JAWS at 50: Richard’s Personal JAWStory

Richard’s Personal JAWStory

By Richard Kirkham

Kirkham A Movie A Day

Richard Kirkham tirelessly writes about every movie he sees in theaters on his blog, A Movie A Day. He is also the operator and frequent podcast host at The Lamb (Large Association of Movie Blogs), which is the world’s largest movie blogging community. Richard was kind enough to share his own experience seeing Jaws for the first time…

Those of us who lived through the phenomena that was and is Jaws can never look back without thinking how it changed us. Those who came after can never live in a world where Jaws did not influence the way movies are made and marketed. Any one who lived before Jaws knows how it changed the movie world, and looking back on summer movies will be a nostalgia of a different order because Jaws is in your world now.

Some might think that this is hyperbole, but the number of films, filmmakers, academics, marketers and film-goers who have been influenced by this movie is undeniable. I have actually read on line comments that dismiss Jaws and suggest it is somehow just a footnote in film making history. If editing is a footnote, if the addition of sound and color to films are footnotes, if the study of film as an artistic medium is a footnote, then maybe they are right. (BUT THEY ARE NOT!!!) The combination of story, director, script, acting and especially marketing created the modern world of film. There may be some negative consequences (like Shrek 4 opening on 4000 screens), but the variety of stories and film-making that have resulted from Jaws is just undeniable. This is the gold standard.

I saw Jaws on opening day in the Summer of 1975, with my friend Dan Hasegawa. Dan and I went to the Hasting's Ranch Theaters, three moderately sized screens located just north of the big Pacific Theater Hasting's Theater. We knew next to nothing about the film except what was shown in the trailer. The trailer gives you a good impression of the action and adventure that is coming your way, but I think it undersells the horror aspect and that is what we were most surprised about. From the beginning cello strokes and underwater POV shot, we are creeped out. It still did not prepare us for the intense opening sequence that everybody held their breath through. Later in the movie, I literally saw 500 people sink into their seats in dread and then jump out of the seat, simultaneously. I am not exaggerating…the audience levitated at least a foot out of their seats when Ben Gardner appears. There have been gotcha moments in films for years; Alan Arkin's dying leap for a blind Audrey Hepburn or Carrie grabbing poor Amy Irving's arm are those kinds of jumps. This made them all look quaint by comparison. I had seen The Exorcist a couple of years earlier, after it had been talked about and described to me for months. It was still frightening and made me jump, but that was despite what I knew was coming. Here, we did not know what was going to happen, and after that first scene it seemed like anything was possible. Amanda has seen this movie maybe more than other movie in her life and she still covers her eyes for a few scenes.

Hasting's Ranch Theater in the 1970s.

The movie is so much more than a horror film, however. This is a struggle of a family man to cope with the inadequacies that plague him, it is the story of a place that defines itself as a paradise, suddenly being stripped of it's self concept. Most of all, it is the story of a quest by an Ahab like character for vengeance against the monsters that have defined him for the thirty years since his own encounter with the Great White Whale. Quint is the greatest movie character ever prior to 1980. He is memorable for his tics, dialogue and the performance of a great actor whose work in this movie was not properly recognized by any critics groups of the time. If you were to ask people, what great supporting actor role performance they remember from any time in the 1970s, Robert Shaw in Jaws will be mentioned. I'll bet that none of the five other actors nominated for Academy Awards that year would make the top fifty mentions on that standard. The monologue that Quint delivers on the Orca, about the U.S.S. Indianapolis, is without a doubt one of the greatest scenes in movie history. It stands beside Micheal's kiss in Godfather Part 2, Kane's rage in Citizen Kane, and even the airport scene in Casablanca. Robert Shaw re-wrote the dialog for himself, and his delivery, starting off with a self knowing smirk, transforming to a terrified memory and finishing off with a self-deluding smile and bit of panache, is something I would imagine every actor now looks at with awe. I am not an expert on performance, but this whole scene seemed real, every bit of it.