck. And it was almost I guess kind of like “The Da Vinci Code” of its time, it was one of those books that just everybody read, and it started this whole obsession and kind of fascination with “where is the wreck? Will they ever find it in the North Atlantic in this deep, deep water?” So I think that’s kind of where it came from, and I wanted to be an oceanographer growing up. And that was another common ground when Jim and I met each other in 1980. He was a art director, I was a set dresser. One of the first things we started talking about was oceanography. We were both huge fans of Jacques Cousteau, and Jim’s just coming back from this record dive that he just made to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Unbelievable.
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DETAILS

Editorial #:
1461890822
Collection:
Archive Films: Editorial
Date created:
March 27, 2012
Upload date:
License type:
Rights-ready
Release info:
Not released.More information
Clip length:
00:01:49:10
Location:
London, United Kingdom
Mastered to:
QuickTime 10-bit ProRes 422 (HQ) HD 1920x1080 29.97p
Originally shot on:
QuickTime - H.264 1080 59.94i
Source:
Archive Films Editorial
Object name:
c07871_07