Jaws: A Rewrite and Redemption

In the first budding months of The Best Picture Project, I reviewed Jaws.  To date, I would consider that post the worst of all that I have written.  This makes me especially sad, considering Jaws is one of my favorite films.  I keep it here as a reminder to be humble.  I have my share of lame excuses: I was a younger, less competent writer and was damn set to get something up on the blog that day, even if it was that chum bucket of shit.  If you don’t mind, we can celebrate the end of Shark Week with a little rewrite for redemption.  I know I can, and so desperately want to, give this film something so much better.

Jaws is considered the first summer blockbuster and one of the most culturally influential movies.  No one had ever seen audiences react to a film like this before.  There were people of all age, lining up to see it over and over again.  As the film’s profit grew, so did its fans and influence.  After Jaws, there was a sudden interest in the water.  Fear was instilled in swimmers.  I’m sure phantom fins caused unnecessary panic too often.  Many fishermen took the film as a call to arms, and began killing a multitude of sharks.  Arguably, the best result of Jaws was that almost overnight, kids wanted to become marine biologists.

Jaws is the story of how a lone, man-eating, great white shark terrorizes a the small island town of Amity.  Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) is the new police chief, and not the biggest fan of water.  While he’s a leader in the small town, he is still very much an outsider.  After the first shark attack, Brody wants to close the beaches.  However, with the fourth of July, the town’s most profitable weekend, coming up, the mayor coaxes him to keep the beaches open, for their economy’s sake.  This decision turns tragic, and the town blames Brody.  Now they want this shark dead.  So Amity’s most notorious fisherman, Quint (Robert Shaw), and a young marine biologist, Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) set out to the water with Brody to kill or capture the beast.

People always comment on how scary Jaws is.  With a shark attack movie, today you would expect a bunch of blood, gore and teeth sinking into soft flesh.  Here, especially in the opening scene, it’s what you don’t see that is so frightening.  Being above the water and witnessing the woman being physically drug around and screaming is much scarier than seeing the bite.  Hiding under the cool, inviting water is the perfect cloak for this powerful killer.  In fact, the more I see the shark, the less frightening it becomes, to me anyway.  The one moment that always makes me jump doesn’t feature the shark at all.  Hooper and I freak out in perfect synchronization there, every time.

One of my favorite scenes from the movie is when Quint talks about his experience after the sinking of the USS Indianapolis. On a dime, the mood changes from sharing scar stories and drinking to legs to Quint’s painful and horrifying story of being left for dead in the middle of the ocean.  As Quint speaks, his eyes are a little glassy, a combination of drink and old memories.  He looks both straight ahead to Brody, but through him as if looking far away to the past.  The way he talks and the grisly descriptions draw me in everytime and if anyone dares to talk during his speech, I give them an intense shush.

The story of the making of Jaws is one of the most infamous in Hollywood history.  It seems like everything the could go wrong, did, yet the film was a surprisingly huge success.  Director Steven Spielberg had a huge mechanical shark created to portray the beast.  It’s been said that while it worked fine when tested in a pool, the thing instantly sank and started dissolving in the salt water ocean.  During the shark cage scene, shot with real sharks, things became very dangerous.  The best shot from the crew’s work was the shark struggling on top of the cage.  Problem was, no one was in it, so the plot had to veer from Peter Benchley’s novel a bit and let Hooper escape the cage and live.

Jaws is one of the few movies that I never get tired of seeing.  Anytime I happen upon it on television, I cannot pull myself away.  Though I know every minute, the suspense pulls me in perfectly.  That scene showing Brody nervous on the beach with the perfect cuts between him and the water, gets me every time.  Though the film nearing 40 years old, there is a timelessness feeling about it.  This is how any fishing village should look and react to a killer shark.

“It’s all psychological.  You yell barracuda, everybody says, “Huh? What?”  You yell shark, we’ve got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July.”

Thank you, readers, for sticking with me.  I feel cleansed and happy to post a much better review of Jaws.  When writing, there is rarely perfection, but improvements are something to cherish.

All That Jazz

Could it be, that I would pick a musical over all the other great films of 1979?  While that seems completely out of character for me, keep in mind that All That Jazz is fairly gritty and at times sarcastic story of a struggling creative mind and his realization of mortality.  It is set in both reality and within the deepest fantasies of Joe’s mind and based on the life story of the film’s director, Bob Fosse.

Roy Scheider plays Joe Gideon, a Broadway choreographer, film editor, dancer, womanizer, trying father, lousy lover, chain smoker and drug abuser.  He keeps himself pretty busy and his body is struggling to keep up.  We see his morning bathroom routine: drop some alka seltzer, cigarette in the shower, pop some Dexedrine, eye drops and “It’s showtime, folks.”  Not the best methods to keep healthy.  His personal struggles between his exwife, daughter and girlfriend don’t provide much emotional nourishment either.  However, from the few heartwarming scenes, we see that he is loved and appreciated, no matter how much everything else gets in the way.

Doesn’t it always seem like when we finally do our best work, no one really appreciates it and it will never be seen?  One of the most memorable dance scenes is when Joe is finally satisfied with the Airotica number he’s been struggling with.  Well, it wasn’t originally supposed to be called that, but Joe revamped part of the number from a hokey airline commercial to into a very erotic and partially nude song and dance.  It’s a brilliant number, Joe and the dancers are proud of their work, but it’s not what the producers had in mind at all.  “Now Sinatra will never record it,” one says glumly.

Before seeing this film, I don’t think I could have ever imagined Roy Scheider as a dancer.  The man had amazing grace, poise and the body to fit the character.  Even though Joe is a character with many flaws and vices, Scheider brought him enough heart, passion and drive to make him someone we could connect with.  And as Joe’s is faced with darker physical hurdles, Scheider still lets him thrive until the very end.  I wish he had won the Oscar for Best Actor, but the nomination is still quite the achievement.

If you don’t connect the dots between the lady in white, the deteriorating health and the comic talking about death early on, you’ll soon see that Joe is going to be faced with his own mortality.  The film shows Joe going though the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.  These come up in the comedian’s act and are replayed with purpose several times.

Throughout the film, we’re brought in and out of Joe’s near death fantasy world.  It provides insight to Joe’s past and how he sees and has understood his own life.  This world in Joe’s mind always has a stage nearby.  Sometimes he’s talking to the woman in white backstage and at one point, a medical explanation is put in terms that Joe understands better with some hokey stage presence.  The Oscars for art direction and costume design were probably won by all the odd and brilliant details going on in Joe’s mind.  From the lady in white’s beautiful costume, the silhouettes of elevated hospital beds in scaffolding and the end finale with those two women in full body vein suits, I was impressed with the odd and thoughtful images throughout the film.

Let me ask you something a bit morbid, how do you think death will be for you?  Writers may hope it will be recorded in books for generations to remember, teachers may want to explain to their pupils how their body is failing and engineers may imagine rigging life propulsion devices.  Therefore, it would make perfect sense for a Broadway choreographer to imagine his death as he experiences it as the greatest show of his life.  That’s certainly not a bad fantasy to keep your mind busy as the reality of your body shriveling up and shutting down plays out.

“I think I’m gonna die.  Bye bye my life, goodbye.”

The French Connection

Have you ever followed someone before?  I don’t mean following a friend as you drive across town so you don’t get lost.  I mean a complete stranger, or someone who would not welcome you keeping an eye on them.  It’s a creepy question to answer yes to.  The experience is nerve wracking, keeping the target in sight while you stealthily stay just out of their range of perception.  You have to just go with it and ignore that part of your mind that calls you a creep, that’s what will make you slip up.  But when your target realizes just what he is to you, there are only two options: slip into the shadows or chase.  The French Connection is my dream chase.

In New York, Jimmy ‘Popeye’ Doyle (Gene Hackman) and Buddy Russo (Roy Scheider) are cops in the Narcotics Bureau.  On a hunch, they tail Sal Boca (Tony Lo Bianco), owner of a seemingly normal sandwich shop.  It turns out he’s about to make a deal with Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey), one of the biggest suppliers of heroin to the US.  Doyle and Russo have to try to intercept the huge heroin shipment from France, but things get messy when Boca and Charnier realize they’re being tailed.

Gene Hackman is so amazing as Doyle that he won the Oscar for leading actor.  He has the most perfect loose-cannon cop presence I’ve ever seen.  One of his shining moments is in an early scene where he busts a bar.  As he enters, he yells, “Alright, Popeye’s here,” lines everyone against the wall and puts two men in the phone booths.  He knows all the tricks, reaches underneath the bar railing, finds all sorts of drugs and mixes them together in a leftover drink to make a “milkshake”.  Doyle is a loose guy, perhaps he gets too intense, but he’s a great cop.  His intensity and sense of duty is what gives the chase scenes a personal drive.

Honestly, the first view can be a bit confusing if you don’t pay close attention to who wants what with the drugs, but the main idea is always clear: Guy 1 is following Guy 2.  I remember in a film class we were shown about five minutes of the train chase.  We weren’t given any premise, just “this is a chase” and that’s all we needed.

Director William Friedkin knows that when it’s filmed right, the most simple plot can be the most captivating.  In the amazing-train-chase-scene, there is always a component of the chase shown in motion.  We see Gene’s car maneuvering recklessly through traffic.  The man on the train keeps moving forward and after enough time, catches a second tail.   When we get a shot of Gene’s face as he’s driving, the train above is reflected on the windshield.  As the chase continues, we only get more involved and stakes get higher.  What began as an on-foot pursuit has turned into a man hijacking a above ground train being chased by a cop in a stolen car below.

I’ve often talked about how I love to yell at certain films, especially tense Hitchcock moments.  Readers, I honestly wish I had been a further creep and videoed my reactions throughout this film.  I was brought repeatedly to my feet, cursing, yelling at Gene Hackman, “Get back on the train!”  By the end, my brain was fizzling and my veins pumped pupil dilating adrenaline.  There was a good half an hour before I could do anything more than pace around the house cursing in delight and jubilation.  I can only hope it will give you the same reaction.  The French Connection won Picture, Director, Actor, Editing and Writing and my undying love.  This is one of the greatest films I have ever seen.

“I’m gonna nail you for picking your feet in Poughkeepsie.”

Jaws

There aren’t many films that you can watch over and over and feel the same wide-eyed rush of adrenaline every time.  Somehow, Jaws has that special quality and Steven Spielberg became a master.  I’ve been watching this movie as long as I can remember, I know exactly what happens and when, yet I feel my pupils dilate and little hairs start to stand every time that music starts up.

duuu dun….duuuu dun. du-dun du-dun du-dun…

It all starts with a late night sna- I mean swim.  That first scene in the calm, just before sunrise, is one of the scariest things ever captured on film.  One second, the girl is just jerked like a fishing bobber, next she’s being thrashed around in the water screaming and then she’s gone.  No bubbles and hardly a ripple.  The world was back to that calm at dawn.

I’ve heard today’s all-knowing teenagers complain that “Jaws isn’t scary” “there’s not enough gore” and “you never see the shark.”  Well la-te-da, why don’t you just blow a shark whistle and have it fly up on land and hump kids to death.  That would make a great movie, right?  Sadly, it would make millions.

You see, Jaws is the kind of scary movie that relies on psychological aspects, rather than shoving fresh guts in your face.  What’s better than a day swimming at the beach on the 4th of July?  The water’s nice, and everything seems fine so you go out deeper where the shark is under full cover and then it’s too late.  Take that little piece of vacation and turn it into shark bait and you’ve scared everyone out of the water for decades.

Of course, there is more to this film than an ominous cello, red water and beach panic.  You see, this is Chief Brody’s (Roy Scheider) first summer on Amity Island since his family moved from New York.  To the islanders, he’s still an outsider, so when he wants to close the beaches over the shark, they worry how they’re going to make money.  Summer is the season that keeps them afloat.  To make Brody look even more conspicuous, he doesn’t even like the water.  “It doesn’t make much sense for a guy who hates the water to live on an island.”

When the shark business heats up, Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) a young shark guy, arrives in town to bring his expertise on their shark problem.  He discovers that the shark they’re looking for is probably a huge great white.  After another grizzly scene with all the tourists as witnesses, the Mayor finally closes the beach and sends Brody and Hooper to help the salty fisherman, Quint (Robert Shaw), go capture and kill the bloodthirsty shark.  Quint is one of my favorite characters from any movie.  He’s got the slurred swagger and big fish tails to rival any fisherman.  From his hardened hands, his sunbaked mind and the terrifying tale of his time on the USS Indianapolis he’s the crazy old pirate of Amity Island, and bringing home that shark would be his greatest story.  Three men on the open water against a giant man eating shark, movies don’t get much better than that.

Jaws is the reason I hate to swim and love to fish.  It is why I have a set of bleached little shark jaws in my box of treasures.  And it is one of the first films that got me hooked on movies.  And I know it is one of the best films ever made.  If you or a loved one (including children) have not seen Jaws, just drop whatever you’re doing and watch it.  We’re just heading into summer, so it’s the perfect time for Jaws.  Just remember: “This shark, swallow you whole. ”

***Well, of course I’m picking Jaws for 1975.  Cuckoo’s Nest is fantastic but there’s not much ever made that can beat Jaws.  ’75 was a wonderful year.***