The Phantom of the Oscar

I hold in my hand a genuine bottle of water from the tank in which Leonardo DiCaprio drowned during the making of James Cameron's Titanic.

A little known fact about the blockbuster is that DiCaprio's life was lost in the final days of production. While filming the scene where his character Jack Dawson is let go into the depths of the Atlantic, his weight belt failed to detach. It was minutes before the crew realised he was in trouble. He was a very good actor, you see.

An even less known fact, somehow, is that Cameron shot Titanic in-sequence. This was what inspired Alejandro G Iñárritu to do the same for his latest feature. Following his death there was just one scene left for DiCaprio to appear in.

The film ends with Rose dying and entering nautical limbo. There she is joined by Jack Dawson, now a ghost. The day this scene was scheduled to shoot, DiCaprio showed up on set, now a ghost. Some say that it was fate.

This was only the first entry in DiCaprio's posthumous career. He has since appeared in nearly twenty films. How? He has a very good agent, you see.

Jonah Hill, his co-star in the Wolf of Wall Street, is terrified of ghosts. He refused to be in the same room with DiCaprio. All of their scenes together had to be composed using CGI like that weird scene in the Good Wife with Julianna Margulies and Archie Panjabi.

Since making that film, his fifth collaboration with Martin Scorsese, DiCaprio has been legally deemed to be haunting him.

There is a well-known scene in Django Unchained where DiCaprio accidentally slices his hand on broken glass, but continues unfazed. This was really set up by director Quentin Tarantino. He was attempting to acquire some blood as part of a ritual to banish DiCaprio from our realm for good. Apparently he's not a fan.

He was foiled by his own ignorance because, famously, DiCaprio uses James Cameron's hands for all of his hand stunts.

Dan Aykroyd took offence to the title of the 2002 film Catch Me If You Can. He assumed it was a reference to a comment he made in an interview in 1999. There he claimed he was the only man in Hollywood capable of busting DiCaprio's ghost. This comment was the subject of many late night talk show monologues. Hence his assumption that the movie title was also a slight towards him.

Though Aykroyd was unable to take out his frustration directly on DiCaprio, he did spend several years pestering the real Frank Abagnale. His petty attempts at identity theft failed in equal parts due to his inexperience and notoriety.

The Academy do not give awards to ghosts. They will nominate ghosts for awards though. Repeatedly. It's sort of teasing them. Many of the older members of the Academy are very literally haunted by their past. Their response is to fuck with ghosts at any opportunity. Knowing this has not abated DiCaprio's Oscar thirst.

Anyway, do you wanna buy this water or what?