Speaker 1: On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women
Speaker 1: in them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
Speaker 1: or do they have individualism? The patriarchy Zephim Beast start
Speaker 1: changing with the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 2: Auga Alert, Alert, We're going on tour.
Speaker 3: We're going on tour, and I know what you're all thinking.
Speaker 3: What are you going to the same four cities again?
Speaker 3: Normally the answer be yes. This time no, we are
Speaker 3: for the first time touring in the Midwest. You heard,
Speaker 3: we responded nine years later, we are touring the Midwest.
Speaker 3: We are very, very excited, and so we wanted to
Speaker 3: let you know as soon as possible so you can
Speaker 3: grab your tickets. It's our end of summer tour. Caitlin,
Speaker 3: where are we going?
Speaker 2: I will tell you. We're kicking off the tour in
Speaker 2: Indianapolis on August thirtieth. That is a Saturday matinee show
Speaker 2: with Let's Fest. So check out our show for sure,
Speaker 2: and check out other programming at the festival.
Speaker 3: I've got a solo show that night. You should come.
Speaker 2: You should definitely come to that to come to both
Speaker 2: of them. So, yeah, that's Indianapolis August thirtieth, then the
Speaker 2: following night, on August thirty first, we will be in Chicago,
Speaker 2: so come on out to that show.
Speaker 3: We'll be at the Den Theater that night. It's a beautiful,
Speaker 3: beautiful theater. We're very, very excited, and tickets particularly we'll
Speaker 3: be going quick there, so if you're in Chicago, get
Speaker 3: your tickets now.
Speaker 2: Indeed, a few days later we'll be over in Wisconsin.
Speaker 2: That's right, We're coming to Madison on September fourth. We
Speaker 2: will be at the Burr Oak and then finally we
Speaker 2: will be in Minneapolis on September seventh at Dudley Riggs Theater.
Speaker 3: It will be a thrilling week in the Midwest. We
Speaker 3: are very excited to come and see you. Come hang.
Speaker 3: As always, we do like audience involvement stuff. We do
Speaker 3: meet and greets after we sell exclusive merch it's a blast,
Speaker 3: so come be weird and parasocial with us. We will
Speaker 3: be announcing movie pics a little bit closer to the shows,
Speaker 3: but we can promise you're gonna have an amazing time.
Speaker 3: Bechdel Cash shows are rowdy and weird and a lot
Speaker 3: of people have met their significant others there, so are
Speaker 3: we promising love.
Speaker 2: Yes, significant others, friends or just fuck buddies. Yeah, just
Speaker 2: go in and find someone to fuck if you want.
Speaker 3: They're just if you're a horny, well no, actually, if
Speaker 3: you're a horney, figure it out. But you can come
Speaker 3: to the show. You're wal, you can see people welcome.
Speaker 3: Don't be weird about it. Just don't be weird about it,
Speaker 3: honor system.
Speaker 2: Yes indeed. Yeah, and the tickets for all of these
Speaker 2: shows can be found on our link tree link tree
Speaker 2: slash bechdel Ca, So grab them while you still can.
Speaker 2: We're expecting these shows to sell out, so don't wait.
Speaker 2: As as mister Andrews says to Rose at the after
Speaker 2: the Titanic has hit the iceberg, don't wait. Get your
Speaker 2: tickets now and we will see you there. Should I
Speaker 2: be invoking Titanic a national tragedy?
Speaker 3: I think that it's you.
Speaker 2: You crested thee hundred year roll. It's fine, thank you
Speaker 2: so much. In any case, grab your tickets. We're so
Speaker 2: excited to come see you.
Speaker 4: See you there and now done done Fuck America by
Speaker 4: byecast Jamie.
Speaker 2: We're gonna need a bigger pod podcast.
Speaker 3: I mean, look, we've been trying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, tell your friends not for lack of.
Speaker 3: Effort that we don't have a bigger podcast. Tell your friends,
Speaker 3: Tell your friends. We didn't pivot the video. I guess, hey,
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, look, we're we've got we've got a
Speaker 3: we've got a quin style podcast. So true, chugging along,
Speaker 3: full of trauma, old fashioned, no video doomed. Who could say,
Speaker 3: let's hope not, Let's hope not.
Speaker 2: What if at the end of this episode we get die?
Speaker 3: Honestly, it would be a blessing. It would be a
Speaker 3: blassing bringing on. Hi everyone, Welcome to the Jaws episode
Speaker 3: of the Vachdel Cast. My name's Jamie Loftus.
Speaker 2: My name is Caitlin Droonte. This is our show where
Speaker 2: we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using the
Speaker 2: Bechdel test. Simply as a jumping off point.
Speaker 3: Is Jaws of what pronounces Jaws use?
Speaker 2: Well, the characters refer to Jaws as he him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but like, I mean, I guess that they are
Speaker 3: shark experts, so I'm assuming they know that, But it
Speaker 3: just feels like it's a given, like.
Speaker 2: They don't question it at all, Like before they.
Speaker 3: Could possibly know they you're using him. I just needed,
Speaker 3: like definitely not to be like obsessed with the like
Speaker 3: gender of the shark. It just felt like the he
Speaker 3: him was a was a foregone conclusion, versus.
Speaker 2: Like, I mean this is true. I think they just
Speaker 2: see a forebiding aggressive thing and they're like, well, that
Speaker 2: must be a male shark. I mean, animals don't have gender.
Speaker 2: Gender is a very human construct, so right, but it
Speaker 2: very well could have been a female shark.
Speaker 3: Well, because Spielberg later on, I mean famously the dinosaurs
Speaker 3: in Jurassic.
Speaker 2: Parks, so you know, all female growth growth exactly over
Speaker 2: time anyway, So yes, we use the Bechdel test as
Speaker 2: a jumping off point. That, of course, is a media
Speaker 2: metric created by our very best friend in the whole
Speaker 2: wide world, Alison Bechdel, first appearing in her comic Dikes
Speaker 2: to Watch Out For in nineteen eighty five. Often called
Speaker 2: the Bechdel Wallace Test, there are many versions of it.
Speaker 2: The one that we use requires this, do two characters
Speaker 2: of a marginalized gender have names? And do they speak
Speaker 2: to each other about something other than a man? And also,
Speaker 2: we like it when it's narratively impactful dialogue and not
Speaker 2: just throw away nonsense.
Speaker 3: We like it. We love it. Yes, and today we
Speaker 3: are taking that interactional feminist frame and applying it to
Speaker 3: one Jaws nineteen seventy five, directed by Steven Spielberg, which
Speaker 3: feels especially worthy of mention this year because it's celebrating
Speaker 3: its fiftieth anniversary. Yeah. I was really hoping to watch
Speaker 3: the new documentary about Jaws, but it unfortunately does not
Speaker 3: come out until after this episode airs tragically rude. But
Speaker 3: there is plenty, plenty, plenty to be said about the
Speaker 3: movie Jaws. There's been a lot of inks billed, and
Speaker 3: here is a little bit more MP three about it.
Speaker 2: Indeed, here's our contribution to that. Jamie, what's your relationship
Speaker 2: with the movie Jaws?
Speaker 3: I was a late bloomer to Jaws. I didn't grow
Speaker 3: up with Jaws, even though I grew up, like you know,
Speaker 3: I grew up in Massachusetts, where Jaws famously takes place. Yea,
Speaker 3: my mom not when I was growing up, but my
Speaker 3: mom when I was in high school and my parents
Speaker 3: got the Vorst. She moved to a community not unlike
Speaker 3: the community in Jaws. A community. She lives in Marshville, Massachusetts,
Speaker 3: which is a community that has a wide class gap.
Speaker 3: There's the rich folks in the hills and kind of
Speaker 3: the more working class, middle class folks in the city below.
Speaker 3: It is a town that very much relies on and
Speaker 3: has a very complicated relationship with the tourist economy. And
Speaker 3: so while there's a lot of cartoonish elements of Jaws,
Speaker 3: I actually did feel somewhat at home when I finally
Speaker 3: saw it. I didn't see it until a couple of
Speaker 3: years ago. It was re released in Imax, I want
Speaker 3: to say, three years ago, and that was my first
Speaker 3: time seeing it, and I have watched it every summer since.
Speaker 3: So I think this was my fourth viewing of Jaws.
Speaker 3: And I mean, it's a classic for a reason. Baby.
Speaker 3: Is it copaganda? Yes, but but it's is it a
Speaker 3: movie ever? Like kind of it is? It's like it is.
Speaker 3: It's really nice seeing like a movie that, like I
Speaker 3: wasn't avoiding it, I just like never saw it, and
Speaker 3: then when you finally see it, you're like, oh, it's
Speaker 3: it's as good as everybody says. It's an incredible movie.
Speaker 2: It's so good.
Speaker 3: It's so good, and much of the lore behind it
Speaker 3: is really fascinating because it's got that like this movie
Speaker 3: shouldn't have worked and then it did, which is always
Speaker 3: a fun thing, and it's yeah, Spielberg's like first theatrical
Speaker 3: release because he made that TV movie that was unlike
Speaker 3: Jaws if Jaws was a truck. Yeah, so that was
Speaker 3: this little warm up. He's like, okay, Jo, well what
Speaker 3: if Jaws was a fish and what if the truck
Speaker 3: was a shark? Yeah, but if the truck was a shark?
Speaker 3: And he slaid that and he was like twenty eight,
Speaker 3: which is upsetting but also incredible, and I, yeah, this movie. Look,
Speaker 3: could we make a better movie than this?
Speaker 2: Me? No?
Speaker 3: I like, no, we couldn't. And there's many movies we've
Speaker 3: covered in the show that we could make up definitely,
Speaker 3: but this is this is one of the greatest movies
Speaker 3: probably ever, one of like what a what like invented
Speaker 3: the blockbuster essentially. I didn't even ever think hard about
Speaker 3: the term blockbuster, but then you're like, you think about it.
Speaker 3: People lined up around.
Speaker 2: The block, Oh and they and they busted.
Speaker 3: They busted while they were waiting. And if the movie
Speaker 3: is so good, everyone busted and it came. That's why
Speaker 3: you wait around the block and then you bust when
Speaker 3: you get in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like edge you're waiting you're waiting, you're waiting.
Speaker 3: And you get so scared you come and yeah, this
Speaker 3: would be rocks. It fucking rocks, Roles and rules. It
Speaker 3: still feels very timely no matter when you see it.
Speaker 3: I love this movie. I particularly love the Robert Show performance.
Speaker 3: I think it's my favorite.
Speaker 2: Had no idea who was British.
Speaker 3: Oh oh by. And also I didn't know that he
Speaker 3: was a Pulitzer Prize finalist author like he was. Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: He was also a very successful writer, and I think
Speaker 3: was you know, many such cases. He was always a
Speaker 3: bit pissed that he was more famous as an actor
Speaker 3: than as a writer, but he was a very I
Speaker 3: wouldn't say he was an underrated writer. He was rated.
Speaker 3: He almost won a Pulitzer.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Anyways, I think that his performance as quint is like
Speaker 3: one of my favorite performances ev which is the coldest
Speaker 3: take humanly possible. And I don't like Richard Drivis famously.
Speaker 3: I think he's annoying, and it's really it's horrible when
Speaker 3: someone's a horrible person, but it's interesting when someone's a
Speaker 3: horrible person, and it just validates the fact that you
Speaker 3: never enjoyed watching them perform and That's how I feel
Speaker 3: about Richard Drives. He sucks and I don't like watching him.
Speaker 3: And it used to just be like, am I being
Speaker 3: a bitch, And then I found out he was a
Speaker 3: horrible person. So now I'm like, well, I can freely
Speaker 3: air I don't like Richard Drivis. I think he's obnoxious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he didn't know until you sent me that link.
Speaker 2: But he's a piece of shit.
Speaker 3: It's Jaws related too. The reason that like, I mean,
Speaker 3: he's he's been. He's been a piece of shit quietly
Speaker 3: for years. But his most recent outing of being a
Speaker 3: piece of shit was he had like an outburst against
Speaker 3: essentially any diversity or DEI in film at a Jaws
Speaker 3: screening in Massachusetts several years ago. Go and because Massachusetts
Speaker 3: is the greatest, he was booed in the theater and
Speaker 3: it made the news rounds. But I mean, it's, you know,
Speaker 3: an old white man, old white manning But it just
Speaker 3: was like, I would not recommend watching the clip. It's
Speaker 3: rather disgusting. And he's possibly a Republican, we just don't know,
Speaker 3: but we know that he it's it's one of the
Speaker 3: more comprehensive, hateful speeches I've ever heard yeah.
Speaker 2: He was disparaging of women of the meet too, and.
Speaker 3: It was literally like, if you are not a cis
Speaker 3: white man, I don't respect you.
Speaker 2: Make him vomit as he says.
Speaker 3: Yes, he says yeah, so early in the show to
Speaker 3: get into that. But and I you know, not that
Speaker 3: I'm like, and I'm sure Robert Shaw was a woke king,
Speaker 3: like who fucking knows.
Speaker 2: He did identify as a socialist, so maybe he did more.
Speaker 3: So I mean, look, yeah, not necessary. I mean to
Speaker 3: hang out at a DSA meeting long enough. Anyways, this
Speaker 3: movie's amazing, Yes, and I really really like it. I
Speaker 3: think if I saw it when I was younger, it
Speaker 3: would be in like some of my all time movies.
Speaker 3: But I'm a pretty recent convert. What about yourself?
Speaker 2: Honestly kind of the same. There's an alternate timeline version
Speaker 2: of me, or like a multiverse Caitlyn out there somewhere
Speaker 2: in the world who has seen this movie a hundred times,
Speaker 2: who can quote it? Yeah, who started watching it when
Speaker 2: I was like eight years old. But that just isn't
Speaker 2: the version of me who's speaking right now. That's okay,
Speaker 2: thank you so much. I saw this only once in
Speaker 2: my like it was either when I was a teenager,
Speaker 2: like in high school, or it was during the kind
Speaker 2: of great Caitlyn movie binge of two thousand and five
Speaker 2: somewhere around then. But I watched it that one time,
Speaker 2: and I didn't see it again until last summer at
Speaker 2: a screening at the Vista in LA and I was like,
Speaker 2: holy shit, why was I sleeping on this movie this
Speaker 2: whole time? This is incredible? What am I doing? And
Speaker 2: now I'm gonna work it into my regular rotation because
Speaker 2: it is so good. It's such a great movie.
Speaker 3: It's a movie.
Speaker 2: It's a movie that feels like a movie. We come
Speaker 2: to this place for magic and for Jaws.
Speaker 3: Literally that I do feel this is so core, but
Speaker 3: like it's a movie that feels like a movie. When
Speaker 3: people are talking about movies, they're basically talking about Jaws
Speaker 3: pretty much. Yeah, it's got something for everyone.
Speaker 2: It really does.
Speaker 3: Whether you're a child or traumatized from what you did
Speaker 3: in World War two, this movie's got something for everybody.
Speaker 2: Indeed, let's take a quick break and we will come
Speaker 2: back to do the recap and we're back. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 2: here's what happens in Jaws.
Speaker 3: We open on just saying exactly.
Speaker 2: We open on some young people having a campfire on
Speaker 2: the beach. A man and a woman run off to
Speaker 2: go skinny dipping. The man is too drunk and he
Speaker 2: kind of like passes out in the sand, but the woman, Chrissy,
Speaker 2: goes into the water, and we've.
Speaker 3: Got that creature from the Black Ligan shot throughout.
Speaker 2: In something that's underwater, grabs her and starts thrashing her around,
Speaker 2: and eventually she's pulled underwater, never to be seen alive again.
Speaker 3: The casting for this is so seventies sexism, but it's
Speaker 3: interesting this character is called Chrissy. Yes, So the casting
Speaker 3: call for this basically said, okay, are you hot, willing
Speaker 3: to get naked, and very physically strong so that we
Speaker 3: can yank you underwater. And the actor who played her
Speaker 3: was all of those things. She had done like some
Speaker 3: pinup modeling I think, and was a I believe, like
Speaker 3: a semi professional slimmer like she had.
Speaker 2: A lot of and a stunt performer, like a professional
Speaker 2: stunt worker.
Speaker 3: Some of our most underappreciated actors. But she in what
Speaker 3: I believe. I watched the Jaws documentary that was filmed
Speaker 3: for the fortieth anniversary, so about ten years old.
Speaker 2: Now I also watched that one.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, that's when I sent to you and her
Speaker 3: she was basically waterboarded yeah during the shot, but she
Speaker 3: was like, but we didn't call it that back then.
Speaker 3: You were like okay, but just like I don't know,
Speaker 3: very like casting eat, it'sunded, Like Steven Spielberg was the
Speaker 3: only person that was like, is she appropriate for the role,
Speaker 3: And all the other men in the room were like,
Speaker 3: humana huamanahamana. So you know that's and because it's like
Speaker 3: the seventies and everyone's our parents age or earlier, they're
Speaker 3: like ha ha ha, And it was so funny and
Speaker 3: we just have to be like, well, if you say so,
Speaker 3: I don't have to agree. It sounds like they've waterboarded
Speaker 3: you anyways. Yeah, rip Chrissy, m hmm.
Speaker 2: Then we cut to Martin Brody played by Roy Scheider,
Speaker 2: the chief of Police of Amity Island, very Martha's Vineyard vibes,
Speaker 2: and that is famously also where they shot the movie.
Speaker 3: A cab does include Brody, yes, but I do love him.
Speaker 3: He's hard. It's hard, he I mean, but that's why
Speaker 3: coppaganda exists, because guys like Brody don't actually exast I
Speaker 3: know anyways, do love him.
Speaker 2: So we meet Brody and his wife Ellen played by
Speaker 2: Lorraine Gary.
Speaker 3: Love her too. What a fun Steven Spielberg is so
Speaker 3: like early Spielberg. I feel like it is full of
Speaker 3: mom characters like this who just like I mean, it's
Speaker 3: not similar to the mom and et in that she
Speaker 3: is a much bigger character in that story. She's a
Speaker 3: single mother, but just that, like the women in his
Speaker 3: like seventies and eighties movies in like rather formulaic movies
Speaker 3: still like have a personality at very least, which so
Speaker 3: few characters in like genre movies do. It's very like
Speaker 3: I am your wife. Here is French fries I mad
Speaker 3: or like however, wives are nagging, right, But she is humorless.
Speaker 3: She's fun. She is like we live on the beach.
Speaker 3: She's like not a great parents.
Speaker 2: I don't think anyone in the seventies were, because the
Speaker 2: way that parents just let their kids run around loose
Speaker 2: all willy nilly.
Speaker 3: It definitely was like, yeah, parent of the time. But
Speaker 3: also it's just wild how well aware she has that
Speaker 3: there's a shark nearby and she's like, there are my kids. Oh,
Speaker 3: you don't like that? They're in the water, like, well,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna have a drink, and you're like, all right,
Speaker 3: let's go. I love her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's fun, and so she and Brody have two
Speaker 2: sons together and are recent transplants from New York City.
Speaker 2: Then Brody gets a call about a missing girl, the
Speaker 2: one from the night before, and he discovers her body
Speaker 2: on the beach, or what's left of her, because she's
Speaker 2: been badly mangled and it's presumed to be a shark attack.
Speaker 2: So he wants to close the beach until further notice.
Speaker 2: But Mayor Vaughn played by Murray Hamilton and his minions
Speaker 2: go to Brody and say, oh, you can't close the beach.
Speaker 2: This is a summer beach town and we need the
Speaker 2: money that tourism brings in. We don't have sharks. That
Speaker 2: woman died in a boding accident.
Speaker 3: Probably, I think there's I've read about. I didn't really
Speaker 3: know before prepping for this episode that Jaws was a book.
Speaker 3: I did not read it, but I did look up
Speaker 3: and like watch the video and read a few articles
Speaker 3: about what the changes that are made in the book.
Speaker 3: And one of the things that like, I'm not upset
Speaker 3: at the way Spielberg did it, but I would be curious,
Speaker 3: like what it would be like if I guess I
Speaker 3: guess the mayor is a piece of shit in both things,
Speaker 3: but like everyone seems more like a piece of shit
Speaker 3: and more complicated in the world of the book, like
Speaker 3: there aren't really the Spielbergie heroes that you get. But
Speaker 3: I guess that the book takes more care in a
Speaker 3: way that I was like, oh, because I like, I
Speaker 3: don't know, like recognize that dynamic from my mom's community,
Speaker 3: Like takes way more pains to describe the consequences and
Speaker 3: the dependency that the community has, and how severely many
Speaker 3: of the residence, like the full time residence of their
Speaker 3: community would suffer if the summer economy were to disappear.
Speaker 3: And so while it's still ultimately I think painted in
Speaker 3: the book as like the mayor is clearly making a
Speaker 3: decision against the wellness of his people, I feel like
Speaker 3: the Spielberg movie makes it as like he's more of
Speaker 3: like a mister Crabs, like he's like our money, money, money,
Speaker 3: I want money for myself and just me, Whereas I
Speaker 3: guess the mayor of the book is like, well, like yoh,
Speaker 3: there's a shark. Oh, it's killing everybody, but otherwise, like
Speaker 3: people won't be able to pay their rents. Like it's
Speaker 3: presented as a more complicated thing where I feel like
Speaker 3: in the like the people in Amity and This are
Speaker 3: more like they're very sheeple vibes versus like we're not
Speaker 3: I mean, And it's like the movie can only do
Speaker 3: so much. But I feel like the people who are
Speaker 3: like the working class normal people are made out to
Speaker 3: be like very not smart as opposed to like, this
Speaker 3: is a very complex issue, but also they're about to
Speaker 3: get eaten by a fucking shark. It's not like, you know,
Speaker 3: it's not like Brody's.
Speaker 2: Wrong, right, Yeah, the movie seems to kind of oversimplify
Speaker 2: it slash like lean into the villainization of the Mayor character, but.
Speaker 3: It's also I don't hate, but no, it works. It
Speaker 3: still works. I just I just thought I was like, Oh,
Speaker 3: I would be interested in like alternate universe version of
Speaker 3: the movie where you know, you had a character that's
Speaker 3: like but I am, like I run a small business
Speaker 3: or like a small restaurant, and if summer people weren't here,
Speaker 3: I wouldn't be able to YadA YadA, you.
Speaker 2: Know right what, Yeah, the movie definitely glasses over that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but in any case, Mayor Vaughn is like, pitshposh, there's
Speaker 2: no shark. Then we cut to the beach. There's lots
Speaker 2: of people having a nice time. Brody is there keeping
Speaker 2: an eye on things because he's very anxious that everyone's
Speaker 2: going to be eaten by a shark. There's a kid
Speaker 2: there who is singing do you know the muffin Man?
Speaker 2: And we're like, okay, Shrek vibes.
Speaker 3: Uh huh huh.
Speaker 2: Just had to throw that out there. And then there's
Speaker 2: another little boy, Alex Kittner, who goes in the water
Speaker 2: and soon after a shark attacks and kills him. This
Speaker 2: prompts a frenzy in town. Missus Kittner, Alex's mother is
Speaker 2: offering a three thousand dollars reward to the person who
Speaker 2: kills the shark that killed her son. And this town
Speaker 2: hall meeting is called and Brody says that he's going
Speaker 2: to close down the beaches, which upsets, you know, quite
Speaker 2: a few of the townspeople because they have businesses that
Speaker 2: rely on tourism. So it isn't just the mayor like,
Speaker 2: there are townspeople who are like I need summer dollars
Speaker 2: to serve.
Speaker 3: It's just very yes, I just, I just I guess again,
Speaker 3: it's just like they're to me, are presented is very
Speaker 3: like you fucking fool, You're gonna die, which is true.
Speaker 3: But it's also like if we're thinking of Jaws being
Speaker 3: the if Jaws is capitalism, you know, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I controversially think that the sharks did nothing wrong
Speaker 2: and that the real villain of the movie is capitalism.
Speaker 3: Well, it's also like, you know, the shark. I guess
Speaker 3: that that's I don't know about sharks, but I learned
Speaker 3: about sharks for the purposes of today, and uh a
Speaker 3: shark probably wouldn't wouldn't have done any of that shit.
Speaker 2: True.
Speaker 3: And then there's like, I know, we'll talk about it,
Speaker 3: but like the author of Jaws went on to become
Speaker 3: a shark conservationist, Like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because he felt guilty about the aftermath of Jaws.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's like, oops, I was just kidding you guys.
Speaker 3: I didn't think anyone was gonna read all that kind
Speaker 3: of fun. Peter Benchley. Yeah, yeah, he's like oops, and
Speaker 3: then he spent and now he's like a legend in
Speaker 3: the shark community.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's a shark named after him. I found out.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll talk more about that. But we're at this
Speaker 2: town meeting and then we hear fingernails on a chalkboard
Speaker 2: and they belong to Quint, the Robert Shaw character. He's
Speaker 2: an eccentric local fisherman who says that he'll catch and
Speaker 2: kill this shark, but it's not gonna be pretty. I
Speaker 2: he'll do it for no less than ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: Quint. All right, I'm gonna say this because I don't
Speaker 3: think I think since my mom stopped commuting, I don't
Speaker 3: think she listens to the show anymore. So if you've
Speaker 3: noticed a change in numbers by one, that's probably her,
Speaker 3: Which is why I feel comfortable saying Quint does not
Speaker 3: not remind me of some of my mom's ex boyfriends,
Speaker 3: whoa okay, just the guys that have spent a little
Speaker 3: bit too much time in the sun. Maybe. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, he's he's kookie, and he's just been in
Speaker 2: the sun a lot. He's been in the sun, and
Speaker 2: he's been out on a boat all by himself.
Speaker 3: He's had too much. He's had a couple of natty daddies.
Speaker 3: Let's say that, what's that? It's a fisher Well, it's
Speaker 3: like a cheap beer, but it's like a cheap beer
Speaker 3: that's extra. It's like turbo beer. Whoa that? I don't know.
Speaker 3: My mom dated a couple lobster men in her time,
Speaker 3: and Natty Daddy was sort of the lobsterman drink of
Speaker 3: choice because it was beer, but it was stronger. Wow,
Speaker 3: natty daddies, I can't funk with It's it's they're pretty nasty,
Speaker 3: but they're strong. It's like a buzzball for beer drinkers.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, got it. We do see him drinking a
Speaker 2: narrogast on the boat later on, and I just matters.
Speaker 2: It really brought back. It brought me back to my
Speaker 2: days of living in Boston.
Speaker 3: Well, I love going home and having a little Ganst
Speaker 3: Shandy in the summer time.
Speaker 2: That's nice.
Speaker 3: But yeah, he's got he's cookie fishermen vibes.
Speaker 2: And everyone's like sure, yeah, we'll think about it. Because
Speaker 2: he like makes this proposition and no one takes him seriously.
Speaker 3: No one is asking the question I'm asking, which is
Speaker 3: what is this accent? Where? Like where are you from?
Speaker 3: What doesn't matter not important, it's perfect, it's great. Every
Speaker 3: choice being made is the right choice.
Speaker 2: Agree. So after this, Brody starts researching sharks. He's astonished
Speaker 2: at how little is known about them, which I think
Speaker 2: at the time was like, pretty true. There wasn't a
Speaker 2: lot of like scientific shark research.
Speaker 3: You could just say anything about sharks, which is how Yeah,
Speaker 3: and then Robert Benchley regretted it exactly.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, a couple like local guys set up a shark
Speaker 2: trap hoping to get that reward money, and the shark
Speaker 2: takes the bait, but the guys don't end up catching it,
Speaker 2: and the one guy almost gets killed. So just another
Speaker 2: reminder at what they're up against. And then more people
Speaker 2: come into town hoping to catch this shark and get
Speaker 2: the reward money, but most of them don't know what
Speaker 2: they're doing. They're being reckless. It's chaotic. And then a
Speaker 2: guy named Hooper, this is the Richard Dreyfus character, arrives
Speaker 2: in town. He's a marine biologist from the Oceanographic Institute
Speaker 2: there to lend his expertise, which in this case means
Speaker 2: I agree, we have to kill this shark, not like
Speaker 2: let's do something else, Like I'm a scientist, and shouldn't
Speaker 2: I be doing like.
Speaker 3: Chris, maybe we should like catch this shark. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: think that's reasonable.
Speaker 2: But he's like, no, let's kill it.
Speaker 3: It's reasonable to catch the shark. Right.
Speaker 2: So Matt Hooper is there to say what he knows
Speaker 2: about sharks, and he examines the remains of the young woman, Chrissy,
Speaker 2: who was attacked in the first scene and concludes that
Speaker 2: it is definitely a shark attack. It was not a
Speaker 2: boating accident, and he's furious that the authorities in town
Speaker 2: have been extremely negligent about this. We then cut to
Speaker 2: a shark that has been captured and killed, and everyone
Speaker 2: is rejoicing because they assume that it's the shark that
Speaker 2: has been attacking people.
Speaker 3: That's so funny. It's like that illustrates exactly how much
Speaker 3: in this world people don't know about sharks because they're like,
Speaker 3: there's only one shark. Ever, we got it at ever,
Speaker 3: we killed a shark, right.
Speaker 2: But Hooper is like, well, this is a tiger shark
Speaker 2: and its bite radius doesn't really match up with the
Speaker 2: wounds on Chrissy. This shark seems too small. This shark
Speaker 2: is innocent. Yes, we killed an innocent shark. Oh sad,
Speaker 2: and he's like, the only way to be sure, though,
Speaker 2: is to cut the animal open and see what's in
Speaker 2: its digestive tract. The mayor is not fond of this idea,
Speaker 2: and then missus Kittner approaches Brody to slap him and
Speaker 2: be like, I just found out that you knew about
Speaker 2: a girl getting killed here last week, and you knew
Speaker 2: these waters were unsafe, and you let people go swimming anyway,
Speaker 2: and now my.
Speaker 3: Boy is dead, and great scene.
Speaker 2: And now Brody is feeling some feelings such as guilt,
Speaker 2: and he goes home and he's like drinking a pint
Speaker 2: of wine and Hooper shows up. Oh, I guess he
Speaker 2: starts drinking the pint of wine after Hooper shows up,
Speaker 2: because Hooper brings the bottle of wine. Anyway, Hooper shows
Speaker 2: up to be like, hey, again, I'm pretty sure that
Speaker 2: shark that got caught is not the shark. And so
Speaker 2: they go to the docks and they cut open this
Speaker 2: shark and confirm Hooper's suspicion that this was not the
Speaker 2: shark who killed the little boy, which means the killer
Speaker 2: shark is still on the loose. So then Hooper and
Speaker 2: Brody go out on a boat, which, by the way,
Speaker 2: Brody is very scared of the water, so this is
Speaker 2: difficult for him.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think fear of the ocean is the world's
Speaker 3: most reasonable fear. I personally am afraid of the ocean.
Speaker 3: It is too big.
Speaker 2: It is really big, and there's so many scary things inside.
Speaker 3: I know that you're supposed to be full of with
Speaker 3: a sense of wonder, but that's just not my story.
Speaker 2: And that's okay. I am afraid of any water that
Speaker 2: I cannot see the bottom of. So even like a
Speaker 2: shallow pond, if it's murky and I don't know what's
Speaker 2: what the ground looks like, I'm scared.
Speaker 3: There's probably a murderer. Yeah, at the bottom there is.
Speaker 3: There's a famous movie about the ocean, and guess who
Speaker 3: wins the ocean. The movie's called Titanic. Yeah, the ocean
Speaker 3: always wins. Wow. Movie sets a false expectation of challenging
Speaker 3: the ocean.
Speaker 2: You're oh, you're so true. Yeah. Wow. Anyway, that's why
Speaker 2: I only go swimming in swimming pools, thank you very much.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay. So then so they're out on this boat, Brody
Speaker 2: and Hooper, and they're looking for the big bad Boy Shark,
Speaker 2: using all of Hooper's fancy ocean sonar equipment that he
Speaker 2: bought himself because he comes from a wealthy family. And
Speaker 2: they come upon the half sunken boat of a local fisherman,
Speaker 2: and Hooper insists on putting on scuba gear and going
Speaker 2: to check it out, which to me seems like a
Speaker 2: very bad idea, what with the ravenous shark on the
Speaker 2: loose and all. Yeah, but he goes in the water
Speaker 2: and he finds a huge hole bitten out of the
Speaker 2: bottom of the boat. He finds a huge shark tooth.
Speaker 3: A very very funny dummy.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I was like, it is actually having seen I've seen
Speaker 3: Jaws in theaters twice now, and it is unbelievably effective
Speaker 3: in a crowd. I was so scared the first time
Speaker 3: I saw it in theaters. And then when you see
Speaker 3: it and you can pause.
Speaker 2: You're like, oh, it's a little silly, but silly, it's
Speaker 2: a great jump scare.
Speaker 3: Everything is so and also like so much of the like,
Speaker 3: oh should I get in the water? Shit, It's just
Speaker 3: I do feel like this movie. He does a great
Speaker 3: job at having a like three way dick measuring contest
Speaker 3: between these men and they're all there are coming from
Speaker 3: such a different place, but all of them are like,
Speaker 3: oh you think that was hazardous to your safety, well
Speaker 3: check out. Like it's just so like masculine, and it
Speaker 3: also feels very aware of what it's doing, especially between
Speaker 3: Hooper and Quint.
Speaker 2: Definitely, it's just awesome. There's a great moment, speaking of
Speaker 2: the narrogainst there's that moment where Quint chugs his cann
Speaker 2: of beer and then crushes it with his hand, and
Speaker 2: then it cuts to Hooper who then takes the final
Speaker 2: swig of his coffee in a styropham cup and then
Speaker 2: crushes the cup.
Speaker 3: Which I guess is like somewhat improvised on the day,
Speaker 3: which is because of this whole like legendary feud between
Speaker 3: Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfus, which we can talk about
Speaker 3: in a bit. It's not super relevant to like our discussion,
Speaker 3: but it is interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So anyway, they find this dead fisherman and the
Speaker 2: huge shark tooths and everything, and it's scary and they
Speaker 2: come back to shore and tell the mayor to close
Speaker 2: the beach because a great white shark is in their midst.
Speaker 2: That's what this like tooth confirms, but the mayor is like,
Speaker 2: it's the fourth of July weekend, I cannot and will
Speaker 2: not close the beach. Then tons of tourists arrive for
Speaker 2: the holiday weekend. People are on the beach and they're
Speaker 2: apprehensively going in the water. But then a shark fin
Speaker 2: is spotted and everyone panics and rushes out, and this
Speaker 2: like shark patrol are about to shoot what they think
Speaker 2: is a shark, but it turns out to be two
Speaker 2: boys playing a prank.
Speaker 3: Close call for them.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, in shallower water, the real shark is spotted, and
Speaker 2: this is where Brody's son Michael is playing with his
Speaker 2: friends and the shark is coming for them. A nearby
Speaker 2: man is attacked and killed, though the kids are pulled
Speaker 2: to safety and Michael goes into shock and has to
Speaker 2: go to the hospital and stuff. And then Brody convinces
Speaker 2: the mayor to sign a voucher so that he can
Speaker 2: hire Quint to kill the shark once and for all.
Speaker 2: So Quin, Brody, and Hooper make preparations. Again Quin, who
Speaker 2: is this like grizzled working class fishermen, is like, who
Speaker 2: the fuck is this? Hooper guy with his soft hands
Speaker 2: and money in his pockets, so there's you know, animosity
Speaker 2: between them. They pack up various weapons, equipment, a shark cage,
Speaker 2: et cetera, and then Captain Quint says, take her to
Speaker 2: see mister Murdoch. Let's stretch her legs.
Speaker 3: Except this is not the largest ship to ever sail
Speaker 3: the Atlantic, not by a long shot.
Speaker 2: And in fact, maybe they need a bigger ship the boat.
Speaker 3: It's been said, it's been said.
Speaker 2: So they set off to the seas to try to
Speaker 2: find this great white shark. They're dropping bait, they're trying
Speaker 2: to lure it in with chum. There's this moment where
Speaker 2: Brody accidentally drops some tanks of compressed oxygen and Hooper
Speaker 2: is like careful, those can explode, and we're like, okay,
Speaker 2: Chekhov's air tanks. Then it seems like the shark has
Speaker 2: taken the bait and they're trying to reel it in
Speaker 2: on this like huge fish line. But they lose it
Speaker 2: after a while, until Brody gets a glimpse of it
Speaker 2: as he's throwing more chum in the water, that famous
Speaker 2: scene where he like his head pops up into frame.
Speaker 3: Oh it's great, so good.
Speaker 2: And then right after this is when we get the
Speaker 2: famous line of You're gonna need a bigger boat because
Speaker 2: this shark is huge. It's like twenty five feet long.
Speaker 3: It's almost like it's an animal. It's a malfunctioning animatronic almost,
Speaker 3: and who can say.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The shark is now circling the boat, so they
Speaker 2: fire harpoons at it that are attached to these floating
Speaker 2: barrels so they can easily track the shark and try
Speaker 2: to prevent it from going under. But this shark is
Speaker 2: so strong and big that it pulls the barrel under,
Speaker 2: so they lose it again in the hours where on
Speaker 2: nightfalls they start drinking and comparing injuries from the past
Speaker 2: and they're sharing stories, including one that provides backstory for Quint,
Speaker 2: which is that he was a soldier in World War
Speaker 2: Two on the real life naval ship called the USS Indianapolis,
Speaker 2: which sunk twelve hundred people went into the water, and
Speaker 2: the survivors floated there for days while sharks started circling
Speaker 2: them and picking men off one by one.
Speaker 3: So this is a very fabric We kind of circle
Speaker 3: back to this. This is so such an effective moment
Speaker 3: in the movie right where it's like taking this stock
Speaker 3: character and giving him like unbelievable depth to like the
Speaker 3: degree to which you're just like, oh my god. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I didn't realize. I didn't realize, you know. I mean,
Speaker 3: there's a lot to be said. I did a little
Speaker 3: bit of research into like this was added. This is
Speaker 3: not in the book. This is added for the movie
Speaker 3: they hired. There was like I forget there there was.
Speaker 3: This movie mainly was by Peter Benchley and one other
Speaker 3: writer who worked frequently with Steve Martin. He also wrote
Speaker 3: The Jerk question Mark.
Speaker 2: Oh, Carl Gottlieb.
Speaker 3: But this was a third writer, a secret third writer
Speaker 3: who had the idea for this monologue, wrote it out,
Speaker 3: gave it to Robert Shaw. Robert Shaw rewrote it for himself.
Speaker 3: He is also he's a writer, and I guess the
Speaker 3: speech was like seven pages long. But this is all
Speaker 3: like I thought it was it because it's such a
Speaker 3: specific detail that I thought was like, this has to
Speaker 3: be from the book, but it's not. And it's so effective,
Speaker 3: if overblown, and like what I didn't get from this
Speaker 3: because it's they're talking about like they were transporting parts
Speaker 3: of a bomb that would decimate areas of Japan, Right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: what I was looking up. I don't know if this
Speaker 3: is in the speech not to but like they didn't
Speaker 3: know they were doing They knew they were on a
Speaker 3: secret mission, they knew they were bringing parts of something,
Speaker 3: but they didn't even know what they were transporting, so
Speaker 3: they were they'd just done something absolutely horrible unbeknownst to them,
Speaker 3: which is just like very darkly fascinating to me. But
Speaker 3: at the point being, this is a true story, but
Speaker 3: like the shark involvement is way overblown. Most people died
Speaker 3: of hypothermia, there were sharks around. But when I was
Speaker 3: like reviewing this speech, I was like, he's implying that
Speaker 3: like six hundred people got eaten by sharks. Yeah, that
Speaker 3: was not the case. It worked. It's better if that
Speaker 3: happened for the movie. But I just was, really, this
Speaker 3: was not something that I I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 3: like I've seen the movie several times and I know
Speaker 3: that they cite something specific, but I just never learned
Speaker 3: anymore about it. And it is a very it is
Speaker 3: a very horrible story. I would uh, I would drink
Speaker 3: too truly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and apparently there's a Nicholas Cage movie about the
Speaker 2: USS Indianapolis, Like about sure, there is story.
Speaker 3: I think I'll skip it, but that's yeah. In the
Speaker 3: documentary I watched, there was also people who were on
Speaker 3: the USS Indianapolis interviewed for the documentary.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I watched the same interviews, and it seemed like
Speaker 2: there were mixed reactions to the Robert Shaw speech in
Speaker 2: the movie where they were like appreciative that this character
Speaker 2: brings this story to life because it was like this
Speaker 2: secret mission that was not disclosed to anyone for a
Speaker 2: long time afterward, and a lot of the survivors just
Speaker 2: like never either couldn't tell anyone or didn't tell anyone
Speaker 2: because you know, this was especially an era where men
Speaker 2: didn't address their feelings or their trauma and they just
Speaker 2: buried it and tried to move on with their lives.
Speaker 2: So they were like, this is the first time I
Speaker 2: ever saw my story told on screen, which.
Speaker 3: Is important, but it's I don't know, it's very tricky too,
Speaker 3: because it's like again it's like, I'm aware that the
Speaker 3: soldiers aboard the USS Indianapolis did not know that they.
Speaker 2: Were delivery doing a war crime.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're war criming, which makes it more tragic to me.
Speaker 3: And it's I don't know, it's complicated. I think it's
Speaker 3: at the end of the day, I was like, that
Speaker 3: was a very interesting and surprising choice in the world
Speaker 3: of the.
Speaker 2: Movie, especially to refer to this real life event, because
Speaker 2: it could have easily just been like a made up mission,
Speaker 2: a made up ship, yeah, in World War Two.
Speaker 3: But it weirdly makes the movie feel more real. Yeah,
Speaker 3: in some ways where it's this I think, you know whatever.
Speaker 3: Part of the reason I think the movie holds up
Speaker 3: is to some extent it feels like it takes place
Speaker 3: out of time. There are some like dated aspects of it,
Speaker 3: but for the most part, like it's not like they're
Speaker 3: using you know, it's it's not like you're watching a
Speaker 3: movie that comes out in two thousand and two and
Speaker 3: someone takes out like an ancient cell phone and you're
Speaker 3: kind of taken out of it for a second. But yeah,
Speaker 3: just like having a real life like horrific story of
Speaker 3: veterans PTSD that there are people who like it, just
Speaker 3: I don't know it really it really brings stuff home
Speaker 3: and it makes the character so much more memorable for sure,
Speaker 3: and Robert Shaw slays it. Yeah, there's also like a
Speaker 3: while there's so much written about the production of this
Speaker 3: movie that he because he had like severe alcoholism. He
Speaker 3: struggled a lot with alcoholism, as did his father. But
Speaker 3: there's like two takes of this scene, and the first
Speaker 3: one Robert Shaw was like, I'm gonna have a few
Speaker 3: drinks before and then was like too drunk to complete
Speaker 3: the scene. And then I don't know, I just I
Speaker 3: feel he's it seems like he's really struggling. He called
Speaker 3: Spielberg and was like, did I embarrass you? I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: and Spielberg was like, it's all good, King, just just
Speaker 3: don't do that tomorrow. And then he didn't do that tomorrow.
Speaker 3: He shut up and gave the speech that we saw,
Speaker 3: and it's great.
Speaker 2: I think this is part of that documentary too, though,
Speaker 2: that he did two takes of it, one completely hammered
Speaker 2: and one completely sober. And then a lot of people
Speaker 2: were like, I couldn't tell the difference. He's just such
Speaker 2: a good actor that like he nailed at both times.
Speaker 3: I just really was so endeared to him. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: like him a lot.
Speaker 2: So anyway, we get this story from Quint that informs
Speaker 2: why he is like fascinated but also has a vendetta
Speaker 2: against sharks.
Speaker 3: Very captain ahab vibes right.
Speaker 2: Right, right right. Then there's a series of like the
Speaker 2: shark comes back, it rams their boat, It disappears again,
Speaker 2: then comes back again, and they shoot it with another
Speaker 2: like barrel harpoon, and tie the ropes attached to the
Speaker 2: barrel to the back of the boat the stern if
Speaker 2: you will, to try to pull the shark toward shallower
Speaker 2: waters to kill it there. But the shark is so
Speaker 2: strong that it's pulling the boat around and the boat
Speaker 2: starts taking on water, so they have to cut the
Speaker 2: shark loose. Now there are three barrels attached to it,
Speaker 2: which means theoretically the shark cannot go underwater. But this
Speaker 2: shark isn't like the other sharks, and it can do anything.
Speaker 2: And then the shark starts chasing their boat, so again
Speaker 2: they try to lead it toward shore. But quint is
Speaker 2: acting a little cuckoo bananas, and he's like pushing the
Speaker 2: engines too hard. He's like overheating them. They're like catching fire.
Speaker 2: The boat is lightly sinking. Also, he has smashed up
Speaker 2: the radio, so they can't call for help.
Speaker 3: He shouldn't he he should not have done that.
Speaker 2: He should not have done that.
Speaker 3: That was I wish I could tell him if I
Speaker 3: could reach into my TV, I'd be like, oh, don't,
Speaker 3: why'd you do that? Instead of going to therapy? What's
Speaker 3: that horrible god that like really tired meme where it's
Speaker 3: like men will smash the only radio communications on the Jaws,
Speaker 3: But instead of going to therapy. That's kind of his
Speaker 3: whole vibe.
Speaker 2: That is his whole vibe. So now they have to
Speaker 2: switch to Plan B, which is Hooper is going to
Speaker 2: go into the water inside the shark cage and lure
Speaker 2: the shark close enough so that he can like stab
Speaker 2: it in the eye or mouth and inject it with
Speaker 2: a lethal poison. But the cage seems very flimsy compared
Speaker 2: to this goliath of a shark, so it seems like
Speaker 2: a bad plan, but they don't really have any their options.
Speaker 2: So Hooper goes in the cage in the water, and
Speaker 2: of course, the shark immediately breaks the cage apart. Hooper
Speaker 2: drops his giant syringe of poison and he's about to
Speaker 2: be eaten, and Brody and Quint pull the cage to
Speaker 2: the surface and it's empty, so it seems like Hooper
Speaker 2: is dead. The shark is now eating the very sinking boat.
Speaker 2: This is the part where Quint basically falls into the
Speaker 2: shark's mouth. It is brutal.
Speaker 3: It's brutal. It's all you're like, mm hmmm, symbolism maybe yeah, yes,
Speaker 3: maybe either way, he's cooked. I also I liked the
Speaker 3: behind the scenes detail that they like that in the book,
Speaker 3: Hooper also dies, but they brought him back to life
Speaker 3: so that they could use a very specific shot of
Speaker 3: a real life shark attacking an empty cage.
Speaker 2: Yes, kind of.
Speaker 3: Fun because I also because I appreciated context for that,
Speaker 3: because I because I was like, he's also just because
Speaker 3: I don't like Richard drys But I was like, huh,
Speaker 3: he could have died. Yeah, I get that Brady's gotta live,
Speaker 3: but like he could have.
Speaker 2: Died well, because there's all these weird class implications. Now
Speaker 2: when you kill off the poor you know, the working
Speaker 2: class character, and you keep the more educated, wealthy guy alive.
Speaker 3: But I appreciate that that is not what it was.
Speaker 3: That was not the intention, right, It just was like,
Speaker 3: I do appreciate what it's like. There's a pretty simple
Speaker 3: explanation for what seems like a pointed choice. But they
Speaker 3: just wanted to use that scary shot of shark. I
Speaker 3: was like, okay, well then I will give you a
Speaker 3: pass on that. What.
Speaker 2: So Quinn is dead, we think that Hooper is dead.
Speaker 2: The shark comes back for Brody, and Brody throws one
Speaker 2: of the tanks of compressed oxygen into the shark's mouth
Speaker 2: and starts trying to shoot it. He keeps missing and missing,
Speaker 2: until finally he shoots the tank and it and the
Speaker 2: shark explode into smithereens. And then guess who resurfaces. It's Hooper,
Speaker 2: who did not get eaten, and he and Brody paddle
Speaker 2: back to shore on the barrels the Yeah, so let's
Speaker 2: take a quick break and we'll come back to discuss.
Speaker 3: Done done, and we're back. Okay. First thoughts on this movie. Obviously,
Speaker 3: we don't have women in it really, so really note
Speaker 3: number one, there's really not many women in it. I
Speaker 3: would say there are three, and one is chunkified by
Speaker 3: the shark in pretty short order. However, what I think
Speaker 3: this movie is great at is showing different shades of masculinity.
Speaker 3: I think that it is really really good at that.
Speaker 3: So it's an interesting conversation to be had because there
Speaker 3: are two women in particular who are generally kept to
Speaker 3: the side. They're generally defined by their marriages and motherhood.
Speaker 3: But the performances are really good, and they're I guess
Speaker 3: in movies of this nature, there is more than I
Speaker 3: expect it. I guess true with the two women we have.
Speaker 3: So I guess let's start there and then we'll talk
Speaker 3: about masculinity.
Speaker 2: Sure, sure, yeah, So, I mean, like many movies, this
Speaker 2: is a story about an important and dangerous task that
Speaker 2: needs to be carried out and who's gonna do it. Well,
Speaker 2: it's a bunch of men and women have to stay
Speaker 2: home and take care of the kids. Yeah, So, as
Speaker 2: we already talked about. Like Ellen again, played by Lorraine
Speaker 2: gary Is, she's a fun character when she is on screen.
Speaker 2: She's dynamic and she has a few fun lines here
Speaker 2: and there where she says want to get drunk and
Speaker 2: full around.
Speaker 3: That's to her husband, kind of her most icon like,
Speaker 3: that's her most iconic negligent parent moment. I love it.
Speaker 3: I love it, And.
Speaker 2: Then I also enjoy the part where she when Hooper
Speaker 2: comes over and she's like, oh, so my husband says
Speaker 2: that you're in sharks as if Like it's a like
Speaker 2: a division of sales that he's into. Pretty funny line. Yeah,
Speaker 2: But other than that, yeah, I mean, she's not given
Speaker 2: a whole lot. Apparently in the book, the Ellen character
Speaker 2: is given a much larger presence. In the book, she's
Speaker 2: more complicated and flawed.
Speaker 3: He's fucking Hooper, right.
Speaker 2: She's having an affair with Hooper.
Speaker 3: I'm yeah, I did not miss that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's glad the movie got rid of that. But
Speaker 2: it's also at the expense of we don't see her
Speaker 2: on screen, although the movie could have just written a
Speaker 2: different subplot for her or whatever.
Speaker 3: That's the thing. It's like, I don't like that. I
Speaker 3: don't like the way the book goes with her character.
Speaker 3: It feels like that is just a thing to give
Speaker 3: the Brodie character an excuse to be a misogynist. But
Speaker 3: I also think that there could have been more that
Speaker 3: she could have been involved in. I mean, I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they in like, there's no reason theoretically to me that
Speaker 3: the Hooper character specifically could not be a woman. I
Speaker 3: think would actually be far more interesting if the Hooper
Speaker 3: characters specifically were a woman, definitely a well educated woman
Speaker 3: of the seventies. Why not. I understand that quint. She's
Speaker 3: kind of inextricably a man. Fine, fine, fine, because a
Speaker 3: woman could not have been on the USS Indianapolis. But anyways,
Speaker 3: and it's not like I want girl cop. It's a
Speaker 3: complicated discussion. What I did think, I thought that the
Speaker 3: character of Ellen, she is present at moments that I
Speaker 3: didn't think she would be. This is peanut, but like,
Speaker 3: I did appreciate that there. Spielberg is really good at
Speaker 3: this of adding these like quiet family moments inside of
Speaker 3: genre movies that I feel like really make his movies special.
Speaker 3: And there is one of them here that I thought
Speaker 3: was very memorable, where it's like Brody is sitting with
Speaker 3: his youngest son. He is like really upset, understandably because
Speaker 3: the only other woman in the movie has just slapped
Speaker 3: him and said, my son's death was preventable, you bitch. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and she's right, and she's right, and he is like
Speaker 3: he knows it, and he knows it. And then his
Speaker 3: kid is sitting next to him, a clear reminder of
Speaker 3: like a kid around the age of the kid who died.
Speaker 3: And there's just like this really sweet moment that Ellen
Speaker 3: sees and is clearly very affected by that I thought
Speaker 3: was like just the moment you don't get in most
Speaker 3: genre movies. It's really good where you know, his kid
Speaker 3: is kind of like mirroring him like kids do, and
Speaker 3: then it's like, why are you upset? And he's like,
Speaker 3: I kill the kid. But just and that moment between
Speaker 3: like father and son of just like a moment of
Speaker 3: real affection and emotional honesty. It's just something you don't
Speaker 3: really see a lot, and it really endeared me to
Speaker 3: everyone in that scene totally.
Speaker 2: I made the same note because I mean, think of
Speaker 2: how many scenes where you see a man in emotional
Speaker 2: turmoil and he deals with it by trashing a room
Speaker 2: or lashing out in some a violent way, and to
Speaker 2: instead have this like very tender moment between father and son.
Speaker 2: I mean, the bar is low, but it was like
Speaker 2: a very refreshing moment that I appreciated.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree, and I think that like for its time,
Speaker 3: even though we're not lit, it seems like, honestly, the
Speaker 3: way that they're doing their family is very similar. It
Speaker 3: is very common for middle class and specifically white middle
Speaker 3: class families of this time where the wife does not
Speaker 3: appear to work. She seems to be a stay at
Speaker 3: home mom. Oh she does work. She's a stay at
Speaker 3: home mom, and the father is the you know, money breadwinner, right,
Speaker 3: But it seems like their relationship is pretty equitable, which
Speaker 3: I also appreciated. There's not a moment where Brody like
Speaker 3: keeps things from her. There's not really a moment where
Speaker 3: I feel like, again, just like what you come to
Speaker 3: expect in movies like this of this time, where the
Speaker 3: husband would be like, you don't get it, you can't.
Speaker 3: I was this again. It's a small thing, but the
Speaker 3: fact that she's in the room with Hooper and Brody
Speaker 3: the whole time they're talking about the shark again, I
Speaker 3: feel like a lesser movie, he'd be like, go, tuck
Speaker 3: the kids in or whatever, like she would be off
Speaker 3: doing woman stuff, and then she'd come in and be like,
Speaker 3: what's going on, And it's like she doesn't. She doesn't
Speaker 3: totally get what's going on, But neither does Brodie. And
Speaker 3: it's not like, you know, he is presented as hyper
Speaker 3: competent in comparison to her. I think really the only
Speaker 3: edge Brody has over his wife is that he is
Speaker 3: I think concerned the correct amount about sharks, and she's
Speaker 3: maybe not quite concerned the right amount about sharks because
Speaker 3: she's listening to the mayor and the media, which I
Speaker 3: don't think makes her a dupe. I think that she's
Speaker 3: kind of the stand in for like, well, what do
Speaker 3: you mean they said it's fine, they got a shark.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I just I liked how her Her
Speaker 3: character should have had more to do, but whenever she
Speaker 3: was present, I felt like she was a treated as
Speaker 3: an equal and had like a personality that was her own,
Speaker 3: which is the bare minimum you can ask of a character,
Speaker 3: but still in a genre movie in nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 3: I was like pleasantly surprised by it same and that
Speaker 3: she's allowed to be horny, want to get drunk and
Speaker 3: fool around public She well, she didn't publicly say she
Speaker 3: was hardy. She said she was harny. She didn't even
Speaker 3: know that there are people filming that. She said she
Speaker 3: was horny, and she didn't die. Again in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 3: that didn't happen very much.
Speaker 2: I mean, well, let's look at what happens to the
Speaker 2: woman in the first scene, shall we.
Speaker 3: The first horny woman. Yeah, she is sacrificed to the
Speaker 3: shark god.
Speaker 2: So she again played by stunt performer an actor named
Speaker 2: Susan Jane Beckliney. She is naked and doesn't need to be,
Speaker 2: which is, you know, the common trope in horror movies
Speaker 2: that we've discussed a lot, where it's just like the
Speaker 2: sexualization of a woman as she's being brutally killed. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's something we see all the time in horror movies.
Speaker 3: And this is not the worst offender of it. Which
Speaker 3: is interesting because I feel like when I think about
Speaker 3: that original death, I remember it as more sexualized than
Speaker 3: it actually.
Speaker 2: Is same And what is that? What are our brains doing?
Speaker 3: I think it's because there's just so many scenes that
Speaker 3: are inspired by it that are boy sexual. I don't
Speaker 3: necessarily think it's it's not it's it's not an US problem.
Speaker 3: I don't think, right, I remember it as we're sexualized,
Speaker 3: but I and I don't know. It's like Spielberg is
Speaker 3: not particularly guilty of over sexualizing women characters. I don't think,
Speaker 3: if anything, he's not. He's very like sanitized vibes. There's
Speaker 3: plenty to be I mean, we've talked about Steven Spielberg
Speaker 3: many times, and let's not forget the Zionism. Let's not
Speaker 3: in terms of how women are generally cheated. I think
Speaker 3: in his body of work, women don't tend to be
Speaker 3: hyper sexualized to the point where this almost feels like
Speaker 3: an outlier moment.
Speaker 2: Right, And maybe you can just chalk it up to
Speaker 2: this was his first big movie in the book, right also,
Speaker 2: and so maybe he's like, I'm not a huge fan
Speaker 2: of that. I'm not gonna do that again. And like,
Speaker 2: she is naked, but a lot of the naked, a
Speaker 2: lot of the nudity is implied.
Speaker 3: Although it's a very dark scene too. I think it's
Speaker 3: because like which I would imagine was related to just
Speaker 3: like production. But you really can't see very much. You
Speaker 3: can't because of how it shot. I don't know if
Speaker 3: the brightness on my TV is turned up too high.
Speaker 3: But for the first time watching this movie, I did
Speaker 3: you can see her nakedness under the water, like in
Speaker 3: the underwater shot or I like, yeah, like kind of
Speaker 3: an upshot. It's it's still pretty obscured and faint and
Speaker 3: difficult to see, but like you can see enough that
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, she's got full bush and good
Speaker 3: for her. But nineteen seventy five right back.
Speaker 2: Remember, right, So, but it's a quick shot and the
Speaker 2: rest of the time, you don't see nudity.
Speaker 3: Really so well. And also, I watch, like you said,
Speaker 3: it's not the worst defender. But but but and I
Speaker 3: don't know how involves Spielberg was in this, but that
Speaker 3: is an image that is harped on in marketing. I
Speaker 3: also think that that's another reason we remember it as
Speaker 3: more sexual than it actually is, because it is used
Speaker 3: as a selling point to imply that you're going to
Speaker 3: see and be titillated more than perhaps you actually are.
Speaker 3: I'm also pretty sure I didn't watch any of the sequels.
Speaker 3: I thought about it and then I thought, I'm not
Speaker 3: going to do that. But I do think that that
Speaker 3: is something that subsequent movies are in the Jaws fronchies
Speaker 3: are more guilty of Jaws hive if you've watched Jaws.
Speaker 3: I've weirdly seen Jaws four, but it was on one
Speaker 3: of those. I was on a show in New York
Speaker 3: that was like, we're making fun of Jaws four. Okay,
Speaker 3: so I don't really remember anything, but if the marketing
Speaker 3: is to be believed, it seems like this idea of
Speaker 3: sexy women being torn to shreds by a shark is
Speaker 3: an image that they return to time and time again.
Speaker 3: But in the movie itself, I think it's telling in
Speaker 3: that I mean, it is what it is. It is
Speaker 3: the movie with a young woman who is expressed that
Speaker 3: she's horny being torn to shreds by an animal. That's
Speaker 3: not great, made worse by the fact that she is
Speaker 3: one of three women in the entire movie. A batting
Speaker 3: average of one for three in terms of being torn
Speaker 3: to shreds is pretty bad. There are two men torn
Speaker 3: to shreds by the t and then one child. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there are two men, but there's so many men that
Speaker 3: I think that, you know, the batting average is actually
Speaker 3: not as bad by a long shot rip to her.
Speaker 3: And the thing that the other thing that frustrated me
Speaker 3: was that when the second victim of the shark, Alex
Speaker 3: Alex the kid, Yes, when he dies, there are narrative
Speaker 3: consequences for that. People do not seem to like there's
Speaker 3: no one from Chrissy's life that is like, she doesn't
Speaker 3: seem to be particularly grieved, which I also think, like
Speaker 3: is unrealistic given how the meeting tends to narrativize white
Speaker 3: women's death like sensational eyes. Yeah, like, yeah, I was
Speaker 3: kind of adrift by that because obviously I'm not that
Speaker 3: like Jaws eating a child. That's bad, that's no good. Yes,
Speaker 3: but it was just weird that, Yeah, there is this
Speaker 3: weird lack of reaction to a teenage girl getting eaten, right.
Speaker 2: I My head canon was like, oh, the mayor is
Speaker 2: like keeping it under wraps, which he can't do because
Speaker 2: everyone saw this child get killed. That was a very
Speaker 2: very public thing versus no one saw Christy get killed.
Speaker 3: That makes total sense. But I don't.
Speaker 2: But that's not that's again just my head canon. It's
Speaker 2: not explicitly in the movie Mayor.
Speaker 3: That mayor he's like, yeah, He's like, Okay, if there's
Speaker 3: a shark attack and everyone sees a ten year old
Speaker 3: tornish reds, I guess I have to be like, oh no,
Speaker 3: he I mean that scene is interesting, though, I mean
Speaker 3: that's well, actually sorry, let's let's talk about the third woman. Yes,
Speaker 3: there's there's but one woman to go another. I think
Speaker 3: terrific performance by an actor who has not given much
Speaker 3: to do but really makes a meal of what she has.
Speaker 3: I am talking about Lee Fierro playing Missus Kittner has
Speaker 3: two scenes, plays both of them incredibly. I think like
Speaker 3: the scene where she everyone's running out of the ocean
Speaker 3: and she's the last person there is heartbreaking. And then
Speaker 3: when she shows up in like with all I mean,
Speaker 3: she's with all due respects, very party city coded morning clothes.
Speaker 2: It was the seventies. Who knows.
Speaker 3: It's no I'm calling them out, it's look at her.
Speaker 3: Her outfit looks like shit, but she pulls no punches
Speaker 3: with this, you know, like with this piece of shit
Speaker 3: cop that let this happen. I love that scene. I
Speaker 3: wish that we had any more of her after that.
Speaker 3: I wish she didn't just disappear into the mist. But
Speaker 3: I really, uh yeah, I thought that that was an
Speaker 3: incredibly played scene that you know, I don't know, I
Speaker 3: just wish that there was a woman involved in the
Speaker 3: main action. It's not like the actions of women have
Speaker 3: no consequence in this world, but they don't get to
Speaker 3: They're mostly in a reactionary position. They're not very active.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, it's more like the emotional through line of
Speaker 2: the movie versus the more active events that take place.
Speaker 3: Right. Yeah, they're the victims, are They're they're reacting to
Speaker 3: the decisions that men are making.
Speaker 2: Right. But a great performance, indeed, and then there's the men.
Speaker 2: I guess starting with Brodie. Sure, as you said already,
Speaker 2: this is copaganda this movie. The movie humanizes police, that
Speaker 2: perpetuates the idea that cops are here to keep our
Speaker 2: community safe when.
Speaker 3: Well and does challenge that, I just think, because I
Speaker 3: mean that scene with Missus Kittner does challenge that, but
Speaker 3: not in a very it's not a comprehensive like he's
Speaker 3: still the hero at the end of the day. It's like,
Speaker 3: I'm sure and like, I like this character, and that's
Speaker 3: copaganda done well, I know, which is a scary thing.
Speaker 3: But yeah, Missus Kidner, Like, I think it's so interesting
Speaker 3: the way that the city and this cops are presented
Speaker 3: in opposition to each other in the space of this movie,
Speaker 3: but in a way that feels very unrealistic. Where as
Speaker 3: we know, so, I mean, we like live in Los Angeles.
Speaker 3: There's I mean, it's all cops, but we live in
Speaker 3: a pretty egregious area for cops and the city being
Speaker 3: very much aligned more often than not when it comes
Speaker 3: to terrorizing their own people. Right, it is very much
Speaker 3: playing into this narrative of the heroic cop fighting against
Speaker 3: the evil mayre and there's no shortage of evil mayors
Speaker 3: in the world. But it's very unrealistic and very movie
Speaker 3: coded to be like the cop is trying to do
Speaker 3: their job, it's just the cities in the way. I
Speaker 3: think that that is just like so observedly, not how
Speaker 3: things are I.
Speaker 2: Mean, And that's what I mean about, like the movie
Speaker 2: perpetuating the idea that cops are here to keep our
Speaker 2: communities safe, because the reality is that cops are there
Speaker 2: to protect the property of the ruling class and to
Speaker 2: incite violence at protests and to union bust and all
Speaker 2: of those things. So this is why this is effective copaganda.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's weird because the movie is critical of
Speaker 2: institutions such as capitalism, or it's critical of the mayor
Speaker 2: wanting to keep the beaches open so that the town
Speaker 2: can profit from the tourism, but it doesn't it doesn't
Speaker 2: apply that same criticism to police cops.
Speaker 3: Which is why I think it's so effective, honestly, is
Speaker 3: because it is not completely uncritical of the society that
Speaker 3: it's released into. It is critical of some stuff, but
Speaker 3: not all stuff, and like it almost perpetuates the idea
Speaker 3: that like the only thing preventing the cops from keeping
Speaker 3: you safe are your elected representatives, which can which is
Speaker 3: just well, actually that like you know, there's no world
Speaker 3: show me a police department where they're really trying to
Speaker 3: do the right thing. It's just that yeah, yeah, like
Speaker 3: that is observably untrue. But it's complicated because yeah, like
Speaker 3: the movie is criticizing the mayor. But it's like, I
Speaker 3: think that this is sort of a works great in
Speaker 3: terms of like it's a great movie beat, but like
Speaker 3: the mayor sort of is like capitalism the guy in
Speaker 3: a way that you know, capitalism is presented in this movie,
Speaker 3: which is fascinating. Doesn't happen in like blockbuster movies often,
Speaker 3: and it's something like Steven Spielberg is pretty willing to
Speaker 3: engage with, but it's just him. It's not presented as
Speaker 3: the very complex issue that it is, because this movie
Speaker 3: can't be too complicated and work allegedly. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I like there is that one moment that I think
Speaker 3: is interesting in the hospital after Brody's son Michael was
Speaker 3: almost sharcked and was kind of like in shock and
Speaker 3: he's in the hospital and Brody you know again, it's
Speaker 3: like it's well, it's all of a sudden a problem
Speaker 3: now that it's on my doorstep, which is the story
Speaker 3: of time immemorial, of like, well, it's one thing if
Speaker 3: Alex Kittner dies because I don't know him, to the
Speaker 3: point where, even after Alex Kitner dies, Brody continues to
Speaker 3: cooperate with the mayor. It's only when his kid almost
Speaker 3: dies that he is like, I refuse to cooperate any further.
Speaker 3: And the only reason the mayor actually shows the beach
Speaker 3: down is because his kids were there, right, which I
Speaker 3: think is a very smart It's weird because in the
Speaker 3: movie it's presented as like I don't see it as
Speaker 3: a particularly critical moment, but it does feel very real
Speaker 3: of like that would be the only circumstances under which
Speaker 3: these characters would take the safety of everyone into account
Speaker 3: is if they're if they specifically happened to also be
Speaker 3: threatened by it, which is how I feel like most
Speaker 3: decisions that are made that are generally good for everyone
Speaker 3: tend to happen because it also threatens the ruling class
Speaker 3: and it benefits them to make that choice. Right.
Speaker 2: It feels cut from the same cloth, like whatever shitty
Speaker 2: men being like Happy International Women's Day to my wife
Speaker 2: and daughters, and that's it only.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I agree. I also think the performance from
Speaker 3: Murray Hamilton, who's in Fucking Everything, Babe. He gives a
Speaker 3: really good performance. I enjoyed it. He plays a villain
Speaker 3: very well. I also remember when he was in The Graduate.
Speaker 3: He's mister Robinson. Oh that's right, he's mister Cocked. He's cooked,
Speaker 3: he's cocked, and he's sort of cocked in this movie
Speaker 3: spiritually as well. Wow, when you think about it.
Speaker 2: I'm thinking about it, thank you.
Speaker 3: He's also in the Amityville Horror. Have you ever seen it?
Speaker 2: You know what I've seen the Ryan Reynolds one.
Speaker 3: Oh they're both bad. Yeah, they're both bad. I guess
Speaker 3: that's all we are. They're both bad, but in very
Speaker 3: different ways. Sure, but he is also at that he's
Speaker 3: very When I think of a movie that came out
Speaker 3: in the seventies, there he is.
Speaker 2: Sure. The last little piece I think of Copaganda here
Speaker 2: is the scene where Brody and Hooper are on the
Speaker 2: boat at night looking for the shark, and Brody is
Speaker 2: drunkenly after his pint of wine talking about being a cop,
Speaker 2: and he's like, oh, yeah, New York City, there's violence,
Speaker 2: there's muggings. But you know, in a town like this,
Speaker 2: one man can really make a difference. You know, in
Speaker 2: twenty five years, there's never been a murder here. And
Speaker 2: he's chalking that up to police being effective at their job,
Speaker 2: ignoring that, you know, in a place where they are,
Speaker 2: which is basically like Martha's vineyard or Nantucket or a
Speaker 2: similarly like wealthy place or you know, an island full
Speaker 2: of mostly upper middle class people that you know, there
Speaker 2: isn't crimes of desperation and stuff like that. And he's like, no,
Speaker 2: it's because of cops being competent, of course. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: we know that that's not true.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And the fact that that's what a drunk cop
Speaker 3: would say is I believe in the power of world,
Speaker 3: like right, right, sure, yeah, akeb includes Officer Brody. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and again not the worst example of it, but also
Speaker 3: a really good example of it in a way, because
Speaker 3: I still like him in spite of it all. Then
Speaker 3: we have our college boy Richard Dreyfus Hooper, the Marine Biologist.
Speaker 3: Another interesting little piece of gristle here because the movie
Speaker 3: does not with him shy away from class, it doesn't
Speaker 3: do much with it. Well, actually, maybe that's not true,
Speaker 3: Like I did appreciate that like this he both needs Hooper.
Speaker 3: It's not disparaging of his higher education, but it also
Speaker 3: acknowledges why he has it, and I appreciated that, like
Speaker 3: he basically admits he's like the rich boy. Allegations are true,
Speaker 3: I'm a rich boy. I guess in the book he
Speaker 3: is way more of an asshole about it, and he's
Speaker 3: hooking up with with Ellen, so I think he's again
Speaker 3: the book, honestly, I considered reading it, but I'm like,
Speaker 3: it sounds like a bummer. I would much rather watch
Speaker 3: the movie Jaws, unfortunately, but in this world he is,
Speaker 3: you know, highly educated, very necessary. Like I think that
Speaker 3: between Quint and Hooper there's an interesting balance struck of
Speaker 3: like they're from very different classes. They resent each other
Speaker 3: for it, which makes sense and is like something that
Speaker 3: we've all seen in either direction, but that they are
Speaker 3: also both totally valid, but they're they're also both like
Speaker 3: very needed on this mission, and they're like you could
Speaker 3: argue the person who is basically useless is Brodie totally
Speaker 3: like like.
Speaker 2: I'm scared of the water. Why am I even here?
Speaker 3: He's mister chum, Like it is kind of like why
Speaker 3: are you here, mister chump? But like that Robert Shaw
Speaker 3: is from uh, I mean, working class background. We don't
Speaker 3: really know much about him other than he was in
Speaker 3: the service, but you know, he's a veteran. It doesn't
Speaker 3: seem like he given his reaction to Hooper, I don't
Speaker 3: think that he like has a lot of higher education.
Speaker 3: But he knows how to fucking drive a boat. He
Speaker 3: knows like, he knows.
Speaker 2: The ocean, he knows fish, he knows sharks.
Speaker 3: He has the experience. Yeah, like and and he's like
Speaker 3: literally how he's introduced is as an authority, even though
Speaker 3: people are still like, oh, he's weird and like, to
Speaker 3: be honest, he is weird. They're not so wrong. It's
Speaker 3: not necessarily classes of people to say quint is weird,
Speaker 3: because also, like he's weird, and people of all classes
Speaker 3: could be weird, and there he is being weird. But anyways,
Speaker 3: but he has presented as an authority whose labor has
Speaker 3: extreme value. I mean, granted, he doesn't really get to
Speaker 3: use the money because he's eaten by a shark, but
Speaker 3: he he gets his rate. Yeah, and I hope to
Speaker 3: one day get my rate before being eaten in a
Speaker 3: sod and half yeah, so I don't know. I appreciated
Speaker 3: that with both of these characters, the movie realizes that
Speaker 3: they are both integral to this mission working like the
Speaker 3: mission does not go off the way it does without
Speaker 3: Hooper's expertise, and it certainly doesn't go off without Quint's expertise.
Speaker 3: Hooper's annoying, but I also do I like. I don't
Speaker 3: like Richard Dravis, but I do like the character, like
Speaker 3: I do think outside of what you pointed out before,
Speaker 3: where he's like suspiciously very uninterested in conservation, which feels
Speaker 3: just like a bad writing choice that feels unrealistic because
Speaker 3: it's also very incurious for someone that's like I love
Speaker 3: sharks to be like and so let's kill one, kill it,
Speaker 3: and I'll dissect it, Like wouldn't you want to observe it?
Speaker 3: Wouldn't that be useful?
Speaker 2: And he's a scientist, like, he's not a hunter, he's
Speaker 2: not a fisherman like you would think he would be.
Speaker 3: He would understand it makes sense that Quinn wants to
Speaker 3: kill the shark because that's his job.
Speaker 2: Right, But Hooper, he would know how important sharks are
Speaker 2: to the ecosystem of the ocean. And that you shouldn't
Speaker 2: just kill them, and honestly would have been a more
Speaker 2: interesting narrative choice if like Brody and quint are like, no,
Speaker 2: this shark needs to die for public safety reasons, and
Speaker 2: by contrast, Hooper was like, no, we can't just kill
Speaker 2: a shark, Like sure, we can try to catch it
Speaker 2: and contain it and transport it elsewhere or some thing.
Speaker 3: And you can argue that like, no, this shark needs
Speaker 3: to live for public safety reasons, like you know, by observing,
Speaker 3: like even if you're strictly thinking about sharks as they
Speaker 3: relate to people, it's like understanding the behavior of sharks
Speaker 3: would be far more valuable, right than just Yeah, that
Speaker 3: really feels like a writing error more than anything else,
Speaker 3: because I think, like you know, scientists were not let's say,
Speaker 3: consulted on the writing of the book specifically, and I agree,
Speaker 3: it is like a more interesting dynamic, and then it
Speaker 3: would be interesting to see what does Brodie think about
Speaker 3: that that it just like adds an element, a more
Speaker 3: complicated element to everything versus Okay, so we're all on
Speaker 3: the same page. We've got to kill this shark. It's
Speaker 3: just the how that we're struggling with like the whether
Speaker 3: to do it or not is very interesting. But it
Speaker 3: feels like maybe there's the script of the production, like
Speaker 3: they did not do research like that is what it
Speaker 3: sounds like.
Speaker 2: Could be. Could also be that there again wasn't that
Speaker 2: much shark research available at the time, but there were
Speaker 2: marine biologists, there were people who this was like, we're
Speaker 2: experts in this area.
Speaker 3: So who's the French guy in the hats? You wonder Cristo? Yeah,
Speaker 3: this is Custo era, Jacques Custo, remember him? Is kind
Speaker 3: of yeah, he's the French guy in the hat. Wait,
Speaker 3: let me check. What if I was wrong?
Speaker 2: I know the name, but I just guess I don't
Speaker 2: know what he does.
Speaker 3: He's a famous French marine biologist, like I think he
Speaker 3: had a yes, okay, yes, oh he looks like Steve
Speaker 3: Zisu and all the thing that seems that's okay, that
Speaker 3: makes sense, And actually Steve Zisu did not make that up.
Speaker 3: It was jac Cousta. Yeah. I believe he is very
Speaker 3: popular cultural figure in the seventies and may in fact
Speaker 3: have something to do with why this movie was even
Speaker 3: made because it was like it and uh, listeners, correct
Speaker 3: me if I'm wrong. If you are a knowwher of
Speaker 3: ocean facts or a Cousteau head. My vague understanding is
Speaker 3: that Jacques Custeau was a very popular figure in like
Speaker 3: the sixties, seventies and eighties and was kind of like
Speaker 3: one of the first, if not the first, like mainstream
Speaker 3: oceanography expert to become very popular. So like, I think
Speaker 3: you're right, like there is an interest in the ocean
Speaker 3: at this time, but perhaps not a lot of like
Speaker 3: commonly accepted I mean, which is wild because you think
Speaker 3: about the impact of Jaws and like there's no world
Speaker 3: where there's you know, remember the ten consecutive years we're
Speaker 3: noal which shut the fuck up about Shark Week. Oh yes,
Speaker 3: And it's just like you've got to shut the fuck
Speaker 3: up about Shark Week. There. I'm not I'm not interested,
Speaker 3: but like, I don't know, that's one of the interesting things.
Speaker 3: I mean, even with Peter Benchley, like we were talking about
Speaker 3: this movie, Like I don't think anyone's arguing that this
Speaker 3: is a correct scientific representation of a shark. It's like
Speaker 3: projecting a bunch of symbolism and moby Dick kind of shit.
Speaker 2: I mean, I have a whole section on this, Oh Okay,
Speaker 2: you'll indulge me.
Speaker 3: Let's do it. Let's do it.
Speaker 2: I guess to start though, with the and this is
Speaker 2: like pretty well known knowledge, so I'll just make this
Speaker 2: really quick and irad stuff off about the sorry well
Speaker 2: known knowledge about the like behind the scenes making of
Speaker 2: the movie. I'll start with that, and then we'll go
Speaker 2: into sort of the like public reception of the movie.
Speaker 2: So for anyone who doesn't know, this movie was a
Speaker 2: very difficult shoot. It went over budget and over schedule
Speaker 2: by like triple. The script kept being rewritten during the shoot.
Speaker 2: The ocean and the weather were very temperamental, The cast
Speaker 2: and the crew were largely miserable the whole time. The
Speaker 2: studio kept almost pull the plug on the production, and
Speaker 2: the mechanical shark famously rarely functioned, which ended up again
Speaker 2: famously working to the movie's benefit because they basically ended
Speaker 2: up having to imply the presence of the shark rather
Speaker 2: than show it on screen as much as they initially
Speaker 2: intended to amazing, which lended a sense of like, the
Speaker 2: shark is looming around, but we can't see it, and
Speaker 2: that makes it scarier.
Speaker 3: That Plus John Williams core, Yeah, great perfection.
Speaker 2: So difficult shoot, but against all odds, the movie was
Speaker 2: finished and made into a really good movie and released
Speaker 2: and it became a smash hit. It was, like you said,
Speaker 2: the first blockbuster is wild.
Speaker 3: It made half a billion dollars in nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 3: Many that's approximately three trillion dollars. So yeah, yeah, nine
Speaker 3: million dollar budget, and that was twice, Like I think
Speaker 3: it went over its budget twice, so it was technically
Speaker 3: a four point five million dollar your budget movie that
Speaker 3: went to nine million dollars and then made one trillion
Speaker 3: billion millions. Everyone saw this movie seven times, yes.
Speaker 2: And it was also one of the first movies that
Speaker 2: got a very big release everywhere simultaneously. Because prior to this,
Speaker 2: it was like, you know, a movie would open in
Speaker 2: this city over here, and then maybe a little later
Speaker 2: it would open over here.
Speaker 3: It would spread it if it did well in a
Speaker 3: certain like market. Yeah, like if you lived in the
Speaker 3: if you lived in any far flong area, it would
Speaker 3: take a long time for a movie to get to
Speaker 3: you because it would be tested in a bajillion markets
Speaker 3: before it got to you, for sure. But everyone got
Speaker 3: Jasa also like a real big especially because it's like
Speaker 3: I had to keep reminding myself. Star Wars comes out
Speaker 3: after that, and so this movie also sort of sets
Speaker 3: the precedent of like a huge marketing and merchandising push
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 2: Definitely, this is one of the first movies that sold
Speaker 2: a bunch of merch that people absolutely gobbled up. There's
Speaker 2: t shirts and posters and toys and games like all
Speaker 2: these tie.
Speaker 3: In shark underwear. You're like, why not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly all this stuff. Yeah, And the movie's approach
Speaker 2: to marketing was fairly new for the time, where it
Speaker 2: ran a bunch of trailers as ads on TV, which
Speaker 2: was not very common at that time. That contributed to
Speaker 2: the amount of people that saw it. Yeah, it stayed
Speaker 2: in theaters for like a year in some places, Like
Speaker 2: this was the first blockbuster and like not a whole
Speaker 2: lot of movies have like rivaled its impact and popularity since.
Speaker 2: And obviously after this, Spielberg was given a blank check
Speaker 2: to do any movie he wanted for the rest of
Speaker 2: his career, and he did, and he did. He's obviously,
Speaker 2: I mean another really ice cold take here. He's made
Speaker 2: some great movies. Many of them are my favorite movies
Speaker 2: of all time, which is difficult to reconcile right now,
Speaker 2: knowing his relationship with Zionism, which we talked about to
Speaker 2: a pretty large extent on the ET episode we did
Speaker 2: last year.
Speaker 3: It's not too long ago, so as far as far
Speaker 3: as we know, I double checked going into this, as
Speaker 3: far as we're recording this right now, which is June
Speaker 3: twenty fifth, twenty twenty five, our conversation that we did
Speaker 3: in our ET episode is from what I can tell
Speaker 3: still up to date. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's like
Speaker 3: inextricable from the conversation about him and also the fact
Speaker 3: that like it's that he's one of the greatest directors
Speaker 3: of all time, and like we have to hold these
Speaker 3: two things together. Also, I mean, I don't know, no, sorry,
Speaker 3: continue to continue.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the point here is that this movie
Speaker 2: was the biggest movie of all time up until that point,
Speaker 2: more or less, and well you'll never believe this, but
Speaker 2: it impacted the public perception of sharks. This movie famously
Speaker 2: made so many people afraid of sharks, afraid of going
Speaker 2: into the water at the beach, also afraid of going
Speaker 2: into lakes and swimming pools, places where sharks would never
Speaker 2: be because of how the shark is represented. In the movie,
Speaker 2: which is you'll never believe this not very accurate. And
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that sharks have not attacked and bitten
Speaker 2: and killed people throughout history. That has happened. Obviously, sharks
Speaker 2: can be dangerous, but again, the way the shark behaves
Speaker 2: in this movie is not accurate. As author Peter Benchley
Speaker 2: put it, because, as we said, he and his partner
Speaker 2: Wendy would go on to become advocates for ocean conservation
Speaker 2: and for the protection of sharks later in their lives.
Speaker 2: Peter Benchley said in two thousand and six, quote, sharks
Speaker 2: don't target human beings, and they certainly don't hold grudges.
Speaker 2: There's no such thing as a rogue man eater shark
Speaker 2: with a taste for human flesh. In fact, sharks rarely
Speaker 2: take more than one bite out of people because we're
Speaker 2: so lean and unappetizing to them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Benchley stuff, I think is very, very fascinating,
Speaker 3: and I appreciate, like truly as someone who could not
Speaker 3: have anticipated his work being as impactful that it was,
Speaker 3: like he was basically writing a pulp novel at the time,
Speaker 3: that he did so much to course correct that I
Speaker 3: think is very admirable, and it seems like the oceanography
Speaker 3: community agrees. And it's also one of those complicated relationships
Speaker 3: where I think it's referenced in the documentary we both
Speaker 3: watched that While yes, there's a lot of there's inaccuracies
Speaker 3: that you're taking us through about how sharks are represented,
Speaker 3: this movie also inspired a lot of future oceanographers, like
Speaker 3: it's very, very interesting.
Speaker 2: That's the benefit of the impact of this movie globally.
Speaker 2: The detriment of the global impact of this movie is
Speaker 2: that because the shark was presented in such a bloodthirsty,
Speaker 2: vengeful way that you know, great whites are just gonna
Speaker 2: go and kill a whole town of people if they
Speaker 2: aren't exploded. This led to people like shark hunting for
Speaker 2: sport and trophy and stuff like that. So this is
Speaker 2: from the Smithsonian magazine from twenty twenty two, a piece
Speaker 2: entitled Steven Spielberg regrets how Jaws impacted real world sharks.
Speaker 2: It says, quote Jaws spearheaded a collective testosterone rush in
Speaker 2: the East coast of the United States, leading thousands to
Speaker 2: hunt sharks for sport. In the years following the film's release.
Speaker 2: The number of large sharks in the waters east of
Speaker 2: North America declined by about fifty percent unquote, and then
Speaker 2: a couple other stats here, about seventy five percent of
Speaker 2: oceanic shark species are faced with the threat of extinction
Speaker 2: due to I mean to some degree. It's like fisheries overfishing.
Speaker 2: Some experts are like, well, you know, we can't give
Speaker 2: all the credit to the movie Jaws, Like it's just
Speaker 2: that fishing practices are largely not are horrific.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there is, I mean, there's yeah, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's overly simplistic to suggest it's all because of Jaws,
Speaker 3: but it's not. Not like Jaws is a contributing factor
Speaker 3: for sure. So yeah, basically, in the years that followed
Speaker 3: this movie coming out, a lot of people just started
Speaker 3: shark hunting. And it's because of the representation of sharks.
Speaker 2: In this movie. It's because not very much was known
Speaker 2: about them at the time. According to Sharksteward's dot Org,
Speaker 2: which is an organization that seeks to save endangered sharks
Speaker 2: from overfishing and the shark fin trade. According to them,
Speaker 2: over five hundred species of sharks are not dangerous to humans,
Speaker 2: and only a few species have been involved in serious
Speaker 2: or fatal attacks on humans. But this went ignored and
Speaker 2: people were just murdering millions of sharks every year right and.
Speaker 3: Left, which is horrifying.
Speaker 2: Horrifying, yes, and ignoring the fact that again, sharks play
Speaker 2: a crucial role in maintaining healthy ocean ecosystems.
Speaker 3: It's the same. I mean, it's like not the same conversation,
Speaker 3: but it's like about bees and like an animal that
Speaker 3: is critical to our ecosystem that it is just very
Speaker 3: socially acceptable to kill because they're viewed as being overly
Speaker 3: aggressive or as pests. Right, thank you for doing that research.
Speaker 3: I sure. Yeah, it's this movie is like legacy in
Speaker 3: so many different areas is gigantic. I mean even now,
Speaker 3: speaking to like the marketing side of stuff. I was
Speaker 3: at the grocery store yesterday and there's like Jaws fiftieth
Speaker 3: anniversary wine at the front of Vaughn's what And there
Speaker 3: were people at the front being like, oh my god,
Speaker 3: Jaws wine, And I'm like, it's still working. It's so
Speaker 3: like people will buy anything with this damn shark on it.
Speaker 3: Like so literally, there were two women who didn't know
Speaker 3: each other at the front of Vaughn's being like, I'm
Speaker 3: getting the Jaws.
Speaker 2: Pino Gregio like, wow, do you think that's what Brody
Speaker 2: pours into his pint glass when he drinks Josta wine?
Speaker 3: I think, I think, I ironically, I think all I think.
Speaker 3: Would Quint fuck with Jaws? Pino Gregio, I think not? No,
Speaker 3: I think not speaking of Quint. Oh yes, my good
Speaker 3: pal Quint. So with Quint. I think it's interesting to
Speaker 3: refer to what your referenced earlier in that documentary, which
Speaker 3: if you're interested in the production of Jaws, it's very marketing.
Speaker 3: It's not like revolutionary, but it is free on YouTube
Speaker 3: if you want to watch it. There's also a new
Speaker 3: fiftieth anniversary documentary coming out July tenth. It's about two
Speaker 3: weeks from now, so I will be watching it. But
Speaker 3: are there stories left untold or does everyone just look
Speaker 3: ten years older? We don't know. We'll find out.
Speaker 2: We'll find out.
Speaker 3: But in that documentary, I mean, I think it was
Speaker 3: interesting having the perspective of actual veterans whose experiences were referenced.
Speaker 3: I like, if Robert Shaw's performance was not good, I
Speaker 3: think I would find this character somewhat offensive. But like,
Speaker 3: and I do think that, you know, there are probably
Speaker 3: cases to be made, but I just think that, like
Speaker 3: he plays Quint with such bravado for sure, but like
Speaker 3: with so much humanity. It is like, for what it is,
Speaker 3: still a very thoughtful performance, and I I think it's tragic,
Speaker 3: you know how his story ends, But knowing that Hooper
Speaker 3: was originally supposed to die, I don't necessarily hate that
Speaker 3: he goes because that just feels like a pretty broad
Speaker 3: like Moby Deck style reference, right of like he will
Speaker 3: die pursuing this thing that he has projected the trauma
Speaker 3: of his entire life onto, because it's not about the money.
Speaker 3: For him, it's about and again it's like gets into
Speaker 3: this masculinity thing. It's like it's about accomplishing this thing
Speaker 3: that you can't really get your head because it's for him.
Speaker 3: It's not about the money. It's not really about protecting people,
Speaker 3: So like, what is it about? It's like this it's
Speaker 3: all inside of him, what he's It's about the sharks
Speaker 3: that ate allegedly ate six hundred of his friends. That's
Speaker 3: what it's about, right, And it's a trauma shark for him,
Speaker 3: and he's consumed by the trauma shark. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I just think story dramaturgically it makes sense. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: I think the performance is like unbelievably great. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I did not realize that he was like a Shakespearean
Speaker 2: actor from much of his career.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean he was like a fancy guy. Yeah.
Speaker 3: He he was like Oscar and Golden Globe nominated and
Speaker 3: like he played such a wide birth of characters. There
Speaker 3: is this I'll just glaze over it. I watched a
Speaker 3: like short doc about the uh, the rivalry between Richard
Speaker 3: Dreyfus and Robert Shaw, because there was a big onset
Speaker 3: beef between the two of them, which everyone involved in
Speaker 3: the movie is confirmed. I think it is kind of
Speaker 3: funny and sweet that Roy Scheider. They were like, oh,
Speaker 3: he was pretty chill, and he mainly went swimming and
Speaker 3: sometimes he'd go to the gym. So Roy Scheider was
Speaker 3: minding his own business. But Richard Dreyfus and Robert Shaw,
Speaker 3: I mean kind of weirdly two sides of the same coin.
Speaker 3: Where Robert Shaw was a later stage actor, he wasn't
Speaker 3: that old, but he was very like generationally, there was
Speaker 3: a big difference between the two of them. Where Robert
Speaker 3: Shaw was famously a very very hard drinker. He eventually
Speaker 3: died in his early fifties due to complications from drinking,
Speaker 3: and Richard Dreyfus was kind of like a coked out
Speaker 3: young star who had a big ego, and Robert Shaw
Speaker 3: wasn't having a bar of it. He like it seems
Speaker 3: like they, you know, in a very like competitive actory way,
Speaker 3: had issues with how the other approached acting, how the
Speaker 3: others approached substance use. Robert Shaw, would you know, say
Speaker 3: pretty It sounds like Robert Shaw was the antagonist. But
Speaker 3: again in this whole thing where it's like a masculinity
Speaker 3: story inside of a masculinity story, where you know, Richard
Speaker 3: Dreyfus seemed to dislike Robert Shaw so much that it
Speaker 3: made his performance better. Like that whole little thing where
Speaker 3: he does the little thing with his he's like, eh,
Speaker 3: making faces behind Quinn's back. Those were mainly improvised because
Speaker 3: he didn't like Robert Shaw. And like when he's mumbling about,
Speaker 3: oh well, if I had to do this anymore, I
Speaker 3: would be shell pissed. This because he didn't like Robert Shaw.
Speaker 3: So when he's being a little brat, it's because he's
Speaker 3: actually being a little brat because Daddy is not being
Speaker 3: nice to him. It's a masculinity soup, like no one
Speaker 3: is right in this situation, but it does seem like,
Speaker 3: you know, for what it's worth. And then I don't
Speaker 3: we don't need to talk about Richard Dreyfus any further.
Speaker 3: But with regards to this, as time went on, like
Speaker 3: Richard Dreyfus was like, I'm you know, it ended with
Speaker 3: like mutual respect, and he like reached out afterwards and
Speaker 3: was like I think he was kind of like what
Speaker 3: happens in Vegas days in Vegas as a way of
Speaker 3: being like, I treat you like shit on Martha's Vineyard,
Speaker 3: but we're cool, right, And I think Richard Dreyfus was like, yes,
Speaker 3: so all's well. That ends well there. Unfortunately, the Robert
Speaker 3: Shaw he passed in seventy eight. He died not too
Speaker 3: long after the making of this movie. But I just
Speaker 3: getting back to quint, I don't really know. I mean,
Speaker 3: there are so many factors that you're like that I
Speaker 3: feel like would normally paying for me that just don't.
Speaker 2: I It's it was almost one of those instances where
Speaker 2: I like forgot to do my job as one of
Speaker 2: the hosts of the Bechdel Cast, because I was just like,
Speaker 2: I was just so immersed in the story and the characters.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I don't even think I wrote anything down
Speaker 2: about Quint other than something I already mentioned, which is,
Speaker 2: you know, the class war between Quint and Hooper, and again,
Speaker 2: hooper surviving at the end was more of a like
Speaker 2: logistical production choice that they made retroactively rather than something
Speaker 2: that was written in the script, because otherwise that would
Speaker 2: have like pretty nasty implications of like, well, yeah, the
Speaker 2: rich educated scientist gets to survive and the working class
Speaker 2: fisherman has to die. But that isn't a narrative choice.
Speaker 2: It was just because everything kept going wrong with the production.
Speaker 3: Right, So it's fine. Yeah, I do think it would
Speaker 3: be more narratively satisfying if Hooper also went down, because
Speaker 3: then it's not like endorsing one philosophy over the other.
Speaker 3: But knowing that it wasn't intended that way is fine.
Speaker 3: And Quint also like makes his feelings about Hooper very
Speaker 3: clear in a way that I think as the audience
Speaker 3: we don't disagree with even if we like Hooper. Like
Speaker 3: there's that line where he's like, you wealthy college boys,
Speaker 3: can't admit when you're wrong. He does, I think, you know,
Speaker 3: in keeping with the generational stuff. There's like one the
Speaker 3: scene where like where Brodie saying goodbye to Ellen, he's
Speaker 3: kind of just like shouting random misogyst stuff in the background,
Speaker 3: and you're like, all right, okay, he's kind of just
Speaker 3: like HM, or we're.
Speaker 2: Singing about Spanish ladies or something.
Speaker 3: Let's go swimmen with bow legged women. You're like, okay,
Speaker 3: here's this swim with bow legged women. And for some
Speaker 3: reason I am not mad at him about that. You
Speaker 3: get the cage, getting the water sharks and the water like,
Speaker 3: he's just too like I would let him be misogynist
Speaker 3: to me because I like him, and after nine years
Speaker 3: should be saying that on the show.
Speaker 2: Well, I just we contain multitudes, yeah, listeners.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And the fact that like he and again I
Speaker 3: understand that it's very over the top, but that like,
Speaker 3: ultimately he is his like demise is very related to
Speaker 3: the fact that he has all of this unprocessed trauma.
Speaker 3: And that is and I don't mean to say like
Speaker 3: and that's the story of every veteran. Obviously they're not
Speaker 3: a monolithm but but that that is a very common
Speaker 3: experience for a veteran instead of seen horrific things and
Speaker 3: are not given the tools to process them. And it's like,
Speaker 3: especially the further back you go in history, it's thought
Speaker 3: to be unmasculine and unacceptable to have those traumas manifest
Speaker 3: in your life. And so what we see with Quint,
Speaker 3: however cartoonish it can be, is you know, he's not
Speaker 3: able to get past this, which totally makes sense, but
Speaker 3: it's like not socially acceptable for him too. I mean
Speaker 3: he has to be drunk and in the middle of
Speaker 3: the ocean to even talk about it, and that's really sad.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah. I honestly found it surprising that the Brodie
Speaker 2: character was imbued with a fear of the water and
Speaker 2: a fear of drowning and all that stuff, because I
Speaker 2: think that was added for the movie. It was not
Speaker 2: in the book. Okay, I mean it makes for good
Speaker 2: characterization in the sense that you know, someone who has
Speaker 2: to go out onto the water to complete a task
Speaker 2: is afraid of the water. That's just like no good storytelling. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but for a man to have a phobia, that's not masculine.
Speaker 2: So for a movie from the seventies, to imbue a
Speaker 2: character who's a man with a fear that he has
Speaker 2: to face. And granted, this fear does not really manifest
Speaker 2: in any significant way because it's sort of it goes
Speaker 2: away mostly and he's just like, I'm on the boat
Speaker 2: now and I'm actually okay. So it doesn't have a
Speaker 2: huge impact on the story. But I found it kind
Speaker 2: of interesting. I guess that a man was allowed to
Speaker 2: be afraid of something and then he communicated that to
Speaker 2: the people around him. Yeah, I agree again, low bar,
Speaker 2: but I thought that was interesting. I don't think I
Speaker 2: have really much else to say. Oh, this movie was
Speaker 2: edited by a woman, Yes, Verna Fields, who is I believe.
Speaker 3: Every Pete Spielberg collaborator. Am I wrong? I don't. Oh,
Speaker 3: she worked with Peter Bogdanovich a fair amount. Yeah, George Lucas,
Speaker 3: Steven Spielberg earlier. And so she did What's Up, Doc,
Speaker 3: which is Bogdanovich, American Graffiti, Jaws.
Speaker 2: Paper Moon, handful of others.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's pretty great. Oh, and then I was like,
Speaker 3: why does I was like, did they just drop her? No?
Speaker 3: She was hired by Universal as an executive consultant. So
Speaker 3: we love to see that. We love to see that
Speaker 3: she did great work and then got promoted. That never
Speaker 3: happens to women. Right in the seventies, unheard of shout
Speaker 3: out to Verna Fields, which also, I mean, I don't know,
Speaker 3: I really appreciated again in a movie, In a movie
Speaker 3: that takes place quite a bit on the beach, I
Speaker 3: feel like there I'm not really getting a lot of
Speaker 3: male gaze out of it outside of that opening sequence,
Speaker 3: which obviously it's the creature from the Black Lagoon shot,
Speaker 3: you can't get around it. But in the other beach sequences,
Speaker 3: I feel like in subsequent beach horror there is almost
Speaker 3: always some male gazy shots of like, oh no, what
Speaker 3: if this hottie got eaten? Uh? But for the most part,
Speaker 3: it is just like people on the beach. Yes, and
Speaker 3: it presented very matter of factly in a way that
Speaker 3: it just feels like unusual. I don't know.
Speaker 2: That reminds me of a documentary I watched to prepare
Speaker 2: for this episode. It's a Shutter original documentary called Shark's Ploitation.
Speaker 3: Nice.
Speaker 2: I really enjoyed it, and it's basically about all the
Speaker 2: movies that fall under the shark'sploitation subgenre and if you're thinking, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: of course, like Jaws, and you know, Sharknado and the
Speaker 2: Meg and a handful of others. There are hundreds and
Speaker 2: hundreds of mostly B movies, mostly horrible bad movies. But
Speaker 2: basically Jaws started this subgenre. Not to say that Hollywood
Speaker 2: had not been making like horror creature feature movies about
Speaker 2: monsters lurking in the sea or lurking in lagoons before this,
Speaker 2: because they had been making movies like this for decades
Speaker 2: prior to Jaws. But again, none of them had the
Speaker 2: cultural impact that Jaws had.
Speaker 3: So wild, it's like, but none of them were good
Speaker 3: like this, like right, why, Yeah, none of them were
Speaker 3: good for sure.
Speaker 2: And so Yeah, just examines this subgenre and talks about
Speaker 2: the tropes that start to emerge in these shark movies,
Speaker 2: one of them being the exploitation of especially women's bodies.
Speaker 2: Some of these movies have rather gratuitous, neuted revel in
Speaker 2: violence against women, stuff like that. But overall, yeah, I
Speaker 2: thought it was a very interesting documentary that I would recommend.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's pretty much all I had.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the last thing I want to say, it's more
Speaker 3: of a fun fact, but I just thought it was interesting,
Speaker 3: just in terms of how much this movie changed marketing
Speaker 3: and how marketing narratives work for art in general, which
Speaker 3: is like Steven Spielberg's career alone is like a fascinating
Speaker 3: look at that. But this book. I don't know how
Speaker 3: this book came across Steven Spielberg's desk. I think it
Speaker 3: was mentioned at some point, but I forget in one
Speaker 3: of the documentaries I watched, but that Jaws was like, Oh,
Speaker 3: it's this best selling book. Everyone loves it. Well, guess what,
Speaker 3: you know why I was a best selling book because
Speaker 3: Steven Spielberg and Universal bought hundreds and hundreds of copies
Speaker 3: of it to send other places to people to be like, hey,
Speaker 3: what do we think of this book? Because they just
Speaker 3: wanted to make a movie of it. I just I've that.
Speaker 3: I feel like it's a victimist crime. We love to
Speaker 3: see a book selling copies. Me personally, someone should do
Speaker 3: that to my Oh my god, I was so scandalized.
Speaker 2: If what should people buy Raw Dog?
Speaker 3: Oh, they should buy hundreds of copies and just send
Speaker 3: and be like should we make a movie about this?
Speaker 3: I would be like, that's so controversial. You shouldn't do
Speaker 3: that that's dishonest, but that I just thought that was
Speaker 3: like funny that they, you know, part of the whole
Speaker 3: idea of like this best selling book, everyone's talking about it.
Speaker 3: That may not necessarily have been true. It sold a
Speaker 3: lot of copies, but who was really talking about it.
Speaker 3: I just think that's funny. Does it pass the buckle test? No?
Speaker 2: No, But on our nipple scale, yeah, where we rate
Speaker 2: the movie zero to five nipples based on examining it
Speaker 2: through an intersectional feminist lens. I mean again, women largely
Speaker 2: are not included in the movie. Yeah, it is a
Speaker 2: very white movie. It's a movie that asks us to
Speaker 2: root for a cop, so, you know, I just don't know.
Speaker 2: But the movie does have some interesting things to say
Speaker 2: about masculinity.
Speaker 3: Question mark, I'm gonna give it two nipples.
Speaker 2: Okay, that sounds great.
Speaker 3: Because for well, I agree with everything you're saying, and
Speaker 3: they're therefore could not in good conscience rank it higher.
Speaker 3: And maybe I'm ranking it a little higher than I
Speaker 3: normally would because it's just such a damn good movie.
Speaker 3: I do think that we have two strong performances from
Speaker 3: women in this movie.
Speaker 2: They're fleeting.
Speaker 3: The fleeting. What you do see is good, but their
Speaker 3: their performances are great. I really like Ellen. I wish
Speaker 3: that we had more of her, but I like seeing
Speaker 3: a just like a full Even though you don't get
Speaker 3: to spend much time with her, you feel like you
Speaker 3: know her, which I think is very rare in terms
Speaker 3: of like quote unquote Mom or what characters they're written
Speaker 3: in this very one dimensional way, and this character is
Speaker 3: kind of written in a one dimensional way. But I
Speaker 3: think like her ability as an actor. Even though it
Speaker 3: was suggested that it was a NEPO pick because she
Speaker 3: was married to a producer, Fuck you, Lorrangengery is amazing
Speaker 3: in this movie, and so if it is NEPO, I
Speaker 3: don't care. And then Lefierra's performance another fleeting but really
Speaker 3: impactful performance. She is a legendary stage actor and teacher
Speaker 3: who just passed away a couple of years ago at
Speaker 3: the age of ninety one. And also shout out to Chrissy,
Speaker 3: who is definitely underappreciated by the film. But again, a
Speaker 3: great performance from a stunt actor, and stunt actors are
Speaker 3: so rarely treated with the respect that they deserve, and.
Speaker 2: We were just talking about that on the Blue Crush episode.
Speaker 2: Another movie that takes place at the beach.
Speaker 3: In the beach, yeah, so I shout out to Susan
Speaker 3: backline who also passed away somewhat recently. The women we
Speaker 3: do meet, I really appreciate their at least their performances,
Speaker 3: if not the writing itself. And I think mainly these
Speaker 3: two nipples are going towards this movie's ability to explore
Speaker 3: masculinity and dick measuring contests across the class spectrum. It
Speaker 3: is a very white movie, it is, I mean, as
Speaker 3: you said, but I do think it's interesting having these
Speaker 3: three very different class perspectives, and again, the copaganda of
Speaker 3: it all, you can't excuse it. But ultimately you do
Speaker 3: have like someone from the lower class, middle class, and
Speaker 3: upper class on this boat and they're all working towards
Speaker 3: the same goal and they have to communicate with each
Speaker 3: other and it doesn't really work, and it's just it
Speaker 3: feels like kind of a reality show nightmare experiment, like
Speaker 3: these three men for world We're I think it's fascinating
Speaker 3: and I think it's like all of the care characters
Speaker 3: are treated with respect by the writing in the plot,
Speaker 3: and I like it too. Nipples and I'm gonna give
Speaker 3: them to I guess I'm going to give one to
Speaker 3: Lorraine Gary, and I'm gonna give one to Lee Fierro
Speaker 3: because they made a meal of what they were given.
Speaker 2: I agree. I think I'll go down to one and
Speaker 2: a half. If I'm reading it on a scale of
Speaker 2: is this movie really good, it gets top marks rating
Speaker 2: it on the nipple scale. The copaganda thing is what's
Speaker 2: getting me because like these like gentle tender, like loving
Speaker 2: father character, sure who we're supposed to be rooting for
Speaker 2: her the whole time, is a cop and it is
Speaker 2: effective copaganda, and that's the sneakiest Yeah, so I resent that.
Speaker 2: But as we keep saying, I like the Brodie character
Speaker 2: and that's why it's so effective. So I just feel
Speaker 2: tricked by the movie. And yeah, it's a really good
Speaker 2: movie and I'm gonna watch it every summer. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: one and a half nipples and I'll give them to
Speaker 2: Bruce the Shark the mechanical.
Speaker 3: Also fun that they ended up naming the Finding Nemo
Speaker 3: Shark after this shark. Cute shark fans will know anyways.
Speaker 3: So that's our Jaws episode, folks. I really love watching
Speaker 3: this movie. Yeah, I'm a I'm a simple person. I
Speaker 3: see Jaws, I say, hey, I like that movie.
Speaker 2: I'm smiling.
Speaker 3: So here's here's to you, listener. We're pouring out a
Speaker 3: class of Jaws Pedo Grisio to you and and with that,
Speaker 3: thank you for thank you for listening. This is pretty
Speaker 3: similar if you're not a member of our Matreon, our
Speaker 3: patriot aka Matreon. These are episodes that are mainly just
Speaker 3: Caitlin and myself having fun talking about a movie that
Speaker 3: you very often will request. So if you enjoyed the
Speaker 3: vibe of this, a little bit Looser, a little silly
Speaker 3: joyin our Matreon, it's five dollars a month, and it
Speaker 3: gets you access to two new episodes every month on
Speaker 3: a theme that you will generally choose and sometimes we
Speaker 3: will impose our will and we will choose it. And
Speaker 3: Casper is going wild right now, being so cute. He's
Speaker 3: being a real cudler. He's saying hi, mother, and he's
Speaker 3: saying Hi Casper. But yeah, and then access to almost
Speaker 3: two hundred back episodes.
Speaker 2: It sounds like you're saying, we're gonna need a bigger
Speaker 2: Matreon subscription.
Speaker 3: We're gonna need a bigger Matreon subscription. Just kidding. It'll
Speaker 3: always be five dollars, but we could just use more
Speaker 3: people having it.
Speaker 2: Well, that's what I mean.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh, and also, we haven't actually announced at the time
Speaker 2: of this recording, but maybe if you like checked our
Speaker 2: link tree, we're going on tour. We're going on tour
Speaker 2: and we're going to the Midwest, and you'll see a
Speaker 2: few links already to some shows that we're doing at
Speaker 2: the end of August slash early September. Be on the
Speaker 2: lookout for a more official announcement and more news about
Speaker 2: that tour. But just give me a little a little
Speaker 2: shark finn if you will, a little to tease.
Speaker 3: Us heading to Chicago. We love you so much, Thank
Speaker 3: you for listening, and we will be back next week
Speaker 3: with another brand new episode. Bye bye.
Speaker 2: The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by
Speaker 2: Caitlin Derante and Jamie Loftus, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited
Speaker 2: by Mola Board. Our theme song was composed by Mike
Speaker 2: Kaplan with vocals by Catherine Vosskrosenski. Our low go and
Speaker 2: merch is designed by Jamie Loftus and a special thanks
Speaker 2: to Aristotle Assevedo. For more information about the podcast, please
Speaker 2: visit Linktree slash bechtelcast