JAWS At 35

[Lord Jim]

You want to feel old?

This week marks the 35th anniversary of the release of Jaws......

I caught a really good two hour retrospective about the movie a couple of days ago on the Biography Channel...

It was made a couple of years ago before Roy Scheider passed away and has a lot of interview footage with him, (as well as Richard Dreyfuss and Steven Spielberg) It also has interviews with some of the actors and actresses who played minor characters...

Like Lee Fierro...the woman who played "Mrs. Kintner"...the mother of the kid who was eaten by the shark who walked up to Chief Brody and slapped him across the face... (She said that they did that take 17 times, and that for years afterwards, people would come up to her on the street with their cameras asking if she would slap them across the face while a friend took the picture.)

If you haven't seen it @W, you should...

I think you'd get a kick out of it...

There's alot of really great interview footage with Dreyfuss and others describing his conflicts with Robert Shaw...

Fair well and adieu all ye sweet Spanish ladies,
Fair well and adieu all ye ladies of Spain,
For I've received orders for to sail back to Boston,
And never no more will I see ye again....

[Timster]

Also the 50th anniversary of The Magnificent Seven.

Some retrospect indeed.

[Lord Jim]

Here's a link to the best scene (in fact one of the greatest soliloquies in the history of cinema)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nrvMNf- ... re=related

I was a Sophomore in High School when this flick was released...I went to Ocean City with some friends after school let out, and "JAWS " was showing in the local theaters...

I hooked up with a girl who really wanted to see the movie, (I didn't want to stand in line for a movie at the beach; I was there to party and get laid).. but we wound up going to see it...

My reaction when we left the theater was: "Gee that's a really great idea showing a movie about a shark eating people on a beach in a beach town. That's about as smart as showing a movie about a plane crash on a plane."

(Hey, cut me some slack, I was 15... I didn't understand how great a film this was)

[loCAtek]

It's thought by many to be the scariest movie in history. The build up of anticipation lasts throughout the whole film.

[Lord Jim]

It's thought by many to be the scariest movie in history. The build up of anticipation lasts throughout the whole film.

The funny thing about that LoCa is that that was completely accidental, and initially unintentional...

Speilberg's original script called for the shark to be shown much earlier, and much more often. But they had so many technical problems with the mechanical shark that he had to completely rework that aspect of the movie....

And that wound up being one of the best elements of the film....

[Gob]

Ah how sad...

I bought Jaws on DVD a few months back promising Hen and Hatch a big thrill. Hen, believe it or not had never seen it!

They found the whole movie most amusing, especially the comedy shark.

Hatch's CGI generation would never find that shark, (wasn't it called Bruce or something,) scary, and the whole build up turns into a anti-climax when the rubber fish is revealed.

Mind you, in Jaws 3, the bloody thing roars, despite not having lungs or vocal chords!!

[dales]

LJ posted:

I hooked up with a girl who really wanted to see the movie, (I didn't want to stand in line for a movie at the beach; I was there to party and get laid).. but we wound up going to see it...

Who gives a damm about the freakin' movie?

It's what did or did not happen afterwards, I'm interested in

[Lord Jim]

I guess it's a matter of timing...

Tati sat down to watch Jaws with me when she was seven, and she was captivated with the movie....

While we were watching it, she all of a sudden said, "somebody's going to get killed in this movie"...

So I asked her, "who do you think is going to get killed?"

And she thought about for a little bit, and then she said "the captain"...(meaning Quint)

Then I asked her, "why do you think the captain is going to get killed? Why not the police chief? or the college guy?

And she thought about it again, and then became very serious, and said...

"Because the captain isn't doing things exactly right, and I think he may be a little bit crazy. And those are the people who get killed in movies" (Seven years old, and she already had the fundamentals of film making down )

Along with Jurassic Park, The Wizard Of Oz, Independence Day and Born Free (yes, I know that's an eclectic selection...)it's one of "our" movies. We pop a big bag of popcorn and watch it together, just her and me, once every month or two.

(I've asked her if when her brother gets a little older if he could watch "our" movies with us....she told me she'd think about it.)

[dales]

is my face red................

[The Hen]

Ah how sad...

Hen, believe it or not had never seen it!

But I have now.

And it was crap. Talk about a lack of .... well, anything to it really.

A shark. Oh-er. A shark.

I suppose if I wasn't an Ozzie, I may have found it slightly ... watchable.

But I stayed awake for the whole fucking thing and all I can say is ... the Mad Magazine version of the movie was better.

[Gob]

A remake? James Cameron directing? You have to be shitting me...

[Lord Jim]

Hey that should make you guys happy...

It looks like they were going to have a cooler shark...(I say "were" because the last thing in the tailer says "Summer 2007" which must mean that for once better judgment actually prevailed in Hollywood and this thing never got completed.)

Since apparently that's what y'all think either makes or breaks the movie...

How realistic looking the shark is. (As opposed to the ya know, great performances, interpersonal relationships, suspense build up, etc.)

Say Hen....

What did you think of The Godfather?

[The Hen]

I have never seen the Godfather.

I liked the Mad Magazines version of it.

: )


I am NOT a good movie watcher. Gob could tell on me badly ... given the right bribes.

[Lord Jim]

Who gives a damm about the freakin' movie?

It's what did or did not happen afterwards, I'm interested in

None of your beeswax, Mister....

[loCAtek]

...I think he may be a little bit crazy.

Oh, that's just great, the "crazy" guy gets it!

He watches his whole crew (from the USS Indianapolis) get eaten by sharks, but that's no reason to be traumatized for life; he deserves to be swallowed whole say the psycho-babbling script writers!?

[@meric@nwom@n]

I loved Jaws. I was the right age at the right time for that movie when I first saw it. I went back at least 7 times to see it, like night after night. (Of course when I was an elementary school age kid I thought Batman was cool. Now I understand why my parents could not abide it.) Now for my mother, GWTW was THEE movie. She spent a day at the cinema watching it consecutively. When I finally saw GWTW I thought it was absolutely gawdawful. I still think it is one of the sappiest stupidest things I have ever sat through.

I can't bear the thought of a remake. I can't think of an actor yet born who could replace Robert Shaw, rest his soul, he made the movie for me. It wasn't about the shark and how realistic it looked, it was about the whole chemistry, man against man, man against himself, man against nature. The movie combined adventure, humor and horror in a magnificent manner that I have not yet seen duplicated.

I will watch for the Biography you mentioned Jim.

[Lord Jim]

It wasn't about the shark and how realistic it looked, it was about the whole chemistry, man against man, man against himself, man against nature. The movie combined adventure, humor and horror in a magnificent manner that I have not yet seen duplicated.

I think that nails it perfectly.

As for GWTW:

I like the first half of the movie. But the second half, after the war is over, as far as I'm concerned you can have it. The whole tone changes; it turns into a complete soap opera, with people dropping dead faster than in a Shakespeare tragedy....

[Rick]

GWTW

[@meric@nwom@n]

Gone With The Wind.

[Rick]

Gone With The Wind.

Oh, thanks.

Never seen it...