Titanic (Scriptment) Page #8

Tommy is sullen and sarcastic. He is proud of Ireland and anything Irish, including this ship which he is quick to point out was built in Belfast, though he despises the snooty British crew. He is sad to be leaving home, but poverty and lack of opportunity give him no choice.

Ara is a refugee from Turkish persecution, going to live with a cousin in Toronto.

CONTRASTING THIS are the first class passengers riding in luxury. They are the power elite, the Brahmin class of Edwardian society. There are millionaires, captains of industry and commerce, socialites and minor royalty.

In the FIRST CLASS LOUNGE Cal introduces his fiancee to BENJAMIN GUGGENHEIM, the millionaire playboy, and his mistress MADAME AUBERT. Hockley presents Rose with the pride of ownership, basking in their reaction to her beauty and pedigree. She dutifully charms them, playing the part of the porcelain doll.

As Guggenheim moves off, Rose says:

ROSE:

And where is Mrs. Guggenheim?

CAL:

(smirking)

At home with the children, of course.

Rose doesn't find this the slightest bit amusing.

Next we meet J. BRUCE ISMAY, the managing director of the White Star Line. Cal congratulates him on willing into existence the greatest ship ever built, and Ismay beams. Titanic was his idea, even down to the name. It is the embodiment of his ego and ambition.

Ismay then asks if their accomodations are satisfactory, and Cal says the suite is extraordinary. Cal actually took the suite only the day before, when J.P. Morgan, the richest man in America and owner of White Star Line, cancelled his booking at the last minute. For this reason the fact that Hockley and his party were even on Titanic was not widely known after the sinking.

THE THIRD CLASS COMMON ROOM under the poop deck is the social center of steerage life on the ship. It is stark by comparison to the opulence of the first class lounge, but is a loud, boisterous place, full of the pageant of human life. There are mothers with babies, kids running between the tables and benches yelling in several languages and being scolded in several more. There is an upright piano and somebody always seems to be noodling around on it. There are old Italian women yelling. There are men playing chess. There are boys playing cards. There are girls doing needlepoint and reading dime novels.

Three boys, shrieking and shouting, are scrambling around chasing a rat under the benches, trying to whomp it with a shoe and causing general havoc.

Fabrizio and Jack come in to check out the scene... the former to look for good-looking girls of any nationality or language group, and the latter to draw.

Jack is an artist.

He carries a large and well worn leather-bound sketchbook, and he spends a lot of his time drawing the people he sees around him. Sometimes it's just a hand, or the way a man's profile will catch the light. He draws people, in all their endless variety, and he loves to draw from life. And there is plenty of life in steerage. The feeling here is totally different than what we have seen in first class. There is energy. Emotion. Excitement at what is ahead, longing and loss for what is left behind. There are things at stake for these people. It is not just some pleasure cruise to visit friends on Long Island, it is a whole new life. Many of these steerage people have everything they ever owned with them. They carry a few treasured pictures, their clothes, some money sown into the lining of a coat.

They are families heading to America to escape poverty or persecution, or single young men setting out to make their fortunes. Many of them lived in noisy, crowded, fetid squalor, where children worked in sweatshops for pennies a day and died of simple diseases. All their hopes and dreams are in this voyage. For them it is also the ship of dreams.

We meet the CARTMELL FAMILY, emigrants from Manchester. They have three children, including a baby. Jack has befriended CORA and REGGIE, who are 4 and 2 respectively. They climb all over him while he tries to draw.

Fabrizio is trying to get a conversation going with an attractive Norwegian girl, HELGA DAHL, sitting with her family at a table across the room. She speaks nothing but Norwegian, and Fabrizio is talking mostly in broad gestures... but he's not giving up and she seems faintly amused by this gesticulating madman.

Jack gives up drawing, handing his sketchbook to Fabrizio to mind while he gives the kids horse rides around the common area and out onto the well deck. Jack has one under his arm and one on his shoulders, running across the deck in the warm afternoon sun while the kids shriek with joy.

ROSE, detached from the conversation in the first class lounge, watches a mother and daughter having tea near the big fireplace. In Rose's POV it is a silent tableau... the six year old girl, wearing white gloves, daintily picking up a cookie. The mother correcting her on her posture, brushing a stray hair out of her eyes. The little girl trying so hard to please, her expression serious.

A glimpse of Rose at that age... the perfect Edwardian princess.

CHERBOURG HARBOR, FRANCE. The ship stands silhouetted against a purple post-sunset sky. Titanic is lit up like a floating palace, and her thousand portholes reflect in the calm harbor waters. The 150 foot tender Nomadic lies-to alongside, looking like a rowboat. The lights of Cherbourg harbor complete the postcard image.

Entering the first class reception room from the tender are a number of prominent passengers. A broad-shouldered woman in an enormous feathered hat comes up the gangway, carrying a suitcase in each hand, a porter running to catch up with her and take the bags. This is MRS. JAMES JOSEPH BROWN, known as "MOLLY" to her friends, and for all history as "The Unsinkable Molly Brown". She is 45, and the wife of a Colorado millionaire. Molly Brown is a tough talking straight-shooter who dresses in the finery of her genteel first class peers but will never be one of them.

OLD ROSE (V.O.)

At Cherbourg a woman came aboard named Margaret Brown, but we all called her Molly. Her husband had struck gold someplace out west, and she was what my mother called "new money", which is to say not our kind.

Behind Molly Brown comes JOHN JACOB ASTOR (48) with his 18 year old wife MADELEINE, their maid, manservant, and a private nurse. Madeleine has a fur muff in her hands, held against her stomach.

OLD ROSE (V.O.)

Molly met the Astors in Egypt, and they hit it off. John Jacob Astor was the richest man on the ship, and his little bride, I can't remember her name, was pregnant and trying not to show it. They'd had a lot of scandal already over him being so old and she only 17 when they got married. By the next afternoon we had made our last stop and were steaming west along the coast of Ireland, with nothing out ahead of us but ocean.

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