The Rewatchables - 'Jaws,' With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey

Episode Date: July 4, 2018

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, Sean Fennessey are gonna need a bigger boat to celebrate the 1975 Academy Award–winning shark-attack thriller starring Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss and directed by Steven Spielberg. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, everyone, it's Bill Simmons. Before we get started, I want to let you know that you were listening to one of six classic episodes of the rewatchables, a podcast that's been around for the last few years. And if you're listening on any platform other than Spotify, you can only hear the last 60 days of new rewatchables episodes plus these six classics, The Godfather, Heat, the Social Network, old school, Jaws, and the town. But for the entire archive, go to Spotify, where you can listen to every episode for free.

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A website right now that is obsessed with NBA Fray Agency and Drake. Here we go. A giant man-eating great white shark attacks beachgoers on Amity Island, a fictional New England summer resort town, prompting the local police chief to hunt it with the help of a marine biologist and a professional shark hunter. dare I say the greatest description of any movie we're going to need a bigger podcast guys Sean Fantasy and Chris Ryan are here

Joss coming up right now There is a creature alive today who has survived millions of years of evolution without change without passion and without logic it lives to kill a mindless eating machine

it is as if God created the devil and gave him Jaws. Do we think this is the greatest movie the last 50 years? Woo! Let's go. Let's go hot, Bill. It's coming hot.

Here's this swimming with bow-legged women. Boy, I wouldn't, it's not, it's not. It's not. Okay. It's not. Okay. But it is right there. And it might be the most rewatchable,

which doesn't make it the best movie, but it might be the most rewatchable movie. So most rewatchable movie the last 50 years. It's in the conversation. Chris Ryan? It is my favorite movie. the last 50 years. Oh, okay.

And it is, it is like the feeling that you get from watching Jaws is the feeling that I think I chase when I go to a movie theater. Is that feeling of you get entertained, you get thrilled, you think, you're scared, everything that you can experience inside a theory

you experience while you're watching Jaws. It's untouchable. And I think it's the oldest movie that is still completely watchable right now. I watched it with my kids a couple years ago as soon as my son was old enough to watch it. And we watched it. And reliving it through them. And first of all, it's not really slow, like some of those movies from the 70s. It's super scary.

All the same beats play really well. And the ending, the last 25, 30 minutes is just untouchable. It's probably the best. There's not one thing I would change about the last 30. Oh, no. I mean, as soon as they get on the boat, it's basically forget to breathe for an hour. Yeah, they're on a boat. They're on the boat, basically, for the last hour of the movie.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like an investigative movie on the beach for about an hour, and then it's on the boat for about an hour, right? When did you guys first see it? Well, I was living in Massachusetts, saw it somewhere 75, 76, and remember, you know, in the research, it backed up what I remember in Massachusetts.

It actually made people afraid to go to the beach. That was a real thing. Oh, yeah. Beach attendance went down. Maybe afraid to go in the pool. Yeah. You know, the beach scene, we lived in Brookline, And so you had to drive like about 45 minutes for water.

And I remember just walking, you know, near the beach being scared. There was no way I was going in. The ads alone just scared the fucking shit out of me. When I was a kid in like 86, 87, this was like I didn't see it in theaters, obviously. I was born 77. But it was the, what should we rent? Jaws. Let's just rent Jaws.

Like in the mid-80s in the late 80s. And when I was a competitive swimmer, I used to scare myself while I was doing. laps by playing the music in my head and thinking there was a shark behind me. So I would just try to swim faster. Yeah. And it was like a legit psychological trick I would play on myself. I would think about like there's a shark behind. By the way, you were a competitive swimmer?

When I was like young teen, yeah. Yeah, okay. Yeah, look out for Chris Ryan and Michael Phelps' new podcast. We have similar builds. Similar builds. Can we film a swimming thing for the ringer? Sure. Swimming miniduck.

So 75 Jaws comes out and completely transforms popular culture and actually affects behavior. 76 Rocky comes out. And it's basically the same thing. People start exercising, jogging, all that stuff. 77 Star Wars comes out and creates this whole new universe for human beings. And just people going over and over again. Three straight years of just craziness.

And blockbusters. Like blockbusters. All time blockbusters. So Sean, I mean, I was kind of curious about this because they always say that Jaws is where movies changed. Jaws is where modern movies are born. Is that because people would go and see it six times in a summer? I mean, what is it that they're talking about when they talk about how it changed the business landscape of the movies? Well, there was a particular strategy that they made the producers, Zanick and Brown.

It was pretty revolutionary at the time, which is that they put the movie in a shitload of theaters. Most of the time in the movie business, in the previous 75 years, essentially, movies would come out in 12 theaters, and then 18, and then 70 and then 100 and then 150. This movie went into a 450 theaters right away. So it was able to be a national phenomenon. There were not a lot of movies. What's crazy about that was initially it was 900. Right.

And Lou Wasserman, grandfather Casey, he actually had the very astute note of, no, cut that in half. I want people in Boca Raton to have to drive to Hollywood, Florida, to go see it. Right. So it was enough to make it a noisy news story, a national phenomenon,

but not enough so that everyone could have seen it immediately. Now when we put out of Ingers Infinity War, everyone sees it that Friday. He wanted to own the summer, which you could do back then. Now I don't think it's possible to own the summer. And it was already a property that was primed to own the summer because Peter Benchley's book had been this huge beach read. And if you read Carl Gottlieb's book about the making of Jaws, he was a guy, he's an actor in the movie and worked on the screenplay. And then he kept a diary of every day of working on Jaws pretty much from pre-production on. And he talks about like how specifically they were timing the production of the movie

based on when the book was going to hit paperback. Yeah. Because the paperback book would then trigger book clubs, people reading it at the beach because they could put it in their bags and stuff. By the way, I remember being scared of the book. The shark was on the cover. I remember even holding the book as a six-year-old and being like, what says?

The book is very different. I don't know if you've read the book. The book is very different for the movie. Well, the book has, at one point, Hooper, the Richard Dreyfus character, starts banging Mrs. Birdie. That's in the book. Steven Spielberg specifically asked to cut that part out of the movie.

Good, good moves. That would have been a different rewatchable. So this comes out, it's widely credited as created in the summer blockbuster, and I think that's 100% fair, right? Pretty much accurate. I mean, there had been movies prior to this that, you know, were hugely successful at the box office. I think the one thing that you hear a lot about is that Jaws kind of killed the new Hollywood.

It killed that era that was kind of brought in by Easy Rock. and all the Jack Nicholson films from that time and all the Peter Bogdanovich movies and this idea that the director was the king and the creativity and eccentricity were able to thrive in Hollywood and Jaws comes in and kind of like, it gets corporations more interested in movies and that's kind of the downside of the movie.

The upside is movies are of major events. They're world national events. And it's like in this case, it's justified. Did you know that it got postponed in Christmas it wasn't supposed to come out in the summer. Did I know that? Yeah. So it was supposed to come out, Christmas 74 gets postponed.

And back then, the summer was the dumping ground. I was trying to figure out why that would be the case, why we wouldn't have wanted to go to movies in the summer. I wanted, when I was a kid in the 70s, I wanted to go to movies all the time. But was that more for, like, genre B movies and stuff in summer? Was that the playground for that? Maybe they thought, like, can't, maybe school was longer back then? Is that possible?

I think part of it is that kids want to go outside in the summer. That was the thinking. prior to this. Oh, well, because we could go outside and nobody would follow us. It was safer. Yes, it was safer. We'd be gone for seven hours. No, in the 70s, you're just like, Mom, I'll be back at six.

Oh, yeah. Don't forget. Don't forget to be back for dinner. And I was out. You were just gone. Yeah, I know. My mom would get mad at me if I was in the house past 1030 a.m. And she was just like, be back for dinner.

I think about how my own son, Ben Simmons, the will be more successful, Ben Simmons. Simmons than the other Ben Simmons. Let's hope not. That's bold. For my sake. I'm calling it now. Now, my Ben Simmons, if we lived in an

era where he could just be like, I'll see you guys later, I don't, we'd never see him again. That'd be it. It's just good. It's also really weird to think about it where we live, where you're just like, if your son went out and just was like in L.A., like what would he do? You feel like, I got to get a new burger.

It's like, going nine blocks away to hang out with friend. I'm not kidding. We used to go, we'd go to the mall. We used to go to the mall. Just go hang out of the dump The dump? The Dump? The Chesson Hill dump. Seriously? Chesson Hell, the huge dump.

We'd go look for Playboys and baseball cards for like hours. You know people throwing baseball cards in the dump. Did you grow up on the set of stand by me? What happened? Did you go look for a dead body? We would have like street hockey all day. Your parents are just out.

My parents were at work. I was home alone every day. So did you go to the movies when you were looking for something to do? Yeah. Well, eventually, yeah. Okay. Eventually. And they weren't movies.

were cheap back then. This actually leads me into like one thing that I thought was really interesting about this movie specifically is the three or four different lifetimes it spanned. Because you had the initial blockbuster release in the mid-70s. And then when home entertainment comes in and VHS comes in, it becomes one of like seven movies that you would find it almost at any given moment at any person's house. And if it was the de facto, do you guys want to watch a movie? sure, well, we have Jaws, or we have Goonies,

or we have whatever the other three movies are, but it was, I feel like it was on for the first 13 years of my life. Well, you left out some checkpoints there. Sure. Hit me up with them. First laser disc, 1978, first one. By the way, great choice. That would have been my number one choice for a laser disc, right?

If you're in 1978, that would have been the first draft pick. I didn't know this in the research found out. ABC aired it for the first time in 1979. it attracted 57% of the total TV audience. Wow. The second highest televised movie ever behind Gone with the Wind. 57%. I'm trying to figure out what that would be now.

That would be like two Super Bowls at the same time. Yes. The Super Bowl gets what, 33, 35? How many viewers? No, the percent of the total audience. Oh, yes. Yeah, I think 35. Incredible.

So you have that. Then you have the VHS checkpoint. Yeah. And you're right. It was one of the must have. whatever's. And then you go into the 92 to 94 range and they started doing those VHS tapes with the deleted scenes. So it had those. I think it's also then in the last like I mean and forgive me if my I'm not going to have an accurate survey of when this happened but it definitely feels like in the

last 10 years our generation of people of writers about pop culture writers kind of grew up and we're like let's have like a real critical reappraisal of this might be like one of the great five films ever made if you look at it in certain ways and just a deep, deep respect for it critically because I think it was a crowd pleasing blockbuster but I don't know that we had necessarily looked at it

as like you put this up toe to toe with almost any movie and like in a lot of technical ways it's unrivaled. It's got a lot of things going for it. Well there's one big reason for it though before you go into your lot of things. The TVs. What do you mean? The last 10 years, the widescreen HD, the big ass.

Once we had widescreen, Jaws was a different movie. It was never a totally satisfying movie on the old TVs because he shot it, that huge wide with the ocean and the boat and you could see everything. And then all of a sudden you had on the square TVs, you had to like kind of zoom in on it. It's a beautiful movie to watch now. I think that's one of the most beautiful movies you can put on a television

other than Robert Shaw getting malted death and a little kid getting out. Kyle that happens. You know, this movie's rated PG. It's an amazing PG. There's nudity. How is this movie PG? Because back then it was G, PG, and R.

That was it. Parental guidance suggested for a movie that features that opens with a nude woman being eaten by a shark in one of the most upsetting scenes in the history of movies. Well, she shouldn't have been out there. Okay. And essentially concludes with Robert Shaw literally being eaten alive. You left out the kid.

Yeah. A kid gets eaten and a dog. This movie is PG. That's crazy. It's crazy. It's, uh... Like, is this, is this movie two full ratings less scary than the Exorcist? No, certainly not.

I actually think Quint getting eaten is... Might be the most disturbing death scene in any movie ever. Just pound for bound. It goes on for 10 more seconds than it should. Yes. He sells... He sells the shit out of it. It's an amazing performance.

Blood's coming out. Then it's like, oh, they ate them. And then that second chop comes in and the blurt just comes out of his mouth. Don't skip the most rewatchable scene too fast. Oh, it's so good. My son, I was scared when he saw it, but he, of course, loved it because he's a maniac. But it's really dark. What is the worst death scene than that?

Again, this movie is PG. Scatman Crothers in the Shining? That's the worst scene. I think Sonny Corleone's up there. Oh, they got the toll booth? Yeah. But this would be the toll booth if he just kept getting shot for. He does keep getting shot.

Neither of those scenes are bloody. When the blood appears in Shaw's mouth, I felt like I learned a lot about the human body. You know, like, I didn't know that that could happen. And then Shider manages he closed the door and the boat's just covered in blood. That scene is. Apparently, I'll step on the internet research.

There's another scene that Spielberg cut out because it was too gruesome on the July 4th weekend, maybe somewhere around there when the shark's going for this guy's son. and he jumps in front of the shark and the shark just completely mauls him and even Spielberg was like that's that's too much that can't stay in. Discretion is a huge part of the myth

of this movie, right? Yeah. That's the fact that you know we'll talk about it I'm sure but the shark not working. So when I interrupted you in the TVs what were you saying? What were the reasons? Movies need like a lot of things to become legends. They need not just to be great and fun to watch but they

need to be about mythology. So in the mythology of Hollywood, this movie becomes the first huge blockbuster, that's one. It has a really troubled production that people love to talk about because it ended up becoming a huge success. So that's two. You've got a director who goes on to be

basically the most important person in Hollywood for the next 40 years. That's three. And you've got this incredible rip-off thing that happens where this movie comes out and every movie tries to be like this. Alien was sold on Jaws and Space. That was how they pitched Alien to the world. So you've got those

four crazy things. Plus, awesome performances. A music score that became you could never have known Jaws and you would know the music. And I think it became something that is like, you hear this a lot with albums, but like parents get excited for like, I can't wait to play my kid this Beatles record to show him like who I am as a person. I think parents feel this way about Jaws. I'm sure. I know I did. I have 100,000.

I think that you're just like, I am, I have no children. I would have children just to show them Jaws. There are some dads that are like that with Star Wars. I know when Kyle, Nephii Kyle over there, when he successfully reproduces, he will be showing his spawn to Star Wars movies. What he acknowledges? But yeah, this was one of those movies. I remember thinking with Ben, like four, is it too early?

Yes. Five, still too early. Six, yeah, let's squeeze it in. And what do you think? Yeah. He loves it. Every time it's on, they want to watch it. And I don't know how much we want to talk about Jaws 2,

but the last half hour of Jaws 2 is really good. We can get to Jaws. I'm also in on the last half a half hour of Josh 2. I'm in time for the Jaws expanded universe. You're out. I'm out there. I don't acknowledge any of those movies. So Peter Benchley sold the movie for 175K.

In retrospect, maybe should have gotten like one hundredth of a point. He sold the book for $475,000. Yes. And he sold the movie for $175,000. And at the time, he was like, I made out like a bandit. Lo and behold, I mean, that's the one of the producers, David Brown was married to Helen Gurley Brown, Cosmo Editor. Dick Editor, saw an early advanced copy.

They say, hey, what's this? They go check it out and they lock it down. That was smart. It was smart that they knew they had a hit on their hands. I don't know enough about different advertising campaigns over the years, but apparently how they advertised this was really innovative. Like they came in $700,000, just flooded the TV. Every network, there was only three to flood.

for three straight days to build buzz for it. 450 theaters, Sean mentioned, and just made it an event. This was June 20th, 1975. Did they have, was this a drive-thru movie, too? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Kind of drive-through movies are hard to explain

to the Kyle generation. Guys, they're called drive-in movies. Drive-in movies, yeah, sorry. Oh, just. What is a drive-thru-through movie? Should we talk about that? Drive-thru movies. You drive-in movies.

You drive-in movies. This was a drive-in movie. Trouble shoot, you mentioned, went over budget, $9 million, 3 million devoted to the mechanical shark that wouldn't work. First movie to make 100 million, made almost 500 million. Over 67 million people saw it in 1975. Wild.

How many people were in America in 1975? How many people voted for president? But 250 million maybe? It's going to be like one third or one fourth of America. Saw this movie. Spielberg, he made Duel for TV, which is really good, by the way. That one still holds up too. It's super dated but strong.

Sugar Lane Express. And then this was his third movie. I don't even know what the parallel is to that. You could argue this is the best movie he ever made. There's a conversation. I think most people do this in Raiders. No, you and I both landed on Jaws. We did a podcast about this, and we both landed on Jaws.

I don't know if it's his most artistically accomplished movie. It's his best movie, though. It's definitely his best movie. It does all the things that he essentially sets out to do in his career. It has some really innovative touches that allegedly, apparently, they still teach in like film schools and stuff. Oh yeah. The famous Brody shot when he realizes something happened in the water

and the camera moving forward as everything pans back. Like some of the underwater stuff. That stuff wasn't happening in the 1975. No, I mean, he was a genius. He was literally training his brain for 15 years as a preteen to figure out how to make movies like this. Put himself up for this too, this movie. You know, he wasn't the first choice for this movie.

Right. And he begged on. Oscars, one for best score or best sound, best editing. Lost Best Picture. I have all the nominees here, Chris Ryan. Do you know what to what, Chris? I don't know. It was lost to 175.

I'm sure it's not going to be too impressive. No, it is. One Flew of the Cuckoo's Nest. It's a tough one. I'd still say Jaws is a way better movie than that. RIPP. Milos Shorman. Mid-70s defensible. It has an age the same way that Jaws' age.

But that's a really good movie. It's a great movie. Yeah. The other nominees that year were Dog Day Afternoon, Barry Lyndon, and Nashville. That's a fucking unbelievable line of movies. Those are five of like 38. favorite movies. That's incredible. Well, it gets better because Spielberg wasn't

nominated for Best Director. He got shut out by Milos Foreman, Fellini, Sidney Lumet, Stanley Kubrick, and Robert Altman. That's the fucking gauntlet. That's why people care about the Oscars, man. What's Felini? Was it Satiricon?

What's 75? Satiricon. That's why people care. Because you can get into a final four like that. That top five for directing has to be the number one top five that's ever happened. Way up there. For Spielberg to get cut out?

Way up there. Holy mack. And Forman 1, right? Forman 1. That used to happen back then, though. Movies would just sweep everything. Yeah. That's a famous, and that movie did sweep.

Louise Fletcher won that year and Nicholson. Oh, right. Yeah. Who got nominated out of Shider, Robert Shaw, and Richard Dreyfus? Shaw? Zero. No nominations. Interesting.

Tough one. Roy Shider. He rips off. Jaws Marathon Man, the sorcerer, Jaws 2, and all that jazz basically goes four for five, but in a really big way. I still like Jaws too. I know you don't defend it.

You're saying that's the one that didn't hit, though, right? No, the sorcerer. Sorcerer is amazing. Sorcerer is incredible. I don't know if I've seen that one. Bill, you have to say it. Do you know what the setup for the sorcerer is? I remember there's crazy stories about it.

You would dig this. All right. It's basically a group of criminals who get hired to drive trucks through South America filled with like unstable chemicals that might explode at any moment and they have to drive through mudslides and over rickety bridges

all while being chased by dirty cops through a South America. I would love that. Why is it on television? It had, so go ahead. I was just going to say, it was just a really troubled production and it had a really difficult time with the film company

that produced the movie. It was recut. There's a Tangerine Dream score that is mind blowing. Pre Michael Mann grabbing Tangerine Dream to do scores. Holy Macro. Freakin did this.

This is Freakin's first movie after The Exorcist. It was his dream movie. It was a remake of the wages of fear. And then if you go backwards, he's in French connection, which he's when he's... Can I just give a shout out? And he's instill of the night with Meryl Streep, which is a really kind of solid thriller. All that jazz is one of the best performances of the 70s. And I say that knowing I'm talking about Al Pacino and Dog Day and Godfather and everybody

else that we're talking about, all that jazz is an incredible performance. It's an amazing movie. I remember... I had lunch with William Goldman once. That's not a name drop. This is going somewhere, I swear. It is a name drop, though. Well, it is.

But I was like, I don't understand. Why wasn't Roy Scheider, why wasn't his prime 25 years instead of nine years? He's like, I don't know. He's like, he was as good as anybody that decade. Like, you look at his work in those movies. Like, he was probably the best leading man we had. Like, he beat out.

I don't want to step on the, what's the cast? Casting what ifs? But he beat out some major dudes for this part. Spielberg saw something in him. I think there's something about what Shider does, especially in the mid-70s here, where probably his humility, or at least his willingness to be the second banana

to Gene Hackman and French Connection, Dustin Hoffman and Marathon, man. Kind of to Shaw and Dreyfus, they have flashier parts and jaws. Yeah. All that jazz is the one where he really is going for it. and he's great in it. But, you know, in French Connection,

it's mostly you're watching for Hackman, even though Shider's great. And in Marathon, man, it's Lawrence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman. He's only in like 25 minutes of that movie. He's really good in that movie. He's incredible in that movie. Yeah, it's,

he just, he hasn't, he hasn't every man thing where he's not that handsome. You know, he doesn't necessarily seem like the, he's handsome enough. He doesn't seem like the smartest guy.

He's a little bit, um, provincial. He really, he's a really good New Yorker transplanted to, a beach community in this movie. It's very unassuming. Doesn't have to be in charge,

even though he's in charge. He's a really good leading man. There's not a lot of guys like him right now. So you're going to like this. I wish Wesley Morris was here because he'd get super excited. Michael Douglas basically had the career Roy Shider should have had. Interesting. Same kind of parts and every man type thing and the every man who gets in a predicament.

And he just had, there were more movies for him to do that. But every movie Michael Douglas was the star of, Roy Shider could have been the star of from the 70s. But Roy Shider never really plays a shitbag. And Michael Douglas' best rules. He's like a real sleaze bucket, right? I mean, not China Syndrome, but in basic instinct, he's kind of dirty.

And Wall Street's dirty. No, it's more like he's a likable person who made a mistake. Wall Street's the only time he plays like a bad guy. That's an interesting question. I just think Michael Douglas is a little too handsome. Like, I was looking at Roy Shider while watching the movie last night. And I was like, he just kind of looks like one of my. uncles.

He just kind of looks like a guy that works for the movie. It does. It's an interesting thing about I wonder if Roy Scheider was like cool old in the 70s and then just got old old in the 80s and terms of physically.

Yes. He's good in 52 pickup though in the 80s. You ever see that with Ann Margaret? That's a great movie. His 80s career wasn't good. I was looking at the IMD. It wasn't like he wasn't acting. He also had a run in the 90s

in those like late night straight to HBO action movies when he was cash and checks. Roy Scheider. I don't. I pretend that doesn't happen. Tough times. Hard times. I love Roy Shatter, though.

And I think he's really good in Jaws 2. That's the last time I'm bringing up Jaws 2. I think he's good in Jaws 2 as well. Jaws 2, very good staff. Is there a Jaws 2? Big usage rate. Let's hit the categories. But first, a break.

Let's talk about the Ringer's new music podcast because it's awesome. It's hosted by Micah Peters. It's about once a week, but when emergencies happen in the music world, like Drake dropping a 25-song album. And we need an opinion on Monday about the Drake album.

album, Michael Peters is there. Michael Peters, original ringer guy. He has blossomed into an awesome podcast host, and he's willing to talk music with just about anybody. Here, the things that he talked about, the last couple, Drake, a week ago, Kanye West, no good month of music. He did X, X, X, X, X, X, Tension, as my son calls him. He did his untimely death.

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Subscribe right now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. Most rewatchable scene. This is an unfair category because this is the most entertaining movie the last 50 years. He could pick 100 scenes. I have two honorable mention nominees and then four. nominees and then if you guys want to add one or five nominees I'm sorry if you want to add one that's great uh the girl getting pulled under at the beginning is just great phenomenal that's an honorable

mention honorable mention okay dry fist scuba diving and running into the guy's head which we can talk about a little bit uh the five nominees the fourth of july shark attack and the and the woman running out and her son doesn't come back from the water it's just gut wrenching it's just great stuff The sun mimicking shiter at the table is my favorite scene in the movie. I'm not going to make the case for most rewatchable, but that's the one where if you leave that movie, you're like, the director's really good at this. That's Spielberg.

Yeah, that's just like a classic Spielberg scene. My most rewatchable scene is not that, but it's the same reason. The same rationale. The Indianapolis monologue. Quint dying. And just the last like, I don't know, nine minutes. when he kills the shark and then Richard Dreyfus pops up and they laugh and quint head shake. Let's paddle back.

It's just so good. It's perfect. My honorable mention is when Hooper brings the two bottles of wine over to the house and Brody's basically tying one on and he, he's like, he opens it up. He's like, you might want to let that breathe and he pours half the bottle of wine into like basically a pint glass. And they talk about how that, you know, he's just basically basically. like, I'm going to go and join this other crew tomorrow, but I'm going to leave knowing that that shark is still out there. And he's like, I have to make a report.

And the dynamic between Hooper Brody and Brody's wife is so great. The character beats are so great. The exhaustion on the face of Brody is so great. I always rewatch that scene. And it could have ended with Brody passing out and Hooper having sex with the wife on the table. Spielberg didn't want any part of it. The wife's really good in this movie. The rain gray.

And she's actually pretty good in the second movie. She's great in the second film. They push the envelope with Joss 3D and not as good at that movie. No. Very famously, Sid Scheinberg, the longtime Hollywood executive's wife. And Shineberg worked closely with Spielberg over the years. That's the best case of nepotism in the 70s. The worst case is John Travolta's co-star in Saturday Fever.

Karen Linn-Gorney, who got cast by whoever the producer was in the thing. Yeah, that's not good. Single-handedly keeps that movie for being an A-plus. I would also want to nominate the town hall meeting after the July 4th attack when we first meet Quint. Yeah. Everything, I would generally nominate

any time Murray Hamilton who plays the mayor is on screen. He's just thrown, I'm sure we'll get to him at some point. He's throwing 101, the whole movie. He's so funny and so good. But Quint, doing the whole, I'll catch him for 3, 3, but I'll kill him for 10 and that whole thing, bad fish. All those lines are great.

Good car. What's most rewatchable, Chris? July 4th. I love as soon as the sun sets everything that happens on the boat. Indianapolis speech, but everything that happens. Oh, the whole stretch. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

That's my favorite. That was the most fun rewatching it. 1,100 men went into the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes. Didn't see the first shock for about half an hour. Tiger, 13 foot of. You know, you know that when you're in the water, chief? You tell by looking from the door.

to the tale. Well, we didn't know. Which our bomb mission had been so secret. Oh, distress signal had been sent. I love Robert Shaw. I've always loved Robert Shaw. I'm going to step on half-ass internet research because I have some info on how they did that scene.

Quite a bit of controversy around that scene. Around the authorship of that scene. Not resolved. Not resolved. People think Shaw, ad lit most of it. Other writers claim to, I don't want to go. It's too complicated going to. William Sackler, who's a playwright, was hired very early on.

He's a guy who wrote The Great White Hope. And he came up with the idea to do a speech about the Indianapolis and that Quint was on the Indianapolis. And then John Milius was involved, maybe. Maybe Robert Shaw wrote it himself. That guy Gottlieb was in there. Gottlieb was on set, rewriting the movie the whole time. I mean, who ultimately wrote it.

Shaw himself was a playwright and a novelist. So this is from a half-fast internet research coming up later. Shaw attempted to do the monologue while intoxicated, as it called for the men to be drinking late at night. Nothing in the take could be used. A remorseful Shaw called Spielberg late that night and asked if he could have another try. The next day of shooting, Shaw's electrifying performance

was done in one take. I think I believe all of that. I go with that. Yeah, that sounds... I could see Robert Shaw being like, I'm going to do this drunk. This is how it should go and just being a complete train wreck. Now, if there's footage of that, I would like to see it.

That should be in the Internet. He's dead. put it on. Robert Shaw was a very big alcoholic and died at 51 years old. He looks like he's 70 in this movie. I got to say you're right. He looks like he is blood alcohol level

Narragansett in this movie. Yeah, when I was doing the research and I noticed that he died when he was three years older than me and he filmed this movie when he was like my age. I was like, oh my God. It's pretty crazy. Either I'm super old or Robert Shaw is age like in dog years.

Yeah. And the only reason he's in the movie is because he was so good in The Sting, which was produced by Brown and Zanick, and they suggested him for it. But in this thing, he looks like a million dollars. He looks really young. He looks old as hell in this movie.

Well, when you're drinking and smoking every day, every night. Nephew Kyle, I'll tell you. Nephew Kyle's right there. Robert Shaw looks like Daniel Craig looks now. Like, he looks, it's crazy to see him in that in the Bond movie. What's your most rewatchable scene? I'm always in for the last, from when Quinn dies all the way through. Smile, you son of a bitch.

That whole thing is so good. And then Dreyf is popping up. But just for pure, like one scene, I still like him and the son. Give us a kiss. I need it. I really like that scene. That's a good father-son scene. It makes my heart warm.

It's just good. It's a kind of scene that just doesn't happen anymore. Movies don't have those scenes. They don't care about character development where there's, like, you know, three lines of dialogue and just people playing off each other. Not to get all artsy-fartsy. What's age the best? I try to narrow this down, but feel free to throw in once.

John Williams' score, Quint, and the Hitchcock move of filming the shark. Those are three, and then I'm going to add just in terms of actually aging the best what we mentioned earlier with the TVs and the HD and how that has given this movie, in my opinion, a completely different life. Because if you watch this movie now and you have a 65-inch TV and widescreened and HD and you're streaming on Netflix, like, It's like you're in the ocean. Yeah.

It's just, it's the best thing that ever could have happened in this movie. So what else would you add? I would throw in just the general way it captures summer at a beach town, both in terms of the power base being really like business leaders, a mayor who probably has a little too much power, a police chief who's just like trying to coast through my, like, second half of my life with some ease. And then that feeling of like everything that happens in this island,

happens in three months. And everything is like sort of geared towards this community that arrives en masse on a boat. And there's something very, it's at once, you know, really exciting, but it's almost like a little bit claustrophobic, a little bit paranoid. We're all stuck on this island. And those three months are so important that the mayor is willing to jeopardize. Yeah. And you think about it.

You just think about it. I remember, you know, being like, I remember working at swim clubs and stuff as a lifeguard. And it's just like the entire summers kind of building towards July 4th. Yeah. And then there's this lull and then it goes back up towards Labor Day. But it's really like, it captures the feeling of summer and the arc of summer really well, I think. The only other thing I can remember doing that pop culture standpoint is the 90210s summer when Brandon worked at the beach club. Yeah, definitely.

That was the second one I was going to say. Volleyball. It was either that or Jaws. I don't remember. Does Chris Ryan look like Juliet Littman to you? I got confused for a second. Give me the Long Island take on this show. Well, I was going to say.

Amity, Amity, was it Amity, New York or Amityville, New York? Amityville is a town on Long Island, which is where the Amityville is House means. Amity was the fake Jaws Town. Yes, Amity is the fake town. But I think the three of us, three East Coast guys, three guys who probably spent our summers going to the beach. My dad lived on the beach. Jersey Shore, Long Island. Cape Cod.

I mean, Amity feels to me like a combination of Montauk and Cape Cod. Yes. Those two where it's sort of like it's really nice, but there's also something kind of old and broken down about it at the same. time and the movie shot at Martha's Vineyard. And I don't know. I mean, it's just very relatable. I was at the beach all the time as a kid, and it just felt like the excitement and anxiety that Chris was talking about, where it's like you're in a wide open space,

but somehow it feels really small. Yeah. Simmons family Cape Week every year, which is happening right now. Actually, I'm not there. But we went in the late 70s. We used to stay always in like hyenas, pharma, place like that. And we went to go visit Martha's Vineyard for the day. And that was the first time I realized, like, oh, you realize Jaws was filmed there.

It's like, what? I had only seen a couple times. Yeah. We didn't have cable and all that stuff. But I still remember walking around and seeing like where they filmed the July 4th massacre basically. You'd be like, yeah, that's the beach. I'm like, oh, my, oh, that's the sandbar and just being completely freaked out. But yeah, it is Martha's Vineyard, but it doesn't feel like that in the movie.

No, and I feel like all of those communities, Martha's Vineyard, Cape Cod, Montau, the Hampton. Even the Jersey Shore to some extent, 40 years ago were quaint. You know, they were small. They were modest. They were towns where families went for a week on vacation. Now they're like big business. You know, they're booming. They're like metropolis.

That's what you could still buy a house like on the freaking water for whatever. Yeah. And people who could buy houses back then had normal jobs. You know what I mean? Like there were teachers and sanitation workers, guys who worked for the city. You know, my mom, teachers had summers off. They would have to go find a thing to do with your kids. When I was rewatching the movie last night, I was no.

quoting to my wife that if you look at how Spielberg moves the camera, especially in the early scenes when we're seeing Shider's character, he does this amazing job of just showing you what the town looks like. The camera's following him walking around after that first attack and just shows you like, these houses are pretty small. The white picket fences that the kids are karate chopping, you know, that's very small stuff. It's not, it's not this like testament to wealth, which is what a lot of those places are now. That's fair. Anything else age the best for you, guess. Other than the whole movie?

The music's really high. I mean, it's two notes. Two notes that do all the work. It's F and F sharp. That's it. I would say for me, it's the never seen the shark for most of the movie because I do feel like that became an iconic way to do a horror movie where it's like, don't reveal the villain you had or don't reveal whoever.

But the funny thing is it wasn't intentional. The mechanical shark was so bad. They had to kind of audible on the fire. And Spielberg even now says it was a godsome, Gotson, which brings us to, would you have for what stage is the best? The summer stuff. Yeah, okay.

I'm going to music. Okay. What stage is the worst, the mechanical shark? There's two scenes with it where we've talked about this before, about is it okay to CGI just to at least get over the hump of it. Quinn is one, I assume. Quinn's death.

No, there's just two scenes where the sharks kind of up there and it's so clearly not a shark. Which will, do you know which one specifically? Well, it's not when he's chung him. When he chung up halfway of the water. Yeah, he's like, when he's like come back and shovel some of this shit, what does he say when he's throwing this stuff into the ocean and it comes up on the back?

Yeah. You don't think it looks good? Yeah, they could see Gia. I think that that has such as that iconic shot of Shider whipping his head up and then the camera cap stops on him and he's got this shocked look on his face that even if the shark doesn't look that good, you're only thinking about Chief Brody. You're not thinking about the shark.

at that moment. The only time it really, really bothers me rewatching it, especially on a big TV in my house now, is quit getting eaten. I'm like, that's a big piece of latex. Like, it just doesn't look like anything. Like, why is it stuck on the mass of the boat? It's mechanics are really bad in the...

Yeah, that sounds great. They had a lot of issues with the shark. But Bill was too busy thinking about lungs getting punctured for the first time in his young life. Oh, yeah. Quinn. Then the other one that jumped out to me for what's age the worst,

No minorities at all. Yeah, it's weird. Now, sometimes I think we overreact with this stuff because that movie's about Amity, Long Island. Maybe they didn't have minorities in the town that they wrote about. But I think if they do this movie over again, which I'll throw my body in front of it at all of us. Well, I don't think there's any way Hooper's not black.

Yeah. Or you could argue maybe even Brody's black. They're having a black person and it's just, the movie's too white. It really does stand out when you're. The one thing I read, I mean, it's an imaginary community, so it's hard to say. But people have pointed out that there's not a single, single woman in the movie. Other than Mrs. Brody?

Mrs. Brody's not single. And the mom. Oh, not a single woman. It's all matriarchs and kids. And the only single woman in the movie gets eaten at the beginning of the movie. Yeah, it's an incredible key party. I think she's single. I think she would call herself single.

That kid from Greenwich probably wishes she wasn't before she got eaten. But there's been like a lot of commentary around the idea of, the fact that, I mean, it's a very masculine movie. The bulk of the time is spent with the guys on a ship. Yeah. But, I don't know. I mean, politically, is it really that, it's not really very offensive? No, it's just a white movie.

Yeah. I've just noticed it the last time I watched, which was probably, I don't know, four months good. It's been on Netflix for a while. All right, it's time for casting what ifs. Presented as always by ZipRecruiter, the presenting sponsor of the Bill Simmons podcast, having a good movie IQ. very important.

Just look at the decision Spielberg made in this movie. Roy Scheider. You knew what he was doing. Well, when it comes to hiring, you don't need a high hiring IQ. You need ZipRecruiter. Their powerful technology scans thousands of resumes to find people with the right experience for your job. 80% of employers who post on ZipRecruiter to get a quality candidate through the site. And just one day, my listeners can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash BS.

Or you can go to ZipRecruiter.com slash rewatch. Whatever you want to do. Knock yourself out, Zipakruder, the smartest way too higher. All right. Robert Duval turned down Brody. Why? He wanted to play Quint. Too young.

Spielberg said too young. Too young and 75. Robert Deval is Brody. Robert Deval's had a couple of sliding doors career moments. Wanting too much money for Godfather 3. I think was a really bad move for him. What? Really screws up Godfather 3.

No, but I think hot take, I think Godfather 3 would have been good. I think they had to throw away that script and redo the whole thing because he wasn't in it. And then all of a sudden, Sophia Coppola is more involved. I'm telling you. I'm a godfather three defender. It is not a good movie, but I think that Andy Garcia role, they had to pump that up. It was just a bad move. He would have been awesome in that. Duval is well within his rights to say no to that. He wanted like six million bucks. I don't know. I think, I'm glad he's not in Jaws. I think. So him as Brody, you're too young? What would have been your... He's not a bad brodie.

He definitely is too young for Quinn. He's not New York enough. Oh, I think he's too New York. Shider feels like Long Island to you. He feels like New York City. He feels like Queens. Yeah. And you need that.

You need that like paranoia going on the water when you're from New York City because you're not used to that experience. Yes. I'm going to convince you guys on Godfather 3 at some point. With Duval, I think that's a good movie. I agree with you. And by the way, wasn't that far away from being a good movie,

even though I don't acknowledge it. There's like an hour-long thing about the people election. There's a lot of weird choices in that movie. Sophia Kobola has gone on to have an amazing career as an artist and director. It's one of the worst performances in the history of movies. It's insane that she's in that movie. Yeah, the Winona What If for Godfather 3. There's a lot of what-is of that movie.

That's my point. She skipped on the internet, which is her biggest win. If Godfather 3 came out in like 2002 when the internet was forming, Sophia's in trouble. She dodged a bullet. Lee Marvin and Sterling Hayden turned down Quint. God, I would have loved to suit in Sterling Hayden. Sterling Hayden would have been really interesting as Quinn.

And his whole thing and the reason why he had to turn it down was because he basically was like a tax fugitive. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Not that Robert Schawe's much better. Oliver Reed turned down Quint. Spielberg won a John Voight for Hooper. So glad that didn't have.

Also came close with Kevin Klein as Hooper. That would have worked. Really early for Kevin Klein. But that would have worked. I didn't really see any other Brody candidates unless you guys heard. I looked. There were others for Hooper. Right, but not Brody.

It seemed like he settled on Roy Shider. Oh, Charlton Heston was the other one. Yeah, Heston expressed interest. He would have been too masculine, too powerful, too confident. You know, Shider's able to be a little bit more low-key. But Hooper, it's like Timothy Bottoms, Joel Gray. Jeff Bridges, right? Joe Gray would have been weird.

Charlton Heston was so annoyed with being rejected for the role of Brody that he later made disparaging comments about Steven Spielberg and vowed never to work with him. That worked out well for Charlton Heston. Soil and gray! That's it for casting what is. The shark was originally played by a not terrible shark. Dionne Waiters Award.

The nominees, the honorable mentioned nominees. We know who this one's going to. Quint not eligible, by the way. He's in too much of the movie. Mrs. Kintner. Two strong scenes. I mean, yeah. That's right.

She's looking around for a kid in the one scene. It's a real Kendrick Perkins comes in, starts a fight. Beats the shit out of Roy Shider and then she's out. 10 minutes, 11 points, no rebounds. The other honorable mention nominee, Ben Gardner's Head.

Good. Yeah, that's good. Great one. We'll get into the story of that a little bit, but the obvious winner, beloved performance. We haven't even talked about him yet. Murray Hamilton is the mayor.

He's in how many scenes? Maybe four? Yeah, four or five. It's coming in hot. The long tracking shot to introduce him on the ferry, right? Well, it's not even a tracking shot, right? It's a stationary shot with the ferry, but you see the whole world change behind these guys,

and he's talking to him about the politics of the beach community. My favorite mayor Vaughn scene, though, is when he's like, you know, he's like, this is not the time or the place to perform some kind of half-assed autopsy on a fish. And I'm not going to stand here and see that thing cut open and see the little Kittner boys spill out all over the dock. Incredible. He's so evil and yet somehow likable at the same time. They know exactly when to be like, let's take this guy out of the movie.

Yeah. Martin, it's all psychological. You yell barracuda. Everybody says, huh? What? You yell shark. We've got a panic on our hands on the 4th of July. That's like built for a trailer.

You need those like two sentence lines where you're like, I'm in. Yeah. I'm in. And that is just totally one of those lines. The movie just takes off after that moment. What was the Murray Hamilton backstory before this movie? Because he's become that guy from Jaws. But he was actually a real actor who had done stuff.

But I just, it was before my time. Yes. So I believe Murray Hamilton got hired because Steven Spielberg loved him in The Graduate. And he's got that very famous speech. Oh, that's right. He was in a lot of movies in the 50s and 60s. He's in some like Doris Day movies. And he's in the hustler.

You could tell he peaked way early because the IMDB picture of him is like 20 years earlier, Mary Hamilton. Yeah, he's also on like every single TV show over in the 70s. Yeah. He's in like the FBI story with Jimmy Stewart. He was in a lot of movies at that time.

But, and then he was in the drowning pool and Rich Man, poor man. Like, he actually had like another renaissance in the 70s after Jaws. This is such a great part. It's kind of amazing nobody's remade this movie and I think that speaks to the ultimate legacy of how great this movie is.

This is one of those movies that you could just, you could just picture somebody at the peak of their powers like Brad Pitt being like, what's next? I'm going to remake Joe or like crazy Johnny Depp. But it also. I want to be broody.

It also like, you know, you talked about how they basically, you know, they've never remade Jaws, but they've basically kept making Jaws after this because of alien and aliens. Yeah. And in every Jaws rip off movie, there is a mayor vaughn. Like it's Paul Riser and aliens. It's the, it's the guy who's like, well, wait a second, guys. Are we sure this is all bad? Yeah, yeah.

You know, it's the guy in Jurassic Park who gets killed in the bathroom. There's always like a politician or an accountant or somebody who's like, eh, this could be good for business, you know? Since we're talking about Mayor Vaughn, though, can we talk about what actually he's doing? Like what, how important is it to get these people on the beach that he's like willing to sacrifice lives? This is a nitpick, but this was going to be in a pick of nits. In the book, the mafia is blackmailing him to keep the beach open. Ah.

And in the movie, they couldn't fit in the. mafia subplat. I don't think they need it. I think it makes sense because it's you only, I think he's thinking and look, this is also back but you have to remember that this is a time when like this would not have gone viral.

Like you know what I mean? This would have been on page 16 of some newspaper. Shark eats somebody. You know it's like oh shark attack. But if you make it into a panic, that's it for the summer. And if it's for the summer, it could be it for everything. It could be it for certainly your career, but if not

multiple businesses. And I'm not saying like I'm not identifying with Mayor Vaughner. I'm making the case for why he does the way he does it. The shit of been a ringer explainer. And he doesn't need... Okay, I'm making the case. Vote Vaughn. I mean, like, what do you want for me?

I think this guy's got a good platform. It's pro-business. We thought we caught the shark. Proved to me we didn't. Wow. When did you start writing for the federal list? That was phenomenal. Shout out to Ben Gardner's head.

Great. So, half-assed Internet research, which I'm going to jump into right now. Spielberg decided he was greedy for one more scream after he had gotten to like the almost the last cut. Reshot the scene in which Hooper discovers Ben Gardner's body. For those of you listening,

that's the scene when Dreyfus is scuba diving. Really for... Not a good reason. Not murky reasons. She was just an excuse to get one more scary scene and goes in the boat and the waterlogged head of that dude pops up. And it is scary for the day. 98th time.

Yes. It's never not scary. I never don't get scared when that head doesn't come up. Great eyeball acting by Richard Dreyfus in this movie. Great. When his eyes blow up, when he's in the cage later in the movie, too, you're like, whoa.

Here's some good scuba diver screams. So Spielberg used $3,000 of his own movie after Universal refused to pay for the reshoot. It was shot in somebody's swimming pool in Encino. And he is the lifecast latex model of the head. attached to a fake body, and to simulate the mercury waters of the Martha's Vineyard, powdered milk was poured into the pool. Sounds like a new Rear, H.Q.

Which was then covered in a tarp. I have more half-ass internet research for this movie than I think we've ever had. Spielberg tried to get out of this movie at one point. Do you know that? No. He did not want to be typecast as the truck and shark guy and tried to jump to direct Lucky Lady for a different studio and Universal blocked him. Can I give you a little note on Lucky Lady?

Lady? Yeah. I assume you guys probably haven't seen it. No. It's a weird Stanley Donnan movie starring Liza Minnelly, Burt Reynolds, and Gene Hackman. It's kind of lost the time. It was a hit when it came out. But the reason that movie matters is because George Lucas visited the set of Lucky Lady and basically picked off the whole crew to make Star Wars. It was a British group of people. Really? Oh, it was like a Pinewood or whatever? And he basically hired all of them to make that movie. No way. There you go. Good knowledge. Almost a Stephen Spielberg directed movie. Spielberg insisted on shooting in the Atlantic Ocean

and Martha's Vineyard because the floor of the ocean was 35 feet. So if the mechanical shark fell to the bottom, they could go get it and they had to, and they had like essentially a miniature version of like an oil rig that they used to, they had to like lower this rig into the water every day. And every day, basically the production of Jaws was a 24-7 operation of, of if it wasn't being put in or out of the water, it was being industrial dried,

and then repainted, and then the paint being dried, like every single night. So they literally worked 24 hours a day for something like six months out there with all sorts of conditions of the East Coast summer. To nobody's surprise, Spielberg admits now that he should have done

a giant Hollywood water tank. But he didn't know any better. And by the way, it's what makes the movie great is that they didn't do it in a water tank. When they're out on the water, it feels so real. real. It feels so real, but disgruntled crew members nicknamed the movie Flaws.

Shooting at sea led to many delays, unwanted sailboats drifting into frame, cameras got soaked, crew members were sunburned and covered in salt, and one time the orca pretty much sank with the actors on board. And it was a 55-day shoot that went three times as long. It was an absolute nightmare by all counts. This is a bit from the Jaws log, which is Carl Gottlieb's book about the making of the movie. call it half-ass offline research because it's just a book. But you know, you were talking about we'd,

you'll throw your body in front of any remake of Jaws. One movie I would watch is apparently, because they were there, it was real like they were basically, there was a May-September thing. A lot of Island romances. Oh, a movie about the making of Jaws? A movie about people who fall in love, like it was a lot of guys who were working as teamsters

or working as like on the crew of Jaws. Netflix series. Meeting women who were working seasonally. and bars on Antuncate. I think that would be a great, I would totally watch that. I love it. Ted Sarandos, you listening?

And then, you know, you have like somebody playing Dreyfus and somebody playing Shire and somebody playing Shaw and Spielberg. And they're in the background. Shaw's in. But it's basically Adventure Land while making Jaws. I mean, who says no to that? It's a great idea.

Chris, you amaze me over and over again. Every time I think you've amazed me the most, you do it again. It went from 52 days to 155 days. That's a long time. Not good. That's a lot. This is amazing.

And I almost thought this was half-ass internet research. So I googled it. And apparently this was true. Before the last day of shooting, Spielberg heard rumors of that he was going to get pranked from his mutinous crew because they hated him so much by the end of the movie. So for the last shot, the blowing of the shark when it was being filmed, Spielberg left the set and went to Los Angeles because he was so afraid he was going to get pranked by everybody. It was not there for the last day. That's right. He like gets into a waiting car and then the car takes him into a waiting thing. Spielberg always wins. It's an amazing thing for really the first big, big break of his career to go so badly.

Because everything about Spielberg now is how he's the greatest guy to work with. He's the most professional. He's a savant. I mean, he obviously learned a lot from this. But the way he's been able to manipulate this story in very smart ways. There's a, there's a documentary about the making of this movie that's as long as the movie called The Making of Jaws. It was on that laser disc you pointed out. I think it was made four. that laser disc. It's one of the best making of documentaries ever, not because it's on YouTube. It's on YouTube. And everyone's interviewed in it too, which is rare. That's why

it's so good. There's so many things that could have got. There's this great documentary that I saw when I was like in a teenager. I don't know. I think it's on Vimeo, but I don't know if it's available. It's called Visions of Light. It's this documentary about the history of American cinematography and Michael Chapman, who I think was the camera operator on Jaws, but

Jaws has this absolute like murderers role of camera operation talent who all wound up being great cinematography. in their own right. Chapman talks about how when they first talked about shooting this, and he would go on to do Raging Bull, but like Chapman was like, Spilberg wanted to nail the camera down. He wanted to have everything on tripods with like long lenses so that you could see everything. And he was like, if you nail this camera down on boats, people are going to be throwing up in the aisles. Yeah. Because it would, this horizon would just keep tilting with the water.

And that's what Spielberg's original idea was, can you imagine everybody just seeing Johnston? Oh my gosh. You know, and then like, the horizon. And then like, That's why they did everything so handheld and moving around so that they could keep a kind of equilibrium with the movie. But you imagine what would have happened if they had been able to show the shark the whole time and it was all tripod? It's so funny too because when you're on the boat,

it really feels like it's on a swivel. You know, the camera's moving around all the time. It's going up and down and around. And if it were stationary, it wouldn't worry. You would be sick, like you said. A lot more half-ass internet research coming up first. Let's take a break. Hey, if you love to score amazing deals

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I use Hotel Tonight. I go on there last minute. Stay where I want. Get the Hotel Tonight app right now to start scoring amazing deals and incredible hotels. Hotel Tonight, the only booking app you need. Robert Shaw was such a nightmare on this set. And by all accounts, everyone's like, he was a sweetheart. But once he had one drink, watch out.

First of all, that means you're an asshole. You don't get to be like, when he was sober, he was great. If you were drunk all the time. He was sober. He was awesome. He was drunk every minute of the set. He kept fleeing back to Canada for tax purposes. He couldn't stay in the United States for a certain amount of days

or he would have to start paying U.S. taxes. Three wives, 10 children, dead at 51. Wow. And his liver probably dead before that. Also, a man for all seasons and one of the best actors of all time. Tortured. Tortured Richard Dreyfus. Yeah.

Richard Dreyfus just openly talks about it on the documentary about how mean Robert Shaw was to him. He said his fatal flaw was that he was the most competitive man in the world, Robert Shaw. He made an ass of... medic remarks to him. At one point, he started calling Dreyfus a coward, talked about what a coward he was,

and he dared him to climb to the top of the Orca's mast, which was 75 feet, and jump off into the ocean, for which he would pay him upwards of $1,000. And Dreyfus kept saying no, and he kept raising the price, and finally Spielberg intervened and was like, he's not jumping off the boat, we need him for the movie. This is like me... Drunk Robert Shaw.

Just taunting him. This is me asking Chris last night how we're covering. hovering LeBron to the Lakers. You know, I'm like, just climb the mast 75 feet and dive off. Just publish every take. No, this is like when we're sitting around and you're like, I will give you $1,000 to tweet this. Oh, yeah.

You're trying to make it sound like you're not mini Robert Shaw over there. Yeah. I really identify with Quinn. You're also constantly drinking garagance it in the office. Yep. You're Robert Shaw slash Quint. We learned last week in the rewatchables of Devil Wars proud of that. Miranda's role motto is Miranda Priestley.

And that she loves the boss bowling. Spielberg named the shark Bruce after his lawyer and called the shark Bruce for the entire shoot. Classic movie trivia. Hold on to that. You'll answer to like a bar trivia one night. It always comes up. It makes sense. They weren't going to call the shark jaws.

They're on the set of jaws. The shark needed a nickname. The forward tracking zoom out shot when Brody realizes the Kintner kid is being eaten is called the Jaws shot now. film school. Do people even do that shot anymore? They should. It's so iconic. I love that shot every time.

I know, but I feel like you can't do it anymore because it's been, it's, it's almost like, cliche. You know, it was just so masterfully used that time. Mythbusters, remember that show? 2003 concluded Brody's shooting the scuba tank could not work in real life. God damn it, I've been thinking that's always by get out of jail. I'm like, if worse comes to worse that I need to kill a massive beast, I can always put an oxygen tank in its jaws and then air.

We've learned from Mythbusters. If ever have to kill a massive beast, is that what you say? The writer Neil Gabbler, Gabbler? Gables. He analyzed the film as showing three different approaches to solving an obstacle. Science represented by Dreyfus. Spiritualism represented by Quint and the common man represented by Brody and nephew Kyle. I love the idea of a drunk shark hunter representing spiritualism.

Yeah, how is it? Well, apparently. He said the last of the three is the one which succeeds and endorsed by the film. The common man wins. Okay. I think that's kind of an overthink, but I like it. That's kind of like science gets you three quarters of the way there, and then the common man takes it the rest of the way.

This one shocked me. Well, we already talked about it in the book Hooper has an affair with Bertie's way. Footage of the real sharks was shot by the tailors, who kind of got a weird career out of this, Ron and Valerie Taylor, the shark shooters. I remember seeing them on different weird shows. Aren't those of the two people who were like, and right here is when a shock took out part of my abdomen? Yeah.

This is why I'm missing a leg right here. But they wanted a great way to attack the cage. So they used a little person and put him in a miniature cage so he would seem much bigger or much smaller in the shark. They had a 14-foot shark and jaws is supposed to be 26 feet. So they put a little person in a little cage to change the proportions when they shot at. A little reminiscent of fat guy and little coat Tommy Boy. Can I ask you guys a morbid question that we might wind up cutting afterwards?

Yeah. You get bit by a shark. Yeah. You want it to take the limb or do you want like massive tissue damage but you get to keep the arm? I want the limb. You want massive tissue damage? Yeah, I can recover massive tissue. I'm kind of like a clean break guy.

That's what I was kind of thinking because when you see those shark attack pictures and it's like this person survived and I'm like, yeah. but that looks like a lot of paper towels now where your biceps supposed to be. Yeah. Shark scars are different than like cool knife fight. It's like, shark scars are like, that's actually you don't have anything there.

It's just skin. I've only known one person in my entire life who would have had an answer for you instantaneously. Kevin Wilds. He would have been like, well, actually, Chris, you don't want massive tissue damage.

I almost feel like we should call it. Maybe at the end of the podcast. Half baked jaws ideas. No, I really feel. half eaten. He's the only person I trust. I just didn't want to disrespect anybody who survived a shark attack

because I'm sure that's a very traumatizing experience. I'm just saying personally when I've seen those pictures like Sean get in your head and overcorrect. I'm just saying that like I'm not trying to criticize anybody perseveres through such an event.

I'm saying personally take the arm. Chris, I'll give you $1,000 if you tweet a poll about this. All right, $1,200. You pussy. Quit. Jump off the mask. Coward.

Yeah, dry best. So anyway, that cage attack, when they filmed it, it was so, the footage was so stunning that Spielberg decided. And what had, there was nobody in the cage when they actually, the shark attacked it. The footage was so great, Spielberg changed the ending and Hooper lives. because when he's attacking the cage, it wouldn't have worked because you couldn't have CG at Hooper at that point. So single-handler, that's how Hooper was saved.

There's also a really cool thing. You know, when the shark gets caught above the cage and he eventually pulls the rig down from off the boat, that's because the 14-foot shark that they were shooting actually did get caught in that space. And brings it down. And pulled it down. So that was not what was in the script.

That's not what was supposed to happen in the story. And Spielberg also rewrote the movie like that. So that shot, you see, where the shark is kind of flapping around above the cage and it's caught there is a real shark. It's not, it's not, um, it's not Bruce. $1,200. Tweet it, Chris. Tweet it, Chris.

Tweet the poll. Be a man. This is a really good one. This might be my favorite piece of internet research that's half-assed. Mrs. Kittner couldn't figure out how to fake smack shiter in the face. And they decided she would just hit him each time. And she hit him, they did 17 takes of her whacking shiter in the face. And he said it was the most painful hour of his career, just getting slug.

The guy literally gets tortured in Marathon, man, doesn't he? No, I think Hoffman does. Peter Benchley, thrown off the set. What? Yeah, after objected to the climax. That's what my half-ass research says. Peter Benchley makes a cameo in this movie. He's the reporter.

Didn't like the shooting of the scuba diving tank. Huh. Peter eventually wrote the first script And then they were like, this isn't a good script. He's like, you guys took my mafia subplied out. Sean probably knows this one.

But initially the first time we're meant to see Quint was in a movie theater, him laughing and ridiculing and berating Moby Dick. And that was just how stupid it was and driving theater goes away. That was our introduction of Quint. They needed Gregory Peck's permission. How does Gregory Peck own the rights to Moby Dick?

Who knows? And even weirder, he said no, because he didn't like his own performance, Moby Dick, and didn't want it to be seen again. That's a whole other rewatchables. John Houston's adaptation of Moby Dick, it's not good. Do you find it rewatchable? No.

Okay. The unwatchables. Last but not least, my second favorite piece of internet research, Spielberg observed that the first testing screening, that the first surprise appearance of the shark that you mentioned, got the biggest scream in the movie. And then he decided he wanted the one more scary win,

and he did Ben Gardner's head. He noticed Ben Gardner's head got the biggest. scream because it became before we saw the shark. And then when we saw the shark, it only got like half of the scream it got before, Spielberg said it taught him a lesson. A movie can only have one major scare moment because afterward, the audience will be on guard.

Steve Spielberg, everybody. Is that still true? I don't know. I think it's different now because most scary movies advertise half their scares in the trailers and their commercials. The audience is already on guard. So it's pretty tough.

The home stretch. Apex Mountain. Roy Shider? Yes. Pretty blanket yes on Roy Shider. No? No? No.

You're all that jazz. I think it's jazz. Okay. Since I've known you, Chris, you've always been all that jazz guy. Yeah, all that jazz is like a criminally underrated movie from that time period. I think you're confusing best career moment with actual Apex. Okay. Explain the difference.

Apex is like he's a guy who's not an A-lister, but a recognizable star who's been in some good things, and now is in this movie that becomes the biggest movie of all time and sets him off to do. So this is his career peak is what you're saying? Yeah. Yes. I can't believe we've done 25 rewatchables yet, and we're still negotiating apex. Is this the best this person ever has been? No.

It's career peak. We'll have to go back and re-record every podcast. With a little bit of best ever. He's not nominated for Jaws, and he is nominated for all that jazz. Interesting. So you think all that jazz is the culmination of the apex? He proved that he was a real actor. It's his last truly significant role.

And it's the only one of these signature movies that he's in that he actually carries the entire film rather than sharing it with other people. Okay. Good case. Good case. No disrespect to Ben Vareen in all the jazz. Robert Shaw?

No. Oh! What are you going to say? It feels really committing to the reenactment. There's a number of other moments. Man for All Seasons is his best. From Russia with love. He's huge.

He's fine in Russia with love. The Sting? I think he's better in this. Okay. He's really good in the Sting. I love the Sting. He's great in the Sting. The Sting is really good and never on television

and feels like it's two years before Jaws and feels like it was like 30. Guys, you're overthinking this. Think about when they go into his little barn and he's just like, let me see your hands. You got city hands. It's never worth a day in your life. You've been cutting money.

I was waiting for you to break out of Robert Shaw impersonation. I wouldn't want to you to say bad fish for a long time. Bad fish. Do you want to do an impression? Is some kind of half-ass astronaut. Do you want to talk about Robert Shaw meeting Bono? If we remake this movie, we got to go with Bono as Quinn. Excuse me, Mr. President.

There's a shark in these waters, sir. Maybe you're too busy caring about the oil in the desert. I don't mean to. Fuck you. Richard Dreyfus, no, but raises a good question. What was Richard Dreyfus's apex bound? Oh my gosh. I think it's close encounters.

You answer this one. I think it's close encounters. This is tough. He's had a lot of apexes. I'll tell you, I ride or die for Mr. Hothotapus. I knew you were going to say that. I mean, that is definitively not the right answer. It's not the right answer, but I love that movie.

I think it's close encounters. I'm going to say, Shit. It must be close encounters. You could argue the goodbye girls since that's like a shitty rom-com that somehow got everybody nominated for Oscars and nobody would ever watch that again. Big fan of What About Bob Dreyfus too? Oh, he's good in that. What about Bob Dreyfus? Also, the bitter feud with him and Bill Murray. What is that about?

Oh, they hated each other. I think Richard Dreyfus was like a major dick because on S&L they hated him too. There's a lot of Richard Dreyfus might have been a dick stories out there. The whole story about why he took this movie reveals what a dick he is. He, like, went to the premiere of a movie called The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, which was a Canadian movie, and he went up to Canada, and he saw the premiere of the movie, and he saw himself on the big screen for the first time. And he was like, oh, man, I suck. And he had previously turned down jaws when Spielberg asked him to do it.

And he decided to do it because he was afraid he wouldn't get another job after the Duddy Kravitz movie. Dreyfus, I don't know. Yeah, I'm not sure about Dreyfus. I think Robert Shaw was on to something. Get city hands. Jeff, I'll give you $1,400. You Wes? What is the name of a knot

that he tells him to tie? I'm not sure. Let me check. Could Janie Treyov been in this movie? I mean, obviously. He should have been Bruce. It's supposed to be a sheepshank,

but in actuality, he ties a trumpet knot. Incredible. Danny Trey out could have played 20 parts in this movie. And could have been Quinn if this was a low-budget direct-to-video.

The twist is if he plays Mrs. Kittner. In drag. Neil. What if you do? Mayor Vaughn. They could have been Ben Gardner. Ben Gardner, yeah, sure.

He's been a severed head before. It's true. Breaking Bad. The Joey Pants Award. Murray Hamilton is a great that guy. He's not a that guy if you're, I think, over 55. But I think for everyone under 40, he's just the mayor from Jaws. They don't even know what his real name is.

Pretty good. Unintentional comedy, anything? Like I said, I feel like the shark when the boat is sinking and Quinn is being eaten. I kind of laughed. I have a new entry for the unintentional comedy. comedy that I didn't even know until I did the research. The next time I watch this, I'm really going to enjoy the dry-fuss, Robert Shaw scenes. Thinking of Robert Shaw just berating him, humiliating him between takes.

Actually, one scene that I always thought was really good, but then made me laugh a little bit when I just rewatched is when Shider's two sons are out on the water after the first attack, and one of them is in the boat. He's looking at the dock. He's looking at the book. He's having a conversation with his wife, and he yells at his sons to get out of the water, And his wife's like, it's okay. He's got a new toy.

You don't want him to be too scared. We want him to go in the water. And then she looks at the book and she sees an illustration of a shark biting a boat. And then it occurs to her that a shark could bite a boat. And she's like, Michael, get the water. He goes to her father. She starts yelling at the top of her voice. Because she saw an illustration of a shark biting a boat in an old book.

Did she not know what sharks were? Bad job by her. This is, you know, unintentional comedy is usually something. that's like we think of as, oh, that's anachronistic or that would never happen or something. But I have to say that I, for some reason, always laugh when that guy in the boat comes up to help Danny once he's fallen in. Yeah. And he's just like, hey, you guys need a hand there. There's not that many really telegraph deaths in this movie.

Yeah. But that guy never had a chance. That guy's like, hey, you guys fell in the water. Are you okay? Yeah, it was definitely like somebody who was the bartender at their favorite bar that they gave a speaking part to. And that actually is what the ride becomes. At Universal Studios, it's that guy basically getting tipped over by the shark, right? They're basically recreating the pond scene.

Right before the shark attack, there's a song playing on the beach, and it's Olivia Newton-John's, I honestly love you. And I don't know whether that was intentional or whatever. I did the research on it. That was her first hit. That was like three years before Greece. I don't know if they snuck that in to foreshadow the terrible shark death. and Mrs. Kittner and loving her child or what was going on there. Picking Nets, I think we covered all of these.

Yeah, I still, I just have a weird problem with Mayor Vaughn being sociopathically committed to keeping the beaches open. It just seems like a weird risk to take as a mayor of a small town. I'm pro Vaughn. I love his platform. I love how he looks out for business. What's up with a woman who's... People don't need to be policed, man. They can make their own decisions.

Let him swim. All those tourists were asking for it. Best quote, is there anything better than you're going to need a bigger boat? I couldn't think of anything. Yes. Well, it's not better, but I don't know where else we would put this. So I want to talk about when they're comparing scars. Just because the low-key best line in this movie is when Dreyfus is saying,

I got the crem della creme right here. Hold on. You see that. He pulls his Henley down. and his chest hair just sort of pours out of his shirt. Yeah. And Shider says, you're wearing a sweater. And then he says, no, it's Mary Ellen Moffitt.

She broke my heart. It's just the best line, man. That's good. There's like a million great quotes in here. But the whole scars. There's a lot of great quotes. I'm just saying, you're going to need a bigger boat. The fact that it was ad lib by Shider.

Yeah. It's just the iconic quote of the movie. It's actually one of the most misquoted. movie lines ever. Because everybody always says, we're going to need a bigger boat. But it's a you're going to need a bigger boat. I also really like when Quinn gives them the shot of home liquor, homebrewed liquor in the cabin, and Shider takes it and spits it out.

And then when Hooper comes up and tries to take the glass from, he's like, don't drink that. I like before Hooper goes down into the cage, he's trying to clean the fog off the lenses of his mask. and he says, I got no spit. And you're like, holy shit. He must be so scared. He's so scared.

That's such an effective line of dialogue. What was the last line of the movie? Looks like we're swimming or what does he say? Yeah, it's like the tides in our favor is more like that? Yeah, I can't remember. He's like, what day is it? Tuesday? Wednesday?

And he's like, tides in our favor. And then they start swimming off. Yeah. But I mean, every single line of dialogue in Indianapolis Beach is incredible. 1,100 men go in the water and all that. I thought about having Chris read the entire speech as Robert Shaw. That's Bono. As Bono as Robert Shaw.

Excuse me, Mr. President. Do you remember a little boat cause the USS United Neapolis? 600 people. I forgot for unintentional comedy. S&L did a great Jaws parody sketch within probably six months of when this came out with Belushi as Richard Dreyfus. Are you serious? It was one of the original Landshark ones with Chevy Chase.

And he's looking, remember the scene when Dreyfus is looking at the autopsy? He's like, oh, gee, like he's horrified. And Boulouci does the same thing as Dreyfus, but on the table is just the, it's basically like just a couple of appliances. There's no sign of the body. And he just goes for it. And every time I see Dreyfus did that scene now, I think of Boulouci, one of my favorite people. Do sharks really have such a slow digestive track that, like, there's just like license plates and toasters in there.

Let's find out. Let's go out to the ocean. I don't want that Kittner boy falling out of the shark's stomach. Unanswerable questions. Did Mayor Vaughn get reelected? Did Mayor Vaughn get reelected? Was on my list.

Let's explore. I'm going to say no. Probably not. Because I wasn't running his campaign. How would you have repositioned his platform after this event? We became a national talking point. I threw us into the spotlight.

We all healed together. We raised shark awareness. That shark terrorized us for one week. I worry about the other 51 weeks of us being in business. This is great. Hey, I'm the one who hired. Chiefs out. Yeah.

So you can give me credit for that. You left out one. And they've never had a murder there. Except by Bruce. Yeah, but like not man on man crime. Psychopathic shark. Yeah. How about if we had shut down the beaches on July 4th, that shark just would have come back the next weekend anyway.

It just would have been July 6th. That shark's coming for us at some point. It was inevitable. Better we got them now before six months later or whatever. Unanswerable question. What happens in Quint's life between 1945 and 1975? About 7,400 cans of Narragans. Oh, way more than that.

Okay, that happens. That's fine. You immediately had that math. What do you think we're at? You think we're pushing 100,000 with him? This is great. This is my kind of question. So 365 days a year for 30 years. Case of beer a day? So that's, he's living 10,000 days there. I think he's good for 10 to 15 drinks a day.

Every day for those 30 years. So that's 10,000 times 15. so we're talking 150,000 drinks. Wow. So that was all he was doing. So that's the over under. Okay, so in between

those 150,000 drinks, because he watched 800 of his friends get eaten by sharks and killed. That's the thing. He's inspired to become a shark hunter. And he develops this strategy around barrels

to kill, to capture sharks and kill them. Do you guys really understand what Quinn was trying to accomplish that? Yeah, he's basically like the shark is being, pulled up to the surface so you can track it. Right, but then how are they going to kill it?

With the harpoons. Just keep shooting it with the harpoonerun it to death. Dragging into the shallows. In the book, that's what they do. In the book, they harpooning the shark to death. We're going to drown them. They added the scuba diving thing because it would make it more kind of a Hollywood ending. That's why Peter Benchley walked off the set.

He was like, fuck this, man. We got to harpoon that shark. First of all, Hooper's supposed to be sleeping with Brody's wife. Where's the mafia? He's so mad. Wow. Another unanswerable question. did Jaws 2 happen?

They're making the Halloween remake right now and they're pretending Halloween 2 and on never happened. No. It didn't happen because I didn't like it. So I pretended that it doesn't exist. So that's a personal choice. So would you, if you were going to do that, if you were going to make Jaws 2,

but forget the sequels, would you set it in 1978 or 1982 or like do like a stranger thing's vibe where you were in the 80s Or would you be like it's back after all this time? First of all, I thought your Netflix idea was really good. I'm really proud of you. I'm proud to work with you and the growth you've shown over the last eight years.

Is this by review? No, it's really good. That was a great idea. I was jealous of it. Second of all, I think Cobra Kai has shown a spotlight on how to do this. You don't remake the movie. You go back there 40 years later and you have ties into it. But the Jaws sequels have taken care of the Brody family.

So do you... Mayor Vaughn's return. I think you have the youngest Brody is now the police chief. Right. Michael's 50. I think Alex Kittner's younger brother is like the vengeful, evil mayor who secretly wants to destroy the town. Yeah.

And then there's a shark and we're good to go. Ten episodes. Sign me up. Return of John. You're looking to me like I have the power to green light this product. What's your level of interest? We've had Deep Blue Sea. We have the Meg coming.

There's never been a really... really good shark movies. No, Open Water is really good. There have been to a couple of good ones. Before Water's good, but I never would want to watch it a second time. I enjoyed it once. Yeah, that's true. Oh, cool, Open Water's hard to come by.

Deep Blue Sea is just out of control. I thought the shallows was good. But would you rewatch it? Was that Blake Lively? Yeah, Blake Lively. Yeah, I like that. It's her talking to a bird from those movies. That's a nifty movie.

That's a 40-minute movie that they stretch in an hour 20. I guess I would watch the Jaws sequel. show. So it's not a remake. It's like what Kobe Kai was. We're picking up 40 years later. Maybe there's a whole thing with Amity is a totally different town now. It's gone totally commercialized what we talked about before. Just rich

people. The families have been knocked out. This movie just really lives and dies by the characters. It's got the shark. The shark's great. The tension's great. The music's great. The archetype people is great. But I want to be there with Hooper and Quint and Chief Brody. Dreyfus is still alive. Maybe Hooper's the mayor.

He's running the Oceanographic Institute. at this point now. He's in charge. In Amity. Maybe that would be like Hooper's moved back to Amity and all he does is dare people to jump off masts. For $1,200. He's like, I give you $800 to jump off this roof. I feel the same way about this idea that I did about Cobra Kai.

When I heard about it, I was like, I'm in. I'll try it. Okay. You know, it's like a Swedish meatball at a cocktail party. When the ladies walk around with the tray and like, Would you like one of these? All right, I'll try it. Like, I would try the Jaws remake.

That's not a remake, but like a 40 years later. The sea is terrifying, right? It's not dope. It's terrifying. Oh, yeah, the sea is ridiculous. And I just think we can do better and come up with something new. Why do we have to go back to this story? We don't have to go back to it.

We can come up with a new one. Okay. I would love to see a natural effect see movie soon. I feel like the last few that I've seen, like, a drift, it's just usually really fake. Like the waves are fake. Everything about it is kind of, this felt so rooted in reality,

even though it was fake. But it was just like, you just felt like these guys. And by the time they're shooting, I don't know when in shooting they did this, but when they're doing the stuff that's on the boat towards the end of the movie,

the Indianapolis speech, the scars, you feel like those guys have been hanging out with each other for a really long time. They feel so familiar with each other. You watch the scene when they're getting drunk and you feel like the three actors

are actually getting drunk. Absolutely. And we've seen movies botched that. And this one, it actually worked. And it's probably been responsible for some botchings over the years. I'm in college probably ripped off while drunk with my friends that show me the way to go home thing 500 times. That was just the thing that people would do. We would put the movie on and you'd get drunk and you'd just start aping those guys doing that stuff and saying all the lines.

It's like weirdly memorable in that respect. One other thing we forgot to mention, I think one of the biggest reasons this movie did well is, It's the ultimate, what would I do if I was in this situation movie? Is it? No, just like we've all gone to the beach. Oh, what would happen? Would I go out there if there was a shark? Would I let my kid go out there?

And this is an interesting nitpick is Quinn really fucks them. You know, he destroys the radio. He is like we're staying out here to get this fish. And those guys are like, I mean, Hooper is probably a little bit more like I want to get a look at it. But Brody's like, let's turn back around. Let's get the friggin coast guard or whatever we have to do. But like, this is we are in over our heads. So what are you sort of proposing here?

Is that you, at what point are you making the decision? If I'm Brody? Or just like, are you saying it tells you, it's like, you always are putting yourself in their position. So would you not get on the boat in the first place? No, I put my position more and just everybody's been to the beach and everybody wonders what's the worst thing that could happen. Oh, yeah.

Whether it's like you get caught up in the undertow, you get attacked by a shark. It taps into what you were talking about earlier with just how it captures, just going to the beach in some small town. It's kind of wild. And like, what would happen if this goes wrong? I mean, the ocean probably kills more people than roller coasters, right? You know, it's like nobody, nobody's really, people get scared of the water.

But like, the idea that you just go and you're like, I'm just going to let my children go out into this thing that's this gaping maw of chaos. That's wild that we do that. With waves and currents and weird shit. Watching it again, I was thinking to myself, I'm really glad I'm not a boating guy. Really glad I'm one of those guys who's not like, let's all go out on the ocean for two hours. Like, that's not, I have no interest at all. Yeah, you haven't had a good boat experience. I grew up on Long Island.

I've had a lot of boat experiences. There's a certain boat experience, I think, that's the sailboat thing scares me after sleeping with the enemy, watching what happened in Julie Roberts. Yeah. No. There would be a boat channel would be, there's enough boat movies now, I think. A boat channel? Boat channel. Boats.

Boats with a C. Yeah. There can be a prison channel, jails or bars with the Z. I feel 100% confidence saying directly to you that's not a good idea. The boats? That's just not going to. What's on boats? Oh, perfect storm again.

Yeah. What's on boats? Last one. Who won the movie? The candidate, Spielberg, Robert Shaw. By the way, we've been doing the rewatchful now. I don't know how many we've done. It's always been an easy answer.

It's been down to two people. Yeah, this one might be a little hard. This is the most people we've ever had. for this category. Spielberg, Robert Shaw, Roy Shider, Dreyfus, probably not, but it has to be mentioned then John Williams, and then the shark. Who won the movie? I want to say Spielberg, and I think that

it's sort of like winning any championship involves a lot of luck. So I think in this case, while acknowledging all the things that broke right and wrong in this movie, it's Spielberg, it sets up his career for the next 30 years, it changes movies, and it's still, to this day. We could go through

every movie that's set on the water. We could go through 98% of the movies that have made since Jaws. He made the most rewatchable

like entertaining movie of the last like 40 years, you know? And didn't get nominated because he went against the all-time directing Guntlet that's probably ever

happened to Oscars. Who do you have, Sean? It's indisputably Spielberg. This movie under someone else's stewardship is a complete fiasco. And somehow,

some way, He had enough artistic instinct to cut the edges every time. Every time he needed to cut the edges on something that wasn't working, he did it in the right way. Every little choice he made, the shark's not working. We'll make it a movie about how you can't see the shark. You know, the score is too small. It's okay. It's effective.

It'll work. This actor turned me down. It's okay. We'll go to this actor. You know, this script isn't working. We're going to have it rewritten by five times by nine people. Every single little thing he does works. And it literally invents the most historic director career ever.

And he saved Richard Dreyfus's life. on the mast 75 feet Dreyfus might have jumped Yeah Tweetin you coward I was calling his manning I'm just going to

quickly make the case for Quint I agreed through that it was Spielberg Robert Shaw Quinn I would say it's a top 10 non-leading man character that we've ever had

Way up there I can't imagine anyone else playing him ever in America in the last 50 years pulling any anyone out and putting them in that role

where the guy became Quint. He was just perfect. It's perfect casting. He seemed like he was a drunk, angry person. Turns out he was on set. On the late 90s, early 2000s movie news message board in a cool news, there was a guy

who just went by the name Quint. And he was a pencil sketch of the Quint character, and he would deliver news about how X-Men was in development or whatever. But that's how iconic the character was, that somebody who was at the time an anonymous tipster about the movie industry was just Quint.

He could stand alone that powerfully. It's a performance that could have really gone wrong in the wrong hands or not been as powerful. I think other people could have played Shider. I think other people could have played Dreyfus. Yeah. I think other people could have directed the movie. I don't think they would have done it as well.

But Quint, I think, is one of a kind. But I agree, Spielberg. you know, when you think, what was his age when did this? 26? 27, something like that. It's ridiculous. We rave about Ryan Coogler and he's kind of the Spielberg for now. He's the closest thing I think that we've had, right?

But Stephen Spielberg was directing episodic television in Hollywood when he was 19. Yeah. I mean, he had been training his whole life to do this. He's a prodigy. Yes. All-time production. Yeah. Jaws.

So not the best movie ever, but the most entertaining movie ever. It's in my top three. No question. question. Most entertaining movie ever? Yeah, I think so. It's the movie that in the last 15 years I've probably watched, rewatch the most. We have a couple of like white whales, so to speak, still on the list that I feel like we'll have in this conversation. The other two that are on this are the other two movies. My top three entertaining, the ones that we're waiting on. The only thing I would say about Jaws is from age six or seven whenever you want to let your kids watch this for the first time all the way to 90 can affect people the same ways. works at any age.

Yeah. It's a good call. E.T.'s like that too, but I'm saying like the emotions this pulls out. Yeah. E.T. is sentimental. This movie isn't sentimental. You never are like, I'm going to skip this part of Jaws. You know why it's not sentimental?

Ah! Thanks for listening to the rewatchable. Thanks for the rewatchables. We're back next week. Enjoy the 4th of July. Thanks to Sean and Chris. Thanks to ZipRecruiter, the presenting sponsor of the Bill Simmons podcast. Thanks to Hotel Tonight.

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