Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Speaker A: On this week's prequel episode, we follow up on our Coyote Ugly listener polls and preview Jaws.
Hello and welcome back to. This film is like the pockets. We talk about movies that are based on books. It's a prequel episode we got. We don't have a ton of feedback, but boy, do we have a lot of previewing to do for Jaws. Everything I researched was interesting.
[00:00:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:00:34] Speaker A: And it's one of the most well documented films of all time. So I have a lot of notes, you have a lot of notes about the book. So we're going to jump right in and 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 do have our Academy Award winning patrons and they are. Amanda Nicole Goble, Harpo Rat, Nathan Mathilde Cottonwood, Steve Ben Wilcox, Teresa Schwartz, Ian from Wine Country, Kelly Napier Gratch Justgratch. Shelby says it's fine. I didn't need a real trailer anyway. And that darn skag. Thank you all very much for your continued support. Truly appreciate it. Katie. Let's see what people had to say about Coyote Ugly.
Yeah, well, you know, that's just like your opinion.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: Man on patreon. We had 4 votes for the movie and 0 for the article.
And we had one comment from Charlene who said, love this movie. I didn't have time to rewatch, but there absolutely is a line warning Violet not to accidentally serve her beer spittoon to a customer. I suppose it's possible streamers have a different edit where it was cut, but more likely you just missed it while taking notes.
[00:01:51] Speaker A: If there absolutely is a line, then we just missed it because we watched the same streaming version.
So when I was saying that, I thought I remembered it the first time we watched it.
We watched the same version on Amazon this time. So it wasn't there the first time and not here this time. So I think we just missed it.
[00:02:07] Speaker B: And speaking of lines, I just had to shout out one of my favorites from the beginning of the shopping scene. Sorry I'm late. Al and I had a fight and then we made up twice.
Like so much of the movie, it's a cliche, the euphemism itself, the in case you missed it was a euphemism punchline. But the way the actress says twice just kills me.
[00:02:29] Speaker A: It is good. It is good. I agree.
[00:02:31] Speaker B: Over on Facebook, we didn't exactly get anybody coming down on one side or the other.
[00:02:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:38] Speaker B: But we got.
[00:02:39] Speaker A: Not really.
[00:02:39] Speaker B: Yeah, not really. But we got a couple of comments.
The first one from Kat who said. Who told Melanie Lynskey we talk like that. Thank God for. For Yellowjackets fixing New Jersey's rep. I didn't even like clock really when she was doing an accent.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: I knew she was doing.
[00:02:58] Speaker B: Yeah, I knew she was doing an accent.
[00:03:00] Speaker A: But like I don't know where Melanie Lynskey's from. And I don't know enough people from Jersey to.
[00:03:04] Speaker B: That's also true.
[00:03:05] Speaker A: To know what they're saying.
[00:03:05] Speaker B: Then I couldn't stop thinking about how she was the only one with an accent.
[00:03:09] Speaker A: That is true.
[00:03:10] Speaker B: Despite three of the characters being from New Jersey.
[00:03:13] Speaker A: I think occasionally.
Oh my God. John.
What was his name?
[00:03:21] Speaker B: John Goodman.
[00:03:21] Speaker A: Goodman. I kind of want to say John Hurt for some reason. John Goodman, I think occasionally throws a little bit on a few words here and there. But yeah, Piper Barabo doesn't at all.
[00:03:32] Speaker B: No. She don't know. No, no.
And our other comment was from Ian who said. I remember quite enjoying it when it came out, but as a 19 year old dude into women, it wasn't nearly as horny a movie as I'd been expecting.
[00:03:46] Speaker A: Even as a 19 year old you could cl.
It wasn't for.
[00:03:49] Speaker B: You gotta love it when the marketing team goes in a whole different direction than the director.
[00:03:55] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. They very clearly were like, well, the only way to market this movie is.
[00:04:01] Speaker B: Is the horny movie.
[00:04:02] Speaker A: Horny movie Horny. Yeah.
[00:04:03] Speaker B: That makes me think of Jennifer's body.
[00:04:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:08] Speaker B: Like another movie that got marketed as horny movie horny.
[00:04:11] Speaker A: I will say I'm not even sure how you would market this movie other than that. I'm not saying you couldn't. It's just. It would be very difficult to market this movie for what it is. I think yes would be my argument. I guess it's like very. Not impossible, but just very difficult. But yeah, it's definitely.
[00:04:32] Speaker B: I mean I would have to go back and look at exactly what the.
[00:04:37] Speaker A: Like I would have to. That's fair. I'm also.
[00:04:39] Speaker B: I don't remember because I have no idea.
[00:04:42] Speaker A: I watched some of the one when I. For the trailer but it wasn't. Or like for the prequel episode. But I.
I don't remember actually much about it.
[00:04:49] Speaker B: I feel like my instinct would be more to market it as like a straight like rom com.
[00:04:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:55] Speaker B: Like include some of the stuff of her working at the bar, but not make it as much of a focus.
[00:05:00] Speaker A: Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. It's a tough task, that's for sure,
[00:05:03] Speaker B: because that's also, like, not exactly what the movie is.
[00:05:06] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It's like you kind of have to market it like you would mark it a musical, but they also aren't popular, so, like, you know what I mean?
Unless they have huge name recognition, you know, like. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I'm not sure how you would market this movie. That would be difficult.
[00:05:21] Speaker B: Over on Instagram, we had three votes for the movie, one for the.
[00:05:25] Speaker A: Sorry, real quick. It would be difficult to market it when it came out. I think it would be easy to market today as, like, a specific nostalgia.
Like, you could really lean into the style and the whatever in a way of like, as like a time capsule and as like a. A girl boss. Like, I think you could lean in and market it kind of more accurately to how we perceive it now, if you were selling it today.
But yeah, I think the issue is trying to make. You can't market it that way in 2000 because it's just like, it's not nostalgic or, you know, like. Yeah.
[00:06:01] Speaker B: Over on Instagram, we got three votes for the movie and one for the article that is with an asterisk on it because it was Tim Wahoo who always votes for the opposite of whatever I said.
[00:06:12] Speaker A: Except not this time.
[00:06:13] Speaker B: Well, he left a comment, but in the poll he voted for, we had two comments, one from Carrie, Shuckhart, or Shoe Cart. I'm not sure who said it was no contest. Definitely the movie.
[00:06:29] Speaker A: Agreed.
[00:06:30] Speaker B: And then Tim Wahoo said, movies are always better.
[00:06:34] Speaker A: Incorrect.
[00:06:34] Speaker B: And in. In this specific instance, the movie was better. So, sure, we agree.
Over on Threads, we didn't get any comments, but we did have one vote for the movie.
[00:06:46] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:06:48] Speaker B: And on Goodreads, we had zero votes for the movie, one for the article. Wow, Mikko and Mikko coming in hot.
[00:07:00] Speaker A: Said.
[00:07:01] Speaker B: Once again, I'm pondering how to properly compare a true story and its dramatization.
And this time there's so little actual material used from the article that it barely even matters. I agree with pretty much everything said on the episode. The movie's not bad. The plot is generic, it looks good, the SoundTrack is fun, etc. But it's still not a movie for me. And the secondhand embarrassment really got me.
[00:07:25] Speaker A: Interesting. That didn't get me at all in this movie, and I don't know why.
I guess it doesn't really. To be fair, that actually doesn't affect me much in media. It affects me a lot in Real life I have horrible secondhand embarrassment IR for like awkward situations and stuff like that. But in watching a movie I like don't care. It doesn't affect me at all.
[00:07:46] Speaker B: I mean I register it. But with like, with this one specifically one, it's a movie that I'm so used to that I like watched a lot growing up that like I don't care.
[00:07:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:57] Speaker B: But also I am so like want to view it as camp.
[00:08:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:02] Speaker B: I think that's the, that I like also don't care.
[00:08:04] Speaker A: I think that's it for me too is that I think again and also just genuinely doesn't really bother me. For instance, the episode of the Office. Every time Scott's Tots the Office, everybody talks about how cringy that is. And some people can't watch it. It just doesn't bother me at all.
[00:08:19] Speaker B: I just don't like that one. Cause it makes me sad.
[00:08:22] Speaker A: It is. Yeah. And that's kind of what people are talking about. But it is kind of awkward and there is some second embarrassment. But it just, I don't know, it doesn't affect me the way I think it does some people watching media. But again, it's crazy because it really does in real life. Like super.
I am hyper sensitive to like awkwardness in real life, social situations and stuff like that. But I don't. And I, but for instance, specifically with this movie, I agree with you that because it is so clearly camp or at least something, some flavor of camp that it doesn't remotely even, it doesn't even trigger the second hand embarrassment. Like I can at least understand what people are talking about in the Scott's Tots episode. In this I'm like, it doesn't even like trigger the set. I don't even really see it because it's like, well that's what the movie
[00:09:06] Speaker B: like definitely people have different like levels of tolerance for it and like different levels of what they recognize as secondhand embarrassment.
To me. Like we talked a lot about how this movie is like a musical.
[00:09:21] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:09:21] Speaker B: In the episode and I think that its use of that kind of like cringiness or secondhand embarrassment is very similar to a musical. Whereas like.
[00:09:30] Speaker A: Well, it's self aware.
[00:09:31] Speaker B: Yes, it's self aware. Some people can tolerate that.
[00:09:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:35] Speaker B: Some people love it. Some people don't like it at all and don't aren't going to go see a musical because they don't like that feeling.
[00:09:42] Speaker A: Yes, I agree. Yeah. And, but yes, that's another way it feels similar to musical where it feels like it's kind of winking at the audience the whole time, which when it starts winking at me, I then no longer feel secondhand embarrassment about it because I'm like, oh, they know what's going on here. So it's like they're like they're not embarrassed because they realize what they're doing and so it ends up making it. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, it's interesting.
[00:10:04] Speaker B: Mika went on to say the anecdotes in the article just felt more interesting and real. I'm probably in the clear minority with this one, but my vote goes to the book.
[00:10:14] Speaker A: There you go.
[00:10:16] Speaker B: So our winner this week was the movie. You were in the minority with that one, Nico, with eight votes to the articles. Two.
[00:10:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:25] Speaker B: With our asterisk for Tim Wahoo.
[00:10:27] Speaker A: Yeah. Yep, yep. If anybody has any late. I know we don't normally do this, but if you have any late feedback, I would love to hear other people's opinion on this. I understand that we shot ourselves in the foot by getting this episode out very late on a holiday weekend. So it was probably not the best situation for getting as much feedback as possible because we only had a day or two for people to get their feedback in and stuff like that. And again, having it drop over holiday, just all that stuff. I get it. But like I said, if you had feelings and you're like, oh, well, I missed the window or whatever, I would still love to hear your feelings on this movie and I would love to talk about them at some point. So if you have comments still, please drop them even, you know, on this and then we'll hopefully talk about them eventually. So.
All right, thank you all. That did comment. Really appreciate it.
Very timely considering the short window you had. We don't have a Learning things segment this week because, boy, do we have so much to learn about Jaws.
There is a creature alive today who has survived millions of years of evolution.
Without change, without passion, and without logic.
It lives to kill.
A mindless eating machine.
It will attack and devour anything.
It is as if God created the devil and gave him Jaws.
[00:12:02] Speaker B: Jaws is a 1974 thriller novel by American writer Peter Benchley.
The idea for the novel stemmed from a lifelong fascination with sharks, which Benchley had frequently encountered while fishing in Nantucket with his father growing up.
That interest grew after reading a news story in 1964 about Frank Mundus, that guy, a fisherman who caught a great white shark weighing 4,000, 550 pounds off the shore of Montauk, New York.
[00:12:36] Speaker A: Well, I will Talk more about that guy.
[00:12:38] Speaker B: Perfect.
[00:12:39] Speaker A: He's in my notes too.
[00:12:41] Speaker B: I'm. I'm guessing that we might have some overlapping information.
So, in 1971, Benchley was a struggling freelance writer.
During a meeting with Doubleday editor Thomas Congdon, Benchley pitched several non fiction ideas. But Congdon was more most interested in his idea for a novel about a shark terrorizing a beach resort.
So Congdon paid him $1,000 for 100 pages, approximately the first four chapters, followed by a $7,500 advance for. For the full manuscript.
[00:13:22] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:13:23] Speaker B: So Benchley started doing additional research for the novel and then, in a very relatable moment, procrastinated actually writing it until his agent reminded him that he would have to return the $7,500 advance if he didn't finish.
[00:13:42] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:13:43] Speaker B: His. So his hastily written first draft was rejected by Congdon, who, according to Wikipedia, didn't like its comedic to. Okay, I'm not really sure what exactly that means, but apparently the first draft had a comedic tone. Interesting following that.
[00:14:01] Speaker A: Very funny to hear because we'll talk about it in the movie notes, but that one of the main things that they did with a lot of the drafts of the script was to make it not comedic, but to add some levity.
[00:14:12] Speaker B: Some levity, yeah.
Following that, the redone manuscript took Benchley a year and a half to complete.
After various rewrites, revisions, and edits, he delivered his final draft in January of 1973.
A title had still not been decided on by the time the book was to go to press.
Reminiscing years later, Benchley estimated that around 125 ideas for a title had been raised during the book's creation, many of which he rejected for being, quote, melodramatic, weird, or pretentious.
Some of these include the Stillness in the Water.
[00:14:52] Speaker A: Too wordy.
[00:14:53] Speaker B: Leviathan Rising.
[00:14:56] Speaker A: Yeah, it's melodramatic.
[00:14:58] Speaker B: To me, that sounds more like a.
Oh, what's that guy's name with the eldritch horrors?
[00:15:07] Speaker A: Oh, H.P. lovecraft.
[00:15:08] Speaker B: Yeah, that sounds more like a Lovecraft thing to me than like a shark.
Jaws of Death.
[00:15:14] Speaker A: I mean, you're close.
[00:15:15] Speaker B: Close. And the Jaws of Leviathan.
[00:15:18] Speaker A: Yeah, Somebody finally came in and said, guys, less is more. Get that. Get the duh out of there. Just call it Facebook.
[00:15:24] Speaker B: Well, apparently. Apparently that was Benchley. In a 1995 interview, Benchley recalled a lunch meeting with Congdon, during which they finally settled on the novel's title.
Quote, we cannot agree on a word that we like, let alone a title that we like, in fact, the only word that even means anything that says anything is Jaws. Call the book Jaws. He said, what does it mean? I said, I don't know, but it's short, it fits on a jacket, and it may work. He said, okay, we'll call the thing Jaws.
[00:15:59] Speaker A: What do you mean, what does it mean? It's a book about a shark. Like, I just.
I feel like they were overthinking it and maybe, I don't know, read the book, but, like, I'm just thinking of the movie and I'm like, yeah, man, it's a book about a shark. It's got big mouthful of teeth. Jaws, like, right again, I get it that it's not.
[00:16:18] Speaker B: It seems obvious now, but Jaws was not Jaws yet.
[00:16:22] Speaker A: Yes, that's fair. That is fair. Like I said, it does seem obvious in retrospect, and I admit I'm doing a little bit of that. But also, like, when somebody would be like Jaws, you'd be like, what does it mean? Like, well, you know, like, a shark has a big jaws full of.
[00:16:34] Speaker B: But I mean, I think the point is probably more along the lines that it doesn't inherently communicate anything about a shark.
[00:16:41] Speaker A: Yes, I guess that's true. Yeah. Is that. It does. Yeah.
[00:16:43] Speaker B: Like, it could be about any. Any. Any jaw, really.
[00:16:46] Speaker A: Yes, that's true.
[00:16:48] Speaker B: So moving on to the COVID of the book.
For the COVID what Benchley wanted was an illustration of the town of Amity as seen through the jaws of a shark.
[00:17:02] Speaker A: Yeah, sounds cool.
[00:17:04] Speaker B: That. That image was ultimately vetoed for sexual overtones as it was compared by sales managers to vagina dentata, AKA a vagina
[00:17:17] Speaker A: with teeth, I guess a. Sideways. Because I'm imagining a shark's mouth.
[00:17:22] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:17:23] Speaker A: And seeing through it.
[00:17:24] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:17:24] Speaker A: And the way a Sharp's mouth. Shark's mouth is shaped, it would be more like horizontal. Yes. Because that's what I would imagine you.
[00:17:30] Speaker B: That's what I would imagine as well.
[00:17:32] Speaker A: Yeah. Which, again, not that it couldn't still be vaginal in some way, but it would be the wrong orientation. Not the general orientation that you. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, we're kind of have it tipped on.
[00:17:42] Speaker B: I mean, I don't know. I don't know what this thing looked like.
[00:17:45] Speaker A: I would have to see it, I guess. Yeah. It's not impossible that it. It.
That it evoked that, I guess. But.
[00:17:52] Speaker B: So eventually, artist Paul Bacon drew a cover with an enormous shark head, to which Doubleday design director Alex Godfrey suggested adding a swimmer quote to have a sense of disaster and a sense Of Scarlet.
[00:18:07] Speaker A: I mean. Yeah, that makes sense.
[00:18:08] Speaker B: So that was like the first, like prototype of the famous Jaws poster.
[00:18:15] Speaker A: Well, cover and then, I guess, cover and then poster.
[00:18:18] Speaker B: Yes, which we're getting to right now.
So Doubleday accepted Bacon's cover, but Phantom, who did the paperbacks. Phantom editor Oscar Diestel didn't like it and he assigned illustrator Roger Castell to do a different version for the paperback.
Castell used photos from shark exhibits at the American Museum of Natural History for reference. Although the main shark that he ended up using was not a great white, but a mako shark.
The oil on board painting Castell created for the COVID would eventually be reused by Universal Versal Pictures for the film posters and advertising.
So that's his version is the version that we recognize today.
[00:19:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:06] Speaker B: So if, if you go to the Wikipedia article for the novel.
Apparently. Yeah.
[00:19:13] Speaker A: Not great white.
[00:19:14] Speaker B: But if you go to the Wikipedia article for the novel, the main picture at the top is the hardcover version that Bacon did. And then if you scroll down more, you'll see like the far more famous Castell paperback version that got used for the movie.
[00:19:31] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah. The first one's. I. I kind of like the first one too.
[00:19:36] Speaker B: The first one is kind of like minimalist.
[00:19:38] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like all black. And then it's just like a swimmer kind of looks like they're floating in space almost. It's. It's different in an interesting way. That looks.
Oh, wait, okay, so maybe was that one the mako shark? Because that looks more.
I don't, I'm not. I'm pretending to be a shark expert here, but the, the image of the original cover, the black one to me looks less like a great white and more like a different type of shark.
[00:20:07] Speaker B: At least this is just my research revealed.
[00:20:12] Speaker A: And then the one that is the book, the paperback cover, that is the movie poster to me looks more like a great white.
Just based on my very cursory knowledge from having watched like Shark Week and stuff on Discovery back in the day.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: But I don't know, I just googled mako shark and it looks to me kind of similar to a great white.
[00:20:38] Speaker A: They are some. Yeah, yeah,
[00:20:41] Speaker B: yeah, they look pretty similar to me.
[00:20:44] Speaker A: Yeah, they do look pretty similar.
And actually the one on that original cover doesn't look like a mako shark. It looks almost more like a. Like a whale shark or something. Yeah, I guess that's what I was thinking, is that the one on that original cover looks one. It doesn't have its mouth open.
[00:20:59] Speaker B: Mm.
[00:21:00] Speaker A: And it looks almost more like one of those like bottom feeder sharks or something, you know what I mean?
[00:21:05] Speaker B: To me, it's not like as obviously a shark as the paperback version.
[00:21:10] Speaker A: It looks almost like a. Yeah, like a whale shark or something. Or something. It just looks way less threatening than the one that's on the movie poster and the paperback cover, which, because you can actually see teeth and stuff.
And it does look pretty similar. Yeah, I could see that being a mako shark, but it's.
It looks close to a great white. It looks closer to a great white than the original poster did. So
[00:21:36] Speaker B: that was the one that Castell did, was the one that ended up being used for the movie. And the original painting of the COVID that he did was either lost or stolen and has never been recovered. We don't know what happened to it.
So Benchley has said that neither he nor anyone else involved in Jah's conception initially realized the book's potential.
Congdon, however, sensed that the novel had prospects and he sent it to the Book of the Month Club and other like similar organizations. The Book of the Month Club ended up making it an A book, qualifying it for its main selection.
And Reader's Digest Condensed Books also selected it after removing the adult themes and language, which I guess is a Reader's Digest Condensed books theory.
[00:22:27] Speaker A: Yeah, I was like, is that what they do with books? I would have assumed they cut out
[00:22:31] Speaker B: like a.
I've never actually read a Reader's Digest condensed book.
[00:22:36] Speaker A: Feels like a crime against literature, to be fair. But I don't know.
[00:22:39] Speaker B: I mean, I think a lot of people would probably say that about Reader's Digest,
[00:22:46] Speaker A: but it's like those. There was a service that was doing that called like Blinkist or something that was like. I think they specifically mainly did it with nonfiction books, which is different, a little different at least, versus a fiction book. Because the whole purpose of a fiction book is the experience of reading it, whereas with a nonfiction book you're trying to get information out of it. But there was a service you could subscribe to that was like, here are 15 minute audio versions of the high points. It's like Spark notes for sure. Yeah.
[00:23:17] Speaker B: Upon the book's release, Jaws was a great success. The hardcover edition stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for 44 weeks. It peaked at number two behind Watership Down, a thing that we're never covering on here. I'm drawing the line. Watership down, selling a total of 125,000 copies.
The paperback version was even more successful, topping book charts worldwide. By the time the film Adaptation debuted, which was again, not very long after the book's publication. The novel had sold 5.5 million copies domestically.
Despite that commercial success, reviews of the novel were mixed. The main criticism focused on the human characters. Michael A. Rogers of Rolling Stone declared that, quote, none of the humans are particularly likable or interesting and confessed that the shark was his favorite character. And quote, one suspects Benchley's also.
[00:24:20] Speaker A: So that criticism matches with the stuff I'll talk about in the movie.
[00:24:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:24] Speaker A: Notes.
[00:24:26] Speaker B: Critics also derided Benchley's writing. Time reviewer John Scow described the novel as cliche and crude literary calculation.
Where events get to be, oh, this one gets better. Where events refuse to take on life and momentum and the climax lacks only Queequeg's coffin to resemble a bathtub version of Moby Dick.
Yeah, right.
[00:24:54] Speaker A: Good for you.
[00:24:55] Speaker B: Writing for the Village Voice, Donald Newlove declared that, quote, jaws has rubber teeth for a plot. It's boring, pointless, listless. If there's a trite turn to make, Jaws will make that turn.
[00:25:10] Speaker A: All right. These are.
[00:25:11] Speaker B: I will say I feel like some of these guys didn't realize what genre they were reading.
[00:25:15] Speaker A: I will say these match. At least the bad reviews match some of the things our patrons have said on the. On the discussion board that I think might have been Nathan or somebody who said that.
The delta between how much they dislike this book versus how good the movie is. This is one of the larger.
[00:25:33] Speaker B: I am not super far into the book yet. So far I feel like it matches what I remember from the movie. Interesting. But it's also been a really long time since.
[00:25:43] Speaker A: I mean, we'll hit more on that. I'm surprised to hear that, based on what Steven Spielberg said about the script, but we'll get to that.
[00:25:48] Speaker B: But again, I'm also not very far.
[00:25:50] Speaker A: Okay, well, I guess that wouldn't even. That would. Yeah, we'll get. We'll get to it.
[00:25:54] Speaker B: However, not all of the reviews were bad. New York reviewer Elliot Fremont Smith found the novel, quote, immensely readable, despite the lack of, quote, memorable characters or much plot surprise or originality.
Fremont Smith wrote that Benchley quote, fulfills all expectations, provides just enough civics and ecology to make us feel good, and tops it off with a really terrific and grisly battle scene.
Christopher Lehman Haupt praises the novel in the New York Times, highlighting the strong plot and rich thematic substructure, while the Washington Post's Robert F. Jones described Jaws as much more than a gripping fish story. It is a tightly written, tautly paced study, which Forged and touched. A metaphor that still makes us tingle whenever we enter the water.
[00:26:48] Speaker A: Interesting. What is it? A metaphor. I think I actually have some notes about that. We'll talk.
I think it's about Watergate, maybe.
[00:26:55] Speaker B: Oh, really?
[00:26:57] Speaker A: Apparently that's one of the interpretations of the film.
[00:26:59] Speaker B: There is corruption.
[00:27:01] Speaker A: Yeah, that's like one of the big. Not so much about Watergate, but a kind of cultural.
[00:27:05] Speaker B: Kind of like cultural. Yeah. In the wake of Watergate, specifically the film.
[00:27:09] Speaker A: But yeah.
[00:27:11] Speaker B: My final note here. In the years following publication, Benchley began to feel responsible for the negative attitude against sharks that his novel engendered. He became an ardent ocean conservationist.
In a 2000 article for the National Geographic, Benchley wrote, quote, considering the knowledge accumulated about sharks in the last 25 years, I couldn't possibly write Jaws today.
Not in good conscience anyway.
Back then it was generally accepted that great whites were anthropologists, I. E. They. That they ate people by choice.
Now we know that almost every shark attack on a human is an accident. A shark mistakes a human for its normal prey.
[00:27:56] Speaker A: Yeah. Also exceedingly rare.
[00:27:57] Speaker B: Yes. Very rare.
[00:27:58] Speaker A: Very rare. And it is like, oh, you were. Thought you were a seal. Whoops.
[00:28:02] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I needed a little nibble to figure out what you were. My bad.
[00:28:06] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. All right. I have so many notes and a lot of it expands on what we already talked about. So let's learn a little bit about Jaws, the film.
This is Universal's extraordinary motion picture version of Peter Benchley's best selling novel, Jaws.
I just found out that a girl got killed here last week. And you knew it. You knew there was a shark out there.
You knew it was dangerous, but you don't even go swimming anywhere.
Jaws is a 1975 film directed by Steven Spielberg, known for E.T. schindler's List, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Saving Private Ryan, the Color Purple, Hook, Jurassic Park, Minority Report, Catch Me if youf Can, War of the Worlds and Ready Player One, among many others. I tried to include all the ones we'd done in there, but there's also tons of other movies. Obviously it was written by Peter Benchley, who also has some writing credits on other Jaws movies.
But he actually did write a.
He's a. He's not only just credited as novel by. He is credited on the screenplay on this.
[00:29:26] Speaker B: So yeah, I saw that he worked on it. I left that for.
[00:29:29] Speaker A: We'll get into that. Yeah, we'll get into that. And then Carl Gottlieb is the other accredited writer. But we'll get into that. A lot of Details about that here. Carl Gottlieb also wrote Jaws 2 the Jerk, which I thought was interesting, and Jaws 3D and some other stuff that we'll talk about later.
Mainly tv. He was a writer on the Odd Couple.
The film stars Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary and Murray Hamilton, among others. Mainly residents of Martha's Vineyard. From the notes we'll talk about the film has a 97% on rotten tomatoes. Might be the highest reviewed movie we've ever watched from Rotten Tomatoes. I would have to go look.
I don't think we've ever done one with maybe. Maybe we've done a 98 or something, but I don't. I think this might be the highest reviewed movie we've ever done on Rotten Tomatoes. In terms of their score metric, an 87 on Metacritic and an 8.1 out of 10. It is the top rated movie, number 203 on IMDb. It was nominated for Best Picture and then it won Best Sound, Best Film Editing, and Best Music for Original Score for John Williams.
The film made 495 million against a budget of 9 million.
So despite all of the budget issues we'll talk about, they came out on top on this one. So Universal Pictures producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown discovered the novel in the literature section of Cosmopolitan, which was edited by David Brown's wife, Helen.
There was an editor note presumably written by her. I don't. Actually. The Wikipedia article didn't say that. The editor's note said, quote, might make a good movie, end quote.
Both producers read the book overnight and agreed the next morning that it was, quote, the most exciting thing that they had ever read, end quote. And they purchased the rights in 1973 before the book's wide release or publication.
John Sturgis, the director of the Old man and the Sea, and Dick Richards were both considered to direct the film. But Richards was dropped from the film because producers were annoyed that he kept referring to the shark as a whale, apparently, which I thought was hilarious.
[00:31:33] Speaker B: That is like, extra funny to me because they keep calling it a fish in the book.
[00:31:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:37] Speaker B: And I'm like, it's not a fish. It's not a fish, guys.
[00:31:40] Speaker A: I assume he just kept thinking of Moby Dick. Yeah.
Spielberg had just directed his first theatrical release. The Sugar Land Express wasn't even out yet, but he had just finished the actual direction of it. And it was still in, like, post production or about to come out for both Zanuck and Brown. And he discovered the novel in their office during A meeting or something like that. And then he read it and he became obsessed with it.
He was signed on to direct in June of 73. Ultimately, he became reluctant to shoot the film because he was scared that it would pigeonhole him as, quote, the truck and shark director, end quote. Which I thought was interesting.
So specific and weird because Sugarland Express is like a car. It's not a car chase movie, but a big. The big main plot element of it is like a slow speed. It's based on a true story. It's about like a slow speed car chase where some people like kidnapped, like a highway patrol officer. And there was like this weird, like slow speed, low speed chase across the country or something like that. So it's a lot of cars and stuff in that. But yeah, apparently he didn't want to be the truck and shark director.
He wanted to move on to a film, a dramedy that was set in the 1930s, during Prohibition, that was called Lucky Lady. But the studio ended up saying, pulled up his contract and said, not, you can't leave. You got to direct this movie.
Getting into the actual script writing of the film, which obviously worked out for him pretty well.
[00:33:00] Speaker B: Yeah, right.
[00:33:01] Speaker A: Getting into the actual process of how they came up with this script. Spielberg wanted to keep the basic plot initially, but his favorite part of the book was the shark hunt on the final 120 pages.
So he decided to trim a bunch of Benchley subplots, saying, quote, I'd like to do the picture if I could change the first two acts and base the first two acts on original screenplay material and then be very true to the book for the last third. Which is why I was interested to hear that you're a small part of what you.
[00:33:30] Speaker B: I'm literally only like 75 pages.
[00:33:32] Speaker A: Yeah, well, but that's interesting, though, because I would have thought that would be the part that would be the least like the. You know what I mean? Because it sounds like. Anyways, but maybe not. Maybe a lot. We'll see. I don't know. Benchley, as we mentioned, wrote three drafts of the script, and then when he delivered the third draft to Spielberg, he said to him, quote, I'm written out on this and that's the best I can do, end quote. He said that his contributions in the final film are, quote, the storyline and the ocean stuff, basically the mechanics, end quote. And that a lot of it got changed after he washed his hands of it.
So, as you mentioned in the reviews for the book, characters were not a high point in a lot of the Reviews and Spielberg was worried that the characters in the story were too unlikable. And so he went hunting for a screenwriter to do a rewrite of Benchley scripts. Howard Sackler, probably best known for writing and I think directing the Great White Hope, had an uncredited rewrite on the script. And Spielberg also tapped his buddy Carl Gottlieb, who I mentioned earlier, who was a comedy writer working on the Odd Couple, to punch up the script and add some levities. That's what I was talking about. Specifically they brought in a comedy guy, which I thought was funny considering the first manuscript was rejected for being too comedic. And then they were like, for the movie we got to punch up this comedy a bit.
Gottlieb also appears in the film as Harry Meadows, who's the editor of the local newspaper. He was only supposed to initially do a one week dialogue polish on the film, but ended up rewriting nearly the entire script during principal photography and ended up becoming the primary credited screenwriter. They would often finish scenes the night before they were supposed to be shot with him, Spielberg and the cast sitting around having dinner and discussing their plans for the next day. Famously, this movie was a night. I get into it more here, but the production for this movie was a disaster and the fact that they made one of the greatest films of all time is amazing. That happens a lot though. There's a lot of stories about some of the greatest movies ever made having disasters productions.
The director estimated that the final script had a total of 27 scenes that were not in the book. So get ready for that.
[00:35:36] Speaker B: Can't wait.
[00:35:38] Speaker A: The character of Quint is inspired by real life fisherman and charter captain Frank Mundus, who you mentioned earlier.
Apparently his tactics of killing whales for chum and harpooning sharks were criticized even in the like time period where he was active, which was like the 40s through the 80s mainly. And in the final years of his life though, according to Wikipedia, he did campaign for shark fishermen to catch and release and ended even ended up writing a conservation book titled quote or not quote but titled White Shark Sam meets the Monster Man.
[00:36:08] Speaker B: What a title.
[00:36:09] Speaker A: Which to me sound just going purely off the title sounds like he hit the.
The Guillermo del Toro realization at the end there. That man was the real monster in all of this potentially. Again, just going purely off the title there. So Spielberg wanted to cast somewhat anonymous leads in order to help the audience, quote, believe that this was happening to people like you and me. He didn't want a bunch of famous people in his movie. I thought this was interesting stuntwoman turned actress Sarah Baclini was cast as Chrissy Watkins, or Chris Watkins, who is the first victim in the cold open of the film, mainly because she was a good swimmer and was willing to perform nude.
[00:36:46] Speaker B: There you go.
[00:36:47] Speaker A: Many of the other minor roles in the film were performed by residents of Martha's Vineyard, where they shot the film.
Robert Duvall was offered the role of Brody, but he only wanted to play Quint, and the production decided that he was too young for that role. So they said, sorry, can't do it. You can be Brody or you cannot be in the movie.
Charlton Heston expressed interest in the role of Brody, but Spielberg was like, you're Definitely too famous, Mr. Charlton Heston.
But Roy Scheider overheard Spielberg talking about the movie at a party, and he became interested in the role and ended up eventually being cast.
Nine days before the start of production, neither Quint nor Hooper had been cast.
Producers had just finished working with Robert Shaw on the Sting, and they suggested him. He didn't want to take the role because he didn't like the book, but he ultimately decided to accept after his wife and his secretary both were like, you should take this role. And he was like, all right.
Spielberg wanted Jon Voight for the role of Hooper, but Jeff Bridges was also considered among other actors. It was actually George Lucas who suggested Richard Dreyfuss to Spielberg after they had worked together on American Graffiti. Dreyfus initially passed on the role. And this is fascinating to me. I'm assuming all of this information is all from Wikipedia. I assume all of this is from, like, interviews and stuff. That's usually what a lot of this. And, like, behind the scenes featurettes and stuff like that.
[00:38:05] Speaker B: A lot of the.
A lot of the sources cited when I was reading for the book were from, like, jaws, 30th anniversary, blah, blah, blah, 25th anniversary.
[00:38:17] Speaker A: I'm sure tons of this is. They got all the actors back together, they sat him down, they had them talk about the movie, and they pulled a lot of this. Like, little, like, tidbits are pulled from those. Like, so who knows? These are things the actors said about their experience with the movie. Who? Their storytellers, man. I don't even know if any, because this is one of those ones that makes me question if this was true or not. But Dreyfus initially passed on the role, then reportedly saw an early screening of his most recent film, the Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, and he thought that he was so bad in it that no one would hire him after the movie came out. So he called Spielberg back and accepted the part because he's like, I'm not gonna work anymore, so I better get. I better get. Accept this job.
[00:38:56] Speaker B: He could strike while the iron.
[00:38:58] Speaker A: More on that later.
[00:38:59] Speaker B: Okay.
I've never even heard of that.
[00:39:02] Speaker A: Yeah, I had never even heard of it either. Part of the reason Martha Vineyards was chosen for the film was that which I. This was interesting. I didn't realize this was chosen for the filming location was that the bottom of the ocean there never drops below about 35ft as far as 12 miles from the shore. Which meant that it was a lot easier for them to film with the sharks and stuff and still be out of sight of land because they needed, like, shallow water for, I don't know, like, the mechanical sharks to operate.
[00:39:27] Speaker B: Not to look like they were right by shore.
[00:39:29] Speaker A: Not to look like they were by the shore. So they could. They could film in locations where they. Yeah, there's no. You can't see the land, but the water's only like 30ft deep, so it's kind of worked out for them.
So initially, producers. And this is one of those that, to me, sounds like somebody made a joke and Wikipedia wrote it as a real fact about the movie. But I, you know, who knows? Initially, producers wanted to train a great white shark and then quickly, quickly realized this was not possible, so they made three pneumatically powered prop sharks. Did they really want to train a great white shark? Or did somebody in a meeting go. Somebody. Or like, in one of the retro. I bet what happened here is in one of the retrospectives, one of the producers said, yeah, during one of the first meetings, Jim said, we should just train a shark. And we all said, you're an idiot.
And then that turns into. Initially, producers wanted to. You know what I mean? Like, I don't even know. But that's my guess for a lot of these kind of things where it's like.
But maybe. Maybe there were serious art. Consideration to training a great white shark. I have no idea.
[00:40:25] Speaker B: You know, I don't always have the greatest faith in the intelligence of producers.
[00:40:29] Speaker A: That's true.
Yeah. I would believe that that's true, I guess. Yeah. The crew that created the sharks, or, like, special effects team that created the sharks were supervised by Bob, Maddie, or Matey. I'm not exactly sure how to pronounce. I'm going to say Matey. Based on the property we reviewed. Bob Matey, who is best known for creating the giant squid in 20,000 leagues under the Sea.
[00:40:50] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:40:50] Speaker A: That was fun. This I.
According to Wikipedia. Jaws was the first major motion picture to be shot on the ocean. That seems implausible to me, but I guess I could also kind of believe it because this might have been the. We're still in the 70s and we're finally getting to a point where cameras are portable enough and like, it's feasible enough maybe to film.
[00:41:11] Speaker B: Feasible enough that you wouldn't do your ocean shots in like a sound stage in a giant pool.
[00:41:17] Speaker A: Yeah. And we'll get to that here. Right now, shooting on the ocean caused a lot of problems, as did the mechanical sharks, famously. And the production budget more than doubled over the course of the film. The original production budget, I believe, was $4 million and ended up being $9 million.
Disgruntled crew members nicknamed the film Flaws due to the constant.
[00:41:40] Speaker B: Pretty good guys.
[00:41:41] Speaker A: Spielberg said of the experience, quote, I was naive about the ocean, basically. I was pretty naive about Mother Nature. And the hubris of a filmmaker who thinks he can conquer the elements was foolhardy. But I was too young to know I was being foolhardy when I demanded that we shoot the film in the Atlantic Ocean and not in a North Hollywood tank. End quote.
I will say, I do think that this movie filmed in a soundstage in a water tank.
[00:42:08] Speaker B: What, like some stuff or.
[00:42:10] Speaker A: Sorry, what? No, no, no, go ahead. Yeah.
I do think that if this film were filmed in a soundstage in a water tank, it would lose a lot of what makes this movie work.
[00:42:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:42:20] Speaker A: Because it feels very real.
[00:42:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:42:23] Speaker A: And I don't know if you would get that feeling from. From a sound stage in 1975. I don't know. I, I would just. I. I do wonder if the magic of this movie would just not exist if they had gone that route.
Some other issues that they dealt with was unwanted sailboats drifting into shots at different times, cameras getting wet, obviously was a big one. And apparently the orca, which is the ship, and they had two different versions of the ship. One of them was built for sinking, but apparently there was one instance where the orca started sinking with the actors on board when they did not intend for that to happen.
The mechanical sharks also famously a nightmare of malfunction and malfunctions and issues.
Spielberg speculated that during a 12 hour shoot day, they averaged roughly four hours of actual filming and the rest was spent dealing with problems. Which honestly doesn't sound that far off from a normal.
It's not that much, but it's.
There's a lot of dealing with other stuff and not actually filming when you're making a Movie. But that is crazy. That is a very small proportion for actually shooting. The actors were frequently seasick. Robert Shaw apparently constantly left to leave for Canada to avoid tax issues. He also binge drank constantly and developed a grudge against Dreyfus, who was getting rave reviews for his performance in the Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, the role that he thought was gonna like, end his career, apparently.
[00:43:52] Speaker B: Incredible.
[00:43:52] Speaker A: He got rave reviews for it. So. The delays, however, did allow them to refine the unfinished script. And famously, many of the scenes where the shark was supposed to appear were shot to only hint at the shark because the sharks weren't working.
Specifically, the opening scene where we see Chrissy get eaten by the shark was supposed to show the shark eating her. And they didn't have the shark, so they didn't use it. And Bo, boy, was that a good.
A good thing that happened because that scene would not be nearly as terrifying or as memorable if you saw the giant shark pop out at the end and eat her. It would just not be that scene. It's one of the most memorable scenes in cinema. And if the shark showed up, it would not be, in my opinion. Speaking of, Spielberg said of it, the shark not working was a godsend. It made me become more like Alfred Hitchcock than like Ray Harryhauser.
End quote. Ray Harryhausen was a monster special effects creature.
He did like the.
He was involved in the Clash of the Titans movies and all that kind of stuff. He did a lot of like stop motion stuff and all that.
Principal photography was scheduled for 55 days. Ended up taking 159. So damn near not, not damn near did basically triple their shooting schedule.
Real shark footage was filmed by shark expert conservationists and photographers Ron and Valerie Taylor down in Australia near what is called Dangerous Reef, which is a great name, incredible name.
[00:45:23] Speaker B: Good job, Australia.
[00:45:25] Speaker A: Apparently they filmed a short actor in a miniature cage to create the illusion of an enormous shark, which I thought was fun.
They actually captured footage of a great white attacking the boat and a cage, but the cage was empty at the time.
So Spielberg. And this is spoilers for the movie, obviously, but Spielberg ended up rewriting the scene where Hooper is attacked in the cage. Originally in the script, Hooper was intended to die there, but since the footage they had captured showed an empty cage and it was so good that Spielberg wanted to use it, they rewrote the scene to where Hooper escapes the cage before the shark attacks it and he ends up surviving. A producer said, quote, the shark down in Australia rewrote the script and saved Dreyfus Character director, end quote. This is funny. I did not know this about Spielberg. This is the thing I'm learning about him as a director.
And apparently this is where it started. Spielberg was not present for shooting of the final scene where the shark explodes as he believed that the crew were planning to throw him in the water when the scene was done as, like a celebration, I guess, and he didn't want to get thrown in the ocean. It has since become a tradition for Spielberg to be absent when the final scene of one of his films is being shot, which I thought is fascinating.
[00:46:34] Speaker B: That feels like one of those, like.
Like a sports. Like where you. Like, yeah. Like where you wear the same socks.
[00:46:43] Speaker A: No. Yeah. Honestly. Yeah. Yeah. It could be.
[00:46:45] Speaker B: Like, if I'm absent for every final scene, every movie will be as big of a hit as Jaws.
[00:46:50] Speaker A: Yeah. I also interested. I would be interested to see how that actually works in practice and what that means for, like, all of his movies. Like, I would just be really interested to see, like, in practice how that played out for, like, every movie he's done. Because I don't know, like, I have to imagine some of his movies, and I assume that when they say final scene, because obviously that's not the very final. I don't. It's been a long time since I've seen Jaws. That's not like the final. Final scene of the movie. Isn't there a slight denouement or does it just end there? I can't remember.
[00:47:19] Speaker B: I have no idea.
[00:47:20] Speaker A: It might be if it is the actual final scene in the movie.
Basically, I'm asking. I don't know if they necessarily mean the final scene in the film or the final scene that they filmed, because that is not the same thing.
[00:47:32] Speaker B: I mean, I would think. Would have to be the final scene that they filmed, Right?
[00:47:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:37] Speaker B: For it to be this thing where they were gonna throw him in the ocean.
[00:47:41] Speaker A: Which is why I'm almost wondering if maybe what that would make more sense then is if. What happens if they schedule. Kind of meaningless, right?
[00:47:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:49] Speaker A: Nothing seems really to be there. Yeah. Yeah. Or the. The second unit director or whatever can handle and I guess maybe. But yeah, it's interesting. I just. I've never heard that and I thought that was funny.
I want to know more now.
According to producers, editor Verna Fields was pivotal in shaping the film. Same thing that happened with Star Wars. The lady editor was kind of. It is interesting how so many editors were women back in the day. I don't. And they still are to some extent, but it's Not, I think it's way more even. Like there were back in the day. Like every big movie was edited by a woman, which I was just found. I was not sure why that was. You know what I mean? I'm not sure what caused that. But Verna Fields was pivotal in shaping the film.
One of these quotes from one of the producers, quote, she actually came in and reconstructed some scenes that Steven had constructed for comedy and made them terrifying and some scenes that he shot to be terrifying and made them comedy scenes, end quote. So again, you can do in the edit, you can really change how scenes are presented. And it sounds like it happened here, just as it did in Star wars and countless other movies. But those are famous examples.
John Williams, as we mentioned, composed the film score and won an Academy Award for it. It was later ranked the sixth greatest score of all time or like in cinema by the American Film Institute.
This is really. I mentioned this here before we get to reviews. There are a lot of very deep and layered interpretations of this film that revolve around Watergate and the lack of trust and authority, etc. That all seem very interesting.
And I would like to revisit during the episode after we watch this to see how we feel about that.
Because obviously I've only ever. I don't remember the last time I watched this movie. It was probably. We'll talk about it later. But.
Yeah, but I didn't watch this at an age where I was thinking about its relevance with and relationship in the cultural zeitgeist to Watergate. I was not something I was thinking about watching this movie. So reviews, obviously, it's got a lot of good reviews. Variety's A.D. murphy praised Spielberg's directorial skills and called Robert Shaw's performance absolutely magnificent. The New Yorker's Pauline Kael said, quote, it was the most cheerfully perverse scare movie ever made with more zest than an early Woody Allen picture. A lot more electricity. And it's funny in a Woody Allen sort of way, really. Just leaning into comparing it to Woody Allen for some reason there.
I guess because it's the New Yorker. They're big Woody Allen fan. I don't know the New York Times or Sorry for New Times. Frank Rich wrote, quote, spielberg is blessed with a talent that is absolutely absent with most American filmmakers these days. This man actually knows how to tell a story on screen. It speaks well of this director's gift gifts that some of the most frightening sequences in Jaws are those where we don't even see the shark, end quote. Writing for New York Magazine, Judith, again, a thing he kind of lucked into, which is hilarious.
Just goes to show that a lot of great art is not like a single person's brilliant vision. It's a lot of coincidences and all kinds of stuff coming together.
Writing for New York Magazine, Judith Christ described the film as, quote, an exhilarating adventure, entertainment of the highest order.
Also complimented the acting and said, quote, extraordinary technical achievements. Rex Reed praised the nerve frying action scenes and concluded, quote, for the most part, Jaws is a gripping horror film that works beautifully in every department, end quote. David Thompson wrote, quote, like Coppola on the Godfather, Spielberg asserted his own role, his own role, and deftly organized the elements of a roller coaster entertainment without sacrificing inner meanings.
The suspense of the picture came from meticulous technique and good humor about its own surgical cutting. You have only to submit to the travesty of Jaws 2 to realize how much more egregious. So this is a not contemporary review. You only have to submit to the travesty of Jaws 2 to realize how much more engagingly Spielberg saw the ocean, the perils, the sinister beauty of the shark and the vitality of its own human opponents. Writing for the New York Times, Vincent Canby said, quote, it's a measure of how the film operates that not once do we feel particular sympathy for any of the shark's victims.
In the best films, characters are revealed in terms of the action. In movies like Jaws, characters are simply functions of the action, like stagehands who move props around and deliver information when it's necessary. He did say, quote, this sort of. He did describe it as, quote, the sort of nonsense that can be a good deal of fun, end quote. So I think that sounds like maybe kind of negative review potentially.
Maybe I would have to have more context to say, but I think that may have been kind of a negative review.
Los Angeles Times Charles Champlin disagreed with the film's PG rating, saying, quote, jaws is too gruesome for children and likely to turn the stomach of the impressionable at any age. It is a coarse grained and exploitative work that depends on excess for its impact, which is interesting ashore in its bore, awkwardly staged and lumpily written. End quote, which is fascinating.
Review of the film Jaws.
Marshall McGill, Marsha McGill of films and Reviews said that, quote, while Jaws is imminently worth seeing for its second half, she felt that before the protagonist's pursuit of the shark, the film was often flawed by its busyness.
And finally, Roger Ebert, writing for the Chicago Sun Times, gave the film 4 out of 4 stars calling it's a sensationally effective action picture. A scary thriller that works all the better because it's populated with characters that have been developed into human beings. It's a film that's as frightening as the Exorcist and yet it's a nicer kind of fright. Somehow more fun because we're being scared by an outdoor adventure saga instead of a brimstone and vomit devil. End quote.
And then finally, just some accolades for the film. In the years since its release, it has been cited by film critics and industry professionals as one of the greatest films of all time. It was number 48 on AFI's Film Institute's. Sorry. On America Film Institute's 100 Years 100 Movies, a list of the greatest American films of all time compiled in 1998. It then dropped to number 56. On the 10th anniversary of that list, AFI also ranked the shark at number 18 on its 50 best fill ins list.
Roy Scheider's line, you're gonna need a Bigger Boat was 35th on the list of top 100 movie quotes of all time.
John Williams score was at sixth. It was sixth on a list of 100 years of film scores. And the film is second on a list of 100 most thrilling films behind only Psycho.
In 2003, the New York Times included the film on its list of best 1000 movies ever made. And in 2001 it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registery. I'm not going to plug stuff, Katie. Where can people watch Jaws?
[00:54:24] Speaker B: Well, as always, you can check with your local library. I bet they have a copy of this.
[00:54:29] Speaker A: I would bet.
[00:54:29] Speaker B: Or if you still have a local video rental store, you can check with them.
Otherwise you can stream this with a subscription to Starz or free Philo or you can rent it for around $4 through Prime Apple TV, YouTube or Fandango at home.
[00:54:48] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:54:49] Speaker B: A little surprised. This isn't wasn't on the Criterion channel.
[00:54:53] Speaker A: Oh yeah, it's not.
[00:54:54] Speaker B: Yeah, not according to what I.
[00:54:55] Speaker A: Look, they just don't have rights for whatever reason. Yeah, I don't know.
I guess it's maybe popular enough because a lot of stuff that makes it through Criterion is stuff that people don't care about.
[00:55:03] Speaker B: Fair enough.
[00:55:04] Speaker A: I don't know. Like it's. Yeah, it might still be popular enough enough that other things. But yeah, I'm excited to watch it and discuss it in this context. I. As I was mentioning earlier, I don't. I've seen this movie. I don't know. Probably a half dozen times in my life or something like that.
[00:55:16] Speaker B: I think I've only seen it once. Actually, I watched it once like maybe a decade and a half ago.
[00:55:22] Speaker A: Yeah, I will say that I don't remember the last time I watched it. It had to have been like college probably. Like it's been at least 15 years, if not longer since I watched this.
So yeah, I'm very excited to check it out and see.
See how I feel about it now. I remember always really liking it and thinking it was a great movie every time I saw it when I was younger.
And so I'm very interested to see how it compares to the book, but also just to again watch it.
I'm always interested to watch movies that I saw when I was 21 and now watch them again as an almost 40 year old. It's very interesting. So come back in less than one week's one. What day is it? Yeah, about one week's time. We'll be talking about Jaws in until that time. Guys, gals, I'm binary pals and everybody else, keep reading books, keep watching movies and keep being awesome.
