Was American Pie More Influential Than Titanic?
In the late ’90s, a screenplay made the studio rounds bearing the unwieldy title, “Untitled Teenage Sex Comedy That Can Be Made For Under $10 Million That Most Readers Will Probably Hate But I Think You Will Love.” That’s a cheeky move for a young screenwriter, risking having his work tossed on the thanks-but-no-thanks pile by overworked script readers fatigued with first-timers’ glib attempts to catch the eye. But the script sold, and writer Adam Herz’s modest little homage to the movies of his youth, and to his youth itself, ended up grossing nearly a quarter of a billion dollars worldwide, spawning three theatrical sequels and four straight-to-video sequels, and providing the primary source of income for comic actor Eugene Levy for the past 13 years. That “Untitled Teenage Sex Comedy” was 1999’s American Pie.
Two years before that, James Cameron made good on years of obsession with shipwrecks by dramatizing the most terrible wreck of them all, using the tragedy of the Titanic to frame a steadfastly old-fashioned epic love story. His Titanic aimed to be the millennial Gone With the Wind, with the doomed ocean liner making collateral damage of its young lovers as surely as the sinking confederacy helped scotch whatever chance Scarlett and Rhett might have had at a happy ending. Cameron’s 1997 film struck audiences, particularly young women, like few could have predicted, and it held the title of biggest moneymaker in history for more than a decade.
Both of these films are back on the marquee this week. Titanic, the box office behemoth and the Oscar juggernaut, has gotten itself a 3D makeover just in time for the impending 100th anniversary of the vessel’s downfall. The more modestly proportionedAmerican Pie brings back its original cast of sex-crazed hijinks-makers, now husbands, wives, and parents, for an American Reunion. Cameron’s film is bigger in nearly every quantifiable sense. But more than a decade after their releases, which really looms larger on the cultural horizon?
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What say you, Tumblr? American Pie or Titanic?