|
|
|||
|
|
|||
         
|
Here are the most frequently asked questions that I hope will answer everything that you would like know. If you can't find an answer to your question, then you can send an e-mail and I'll try to answer it ASAP. This page will be constantly revised so come back and see if your question is posted on here. Table of Contents
Who is Clive Cussler? (Added 3-29-2003)Probably one of the greatest adventure novelist of our time. Bought for $840,000 by Viking Publishing in 1976, Raise The Titanic put him on the map after 11 years of hard work. Before his success with RTT, he previously had written Pacific Vortex, which wasn't published until after the his success, The Mediterranean Caper and Iceberg. Originally in advertising, first as an award-winning copy writer, and then as creative director for two of the nation's largest agencies. He started his writing career when his wife, Barbara, got a night job for the local police station as a clerk. At night after putting his kids to bed, he had hardly anything to do and no one to talk to. So out of solitude he decided to write a book. After a few nights of thinking of an idea on what to write about he thought it would be fun to produce a little paperback series. The thought of a best-seller never crossed his mind. Thanks to his marketing experience, he began researching and analyzing all the series heroes, beginning with Edgar Allan Poe's Inspector Dumas. Next came Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes and all the other fiction detectives and spies. Like the likes of Bulldog Drummond, Sam Spade, Phillip Marlowe, Mike Hammer, Matt Helm, James Bond. What ever he could find and he studied them all. With his experience in creative advertising under his belt, he started to wonder what he could conceive that was totally different. He didn't want to compete with already-famous authors. He was determined not to write about a detective, secret agent or undercover investigator or deal in murder mysteries. He then decided his hero's adventure would be based on and under water. And thus, the basic concept for Dirk Pitt the marine engineer with the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA) was born. He found it interesting that almost no authors were writing pure, old-fashioned adventure. It seemed to him, a lost genre. After taking a refresher course in English, he launched his first book that introduced Pitt and most all of his characters who appeared in the upcoming novels to follow afterwards. The first book was named Pacific Vortex. Dr. Cussler, leaned heavily on Alistair McLean on his first two books and was quite flattered when critics told him they were quite similar. But by his third book, he began to drift into his own style with a myriad of subplots. And because of that, Iceberg, to this day, has and always will be a sentimental favorite of his because it never ended where it began. After completing Pacific Vortex, he was about to launch a second book when he was offered a position at a large advertising agency. It would have been a wonderful opportunity with a well paid salary, but his wife challenged him. She knew that if he wanted to write sea stories, why didn't he take a job as a clerk at the local dive shop who at the time was hiring. He wasted little time and in 1968 he started working for the Aquatic Center Dive ship in Newport Beach as a behind-the-counter-salesman. Never being a certified diver, it took him just a few weeks. Once he was certified, Dr. Cussler started bringing in his typewriter in the morning and wrote at a card table behind the counter when business was slow which was usually in the afternoons. A little over a year later, Dr. Cussler finished his second novel, Mediterranean Caper. That's when he decided to leave the shop and return to advertising. With constant rejection letters on his first novel, Pacific Vortex, Dr. Cussler had decided that it would be a smart decision to find himself a literary agent. With a little cunning and ingenuity, he soon met Peter Lampack, who was with the William Morris Agency in Manhattan. With Peter liking his second novel, Mediterranean Caper, Dr. Cussler now had a contract. With the contract promptly signed and mailed, he started working on his third novel, Iceberg. Now that he had an agent and with renewed inspiration, Dr. Cussler left the advertising agency, and decided to write full time. Fed up with Southern California and wanting to change his family's lifestyle, he sold his boat, house and car. Bought a new family sedan and a tent trailer. After a wonderful summer, he and his family relocated to Estes Park, Colorado. Once settled in, he started to work on his third novel, Iceberg. After a year he finished Iceberg and with his agent having no success finding an editor to take Mediterranean Caper and now, Iceberg and with his savings about depleted, Dr. Cussler went back to advertising. Once he got himself a job with a very small agency and started to prove to them his value, Dr. Cussler moved his family to the suburb of Arvada just outside of Denver. It wouldn't be long before he is given the pink slip again. Taking a once broken down and small firm and making it into multi-million company, Dr. Cussler vowed to never work in the advertising agency again. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Because that's when he started to work on Raise The Titanic! in one corner of his unfinished basement. By then his agent, Peter Lampack, had found a small publisher to take Mediterranean Caper. Printing fifty-thousand copies and selling thirty-two thousand, Pyramid Publishing paid him five thousand dollars and sold the novel for seventy-five cents a piece. Less then a year later, Dr. Cussler sold his novel, Iceberg to Dodd Mead Publishing for five-thousand dollars. The novel sold thirty-two thousand copies with an initial intent of only printing five thousand. Once he finished Raise The Titanic, Dr. Cussler sent it off to his agent. Once approved, it was relayed to Dodd Mead. It was rejected within ten days. His agent decided to sent the renounced manuscript to Putnam but they wanted a massive rewrite which Dr. Cussler refused to do. And what Dr. Cussler would later say, "Out of the blue, Viking Press bought it, asked for very few changes and paid me seventy-five hundred dollars." And that's when "strange forces" went to work. A London editor from Macmillan Publishing was visiting a friend at Viking and heard about Dr. Cussler manuscript. Since the Titanic was a British ship, he asked for a copy of the manuscript to read on his plane back to England. He ended up wanting to buy it. But his agent had already sold Iceberg to Sphere Publishing, a small publishing house in London, for four hundred dollars. Since Sphere had the first option, they put in a bid for the manuscript that was promptly topped by Macmillan. Once the dust settled from the bidding war, Sphere owned the book, paying twenty-two thousand dollars, a high price for England in those days. Getting the feeling that things were suddenly falling into place, Dr. Cussler called his agent and got his writes back for Mediterranean Caper. At the same time, Dodd Mead Publishing notified his agent that Playboy Publications had offered four thousand dollars for the paperback right so Iceberg. Still with that "gut" feeling, Dr. Cussler told his agent that he would buy back Mediterranean Caper from Dodd Mead Publishing for five thousand dollars. The deal was done two weeks later. With the buzz and interest about Raise The Titanic over in Britain, it didn't take long for American paperback publishers to take notice. It soon went to auction with Viking Press winning the rights for $840,000. Once the auction was over and finding out that "Raise The Titanic was the third Dirk Pitt novel, Viking Press bought them both for forty thousand dollar a piece. Raise The Titanic! was the first novel to have several plots going on at the same time and to have them all converge at the end. Since then, Dr. Cussler has sold over 100 million copies of his Dirk Pitt Adventures. He continues to write Dirk Pitt adventures while living a life that nearly parallels that of his action hero. Like Pitt, Dr. Cussler enjoys discovering and collecting things of historical significance. With NUMA (National Underwater & Marine Agency, a non profit group begun by Cussler) he has had an amazing record of finding over 60 shipwrecks, one of which was the long-lost Confederate submarine Hunley. And recently discovered the rescue ship Carpathia who picked up the Titanic survivors. Dr.. Cussler also has a renowned and extensive classic car collection, which features over 80 examples of custom coachwork. Along with being Chairman of NUMA, he is also a fellow of the Explorers Club (which honored him with the Lowell Thomas Award for outstanding underwater exploration), the Royal Geographical Society and the American Society of Oceanographers. Married to Barbara Knight for 40 years, with three children and two grandchildren, he divides his time between the mountains of Colorado and the deserts of Arizona. He is represented by the Bartholomeaux Agency. Why do you want to Raise the Titanic? (Added 3-29-2003) I don't. I just want the film re-done. Where can I find a copy of the film?Since the film is out of print, there are only a few places where you can either get a fairly used copy of the film or a new one from certain websites that have bought out the remaining copies before it was discontinued. As to which web sites hold a used copy or a brand new copy, I don't know. You'll have to make that judgment call on your own. Here are the list of sites that I have found.
Back to TopI here that it is also on DVD. (Added 2-14-2002) (Updated 3-29-2003 & 5-30-2003)Yeah it is but only in Germany and the United Kingdom. Unless you have a Region 2 DVD player then it won't be worth your time. There have been some Regional 1 DVDs floating out there on E-Bay but they are pirated copies and not endorsed by the film company or by Dr. Cussler himself. Legal action is pending and any sellers or buyers might be subjected to prosecution. I strongly discourage anyone out there who might be tempted to purchase one to back off on the attempt. To order a Regional 2 copy from the United Kingdom, just click here. With production getting started on Dr. Cussler's new Dirk Pitt Adventure, Sahara. There just might be a slim chance that it will be released sometime next summer during the initial release of Sahara at the theaters. Stay Tuned! Back to TopWhy did you make a website about a film that was a complete bust?Well let's get the record straight. Clive Cussler wrote the book long before the film was produced. And very poorly I might add. I'm a fan of the novel, not the film. Clive once said that when he went and seen "Raiders Of The Lost Ark" just right after his film was released. He said he about cried. He wanted his film to be just as action-packed and fast-paced as Raiders. What I can't understand is how in the world do you take out all of his most action-packed scenes and twists from his book and NOT put them into the film? I can't remember how many times I just wanted to find the screenplay writers who wrote it and ring their idiotic necks. If the actual wreck wasn't found, I guarantee you, this film would have been re-done. That's the point that I'm trying to run across here. Forget common sense and just re-do the film. Mr. Cussler just signed a deal with Crusader Entertainment to do his novel Sahara plus 2 additional adaptations. Why not re-do his best piece of work? The concept of the film still excites me. And I will admit, I still watch the film on a occasional basis (I've been watching it to much lately for some insight and ideas for this website.) because of the basic concept. First there's the mystic at the beginning of the book. A mysterious man who we know is on the verge of insanity forces a junior officer (Bigalow) down to the cargo hold and then locks himself inside the vault without even a blink. But before he does he throws another mystery into the fold and says, "Thank God for Southby." So your wondering , where does this lead to? And who in the world is Southby? And from that point on, you just can't put the book down. From my standpoint I just couldn't put it down. Then when I found out that they made a film about it, I thought to myself, "If the book was awesome, then the movie has to be really good." WRONG! I felt robbed as I know other Cussler fans felt the same. And this all happened 17 years ago when I was in junior high. No wonder my English teacher told me, when I announced to him that I was going to read the novel for my book report, that I better read the book and not even try to watch the movie and report it from the movie's point-of-view. Now with the internet, I feel that there might be a fighting chance to see if there is anyone else out there (and I hope allot) who feel the same way and that this novel deserves a second chance at redemption. I hope that your one of the millions out there who feels the same way. By the way, did you know that Robert Ballard had only two films on his original voyage back in 1985? The first one was "A Night To Remember", and the second one was "Raise The Titanic!"? Even he hoped that it would be in a hibernated condition and in one piece. And if you have read any of Ken Marshall's books you would know that he still has in his possession a painting that he did of the Titanic laying on the bottom in ONE piece and her hull rust free. Here is an excerpt from Daniel Allen Butler's book "Unsinkable" where he explains (And who I owe allot of thanks to for allowing me to use a part of his work on this site, thank you Dan.) the Titanic's condition and why so many people thought it would be in pristine condition and in one piece. The common thread running through all of these works was the firm conviction that the Titanic had gone to the bottom in one piece, and that the combination of extreme cold, extreme pressure, low salinity, and very little free oxygen had kept the ship in a short of deep-sea freeze. Everyone, including oceanographers and marine salvage experts, expected that if the ship were ever found, she would be in a state akin to suspended animation, little changed from the moment she reached the bottom of the ocean on April 15, 1912. What Robert Ballard was about to discover would not only command unprecedented attention, but it would also stun the world.
What Ballard found left everyone gasping in surprise.
The most startling discovery of all was finding the wreck in two
pieces: even though several
survivors had stated that the ship had broken in two before she sank,
their testimony was inconsistent and sometimes contradictory, and expert
opinion had it that she went under in one piece.
Ballard came to the conclusion that the Titanic did break in two just before she took her final plunge, at a point
somewhere in the Engine Room, where, he theorized, the large openings in
the decks that accommodated the engines had created a weak spot in the
hull. (A later study of the
contents of the debris field and the wildly differing conditions of the
two halves of the wreck—the bow almost intact, the stern badly
smashed—would make it clear that though the ship’s structure began
to fail during her amazing headstand just before she sank, the actual
breakup took place partway to the bottom.)
For years, it had been an article of faith among those who
studied the disaster that the iceberg had ripped a continuous
300-foot-long-gash in the
Titanic’s
side. But when Ballard took
Alvin down
to the bow, he couldn’t find any sign of such a grievous wound.
Admittedly, most of the bow is buried in a massive pile-up of
mud, but what Ballard could make out was a series of split seams, popped
rivets, and sprung plates---the result of the iceberg bumping and
scraping along the side of the hull.
When Ballard went back to the records of the British inquiry, he
found that the rate of flooding indicated an area open of the sea that
totaled little more then twelve square feet.
Translated into a continuous gash 300 feet in length meant that
the cut could have been only about three-quarters of an inch
wide—possible with an acetylene torch, but not an iceberg.
Nevertheless, bent plates and open seams in the first five
compartments caused by the iceberg grinding its way along the
Titanic’s hull would have had the same effect as a long continuous gash;
uncontrollable flooding.
The overall condition of the wreck was also startling.
For decades oceanographers and marine archaeologists had believed
that the ship was sitting in a veritable deep freeze, with the cold
water (only a degree or two above freezing) and the tremendous pressure
(six tons per square foot) keeping the free oxygen to very low levels
and reducing the salinity of the water, retarding corrosion and rust.
It was also thought that there would be a near total absence of
marine life, sparing the wood and fabric furnishings of the ship from
consumption. Instead the
expedition discovered that the
Titanic
rests in an area where the oxygen and salinity are higher then normal
for such a depth, and that wood-boring worms no one suspected lived at
those depths had eaten away almost all of the wood.
Instead of a near pristine ship, they found a dilapidated wreck,
covered with iron stalactites running down her sides.
She was slowly but inexorably decaying.
As Ballard put it, “The
Titanic
was unlucky to the last.
If she’d fallen almost anywhere else, she’d probably be in
perfect condition right now. She
couldn’t even sink in the right place.”
Melancholy settled over Ballard as he and his crew continued to
explore the
Titanic, a
deep sadness brought on by the constant awareness that they were, in a
sense exploring a tomb. Ballard
gave voice to the feeling at a press conference in Washington D.C., a
few days after his return. As
he made his closing statement to the press in an emotional yet subdued
way that most press conference statements are, his voice quavered, then
broke with barely restrained emotion. “The Titanic itself lies in 13,000 feet of water, on a gently sloping, alpine-like countryside overlooking a small canyon below. It’s bow faces north and the ship sits upright on the bottom. . . . There is no light at this depth. . . . It is quiet and peaceful and a fitting place for the remains of this greatest of sea tragedies to rest. May it forever remain that way and may God bless these found souls. Not one could have foreseen the emotional impact the Titanic would have, not just on Ballard, but on the rest of the crew of the Knorr, and in 1986, the Atlantic II. A pall hung over them, almost as if there had been a death in the family. In 1986, when the Alvin finished its last dive, the crew knew instinctively that, for them, no one would ever go back to the wreck. ( Daniel Allen Butler, Unsinkable, Stackpole Books, 1998 Pg 210, 213-215)
|
||
| National Underwater and Marine Agency c/o Pitch Productions 859 Hollywood Way #212 Burbank, California 91505 Tel/Fax: (818) 559-3278 |
Or you can send her an e-mail at pr@numa.net
Can you give me any information about the actual ship?
(Added 4-14-2002)
Believe it or not, I have received allot of e-mails from students and teachers about where they could look up information about the actual ship. So, instead of re-typing all of those links to everyone, I decided to make a new links page with all of my favorite historical Titanic links right here on the site. Check it out!
