Many things happened between December 1997 and March 1998.
The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal broke.
A massive ice storm swept the Northeast.
Merie W. Wallace
Victoria and David Beckham got engaged.
But nothing nothing captured the nations attention as much asTitanic.
Instead, the Leonardo DiCaprio-and-Kate Winslet-starring romance hit No.
1 at the box office and stayed there for a whopping 15 weeks.
Suddenly,Titanicwas everywhere.
Fans werent just obsessing over the film but diving into the ships history and trading theories about its sinking.
Teenagers held Titanicparties and visited the burial sites of the boats victims.
It was like being in a kind of dream state, he says now.
I kept expecting somebody to wake us up and say, No, that didnt really happen.
You just dreamed that.'
In Japan, it was like Beatlemania, Cameron says.
People were getting stepped on, and it was almost like a stampede.
It was just this hysteria.
(La La Landhas since earned the same number, but no film has ever surpassed it.)
We were passing over the coast of Greenland, and I was looking out the window, Cameron recalls.
I literally was seeing the first iceberg I had ever seen in my life.
You could see these little dots in the water below.
The calls did not just come from teenagers, an Academy spokesman told EW in 1998.
One older woman called and said the whole state of Florida was upset.
It raked in 11 awards, tyingBen-Hurfor the most wins by a single film.
My heart is full to bursting, except to say, Im the king of the world!'
Cameron recalls with a laugh.
The big mistake was quoting my own movie.
That was the cringer.
In my mind, at the time, I was saying I feel like Jack felt, he continues.
That was what I was trying to express.
We were right, you were wrong, na-na-na-na-na-na.
Which is how it was interpreted.
Still, theres a silver lining.
Me and Sally Field, we can go on the road together with a little act, Cameron jokes.
We can do our epic-Oscar-fails duet.
