#319. 'Jaws' at 50
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This episode marks the 50th anniversary of Jaws, and all three hosts are effusive about it even as they argue over its place in the Spielberg canon. Mike saw the new 4K theatrical re-release at the Alamo and raves that it played like discovering the film for the first time, newly thrilled by the Indianapolis speech, the Ben Gardner's-head jump scare, and the already-fully-formed Spielbergian craft on display; JVL instead spent the week reading Peter Benchley's source novel, which he calls "dog shit," marveling at how the screenwriters (Carl Gottlieb chief among them), Spielberg, and John Williams took one decent premise -- what if a shark got territorial? -- and elevated it into art, and he argues the film is less a creature feature than a serial-killer procedural. Sonny, who still hasn't caught it on the big screen, offers two "hot takes": he prefers the tense first-half Amity/police-procedural stretch to the second-half shark hunt aboard the Orca (Mike pushes back hard, saying the boat section only gets better with age), and he ranks Jaws outside Spielberg's top five, behind Jurassic Park, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Close Encounters, E.T., and several of his prestige dramas -- a claim JVL calls "the most preposterous thing you've ever said." The episode opens with its usual long banter block: JVL recounts a bear stalking his shed and a surreal, screen-sharing Apple Genius Bar/tier-two support saga that leaves him half-convinced "the mothership really does know everything"; Sonny gripes about rewatching The Book of Boba Fett with his kids and spirals into a riff on how franchise storytelling (Boba Fett, Han Solo, Wolverine's origin) kills mystique by over-explaining it; and Mike recaps an exhausting Labor Day weekend of baseball practices, a kids' triathlon, and a decades-old neighborhood picnic he can't escape, salvaged only by a Yeti tumbler cocktail (Sonny counters with his own tumbler, filled with an entire bottle of Riesling). They close on whether Jaws would be the cultural monument it is without John Williams's score and the iconic one-sheet poster -- verdict: the score is non-negotiable, the poster maybe less so -- before wandering into an aside about the surprisingly recent Jaws pinball machine.
From the show notes
Still need a bigger boat.
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00It's a beautiful day, the beaches are open, and people are having a wonderful time. Amity is a summer town. I don't think you appreciate the gut reaction people have to these things. You yell Barracuda, you're racist, huh? You yell shark, we've got a panic on our hands on the 4th of July.
Mike00:00:30Welcome to the Sub-Beacon Podcast, I'm your co-host Mike Warren. Joining me as always are my two co-hosts, and I think we're going to need a bigger podcast. Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch join us over at Sub-Beacon.com. Tell your friends and family that if they want to listen to this show, and it's always a fun show, they can only do it at Sub-Beacon.com.
?00:00:59Sub-Beacon.com.
Mike00:01:00Sign up to become a patron at Sub-Beacon.com. Join the conversation in the comments. Lots of comments, lots of discussion from last week's show about K-pop demon hunters. We are going to be talking about Jaws on the 50th anniversary of that landmark blockbuster. You might call it the first blockbuster movie later on in the show, but first JVL, what is going on with you, my man?
JVL00:01:25Jonathan V. Two things. You boys both received a photo. From my wife, uh, showing the bear making moves on my shed.
Mike00:01:34Jonathan V. Yeah.
JVL00:01:36Jonathan V. Yup. Jonathan V. Yeah. Jonathan V. I mean, look, I'm, you guys predicted it. You guys said that this would happen.
Mike00:01:42Jonathan V. I think you gotta move out. You just, just, just, just leave. Just give up the house. It's okay.
Sonny00:01:49Jonathan V. I don't move out. You just, you have a new bear skin rug, man. Like you just, you have, like, I'm sorry.
Mike00:01:55Jonathan V. Sonny, he's clearly not willing to do what it takes to get rid
Sonny00:01:58of the bear. Jonathan V. I don't think he has to go out there and pull the trigger or anything. You hire people for things like this, you know? Look, you, if you have a, you have a, if you have a problem in your house, JBL, what do you always say? You just throw money at it. You throw money at it. I don't think you'd even have to throw that much money at a guy who would be willing to shoot a bear and skin him.
JVL00:02:17Jonathan V. So maybe I should call the, uh, the nice people at Calabrese's, uh, Anthony Calabrese's Garbage Disposal Waste Management Company.
Sonny00:02:26Jonathan V. No, you don't want, you don't want to call those people.
JVL00:02:29They take care of different kinds of problems. Jonathan V. Different problems. Okay. Uh, so, but the other thing I want to tell you is, uh, this is just a little bit of public service. I think I told you I was having some, some apple difficulties. Yes. Jonathan V. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, and I went to a Genius Bar. Did I tell you that I went to a Genius Bar?
Sonny00:02:45Uh, did you say you were going, you said you were going to, yeah, so went to the Genius
JVL00:02:50Bar and it was one of the best Genius Bar experiences of my life. It was great. I got not one, but two geniuses who between them had 30 years. Working the apple genius bar and they were both totally stumped, couldn't fix my problem. And I got to tell you, I felt really good to me because I didn't feel like an idiot. It was not the case where like, you know, ma'am, ma'am is the computer plugged into the wall. Right. Right. So they gave me a secret phone number and they said, you got to call this number. You got to ask for the family sharing division. Cause this is the problem I was having with the family sharing set up. And uh, when you get it, just tell the first guy tier two, tell them we sent you and that you need the level two, the tier two help. So I was like, okay, knock on the door three times and does tier two skip you past like
Sonny00:03:49the call center in Southeast Asia and just take you right to the guy in like Cupertino.
JVL00:03:54So my experience with apple support is that I have never wound up with a foreign call center with apple support. I've only ever dealt with, uh, this, but yes, but the very nice gentleman who sounded like he was, uh, like on the East coast when I first called, once I said the magic words of tier two, it was like, man, I have to put you on a brief hold, but we're gonna need to sort it out. Don't worry. And he put me in touch with Alex and uh, I was a little concerned as to how this was gonna work over the phone mm-hmm because I thought. I mean, so what I'm gonna be describing things to him and then constantly sending him screenshots of the things I'm seeing. And then he's gonna say, go to this page and to that menu and that, but, uh, and, uh, or was gonna share your screen. So apple's ability to screen share any and all of your devices and they have the full list of your devices in front of them. And, uh, you know, Um, can you, well, let me look at your phone. Alex said, I pulled my phone and I get just a little thing saying, Alex would like to do consent, letting us see. And then like, bam, it's right. And by the way, it's nice that he asked, I mean, I will not believe for a minute that apple does not have like the, do you consent to is like a nice little Kabuki theater to make us feel good.
Sonny00:05:23Yeah.
JVL00:05:24Yeah. But, uh, well, this is, they, they know all of the devices I have and they were able to say, okay, pull up this, pull up this. Like I had at one point, two laptops, my desktop, my phone and an iPad open in front of me. And I'm just seeing little red arrows on each of them as he's saying, okay, over this thing right here. Yeah. Click on that. Okay. And now over on this one, I am not prone to conspiracies, but I just thought to myself, this is how they get you. Yeah. This is how they get you. They know everything there.
Sonny00:05:59Uh, that, that, that tracks with my, I, I think I've only had to deal with somebody on a phone with Apple one time. And it was almost exactly like this. It was like, can I just do this? He was like, can I just like, can I just handle this? And I was like, yes. Can I don't know. Can you? And he was like, yes.
JVL00:06:20He was like, yes. I also thought it was cute that he pretended that I needed to click the thing that his red arrow was hovering over as if I couldn't just do it. Do it himself.
Sonny00:06:30I do wonder, I do wonder if there is like, if that is built in, so they can't do that. I don't know. It doesn't matter this, what you, the, the, the, can I, uh, can I share with Alex button is, is funny. And it reminds me of my own pet theory, which is that the ask app, not to track button does nothing that it, that it's like, it's not, it doesn't say the crosswalk buttons that
JVL00:06:58are connected to nothing. Yeah. And you're at a street corner. It's like, oh, you want to press to make the light change fast. Sure. God, press it. Press it all you want.
Sonny00:07:06Does it make you feel better? It's not, it's not a command. It's a request. And if I know anything about people in Silicon Valley or really life in general, if they want to do something and they ask you nicely, they're just going to do it anyway. Like it's not the ask, ask not app not to track. Yeah, sure. Okay. Please. Mr. App. Please.
JVL00:07:27Mr. App. Don't track. Be considerate. The ease with, with which, with me simply calling this phone number, them recognizing that I'm calling from my iPhone from there, picking up the full device list of everybody in my family sharing network, which is 20 devices or something, uh, and then being able to simply hop, skip and back and forth to look into each one of them again. Maybe I'm naive. I was a little like, wow, the mothership really does know everything. Oh yes. No.
Sonny00:08:05I mean, I'm, I'm not, I'm not, the only thing that's surprising about this is the number of devices in question. Because anytime I look at like, anytime I look at my list of things that are attached to my Apple, like, so I've got a, I have an iPhone and I have a Mac book and I have AirPods and like the system knows where I am. Where they all are at all times, like there's better than, you know, those are never. So I like, I know. And I'm like, oh, this is nice. I know. But I know if I know then like everybody in, in Apple land can know, and I mean, there's, they don't have any reason probably to track, but that's all I got boys.
JVL00:08:49How are you Sonny? What's going on with you?
Sonny00:08:52Um, not a ton. Uh, let me think. We were, uh, we are. We are rewatching, uh, the book of Boba Fett with the kids. So the kids, the kids had never watched the kids had never watched the Mandalorian and what they wanted to watch. They wanted to watch the baby Yoda show. So I was like, okay, we can watch that. And we get to the end of season two of the Mandalorian, which is, you know, which is kind of, which fine. It's the one that ends with Luke Skywalker showing up.
Mike00:09:20Um, I didn't even get that.
Sonny00:09:22And then we were like, well, I guess we have to watch, we have to watch the book of Boba Fett next because like. That show turns into the Mandalorian season 2.5 halfway through, like after four episodes with Boba Fett, the fifth episode is titled return of the Mandalorian. And this, the season after that is entirely like Mandalorian focus. It's like Matt in the next episode. So we just got to the fifth episode, the return of the Mandalorian. And in this episode, the next episode, he goes to get baby Yoda and blah, blah, blah. But like, it really is a reminder just how, of how badly they've like fucked up this whole, this whole thing. Oh yeah. Like it's, it's with the, with the exception of Andor, which I do, I do really think you should take a, you should take a second shot at JVL, um, it's, it's, they have, they have just driven this thing into the ground.
JVL00:10:13I have a question for you boys about the nature of storytelling.
Sonny00:10:17Oh, is there, we go.
JVL00:10:19Is this a unique flaw to the people at Lucasfilm or is this a general flaw? In the world of storytelling where you have something that's really fucking cool and yet you are compelled to explain it to death so that you strip away everything that was once cool about it, which is essentially what they did to the character of Boba Fett, right? Which is what they basically did to Han Solo. It's what they did to the millennium Falcon, the fucking dice. I mean, I, I am surprised we haven't had an entire prequel series. Devoted to explaining how the millennium Falcon got its name, because you know, if you could
Sonny00:11:04explain, well, you see, there was this guy, there was a Lando movie and slash or series in the works. And that I think has gotten kiboshed.
Mike00:11:14I just stop explaining things that are cool. So let them be cool. I, I think there's a couple of things going on here, JVL that you're, you're hitting on. One is that I do think people, this is. This is not a general statement across the board because there we can all think of exceptions, but like generally I do think people in decision-making when it comes to these like big IP plays, like there's just a lot of like stupid people who don't know how to tell stories. So I think that's part of it. I think, yes, I think the other, I think the other thing going on though, is this is there people on this podcast who celebrated the you know, the, the blooming of nerd culture into, you know, like you guys have your comic books are now on the screen, right? But like, this is the negative side of nerd culture, which is like, there is a side of nerddom that has to know kind of every, every little detail and sort of salivates at the prospect of like knowing the origin or the, the, the, the, the logic. The logical conclusion of every kind of detail in a way that ruins it.
JVL00:12:31Well, you see, Data's emotion chip was, um, the progenitor designed his emotion chip in season two, episode 13 of the next generation, the TNG.
Sonny00:12:43Dr. Noonien Singh, please let us, let us, uh, put respect on that thing.
JVL00:12:48But then in season four, when they put the, it was a different emotion chip and you look at it and it's not, I don't know why that is.
Sonny00:12:57So it's interesting because I do think there's, I think there's a difference between worst episode ever. Go ahead. I think one thing, I think one thing you're hitting on here is that there is, there's a difference between creators as individuals and corporate creations and that, and that corporate creations, there's the, the, you have to keep expanding the fan base and you have to, but you also have to appeal to the hardcore fans. And so the way you do this is you tell kind of new stories by doing the same thing over and over again. And this is, and like the Mandalorian was interesting because it was, it was the first star war. It's like the only star wars visual medium thing, like not, not books, not comic books or whatever. That was totally divorced from the Skywalker saga, at least at first, at least at first. And then the second season, they kind of, they kind of start. We're leaning back into it. And then Luke shows up at the end of the second season. Right. And so like now it's, now it's whole thing. But look at, think about it, think about it in, in, think about it in like comic book terms, right? Like what was, what was the big, what was the big mysterious story from through like the entire 1990s? I'll tell you what it was because I remember this, this was very great coming back. No, it close though. You're you're adjacent to it. It is. It is. What, what is Wolverine's deal? Where is Wolverine from? And every like two years or so they would give you like a little piece of the Wolverine story. This is how he got his adamantium skeleton, blah, blah, blah. Until finally in like 2000, I dunno, the early two thousands, there was that Logan series that was like, here's finally, here's Logan's origin story, blah, blah, blah. And I wouldn't say that killed the character exactly, but it did like it, it, he was less cool after that. I think maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. Maybe the movies, you know, revitalized at all. Um, but that was like, that was, that was a whole, and that was, that's just purely a function of Marvel as a corporate entity needed to milk that for as long as they could. And you wind up there, you wind up there, um, I'm trying to think of what a good example would be of, of an individual creator, not falling into this trap. And I, I honestly don't know what the answer is. I don't know. It's hard to think of one. I would, it's a thing I would, you've asked a big question about the nature of storytelling and I would have to like actually sit down and think about it.
Mike00:15:37But I do think, but I hear, okay, here's my thought on that, which is you either need one storyteller, uh, who is like where it's like singular vision and there is no kind of intrusion from, and this is like the corporate, the intrusion or like where it's something where it's so open and almost like. Open, um, uh, almost like folk level of stuff where like you can tweak with things, do genre versions of the story and like, it's fine because like nobody really kind of owns the actual story. Like it feel like it has to be one or the other. And when you get in the muddled middle of like, uh, like you said, trying to appeal to everybody, but also the creators themselves are kind of, um, they all kind of try to own a piece of it. I just think it that's, that's where you fall into the trap.
Sonny00:16:26Yeah. I don't know. I would, I would have to think about it more. I need to, I need the noodle on this cause it is an interesting question.
Mike00:16:33Well, maybe let's return to it, uh, next week. Um, how are you buddy? Fine. Uh, I feel like, I feel like I had put upon fine. No, no, no, no, no. Well, there's, there's some other stuff, but I do feel like this past, we're recording this a few days after labor day weekend, like we kind of sat on Monday night and thought this was like a action packed labor day weekend, just in terms of like, we felt like we were doing stuff all the whole weekend. So like we had, you know, one baseball practice on Friday night and then the next morning baseball practice, same team baseball practice. Um, and then, uh, uh, the other ones baseball practice in the afternoon on that Saturday. Um, and then we, we met some friends who were, um, in town. Um, and, and visiting some other friends that we met them out with all the kids and stuff. And then the next morning my kids were in this, uh, annual neighborhood triathlon. Um, and so they did that and which is a whole thing with the, they, they do the triathlon and my wife was volunteering, uh, to, to help guide them. And then there's like a breakfast afterward and, uh, and you know, and it was just sort of, that, that was a lot. Um, and then like, there's like a labor day. We had a picnic in our neighborhood on the Monday and we were out there doing that and, and we did, um, well, I'll tell you, I'll get to what, how I made that not miserable. Um, but like even before then we did kind of a, uh, I ended up, our oldest kind of was not feeling well on labor day on that Monday morning. So he and my wife stayed home, but then I took the two younger boys out and we went on a hike, um, out in, out in a big famous hike in Maryland. Kind of did all that. And when, then we had to come back and do this, this, uh, neighborhood picnic. And the thing that I realized that we do this neighborhood picnic, it's kind of annoying that nobody, nobody in the neighborhoods listening to this podcast. So I don't feel bad. Um, we have a very old neighborhood as in like the houses have been around this little community association for 50, for 50 years. Uh, our house is 50 plus years old. And, um, we're at the stage where there's a lot of age diversity in the neighborhood. Which is good because kids get to know old people, old people get to know the kids and everybody makes it together. And it's very nice. Um, but the, the old people have the, have a monopoly on the social stuff. So like things that they've been doing for literally 45 years, like that haven't been updated or haven't been, uh, you know, considered for like what maybe parents might like, you know, like a Labor Day picnic, like on Labor Day, like when everybody's like getting ready for school the next day, like maybe not the best time to do it, but that's what we do because that's what we've always done it. And God forbid we ever move anything or change anything. And in the flip side of all this is like, no, no, this is again, from a parent's perspective, it's like, it's like, can, could we do things that are maybe a little more oriented toward like what is best for our, for us with the kids and all that stuff? No. No, the answer is no. But on the other hand, like as, as my very smart and astute wife puts it, like you want to change it, then you be in charge of that. And there's no way in hell I'm I, or any of the other parents are like volunteering to be the president of the community association. Anyway, um, could you decline to participate?
JVL00:20:17We could like Jerry taking his face down from the, uh, the mailbox thing. Yes, uh, I could.
Mike00:20:26Um, we could, and you know, we try, but we're trying to try to be there and the kids like to do it. You know, the kids like to go and run around and it's just neighborly and you know, and we like, we like our neighbors. It's just, it's, it can, it's, it's the timing. So anyway, so I, what I ended up doing was I took my, my, uh, Yeti tumbler and I made a, uh, double cocktail and brought it there and it was great. And I had a great time and I enjoyed it. It was out side, but it just felt like I was outside all weekend. I had more baseball practice than my kids did because I was at all those baseball practices. So anyway, it's all fine.
Sonny00:21:03There's something, there's something to be said for the Yeti tumbler full of the other. I may have mentioned this to you guys. I, I filled, I filled up a Yeti tumbler the other day, not quite all the way. It didn't, it didn't quite often, but with an entire bottle of white wine and, and just like, and just, just, just walked around drinking my Riesling or whatever it was. It was like, I was, it was wonderful. It was, it was amazing.
Mike00:21:29Mine was a Mai Tai with a pebble ice. It was, it was just perfect. Just perfect. So I'm glad we have solidarity on that Sunday.
JVL00:21:38I have reached the point where I no longer go to baseball practices because flash now drives himself. There we go.
Sonny00:21:45He passed his, so he's, he's the driver now.
Mike00:21:50Congratulations. See how that goes. That may be a conversation for another week. All I'll say is, all I'll say is the short episode this week. There, there we go. By the way, just the last point on this is there's nothing more humiliating than when you're helping out at your son's practice to, to do the, to do just like outfield duty during, during the scrimmage and you flub a throw to first base and your son's tells his coach, my dad is terrible at baseball. Not wrong, not wrong. Totally correct. But a real gut.
JVL00:22:25Um, you sit that shit down, you get on, you go ride the pine.
Sonny00:22:32I got to practice next week.
Mike00:22:35What was I supposed to say? You're wrong, son. He's not wrong. Anyway, uh, why don't we move on and talk about the box office? Sonny, should we talk about, there's no real difference. We talk about the full weekend or the regular weekend, like the full Labor Day weekend numbers.
Sonny00:22:50I mean, it's the worst, it's the worst weekend of the year. It's pretty terrible.
Mike00:22:54It's pretty terrible weapons.
Sonny00:22:55You're not missing, you're not missing out on a, on a ton, uh, here weekend wise.
Mike00:23:03No, well, it's, it is interesting that number two, uh, is the movie we're talking about this week. Jaws, the 2025 50th anniversary re-release is number two, but I mean, did what nine over the three day weekend, really kind of a four day weekend, nine, almost $10 million.
JVL00:23:18Did they remaster it? Like, is it a cleaned up, beautiful print?
Sonny00:23:23It's, it's a 4k.
JVL00:23:25I saw it.
Sonny00:23:26You saw it in theaters.
Mike00:23:27I saw it in theaters.
Sonny00:23:29I was, it's funny. My, my Labor Day weekend was my wife and my son were out of town. They went on like a, uh, uh, mother son group trip, which was nice. Uh, it was, so it was just me and my daughter. And I was like, I, my daughter is, she just turned 10 and I was like, I think I could, I think I could take her to see Jaws. I think I could, I think I could take her to see Jaws and then, and then I was like, no, I better not. I, she, if she has nightmares or whatever, my wife will get mad at me. And like, she might, she might not still quite be there. And then I watched it at home because I own it on Blu-ray of course. And I watched it at home and I was like, ah, it's probably for the best. I didn't take her. It's probably, probably, probably for the, cause it's not even the shark stuff. She would be, she would be fine with the shark stuff. It's like the, the rotting head in the ship, the, the eye hole, the port, the porthole of the ship, uh, et cetera. Um, that would have, that would have gotten her, uh, I think, I don't know.
Mike00:24:30I mean, it got me again, but I, uh, no, I, I'm curious to, I'm curious to hear
Sonny00:24:34how it sounded or how it looked on, on the, on the big screen. Um, no, the box office was, it was weak. Uh, you know, the number we get weapons, weapons back in first. I mean, weapons again, holding pretty well. It's, it's at 132 million, it's going to make 150 million domestic, which is a good number for a movie that costs 38 million or whatever, um, horror remains. Very, very good to the studios. Uh, and horror will be the number one movie this weekend as, uh, the, the, the conjuring last rights or final rights or whatever is, uh, good Lord.
Mike00:25:11It says, uh, untitled, the conjuring series. What is this?
Sonny00:25:16The conjuring series, the conjuring, the conjuring series has like 13 movies in it. By the way, I was like, it's the most successful franchise of the last 20 years. It, it, it is right up there. I don't, I would be hard pressed to think of what would, what would be in competition with it, like non comic book, uh, division, but like, um, but like there's the, there's the conjuring and then there's the conjuring one, two, three, and fast and furious. Well, fast and furious started in like the two thousands, like the early two thousands. It was like 2000, like the year 2000, I think was the first one, maybe 2001.
Mike00:25:52So sorry, what was your time? What was your timeframe?
Sonny00:25:55Um, 10 years, last 13, 15 years. The first one came out in 2013. Yes. Um, uh, I mean, saw comes out in 2002, I think is when saw debuts, uh, paranormal activity maybe, but that's like even back to 2009. Um, but the, uh, but I'm sorry, I'm getting just, but like there's, there's the conjuring one, two, three, and four. Then there's also three Annabelle movies. There's three movies about the doll. That's like the pro.
JVL00:26:24Log from the first one is okay. So, so Annabelle is part of conjuring. Isn't La Llorona also?
Sonny00:26:30The Curse of La Llorona is, is technically within this universe, but it's not really related to any of the things, but that, that is a part of it. And also there's the nun and the nun part two. There's two nun movies, two movies about evil nuns. Anyway, lots of, lots of movies in that franchise. Uh, and this, this new one's going to be a huge hit too. It's going to, it's going to gross $50 million this weekend. So, uh, people love, people love Ed and Lorraine. Oh, Warren, Warren. They're the, they're the Warrens.
Mike00:26:58Yeah. Great. You know, I'm so glad we could contribute. Yeah.
Sonny00:27:02If only Warren were good, good Catholic people, you know, they're just out there. Yeah. Exercise and demons and stuff.
Mike00:27:11I've never seen a conjuring movie, so I have no idea.
Sonny00:27:14You've never seen a conjure. You've never, you've never been, you've never done a conjure.
Mike00:27:18I've never done a conjure or an Annabelle for that matter. Um, so. So, uh, okay. Yeah. All right. Well, should we, should we move on? Let's do the main event. Yeah. Let's talk about, let's talk about Jaws. Uh, Sonny, you want to give us a big boy review of one of the most famous movies ever, ever made.
Sonny00:27:38Jaws directed by Steven Spielberg. You're going to want to keep an eye on this Steven Spielberg cat. He's, uh, he's had a couple, a couple of movies that have been pretty well received duel, uh, which was basically a TV movie. Uh, and then, uh, Sugarland express last year, he had the Sugarland express. Come out, uh, which, you know, got a lot of, got a lot of nice, nice buzz and, you know, turn some heads. But I think people are really gonna, I think, I think his stock's going up with this Jaws.
Mike00:28:05Hold on Sonny. So in, in this, in this little fantasy you're indulging in. So are we doing this podcast on like, like CB radio? Like what, what are we, what are we, what are we breaking? It's 1975.
Sonny00:28:17We got a, we got a hot rod coming through here.
Mike00:28:20We got, we got, we got a shark in your back door. All right. Sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead.
Sonny00:28:28The waters are teaming, teaming with shocks. Um, uh, no, uh, so, uh, I am not going to do, I'm not going to do this whole podcast as if it is 1975. Uh, no, I look, we all know that we all know the story of, of Jaws. It's about a beach town that is attacked by a shark and nobody believes that it's a big massive killer shark until more bodies start piling up and then they go out on the water and blah, blah, blah. I'm, I'm mostly curious to know how it looked. How it looked on the big screen. Cause I have still not seen it. I've still never seen it on the big screen. I've still never, uh, I still have not seen it in a theater. I've only ever watched it at home, either on cable or on a blue Ray. Uh, Mike, how was the theatrical experience of Jaws? How was your crowd? How big was your crowd?
Mike00:29:13A small crowd. It was, it was like, uh, it was a Friday afternoon basically. Um, at the Alamo, but, um, so to explain how it was, how my experience was, I was definitely like nine or 10 when I first saw Jaws on VHS. Um, so like, that was my experience watching it. Maybe I caught it on cable, which I realized later they, you know, because of whether it was on VHS or cable, like there were like certain cuts that were made, like the pan and scan stuff. Like, so like, you really do kind of like miss a lot of the movie. By watching it that way. So, um, which I kind of found out after, or a bad way to watch a movie. I think it's, I think it's a bad way to watch a movie. Turns out pan and totally, well, I, I particularly, I didn't realize this, but it, it, it was richer without me realizing why it was richer until I found this out later. But like the big, the big scene, um, in the, the, like the Indianapolis speech scene, um, you know, in the, in the boat, like that, there was a ton of pan and scan there. So like, um, just all of the decisions that Spielberg made of how to shoot them and how to shoot like Cooper in, um, like that. Like listening to, uh, to Quint tell the story was like different. Anyway, the point is, is that I felt like I it's like a cliche, but I really felt like I was seeing it again for the first time, uh, I loved it. It was, it was so thrilling and it's, and it put me back, even though I know the story backward and forward, I know everything that's going to happen. Although I will say I forgot the order of certain things. Like I had not remembered that the. Cage, uh, that Hooper goes down into like that. That's basically near the end for some reason, 15 minutes.
Sonny00:31:00Right.
Mike00:31:01And which of course makes sense because that's how they get Hooper out, like out of the, out of the story for the, for the end. Um, so it can just be, uh, so it could just be Brody the shark, but. Like I had that in, like, right when they get on the Orca for some reason in my head. So it was a delight to sort of have the story, even though I knew it, have it unfold for me in, in, in kind of a way. Kind of new ways. Um, it looked great. It, it, um, it sounded fantastic. The score was terrific. That jump scare where what's his name's, uh, you know, rotting dead head pops out at Hooper and the, uh, and the boat, like I, it scared the shit out of me. And like every time, every time it's such a, even when you know, it's coming, even
Sonny00:31:48when you know, it's coming, like, I know there's a head that's going to be going through this window here in a second.
Mike00:31:53It was great. Um, this was just me because it was a pretty small crowd, but like, I was laughing a lot. Um, it's, I forgot how funny the movie is too. Um, like it's the whole thing. I mean, what am I supposed to say? Like one of the, one of the most loved movies all of all time is great. Like what else is there to say, but it turns out, but you do see like there are also, and just stop me if I'm rambling here, but like, there are so many good little Spielbergian moments. And when you realize. Like, you're watching this at the beginning of his career, you know, the stuff with like, you know, the, the, the spotlight in the mist or in the fog as there, as there, as, as, uh, Brody and Hooper are out on the boat for the, the first time, um, just the, the, the, the, oh, the way that like everybody is talking all at once, you know, which is like very like Spielberg, you know, they're like having a conversation and it sounds you're actually only catching little bits of the conversation until it gets to the important part. But like, there's other ambient noise going on and it's kind of layered on top of each other, like just all of those little touches. It's, it is so much better than obviously than every other imitator that came out after it. But like, when you know that all of those movies, all the Jaws sequels, all the other, like, you know, wannabe sequels, right. Wasn't there one with about like a killer whale and, and, and other things like, it's like, like this. This could have been that one of those movies and it's so much better than that. And I, I don't know what else to say. I loved, loved, loved watching it on the screen and I fell in love with the movie all over again. I haven't, I frankly haven't been able to stop thinking about it since I saw it several days ago.
JVL00:33:42So JVL. So, uh, I, I didn't watch it because I've seen a bunch of times. Sure. What I did was I, I actually, this week. I went and I read the novel.
Mike00:33:55Oh yeah.
JVL00:33:55So I read the Peter Benchley novel, which I had never done before. Cause that was really interesting. I was really interested in it. And he has a cameo in the movie. This is an amazing example of all I could think of reading. Cause the book is dog shit. I want to be very, very clear. It is a terrible, terrible book. It is. It is poorly executed, poorly conceived. Benchley was a floundering freelance writer at the time. He pitched like 15 ideas to this editor at Doubleday. And one of them was like a book about a shark. And he did, this was like his idea number, number 14 that he wanted to do. And the editor at Doubleday was like, "That sounds interesting, do that." And kept pushing him, pushing him to do it. Benchley dragged his feet on it. He wrote like the first hundred pages. Of those, only the first five pages were usable. The other 95 had to be scrapped. All I could think of was in the beginning of Inception, when Cobb talks about how the most powerful thing in the world is an idea. Because everything that we know of from Jaws springs from a single idea, which is a one sentence question. What if a shark became territorial? That's it. That is the single idea in here that Benchley had. He was utterly incompetent at being able to do anything with that idea and tell that story. We can talk all about the novel if you would like, because, oh boy, it's like, it is part ice storm. It is as much the ice storm as it is a story about a shark terrorizing a beach side community. He spends an unbelievable amount of time on like, the chief's wife, who is a rich girl who went to Wellesley, who sort of has lowered herself by coming and marrying a townie from the Summerside community. Where her rich family used to summer. She fucks Hooper, by the way. - Yeah. - What?
Sonny00:36:29- Did you know that? - That's the only thing I knew about the book is that she cheats on the chief with Hooper.
JVL00:36:35- She fucks Hooper. And interestingly enough, the reason she fucks Hooper is because the book was written with a sex scene in it between the chief and his wife, and the editor was like, "No, we can't have the sex scene "being between married people." - It's the 1970s. - It's the 1970s. No, I'm not kidding.
Mike00:36:55- Yeah.
JVL00:36:56- Mike, that's why this is. - I believe you. - And so all of the '70s-style Watergate paranoia, Dog Day Afternoon, all of that shit is floating through the book. And this is a case where Jaws is the thing it is in our culture, because real artists went and took this one idea. And made something of it. And the biggest synecdoche I can think for this is to look at the cover of the first edition of the book, which is, it is basically the Jaws cover. - The movie poster. - It's basically the Jaws poster we all know, but it's black and the font for the words Jaws is like, okay, and there's kind of a one-line, woman swimming and there's a shark coming from under, again, the composition is all basically what we know as Jaws, but it's really shittily executed. And the shark is drawn wrong. And you get to the one sheet and an actual artist has sat there and created this unbelievably iconic thing with the power of the red, just big Jaws, the white totally, again, the choice of having the sky be simply white space without any attempts to put in like clouds or anything like that. The blues used for the water are again, it's just like one of the most striking color palettes you'll ever see. And then the idea that this girl is kind of half naked. It is a movie. It is a movie poster in which you can tell this is a fully naked girl in it, but you kind of can't see anything. But you know, if you're 12 and you're staring at it long enough, you're convinced you could see some nipples.
Sonny00:38:48- Well, you can in the movie.
JVL00:38:50- Yeah. - Well, you can.
Sonny00:38:51- I don't know. I don't know how it looked in 4k, but this is what I was always. I remember the first time I watched it in Blu-ray, which was like after having seen it, you know, again, on cable or on VHS or whatever. I was watching it and I was like, oh yeah, she's just naked in this PG movie. In this. - Yeah.
JVL00:39:07This is a different time.
Sonny00:39:08Different time. - 75 different time.
JVL00:39:10- But all of which is to say that you get that, you get the screenwriters. I forget who the screenwriters are who basically totally reconceptualize the story and make it better. You get, you get the Indianapolis speech, which is nowhere in the book. You know, Quint is, Quint is bare. I mean, Quint really is a cardboard cutout in the book. There's no depth to that character at all. You get Steven Spielberg who understands what the real story is here. And, and, and, and then who, Hooper dies in the book is the other thing. Yeah. And we understand that. And also Hooper and Hooper and the chief hate each other in the book, partly because Hooper is balling his wife, but also be from the very first time they meet each other, they hate each other. And the chief is this weird neurotic guy who is anyway, when, what the movie needs as its catharsis is it needs this to end as two buddies, right? As they are kicking back to like the, you've just been through hell and back on this. And the movie has to end with the characters liking each other because otherwise everybody is going to come out of that theater. Like still worked up like this, instead of with the catharsis of, ah, right.
Mike00:40:29- And not just a, not just a buddy moment, a joke. The movie ends on a joke.
JVL00:40:33- Anyway, it's, this is what happens when real artists over the course of years get control of a perfect idea. - By the way, Carl Gottlieb is the screenwriter.
Sonny00:40:43- Yeah, Benchley is accredited screenwriter as well. He did, I'm sure he did the first draft, but.
JVL00:40:48- No, he did. So he famously, there is a draft that he did. - Yeah. - And I'm sure that this was done as a way to just get some money to him, right? So the river of-
Mike00:40:56- Well, that's why they put him in the movie too. He's the guy who's, he's the news reporter.
JVL00:41:01- But it, the whole thing is kind of astonishing to me how, how much Jaws as we know it really is an artistic property by committee in that normally it goes the other way around. Normally you get a great artistic work is like the, it is emerges. Singularly from a single artist who is a genius or something and this it's not. It's just the guy who had the idea was a fucking idiot, but it's a great idea. And it took an entire village of artists several years to turn that idea into something great and something that resonated with America for half a century.
Mike00:41:42- Is there something sunny to this idea that Jaws, I mean, everybody talks about, right? Jaws is the beginning of the blockbuster era. It's sort of the, the beginning of the end of new Hollywood. I mean, it does feel kind of like it, it benefits by being that linchpin or being at the turning point of all those things, right? It's like, you've got, I mean, the committee that makes this is like, they're like young and artistically inspired, but also ambitious filmmakers. I mean, mostly Steven Spielberg, but everybody else as well. Like, and I don't know, it's like, there's a perfect storm element.
JVL00:42:23- This is the last days of the studio system. - Right, well, that's what I'm saying. Like, it takes all of that good stuff and mixes it together.
Sonny00:42:31- The studio system had already like, essentially started to break down. I mean-
JVL00:42:36- But it wasn't dead.
Sonny00:42:37- But it was, it was not dead. No, I mean, like I just watched Chinatown this last week, which is another great one, but that's a Robert Towne movie. It's a Roman Polanski movie. It's, you know, Robert Evans, is the kind of, that's very much a new Hollywood movie. This is closer to an old Hollywood studio confection, right? This is something that could have been made in the Casablanca era, theoretically.
JVL00:43:11- And they buy the rights to this before the book even hits the shelves. - Right, right, right. - It is not like Spielberg has his passion brought. Like, it is a, we've got this thing, we've got this young upcoming director, Spielberg. It is like it is the, there's this fermenting period where the old studio system is falling down. The new Hollywood has not yet been fully born. And out of that ferment, you get this great piece of art.
Sonny00:43:36- Yeah. - Does that make sense?
JVL00:43:37- That's about right. - Yeah, that's what I'm saying, yeah.
Sonny00:43:39- I mean, the big innovation, of course, with "Jaws" is the, and it's not even really technically an innovation. Other movies had been on lots of screens at the same time before this. But this was the movie that, is rightfully considered to be the first real blockbuster. It was an enormous hit. It was lines around the block. It was an, even with it being in 1,500 screens or whatever, which was, it's an unheard of number for the time. But it's, I mean, it's just hard to, it's hard to think of, like I sometimes do think about like, Pauline Kael would write a review of a movie. She would write a review of a movie. And that movie was only playing in New York City and LA. And she would write like 17,000 words about it. And she would talk about like every plot point in detail. You know, like we have all this spoiler culture stuff now. - Right, right. - People throwing a fit if you tell them, you know, what happens in the--
JVL00:44:38- At the end of Titanic, the ship sinks.
Sonny00:44:40- Oh, how could you do that? - That, you know, that sort of thing is kind of maddening. And I just think about, I think about, I think about how she is writing and working in a time when like the movie she is writing about and the stuff that she is writing that's being read is literally only, you could only see it in like four cities at the time, you know, maybe, I don't know, 10 or 20. And people were just like, yeah, this is fine. We'll watch it when we get to it. This sounds like a good movie that I've just read all about. You know, like I want to go see it. And "Jaws" and "Star Wars" both are kind of, you know, the turning points there where it does become this kind of big opening mass culture thing, which, you know, kind of, it's interesting. I want to say, I want to make a controversial argument here. I got a hot take. - Oh boy.
JVL00:45:37- Okay, can I ask you a question before you get to that?
Sonny00:45:39- Yeah.
JVL00:45:40- Oh, nevermind. Okay, go ahead, Jared. - My question for you guys is, is "Jaws" fundamentally a creature movie? - Or is it fundamentally a serial killer movie? Because as I was reading the book, it struck me that "The Shark" is really presented as a serial killer. And it feels much more like a police procedural type thing
Mike00:46:10than a monster movie.
JVL00:46:13Much less like "Creature from the Black Lagoon" or, you know, one of those things than it does. Like there's a killer roaming and at first people don't even believe that there really is a killer and it's a serial killer. And he's, you know, nobody's ever seen somebody kill in this way before. And they've got a, they can't outsmart him. They can't catch him. And the cops who do things their own way have to go out and go to, I mean, it's almost like a paint by numbers serial killer.
Sonny00:46:42- It's a slasher movie. It's a slasher movie. Like that is kind of what, it's funny. I was listening to the rewatchables. I was watching, I was watching the, or listening to the rewatchables podcast about Jaws two. They did one for Jaws two, not, I'm sure they've done one for Jaws, but I was listening to the one for Jaws two. And they were like, this, this movie is actually a slasher movie. This is a, this is a slasher movie that, and I think I haven't actually, I've actually never seen Jaws two. So I won't speak on the qualities it has versus this movie, but I do, I do get the sense that that one is even more over the top, more like somebody's about to get murdered. Somebody we got, we got, all the kills here do, I guess they don't all happen off screen, but they are, they are, it's, it's not, it's not gory.
JVL00:47:29- I'm not thinking this is a slasher movie. I'm thinking this much more like, like Zodiac or Silence of the Lambs. - There's seven. - Or, or seven.
Mike00:47:40Yeah. - Yeah. You know, it's, that's, I, you've, - That was my question for you boys. - You've convinced me on that JVL, or, or you, you could convince me on that. Here's my thought watching the movie as I was watching it, is it actually feels like two movies. Then the first half of the movie feels like, yeah, maybe, maybe serial killer or even just kind of monster movie. The first half does feel that way, even though, I mean, again, because yeah, we all know about how the shark didn't work and that's why we had, he had to go the, the Hitchcock route, not show the monster, but it, it, there, there is this sort of, it is, it builds, builds on the tension of when's the next one going to happen kind of thing, right? - Yeah. - And then the moment that they get on the Orca, it becomes it to me and, and with everything that happens, it becomes, it becomes like an adventure movie. It becomes like a, a buddy, a buddy movie. Road movie is a good way, but like it becomes, I mean, and even the score gets to a bunch of that. Like there, there's, there are all these fantastic shots where the, the, the camera kind of sweeps around the Orca and it has this almost swashbuckling part of the score, you know, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. And it, it, it was like, oh, now we're in a completely different movie. It felt like to me in that moment. - Yeah. - All right, Sonny, you have a hot take.
Sonny00:49:05- I have two hot takes. I have two, I have two hot takes about Jaws. - Here it comes. - First hot take about Jaws. And I'm curious, I, I'm honestly curious what you guys make of this. I find the first half of this movie to be incredibly compelling. I find the first half of this movie I find the, I find all of the stuff on Amity with the arguments about keeping the island open, keeping it closed with like trying to figure out, doing the like investigation, the police work stuff. I find, I find the first half of this movie absolutely compelling. And I don't think the second half of the movie dies or anything. As you say, Mike, it's, it's Steven Spielberg movie. And he is, he is doing a thing that has a degree of difficulty that is like unheard of. He's shooting on the water. Yes. He's shooting in a boat. He's shooting on a small cramped location.
Mike00:49:54He's shooting with Robert Shaw.
Sonny00:49:56He's shooting with Robert Shaw, who like, who is drunk, who Dreyfuss hates, like Dreyfuss doesn't want to be on screen with him and like he, and he, and it's, it's still, it's still compelling, but I find, I find the back half of this movie much less compelling than the first, all of the shark, the actual shark fighting I could take it or leave it. First half of this movie, incredibly compelling, great stuff. I am riveted throughout. Then they get on the water and I'm like, this is really well done. And that's about as far as it goes for me.
Mike00:50:34I can't agree with you on that at all. It is, I appreciated the second half of this movie better than I ever have. And maybe it's because I'm older and I sort of under, I could understand what Robert Shaw was saying because when I was a kid, I remember being like, I don't understand him. - He's got a real mush mouth. - Who is that? - He's got a real mush mouth. - Where is that? Where's this guy from?
Sonny00:50:54- You got those theater speakers too. - Yeah, exactly. - You're getting the full.
Mike00:50:57- I don't know. Maybe it was because I was captured and I was sitting in the theater. But I, and look, I'm not saying I'm some like great sailor or anything, but I've spent a lot of time in my life on boats. And so I feel like I kind of have a good sense of what it's like on a boat and what it's like when you're me and you don't know as much as somebody else on a boat. So I really sort of sympathized or kind of related to Brody during that whole, his whole sort of growth journey. I don't know. I really found Brody's arc to be much more compelling than any other time I've watched it. And he has so much growth on the boat and in the boat scenes. So I just, I loved it. And I mean, the USS Indianapolis speech, it's such cliche to say how great it is, but it is so good. And watching Dreyfus again, who hated Robert Shaw. Like, I don't know if he was acting or if it was real, but when he's watching the story, you know, and he knows what, like how incredible that story is. It just is showing on his face. Oh, I loved it.
JVL00:52:18So, yeah. I mean, I would say, I agree Sonny, that I prefer the first half of the movie, but the other movie, the road movie adventure movie is still fantastic. Although I did now having read the book, I mean, there's a good 40 or 50 pages in which Brody is investigating the partnership structure of the mayor's real estate agency, which Peter Benchley thought was like really, that was, you know, really giving people what they want. And I got to say, I did miss that.
Sonny00:52:54- Wasn't there something about the mafia?
JVL00:52:57- Yes, that's his partner. The mayor's partners are in the mob and there's a lot of talk about leases and summer leases. I would say there are two other things.
Sonny00:53:09- You'll get just enough of that in the movie though, where it's like, look, the mayor's in a tough spot. The mayor is in an exceptionally tough spot in this town. This town relies on the summer business. You shut down the beaches and this beach town, they're just going to go to a different beach. People are going to lose their jobs. They're going to lose their businesses. They're going to lose their homes. He's going to get voted out of office.
Mike00:53:36- He's just the avatar for the townies.
Sonny00:53:39- He's only as good as the town will let him be. And the town wants that fucking beach open.
JVL00:53:44- And he's in a tough spot because they had a black person raping a lot of rich white ladies. This is another subplot in the book.
Sonny00:53:52- Wait, that's in the book? - Sure.
JVL00:53:54- I will say one of those, one of those,
Mike00:53:58the one of the blacks as Benchley calls them again,
JVL00:54:02when it's time, but that is a thing. It's another thing that there is a lot of Benchley spends a lot of time talking about teenage boys and their crotches. - Sure. - And he describes teenage boys laying on the beach, grinding their hips into their towels, attempting to stimulate themselves on the sand while they try to glimpse just a fleeting snatch of pudenda from the teenage girls. And then I'm this dude. - Stick with the movie folks.
Sonny00:54:39- 1970s.
JVL00:54:40- Again, just this thing is a product of its time. I mean, all of the worst ways.
Mike00:54:47- Wow. - This is, going back to the mayor. - Sonny, you have another hot take. - Oh, sorry, sorry, Sonny, you go ahead.
Sonny00:54:56- Wait, no, what was it? What were you gonna say about the mayor, Mike?
Mike00:54:59- Oh, just that the mayor reminded me of things, something that the movie does really well in the characterization of all of the characters, like even the minor or secondary characters like the mayor, which is, I mean, there are, they all have shades, right? Like there's that, a lesser movie would have had the mayor just be completely villainous, but he has this kind of moment where he, you know, yes, he realizes he makes this huge mistake and he tells Brody, right? My kids were on that beach too. Like he has this moment where like, he's totally, he's totally like pulled himself apart because like he realizes what a mistake he's made. I just think it adds so much, it just adds so much to the movie and it makes it so much deeper or, more shaded than less realistic.
Sonny00:55:50- Yeah, not realistic. No politician would ever be like that. They'd just be like, ah, you know. - Fair, okay, fair enough. - What do you want, what do you want me to do? You want me to shut this town down? Throw all these people, they're gonna be on welfare. They're gonna be on welfare by the end of the summer, by the end of, by winter, by winter time.
Mike00:56:05- Okay, did you have any other thoughts, Sonny?
Sonny00:56:09- I have one more hot take.
Mike00:56:10- Oh yeah, you have a second hot take.
Sonny00:56:12Oh, go ahead. - I have a second hot take. My second hot take is this. And I want to preface this by saying Jaws, five star movie. Classic. Nobody denies that it is. - Oh boy. - Nobody denies that it's a great film. Nobody would deny it. - However. - No reasonable person would deny this. However, Steven Spielberg is the greatest director in American cinematic history. Arguably, arguably, you can make the case. And as a result, Steven Spielberg has like 10 five star movies. If we're going on a scale of zero to five stars. - I would put Jaws in the bottom half of Steven Spielberg's great films.
Mike00:56:54- Okay, I mean, that's not that hot. Like, what are you saying?
Sonny00:56:58Like, sure. - I would say like, I mean, like if you just compare it to other, compare it to similar comps, right? So like Jurassic Park is a better creature feature than Jaws. No one would, I don't think anybody would, maybe people would deny it. I don't know, maybe, but.
JVL00:57:11- I don't know, man.
Sonny00:57:14- All right, think about, just hold on. - Jaws of the Lost Ark is a better pure action movie, better pure action adventure movie than Jaws. I don't like that, they're doing different things, but I think like, if we're talking just like pure action, I would say Minority Report is a better police procedural movie. Like I would, you put the procedural kind of investigative aspects of the two, which as you say JVL, this is like the first half of this movie is very much like a police procedural. Minority Report? - It's a better movie. I don't know, I like, I just, I would put of his like, of his late, of his like '75 to '84 run, I think Close Encounters of the Third Kind is a better movie. I think Raiders of the Lost Ark is a better movie. I think ET the Extraterrestrial, probably a better movie. I think, and I would, I don't, I do not think--
JVL00:58:07- Balderdash.
Sonny00:58:09- I do not think--
JVL00:58:09- This is the most preposterous thing you've ever said.
Sonny00:58:10- I do not think that Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is a better movie than Jaws, but I would rather watch Temple of Doom than Jaws on any given night. You give me a choice. You give me two movies. You're like, you want to watch Indy 2 or Jaws? And I'm taking Indy 2 100 times out of 100, 100. And then, I mean, like Schindler's List, better movie. Saving Private Ryan, better movie. Munich, better movie. Lincoln, better movie.
Mike00:58:38- But of movies that have to do with vicious animals with teeth and ships, this is a better movie than Hook. We can all, we can agree--
Sonny00:58:46- This is a better movie. This is a better movie than Hook. It's a better, it's a better World War II movie, kind of, than 1941. - Than 1941. - Than 1941. - Okay. - If you're ranking Steven Spielberg World War II movies, it's Saving Private Ryan, Jaws, Indianapolis Speech, 1941. I think that's a fair, I think that's a fair thing to say. I think that's, I'm just saying that like, Steven, again, if we concede that Steven Spielberg has 10 five out of five star movies and it may even be more than that, or maybe it's a few less, I put Jaws near the bottom of that list.
JVL00:59:24- Okay, so that I understand what you're saying, you are saying that if you take the top 10 Spielberg movies, - Yes. - Jaws is somewhere between six and 10. - Yes. - So you're saying that Jaws is maybe the sixth best Spielberg movie.
Sonny00:59:44- Somewhere between the six and the 10th best Spielberg movie, I would say.
JVL00:59:48- All right, that's not, I mean, I think it's wrong, but it's not preposterously wrong.
Sonny00:59:52- Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. - So not that hot, not that hot of a take then.
JVL00:59:57- I would go the other way, which is to say that Jaws might be his best movie. I'm not sure of that. I wouldn't go to the mattresses on that. I could be talked out of it, but I think it's easily one of his five best movies. Probably one of his three best in the case can be made for the best of his movies.
Sonny01:00:23- I just don't think it does. I don't think it does anything the best that Steven Spielberg does. I think every, like every element of it, Steven Spielberg does better elsewhere. That's all I'm saying.
JVL01:00:36- Michael, if you had to say the top three Steven Spielberg movies, what would you say?
Mike01:00:41- Top three, okay, so in no particular order, Raiders, Jurassic Park and, oh, and Jaws. I mean, just in terms of, just in terms of the top three movies that like I enjoy and think are, and think are like all around like great movie experiences, those three. Might throw in, I might throw in Saving Private Ryan in there, but just in that, I don't know. It almost doesn't feel like a Spielberg movie compared to the rest, but anyway. Or like Amistad, like they're just like not, those are like different. That's not what I think of when I think of like a Steven Spielberg movie, so.
Sonny01:01:34- It is interesting, it is interesting to think of, like Spielberg really does kind of--
Mike01:01:38- The Color Purple, you know.
Sonny01:01:40- Spielberg does really kind of appear fully formed, even with Duel. Duel is, you know, again, it's a TV movie. It's pretty straightforward, 90 minute, you know, thriller, kind of spare and sparse. But you go to Sugar Land Express, I watched Sugar Land Express this last week for the first time, I'd never seen it before. And Sugar Land Express is really interesting if you think of it as Steven Spielberg sat down and was like, I wanna make a, "Bonnie and Clyde" or "Badlands." Because it is kind of like those movies, like "Doomed Love," "Young Doomed Love," kind of in the country, you know, "Criminals on the Run." But it is also, it is also like hopelessly sentimental in the way that Steven Spielberg is. And like every scene has all this like visual humor in it. And everybody except for the like lead guy, the lead, the Walter Peck, turns out Walter Peck. Everybody has like a happy ending except for him. Like you get it in, you get it in a coda. Like the girl gets her kid back and the, you know, the police chief retires and is celebrated as a hero, blah, blah, blah. But like, it's very, it's extremely Spielbergian. I don't know.
Mike01:03:03- Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what else there is to say about "Jaws," except like it's, it is some, it's some black tar Spielberg. Like it's like, shoot it straight in my veins. That's how I feel about it. - Closing question.
JVL01:03:19- JVL. - Does "Jaws" become what it is without the iconic one sheet poster and the John Williams score?
Sonny01:03:32- Those are two separate questions. That's the answer.
JVL01:03:35- No, but I'm saying are the addition of those two things absolutely required for "Jaws" to become the cultural artifact that it is?
Mike01:03:44- But I think the score, it's like is the Mona Lisa still the Mona Lisa without like some key part of the painting, right? Like, I don't know, like the answer is no on the John Williams score. The one sheet is sort of icing on the cake and a cherry on top.
Sonny01:04:04- Yeah, the one sheet, like the score is absolutely essential to it without the duh, duh, duh. Like that is, I mean, that's I think that's the thing every, the first thing people think about when they think of Jaws is that score. Totally, totally inseparable. The one sheet, I don't know. It's, I can imagine a universe in which there is another poster that is also very good that people still go see the movie, but maybe not.
JVL01:04:34I don't know, it's a very good poster. - I'd love to have the Jaws pinball game. The Jaws pinball machine is, oh, amazing.
Sonny01:04:42- Is it a legend, is it a legendary pinball machine? - Yeah.
Mike01:04:45- Would Jaws have been the legend that it is without the pinball machine? That's the real question.
JVL01:04:49- The pinball machine is actually quite new. It's a recent release.
Mike01:04:55- All right, well, that is all the time we're gonna give to this episode. Join us over at subbeacon.com. Tell your friends and family and leave a comment. We'll talk to you next time. One final thing for me on this, you say there's no gore. Somebody, one of you said there was like,
Sonny01:05:16it's not a lot of blood. - There's not that.
Mike01:05:17- But like, I will say, the kid, the second victim, the kid who's out there on the-- - The raft. - The raft, like that was in, that was like implanted into my brain the first time I saw it. And when I saw it again in the theater, it was like being, like the horror of being a kid going into the water, like all over again, just like, when you see, it's like not even, you can't even see it, right? It's like, you see this like shark-like figure kind of come out and like his arms and legs are kind of flailing. And there's just a lot of dark red blood. Oh, horrifying.
JVL01:06:00- The book makes a real big thing over the fact that his parents are divorced
Mike01:06:03and the mother is a single mother.
JVL01:06:05And I'm sorry, I keep ringing this bell, but again, it's like 1974.
?01:06:13That's funny.
Mike01:06:13I'm sure it's fine.
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