Rewatchables Reference

• Honorable mentions: the opening girl getting pulled under, and Dreyfuss scuba diving into Ben Gardner's head.
• Nominees: the July 4th shark attack and Mrs. Kintner's son not coming back from the water; the son mimicking Scheider at the dinner table ('Give us a kiss – because I need it'); the Indianapolis monologue; Quint dying through Brody killing the shark and Dreyfuss popping up; the town hall meeting where we first meet Quint ('I'll catch him for three, but I'll kill him for ten'); Hooper bringing two bottles of wine to the Brody house.
• Bill picks the last 9 minutes – from Quint's death through 'Smile, you son of a bitch' and Dreyfuss popping up. Chris picks the Indianapolis speech and everything on the boat once the sun sets. Bill's personal favorite: the son mimicking Scheider at the table.

• John Williams's score – two notes (F and F#) that do all the work. You could never have seen 'Jaws' and you'd know the music.
• Quint as a character – a top-ten non-leading-man character in the last 50 years. Robert Shaw seemed like he was a drunk, angry person. He was perfect casting.
• The Hitchcock move of not showing the shark for most of the movie. It wasn't intentional – the mechanical shark was so bad they had to audible – but Spielberg now calls it a godsend.
• HD widescreen TVs – Spielberg shot it huge and wide, and on the old square TVs you had to zoom in. On a 65-inch widescreen in HD, it's like you're in the ocean. Bill says this gave the movie a completely different life.
• The way it captures summer at a beach town – the power dynamics, the mayor with too much power, the police chief trying to coast, everything building toward July 4th, the claustrophobia of being stuck on an island where those three months are everything.

• The mechanical shark – especially during Quint's death scene. Bill: 'That's a big piece of latex.' The mechanics are really bad on a big modern TV.
• No minorities at all in the movie. The whole movie is extremely white. If they remade it, Hooper's probably black, or maybe even Brody.
• No single women in the movie other than the girl who gets eaten in the opening. It's a very masculine movie.

• Robert Duvall turned down Brody because he wanted to play Quint. Spielberg said he was too young for Quint.
• Charlton Heston expressed interest in Brody but was rejected – too masculine, too powerful, too confident. He later made disparaging comments about Spielberg and vowed never to work with him.
• Lee Marvin, Sterling Hayden, and Oliver Reed all turned down Quint. Sterling Hayden couldn't do it because he was a tax fugitive.
• Spielberg wanted Jon Voight for Hooper. Kevin Kline, Timothy Bottoms, and Joel Gray were also considered.

• Murray Hamilton as Mayor Vaughn. Maybe 4-5 scenes total. He's so evil and yet somehow likable at the same time. 'It's all psychological. You yell barracuda, everybody says huh, what? You yell shark, we've got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July.'
• Honorable mentions: Mrs. Kintner (2 strong scenes – beats the shit out of Scheider, then she's out. 'Kendrick Perkins – 10 minutes, 11 points, no rebounds'). Ben Gardner's head.

Murray Hamilton – he's that guy from 'Jaws' for everyone under 40. They don't even know his real name. He was a real actor who'd been in The Graduate, The Hustler, and dozens of 50s and 60s movies. Spielberg cast him because he loved him in The Graduate.

• Roy Scheider – Bill says yes. Chris makes the case for All That Jazz: it's his only Oscar nomination, the only time he carries an entire film, and it's his last truly significant role. Scheider wasn't even nominated for 'Jaws'.
• Robert Shaw – debated. Man for All Seasons is his best movie. He's great in 'The Sting' and From Russia with Love. But Quint is one-of-a-kind.
• Richard Dreyfuss – 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind'. Chris rides or dies for 'Mr. Holland's Opus' but admits it's not the right answer.

• The most half-assed internet research of any episode so far. Shaw's drunk Indianapolis take done in one take the next day. Spielberg's $3K Ben Gardner reshoot in an Encino pool with powdered milk. He tried to quit for Lucky Lady. Insisted on ocean shooting because the floor was 35 feet. Shark named Bruce after his lawyer. The 'Jaws' Shot (dolly zoom). Mrs. Kintner hit Scheider for real across 17 takes. Peter Benchley thrown off set. Gregory Peck refused Moby Dick permission. Little person in miniature cage. The Orca nearly sank. Crew called it 'Flaws.' 55-day shoot went 155 days. Spielberg fled on the last day to avoid pranking.
• Spielberg learned from test screenings: a movie can only have one major scare moment. After he added Ben Gardner's head before the first shark appearance, that got the biggest scream. The actual shark reveal only got half the reaction because the audience was already on guard.

• Mayor Vaughn's sociopathic commitment to keeping the beaches open. In the book, the Mafia was blackmailing him – the movie dropped that subplot. Chris makes the case: before viral news, this would've been on page 16 of the paper. If you shut down the beaches for the summer, it destroys the whole town's economy.
• Mrs. Brody sees an illustration of a shark biting a boat in an old book and suddenly panics about her kids in the water. Did she not know what sharks were before this?

Danny Trejo – could have been Bruce the shark. Could have been Quint in a low-budget direct-to-video version. Could have been Mrs. Kintner in drag. Could have been Mayor Vaughn. Could have been Ben Gardner ('He's been a severed head before – Breaking Bad').

• Did Mayor Vaughn get reelected? Bill pitches his reelection platform: 'We became a national talking point. I threw us into the spotlight. We all healed together. I raised shark awareness. That shark terrorized us for one week – I worry about the other 51 weeks of us being in business.'
• What happened in Quint's life between 1945 and 1975? Bill estimates approximately 150,000 Narragansetts (10-15 drinks a day for 30 years).
• Did 'Jaws 2' happen? Bill: 'It didn't happen because I didn't like it, so I pretend it doesn't exist.'

• Bill pitches a Cobra Kai-style 10-episode sequel set 40 years later: Mayor Vaughn returns, the youngest Brody is now police chief, Alex Kintner's younger brother is the vengeful evil mayor who secretly wants to destroy the town, Hooper's back running the oceanographic institute... and then there's a shark.
• Sean is more hesitant – the sea is terrifying and there's never been a really good shark movie since 'Jaws'. He'd rather see something new.

• Spielberg – unanimous. Sean: 'This movie, under someone else's stewardship, is a complete fiasco. Every time he needed to cut the edges on something that wasn't working, he did it the right way.' The shark's not working? Make it about not seeing the shark. Score too small? It's effective. Actor turned him down? Find a better one. Script not working? Rewrite it nine times.
• Bill makes a strong case for Quint/Robert Shaw: 'I can't imagine anyone in the last 50 years pulling anyone out and putting them in that role where the guy became Quint. He's just perfect.' But all agree it's Spielberg – it set up his career for the next 30 years, and he did it at age 26-27.