age of the remnants of theTitanic, which the audi-
ence also sees.
The film is also enhanced by a moving score, writ-
ten by James Horner, a theme song by the popular
singer Celine Dion, and elegant period costumes de-
signed by Deborah L. Scott. The interiors of the sets
were designed by the companies that had originally
outfitted theTitanicin 1912. Cameron worked hard
to create an authentic feel in all aspects of the film,
going so far as to hire an etiquette expert to work
with the cast on the manners and culture of 1912 En-
gland and North America.
Titanic was nominated for fourteen Academy
Awards and won eleven. Winslet was nominated for
Best Actress, and Stuart for Best Supporting Actress.
Cameron won for Best Director. Other Oscars won
byTitanicinclude Best Picture, Best Original Score,
Best Song (“My Heart Will Go On,” by Dion), Best
Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Costume
Design, Best Film Editing, Best Visual Effects, Best
Sound Effects Editing, and Best Sound. At the
Golden Globes, the film won Best Director, Best Mo-
tion Picture-Drama, Best Original Score, and Best
Original Song (“My Heart Will Go On”).
Special Effects Technicians re-created an almost
life-sized version of the exterior of theTitanic,lo-
cated in the Pacific Ocean in Baja Mexico. The exte-
rior was actually sunk in the final scenes of the film,
destroying the model and allowing only one take of
some scenes. Some interior scenes of the sinking
ship, mostly those involving actors, were shot in tilt-
ing tanks located in sound stages. Cameron and his
crew often came up with creative solutions to prob-
lems that cropped up during filming and blazed new
trails in the areas of filming water-related disaster
scenes.
Budget Titanicwas the first film to cost $200 million
to make and was the highest-budget film of the twenti-
eth century. It is also the highest-grossing box-office
hit of all time in the United States, bringing in over
$600 million. The film was costly to make for many
reasons, including the cost of expeditions to the real
Titanic, the cost of re-creating most parts of the ship,
and the cost of constructing tanks and other special-
effects materials. The large cast of actors and extras
also contributed to the film’s large budget.
Impact Titanicpushed the limits of filmmaking in
many ways. Its budget exceeded any motion picture
made before, as did its box-office earnings. Its spe-
cial effects and dedication to historical accuracy,
combined with the sheer spectacle and scope of the
film, captivated the imagination of the filmgoing
public.
Further Reading
Frakes, Randall.“Titanic”: James Cameron’s Illustrated
Screenplay.New York: HarperCollins, 1998. A use-
ful reference that includes the shooting script.
Parisi, Paula.Titanic and the Making of James Cameron:
The Inside Stor y of the Three-Year Adventure That Re-
wrote Motion Picture Histor y. New York: Orion,- Details the immense filming project with
fascinating stories.
Shapiro, Marc.James Cameron: An Unauthorized Biog-
raphy of the Filmmaker. Los Angeles: Renaissance
Books, 2000. A look at the renowned filmmaker
by a veteran entertainment journalist.
Kris Bigalk
See also Academy Awards; CGI; Film in the United
States;Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Tobacco industry settlement
The Event The largest civil settlement in U.S.
history is signed by major tobacco companies
and states’ attorneys general
Date Signed in 1998
The successful series of lawsuits against large tobacco com-
panies for reimbursement of Medicaid claims became a
highly successful method of enabling government to be more
accountable to citizens and of providing much-needed
funds for individual states.
In the late 1990’s, major tobacco companies were
faced with billion-dollar lawsuits. By 1998, nearly all
of the U.S. states’ attorneys general had filed lawsuits
against these companies to recover state Medicaid
costs associated with smoking-related diseases. Soon,
all of the states followed suit and came eventually to
settle their cases with the tobacco industry. Ulti-
mately, this resulted in the huge financial settle-
ments guaranteed by the Master Settlement Agree-
ment (MSA) and restricted tobacco marketing and
advertising.
The Master Settlement Agreement At first, the indi-
vidual state lawsuits were considered to be long shots860 Tobacco industry settlement The Nineties in America