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Jaws · This Film is Lit

• 0:04
  Speaker A: This Film is Lit, the podcast where we finally settle the score on one simple. Is the book really better than the movie? I'm Brian and I have a film degree, so I watch the movie but don't read the book.
• 0:15
  Speaker B: And I'm Katie, I have an English degree, so I do things the right way and read the book before we watch the movie.
• 0:22
  Speaker A: So prepare to be wowed by our expertise and charm as we dissect all of your favorite film adaptations and decide if the silver screen the or the written word did it better. So turn it up, settle in, and get ready for spoilers because this film is lit, You're gonna need a bigger boat. It's Jaws and this film is L. Hello and welcome back to this film is Let the Pockets. We're talking about movies that are based on books. We have every single one of our segments, plenty to talk about, so we're gonna jump right in. If you have not read or watched Jaws, you'll be one of the only people I think to at least have not watched it. But we were gonna give you a brief summary of the film and. Let me sum up, Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up. This summary is sourced from Wikipedia. In the New England beach town of Amity Island, a young woman goes for a late night ocean swim. An unseen force attacks and pulls her underwater. Her partial remains are found washed up on the beach the next morning. After the coroner concludes it was a shark attack, Amity police Chief Martin Brody plans to close the beaches. Mayor Larry Vaughn persuades him to reconsider, fearing the town's summer economy will suffer. The coroner, apparently under pressure, now concurs with the mayor's theory that it was a boating accident. Brody reluctantly accepts their conclusion until young Alex Kintner is killed at a crowded beach. A $3,000 bounty is place on the shark, causing an amateur shark hunting frenzy. Quint, an eccentric local shark hunter, offers his services for $10,000. Consulting oceanographer Matt Hooper examines the girl's remains, confirming that she was killed by an unusually large shark. When local fishermen catch a tiger shark, Vaughn declares the beach is safe. A skeptical Hooper dissects the shark and finding no human remains inside its stomach, concludes that the killer shark is still active. While searching the night waters in Hooper's boat, Hooper and Brody find the half sunken boat of Ben Gardner, a local fisherman. Hooper dons a scuba suit and goes underwater to check the boat's hull and finds a large shark tooth embed end it, he drops the tooth. After encountering Gardner's severed Head. Vaughn dismisses Brody and Hooper's assertions that a great white shark causes deaths and refuses to close the beaches, allowing only increased safety precautions. On 4th of July weekend, tourists pack the beaches. The shark enters a nearby lagoon, killing a boater and nearly killing Brody's son Michael, who is hospitalized with shock. Brody then convinces a guilt ridden Vaughn to hire Quint. Despite initial tension between Quinton, Hooper and Brody's fear of the ocean, the three head out to sea on Quint's boat, the Orca, to hunt for the shark. As Brody lays down a chum line, the shark suddenly appears behind the boat. Quint, estimating it it is 25ft long and weighs 3 tons. Harpoons it with a line attached to a flotation barrel. But the shark pulls it underwater and disappears. At nightfall, Quint and Hooper drunkenly exchanged stories about their assorted body scars. One of Quint's is a removed tattoo. He reveals that During World War II he survived the sinking of the USS Indianapolis, during which sharks killed many US sailors. The shark returns, ramming the boat's hole and disabling the power. The men work through the night, repairing the engine. In the morning, Brody attempts to call the Coast Guard, but Quint, obsessed with killing the shark. Assistance. Assistance. Smashes the radio. After a long chase, Quint harpoons the shark with another. Another barrel. The line is tied to the stern cleats, but the shark drags the boat backwards, swamping the deck and flooding the engine compartment. As Quint is about to sever the line to save the boat's transom, the cleats break off. The barrels stay attached to the shark. To Brody's relief, the Quint. Quint speeds the orca towards shore to draw the shark into shallow waters. Shallower waters. But the damaged engine fails. As the boat takes on water, the trio attempt a riskier approach. Hooper suits up and enters a sharkproof cage, intending to lethally inject the shark with strychnine via a hypodermic spear. The shark attacks the cage, causing Hooper to drop the spear. While the shark destroys the cage, Hooper escapes to the ocean's bottom. The shark leaps onto the boat's stern, subsequently devouring Quint. Trapped on the sinking vessel, Brody thrusts a scuba tank into the shark's mouth and, climbing onto the crow's nest, shoots the tank with a rifle. The resulting explosion kills the shark. Hooper surfaces and he and Brody paddle back to shore, clinging to the remaining barrels. The end. We have guess who this week. Let's do it. Who are you? No one of consequence I must know get used to disappointment.
• 4:48
  Speaker B: He was a handsome man in his early 50s, with a full head of salt and pepper hair and a body kept trim by exercise. He dressed with elegant simplicity in timeless British jackets, button down shirts and Wegen loafers.
• 5:04
  Speaker A: I'm gonna say this is Brody.
• 5:07
  Speaker B: This is the mayor.
• 5:08
  Speaker A: Oh, that makes more sense. That makes more sense. It's not really like. I don't know if I would describe him necessarily. I guess he is kind of handsome. I don't know if I would describe him as a handsome man, but he does match pretty thing over pretty much everything else. And I was not sure about Brody because of the clothes. I was like, that doesn't really make sense for Brody. But yeah, okay, fair enough.
• 5:27
  Speaker B: He was young, mid-20s and handsome, tanned, hair bleached by the sun. He was about as tall as the POV character, but leaner. I took a name out of that.
• 5:40
  Speaker A: I'm gonna say that this is Hooper.
• 5:43
  Speaker B: That is Hooper.
• 5:44
  Speaker A: Just based on the age. Really. I was just going on, yeah, he's the young guy, the young guy. He's the college student, or he's a grad student or whatever.
• 5:51
  Speaker B: He wore a white T shirt, faded blue jean trousers, white socks and a pair of graying Topsider sneakers. His head was totally bald, not shaven, for there were no telltale black specks on his scalp, but bald, as though he had never had any hair. And when, as now, the sun was high and hot, he wore a Marine Corps fatigue cap. His face, like the rest of him, was hard and sharp. It was ruled by a long, straight nose. His skin was permanently browned and creased by wind and salt and sun.
• 6:24
  Speaker A: Well, I mean, if this isn't the description of a salty sea sailor, and thus Quint, I don't know what is.
• 6:31
  Speaker B: Yes, that is Quint.
• 6:32
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 6:34
  Speaker B: No more than 10ft off the stern, slightly to the starboard, was the flat conical snout. It stuck out of the water perhaps two feet. The top of the head was a sooty gray pocked with two black eyes. the end of each side of the snout, where the gray turned to cream white, were the nostrils, deep slashes and the armored hide. The mouth was open not quite halfway. A dim dark cavern guarded by huge triangular teeth.
• 7:02
  Speaker A: Fair enough. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that this is the shark.
• 7:07
  Speaker B: It is the sharks.
• 7:09
  Speaker A: I appreciate you including them. That's fun. It was good. All right, I have so many questions, let's jump into them. In. Was that in the book?
• 7:18
  Speaker B: Gaston? May I have my book, please?
• 7:20
  Speaker A: How can you read this?
• 7:22
  Speaker B: There's no pictures. Well, some people use their imagination.
• 7:26
  Speaker A: So most of my questions are about some of the most iconic moments in the film to really see what translates from the book. And we're gonna start with the opening scene, which is one of the more iconic cold openings in movie history, which is our skinny dipper running to the water and being eaten by a shark. Is that how at, like, dawn or dusk? I don't know. I guess it's dusk. Yeah, I guess. Is that how the book opens?
• 7:52
  Speaker B: Yes, that is how the book opens. Well, the book actually opens with, like, the shark swimming underwater, and then we go to the beach, which is also how the movie opens.
• 8:04
  Speaker A: Technically, we get, like, the opening POV
• 8:06
  Speaker B: shot of the POV of water.
• 8:07
  Speaker A: Assuming, you could assume, was the shark. Yeah.
• 8:10
  Speaker B: But, yes, we open with our skinny dipper who gets eaten. The circumstances are, like, very slightly different because in the movie we see. It's like these two kids at a bonfire.
• 8:20
  Speaker A: Just two random kids.
• 8:21
  Speaker B: And the book, these two are from, like, a group of young people who are renting out one of the summer homes on the beach. But the outcome is the same.
• 8:30
  Speaker A: One of the things I didn't notice this time, which I thought was fun, was the little detail of. Because. And so I mentioned before in the prequel, I haven't watched this movie, and it's been probably 15. I don't remember. I saw. I've seen this movie a handful of times when I was younger, throughout my childhood and high school and college. But it's been since college, probably since I watched this. So there's a lot of little stuff that I did not remember and little details that I just never noticed. One of them that I thought was kind of fun here is during this opening scene where they're running to go skinny dipping is the girl is running down the beach and the guy is chasing her. And it's evocative of her being hunted a little bit in a way that I thought was interesting. And another detail that I thought was funny is that when she's swimming and then we see her dive underwater for the first time, she does this something like a. What's the thing called synchronized swimming move. Basically, where she puts her leg up out of the water and it looks kind of like a shark fin. And I thought that was clever. But it is the same kind of thing where she just disappears. I guess we don't. Does the mood of the scene in the movie feel similar to the mood in the book or how it's described? Is it similar to how it's described in the movie, or do we get more descriptions of the shark and stuff? The scene in the book, I would
• 9:50
  Speaker B: say it's pretty similar.
• 9:52
  Speaker A: Okay. Because that's one of the things that makes the scene work so well in the movie, is that you don't actually really know. What. You never see the shark. It's just. I mean, you can assume what's happening, but the way she is, like, pulled back and forth across the water by this, like, incredibly strong, terrifying thing under the water that you never see is very scary in a way that I was just curious how much that feels, like, directly inspired by the book versus the movie, like, really playing with that.
• 10:17
  Speaker B: Okay. So I'm looking back at that scene in the book. We do know that she's being attacked by a shark in the book, like, because of the description.
• 10:24
  Speaker A: To be fair, you assume in the movie, it's not like. It's not like, wonder what got her? But, like.
• 10:28
  Speaker B: Right.
• 10:29
  Speaker A: But you don't ever see it, is my point. And it's never like, it could be an octopus. It could be any. Yeah, whatever. You just never see it. So it leaves it completely up to your imagination. Again, you do assume it's a shark, but so that happens. They find her body the next morning, and Brody immediately tries to shut down the beach. He's like, we have a shark attack. We got to shut down the beach. And the mayor just immediately is like, nah. And a thing that I thought was interesting, that I did not recall from previous watches, is that the night before, the medical examiner on his report says, or when. When Brody calls that. That morning, Brody calls the medical examiner, and the medical examiner tells her. Tells him that it was a shark attack. And then later, when he's talking to the mayor down on the ferry or whatever, that they're going out into the water, the medical examiner's there, and he goes, no, it was a boating accident. So he, like, changes his report at pressuring from the mayor. And I wanted to know if that all played out like that in the book.
• 11:24
  Speaker B: You had a couple questions there. I'm gonna do my best to answer them all in the book. Brody does want to, like, after that initial attack, he does want to close the beaches for a few days to give the shark time to move on, which is, like, the most reasonable way to handle this. And Vaughn then does not want him to close the beaches because the Fourth of July isn't far off. It's not like that weekend like it seems to be in the movie, but he's Worried that if there's any kind of bad press, it's going to affect the tourism. I don't think there was anything in the book about the medical examiner changing his report. I cannot recall that happening, but I could be misremembering that. So if I am, feel free to chime in in the comments.
• 12:14
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 12:17
  Speaker B: So one of the main kind of differences with all of this is that in the book, Vaughn has, like, shadow partners that are pulling strings and giving him extra incentive to not close the beaches. Whereas in the movie, it seems like he's just motivated primarily by wanting the summer tourism.
• 12:42
  Speaker A: He wants the summer tourism. And he. Because in. And the citizens are like. A lot of the citizens are like, hey, this is how we make our money.
• 12:51
  Speaker B: So he's also.
• 12:52
  Speaker A: Because we see in the town meeting, like, the woman is like, no, blah, blah. So he's motivated basically by approval ratings. The way I would describe his motivation.
• 13:01
  Speaker B: Right. So. But in the book there's this, like, extra motivation because then it's revealed that he got into some shady real estate deals with these people who turned out to be in the mafia.
• 13:15
  Speaker A: Oh.
• 13:15
  Speaker B: And that's why he's so scared and, like, deferential to these other people who are like, no, don't close the beaches.
• 13:22
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 13:23
  Speaker B: Because the town needs to make money so that our real estate. I don't know.
• 13:28
  Speaker A: Yeah. So their investments or whatever.
• 13:30
  Speaker B: Yeah. So their investments make money on their investments. I. I thought the movie made a good decision to nix that plot line. I didn't fully understand it in the book. I thought it was a little bit, like, not super well fleshed out.
• 13:42
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 13:42
  Speaker B: So I'm. I'm not sure it would have landed any better in film format.
• 13:46
  Speaker A: I also just think it's a less interesting motivation for the mayor is in the movie. It's a much more. It's completely understandable. Like I said, he's motivated by his popularity. Essentially. He wants the town to. To make money so that he, you know, ostensibly is, you know, he makes money off of that. But also, more importantly, he just. He wants the people to like him so that he gets reelected, blah, blah, blah. And if he shuts down the beaches, that will be a very unpopular thing. And so I think it's perfectly fine. You don't need an extra layer of like, the mob is like, the mob is after him. I think him just making a mistake and being motivated by his own kind of vanity to. For, you know, essentially is way more compelling than, oh, actually the mob was kind of forcing him to do it. It's like, fine, but it's just not as. It's not as. It's not as compelling of, like, a moral tale, I don't think, in terms of. It's a different one, I guess. But I really like the idea of, in the movie, the mayor realizing how badly he fucked up. And again, he did it all just because he wanted to be popular, essentially.
• 14:49
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 14:51
  Speaker A: So after that happens, they decide to keep the beaches open. Everybody shows up for the holiday weekend. And we get very famous scene where the next shark attack happens where they're all sitting on the beach and everybody goes and gets in the water. And then. And this is actually before the holiday weekend. I think this is just the next day or whatever or something. And we get this great scene where Brody is watching. He's sitting on the beach with his family and he's watching the ocean. And he. He's. He's really, like, you know, trying to be vigilant and look out for sharks or whatever because he's very worried that this is still an issue. And we. He keeps getting distracted. And the way the tension builds in the scene is great because, like, people keep coming up and they want to talk to him and, like, walking in front of the camera and he, like. He's trying to see past him because he keeps thinking he's seeing, like, there's, like, a thing where a girl's, like, screaming, but then it's like her boyfriend, like, messing with her or whatever and stuff like that. And I wanted to know if that scene came from the book, because that's. I think it's a great. It's one of the best scenes in the movie, in my opinion, in terms of the way it builds tension.
• 15:49
  Speaker B: No, that is not from the book.
• 15:51
  Speaker A: Okay. But it also leads to the most famous dolly zoom in cinema history, probably, which is the one where everybody knows what a dolly zoom is. Is the one where they. Which is where the camera pushes in on him while zooming out and you get that. The vertigo shot. Actually, that's probably. To be fair, that's. That's what it's more known from, would be Vertigo, because it is literally called the vertigo shot a lot. But it's a dolly zoom. And this is one of the most famous dolly zooms. It's a great shot. Another little detail that I was interesting that I didn't remember from having watched this movie before is that Brody is afraid of the water. He, like, doesn't like the ocean. And I thought that was fun. And I wanted to know if that was A character trait of his in the book.
• 16:28
  Speaker B: Yeah, it actually is. He's definitely not a fan of being in or on the water or around the water. And the book also mentions specifically that he's a poor swimmer, which seems crazy because in the book. Book, Brody is an Amity native.
• 16:45
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 16:46
  Speaker B: He's not like a trans. A transplant. Like. And like, how are you going to grow up in a town whose entire job is beach and not know how to swim?
• 16:53
  Speaker A: That is interesting. But that adds another layer that I think is fun of that. Yeah. That he has this kind of deep seated from childhood fear of the water and never learned to swim because of that. So. Yeah, they keep that. But yeah, he's from out of town. But I did they do address that because they're like. Didn't make a lot of sense.
• 17:09
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 17:09
  Speaker A: For you to move, become sheriff in a town where that's an island and you don't like water. So another shark attack happens. The kid is killed along with a dog. Pippin or something.
• 17:21
  Speaker B: Pip it.
• 17:22
  Speaker A: Pip it. I thought he was saying pippin.
• 17:23
  Speaker B: It does sound. I looked it up afterwards because I had a note about it later.
• 17:27
  Speaker A: I was like, oh. Because we were just watching Lord of the Rings right now again and I thought that was fun. But yeah, pip it. Okay. So they get killed and then so they have a town hall meeting, which I thought was a great scene. They're all crammed in this tiny little town hall office. And we get this. We're introduced to Quint. This is his introduction. And the way he is introduced is that he scratches his fingernails down the chalkboard in the back of the room in a truly spine tingling, awful auditory moment. And I wanted to know if that was how his character was introduced in the book. And then if he offers to hunt and kill the shark for $10,000.
• 18:05
  Speaker B: That is not how he's introduced in the book. The book's introduction to Quint is Brody looking him up in the ph. Phone book and calling him.
• 18:13
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 18:14
  Speaker B: Because he used to be able to do that.
• 18:15
  Speaker A: Right.
• 18:16
  Speaker B: Just look anybody up in the phone book and call their landline.
• 18:19
  Speaker A: You just Google them. I mean, same thing.
• 18:20
  Speaker B: But he. He is a professional shark hunter and he does. They do end up hiring him to kill the shark, I think for around the same amount.
• 18:28
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 18:29
  Speaker B: Obviously this is better in the movie.
• 18:31
  Speaker A: Yeah. It's a great moment. And I love. I also love a thing that I didn't remember this movie. I'll talk more about it later. But I. I love that I couldn't understand like half the Words he said.
• 18:41
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 18:41
  Speaker A: Which feels right. I feel like, like you shouldn able to understand like half of what that guy's saying. You also don't need to. You get the gist of it enough that it's like. But you shouldn't be able to understand every word that a Mainer seas fisherman like old like yeah. Sea captain. You should understand like every third word that he says. I think that's, that's the correct version of that character. There's a little tiny scene that I just want to talk about because it's such a. This movie has some great little character moments. I will say overall I enjoyed this movie a little less than my memory of it. Yeah, just a little. I still enjoy. I think it's a great movie. I don't know if I thought it was quite as like overall compelling as my memory. I think a big part of that is just not that it's not rewatchable because it definitely is. But a lot of the, the, the pizzazz of this movie is the experience of seeing it the first time and like not knowing, not knowing what's gonna happen and the surprises like that is a huge part of what makes this MO so compelling. And so seeing it for like the 10th time after having not watched in a decade, it does lose a little bit of that again. I still enjoyed it still like it's a very, very good movie. But one of the things that I really liked was. Or this little character moment that I thought was really interesting where it's. It's. Brody and his wife are like sitting there in their house and they're just chit chatting about I don't know what the day and like what he's going to do and stuff like that.
• 20:11
  Speaker B: He's stressed out.
• 20:11
  Speaker A: He's stressed out and his wife says to him wanna get drunk and fool around? And he goes oh yeah. And I thought this is great. I don't know why it's such a funny little like real human moment that I just, I don't know, I thought was very funny and endearing about their relationship and their. Just everything. It tells you a lot about their relationship in like no time at all. And I wanted to know if that came from the book but also wanted to note good on this movie for having an age appropriate spouse for Brody.
• 20:42
  Speaker B: Yeah, for real.
• 20:42
  Speaker A: Cause they are like seemingly roughly the same like in their like late. I don't. This is the 76, so they might have been 30.
• 20:50
  Speaker B: It's hard to say.
• 20:51
  Speaker A: It's hard to say how old they actually were. You wouldn't. I wouldn't be surprised if they were actually, like, 35. But there's some.
• 20:56
  Speaker B: There's somewhere in their 30s or 40s.
• 20:57
  Speaker A: I would say their late 40s is what I would guess. Like, if I saw those people today, I would say they're in their late 40s. I guess I could look up how old the actor was in the movie. But do those. Does that. Does that little scene come from the book?
• 21:09
  Speaker B: That scene does not come from the book. We're going to talk more about Brody and Ellen's relationship a little bit later. Don't you people who read the book worry? We will get to that. But spoilers. I like them a lot better in the movie.
• 21:27
  Speaker A: Okay. And so he was, like, 44 when they filmed, like, in his early 40s when they filmed this. So I would have guessed the late 40s, early 50s. But that's that classic people back then aged a little harder because they were all smoking and drinking, smoking and drinking and tanning in the sun constantly. Yeah. Another thing that I love, that I've always loved about this movie in a very infuriating way, is the energy of the film where Brody is just the only person taking this whole thing seriously. And even the other people that are kind of taking it seriously, he's the only person taking this really seriously. And he's also surrounded by idiots. He's surrounded by people who not taking it seriously, and then other people who maybe are trying to help them, but tend to be, like, little cop buddy or whatever, who's an idiot. I thought that was really compelling because it really endears you to Brody's struggle and makes you root for him because you're like, jesus Christ, this is the worst. And I wanted to know if that just general dynamic felt like it came from the book.
• 22:29
  Speaker B: I would say that that kind of energy is present in the book. I think the movie ramps it up, and I think a big part of it is changing Brody to being a transplant because in the movie, he's got a little more skin in the game. In the game of, like, this town needs to have a good summer, needs
• 22:49
  Speaker A: to have a good summer, and blah, blah, blah. And, yeah, and everybody, like, super knows him. Like, he's an outsider in the movie. People are like, well, this is your first summer. You don't know what you like. So they don't trust him. They don't. He doesn't have the pull necessarily in the same way that he would if he had grown up there and everybody, like, knew him and trusted him and Stuff like that. So, yeah, I think. I do think definitely making him an outsider helps the overall dynamic of the movie. So they end up catching a shark that they think because of all these shark hunters descend trying to get the $3,000 reward that the kid's mom put out on the shark, and they end up capturing a tiger shark that they think is the one that was. Ate everybody. And I wanted to know if that happened in the book and then if the Hooper ends up dissecting it and realizing that it's not the right shark.
• 23:34
  Speaker B: No, this does not happen in the book. None of the. None of the stuff about, like, catching the wrong shark or anything. But I thought that this was a really good addition to the story.
• 23:45
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. It definitely adds a moment where you're like, oh, yeah, and you don't know what's gonna happen. And I also leads to one of my favorite, like, comical scenes in the movie, which I think I had a note about later, which is Hooper just, like, hucking fish and shit, like, at Brody as he's, like, pulling it out of the stomach of the shark and he throws a lightsaber and played at him and stuff. It's a great scene. And, yeah, I love it. This scene is interesting in the movie and again, was really dialing up our sympathy for Brody and the predicament that he is in is that the victim, the child who was eaten by the shark, his mom shows up all dressed in black, she's in mourning, and she slaps Brody and blames him for her kid's death, despite us knowing that he's the only person who was trying to do anything about this and genuinely the least responsible person for her child's death. And I wanted to know if that happen in the book, because, again, it's one of those that really makes you feel for Brody.
• 24:38
  Speaker B: There is a similar scene in the book where Mrs. Kintner confronts Brody about her son getting killed because she feels that he's responsible and. And, like, she's. She's not wrong, but she's also not entirely correct about that. But in the book, she, like, runs into his office and slaps him with a newspaper and yells at him and then, like, breaks down. And while I appreciated the book's version, I appreciated the film's kind of more restrained take on it a little more.
• 25:12
  Speaker A: I think I also love that one and that it's in public because it makes it even more infuriating for us, for Brody. But I also love that the mayor is there because his reaction is great and adds a Little wrinkle of humanity. Cause, like, he's obviously the villain of this tale. Kind of like, broadly. He is like one of them. Other than the shark eye, obviously. He's the main antagonist of the story who is causing issues for Brody and who is responsible for all these people getting eaten by shark. Because he doesn't want to shut the beaches down. But I do love, in that little moment that they give him after that happens, he says to Brody, he's like, I'm sorry. That's not fair. Like, he apologizes kind of to Brody and says, like, hey, that's not fair to you. Like, we know. You know. Which I think is a nice little moment that adds a little bit of depth to the mayor that keeps him from being just a completely obnoxious cartoon villain who's like, I know the beaches must be open. You know what I mean? He has he. At least somewhat. And then again later, even more once the.
• 26:11
  Speaker B: Yeah. And the scene is a nice lead in to that.
• 26:14
  Speaker A: That is. That's a good. Yeah, that's a good point. It's a good lead into the scene at the hospital later. A little moment. So Hooper shows up at Brody's that night and is like, hey, so I don't think it's that shark. And this is right before they go do the cut. The tiger shark open. And he brings us some wine. He brings a bottle of red and a bottle of white. Cause he didn't know what food they would be eating. So he brought both. And he sets it on the table. And they're like, chatting about the shark. And Brody just opens the red wine. And he was drinking water or something with dinner. Might have been a beer. I don't know. He had a big glass, like a tall glass with his dinner. And he just fills it up entirely with red wine. And it's a great moment. And I wanted to know if it came from the book.
• 26:54
  Speaker B: That does not come from the book. And it was quite possibly my favorite thing in the whole movie.
• 27:00
  Speaker A: His reaction in that moment is great. The way he plays it. He's just fucked. He's over all of it. And it's just like, ugh, fuck this. I also love Hooper's little. No, you'll want to let that breathe. You want to let that. He's just like, no. So. And then. So I assume that the scene where they cut open the tiger shark and dig through its stomach is not from the book.
• 27:23
  Speaker B: No, it's not.
• 27:23
  Speaker A: Obviously, if that whole plot where they catch the wrong shark isn't there, that Would make sense. Again, great scene. I love that. He's just. You can tell, too, that in that scene, Richard Dreyfus is intentionally throwing the stuff at. He's, like, trying to hit Roy Scheider with it because he thought it would be funnier because there's no reason that he's, like. He could just pull it out.
• 27:45
  Speaker B: Right.
• 27:46
  Speaker A: But he's, like, hucking it at. Which is very funny to me. So then they decide they need to go out and do some searching because this isn't the right shark. And I don't remember what they're even necessarily doing. Oh, they're just out, like, using his. He has, like, fish finders.
• 28:00
  Speaker B: Yeah, he had, like, sonar and stuff.
• 28:01
  Speaker A: Sonar and stuff. So they're out in his fancy boat and Brody asked him, like, how do you afford all this? Is like, the university or, like, what? And he goes, no, actually, it's me. I'm rich. And we find out that he's just, like, from a rich family and just buys all this stuff himself. And I wanted to know if that came from the book, because I thought that was an interesting little wrinkle that I did not remember at all. That stuff never ends up really mattering. I guess some of it does later. But, like, his, like, fancy boat doesn't. They don't use his fancy boat other than this one scene. But I wanted to know if that element came from the book is, like, Cooper, a rich kid.
• 28:33
  Speaker B: He is. He is from a rich family in the book, which is important for different reasons, because he does say that the equipment he has comes from the research institute that he works at.
• 28:44
  Speaker A: Which makes sense.
• 28:45
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 28:46
  Speaker A: Yeah. So they then find the shark, or they find the shark tooth in that boat, one of the fisher's boats, who's got his head bitten off, or I guess his body bitten off and his head was left behind and freaks out. And then they go and they toddle the mayor, and they're like, hey, man, we did not catch the right shark. I found a short great white shark tooth in the boat, and that's what's killing everybody. And the mayor just does not believe them. And Hooper is just, like, furious at him. And he has a great line where he says, you're going to ignore this problem until it comes up and bites you on the ass. Which doesn't happen. The mayor doesn't get eaten, which you would expect in a lesbian movie. I think he would get eaten. I think that's. Yeah.
• 29:26
  Speaker B: We never even see him.
• 29:27
  Speaker A: No. He just disappears. Yeah. Yeah, but. So that line. But Also, just generally, does the mayor just not believe them when they keep telling him, like, no, the shark's still out there. We gotta do something about this and just insist that the beaches are gonna be open.
• 29:42
  Speaker B: So that specific line is not from the book. The mayor does spend the book insisting that they don't need to close the beaches, but like I said earlier, it's much more mixed up in his, like, real estate mafia problems than anything else.
• 29:57
  Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, then we get. So the holiday weekend has arrived. All of the vacationers are there, and everybody's sitting on the beach, but nobody's going in the water because they've heard about the shark and they're obviously worried about the shark. Even though they, you know, the. The town has reported that they caught the shark and killed the. The shark. People are still a little weary. And so we get this scene where the mayor is, like, walking around on the beach and he starts, like, coaxing residents to, like, go get in the ocean.
• 30:24
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 30:25
  Speaker A: And I did not understand why he would do that. I wanted to know if it came from the book, because my. The whole I'm sitting there, I'm like, I didn't remember this scene. I'm like, buddy, they're there and they all seem to be enjoying them. Nobody seems, like, miserable or anything. They're all, like, hanging out, like, on the beach. People, like, playing video games on the boardwalk or whatever. And I was like, if they're not in the water, they're probably gonna spend even more money because they're gonna be free. Yeah, yeah. Like, being in the water doesn't do anything for you and I. And so I want to know if that came from a book. I guess the idea is that he thinks people. Anyways. Does that come from the book? Does that scene happen in the book?
• 31:01
  Speaker B: That scene is not from the book.
• 31:03
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 31:04
  Speaker B: But I fully agree with you that it kind of makes no sense because your town being full of people.
• 31:11
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 31:11
  Speaker B: But, like, they mostly aren't swimming feels like the ideal scenario.
• 31:15
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. They're there already.
• 31:17
  Speaker B: They're there. They're going to spend money and they're probably not going to get eaten by a shark.
• 31:21
  Speaker A: Yeah. The only thing I could think. I guess the idea that. Is that in this scene is that he thinks that if people don't start swimming, people will get bored and, like, leave early or, like, I guess it doesn't make a ton of sense because it's like, they're there already. These are vacationers. Right. Are they gonna, like, cut their vacation short and, like, probably not like, and again, it'd be one thing too if people. If we had scenes of people, like, milling around on the beach and being like, should we just leave? Or, you know, something like, Vietnam Overheard. But everybody seems to be having a grand old time. Like, everybody's like, oh. They're like, playing games and stuff. Know. I don't. I was like. But again, he's like, no, why don't you go get. It's like, okay. But anyways, it's like one of the one, like, weakest point in the script. I think that. I thought that was. Just felt a little like.
• 32:10
  Speaker B: Yeah, it was almost like the script, like. Because we need people to go in the water for the next plot beat. And it was almost like the script didn't know how to accomplish that. But you could just have people go and get in the water. Like, I don't feel like.
• 32:25
  Speaker A: Well. And I think more importantly, they really wanted to, like. Like, reflect that. Like, the mayor is like, you know, they have another element of guilt, like, on top of the mayor, for. For kind of coaxing people in it. I don't know. It. It is a little silly. Well, we also know, as we were talked about in the prequel, that this Half of this script was being written. Half of these scenes were being written the night before they were being filmed in a lot of instances and stuff.
• 32:47
  Speaker B: So I guess occasionally you can tell.
• 32:49
  Speaker A: Yes, this could be one of those where, like, I don't know, we gotta nag us. I don't know.
• 32:52
  Speaker B: Just have him. Have him tell people to get in the water.
• 32:55
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So then we get the next shark attack. And this is the big one that leads to them actually shutting everything down is that the shark ends up getting into the lagoon. They call it the pond, which is still connected to the ocean, but it's obviously, you know, it's a little lagoon. And the shark gets in there. And Brody's son is in there with his little boat or what. He has, like, a little sailboat that he. Him and his friends sail around, but they're in the water and they're next to another guy on a boat. And that guy gets eaten by a shark. And Brody's son almost gets eaten by a shark, but the shark just swims right past him, I guess. Cause he's full. Whatever. Or he respects Brody's son. I don't know. One of the two. And Brody's son goes into shock, obviously. And I wanted to know if that scene came from the book, because it kind of kicks off the whole second half of the Movie, basically, this does
• 33:44
  Speaker B: not happen in the book. Brody's children are pretty safe the whole time. What does happen that kind of turns the tide is that there's some random kid who almost gets eaten, but doesn't. And there happens to be a news crew on the beach and they like, catch the whole thing on the beach.
• 34:03
  Speaker A: So there isn't another death that then sprung. Okay. Yeah. Cause there is. We never see this. It's just some older kid who's like. He looks like he's in his early 20s or something. Gets eaten. Interesting. Okay. But yeah, kid almost gets eaten and the news crews catch it and. Okay, same idea. Random little thing. Does Quint drink Narragansett beer in the. Because in this movie, we see him drinking beer on the boat when they. So they go out. They're now on their shark hunt, and we see him drinking Narragansett beer. And I had never heard of it before, but recent. Like a couple years ago, we were at some pizza place somewhere. I genuinely can't remember.
• 34:41
  Speaker B: I think that might have been in Kansas City.
• 34:42
  Speaker A: It might have been. I. But I can't remember. And they had a Narragansett beer there. And the lady, the. The server was like, oh, this is the beer from Jaws. And I was like, what? I never really. Cause it's not super prominent in the movie. He drinks it like. Like one time or a few times. But you don't like. There's not like a super close up of the can or anything.
• 35:01
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's not like product placement or
• 35:02
  Speaker A: anything, but apparently it's a real beer and it still exists. And I tried it. It was good. It's a good beer. And I wanted to know if he drinks. It's also called Gansett, apparently, like, for short. And I don't even know. I think I'm pronouncing that wrong, probably. I can't remember. She told us how to pronounce it, and I forgot what it was. But there's that beer in the book.
• 35:21
  Speaker B: So they do drink beer while they're on their shark hunting expedition, but the brand is never mentioned.
• 35:28
  Speaker A: Okay. That is. It's a popular Rhode island beer. Apparently it's from Rhode island, so it's from that area. So it makes sense for him to be drinking it. But speaking of that is during the scene or right before the scene where we get the. Where he catches the shark on his fishing reel. And I wanted to know if the fishing scene came from the book, because it's. Man, one of my favorite scenes in the movie. The way the tension builds in that of Brody, like, learning, practicing, tying his knot. And, like, Quint notices the reel, like, clicking out and he's, like, watching it. And we get this great, like, close up. I think it might even be a split diopter of him and the reel. And he's, like, watching it, and he's, like, slowly, like, strapping himself into the chair. And it's such a great. Again, tension build. And I wanted to know. And then obviously he catches or hooks it, and there's. We get the big scene where he's trying to reel it in or whatever. And I wanted to know if that scene happened in.
• 36:22
  Speaker B: There are some moments where they're, like, kind of essentially fishing for the shark. But this specific scene with all of the things that you mentioned. Yeah. That it is not from the book, although I agree with you. It's a great tension building. Like a study in tension building.
• 36:40
  Speaker A: It's so good. Which leads into probably the most famous scene in the movie, which is the chum scene where Brody is tossing chum over the side and the shark just pops up behind him. And he just bolts right straight up, right backs into the cabin and turns and says the line, you're gonna need a bigger boat. A line that everybody misremembers as we're gonna need a bigger boat. Which he actually. They say right after that.
• 37:04
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 37:04
  Speaker A: But anyways, first does the chum scene and, like, Brody being surprised by the shark. And then the line, you're gonna need a bigger boat. Does that any of that come from the book?
• 37:15
  Speaker B: So, okay, so first, the line, you're gonna need a bigger boat is not from the book. That is a movie invention.
• 37:22
  Speaker A: So I knew that I had to ask anyways. Obviously, I knew that because I had read somewhere that that was. Apparently, it was like an inside. That's one of those. It was. I don't even think it was in the script. Initially. It was like an inside joke amongst the cast and crew, like, we're gonna need a bigger boat because of some issues they were having or something like that. So it's something they were saying, like, during filming that they then apparently worked into the movie, but.
• 37:44
  Speaker B: And it became the most iconic line from the movie.
• 37:47
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 37:48
  Speaker B: So there is a scene in the book where Brody looks over and unexpectedly sees the shark. The difference is that in the movie, the shark, like, kind of lunges out of the water and splashes. Yeah, it's kind of a jump scare.
• 38:04
  Speaker A: Yeah, it is a little bit. Yeah.
• 38:05
  Speaker B: In the book, he looks over and the shark is just sitting There with its head out of the water like silently watching them and then it just calmly slides back down under the water. And this is one of the few things spoilers that I have to say I think is better in the book because holy shit, that sounds creepy as fuck.
• 38:31
  Speaker A: It does. I think it sounds like it could be a great scene. I don't know if it would be better than this scene just because the. The. The jump scare moment of it, the way it all plays out. His reaction is all so good that I don't know if you could play that. That scene. I don't know. I don't know. I like this scene so much that I would be hard pressed to say that that that other version would be better. But I do imagine a version of that scene that would be very creepy.
• 39:00
  Speaker B: And like I think it would. It would be a slightly different movie maybe.
• 39:05
  Speaker A: Or at least a different scene.
• 39:07
  Speaker B: Yeah, a different scene. It would have a different vibe.
• 39:09
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 39:10
  Speaker B: And I agree with you. I think that the scene we get in the movie is probably overall better.
• 39:16
  Speaker A: Yeah. But I get what you're saying. I totally get what you're saying.
• 39:18
  Speaker B: I like personally, as far as it being scary, I think the books version sounds scary.
• 39:27
  Speaker A: I don't disagree with that. Yeah, no, absolutely. It actually it kind of reminds you of like the. Almost like it's like a whale or something.
• 39:33
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 39:33
  Speaker A: It just. Because again what that does is it which you get some of these other moments in the movie but that. That evokes an intelligence beyond what you would expect of a shark. That it's like watching them or studying them or something like that. Which you actually get some moments of that in the movie where they talk about. It does things that are weird.
• 39:50
  Speaker B: Yeah. And it does in the book as well.
• 39:52
  Speaker A: And specifically later we get that scene where they're like they're reeling in the barrel rope and they like what's going. And then it tries to ambush them from. It's basically like fishing for them where it's like it's got the barrel over here and they're pulling the line in and then it comes out of the water from behind kingdom and stuff like that. So there is. The movie does play with the idea that this shark is like super intelligent. And then the later movies go crazy with that from what I've heard. I've never actually seen any of the sequels but I've heard the sequels get exceedingly silly and ridiculous and the shark becomes like sentient like a human basically. But like. And is like doing things that sharks literally could not do. Speaking of the flotation barrel thing, that was the thing as a kid I always thought was interesting is they. They keep shooting the shark with these harpoons with barrels attached. Because the idea is the. That obviously the shark won't be able to drag these big air barrels underwater and it'll like tire it out and basically kill it because it won't be able to swim anymore. And I wanted to know if that came from the book.
• 40:49
  Speaker B: Yeah, they do harpoon it with those flotation barrels a couple times over the course of the skirmish. And I believe it does drag at least the one under the water.
• 41:02
  Speaker A: Yeah. Because they have that scene later in the movie where they're like, oh, it's three barrels. He can't take three barrels. And then it's swimming towards the boat and then they disappear under the water. So. Good. So then later that night they fail to kill the shark. It disappears. And so later that night they're drinking around the little table in the boat comparing war stories and scars. And Quint and Hooper drunkenly become friends by comparing their scars. Who initially they were very standoffish, but. But as they start comparing their. Again, their different scars from animal or shark encounters and stuff like that, they become fast friends. And I wanted to know if that scene came from the book because it's very fun. I like that scene.
• 41:44
  Speaker B: It is not from the book, but I also liked that scene. I thought it was good.
• 41:48
  Speaker A: And it leads directly into. Cause the final scar they ask about is he has this scar on his arm and they're wondering what it is. Brody asks him what it is and he explains that it was a tattoo that he had removed. And this is where he launches into the fact that he was. Was on the USS Indianapolis. And he relays his tale of woe, of the sinking of the Indianapolis and being in the water with all the people getting eaten by sharks and all that. Which is a real. This is a true.
• 42:10
  Speaker B: Yes, A real thing that happened.
• 42:13
  Speaker A: The amount of people who were eaten by sharks is disputed, but it was a thing that happened. And most of the people that died of exposure and stuff like that, or they drowned. Yes. But when I was reading on Wikipedia, it says like, the estimate of. Is like dozens to a hundred to a couple hundred of them were eaten by shark. Like it was a. It was very much a thing that happened. A bunch of sharks showed up and just started eating all of them. And I wanted to know. And so he recounts this story and it's very harrowing. And it's this. It's it's like the scene that everybody. It's the reason he was, like, nominated for an Oscar for this movie. It's like the scene. And I wanted to know if it came from the book.
• 42:51
  Speaker B: This is not from the book. But I really liked this. I liked the depth that it added to Quint's character, which is something his character needed pretty badly. And I. I liked that Robert Shaw got to chew the scenery.
• 43:05
  Speaker A: Boy, does he.
• 43:06
  Speaker B: Because he was a Shakespearean actor.
• 43:08
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. He. Yeah, he really gets to chew on it in this scene. He does a great job. Yeah, it's. It's a fantastic. It's one of the most famous monologues in cinema for a reason, because it's done very well, all on a single take. I think it all just sits on him as he does the whole thing. And so at this point, quits kind of Quints kind of lost it. The next morning, they're. They're. The shark shows back up and they're. Brody's like this. We're calling the Coast Guard because their engine, they get flooded at this point,
• 43:36
  Speaker B: and, like, the boat is starting to deteriorate.
• 43:38
  Speaker A: The boat is deteriorating. Like, it's. The engines all has issues and all kinds of stuff. And so Brody's calls for help, and Quint comes in and just destroys the radio with a baseball bat. And I wanted to know if that happened in the book.
• 43:52
  Speaker B: That does not happen in the book. I guess the closest thing is that after a few days of chasing the shark, he tells Brody that he's going to go back out and hunt it free of charge because he's Captain Ahab and cannot be bested by the white whale. I mean, shark.
• 44:11
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's a. It's a good moment. And it's. You know, I. It does. You had to come up with a reason why they can't call for help. And I think the crazy old sea captain and having a vendetta against sharks and wanting to kill it himself is as good of a reason as any.
• 44:24
  Speaker B: And I guess I'll mention since we have not that in the movie we see they just stay out in the boat. Like, they're like, living on the boat the entire time in the book. They only go out during the day and, like, at night. At night they come back.
• 44:40
  Speaker A: It's only a couple days in the movie, like, they're out there. So. And I do like that it turns into, like, a bottle episode. Like, not a bottle episode. But I do. I think it's more compelling that they're just it would be way less dramatic if come and go, like, every day and, like, go back to shore in the evening and whatnot. Then being stuck out on the boat at sea is a. Which also doesn't make. Is a little. Not that it doesn't make sense, but there's. There is an element of like, okay, well, the shark has been killing people pretty close to the shore this whole time, and now you're, like, way out at sea, I guess, to hunt this thing. Like, whatever. It's fine. You need it to be that way so that they're. It's remote and they're stranded and it's.
• 45:15
  Speaker B: And they do. Like in the book, they talk about, like, Brody's like, well, why can't we stay out here at night and keep hunting it? And Quint is like, because we can't see it.
• 45:25
  Speaker A: Yeah, we can't do anything at night.
• 45:27
  Speaker B: Do anything.
• 45:28
  Speaker A: Yeah. So they start to go back to shore, but Quint pushes the engine too hard and it blows the engine up. And so now they're trapped, they're stuck, and they don't know what they're gonna do. So Hooper has this idea that he brought this shark cage with them. He also has the. This spear and a poison. Strick nine poison, apparently. And he has this plan that. It's not a great plan, but the only thing they can come up with is that if he goes down in the cage with the spear, he can stab the shark. Because they specifically say, like. Because I'm like, well, the shark has been coming up to the boat. Just stab it is even still. This is a little flimsy. But he's like. They're like. The guy's like, do you think you'll get that spear through his skin or whatever? And he's like, no, but if I can get down there and get close to him and get him in the mouth, right? Like, the tissue in his mouth will be soft enough that it will actually get through. And so that's like, the justification of why he needs to go down in the cage to do it. It's a little flimsy, but whatever. I wanted to know if that came from the book.
• 46:33
  Speaker B: Hooper does go down in the shark cage. The main motivation in the book, I felt like, was he wanted to take pictures of the shark from underwater because he's all excited about it. He's like, nobody's ever footage of a great white this big, like, up close. He wants to go take pictures. He. I think he does also have, like, a thing that he's gonna.
• 46:55
  Speaker A: Something to defend.
• 46:55
  Speaker B: Try to. Yeah. Stab it with. But it. None of it matters because he immediately gets chomped in half when he goes down in the cage.
• 47:04
  Speaker A: Yeah, we talked about that in the prequel. But that. So in. In the movie, he ends up surviving by pure happenstance that. There was like, a note, the producer said that a shark down in Australia rewrote the script for us and that's why Richard Dreyfuss survives or whatever, because they had filmed a shark attacking a diving cage in Australia, like an actual great white. And they liked the footage so much that they wanted to use it, but the cage was empty at the time.
• 47:33
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 47:33
  Speaker A: And so they had to come up with him getting out of the cage in order to use this footage of an actual shark attacking the cage. It's also. He is laughably bad at trying to stab this shark with his. Immediately drops it. Like, as soon as the shark shows up, he like, ah. And like, drops the spear. And you're like, well, that was great. He's also holding it outside the cage. For some reason. I didn't understand that. It's a spear, man. You can poke it through the bars of the cave. You don't have to have your arms outside the. What are you doing? I was like, okay, whatever. He's like. Again, he's been laughably bad at it. I will say the shark puppet, you know, animatronic. Whatever they use when it's like, attacking him in the cage. Cage. Some of those shots again, later are a real shark, obviously, but the ones where he's like, in the cage and the shark is, like, trying to come through the bars is obviously not a real shark. And it's very convincing. And the shark looks great in, like, all of the scenes for the most part, like, when you see it swimming around. It is a very convincing.
• 48:29
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 48:30
  Speaker A: Animatronic of a shark. But in this particular scene, it's like it looks like a real shark attacking a cage in a way that is. It's white. One of. It's. It's. It's the thing that makes the movie work. If the shark looked any worse or any less believable in all of the scenes that it's in than it does. The movie would be bad. Like, it just wouldn't work. But the fact that the movie. Look, every time you see the shark, your brain goes, that's a real shark. Is what makes it terrifying and what makes it work.
• 48:54
  Speaker B: Yeah, well. And the movie. The movie is also. And lots of ink has been spilled on this, but the movie is also Very judicious about when it shows the shark.
• 49:04
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 49:05
  Speaker B: How it shows the shark.
• 49:06
  Speaker A: Often not even by their choice. Again, we talked about this in a prequel. A lot of that is because the shark wasn't working or they were having technical issues with the animatronic or whatever, so they had to not use it or just use the fan or whatever.
• 49:17
  Speaker B: But by necessity, then, yes, we end up with, you know, a thriller that is very scary because you're not seeing the shark for a lot of that time.
• 49:27
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, and even, like, the scenes, like, early on where we see, like, the kid get eaten by the shark and stuff, the way they depict that. If you've ever seen footage of, like, sharks feeding, it looks very real to what you. It's just like kind of like fins and stuff flipping around. It's not like, super violent, you know, like, the shark doesn't, like, jump out of the water or anything like that. It's just kind of like, what's going on over there? Oh, Jesus. And like. Yeah, in a way that is very. Yeah. Again, it all looks very real. And then you, obviously, you mix in some real footage of sharks and it helps trick your brain even more. Does Quint get eaten? Is. So then Hooper's now disappear. They don't know what happened to him. But the shark then just bursts out of the water and slams onto the back of the boat, basically rips the boat in half. And Quint slides down and basically just gets swallowed up and eaten by the shark. And Brody is now the last man standing. Is that how it goes down in the book?
• 50:24
  Speaker B: Quint does not get eaten in the book.
• 50:26
  Speaker A: Really?
• 50:26
  Speaker B: He does die. Oh, but he doesn't get eaten.
• 50:30
  Speaker A: That's the biggest insult ever. Like, at least in this, he goes down eaten by, you know, like a true war. Like a true.
• 50:37
  Speaker B: Well. Well, wait. Okay, because your next question. I talk about this. All right, so Brody is the last man standing in the book, though.
• 50:44
  Speaker A: So that leads to the final confrontation here. Brody, the shark bursts into the orca at one point, and Brody grabs a scuba tank that they had and shoves it. And he's, like, hitting the shark with it and ends up, like, shoving it into the shark's mouth. And so the shark has this scuba tank sitting in its jaws for this final confrontation. And Brody has the clever idea of using the rifle that they have to shoot the tank to potentially blow it up. Yeah, he comes up with that on the fly. I was like, that was clever. I guess.
• 51:18
  Speaker B: I mean, they do set that up.
• 51:20
  Speaker A: Up. Oh, dude.
• 51:20
  Speaker B: Earlier when. When Hooper brings the tanks on board or at some point.
• 51:25
  Speaker A: Oh, is there a line about.
• 51:26
  Speaker B: Yeah, they got loose? Yeah, I saw that part where somebody's like, hey, be careful. Those are. That's like compressed air. It'll blow up or something like that. Okay.
• 51:35
  Speaker A: Anyway, so he has this plan, and there's this. The. The orca is sinking. He climbs up on the mast, which we set up earlier by seeing Quint up on there, but he's up on the mask. And we get this great thing where it's, like, slowly dipping into the water and he's slowly falling. We get like, It's. It's like a classic, like, ticking clock kind of thing. Like, it literally looks like the hand of a clock, like, moving down as he's, like, slowly dipping down into the water. And he pulls the rifle out and the shark comes charging at him. He shoots at it a couple times, and then on the final shot, hits the scuba tank. And the shark explodes.
• 52:08
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 52:09
  Speaker A: And he survives. And I wanted to know if that's how the shark is. Is conquered in the book.
• 52:16
  Speaker B: It is not.
• 52:17
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 52:19
  Speaker B: And now, before I get into this, I want us to recall the book review poll quote that I read in the prequel where the reviewer said that the climax of the novel, quote, lacks only Queequeg's coffin to resemble a bathtub version of Moby Dick. And now, I had not finished the book yet when I read that, so I thought that maybe that reviewer was being a little bit melodramatic in the way that book reviewers sometimes are.
• 52:54
  Speaker A: Sure.
• 52:55
  Speaker B: But little did I know, this book ends almost exactly the same as Moby Dick. So what happens at the end of this book is that Quint accidentally gets a rope wrapped around his leg in the chaos, and he ends up being tied to and then dragged into the water by the shark, subsequently drowning, which is exactly what happens to Captain.
• 53:24
  Speaker A: I've never actually read Moby Dick.
• 53:25
  Speaker B: Literally. I've never read Moby Dick. I've read excerpts from Moby Dick. In high school. We did not read the whole thing because it's like a thousand page novel, but we read, like, some excerpts from it. That is how Moby Dick ends. Captain Ahab, like, accidentally gets tied to the whale and, like, dragged into the water. Daughter. So then. So that happens to Quint, and then the shark ends up, like, succumbing to his wounds before attacking Brody, who's just, like, floating on a seat cushion.
• 53:55
  Speaker A: He means to come to his wounds before attacking.
• 53:58
  Speaker B: So he's like.
• 54:01
  Speaker A: Because maybe I don't Know what succumbs to his wounds.
• 54:05
  Speaker B: I will simply. Brody clutched the cushion and he found that by holding in front of him, his forearms across it and kicking constantly, he could stay afloat without. Without exhausting himself. The fish came closer. It was only a few feet away and Brody could see the conical snout. He screamed, an ejaculation of hopelessness, and closed his eyes, waiting for an agony he could not imagine. Nothing happened. He opened his eyes. The fish was nearly touching him, only a foot or two away, but it had stopped. And then, as Brody watched, the steel gray body began to recede downwards into the gloom. It seemed to fall away, an apparition, evanescence, evanescing into darkness. Brody put his face into the water and opened his eyes. Through the stinging saltwater mist, he saw the fish sink in a slow and graceful spiral, trailing behind it the body of Quint, arms out to the sides, head thrown back, mouth open in a mute protest. The fish faded from view, but kept from sinking into the deep by the bobbing barrels. It stopped somewhere beyond the reach of light. And Quinn's body hung suspended, a shadow swirling slowly into the twilight.
• 55:17
  Speaker A: Okay, that sounds awesome and creepy and like. I actually like that more now. I understand if it's basically just a rip off of Moby Dick.
• 55:26
  Speaker B: It's kind of just.
• 55:27
  Speaker A: I get changing it from that regard. But I do really like that. I think it's. It's creepy in a way. I now understand what your sentence means. I. The shark succumbs to his wounds before he's able to attack Brody. The way I read that was like he succame to his wounds and then attacked Brody. But I see what, I see what you were saying. I got it. But yeah, no, that, that, that is. I, I, that would be. I like that ending if. No, if for no other reason than the ending in the movie's fine. I like it.
• 55:54
  Speaker B: The ending of the book is like significantly less triumphant.
• 55:58
  Speaker A: Yes. Than the end of the movie, which I actually like in a way. I think the ending of the movie's iconic. I love the, the masked thing and the way he's dripping into the. Dipping into the water. I think you could still do that and still do the ending basically like the book did. But I do. There is something I like about. Yeah, the less triumphant kind of just like that's fair. Sad nature and especially the way Quint gets drugged. I think that's all really compelling. Again, ripping off Moby Dick aside, on top of that, you add on the fact that. And then this is whatever. Because it is a movie, and, like, who cares? But it is. Is also the fact that shooting a scuba tank doesn't cause it to explode like that. Like, that's not a thing. They did it on Mythbusters. Like, you. You literally. It does not. Like, it'll. What it can do is you could put a hole in it, kind of even. That's complicated. But, like, you could put a hole in it, and it would, like, maybe, like, shoot into the shark and might hurt it a little bit, but, like, it's not gonna expl. It's just not how that works.
• 56:56
  Speaker B: Okay, fair enough.
• 56:57
  Speaker A: Yeah. So, like, they don't like shooting it with a gun. It would. It will just leak air, basically. Again, it could hurt the shark, but it's not. Yeah.
• 57:04
  Speaker B: The thing for me is that, like, well, two things. One, while I was reading the last page of this novel, I had that review quote in mind. So I was thinking, like, okay, what's gonna happen here that made this reviewer think of Moby Dick? And then I was like, well, I'll be damned. It's Moby Dick. The other thing is that I initially misread the last part about the show shark, and I thought for a second that the shark got away, and I was like, go, shark. And then I read it again, and I was like, oh, yeah.
• 57:38
  Speaker A: But that's. I think the other thing that I really like about that is him looking down and just. It's such a creepy ending because it triggers, like, the thassalophobia. Like.
• 57:47
  Speaker B: Yes, it is.
• 57:47
  Speaker A: Like, it is. Seeing that giant shark just disappear into the black depths with Quint's body follow. Like, that's very creepy and, like, upsetting in a way that I think would be very. I. I understand why that wasn't the final moment. Big blockbuster.
• 58:04
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 58:05
  Speaker A: Summer movie. But, like, I kind of like it
• 58:08
  Speaker B: much with, like, the other scene where the shark just, like, comes out of the water and watches them. It's a slightly different movie.
• 58:15
  Speaker A: Yeah. No, that's. That's true. All right. Those are all my questions for. Was that in the book? But I got one thing I want to ask about in Lost in Adaptation. Just show me the way to get out of here, and I'll be on my way. Yes. Yes.
• 58:28
  Speaker B: And I want to get unlost as soon as possible.
• 58:31
  Speaker A: There's this one moment in the movie where I think it's the scene where the kid gets eaten. They. They're all on the beach, and they see the shark because they have a bunch of shark spotters and stuff out
• 58:43
  Speaker B: there, and they is this one with the fake fin. I think this is when the kids were faking it.
• 58:48
  Speaker A: I think it is. I can't remember.
• 58:49
  Speaker B: But then the shark is actually in the.
• 58:51
  Speaker A: Yeah, Yes, I think you're right. But there's a scene where they. They see the shark fin and they all start freaking out and yelling, shark. And the lifeguard, who's on the stand pulls his whistle out and starts blowing his whistle to get people out of the water. And Brody is standing next to the lifeguard, looks up at him and yells, no whistles. Yeah, And I wanted to know if this was in the book, and if so, why he would yell no whistles. Because I couldn't understand what that. It's like, is the idea that the whistle is gonna, like, provoke the shark or so. Like, what is. I didn't understand.
• 59:21
  Speaker B: So this does not happen in the book. And I'm afraid I'm of zero help here, because this did not make sense to me either.
• 59:29
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 59:30
  Speaker B: Maybe we have a listener who lives by the beach and could tell us what this is possibly about. I have no idea.
• 59:37
  Speaker A: Yeah, he's like, no whistles. I'm like, but the why?
• 59:40
  Speaker B: Yeah, because what I would think would that, like, the whistle would cause panic. But people are already panicking.
• 59:47
  Speaker A: Yeah, people are already panicking. And also, that's what they use a whistle for as a lifeguard. They blow a whistle to get people out of the water. I thought, yes, that's. I think that's the thing you do
• 59:54
  Speaker B: is that's like the impression that I was under.
• 59:57
  Speaker A: Blow the whistle to get people out of the water. And like I said, I guess the idea is they. Yeah, people. And that's to your point. People are already panicking. It's not like. I don't know. Yeah, it was very interesting. I didn't understand that. All right, those are all my questions. Let's find out what Katie thought was better in the book. You like to read?
• 1:00:13
  Speaker B: Oh, yes, I love to read.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker A: What do you like to read?
• 1:00:19
  Speaker B: Everything. Overall, I think that the book did a better job with conveying the sense of desperation that the people of Amity experience over needing to have a good summer. Not that this is absent from the movie, but it hit a little different in the book. Like, everyone there is so poor, and you really get a good sense of just how poor they are.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker A: Yeah, you don't really get much of that in the movie. Yeah, like, you hear people saying, like, well, we need. Oh, you know, our business and stuff. And like, you're like, yeah, obviously.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker B: But yeah, it's not quite the same thing, but, like, we live in a college town and the local businesses here depend on that yearly influx of people. I don't know. I had a lot more sympathy for how complicated the situation was in the book. You could really feel the we're fucked no matter what energy coming off the pages.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker B: Kind of related to that. I appreciated the movie's decision to make Brody an outsider, a transplant, but I equally appreciated the book's approach of having him be a hometown boy. I thought both worked well, just in different ways.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker A: Yeah. I can absolutely see the merits and the subtle ways it would change his character and how he handles everything. And both are interesting, just in different ways. Ways.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker B: Similarly, although I largely preferred Ellen in the movie for reasons that we'll get to, I can sympathize with her in the book. She was a summer person who married a townie, and now she doesn't belong in either world.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker A: Ellen is his wife.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker B: I liked Brody's friendship with Harry Meadows, who was Amity's newspaper reporter and editor. And he is the newspaper and Amity. But I thought they had a really nice little friendship.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker A: Yeah. We see him once in the movie, come out of the Gazette. That's also the guy who was the main credited screenwriter. He got cast in the movie. He was a writer on the Odd Couple or whatever. He's the guy who added a bunch of comedy and stuff to it, but he also rewrote the whole screen.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker B: Yeah, he's a much bigger character in the book.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker A: Yeah. I don't even know if he has a line, maybe one or two lines in the movie, but barely in it.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker B: Yeah. I enjoyed this description of old money rich people. Quote, privilege had been bred into them with genetic certainty as their eyes were blue or brown. So their tastes and consciences were determined by other generations. Intellectually, they knew a great deal. Practically, they chose to know almost nothing.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker A: Yep. Yeah, that's a good one.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker B: I also really liked this singular line. The sea was as flat as gelatin.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's a good.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker B: Really good. Like, a good visual there.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker A: Because there are a lot of times where, you know, obviously, like glass. There's a lot of ways people have described a calm sea in literature. That's a new one.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker B: I feel like gelatin really evokes something, though, because gelatin looks liquid.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker A: Yeah, it has. Yeah, it has a liquidity. Liquidity to it. And it. Like you can kind of. Yeah, no, it does for sure.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker B: This last thing. This is just like, me being silly, but. So there's one point in the book where Ellen decides she wants to have a dinner party. She wants to invite Hooper because she has a crush on him. We'll get to that. But then Brody's like, well, we should invite a girl for him.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker B: So they invite this, like, younger gun girl from town whose name is Daisy Wicker, and. And then during the dinner party, she talks about putting weed in gazpacho.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker B: To a cop.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker A: Nice.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker B: In the 70s.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker A: Yeah. I don't know. It depends. Small town cop, You're a mixed bag of how, like, strict they were.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker B: But anyway, like that. I mean, apparently he was not all that strict because he didn't, like, arrest her or anything for it. But then later on in the book,
• 1:04:30
  Speaker A: we only arrested black people for weed back in the 70s. Katie.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker B: Okay. Yeah. And continuing after that as well.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker B: So they invite this. This Daisy Wicker girl to this dinner party. And then later on in the book, Brody finds out from Larry Vaughn's secretary that Daisy Wicker is a lesbian and thus was not going to be interested in Hooper at all. And I just. I wrote in my notes, Daisy Wicker's gay. Happy pride, everyone.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker A: Amazing.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker B: Happy pride. There's a lesbian in this book.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker A: Yeah, there you go. All right, let's go ahead and find out what Katie thought was better in the movie. My life has taught me one lesson, Hugo, and not the one I thought it would. Happy endings only happen in the movies.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker B: There was some peak men writing women in this book, possibly the best of which was the line, their untethered breasts bouncing.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker A: We love when boobs.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker B: What does that mean? What is that? I feel like what he wanted was, like, they're not wearing bras.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, that's what that means.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker B: Untethered.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker B: They don't float well.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker A: They're not. They're not tied down by a bra.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker B: They're untethered, wild and free in the breeze.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker A: Okay, I'm not saying it's great. I'm just saying I at least understand the idea. They're not yet.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker B: Flipping over to the movie, we kind of touched on this. But I love the tension of the scene right before Alex Kintner gets attacked. Because the film sets up up, like, a couple different options of, like, we have, like, the kids playing and we have, like, this woman, like, floating, and we have the dog, and you don't know what's gonna happen.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker A: Yeah. That's the scene with the Vertigo shot. Like, that's the. Yeah.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker B: Also rip Pipet the dog.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker A: Yes. Not Pippin. Yeah. Wasn't a fool of A took?
• 1:06:30
  Speaker B: No. Also when I looked up what the dog's name was, because I couldn't remember for sure, there was a random article about the dog. And apparently when they were filming the part where his owner. Because that's his actual owner in the movie, when they were filming that part where he's calling for Pipit and there's no answer, they had to cover the dog's ears.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker A: They couldn't just take it off set
• 1:06:59
  Speaker B: because he kept responding and barking.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker A: You know, I was a little thing that I think this movie does really well that I appreciate. Is that it. Because it is like a. A blockbuster. Like, you know, action adventure, thrill ride movie, horror film, whatever. It. One of the things it doesn't do is spend too much time making you feel bad.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker A: So, like, it kills characters. Like a kid gets eaten by a shark. A dog gets. But like, it never. That woman at the beginning. It never like, like, lingers on the aftermath or really, like, revels in like, the. The gore or anything like that. Again, even like, specifically the dog being eaten. You know, like, you don't even see the dog get eaten. You don't know anything. You just see the guy looking for the, like calling his dog and his dog and coming back and it's like. And then it moves right on. And a lot of that happens in a way that allows you to watch this movie and still go on the roller coaster of like, oh, geez, oh, no. But without ever, like, feeling.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker B: You're never too sad.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's what I mean. You're never too sad. It does a really good job of teasing those emotions out of you, but never, like, forcing you to really like. Because again, that's not what this movie is. This movie is supposed to be fun. It's a thrill ride. It's an adventure.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker B: It's a blockbuster.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker A: Yeah. So it's supposed to be that kind of a combination of all those things. And so I thought it has a really deft hand in handling, again, people and animals dying.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker B: I thought the movie's addition of a town hall meeting was inspired. Always good stuff.
• 1:08:31
  Speaker A: Not in the book at all.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker B: No, not in the book at all.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker A: You gotta have a town hall.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker B: Always good stuff. When we get a town hall meeting.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's always great.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker B: I really liked the little scene where Ellen and Brody's kid, he's out in that little sailboat thing, like, by their house, and. And Brody wants him to get out. And Ellen's like, oh, let him fly. He's fine. And then she looks down at this illustration In a book of like, a sailboat getting capsized.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker A: Well. And there's a shark, like, biting into the side of the boat.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker B: And then she's like, get out of that boat.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker A: She looks back up. Get out of the boat. Yeah, it's great.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker B: The scene with the two guys on the dock trying to catch the shark with the holiday roast or whatever.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker A: And then it drags the wind out to.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker B: The little detail that I thought was a great touch was the floating piece of dock turning around to indicate that the shark had turned around.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:09:27
  Speaker B: It's tied to him.
• 1:09:27
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's the same thing like we get with the barrels later, but with the. With the deck or with the dock. Yeah, no, it's great.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker B: I liked pretty much all of the characters better in the movie. Actually, not. Not even pretty much. I liked all of them better in the movie. The reviews were not lying when they said that the characters were unlikable. I had a very hard time rooting for anyone in this book. They were all bad.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker B: I liked the dinner scene with Brody's kid mimicking him. I thought that was cute.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker A: Yeah, it was very cute. Yeah.
• 1:10:03
  Speaker B: Even though his kid kind of looks like Chucky.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker A: His kid is an interesting looking child.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker A: But, yeah, he. It is a cute scene. Yeah.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker B: And now this is kind of the main thing that I wanted to talk about in the book. That I am glad the movie decided to just simply not. Okay, the middle section of this book takes an insane detour down Ellen's midlife crisis. And we go with her as she has an affair with Hooper.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker B: Because she used to be rich and now she's not anymore. And she's like, I want back into that world.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker A: She's gonna have an affair with Hooper.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker B: So she has an affair with Hooper. Well, mostly, yes, but also because when she was a teenager, she dated his older brother for a while.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker A: And so this is like some weird.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker B: Yes, some weird, like psychosexual, but also like, she just wants. She's also, like, unhappy in her marriage with Brody and blah, blah, blah. But anyway, so we go. They have sex once, and we go with her to. To. To instigate this.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker A: Right?
• 1:11:29
  Speaker B: We don't actually see the sex happen. It's a cut scene, fade to black, whatever. But this book has the worst thing about nipples that I have read since we did 50 Shades, if you'll recall the elongated nipples from 50 Shades. But. So there's a scene in this book before she's gonna meet him for lunch, and she has purposefully chosen a restaurant out of Town so that no one will recognize her, so she can have an affair. And she's getting ready to go do this. And I am reading this and I read the line, she dabbed cologne on her nipples.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker A: What?
• 1:12:20
  Speaker B: And I put down the book and I picked up my phone and I wrote, she dabbed cologne, all caps, on her nipples, question mark. Question mark.
• 1:12:29
  Speaker A: What?
• 1:12:30
  Speaker B: And then I put down my phone and then I picked the book back up.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker A: Up.
• 1:12:34
  Speaker B: And the sentence continued and on her genitals.
• 1:12:38
  Speaker A: Oh. What?
• 1:12:40
  Speaker B: And then I put the book down and I picked my phone back up and I wrote, and on her genitals, all caps, question mark. Question mark. Question mark.
• 1:12:50
  Speaker A: What?
• 1:12:50
  Speaker B: So I don't know. Is that a common thing to do? That's not a thing that I have ever heard of.
• 1:12:58
  Speaker A: Reads as a dude, right. Writing a woman.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker B: Yes. And like I said, like peak men writing women even.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker A: Still, that's an insane thing because why would you.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker B: I guess nipples. I could see maybe.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker A: No, I could see like on the. In between her breasts or something. Like around.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker B: Around the area.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker A: Around the area. Or like, see, you know, if you want to be like, you know, make it kind of seductive and sexy or whatever. You could have her like, rub. Yeah. Put it somewhere sexy or whatever, but on your nipples.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker B: On the nipples.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker A: That's insane.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker B: And then on the genitals, that's even. Even crazier because that again, unless he
• 1:13:37
  Speaker A: just means like, you know, like you could put a little like on your happy trail or something. Like on the.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker B: Sure, sure.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker A: That would be one thing. But like, on your genitals.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker B: On the genitals to me implies like on.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker A: On the genital genitals, which is. You would not. You should not.
• 1:13:51
  Speaker B: You should not not. Dude, you should really shouldn't put much of anything.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker A: No.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker B: On your.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker A: You definitely shouldn't put an alcohol based and cologne or whatever, like perfume and like,
• 1:14:04
  Speaker B: we're getting a UTI today.
• 1:14:06
  Speaker A: Also, even from the perspective of a guy. Like, I'm. I'm trying to imagine it through the. Through the lens of like a horny dude. Like, this is like writing a fantasy about like how he imagines a woman getting ready for a date or whatever. Why is that sexy to the person writing it? Like, you know, like Peter Benchley as he's writing it. Like, why would he think that would be? Because like, all I'm imagining is like, okay, so let's play this scenario out. You get to the point where they're having sex later, and let's say the guy is like, you know, maybe sucking on her Boobs or whatever just tastes now you'd have a mouth full of cologne. Like, gross. Like, you know what I mean? It just doesn't make any sense. Like, I don't get it. Like, it's not even for the guy. It's not like a sexy fantasy. I don't get it at all.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker B: No, it. No. So then they go have din. They go have lunch at this restaurant. And they're talking about how. How does this even come. They're talking about how his. How his grandfather made the family money and the. Hooper says basically he was a robber baron. At one point he owned most of Denver. He was the landlord of the whole red light district. And then it goes on. He says from what I hear, he liked to collect his rent in trade. Okay, so by sleeping with the prostitutes. And then Ellen sees this as. As a way to slide sex into the conversation, right? And she says, that's supposed to be every school girl's fantasy.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker A: What? What's supposed to be every school girl's fantasy?
• 1:15:58
  Speaker B: And that's exactly what he. Hooper says. He says, what is. And she says to be a, you know, a prostitute to sleep with a whole lot of different men.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker A: So maybe the idea here is that she's supposed to be bad at having an affair. Like, and bad at being flirty and like, is that maybe. And that's like the putting the clone on the nipples and the like this weird line. Like the idea is supposed to be that she's like, yeah, maybe do this. I don't know.
• 1:16:27
  Speaker B: But I mean, they end up having sex. So like, so strange works.
• 1:16:30
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:16:32
  Speaker B: But then they go on to discuss fantasies and he. She says, oh, mine aren't very interesting. I imagine they're just your old run of the mill fantasies. There's no such thing, said Hooper. Tell me. And she says, oh, you know, just the standard things. Rape, I guess, is one. And. And like, listen, I'm not. Not here to knock on people's fantasies.
• 1:17:08
  Speaker A: Yeah, we're not here to kink shame.
• 1:17:09
  Speaker B: We're not here to kink shame. But this was an insane conversation to read.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker B: So then he makes her describe this rape fantasy that she has. And then she asks him.
• 1:17:28
  Speaker A: Keep going. Sorry, go ahead. I'm piecing together what I think is going on here.
• 1:17:33
  Speaker B: Let's see. Okay. She asks him, and he says, mine are usually orgies or at least three ways.
• 1:17:40
  Speaker A: His fantasies.
• 1:17:42
  Speaker B: Three people, me and two girls. And I was like, okay, so we have a couple of really original thinkers here. Yeah, so what it. And then they go have sex.
• 1:17:51
  Speaker A: Okay, well, and then what was your last note you had here about this?
• 1:17:56
  Speaker B: So then, like, they have sex, and then she feels kind of about the whole thing. And then later on, like, way closer towards the end of the book, she's talking to Larry Vaughn, who is leaving town because he's scared of the mafia. And he says to her that he's thought. He's like, you know, I've thought over the years about how we could have been a power couple if we had gotten married. And she was. She's like, yeah, I guess so. And then after he leaves, she's like, actually, that makes me appreciate my relationship with Brody. It's fine. Everything is fine. And I'm like, I don't really know what exactly is supposed to have happened here.
• 1:18:42
  Speaker A: This whole thing feels like it was interesting. So what I was gathering from this is, as you're describing, all this just feels like a man's fantasy of, like. Like the idea of a woman being unfaithful and one being kind of pathetic and bad at it.
• 1:19:00
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:19:00
  Speaker A: And then also after doing it, realizing, oh, I. That was a. It feels like a dude's fantasy, like, resolution of. I don't even know how to describe this. It. It. To me, it just feels like Peter Benchley or whatever. Like, kind of putting in this weird, like, moralizing thing about, like. And again, the whole line about, like, that. That's every school girl's fantas. And she's kind of pathetic and, like, not even good at it. And then the thing being like, oh, every school girl's fantasy is. Is being a prostitute and sleeping with a lot of guys. There feels like there's this weird idea of, like, deep down, like, maybe women have this weird, like, kind of horror complex thing and.
• 1:19:42
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker A: Like, it just feel. All of it feels vaguely massage wrapped in this, like, weird misogyny.
• 1:19:48
  Speaker B: I wouldn't even say vaguely.
• 1:19:49
  Speaker A: Well, okay, well, maybe not vaguely, but, like, I guess. And I think that that's what it is. And then her, like, realizing, oh, she appreciates her husband now. And all that just. It all feels like, again, very paternalistic, like, moralizing, like.
• 1:20:02
  Speaker B: Yeah. And it frustrated me, too, because I felt like. Like, as I mentioned in Better in the book, I felt like some of the stuff that he initially set up with Ellen where she's like, I used to have this one life where I was, like, a summer person who would come to Amity in the summer and rent a beach house. And now I've married a townie and I live here, and she feels like she doesn't truly belong in either world now. And she's kind of at this point where she's having this midlife crisis and she wants to try to go back to being a summer person, but she can't.
• 1:20:48
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:20:48
  Speaker B: But she's also not happy being in the situation that she is. And I thought that was kind of interesting.
• 1:20:54
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:20:55
  Speaker B: I was like, okay, we could go somewhere interesting with this. But then the place that he takes it is decidedly not interesting.
• 1:21:03
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Well, the place he takes it is. Well, then, haven't you learned your lesson now? Silly woman. That.
• 1:21:08
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:21:08
  Speaker A: Yeah. Like. And that's why it all feels very paternalistic and weird in the eyes. And I think that kind of is why all of it is. Feels like that is. I think it's supposed to be kind of humiliating for her. Like, I think so. I think a lot of the stuff happening. At least that's the vibe I'm getting from the way. The way you're reading it. I don't know. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah. Completely unnecessary. Because one, I really like their dynamic in the movie. I think it's really compelling. But there's also a little bit of that in there. Like, we have that. There's that one scene, I think it's in the hospital or something where he says, like, take Michael home. And she goes, like. She says, like, back to New York or whatever. And he goes. And he, like, says, like, oh, no. You know what I mean? And so, like, she clearly doesn't love.
• 1:21:46
  Speaker B: Yeah, I don't. I don't think she loves the idea
• 1:21:48
  Speaker A: of being there, but she loves him. And they have a good relationship and they're feeling like. And they're working through it. And that is. There's a little bit there. The movie doesn't really go into it at all, but it adds a little bit of depth to their relationship and makes them more fleshed out characters in a way that is interesting and definitely better than that.
• 1:22:07
  Speaker B: The whole conversation in the restaurant was. Was honestly one of the more embarrassing to read things that I've maybe ever read.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:22:18
  Speaker B: Not Counting all of 50 Shades of
• 1:22:20
  Speaker A: Gray or the sex scene from the Godfather.
• 1:22:22
  Speaker B: Or the sex scene. That was funny, though.
• 1:22:24
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:22:25
  Speaker B: God, I almost forgot about that. Oh, good times. Moving forward. I really liked the jump scare with Ben Gardner's head. I thought that was good.
• 1:22:35
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's good moment.
• 1:22:36
  Speaker B: I also liked the. The two kids with the cardboard fin.
• 1:22:40
  Speaker A: I also just love that scene with Ben Gardner at night where. Or that scene where all the, like, steam on the water. That's like all foggy or whatever. And the light. And then the lights under the water is always creepy. Like the lights coming out from under his boat, like, lighting up underneath the surface of the water is. I've always found that super creepy. And yeah, yeah, the two kids with.
• 1:22:59
  Speaker B: The two kids with a fin. That's good. I really liked the line, you're the mayor of Shark City. Yeah, I liked that. No, cats die in this movie.
• 1:23:08
  Speaker A: Okay. Does a shark get a cat? No.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker B: The Brody's family cat gets killed by one of the mobsters.
• 1:23:19
  Speaker A: Oh.
• 1:23:20
  Speaker B: It was like a. To like, scare him into keeping the beaches open. But it was such a weird, like, random one off scene where, like, up until then we had not interacted with that, like, plot element at all. And it just didn't work for me. It didn't land. I also liked that the movie nixed a lot of Quint's more sociopathic stuff. He was really hard to read about in the book. Like, the last 7,500 pages of this were just on the boat.
• 1:23:59
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:23:59
  Speaker B: With Quint, Brody and Hooper. And I was. I literally wrote in my notes, like, jesus Christ, are we just going to be on the boat with them for the rest of the book? Because I didn't like any of them and I didn't want to hang out with them. But Quint specifically. There's a reveal in the book that he has, like, a pickled baby dolphin that he's been saving to use as, like, really good bait. Bait?
• 1:24:29
  Speaker A: I don't even think it would.
• 1:24:30
  Speaker B: I don't even think that would be good bait.
• 1:24:32
  Speaker A: But then, like pickled or whatever.
• 1:24:34
  Speaker B: I mean, it's. It's gotta be because he's implied that he's had it for a while and it's like floating in something. But then he. They go on to, like, have a conversation about it and he says that he, like, cut it out of a pregnant dolphin. It's like a fetus. And I was like, what the fuck, man? But then there's also a scene where they catch a little blue shark and he's like, watch this. And he, like, holds the shark up and cuts it open and then throws it back into the water. And there's this big extended description of how first this shark attempts to eat its own organs as they're exiting his body. And then all of these other blue sharks show up and then eat this other shark alive. And I was like, why am I reading this?
• 1:25:27
  Speaker A: I mean, the idea is it takes a monster to catch a monster. That's what we're doing is that Quint is this insane, sociopathic monster who.
• 1:25:36
  Speaker B: But I didn't need multiple examples.
• 1:25:40
  Speaker A: Yeah. I mean. Yeah.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker B: And my last note is that I was totally fine with not having a description of the shark's reproductive organs being described as salami. Like, I was really good with not having that.
• 1:25:57
  Speaker A: Yeah. That's fair. All right, let's go ahead and talk about a couple things the movie nailed. As I expected, Practically perfect in every way.
• 1:26:08
  Speaker B: Not very much.
• 1:26:09
  Speaker A: I mean, we talked stuff.
• 1:26:11
  Speaker B: We talked about a lot of stuff. And we did kind of already mention this, but the book does open with the shot shark swimming in the water.
• 1:26:18
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:26:20
  Speaker B: Quinton Hooper don't get along.
• 1:26:22
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:26:22
  Speaker B: Although there's never a turning point in the book where they do. They do start getting along. And there is a moment in the book where the shark goes under the boat while they're chasing it and is like, hiding from them under the boat.
• 1:26:35
  Speaker A: All right, let's get to some odds and ends before we hit the final verdict.
• 1:26:49
  Speaker B: So this is a random little thing, but at the beginning of the book, after Brody has seen Chrissy's remains, he gets sick to his stomach. And then he's going to meet Harry Meadows for lunch and he has. Because he's feeling sick to his stomach, he has Harry Meadows order him for lunch. Lunch, an egg salad sandwich and a glass of milk. And I was like, egg salad?
• 1:27:17
  Speaker A: My go to order when I'm not feeling great.
• 1:27:20
  Speaker B: Stomach is diabolical. That's horrific. I don't know. I get maybe the idea is that it's bland.
• 1:27:28
  Speaker A: I. I think that's the idea is that it's, like, bland.
• 1:27:30
  Speaker B: Yeah. But. Oh, God, all that dairy.
• 1:27:35
  Speaker A: Dairy and eggs and.
• 1:27:37
  Speaker B: Yeah. Another thought that I had during the movie when they had all the people show up, all the fishermen they are to try to hunt the shark was that. I feel like a bunch of nuts coming in to do that. Are still people in your town spending money?
• 1:27:51
  Speaker A: It's very true. Yeah. They got to buy bait and stuff and blah, blah, blah. They got somewhere to stay.
• 1:27:56
  Speaker B: They got to stay somewhere.
• 1:27:57
  Speaker A: Yeah, Absolutely. Yeah. Another thing that was very obvious to me this time that was like, less so as a kid was all of the shark science in this movie is like. Like complete obvious bunk and like, nonsense and just paper thin. Like, there's that scene where Hooper comes over with the wine and they're talking and he explains, like, there's this theory called territoriality. And I think this shark is hunting here. And, you know, there's this theory called territoriality but it's. It's just a theory. But it's one I agree with. And it's all very silly. Science babble. That's just bullshit. And even then, I feel like even. I know we've learned a lot about sharks in the intervening years.
• 1:28:34
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:28:34
  Speaker A: But even for 1975 or whatever, I feel like, like this was still, like, really, like, bad. Like science nonsense, like pseudo science babble about sharks and. Yeah. Just very dumb in a lot of ways. And like, the way where he's. He'd be just talking about how it hunts and stuff, and it's like, it's a rogue shark. And, like, I was like, is that a thing?
• 1:28:53
  Speaker B: I don't think that's a thing. Aren't all sharks technically rogue sharks?
• 1:28:57
  Speaker A: Maybe not. I think there are some that. I don't know.
• 1:28:59
  Speaker B: Like, they don't hang out in groups. Right.
• 1:29:01
  Speaker A: Maybe. I actually don't know. They might. I think. Maybe. I have no idea. But it just. I. I felt like. I'm pretty sure all the science. Anything in this is. Obviously, we know that all the stuff about sharks, like, when they're talking about how it's like, oh, it's. It's. It's a taste for human and stuff like that. It's all. But like. Yeah, it's very silly.
• 1:29:19
  Speaker B: We already kind of talked about this, but I did like the line, martin hates boats, he hates water. Like, bro, why'd you take this job?
• 1:29:27
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:29:27
  Speaker B: What? That's the backstory. I won. How did he get convinced to take this job?
• 1:29:31
  Speaker A: Job, yeah. So I randomly watched all the President's Men over the weekend while you were out of town last weekend, partially because I talked about, in the prequel that people had talked about, how this movie was kind of like a response to Watergate.
• 1:29:46
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:29:46
  Speaker A: Mainly just in the very broad sense of a disillusionment with authority and government and blah, blah, blah, and all that sort of stuff. And I'm sure there are other, like. Like metaphorical stuff if you really want to deep dive into, like, different elements of the film and what it could represent or whatever. I think it's very clear that it's not what they were doing. I don't. It doesn't strike me as, like, that's what the movie is like a. Trying to be like an allegory.
• 1:30:11
  Speaker B: Honestly, I could see it maybe more for the book than the movie, maybe. But I.
• 1:30:16
  Speaker A: When did the book come out?
• 1:30:18
  Speaker B: The year before the movie. 74.
• 1:30:20
  Speaker A: Okay. So still after Watergate. Yeah. Anyway, so I ranched all the presents. Men, which for people who don't know is about water. It's about the reporting on Watergate, specifically by the Washington Post.
• 1:30:30
  Speaker B: My mom loves that book.
• 1:30:31
  Speaker A: It's a. Yeah. And it is based on.
• 1:30:33
  Speaker B: I don't know if she also loves the movie. She probably does.
• 1:30:36
  Speaker A: I bet she does, but. So the movie came out. All the President's Men came out, I believe, the year after Jaws came out. Or vice versa. It was 175 and the other. So Jaws is 75, I believe.
• 1:30:50
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:30:50
  Speaker A: And then all the President's Men is 76. So he. Literally very, very similar in time period when they came out and was it. It's fascinating how stylistically similar like these. These movies from this period of the 70s are like. They're all. And they're all, like, influenced by, like, De Palma and stuff like that. Like, tons of split diopter shots and just the framing. But another thing that I thought was really interesting that this movie and Jaw or Jaws and all the President's Men had in common is the chaotic dialogue of, like, people all talking at the same time. That happens a ton. And because it's in, like, a newsroom, a lot of it happens in a newsroom.
• 1:31:27
  Speaker B: So people are like, ye.
• 1:31:28
  Speaker A: Constantly talking around each other. But this movie, especially in the beginning for, like, the first act, has a ton of scenes where, like, five people are in a scene at once all talking.
• 1:31:37
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:31:38
  Speaker A: And, like, you're kind of picking up different. And that's like, a thing. You don't see a ton in it. It became less popular, I think, in cinema. And it. There's different. Obviously different styles for different directors and stuff like that. But I thought it was really interesting how similar stylistically in a lot of ways Jaws was to all the President's Men. I was like. Which was interesting. Again, going back to the fact that apparently a very common interpretation of Jaws is it as kind of a cultural zeitgeisty response to Watergate. So I thought that was just kind of interesting that I felt like they're very similar in a lot of ways. There was something specific, and I can't remember. I didn't write it down. There was some specific moment in all the President's Men that. Or in Jaws that happened that reminded me of something very specific other than the dialogue, like, talking thing. There was some specific moment that was like, my God, that's, like, very similar. Like, I almost wonder if all the President's Men, like, took that moment from Jaws or. I can't remember what it was. I would have to go back and watch it again, but which we'll probably do it one day. Eventually.
• 1:32:43
  Speaker B: Eventually my mom will ask us to do it. Yes.
• 1:32:46
  Speaker A: Yeah, it is. It was a good movie. It wasn't like my favorite thing ever. And I do. We'll talk if we ever do it. I think it helps a lot if you know more about Watergate than I do. I think it gives you maybe a little bit of grounding for understanding who all the players are and stuff like that. Whereas watching the movie I was a little bit like, trying to keep up with all of the information that's being revealed.
• 1:33:07
  Speaker B: Yeah, I really don't know. A ton.
• 1:33:09
  Speaker A: I don't know other than like, more about it now.
• 1:33:11
  Speaker B: General.
• 1:33:12
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:33:12
  Speaker B: Idea of what happened, but I don't know a lot.
• 1:33:15
  Speaker A: I know more about it now and I. I have a pretty good understanding of essentially Nixon and the. A bunch of his people, all the President's men. That's what it's about. We're bugging and we're paying people to bug like Democratic offices and stuff like that had been. And they were doing other stuff. But the thing they got caught for was bugging the Watergate Hotel, which was like the Democratic National Convention, like office or. Or something like that, just to like spy on them, basically. And it. And then the big reveal is that it finding out that it does go all the way up to Nixon because initially they're like, oh, we don't know who these people are working for. And then they start slowly, piece by piece, revealing, like, oh, this person's involved. Oh, this person's involved. And then eventually it gets to the point where it's like, holy shit, it goes all the way to Nixon. Again, it's a very compelling movie. I thought the ending was. Oh, that's what it was. It was the typewriter writer. We get a scene in Jaws at the beginning where he's typing up the.
• 1:34:10
  Speaker B: Yeah, the, the.
• 1:34:11
  Speaker A: The. The death report or whatever for. For the swimmer at the beginning. And we get like the. The banging of the. Like. And it's like this close up of him typing. That's how all the President's Men ends. It ends on the final. Like it does like a Breakfast Club close where it's like, here's what happened to all the people. But they do it with just a close up of a typewriter page. Page and a typewriter typing out, like Nixon was. Blah, blah, blah, resigned. And it just goes through like all. What all the people involved did. And it reminded me a lot of that shot from Jaws. I was like, that's interesting. I wonder if that was inspired by the shot from Jaws or just a coincidence or whatever. Or they're both inspired by something else. I don't know. Do you. Moving on. Do you know anything about the zinc oxide on the nose thing? Because I have never understood that. So we see Ellen tells him. She's like, I packed your zinc oxide or whatever. And then we see later Brody has it on his nose. Nose. And like, I know it was used essentially as like sunblock. But I never understood was the idea. Did like. And. And that's why you can see it. Is that zinc oxide, it just stays there and it like it stops sun damage. But I never understood. It's like, was the idea that they're just trying to stop their nose from getting burned or was there some weird pseudoscience belief that, like putting zinc oxide on your nose, like, protected you generally from the sun or something like that, that. You know what I mean? Because I just always found it so strange that were they. Where people only get. The thing that's weird to me about it is were people only getting burned on their noses? For me, when I get gotten sunburns in my life, my nose is like, sure, it can get. It's not my cheeks, my neck. There's so many parts of my ears. There's so many parts of my body that are more susceptible to being sunburned or as susceptible to being sunburned as my nose, that I've never understood why in movies, when you see people do this, it's only ever on their nose. So that's my question.
• 1:36:05
  Speaker B: Okay, so you wrote this down. And then I went on a whole tangent. Okay, so zinc oxide is just mineral sunscreen. It's sunblock.
• 1:36:17
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yes.
• 1:36:18
  Speaker B: So there's two different types of sun protection that you can employ. Sunscreen, which is a chemical barrier that absorbs UV rays and that can be made of multiple different things.
• 1:36:31
  Speaker A: But that's what most of what people buy today.
• 1:36:33
  Speaker B: Sunblock is a physical barrier, and it works by reflecting the UV rays away from your skin, which is why you're supposed to put on enough of it that it's visible.
• 1:36:43
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:36:44
  Speaker B: And if you're in the US you generally won't see the word sunblock on a label because of the fda, but if you look at the ingredients, if. If your sun protectant contains zinc oxide or titanium dioxide, it's a mineral sunscreen, AKA sunblock.
• 1:37:01
  Speaker A: Right.
• 1:37:01
  Speaker B: So you should be putting a lot of it on.
• 1:37:03
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:37:05
  Speaker B: About the note, I don't know.
• 1:37:07
  Speaker A: Okay. Because that's the part that has always
• 1:37:08
  Speaker B: been crazy, I always just assumed the idea was that, like, oh, I'm going to burn easier or quicker on my nose. But then I was thinking about it, and I was like, that's not the case for me.
• 1:37:19
  Speaker A: Exactly.
• 1:37:20
  Speaker B: Because I always. If. And I'm pretty good about putting on sunscreen green every day. But if I don't, I always burn on my forehead first. Like, I start to feel it, like, at the top.
• 1:37:30
  Speaker A: I get it on my cheeks.
• 1:37:31
  Speaker B: I also have a massive forehead, so that's probably why, like, I get it
• 1:37:35
  Speaker A: on my cheeks, my nose, a little bit, but it's mainly my cheeks that I will start to sunburn on first or my neck or, like I said, a million other things. And so I've just never understood why, like, the cultural. Because I assume this was a thing people were doing real life.
• 1:37:50
  Speaker B: Like, a visual shorthand for having sunscreen on is like, to have it on your nose.
• 1:37:55
  Speaker A: Right. But I guess my question was, was that how people were actually applying zinc oxide? Is it just a movie thing?
• 1:38:02
  Speaker B: You know what I mean?
• 1:38:03
  Speaker A: Because again, I'm like, well, if you're gonna do that, why would you not have it also on your cheeks, on your neck?
• 1:38:07
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:38:08
  Speaker A: I just. I've never understood it, and I don't.
• 1:38:10
  Speaker B: Can somebody who's older than us.
• 1:38:12
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:38:13
  Speaker B: Tell us if this was common practice in real life.
• 1:38:17
  Speaker A: When my parents come down for my birthday, we'll talk to them and see if they ever used to think oxygen sunblock. But I've just never understood it, why it's always just on the nose. And again, I understand that it's a different thing. It's not regular sunscreen. That's why you get like. I get all of that. I've just, like, to me, it's been like, is that really worth it? Like, you're just putting it on your nose. That's It Is that. That's why I was like, maybe there's some weird thing where. Because I could almost believe this, that there was, like, this broad, weird pseudoscience belief that, like, somehow having, like, the sunblock on your nose was somehow protecting all of you. Yes. I don't know. I don't. I know it sounds stupid, but.
• 1:38:55
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:38:55
  Speaker A: People believe a lot of stupid things throughout history.
• 1:38:58
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 1:38:58
  Speaker A: So, like, I'm like, maybe it was something like, I don't know, genuinely unsure. And so I was just curious. Anyways, if you know, please tell us. I'm sure I could look it up and find. I'm sure somebody has done a video on this is the kind of weird thing that, like, video essays get made about, so I'm sure it exists. But, um, one thing that was random, that I never noticed before in the movie is that there are several shooting stars.
• 1:39:17
  Speaker B: Yeah. When they're out on the boat.
• 1:39:18
  Speaker A: When they're out on the boat. Which I thought was kind of cool and just interesting. Maybe you could make a weird. If you wanted to be like a Steven Spielberg, like, conspiracy theorist guy. It's like. It's like prequel, like for.
• 1:39:31
  Speaker B: It's E.T.
• 1:39:32
  Speaker A: oh, E.T. yeah. Yeah, that too. Yeah. It's E.T. i was going to say Close Encounters a third time, but take your pick of Spielberg Alien movies. Yeah. Yeah. Or maybe it's the. It's the setup for Disclosure Day coming up. Another thing I love about this movie is that I can always literally, almost literally smell this movie when I watch it. Especially the second, like the end of it, like the third act or whatever. When they're out at sea, the diesel, the fishy guts smell. Salt water, Greek. Like, just when they're driving around on the orca.
• 1:40:04
  Speaker B: Very evocative.
• 1:40:05
  Speaker A: Yeah. When they're driving around in the orca. I can just. Especially because I spent a fair amount of time on boats. We had a boat when I was not like a big boat, but like a little, you know, John boat or whatever. And so we went fishing a lot. And so I know the smells of fish.
• 1:40:17
  Speaker B: You did a lot more fishing than I did.
• 1:40:19
  Speaker A: And the way that boat engines smell and all that kind of stuff and docks and I, like, know how all of that stuff smells. And so this movie just, like, instantly evokes all of that stuff to me. And then the other little thing that I've never really noticed before, and it's a thing that I don't think I love about the score, obviously. John Williams, one of the most famous scores of all time. The theme is great. Like, I'm not criticizing that, but one of the things that I never really paid attention to before is when they're doing the barrel stuff and like, the chasing the barrels around, the music. And it comes back several times, basically whenever they're doing, like, the barrel chasing thing. I think it is, like the barrel motif or something like that. The score is, like, very playful and, like, kind of triumphant in a way that is. Is interesting. Like, I understand that we're trying to, like, create peaks and valleys and like, if the whole movie's tense, then none of it's tense. But there is this element of, like, when they're chasing the barrels and stuff. The music to me evokes a different mood than what is actually the mood of that scene, which is like intense, like concentration and a little bit of like, you know, I don't even know, you know, they're trying to hunt and kill this shark. It's tense, it's. They're chasing it and like, it's not. They're not in any immediate danger. So it doesn't need to be super scary or suspenseful or anything. But like the way the score plays there is very like playful and fun in a way that I was like, not really the vibe of the scene. I don't know, it's just interesting.
• 1:41:51
  Speaker B: I did see something on the Wikipedia page for the movie about John Williams quote evoking pirate music.
• 1:41:59
  Speaker A: Which is what it sounds like. Yes.
• 1:42:01
  Speaker B: Yeah. It sounds like a 1950s, like, like high seas buccaneer, which I understand the
• 1:42:07
  Speaker A: thought process behind a little bit, but I actually don't know if it actually is tonally like.
• 1:42:13
  Speaker B: I agree. Like, specifically, there's another moment where that music plays. Like when they're first setting out.
• 1:42:20
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:42:20
  Speaker B: And I think it works there.
• 1:42:22
  Speaker A: Yes. Where it's like we're beginning the adventure like, ah. And like nothing's gone wrong yet. It's all like, yeah, yeah.
• 1:42:28
  Speaker B: When they're chasing the shark. Yeah. I don't know if that necessarily.
• 1:42:31
  Speaker A: It's a little too happy and playful and jovial in a way that doesn't quite match the intensity of like, what is happening. In my opinion. It's the only part. The rest of the score is great and it's amazing. It's just that I just was like, I don't know. I don't know if I love that maybe there's an intentional juxtaposition there that. But to me, it just didn't work as well as I remembered that again, that very specific little motif in the thing. Before we get to the final verdict, we want to remind you you could do us a favor by hanging over to Facebook, Instagram, Threads, bluesky, Goodreads, any of those places. We'd love to hear what you have to say about Jaws. We will be talking about that next week. You can also help us out by hanging over to Apple Podcasts, Spotify. Wherever you listen to our show, drop us a five star rating, write us a nice little review. We'd appreciate that. You can Support us@patreon.com ThisFilmIsLit get access to bonus content. We're gonna be putting out our June bonus episode on Tombstone here in a little bit. Our last month's episode was on Juno. Lots of fun stuff over there. You can listen to us talk about other stuff that isn't based on books. Katie, it's time to time for the final verdict.
• 1:43:27
  Speaker B: Sentence passed.
• 1:43:29
  Speaker A: Verdict after.
• 1:43:31
  Speaker B: That's stupid. Jaws is a property that has been slowly stalking us since we started this podcast. I don't really have a good reason for not covering it sooner, except that I wasn't super interested in reading the book. And as it turns out, I was right to not be interested in this. That this book had its moments here and there, but overall I didn't really enjoy it. It was hard to root for any of the characters, even Brody. And while I think that Ellen's midlife identity crisis could have been an interesting thematic addition, putting an affair with Hooper at the center of that was a strange choice that made any potential fall completely flat. I don't think Benchley wanted to explore any of the themes that he initially set up with Ellen villain. I think he wanted to make sure there was some sex stuff in his thriller book.
• 1:44:26
  Speaker A: Makes sense too. I hadn't even thought about that. That makes sense.
• 1:44:30
  Speaker B: Jaws, the movie is, I'll be honest, probably not something I would watch over and over, but it is really good. It has a lot of iconic lines and moments. And on top of that, Jaws basically invented the summer blockbuster changing motion picture history forever. And if that's not a good case for the movie being better, what is? Basically what I'm saying is we're gonna need a better book because the movie is the clear winner.
• 1:45:01
  Speaker A: Well done. One thing I was gonna mention is I completely agree it's not a movie I could watch over and over again. I think another element and we could talk more about this on the next prequel or whatever. I think another element of it that makes the movie not to me hold up quite in the same way that it used to for me is just the. The pure nature of understanding sharks and stuff a little bit more makes it harder to enjoy the movie because, you know, like one. And that's even just disregarding all of the fallout and like people like all of the like real world issues it caused after that. Even ignoring all of that, just knowing what you know about sharks and like the fact that they're not like weird human hunters and stuff like that about it, it just makes the whole thing.
• 1:45:42
  Speaker B: I cannot root for you hunting and killing a shark because I know that that shark is not actually a monster.
• 1:45:48
  Speaker A: Yes, exactly. And it makes the whole thing again, within the context of the movie. The movie is so good it still works even when you know that, but it does for me take the sheen off a little bit in a way that makes it not like one of my favorite movies of all time. When you know, maybe it used to be when I was I honestly when I was a kid might have said it was one of my favorite movies, you know, not my favorite, but it would have been on my list probably when I was younger.
• 1:46:13
  Speaker B: I am Team Shark and if I rewatch the movie I will be hoping maybe this time the shark will win and I'll just eat all of them.
• 1:46:22
  Speaker A: Katie, what's next?
• 1:46:23
  Speaker B: Up next we are going to be doing your birthday episode and we're going to be talking about Contact back to Back Bangers, the 1999 film based on the novel by Carl Sagan Sagan. And you are currently reading them?
• 1:46:39
  Speaker A: I am currently reading it. I've been wanting to read this big. I'm I love the movie. It's one of my favorite movies especially was as a kid and I'm a big science nerd. I've read other Carl Sagan books, Demon, Haunted World and stuff like that which are non fiction. But I've never read one of something of fiction that he's written. And so far I'm, I don't know, like three or four chapters in. I'm really enjoying it and I like his writing style a lot, which I figured I would because again I like his non fiction writing style. But no, it's really interesting and I'm very excited to talk about it. Have you seen the movie?
• 1:47:09
  Speaker B: No.
• 1:47:10
  Speaker A: Just can't wait. Oh can't. It's so good. Anyways, that'll be in two weeks time. But in one week's time we're seeing what you all had to say about Jaws. Until that time, guys, gals, my minor pals and everybody else keep reading books, watching movies and keep being awesome. Sam.