Prequel to Contact - Jaws Fan Reaction, Contact Preview

[00:00:12] Speaker A: On this week's prequel episode, we follow up on our Jaws listener polls and preview contact. Hello and welcome back to this film is lit the Pockets. We talk about movies that are based on books. It's another prequel episode. Plenty of feedback to talk about with Jaws. Plenty to preview about. Contact. Interesting preview this week, but we'll get to that when we get to it. But we're going to start, as we always do, with our patron shout outs. I put up with you because your father and mother were our finest patrons. That's why. No new patrons this week, but we have our Academy Award winning Hall of Fame patrons and they are Amanda Nicole Goble, Harpo Rat, justice for Kevins, Mathilde Cottonwood, Steve Ben Wilcox, Teresa Schwartz, Ian from Wine Country, Kelly Napier Gratch Justgratch. Shelby's listening from the backrooms. And that darn skag. Thank you all very much for your continued support. I assume Katie or Shelby saw backrooms. I actually do want to see back rooms. I've heard it's good and I heard it's the kind of horror movie that I like. I heard it's not, it's like, it's not super like jump scare heavy or anything like that. It's much more like atmospheric and like kind of psychological and that sort of thing. So I think it actually looks pretty interesting. Although I've heard it's not like the best horror film ever. But it's good and it's fun in an interesting way. So let's jump right in and see what the people had to say about Jaws. Yeah, well, you know, that's just like your opinion. [00:01:47] Speaker B: Man on Patreon. We had eight votes for the movie, one for the book, and two listeners who couldn't decide. Our first comment is from Shelby, who said, so I finally read and watched Jaws. Nice to cross that off the list. My thoughts are a bit scattered, so bear with me. [00:02:06] Speaker A: I will not. I will shark with you though. [00:02:09] Speaker B: Boo. This was actually my second Benchley book. I read Beast a couple years ago and I barely remember it. I retroactively found it kind of funny that the author regretted making the shark look bad because everybody looks bad in this book. But I guess the shark is the [00:02:27] Speaker A: memorable character that and he probably doesn't regret making people look bad. [00:02:33] Speaker B: People do. [00:02:33] Speaker A: People suck. [00:02:34] Speaker B: People do that all the time. [00:02:34] Speaker A: Some people do be sucking, whereas sharks are just sharks. [00:02:38] Speaker B: Brody and Harper are douchebags in the book, to say nothing of Quint. And Ellen ended up a weird male fantasy. There was also racism for no reason, as is often the case it is the 70s. [00:02:50] Speaker A: The reason is the 70s. [00:02:52] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:02:52] Speaker A: Or 60s or whatever. Right? [00:02:54] Speaker B: 60s, 70s. [00:02:55] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:02:56] Speaker B: At the start. We learned that Amity had a predator in the area a few years ago, and we had to specify it was a black man targeting white women. This adds nothing at all to the book and never comes up again. Thanks, Benchley. [00:03:09] Speaker A: I mean, I. I honestly think that it's. It's playing into predator. It, It's. It's. He's playing. It is racist, obviously, but I think he's very clearly, I would imagine, playing on like echoing the predation of the shark on people with this black killer guy. You know what I mean? I think it's kind of a literary device, if I had to guess. [00:03:33] Speaker B: Then later, when Ellen gets the white. When Ellen, the wealthy white woman, talks about her assault fantasies, she has to specify that she doesn't fantasize about it being a black man, but she understands the women who do. Bruh. Yeah, there were a few good, creepy moments with the shark, AKA the hero of the piece. I'll agree with Katie that you really felt how fucked the town was because of the deaths in the book. The movie was fine. I honestly expected it to be scarier. To be honest, every time Quint showed up, I went, oh, that's what everyone's been parodying. His monologue about the war was fantastic. So I'll give it to the movie for that. And all the BS they cut from the book. [00:04:17] Speaker A: I will say your note or your observation that you honestly expected it to be scarier. I think that's one of those. That is. It's hard to in retro. Like, watching this movie for the first time in 2026 is not the same experience as watching this movie. [00:04:36] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:04:37] Speaker A: Either either. When it first came out and it being like the first thing of its kind because obviously it was such a trendsetter that you've seen every type of scare and moment. And everything from this movie has been done a million times in other movies. So nothing in this is new to you anymore. But on top of that, a big part of it, a lot of reason people were scared of this is from watching it when they were young. This is not a movie that's particularly scary. It was for adults, especially during the time period. But it is also back when we didn't know anything about sharks or your average person didn't know anything about sharks and didn't realize that they weren't. Now it's even less scary because we know sharks don't hunt people. [00:05:20] Speaker B: That's not shark week now. [00:05:22] Speaker A: Yeah. So I think all of that adds up to make the experience of watching the movie even for the first time. I would imagine not quite as scary or impactful or as memorable as it would be if you're watching it for the first time as a 12 year old in 1978 or whatever, in 1980 or something. [00:05:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I do think it is something that you kind of have to watch through like a historical lens now. [00:05:45] Speaker A: Yeah, 100%. [00:05:48] Speaker B: I nearly forgot. But I did spot the extra that's the spitting image of the lady of the Dunes. [00:05:54] Speaker A: Yeah, I heard about this. I forgot about this. [00:05:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I heard they recently identified the Jane Doe, but I don't know if they've ever confirmed if the extra was actually her. [00:06:03] Speaker A: I have no idea. [00:06:04] Speaker B: That's a whole rabbit hole, honestly. Makes it hard to take the Animatron shark as seriously. I don't know about this. [00:06:11] Speaker A: Lady of Dunes was an unidentified murder victim that was found up in Massachusetts that they didn't know who Woodette was forever. On October 31, 2022, the FBI field office in Boston announced that Terry Ruth Marie Terry is the person, the woman she had officially been identified. And then her husband, Guy Muldavin Moldavan was officially named as her killer on August 28, 2023. So they figured out who killed her a couple years ago, but I have no so here's the jaws thing. In August 2015, speculation arose that lady of the Dunes may have been an extra in Jaws who had been which had been shot on Martha's Vineyard. Joe Hill, the son of horror author Stephen King, brought this to police attention after reading the Skeleton Crew, How Amateur Sleuths Are Solving America's Coldest Cases. Just weeks before, while watching the film's Fourth of July beach scene, he spotted a woman in the crowd wearing a blue bandana and jeans similar to those found with the body. Although a lead investigator has noted interest in this lead, others have described it as far fetched and wild speculation. That's all that's on the Wikipedia about it. That was also before they knew who she was or solved the murder. So they have since, right? [00:07:19] Speaker B: There's no since identified. [00:07:21] Speaker A: They've since figured who out who she was and there's no addendum on the Wikipedia page like either way, like we confirmed this was or wasn't her, so who knows? [00:07:30] Speaker B: Shelby rounded off her comment saying, also I liked movie Hooper. I'm glad he survived thanks to that actual shark. [00:07:39] Speaker A: Yeah, Movie Hooper's fun. Yeah, Richard Dreyfus does a good job with them. [00:07:43] Speaker B: Our next comment is from Cottonwood. Steve, who said I have to place mine at can't decide because I couldn't get the book in time. Judging by the final verdict, I didn't miss much. But I'm sure this will inflame some people. I don't like this movie. Not even one bit. I don't even consider it Spielberg's career start. And I reserve this for Close Encounters of the Third kind. Steve, I would expect nothing less from you than to be curmudgeonly about a popular film. [00:08:14] Speaker A: Obviously. [00:08:17] Speaker B: Why do I dislike it? Maybe it's because. [00:08:19] Speaker A: Hold on, I just caught. I don't even consider Spielberg's career start. I reserve that. That's a nonsense. Sorry, Ste, I'm gonna come at you. What do you mean you don't consider it his. It's the. It is. It's not. Well, you're not. You're right, it's not. Because he made a movie before this. Several, I think, movies before this, but that were TV movies. This is, I think, his first theatrical release. But what do you mean you don't consider it? If you don't like it, that's fine. [00:08:41] Speaker B: But would he have gotten to make Close Encounters if it hadn't been success of jaws? [00:08:46] Speaker A: No. 100%. That's. It's like. What do you. What do you mean you don't consider it his career? You just say you don't like it, like, that's fine. But like. I mean, it's not fine because you're wrong. But [00:08:59] Speaker B: why do I dislike it? Maybe it's because shark films are just a laughable concept to me, being someone who is afraid of the water, which is why I live in deserts and now the mountains. The obvious line for me is just stay out of the water. I can get a story about a sinking ship in the middle of the ocean, but when you have the choice, just let nature be. [00:09:21] Speaker A: I mean, there is some truth to that. That it is fairly easy to avoid the killer shark. [00:09:26] Speaker B: Yes. [00:09:27] Speaker A: Don't go in the water. The movie does, I think, a fairly effective job of. Of making it scary. Despite that, that is the answer by creating scenarios where. Because, you know, for somebody who's afraid of the water, sure, that's a thing. But a lot of people would be like, well, yeah, but I'm not going to get eaten by a shark. Like, that's super rare and like, never happened. So, like, it's fine. Yeah. And so the movie is playing on that a little, you know, like, which is true and like. Yeah. Anyways, yeah. [00:09:55] Speaker B: Which is true in reality. [00:09:56] Speaker A: And true in reality, but within the movie. Yeah. Like I said, I think the movie does a good enough job of creating a scenario where it's understandable why there are a bunch of people in the water because they either think that the shark's not a big deal or they think the shark has been killed or blah, blah, blah. Or they didn't hear about it or whatever. And then for the whole second half of the movie, they have to be. They're hunting the shark. It's like a whole. You know, that's the point is like, we gotta kill this shark so it doesn't eat people. Which, again, whatever. Yeah. But I do, again, to some extent, understand your point of, like, you know, if you were in that scenario, you wouldn't find it scary because you just wouldn't go in the water fair unless. [00:10:33] Speaker B: Unless the mayor was forcing you and your family to go into the ocean. [00:10:37] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. [00:10:39] Speaker B: Now, this is just my dumb, overly logical and sometimes Buzz Killington mind working hard on this. But, yeah, sharks aren't scary. Shark movies are laughable and stupid. I've seen them all. Some due to good bad or bad bad. [00:10:53] Speaker A: That's true. We have done quite a few shark movies. [00:10:56] Speaker B: Ouija shark, big shark, Sharknado, sand shark, ice shark camp, Blood colon, clown shark, cocaine shark, and even the awful Nicholas Cage movie. Usss, Indianapolis Colon, Men of Courage. [00:11:11] Speaker A: Yeah. They made a movie about the monologue. [00:11:13] Speaker B: Of course they did. [00:11:14] Speaker A: Not about the monologue. [00:11:15] Speaker B: Right. But about the actual event. Historical event. [00:11:18] Speaker A: Yes. [00:11:19] Speaker B: It all just blends into a silly slurry of hilarious concepts. Now, stuck in the wilderness kind of movies, I can somehow get behind. Especially the gray, as ridiculous as it is, especially with the final scene with Liam Neeson. [00:11:32] Speaker A: That's interesting. I don't. I mean, you listed off all of the most ridiculous shark movies. [00:11:38] Speaker B: That is a fair point. [00:11:40] Speaker A: Like, you're like, shark movies are dumb and bad. Here's all of the worst. Silly, intentionally bad for a lot of them. Like, intentionally ridiculous shark movies. [00:11:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:11:49] Speaker A: Not that there are a bunch of, like, good shark movies. It's pretty much Jaws. [00:11:54] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:11:54] Speaker A: And that's about it. I think I'm trying to think of another one where sharks play a pivotal role and it's like a good movie. It's probably just Jaws because, like, deep blue sea's awful. There may be a. I've never seen the shallow. [00:12:09] Speaker B: There was one about the Megalodon not too long ago. I don't know if that one was. [00:12:13] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:12:13] Speaker B: I don't know. [00:12:14] Speaker A: Oh. Oh, the trench. Yeah. No, that's. Are you sure? [00:12:17] Speaker B: No, the Mega. [00:12:18] Speaker A: Oh, the Meg. Yes. No, that's. That's. That's similar to Deep Blue Sea. It's like a ridiculous bad. At least I think it's. It may be good in like a silly. But it's not trying to be like a serious movie like Jaws is. The only other one I was going to say was the Shallows, I think is supposed to be Okay. I have not seen it. And then there might be one other. I think it's the Shallows. The one where there's a. One where a woman ends up trapped. It might be Blake Lively. I can't remember. [00:12:45] Speaker B: I was going to say I think that's the shallows where she gets trapped [00:12:48] Speaker A: on like a buoy or whatever by a shark. Yeah, yeah, I think that one might be okay. Reviewed but not like considered a great movie. [00:12:56] Speaker B: Yeah, the shallows has a 78% on rotten tomatoes. [00:13:00] Speaker A: Okay. I say I thought the Shallows was one and that is one where. I think. I don't know if you said you didn't list it here, Steve, so I assume you haven't seen it, but I think that's one from my memory that has a fairly reasonable. Like it's made in the modern day where we understand that shark attacks are an incredibly rare thing and that sharks aren't hunting people. She's just. I think she's just like surfing or something like that and. And gets attacked by a shark which does occasionally happen because when you're on a surfboard you kind of look like a seal or whatever. And then she ends up being injured and gets trapped and then because she's bleeding and stuff, the shark is like, I don't know, I haven't seen it. But that's one where at least from my. My cursory knowledge of the scenario I'm like, yeah, I could see that that's like a fairly. That feels reasonable. Like. Yeah, like. And like understandable even for Steve. Again, he wouldn't be in the water because he doesn't like. But you know it. They didn't. [00:13:47] Speaker B: Yeah, Steve would never. [00:13:48] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:13:49] Speaker B: Anyways, so continuing with Steve's comment here. Also just my dumb 12 year old logic working here. But orcas bully the hell out of great whites. Those losers aren't even the toughest guys in the sea. It's like Jack Black's bully in Never Ending Ending Story three versus Buddy Revel from Three o' Clock High. I don't know either of those. [00:14:11] Speaker A: I mean I know Jack Black's Bullying. I've seen Neverending Story 3 and I remember Jack Black plays the bully in the beginning of that. But I have not seen 3 o' clock highs. I don't know. [00:14:19] Speaker B: It's not even a comparison, provided you have seen either of these bad movies. And of course, sperm whales, bully, orcas. So when are we getting the killer sperm whale? [00:14:29] Speaker A: Oh, my God, Steve, did you do this on purpose? Did you see the trailer? No, go ahead, keep reading. [00:14:36] Speaker B: Come on, Hollywood. [00:14:38] Speaker A: Literally. They dropped the trailer for a killer sperm whale movie yesterday. [00:14:42] Speaker B: Really? [00:14:43] Speaker A: I'm not even kidding. It's called. [00:14:45] Speaker B: Fascinating. Well, there's your answer, Steve. [00:14:50] Speaker A: I think it's a sperm whale. Yes, it's called Whale Fall. They dropped a trailer for it yesterday. This is so funny. Following a scuba diver who, while looking. It looks ridiculous, but it also looks like it's being a serious movie. Following, like a horror. Following a scuba diver who, while looking for his father's remains, is swallowed by an 80 foot, 60 ton sperm whale and has just one hour to get out before his oxygen runs out. He is swallowed by a whale and is alive inside of it. The trailer is insane. It's insane. It's funny because they're playing. It's played like a serious movie, but obviously the premise is very ridiculous. I don't know, I've only watched a little. I haven't even watched the trailer in its entirety. I've watched like, I scrubbed through it just because I was like, what? But it's got like Josh Brolin in it and stuff. And it's got the kid, the kid who plays the junkie in Weapons. He's like the main character who gets swallowed by the whale. But I assume it's a. It's going to ultimately be like a play on like Jonah or something like that. [00:15:52] Speaker B: At least referencing Jonah and the whale. But like sperm. Sperm whales just. Sperm whales eat. [00:16:00] Speaker A: Yes. I don't know. I don't know. You would have to watch a trailer in terms of the. He gets swallowed in the sense of like, not on purpose. [00:16:07] Speaker B: Right, right, right. Never mind. [00:16:09] Speaker A: I'm not sure what your question is. [00:16:11] Speaker B: I'm not sure what my question is either. I just. I guess in my mind I feel like there's a difference between, like, getting swallowed by a sperm whale versus getting swallowed by like a blue whale. Because blue whales, like, inhale krill and then. Yes. [00:16:29] Speaker A: I don't know enough about whales to tell you to answer any of your questions. [00:16:33] Speaker B: Never mind. [00:16:34] Speaker A: I have no idea. [00:16:35] Speaker B: Forget I said anything. [00:16:36] Speaker A: I assume that the premise is absurd. On its face. [00:16:39] Speaker B: Yes. [00:16:39] Speaker A: But I do not know. So. So. And I know not nearly enough about whales to tell you. I just thought it was very funny that he said, when are we getting the killer sperm whale movie? Literally the day like before they dropped the trailer. [00:16:52] Speaker B: I mean, you know, I think giant squid. Giant squid is the scariest thing in the ocean. [00:17:00] Speaker A: I agree. Yes. Or maybe at least one of the scariest things in the ocean. I mean, as we learned last summer [00:17:07] Speaker B: or the scariest thing in the ocean is the ocean. [00:17:10] Speaker A: I was about to say, as we learned a summer or two ago or whenever that was. Scariest thing in the ocean is the weight of the ocean when you're down at the bottom of it. [00:17:18] Speaker B: Anyway, yeah, don't like Jaws, but according to my parents, Peter Benchley is a hack. So it's a push fair. Thanks for the review. I promise to be better and less childish for contact, but yeah, sharks as villains are a bad concept. [00:17:33] Speaker A: I agree they're a bad concept. [00:17:34] Speaker B: They're not a great concept. [00:17:36] Speaker A: Mainly because of the cultural effect it has. I think you can use them as interesting villains in a movie and I think jaw. But I just think you shouldn't because it's bad. Like ethically bad in a way, kind of. Or at least it definitely was back then. Now it's a little bit different because I think everybody understands. Or at least most people understand. Yeah. [00:17:57] Speaker B: Our next comment is from Mikhail Moore who said take my comments and vote with a grain of salt. Because the last time I read this book was 15ish years ago when I was an ocean starved 19 year old from the Midwest. So we have the opposite. We have the opposite opposite of Steve. Somebody loves the ocean. Anything about the ocean and sharks immediately went to the top of my list. And I hadn't seen more than random snippets of the movie on various bar TVs in just as long. [00:18:28] Speaker A: We're gonna have to get Mikhail and or Michael, however it's pronounced, and Steve in a ring to duke this out. Because they have very opposite opinions on sharks in movies. [00:18:39] Speaker B: This choice is a very hard one for me. I keep going between the book is better and can't decide the problems. Filming might be the best example of failing upwards to ever exist. [00:18:49] Speaker A: Definitely up there. [00:18:50] Speaker B: And pair that with an iconic score and top notch sound design. It makes sense why it is still a benchmark for thrillers. In almost every way the movie is better. That being said, one of the only points where the book is better than the movie is the shark itself. The movie shark has Malice to an absurd degree in the later films where [00:19:11] Speaker A: it becomes like an evil villain, literally. Where in this one it has a little bit of that. But holy cow, in the later ones, it's like a. It's like a mastermind villain. [00:19:18] Speaker B: While the majority of the book makes it clear the shark is just acting on instinct, there are some moments, like the spy hopping, the creepy poking its head out of the water bit scene where the characters assign it human traits. But I thought it came off very clear that sharks just be sharkin. I think the key difference between the themes of the book and the movie is man versus nature and man versus monster. I remember feeling a deep sense of awe while reading about the shark. While the movie only wants you to feel scared. Like, one of the critics said the shark is the only likable character in the book. But I like her enough that the book ultimately wins out for me. [00:19:57] Speaker A: I will say that was not my experience, or at least wasn't my experience watching the movie when I was younger. When I watched the movies younger, it wasn't. I obviously found it scary at times, but I also thought the shark was cool and fascinating and it felt to me similar to watching, like a nature documentary. [00:20:15] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:20:15] Speaker A: Like, I did feel it. Like, obviously, I get what you're totally. [00:20:18] Speaker B: It looks real enough. I think that you can get that from it. [00:20:22] Speaker A: Yeah. And I totally get what you're saying about, like, the malice of the. And being like a thinking agent. That is kind of evil in the movie. Like, the movie does present it that way. But I think it plays just a fine enough line going back and forth between that and it being an animal. Be doing animal things. Like, it's. At least in this first movie, it is just under the line of like, okay, well, that's clearly an evil agent being evil in this one. It's like it might be being evil or it might be just like a really weird hungry shark. You know what I mean? Like a rabid shark. If that were to exist. [00:21:02] Speaker B: Oh, my God. Can sharks get rabies? [00:21:04] Speaker A: I would assume not, but why not? I can't. I don't think rabies exists in sea creatures. I think it's a mammalian disease. [00:21:13] Speaker B: Fair enough. I believe I don't really know that much about rabies. [00:21:15] Speaker A: I don't either. I think it's a mammalian. I could be wrong, but I don't think things that aren't mammals can get it. But I don't know that for sure. [00:21:22] Speaker B: Okay, so a whale. [00:21:24] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. But that being said, I like. And so I think the movie does capture that a little bit. It may be tough if you were comparing it to the book. If you had read the book before seeing the movie, which it sounds like you may have. It's hard to tell from your note. I could see in comparison feeling not that way. But having just seen the movie only as a child and growing up a bunch of times I did have that kind of sense of awe of nature watching the movie. Take that for what it's worth. [00:21:54] Speaker B: As a complete aside, one of the best conversations I've had with friends was about how there needs to be a Jaws opera or Japra if you will. [00:22:03] Speaker A: I. I am surprised we've never gotten a Jaws musical. You didn't mean there wasn't one? [00:22:07] Speaker B: I don't know. [00:22:08] Speaker A: I didn't see anything because it seems ready made. [00:22:12] Speaker B: That does seem right. [00:22:13] Speaker A: There's not that many like sets. Like you could get away with fairly few sets and fairly minimal sets and you could do some interesting stuff. I think you could. [00:22:22] Speaker B: You could have some pretty good numbers. [00:22:23] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. There's definitely. There's like big moments you can imagine being musical numbers and stuff. And. And you could play into the camp like I don't know. That could be. I could see it or an opera. I guess I'm not. I just. I'm not as well versed in opera to know like you know how that would work. But. Or to imagine it I guess. But I can imagine a jaw is [00:22:45] Speaker B: music but a jaw is musical. [00:22:46] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:22:47] Speaker B: Our next comment is from justice for Kevins AKA Nathan who decided to go for bat for the Kevin. Go to bat for the Kevins of the world after our Coyote Ugly episode. [00:22:59] Speaker A: And I. I was wondering what this is a reference to. [00:23:02] Speaker B: I said that it was not a good leading man name. [00:23:05] Speaker A: Gotcha. [00:23:06] Speaker B: Which I stand by. [00:23:07] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:23:09] Speaker B: But Nathan is here. [00:23:11] Speaker A: Decidedly not. A Kevin is out here to defend. [00:23:13] Speaker B: Defend Kevin's honor. All right. And justice for Kevin's said I tried really hard to like Jaws the movie this time around. And I will say having the God awful book to compare it to really helps its case. In the end though, the movie just doesn't do much for me. I like the stuff on the orca. I think the physical interaction while they compare scars might even outshine the monologue. The guys seem so naturally physical as they roughhouse and de stress from shark hunting. It's so well shot and played by the actors. It's not that the performances are bad before the orca either. It's the shark attack scenes in the first half the. That just do absolutely nothing for me. Maybe it's just fatigue from a million copycats, but the attack scenes don't scare me, nor do they work to make me anxious about the impending attack before it happens. [00:24:08] Speaker A: That's interesting because it works for me. Even having seen it a million times and seen a million movies other times, it's still. I still find in particular little moments in all of them. But in particular the. The opening scene. I still find that scene difficult to watch. The way her breathing and stuff during that scene and the way she's, like, panicking, I still find incredibly, like, intense and upsetting and, like. [00:24:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:24:35] Speaker A: And it evokes, like, a lot of, like, empathetic, like, fear in me. I don't know. Like. Yeah, I don't know. I find it still very effective. [00:24:45] Speaker B: But I love the interaction of Brody and Hooper as they become genuine friends. And scenes like the shark autopsy make the viewer gradually grow to know and like them. This is why the book fails, because even when we aren't actively reading about the affair, it poisons the dynamic once on the orca because we have to wonder if the truth is going to come out. Yeah, it sort of never does since they never make it back to shore after Hooper lies about Daisy. He says that she wants to try out men but chickened out, which is in and of itself a gross lie. That makes me like him way less. And I already didn't like him. Yeah. The book works a lot to portray how unwelcoming the town is to outsiders, but it seems really unwelcoming, even to locals, if they aren't the right race. [00:25:31] Speaker A: Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:25:34] Speaker B: I can't tell how aware of this the book is. I kind of had the same issue. Like, I wasn't sure, like, how aware Peter Benchley was of the racial things that he was writing in the book. [00:25:48] Speaker A: I was thinking about that. It's one thing, too. It would be interesting if the point of the book book was that the panic or the fear about the shark was, like, overblown or bad. Or that the anthropomorphizing of the shark is, like, this evil, mindless killer was, like, the wrong way to view it, which is clearly not the case. You could actually make an interesting point that the inclusion of, like, them talking about being scared of, like, this black serial killer guy and stuff is racial commentary echoing. Yes, the, like, racial fears and stuff echoing like, this un. Like this. The fears of, like, the shark that are not, you know, like, the way we kind of anthropomorphize and Project all of these strange fears onto this shark. These people in this white town are doing the same thing to, like, black people. Yes, you could, but it, but the fact that the book is not that [00:26:42] Speaker B: they were correct to be afraid of [00:26:44] Speaker A: the shark and, and that the shark is like a, like a murderous, like, rampaging killer makes it clear that that's not what he's doing there. Probably. So it does make it more complicated. [00:26:56] Speaker B: It's very clearly a town where black people only exist in the service class. And the only specific story we get is about the black serial rapist who appears to have attacked white women. I would say that the book is setting up how racist things are, but it mentions how they drove a pair of Hispanic brothers out of town and how the representation for other representatives races on the town council is the white guy in town with the darkest skin. Neither of these are discussed with any sort of racial lens. So it seems like the book is unaware of the underlying issue. [00:27:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know. I haven't read the book, so I can't really comment. But one thing I was gonna say was that when you said it's very clearly a town where black people only exist in the service class, I mean, this book was written in the 70s. That was most towns in America. Unfortunately, a lot of towns in America, black people only existed in low paying service. [00:27:49] Speaker B: Yes. And particularly a, like a small town and a poor town. [00:27:54] Speaker A: But yeah. Yeah. It is like if. [00:27:56] Speaker B: If the white people are poor. [00:27:58] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:27:58] Speaker B: The non white people are more poor. [00:28:01] Speaker A: Yes. And. And. Yeah. Yeah. And obviously during this time period, there were towns and places and areas within the country where black people were upwardly mobile and doing stuff. But lots of towns in America and lots of places black people were relegated to. [00:28:14] Speaker B: Yes. [00:28:15] Speaker A: Service roles and stuff like that. And still are in a lot of places. You know, like. Yeah. [00:28:20] Speaker B: All right. Over on Facebook, we had six votes for the movie and zero for the book. Sarah said movie, all caps, five exclamation marks. [00:28:33] Speaker A: Nice and short and simple. [00:28:36] Speaker B: Ian said the book didn't make me scared of taking a bath when I was six. Movie, hands down, the Indianapolis monologue alone would put the movie in the all time top 50. Aurelio said the movie was way better. I hated all the characters in the book. Brody was an insecure asshole, the wife was a cheater, and Hooper was an arrogant prick. Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. And James said movie 100%. Over on Instagram, we had six votes for the movie, one for the book, and one listener who couldn't decide I believe that book vote in our poll though, it was Tim Wahoo, so that gets an asterisk. Tim Wahoo said Katie is team movie and I was this time. Yes, correct. [00:29:22] Speaker A: That's accurate. Relaying the events that transpired, [00:29:28] Speaker B: Nathan said, back when I was in college, I binged house. And aside from being convinced that it's never Lupus, I remember precisely one thing, and that is the credit for a production company when somebody said, that's some bad hat, Harry. [00:29:43] Speaker A: Oh my goodness. Yeah, I do remember that now. [00:29:47] Speaker B: Yeah. I was last weekend years old when I realized where that quote comes from. That was a fun piece of knowledge until I realized the production company in question was Bryan Singer's. [00:29:58] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:29:58] Speaker B: And it made me depressed again because we can have. We can't have any happiness in our world today. [00:30:03] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's fair. Yeah. No, I. So I do, as soon as I read that I was like, oh yeah, I do remember that production company. I didn't watch a ton of House, but I watched a little bit and I assume, I recognize. [00:30:14] Speaker B: Feel like we all watched a little [00:30:15] Speaker A: bit of House and I'm sure I recognized it from other stuff, but I didn't. Like I'd forgotten about it. So when we watched the movie this time, didn't even register. Didn't. [00:30:25] Speaker B: I didn't either. I, when I read that comment, I had to go look for the clip from the movie. [00:30:29] Speaker A: Yeah. But as soon as I read that I was like, oh yeah, I do remember that production company. Stinger. [00:30:33] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:30:33] Speaker A: Yeah, that's funny. [00:30:36] Speaker B: On threads, we had two votes for the movie and one for the book. Gumbyokay234 said, I voted for the film while PB gets credit for the idea. Spielberg brought so much more humanity to the characters. [00:30:52] Speaker A: Not just Spielberg, his old co writers and stuff. But yes, I, I just, I like to point that out because people like to squash film and I do it myself. I'm guilty of it myself. But it's something I try to be cognizant of is as somebody who does direct things, not to take all of the credit for everything that goes on in a production. So many people are involved and do so many things. And in particular Carl Gottlieb, one of the screenwriters, came in as a character writer to help lighten up the characters and stuff like that. [00:31:24] Speaker B: And particularly in regards to characters, the performances as well. [00:31:28] Speaker A: That as well. Yes, their performances. And even on top of that, the editor we talked about in the prequel, the woman who edited the film, they talked about some of the Scenes were supposed to be presented as dramatic. She re edited them to be more comical and vice versa. And so a lot of how you interpret characters. So much of how you interpret characters comes from the edit. Yeah, it's crazy. [00:31:48] Speaker B: Yeah. Brought so much more humanity to the characters, not to mention the realistic portrayal of small town politics. Robert Shaw as Quint was positively electric. And even after having seen this movie a dozen times, I was still enraptured by the Indianapolis monologue on blue sky. We didn't have any votes per se, but we do have a comment from Nathan who said being an apparently out lesbian in 1975 is enough to make Daisy a badass. So discussing pot with a sheriff in his home is just icing on the cake. Daisy is the best character in either version of the story. [00:32:26] Speaker A: Fair enough. [00:32:28] Speaker B: I agree. I want the Daisy Wicker story. I want to know more about her. And finally, on Goodreads, we had one vote for the movie, zero for the book. And Mikko said, I really did not like any of the characters in the book. They all just feel like slightly different kinds of assholes. The movie thankfully fixes this. Even some of the introductory lines in the movie, like Brody's, they're in the [00:32:59] Speaker A: yard not too far from the car. He doesn't say it exactly like that, but. [00:33:03] Speaker B: Or Hooper's, they're all gonna die. Make me like these characters immediately more than the entire book. Chapter 8 really sucked. Any goodwill I had towards the book. I didn't really like the characters before, but the book was at least jogging along. But then the Ellen Hooper conversation happened and mentally it felt like crashing into a wall. And Katie didn't even mention the imagined genital displaying car crash or the chicken. Fucking. [00:33:32] Speaker A: Pardon me. What? [00:33:33] Speaker B: Hang on. I have not read a worst chapter in a long time. The movie wins this hands down. The characters are likable, so you root for them. The extraneous side plots have been cut and the tension is so much more palpable. Okay, so I had to go back and look for both of those. [00:33:50] Speaker A: I was like part of me. What? [00:33:51] Speaker B: I. I don't know if it was more that I was distracted by everything else going on in that conversation or if my mind just protected me from remembering both of these things. But I did find what Miko is talking about and I had to read it. So now you have to hear digital displaying car crash. [00:34:11] Speaker A: So fascinating. [00:34:13] Speaker B: So first off, the chicken thing. [00:34:15] Speaker A: Okay, that is the thing I'm less interested in. I. That I can imagine. [00:34:22] Speaker B: She looked down at her half eaten chicken and she laughed. Remember, they're at a restaurant. A restaurant far away from town. So they can have an affair. What's funny? He asked. I was just wondering, she said, and her laughter built. I was just wondering if. Oh Lord, I'm getting a pain in my side. If chickens have. Of course, said Hooper. But talk about a tidy. They laughed together, and when the laughter faded, Ellen impulsively said, let's make a fantasy. So they talk about chicken. Pussy, basically. [00:34:56] Speaker A: Okay, great. [00:34:58] Speaker B: Which is like, sure. [00:35:00] Speaker A: Famously. Don't they have a cloaca? I think, Right? That's what birds have. [00:35:04] Speaker B: I think so, yeah. [00:35:06] Speaker A: But whatever. [00:35:07] Speaker B: Okay, now the car thing. [00:35:09] Speaker A: Yeah, this one. I'm truly fascinated. [00:35:14] Speaker B: All right, let me figure out where to start. Here. There must be motels between here and Montauk. Or even better, between here and Orient Point. Fair enough. Even if there's not, there's always the car in broad daylight. You do have wild fantasies. In fantasies, anything is possible. Alright, that's settled. So what would you do? I think we should proceed chronologically. First of all, we leave here in one car. Probably mine, because it's least known. And we'd come back later to pick up yours. Okay. Then while we were driving along. No, even before that. Before we left here. I'd send you into the ladies room and tell you to take off your panties. Why? So I could explore you while we're on the road. Just to keep the motors running. I see, she said, trying to seem matter of fact. She felt hot, flushed, and sensed that her mind was floating somewhere apart from her body. She was a third person listening to the conversation. She had to fight to keep from shifting on the leatherette bench. She wanted to squirm back and forth, to move her thighs up and down, but she was afraid of leaving a stain on the seat. Then said, hooper, while we were driving along, you might be sitting on my right hand and I'd be giving you a massage. Maybe I'd have my fly open. Maybe not though, because you might get ideas which would undoubtedly cause me to lose control and that would probably cause a massive accident that would leave us both dead. Ellen started to giggle again, imagining the sight of Hooper lying on the side of the road, stiff as a flagpole and herself lying next to him, her dress bunched up around her waist and her vagina yawning open, glistening wet for the world to see. [00:37:06] Speaker A: I was kind of like, thought it was like a funny beat at the end when it's like the punchline of, like, him laying there with his, like, erection in the air that's like, kind of funny. But then it went on. It got less funny. Like it. It. Because it gets like, horny in a way. Like the. The erection thing is like, funny, like as a punchline. The. The other part is just like horny in a way that's. [00:37:28] Speaker B: Anyway, the whole conversation is like that. Like the whole chapter. [00:37:31] Speaker A: Yeah, it just turns into like 50 Shades for a few minutes. Yeah. [00:37:35] Speaker B: Okay. [00:37:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Cool. [00:37:37] Speaker B: All right, so our winner this week, unsurprisingly, was the movie, with 23 votes to the Books 3, plus our three listeners who couldn't decide. [00:37:48] Speaker A: All right. Incredible stuff. Thank you all so much for all of your feedback. We love hearing what people have to say about stuff we talk about Now a little bit different this time we're only gonna have one preview segment and you'll see why as we get into it. But it's time now to learn a little bit about Contact. This morning's detection of an unidentified radio source from deep space can either be confirmed as nor denied. Whatever it is, it ain't local position. I checked into parametry. Somewhere in Lyra, I think. Can't be. It's only 26 light years away. I want all these people out of here. You're having sent this announcement all over the world may well constitute a breach of national security. This isn't a person to person call. [00:38:31] Speaker B: This may be an announcement to get our attention. [00:38:33] Speaker A: The president has called an emergency meeting. You know those interlaced frames that we thought were noise? This has structure. I'm going to recommend to the president that we militarize this project immediately. [00:38:40] Speaker B: There's no reason to believe that their intentions are hostile. [00:38:43] Speaker A: There's no proof of that. Contact is a 1997 film directed by Robert Zemeckis, known for Romancing the Stone, Back to the Future movies, who Framed Roger Rabbit, Forrest Gump, Castaway, the Polar Express, Beowulf, A Christmas Carol, Flight, the Witches, Pinocchio and others. It was written by James V. Hart, known for August Rush, the Francis Ford Coppola, Dracula, Muppet, Treasure island, and Hook. So a couple movies we've talked about in bonus episodes and non bonus episodes, otherwise. Yeah, and Michael Goldenberg, who wrote Peter Pan, the 2003 one, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and the Green Lantern movie. So not a great catalog of films, at least from script wise. Other than this one. The film stars Jodie Foster, Jenna Malone, Matthew McConaughey, David Morse, Tom Skerritt, James Woods, John Hurt, William Fichtner, Angela Bassett, Jake Busey and Rob Lowe. It has a 69% on Rotten Tomatoes, a 62 on Metacritic and a 7.5 out of 10 on IMDb. It was nominated for one Oscar for Best Sound. It was also nominated for at the Saturn Awards, which are the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Awards. It was nominated for Best Science Fiction Film, Best Director, Best Writer, Best Music, and then it won for Best Actress for Jodie Foster, Best Young Actor or Actress for Jenna Malone. [00:40:09] Speaker B: Nice. [00:40:09] Speaker A: It made she plays young Jodie Foster. It made $171 million against a budget of $90 million. So you're still probably wondering why are you talking about the movie and not the book? We'll get to it. Hold on. So the year Sagan came up with the idea for Contact, his close friend Linda Obst became a producer at Casablanca Filmworks and pitched the idea to the studio head there, who commissioned a development deal for the film. Sagan and Ann Druyan, who would be eventually become his wife, who's still alive. A very cool woman, at least as far as I know. I don't. I say that I haven't looked in to see if she became a transphobe or something. I don't think so. But knowing what I know about her and Carl Sagan, I would not imagine. But I don't know for sure. So I. I need to look that up. Sagan and Andrian finished the film treatment in November of 1980. Druyan said of it, quote, we hoped to write something that would be a fictional representation of what Contact would actually be like, that would convey something of the true grandeur of the universe, end quote. Peter Goober, great name for this guy for a thing that we'll get to here in a second. The head of the studio really liked the script, but he hired various screenwriters to rewrite it. New characters were added, including a Native American park ranger turned astronaut. He also suggested that they give Dr. Arroway an estranged teenage son, saying, quote, and this is the part that. Oof. He suggested giving Arroway an estranged teenage son, saying, quote, here was a woman consumed with the idea that there was something out there worth listening to, but the one thing she could never make contact with was her own child. To me, that's what the film had to be about, end quote. Sagan and Druian disagreed and did not use this idea. And holy shit, am I glad. I will say it is deeply ironic for him to suggest that as like the core theme of this story because this book is pretty deeply feminist. I'm like 150 pages in so much of it and so many times it is commenting on the plight of being a woman in science in this time period. It is very much about being like a career forward motivated woman who cares about this kind of thing and having to deal with the men in this field. And it's very funny to me that this producer was like, what if it was about how she can't connect with her kid though? [00:42:30] Speaker B: What if it was about how she's a bad mom? [00:42:32] Speaker A: Yeah, what if it was about how she's a bad mom? It's like, ah, fuck you man, fuck you. In 1982, Goober took the film to Warner Brothers when he left Casablanca Productions or whatever. And then the film's development stalled, leading to the book. Why don't they just speak English? Mathematics is the only truly universal language center. [00:42:55] Speaker B: Buried within the message itself is the key to decoding it. [00:43:00] Speaker A: Those look like engineering schematics, almost like blueprints. [00:43:02] Speaker B: It is our belief that the message contains instructions for building some kind of machine. [00:43:08] Speaker A: A machine. [00:43:09] Speaker B: It might turn out to be some kind of a transport. [00:43:12] Speaker A: Transport. [00:43:13] Speaker B: As development stalled, Sagan decided to rewrite Contact as a novel which would ultimately be published by Simon and Schuster in September of 1985. So unsurprisingly for anyone who knows who Carl Sagan is, he was a lifelong fan of science fiction. Reading sci fi and fantasy as a child inspired him to become an astronomer. But as an adult he, he preferred realistic stories that helped readers understand real science. He had already written quite a bit of nonfiction, but he set out to be just as educational with Contact, which is his only full work of published fiction. [00:43:53] Speaker A: Yes, and as I mentioned before, I have read a couple of his other books. I've read Demon Haunted World. I didn't realize this was his only non fiction, but that makes sense because again, he was primarily a fiction. Or this was his only fiction. He was primarily a nonfiction writer. [00:44:08] Speaker B: So in 1981 Simon and Schuster gave Sagan a 2 million dollar advance on the novel, which at the time was the largest ever made for a book that was not yet written. Within its first two years the novel sold 1.7 million copies and was a main selection of the Book of the Month Club. It won the 1986 Locust Award for Best First Novel and it placed 15th in the poll for the Locust Award for best science fiction novel. Physicist Kip Thorne gave Sagan ideas on the nature of wormholes while he was developing the outline of the novel. And another fun fact, the novel's protagonist, Eleanor Arroway, was named after Two people. Eleanor Roosevelt, who was a personal hero of Andrian, and Voltaire, whose last name was Arouet. [00:45:04] Speaker A: Yes. And on top of that, I had a note about that later, trying to find. Or I think. I think I had it. [00:45:10] Speaker B: Oh, you moved things around. [00:45:12] Speaker A: Yeah. But anyways, there was one other note that the arrow was also related to that. She would shoot through the galaxy like an arrow. Like, that was the other nice, like, reason for the name. [00:45:24] Speaker B: Well, then that brings us back to the movie. [00:45:27] Speaker A: Yes, it does. The fact is, you don't know what it does. It could be anything. [00:45:31] Speaker B: Nobody's saying this is dangerous. They're gonna build it. Who gets to go, though? [00:45:34] Speaker A: It's complicated. Ellie. [00:45:36] Speaker B: Who gets to go by doing this? [00:45:37] Speaker A: You're willing to risk your life. You're willing to give your life and die for this. Why? So that's why we did it this way. Because the. The movie, actually, it started as a movie and a movie script, then became a novel and then became a film again. So there was not really an easy way to do it. So we're like, I'll just do it all as one. That's fine. [00:45:56] Speaker B: A little bit different from. [00:45:57] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't think we've ever had that happen. [00:46:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:46:00] Speaker A: But it is interesting because it still fits. It's not a. It's not where. It's like a novelization of a movie that has been made. It is a full standalone novel that he wrote as a novel before the film came out, but it is based on a screenplay that he wrote to be a film. So back to the movie. Goober, who then left Warner Brothers for Sony Pictures, tried to purchase the rights for the film in 1989, but Warner Brothers refused the rights. Linda Obst, Sagan's old producer friend, who had initially kicked this whole thing off back in the late 70s, was then hired as an executive at Warner Brothers and fast tracked the film's production because obviously she was like, hey, we should make this movie. Roland Joffe, known for the Killing Fields, the Mission, Fat man and Little Boy, City of Joy, and the star, Scarlet Letter, the one from like, 94 or whatever, was hired to direct with. I think it's got Demi Moore in it. Yeah, yeah. Was hired to direct with a screenplay from James Hart, the guy who is the accredited screenwriter for the film. Joffe would eventually drop out, and Zemeckis was asked to direct the film, but he refused because he didn't like the ending, saying, quote, the ending of the script had the sky open up and these angelic aliens putting on A light show. End quote. That's the extent of the quote here. There may have been another thing, but he didn't like the ending, so he refused. This is fascinating. I had no idea about this. In December of 1993, Warner Brothers hired George Miller to direct and the film entered pre production. I'm a little. Look, I like this version. It's been a long time since I've seen it. I like this version. Would have been fascinated to see a George Miller version of this movie. This was still back when Zemeckis had the sauce. Still, he hadn't lost it all. So he's still making good movies. Back in. I think Castaway might have been his last good movie. I don't know. I have to go look. But he could still make good movies. And this one, I think is a good movie from my memory. But man, a George Miller version of this would have been fast. Really interesting. Julia Roberts expressed. Expressed interest in the role of Ellie. And George Miller also considered Uma Thurman before he ultimately cast Jodie Foster in the role. Another version of Goldenberg's script, including the aliens, included the aliens creating a wormhole that transported the entire Earth to the center of the galaxy is not what happens in the movie or the book. Supposedly, George Miller asked Goldenberg to rewrite the script and make the Pope a key supporting character at one point. [00:48:16] Speaker B: Like. Like the Pope. [00:48:18] Speaker A: Yep. Which. The. The. The book and the movie. And. And I imagine the book. I haven't gotten to this point yet. They've just. They haven't gotten to like, all the fallout necessarily. But a big part of this is science and religion. Like, that is kind of what this is about. Like, and what. What happens with religion when we discover a. Communicate a message from. [00:48:39] Speaker B: Right. [00:48:40] Speaker A: Aliens somewhere else in the galaxy. So a key supporting character. I just imagine he would be involved with kind of handling the religious aftermath of all of this going on. [00:48:52] Speaker B: Hopefully a good Pope. [00:48:54] Speaker A: Yeah. Because, I mean, there is. And we'll get to it. There is one of the main characters. Matthew McConaughey's character is, I think, a theologian. So I don't know if that would have been the role that the Pope would have been in or what. But I have no idea. Which would have been crazy because. Because we'll get to it. But I. I'm I'm so excited for you to see this movie for the. I am so excited to watch it again and see how it is and just. Oh, I'm so. I'm so excited for this. Ultimately, Warner Brothers fired George Miller blaming delayed start dates, budget concerns, and Miller's insistence that the script needed to be rewritten a ton more. And they're like, no, we just want to make this movie. So they fired George Miller. And Zemeckis then stepped in and agreed to direct, assuming Warner Brothers gave him complete control over the film and final cut privilege, which he got. Zemeckis cast McConaughey in the film. Despite his rare blood cancer diagnosis in 1994, Carl Sagan remained involved with the production, which included him putting on a little academic symposium for the cast and crew, where he gave them a history of astronomy kind of primer and that sort of thing. Basically, he's given them all some background information so that they had a little bit better understanding of what the heck they were talking about in filming and all that sort of stuff. So the film actually did shoot at the Very Large Array in New Mexico, which is where Ellie works in the book, which is a real, obviously satellite or radio telescope array in New Mexico that does do seti, which is the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Producer Steve Starkey said, quote, it is a working facility. So in order for us to accomplish shots for the movie, we had to negotiate with the National Science foundation for dish control in order to move the dishes in the direction we needed to affect the most dramatic shot for the story. End quote. After that initial few weeks of on location shooting in New Mexico and Arizona, the film moved production to Warner Hollywood studios to complete filming, and the rest of the film was shot in Studios. More than 25 CNN news reporters have roles in the film, including Larry King and the show Crossfire. And Druyan actually has a brief cameo on Crossfire as herself debating Rob Lowe's character, who's like a religious wacko, I believe so. Filming briefly paused on December 20, 1996, which is the day that Carl Sagan passed away. And at the news of his passing, they had a little. They paused for the day and didn't film. Eight different VFX companies worked on the film, including Sony Pictures, imageworks, Weta Digital and Industrial Light and Magic. So all the heavy hitters in the VFX world, at least at that time. Weta Digital in particular, was responsible for the wormhole sequence, which drew inspiration from 2001 A Space Odyssey, which you will recognize when you watch that part of the scene or that part of the movie. This is fascinating. Also sucks, but is fascinating. I'll explain why it sucks in the main episode, but footage of Bill Clinton discussing a Martian meteorite fragment was used in the film, along with some editing tricks and some digital stuff, some digital effects to make it appear as though Clinton was talking about discovering alien life. Zemeckis said, quote, I swear to God, it was like it was scripted for this movie when he said the line, we will continue to listen closely to what it has to say. I almost died. I stood there with my mouth hanging open, end quote. And so, yeah, there are moments where you see Clinton talking about this. I'll talk about why that's disappointing, in my opinion, when we get to the. [00:52:16] Speaker B: Okay. [00:52:18] Speaker A: The film. Because he's not president in the book. [00:52:21] Speaker B: Oh, okay. [00:52:22] Speaker A: Somebody else is. [00:52:24] Speaker B: All right. [00:52:26] Speaker A: It's a woman. In the book, the president is a woman. They were trying to be. [00:52:30] Speaker B: They were trying to be hopeful. [00:52:32] Speaker A: And they were like, it's a woman is the president. And for the movie, they decided to make it. To actually place it in, like, which the book is placed in the time period it's set and there are real people in it, but the President is a fictional person. It takes place slightly. I think the book takes place a few years ahead of the current time they were writing in the future. Whereas the movie takes place contemporaneously with when the film was shot. The opening shot of the film, a long zoom out from Earth. Tracking the journey of radio signals leaving planet Earth was the longest continuous CGI sequence in live action film at that time. And up until the day after tomorrow in 2004. We will talk. I had some notes about the medicine cabinet shot, but we will talk about that when we watch the movie and you have reference for what we're talking about because it's a very famous, very cool shot shot that is, like, mind blowing. And we'll talk a little bit about how it's done. I'm not. It's. It's. It's impossible to explain how it was done verbally, so you have to kind of just watch videos about how they did it. But it is really, really cool. Francis Ford Coppola actually sued Warner Brothers and Carl Sagan, claiming that Contact, or the Estate of Carl Sagan, claiming that Contact was based on a story that he and Sagan had developed for an unproduced produced television special in 1997, or, sorry, 1975, called First Contact. Ultimately, that suit was dismissed because Coppola took too long to bring the suit. They basically. So they actually didn't judge it on the merits of whether or not. Yeah, it was just a thing of, like, you took way too long to bring this suit if you thought it was Copyright infringement. You should have brought this suit like 10, 15 years ago or whatever. Why'd you wait around so long? We're dismissing this, so I don't know how justified that was. It seems they were working. I mean, I assume it's true that they were working on this television show together called First Contact. It doesn't seem that he was lying about that. Now whether how much of that inspired the book and the movie, who knows? But I assume Coppola knows and some other people probably. I thought this was interesting. Andrewian has denied that Jill Tarter, who was the head of Project Phoenix at seti. And Project Phoenix is the real world equivalent of Project Argus in the book, which is the Search for Extraterrestrial is the project at the Very Large Array that was searching for extraterrestrial life. In the book it's called Project Argus. In real life it was called Project Phoenix. Or it might still be called Project Phoenix. I don't know. Andrian has denied that that woman was the inspiration for the character of Ellie Arroway. It is interesting because again, she was basically in the exact role that Ellie is in in the book and it wasn't a woman, which is, you know, seems like a pretty interesting coincidence. Foster, however, did meet with Tarter to research her role. And Tarter was a story consultant and advised on how to showcase the struggles of a woman scientist in the era. There's the note about Ellie's full name which we already talked about. Getting to some indb. Trivia facts. Carl Sagan was to have a cameo as a member of the committee selecting an occupant for the machine, which we'll get to in the movie, obviously. But he did unfortunately die before the scene was filmed, which seems like you guys could have. You guys. He had cancer. You guys. [00:55:47] Speaker B: Yeah, you guys should have like, could [00:55:49] Speaker A: have like moved that up. [00:55:50] Speaker B: Yeah, moved that up in the schedule [00:55:52] Speaker A: or, or gotten him into a different set. Seems very strange that they didn't. Weren't able to make that happen. I guess maybe it could be a thing where by the time they were filming he was so ill that he just couldn't. I have no idea. William Fichner's character, who is a blind astrophysicist with enhanced hearing, is named Kent Clark, which was a play on Superman's alter ego, Clark Kent. And that character is also based on real life. Blind SETI scientist Kent Cullors. In 2011, Jodie Foster was part of a group of private donors that saved SETI's telescope array in California. So not the ones from the movie, a different telescope array, but I assume because of her experience on this movie, she donated to that. So that telescope array wasn't shut down. There's a scene in the movie where you see a bunch of. There's an encampment of crazies outside the. They're not crazy in a sense, it's just people. They are crazy in their own way. But there's an encampment of people outside the telescope array once it is revealed that they have got. Received the Earth has received a message from aliens. There's a whole encampment forms outside of religious people and all kinds of stuff. But on One of the RVs in this scene, there's a banner that says UFO Abduction Insurance. And apparently that was a banner from a real company. And then Warner Brothers paid them to use it in the movie. Like, there was a real insurance company that had a banner for UFO and abduction insurance for that scene. The filmmakers put out a call for UFO enthusiasts. And supposedly most of the extras in that scene brought their own wardrobe and props and everything. And it's just like actual, like, UFO heads. Like, nice. Yeah. In the movie, this was the first time that Jodie Foster had ever worked with blue screen technology. And she said of it, quote, it was a blue room, blue walls, blue roof. It was just blue, blue, blue. It was really tough. End quote. Which is not a lot of movie. It's mainly the end part where she's in the. Yeah, the machine. But most of the movie is filmed, like, in actual locations and stuff. Eleanor argues for funds at the boardroom at one point in the movie, wearing Carl Sagan's trademark turtleneck and beige suit, which I thought was a fun little Easter egg in an art imitating life kind of way. Jodie Foster is very publicly an atheist and Matthew McConaughey is very publicly Christian. And that is their characters in the movie. Jodie Foster is an atheist and Matthew McConaughey or Ellie is an atheist and whatever. I can't. Palmer or something like that. Can't remember his character's name. I don't know if he's Christian, but he's like a theologian, like I said. According to IMDb trivia, Peter Jackson did some visual effects for this movie, repaying a favor to Robert Zemeckis, who was a producer on the Frighteners. Again, Weta Digital worked on it, so I don't. Maybe he was involved with them somehow because Weta Digital's out of New Zealand. So getting to some reviews, critic James Bertinelli Berardinelli said that Contact is, quote, one of 1997's finest motion pictures and is a forceful reminder that Hollywood is still capable of making magic. He likened its awe and spectacle to 2001 A Space Odyssey, adding, quote, if Contact falls short in any area, it's an inability to fully develop all of its many subplots. End quote. Mick LaSalle for the San Francisco Chronicle largely enjoyed the first 90 minutes of contact, but felt that Zemeckis was too obs with visual effects rather than cohesive storytelling for the pivotal climax. Rita Kempley for the Washington Post did not like the premise, which she described as, quote, a preachy debate between sanctity and science. End quote. Don't it's been a long time since I've seen this movie. I don't know if I would call it preachy, but my memory is that it's pretty. Like, I don't know, figure it out, make it up, do whatever, figure it out yourself. But yeah. And then finally, Roger Ebert gave Contact three and a half out of four stars and wrote, quote, it tells the smartest and most absorbing story about extraterrestrial intelligence since Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Movies like Contact help explain why movies like Independence Day leave me feeling empty and unsatisfied. End quote. In 2011, Ebert added contact to his Great Movies collection. So. Oh, and then finally, Keith Turin for the Los Angeles Times said Contact carried a more philosophical portrait of the science fiction genre than did other films, but would still satisfy the cravings of the general public who simply want to be entertaining. End quote. As always, you can do us a favor by heading over to Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Goodreads, any of those places interact. We'd love to hear what you have to say about the movies we watch. Very interested to see what people have to say about Contact. Very interested to see what I have to say about Contact. We'll talk about that in a second. You can also help us out by dropping us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen to our show and Support us at Patreon.com ThisFilmIsLit Katie where can people watch Contact? [01:00:34] Speaker B: Well, as always, you can check with your local library, or if you still have a local video rental store, you can check with them. [01:00:41] Speaker A: I think it's good. Good chance your library might have this one. [01:00:44] Speaker B: Otherwise you can stream this with a subscription to the Roku Channel, which I think it's free. [01:00:50] Speaker A: Maybe I could be. [01:00:51] Speaker B: Maybe. I'm not sure. [01:00:52] Speaker A: It might be free. [01:00:53] Speaker B: Or you can rent it for around four bucks from Prime Video, Apple TV, YouTube or Fandango at home. [01:01:00] Speaker A: Yeah. So as I said, I'm very excited to watch this. I'm excited for you to see it. But it used to be a movie I really enjoyed. I have not watched it in like 15 years at least. What I'm most excited about is to finally watch it and be able to like think about what it's actually about. Because it's a very like 2001 and stuff like that. This is a very heady science fiction that is about themes. Like it is about science and religion and all this kind of stuff and relationships and blah blah, blah. It's about like lots of things. Things and I'm very interested to see because as a kid I just enjoyed watching it because it's like a really cool like sci fi kind of a thriller at times. Like, it's like puzzle solving, like trying to figure out this message. Like this is really interesting, compelling story just as a narrative. And that's how I watched it every single time I've seen this movie. So I'm very excited to finally watch it and actually like digest and talk about and think about what thematically what it's saying and also to compare that to the book. Because I would not be surprised if the book is saying something a little bit thematically different than what the movie is saying. Because Carl Sagan and Andrew and very atheist, very science minded, very what, you know, skeptical, rational people. Rob Zemeckis, I don't think as much he's. He's a little more wooey, kind of like, you know, whatever. And so I'm interested to see how those compare. I'm very, very, very interested to see that and also to see how it holds up as a movie. Yeah, because like I said, one of my favorite movies for a long time. So that's gonna do it for this prequel. Come back in one week's time, we're talking about contact. Until that time, guys, gals, not battery pals. [01:02:42] Speaker B: And everybody else keep reading books, keep [01:02:44] Speaker A: watching movies and keep being awesome. Sam.