Happy 40th Birthday "JAWS"!

Oh Jaws.  It's been 40 years since we last met in a darkened theater.  I've changed, but you have remained so beautifully the same.  Your sparkling white serrated teeth still shine with promise. And shredded bits of Captain Quint. Our first summer together was filled with hope and youth.  I was a teenager, heading off to college....most likely to major in English lit or Marine Biology. I thought I would be the next Jacques Cousteau, or at the very least a best selling hack writer. But you changed my life, didn't you.  You changed everything.  Your impossibly young director Steven Spielberg invented the monster summer blockbuster and delivered it to the world on your gleaming gray 25 foot back.  

Today I went to the 40th Anniversary for the movie Jaws (thanks very much TCM for being a host along with Universal).  At today's screening, there were only three things the same as they were in 1975.  The theater was packed.  Everybody screamed.  And when Chief Brody said, "We're gonna need a bigger boat", it got the biggest laugh. Absolutely everything else is different.  We sit here in our smart phone buzzing, soul crushing, digital world.  We're stunned by our climate changed, middle class evaporating, dystopian reality.  In 1975 we had just finished multiple landings on the moon.  Today we don't even have a space shuttle anymore.  But hey, it's still awesome, right.  We've got Twitter and stuff.  And Fitbits.  And our theaters now remind us on a big sign that a junior popcorn has 550 calories and 15 grams of fat.

That's why movies like Jaws are so important.  For two hours we can sit in the dark and forget about everything except for that special 4th of July weekend on Amity Island. 

And we cringe in terror at the brilliant opening scene, all the more terrifying because we never actually SEE the giant shark.

And we see the early talent of the great director who has always been so exceptionally gifted with child actors.

And we laugh at the ever present humor that gave us "bad hat Harry", and the best tracking zoom of all time.

And we hear Captain Quint (the magnificent Robert Shaw) give his absolutely riveting soliloquy about surviving the U.S. Indianapolis sinking during WWII ("well anyway...we delivered the bomb")

 

The whole movie is stuffed to the gills with groundbreaking cinema innovation.  John Williams' Oscar winning score.  The great Verna Field's heart attack inducing editing (she won the Academy Award for Best Editing too...one of the rare times it has gone to a female).   

But most of all, Jaws has a special place in my heart because it is 100% responsible for my career spent in media.  Because the day I saw it for the first time, I watched an audience become completely unhinged. A little theater in upstate N.Y. was the venue for an audience losing their shit at a movie for the very first time. They were shrieking.  They were running for the lobby.  One little 12 year old girl stood on her seat during Quint's bloody demise and screamed over and over, "He's eating him...he's eating him...Oh dear God he's eating that man!"  An usher had to lead her away.

I've never been so transfixed in my whole life, before or since.  A little epiphany explosion went off like a roman candle over the head of Jane K. Collins.  I decided right then and there to go into a business that can make people go off their rockers. Coolest thing I ever witnessed.  Buh bye biology major.  So long literary dreams and pretensions.  Hollywood, here I come.

So thank you Steven Spielberg.  For my 35+ years spent working in television and social media and music and the Internet.  For decades in a business where I've been able to get into the brains of an audience and figure out why entertainment makes them go crazy.  For a career that gave me the chance to meet media giants like Rupert Murdoch and Leonard Goldenson and Bob Iger and Gene Autry.

It would have been cool to swim with dolphins, but I've got no regrets. I got to swim with the sharks in Hollywood instead.  Thank you Steven Spielberg.  Thanks for the memories.

Shark Week 2011: Show Me Your Teeth Boys!

Every year the Nose likes to give folks a heads up that Discovery Channel's "Shark Week" is coming. Mark your calendars and set your alarms, the pointy teeth fest is coming our way this Sunday night, July 31st. Be sure and visit Discovery's blinking, pulsating, colorful Shark Week webpage by clicking the link above. There you can watch the FABULOUS "Show Me Your Teeth" promo video set to a Lady Gaga tune. Or you can see it right here by activating the video on The Flaming Nose. I must warn you that it is highly addictive, and I have suffered this song as an ear worm for 5 consecutive days.

And now, because I have already said plenty about Shark Week in past Flaming Nose posts; (see for yourself) 2010 or 2009, I'd like to add a few new random shark anecdotes.


First a Shark joke:
A man is swimming in the ocean when he happens upon a shark. He's so startled, he punches the shark right in the nose. "What did you do that for?" asks the shark. The man says, "I was so scared, I thought you were going to eat me!" The shark says, "Well I am now". Existential. Funny. And sort of true...for most sharks, if you don't bother them, they won't bother you. Discovery's Shark Week coverage has evolved over the years to include many segments on shark ecology and conservation. One hopes the message resonates so that the shameful slaughter of sharks for their fins (to make a Chinese delicacy) will end.

Do You Think the movie "Jaws" is very popular in the People's Republic of China?
Because if you really think about it, there is a subtle socialist manifesto running through this movie's main themes, especially if you look at the key characters. Maybe that's why they are so intent on wiping out sharks by turning them all into soup! First there's Captain Quint: a rugged individualist (anti collectivism) who endangers the others by destroying the boat's radio. He is punished by becoming shark food. Then there's Matt Hooper: a wealthy young capitalist who hides under a rock (imperialist coward!) to escape the giant shark. Mayor Larry Vaughn is the most despicable character, responsible for many deaths because he keeps the beach open (selfish profiteer!) choosing money over human life. Only Chief Brody, man of the people...public servant...is able to heroically vanquish the monster fish in the end. Voila!

Watch Shark Week starting this Sunday. It's nice to have a TV series about sharp teeth that doesn't involve vampires!

Just When You Thought it was Safe to Get Back in the Water!

Now that summer is officially here (thanks for the Solstice tribute, Lisa!) our thoughts naturally turn to the beach. And what summer beach thought would be complete without a few nervous nods to the shark. It's time to reminisce about great shark movies and television. At the top of the heap, thanks to author Peter Benchley, director Steven Spielberg, and composer John Williams, is JAWS. Released exactly 34 years ago, it has been scaring the daylights out of people (and keeping them out of the water) ever since. Funniest personal "Jaws" anecdote: my sister used to run a dive boat in the Florida Keys. Inevitably some tourist would have a nervous melt down in the water. To get them to snap out of it, she would calmly ask them..."Do you hear the music? No? Well if you don't hear the music, the shark's not coming". It worked every time.

On television, the greatest shark programming has been coming to us compliments of the Discovery Channel for over 15 years. "Shark Week" returns on August 2nd with plenty of new footage, including a segment about shark encounters with dogs and other animals. We'll give another update when it gets closer to the air date. In the meantime, the Discovery website has plenty of fun videos, pictures and games about sharks.

Shark trivia question: Which beach in America has the most recorded shark attacks? Answer: New Smyrna Beach, Florida, which has recorded over 200 attacks. None were deadly. Note to readers, I have been swimming in the New Smyrna Beach waters dozens of times over the years on vacation (it's near the more famous Daytona Beach) and have never even seen a shark, much less been nipped by one.

So grab your tube of Coppertone and a good scary summer paperback. Whether you stay on the beach and read or are brave enough to venture in, it's important to remember that the odds of a shark encounter are slim to none. Instead of being afraid of this amazing, almost prehistoric beast, we should all think about preserving them. Some are becoming increasingly endangered and rare, like the gentle giant whale shark pictured here.