Why Jaws Still Bites 50 Years Later With Pat Jankiewicz – Episode 377

Jeff Dwoskin 0:00

All right, everyone. I am excited to welcome back to the show. Friend of the show, Pat jenkiewicz. He's the author of many books. He's a deep diver. We dove deep into the Incredible Hulk TV show in Episode 175 he's also written the companion book for Buck Rogers, The Greatest American Hero. And the reason we're here together today is to talk about his jaws companion, just when you thought it was safe to listen to podcasts again. Pat Jenko, it says he is my guest, and we're going to talk Jaws celebrating its 50th anniversary, 50 years.

Pat Jankiewicz 0:33

Holy smokes. Yeah, yeah, what Quentin Tarantino, very correctly, calls the greatest American movie ever made.

Jeff Dwoskin 0:41

Jaws is one of those movies where you can re watch it over and over again, and it holds up as if it was made last week.

Pat Jankiewicz 0:51

What's amazing is it was made in the middle of the 70s, the worst time for clothes, the cheesiest time for music, and the movie doesn't dig, because they're all wearing swimsuits,

Jeff Dwoskin 1:04

right? Because it's on Martha's Vineyard, because it's right, because, because it's filmed in Martha's Vineyard. So they're all wearing Martha vineyard wear, which probably is the same now as it was then.

Pat Jankiewicz 1:14

Yeah, and Hooper. Hooper is basically dressed like funky scientists in the island with the he's got the cap. He's got nothing except for, like a one regrettable shot when he is looking for the shark, and he's wearing like those 70 granny glasses on Richard dravis quintes dressed like an old seaman. Brody is dressed in a sheriff's uniform. The movie does not date. It's amazing. They were smart enough not to make you watch any movie from the 60s, 70 or 80s, and they're drowning in the era. Jaws is iconic, because, like, timeless,

Jeff Dwoskin 1:48

yes. And it doesn't hurt that they were at sea the whole time, so they didn't use phones, which is usually the the indicator of the time frame you're in,

Pat Jankiewicz 1:57

yeah. I mean, he has a he has two phones at the very beginning, when they notify him of the the victim's body on the beach. But again, that's the pretty much. I think there's like two scenes where you can tell it's a rotary phone, but that's it.

Jeff Dwoskin 2:10

What do you know about the book? Peter benchley's book that inspired the movie comes out in 1974 inspired by real shark attack. So it's a story based around actual happenings, and it just becomes an instant bestseller itself. Yes. Do you know anything about, like, the everything? What do you want to know? Just talking about, like, how did they determine to acquire the rights? Like, you know, determine, because they move pretty fast. Make this a movie.

Pat Jankiewicz 2:37

Yeah. So eventually you've been running for like, National Geographic and Newsweek and all that. And cogdon This, this book editor, took him out to lunch. He took him to a second tier club, not where he would take like Tom Wolf or somebody, and he proposed him giving him a book. And they hashed out ideas, and nothing was going over. And cogdon is is like kind of pushing him, trying to find if there's any commercial ideas, because he liked a couple of his articles. So Benchley then pitches in this book about a shark that promotes a crisis of conscience in the community over whether or not, you know, basically Moby Dick meets enemy the people. And he responds to that, and eventually he sends him like the the first chapter, and he said, Just eventually, style, the family style, eventually he's like, Nathaniel Benchley, the Russians are coming. Was a lot of jokes. And he said, so there's a lot of jokes. Brody and everyone are yucking it up. But he said the opening attack on the girl was so scary. He took a blue pencil through the rest of the book and wrote no to the rest of the chapter and wrote No jokes, but the opening with the naked, drunk girl going swimming, attracting the shark's Attention, all that really was great, and so he wanted it more serious. Jaws is one of those rare instances where the movie is actually better than the book. I mean, give eventually credit for the core concept the shark attaching, attacking a beach community. But Hooper, in the novel, is sleeping with Brody's wife. Brody is kind of upset, balding and troubled, and Quint is this old, bald guy who just hates sharks. They never say why? So in the movie, gave Quint this amazing backstory. I mean, Brody suddenly becomes the movie works. It's a perfect American movie. It's three guys coming from three academic stratas together to save a community. Quint is blue collar, living in the shack. You know what I mean? Hunting, hunting sharks. Brody is middle class. He's the police chief, but even his wife doesn't really respect him. And the book, even in the movie, they change it instead of her stuffing Hooper, they keep Brody's weaknesses. If you watch the first half of the movie, Brody's clumsy. He knocks over all the painting supplies. Everything in the movie is stuff he's meant to do. You know, don't play on those swings. I haven't fixed them yet. Everything bro. He is doing in the movie, he means to do, but hasn't done. And then Hooper is rich, but he puts himself in danger trying to help save this community. So these three guys join from different stages. They're different people, and at the end of the movie, it's basically a team effort. This is a 50 year old spoiler alert, but when Brody is the last survivor. Basically, Quint is dead and Hooper is flat. He's using quince gun as he's clinging to the gin Paul as it's sinking. He uses Quinn's gun and Hooper's air tank. So even at the very ending, when it's him alone, it's still a team effort. That's brilliant.

Jeff Dwoskin 5:38

Yeah, in the book, Hooper dies, right? Hooper dies in the

Pat Jankiewicz 5:41

shark cage. He's He's bitten in half. In the book, give eventually credit to this. By the way, in the book, The shark is breaching all the time. The shark will, you know, you know this from South Africa, and eventually, knew this from going on, on, researching sharks and everything. They breach, they leave, even though they're even though they're 1000s of pounds, these things leap into the air. He bites Hooper in half. I mean, when he Bridges out of the water, Brody shoots his corpse in the neck while trying to kill the shark. Quince death in the book is kind of a botch. Quinn dies exactly like Captain Ahab dies in Melville's Moby Dick. He gets his leg tangled and drowns, and so he's forever attached to the shark. At the end of the book, when Brody looks in the water before grabbing the part of the chair and swimming, we're sure he sees the shark, and Quinn's body is dangling in the twilight. In the twilight water not really a, you know, you know, it's moving dick. It's not really a cool ending. The whole thing is you've got to go mono, a mono. They're there to kill the sharks. They're either going to kill the shark or the shark is going to kill them. And I think the movie ending is perfect. Once Quinn dies, all bets are off, because Brody is the only one who doesn't know the environment. Brody's afraid of the water. Brody doesn't know this or that. All the experts are fled or gone, and it's Brody alone, and that's the most terrifying part of the movie. When the shark comes through the window, he suddenly realizes, you know, when he goes in his protection for the second half of the movie has been the boat. So when the boat is finally sunk and the shark has driven off, the two experts, when it comes through that window at him, it's the most terrifying sin in the movie, because now it's there's nothing protecting him. There's nothing shielding him. The experts show them Clints boat shields him. At the end of the movie, it's him alone. It's terrifying.

Jeff Dwoskin 7:34

Yes, I always thought about at the end of the movie, after he kills jaws and then Hooper reappears, right? And they kind of swim back together. Yo. There's no way anyone who's ever been in a pool, after seeing the movie Jaws, knows a shark is about to eat them in that pool, right? Yeah, they swam that far and didn't have a panic attack the entire time, like there was another shark or something. Minnow bumps up answer at knee. That's all I but I watch it, that's all I think about. Is like that must have been the most torturous, uh, swim home ever.

Pat Jankiewicz 8:08

Yeah, because they but the what the movie plays fair, they made sure. Spielberg makes sure, I think Joe elves shot that footage, but he makes sure you see Brody and Brody and Hooper hit the beach at the very end of the credits. They actually make it to shore, because you don't. Before the movie goes to the black credits, they make sure you see the two heroes reach shore, which is really impressive. How

Jeff Dwoskin 8:32

did they come to pick Spielberg? Because he's, I mean, now we go like, Oh, Steven Spielberg, but he wasn't Steven Spielberg back then.

Pat Jankiewicz 8:38

No, he did not get the he says he stole the script from Zanuck and Brown's office. But there was also this really terrible meeting. The original director was a guy named Dick Richards. And Dick Richards, did the original heat? Have you seen the heat in the 80s with Burt Reynolds? It's based on a great book, Think, by William Goldman. The book is fantastic. The movie's not so good that, in fact, that movie is famous because Burt Reynolds punched Dick Richards. So Dick Richards had the script. They had to have the gig on jaws. There was a big meeting, meet and greet Linda Harrison, who was married to the Nova from Planet of the Apes. She was up for the role of Ellen Brody in Jaws. She was, of course, married to Zanuck at the time, and so they they did this meeting at the 21 cup. And Dick Richards apparently was a little drunk the meeting with Benchley, Zanuck and brown are introducing him, introducing Dick Richards to Benchley, and they're trying to make sure Benchley is worried this book put him on the map. He can't afford the movie to be terrible dick. Richards kept referring to the shark as a whale, and every time he called the shark a whale, is that this is in David Brown's book. Let me entertain you. Every time he called the shark a whale, they would correct him. But Devin Brown and Richard Zanuck both noticed angry or. And angry or eventually was getting so he basically had the gig and lost it once he lost jaws. That's when Spielberg swept in. And what's amazing is he made it basically the narrative drive of the movie is dual. And one of the things, one of the interesting things about the movie, I'd interviewed the late Richard Matheson in my book, who wrote, I Am Legend to all the classic twine zones. And he said, Spielberg called him and offered him the job running jaws. And when he told him what he wanted to do, he told Spielberg, you just want to make duel with a fish. So he didn't do it. And of course, later on, he wound up doing Jaws 3d which was nowhere near jaws in terms of effectiveness, the same Richard Madison had told me he got thrown out also, at universally, got thrown out of a meeting with Alfred Hitchcock. When Alfred Hitchcock liked his books and liked his twin sons, wanted to talk to him about doing the birds. And he said his first line of the meeting with the Hitchcock was he passes all these bird trainers and everything coming into Hitchcock's office. And so Hitchcock asked Matheson, what would you like to do? And he goes, I would never show the birds. I think Hitchcock was too far gone by then they all had, they had all the bird trainers and everything

Jeff Dwoskin 11:16

else. Wait. So Richard Matheson wrote jaws.

Pat Jankiewicz 11:20

Yes, he did. His draft is better than the film they made originally, Matheson's very first idea, basically, he was looking to do something more to the story that inspired Jaws, where it was a shark in the creek. Kind of thing was, was his original idea for it? He said, once they went 3d they never went back.

Jeff Dwoskin 11:40

3d was pretty hot at the time.

Pat Jankiewicz 11:42

Problem with the 3d though, is by the all these cheap Jack movies had beaten it out. You know, there were terrible movies, like coming at ya. There was the summer of Joss, Urd metal storm, which was horrible, the destruction of Jared sin, space hunter, all these mediocre to terrible 3d movies. So by the time Jaws 3d came with great 3d a lot of his effectiveness was was diluted. He told me the least helpful note of writing Jaws 3d for him was a universal executive. Asked Matheson, could you make it the shark from the ending of Jaws two, you know, the one with the burned out eye and everything. And he did not think that was very helpful. No,

Jeff Dwoskin 12:23

originally, I think I had read that the original Jaws sequel was going to be potentially about or what Spielberg wanted to do was about the USS, Indianapolis. Spielberg,

Pat Jankiewicz 12:34

he literally told him they would wait till he could finish Coast encounters. He would have directed it. He didn't really want to do Jaws too. But Spielberg loves World War Two. And, you know, he was always had a natural fascination for it, because obviously his father fought in it, and everything else he had an interest in World War Two. World War two runs through all his movies. I mean, you you see references to it in close encounters, the pilots that are returned. It's in Jaws. Of course, 1941 of course, writers Lost Ark. There was always this. He was interested, even his, even his short films as a kid were like World War two movies, because that's what he grew up on. So he wanted to do Quinn's story on the Indianapolis. And can you imagine how terrifying that would have been?

Jeff Dwoskin 13:15

Yeah, I always thought, after hearing that, that where I always thought it would be, still be something that they still make Jaws movies would be as if they had just made great shark movies, right? Versus trying to figure out why the Brodies are always being attacked by

Pat Jankiewicz 13:29

sharks. Yeah, again, Matheson did not want the Brodies in Jaws 3d that was kind of forced on him, but, yeah, if you only get like Revenge of the creature, which Jaws 3d is an uncredited remake of they just have new people, same creature. That's a brilliant idea. Just put the shark somewhere else, and everybody has to figure out how to handle it. You know what I mean? He keeps coming back to the same place, like the Universal Studios tour. John puch, who's a an acclaimed TV director now, he's the younger brother. You Sean Brody in Jaws. He says, There's no way Jaws, the revenge is the worst Jaws movie. He said, jawdie is the worst. We go to sea world to fight a shark, which is kind of hilarious.

Jeff Dwoskin 14:13

Well, I think if you take Jaws 3d and you remove the Brodies from it, then it's a terrifying movie, right? It's like this, it's safe area where somehow a shark got in, no different than the shark in the creek. But it's like, what kind of makes it unrealistic is the fact that it's the Brodies somewhere else and a shark, same kind of shark, finds him again.

Pat Jankiewicz 14:36

Yeah, to me, and by the way, when you look at that, to me, is the most franchise damaging. Brody has killed two great whites by the end of the series, his son has killed two great whites. His wife killed helped kill one great white. I mean, it's ridiculous,

Jeff Dwoskin 14:52

but had they done just great shark movies? That's something that could it still be a franchise today, you know? I mean, a jaws? Yeah.

Pat Jankiewicz 14:59

You look at Chris Kent is his open water which is a great shark movie, and he has a great nod. The two victims in the movie are named after Susan back leaning. Who was Chrissy? I think her name is Susan Watkins, which is he combined the actress's name with the character name. The male lead in the movie is named after the kitner boy. You just do a nod like that and move on. There are so many great shark movies. Have you seen dangerous animals yet that looks really good? Looks freaky. I haven't seen it yet, but friends who I trust have been raving it up. The great Cynthia Garris, this actress, singer who recommended the reefs to me, which is a great Australian shark movie. She loved it, and I trust her implicitly. She's a huge shark movie

Jeff Dwoskin 15:39

aficionado. I think Deep Blue Sea is one of my favorites. Yeah, there's so

Pat Jankiewicz 15:44

many good ones. I mean, the reef is great. I don't care what people say, but Jurassic shark people who see is fantastic. The Shallows is fantastic.

Jeff Dwoskin 15:52

Yeah, a lot of great ones. It is definitely a horrible fear tied to it. And if you are on great white shark tick tock. You would be led to believe that there's a shark attack every five seconds. I actually looked it up. Do you know how many fatal shark attacks there are? Not attacks, fatal shark attacks, there are a year, whether it ends in five to six, but unprovoked shark attacks, meaning, like somebody gets bad or something. There's about 70 or 80 a year, about 40 or 50 of those in the US, and they say it's more you're more likely to get struck by lightning than get bitten by a shark, and the global odds of being killed by a shark, which Tiktok will lead you to believe otherwise, is one in 4 million.

Pat Jankiewicz 16:38

Wow. I mean, I remember on a family vacation in Florida. I remember 12 Foot Hammerhead came into the swimming area and just to see that fin and know you're in the water. I I was with my dad. It was with my uncle Jerry and my big brother Tom, you know, those are my three heroes. This fin goes around us, and we were utterly helpless. I mean, I was like, you know, 12 and it's like, Oh, my God, there is nothing you can do when it comes in. But if you leave him alone, nine times out of 10 to leave you alone, it's when you go to areas like Stinson Beach, which is Northern California. Stinson Beach has had some really terrific, not terrific, horrific, shark attacks. My brothers, my dad and I used to camp on a villa beach. And I remember we camped there one year, and they told me, there'll never be any marine wildlife here because we had an oil spill a couple years ago, and the fish will never come here again. Well, then the next time we were there, we came a month after 2004 a great white bit, a woman in half. There was a woman who had this, it's in the devil's teeth. And if you read my book, there's a shark attack. No swimming son that I took that to the villa beach right after the 2004 attack, this poor woman had this habit of swimming with the dolphins, or no, no. She would swim with the sea lion, which I would not recommend. You know what I mean, because the sealer the sharks go there for the sea lions the Channel Islands Catalina, and then you go further out to sea divers called Shark Park, because that's where the sea lions hang out. That's where the sharks come to eat the sea lions. And in Villa Beach, this poor woman would swim with them. When the sea lions saw the shark coming, they all split and attacked her. I talked to people like the sunglasses hot lady on the beach, the stories were crazy and horrifying. You don't want to be like you said. You don't want to be one of those five or six people.

Jeff Dwoskin 18:29

Well, it's funny, because I joke about the Tiktok thing, but I watched one great one guy talking about a great white shark attack. So you know, Tiktok, that's now, that's all I get. You know, it's funny. You think of it. You think to yourself, it's like you think of all the ways you can die, right? Car Crash, just getting hit by, you know, just whatever natural causes, disease, you know, whatever it is that we fear day to day. It's probably not in most people's top 10 eating you know, it's like, it's mind boggling to think about that.

Pat Jankiewicz 18:59

But my argument is, nobody forgets the poor bastard eaten by the shark. Lester Stillwell, who the kitner boy, is based on the kid who got eaten in 1916 in Matawan Creek. He was like nine or 11 years old. You'll never forget him. I mean, eventually made him into Alex Kenner. It's the it's the most terrific attack you've ever heard of. You'll never forget that guy, anybody who has been mauled and killed by a shark. You know what I mean? I mean, I can name the surfers who've been in doubt here, just because it's so, like you said, it's so unlikely,

Jeff Dwoskin 19:31

Pat, I rather go silently and forgotten that.

Pat Jankiewicz 19:36

Yeah. All right, let's go sleep in the snow, lost. All

Jeff Dwoskin 19:39

right, let's get back to the movie. All right. So casting any like was Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfus, Robert Shaw, were they always destined? Were there other people? Almost

Pat Jankiewicz 19:49

no. A ton of people turned them down the one guy. Carl golly told me that the one guy Spielberg wanted the most was Sterling Hayden, Captain McCluskey. From the Godfather, right. Stand up. Stand him up straight and tall, the one who breaks Michael's jaw, he wanted him for Quint, and he wanted Lee Marvin for Quint. And there was, like, a long list of these guys. I The amazing thing is throwing hand and turned him down. Lee Marvin basically told him he'd rather be fishing for real fish than pretending to fight a fake fish. Everybody who got it was like second or third. You know what I mean? After people passed, people didn't want to do it. Phil Berg met Roy Scheider at a party, and Roy shiner said, Tell me about this movie you're doing. And he described jaws to him, and that's when Roy Scheider said, Yeah, I would love to do that movie. One of the more horrific elements that just came out this week. Roy Scheider had been cast by William Friedkin as Father Karas and the exorcist. And then when he met Jason Miller and gave him the part, because he felt, you know, Jason Miller, I couldn't think of anyone else as Father Karas. Scheider had that role until he saw play with that Jason Miller was in, can you imagine the horror of Scheider your second banana in the French Connection? And then you have the lead in The Exorcist, then you lose it and becomes one of the highest grossing movies of all time. I mean, you imagine how

Jeff Dwoskin 21:14

terrible that must have been horrible. And then, and then, boom jaws.

Pat Jankiewicz 21:17

And then, boom Jaws, yeah. And, and because of jaws. Eventually, that got him sorcerer when Steve McQueen passed, you know. And unfortunately, when he gets to be the lead for freaking it becomes the biggest bomb of his or freaking career. Shiner got it. And supposedly, Spielberg's direction to him every day is, can never show me a scene in the movie where you look like, you know, you're gonna kill the shark. He wanted them insecure. And if you watch it's a great performance, you know, he's got the glasses on and he's he's, you know, nervous and he's clumsy. And then towards the end of the movie, when he's in the black turtleneck, and suddenly he becomes the man. He becomes a combination of Hooper and Quinn, because he's been around these two alpha males so long, Brody rises to the occasion. The interesting casting for me thought wise was both Sid Sheinberg and head of Universal Studios under Wasserman. Sid Sheinberg and Richard Zanuck both promised the part of Ellen Brody to their wives. When Spielberg heard that both of them wanted their wife in the same role. Supposedly, he just went, Oh, he couldn't say or do anything, because he was small. This is his first big movie, you know, after Sugar Land Express, and now the two men who control his future both promise the role to the wife. When Lou Wasserman heard the story, he looked at them and said, somebody is going to get a divorce out of this. And Linda Harrison said that turned out to be true when Jaws became the highest grossing film of all time. Of course, whatever pressure is on her and Xanax relationship, the fact that he didn't have the power to get her into the movie must have really weighed heavy. She was supposed to play the they wrote a part for her on Jaws too. She was supposed to be the the woman doing the bite measurements on the on the dead killer whale. The bad blood between Zanuck and Sheinberg was so bad they wouldn't let Zanuck cast her on that either. So it's poof, wow. The fact that half of the performances in the movie are local hires. Ben Gardner was a non actor cast, you know, the fishermen on the island and the guy they they used Shaw. Used him for Quint. And so Shaw would walk around with the man, the legendary man on the Kingsley. He would walk around the he would walk around Martha's Vineyard with him. And so a lot of his mannerisms as Quint came from him. So to thank him and reward him. They made him. They made him. Ben Gardner, one of the most effective performances in the the movie is Mrs. Kitner, when she's looking for her son and she slaps Brody realize he knew and let her son die. That was a theater actress on the island, Leah Fierro, and

Jeff Dwoskin 23:56

she's incredible. She's amazing. She's amazing. She is

Pat Jankiewicz 24:00

incredibly amazing. I mean, for a local hire, for them to depend on the that's the scene that propels Brody to overcome his fear and go to see and save his community. Because the woman had kids his age, he feels personally responsible for destroying this woman's family. That's a local hire. Nowadays, if you're doing a movie, you would never entrust that on a local thing. You would bring some big Hollywood actress in for this amazing, moving moment. They did not do that. It was all local hires. You know, the kids are local hires, and you could tell, even though Brody is supposed to be from New York, his kids have thick Massachusetts accents, and that's why this is one of my favorite Jaws facts. And I got this from the amazing June for who was the voice of June was every cartoon you've ever heard of. She was witch hazel on Bugs Bunny. She was Rocky the flying squirrel on Bullwinkle. She was Natasha fatal, also on Bullwinkle, but she did all these voices she's told. In the twine zone. So if you watch the movie, the oldest son has a thick Boston accent. Hey, Ma got bit by a vampire. You know, when he's you know, you're playing on those swings. I'm gonna fix those swings. So what was happening is, later in the movie, when he's got his, I would argue, his biggest line when he says the pawns for old ladies, which is the setup for the line, where Brody says, we'll do it for the old man. Will you? Spielberg brought in June Foray because he needed the audience to understand the line. And so June comes in, and she goes, pause for old ladies. That's June for it. And he says, do it for the old man. So June for a told me that when she did it, she was doing, it's Filbert request. She was doing wild talky Tina lines in between when she was dubbing the line for him. And you don't know this but Harry Shearer, Mr. Burns from The Simpsons and a number of other characters, he's one of the ADR lines you hear on the town. You hear talking in different scenes, really. Oh yeah, you know, Jaws was one of the first movies with just amazing ADR, and if you listen, they're acting the hell out of it. I love when the shark eats the guy in the in the pond, and when the shark is leaving, here's somebody scream, get a gun. Somebody get a gun and kill that thing. Anybody got a gun. That's great. The ADR in Jaws is fantastic. I mean, the opening beach party, you hear somebody say he's an amputee. It's almost predicting what's going to happen later in the movie. And if they're doing ADR, they already know all that. It's probably an in joke. Pat, what is ADR? Oh, automatic dialog replacement when they're doing all the lines to get the movie synced up for release. You know, because there's too much crowd noise on a real set when they're dubbing the final version of the movie for the crowd. Sorry, no, no,

Jeff Dwoskin 26:43

it's okay. How much involvement did Peter Benchley have with the screenplay before they brought in Carl Gottlieb,

Pat Jankiewicz 26:49

I've read his script, and Spielberg took his script. You can read his script. It might be online. I read the version. I read was at the Margaret Herrick library. It's a solid adaptation of the book. And Carl Gottlieb said, when Spielberg handed him benchley's draft, he wrote two words on the front for him, which was eviscerate this. So Golly. Golly never gets enough credit. Gottlieb made the movie, made the characters a lot more likable. You know, there, there were several drafts. John Milius, of course, wrote a couple of hot button scenes with the Quinn's speech came from Milius and Gottlieb and Milius have differences on the Indianapolis scene. I've talked to Milius. Milius said he wrote it, but the version that I've heard from Gottlieb and other people is that it was also written by Howard Sackler, who didn't get screen credit, but Howard Sackler, who did the Pulitzer one prize winning play the Great White hope. He was a diver, and supposedly he brought in the Indianapolis scene. But Milius told me, and this, this also makes sense. It had been recently the Indianapolis shark attack had been recently declassified. Milius told me he gives Spielberg the option of there were two really serious shark attacks and soldiers in World War Two. One was Guada Canal and the other was the Indianapolis. And nobody knew about the Indianapolis, and it was just

Jeff Dwoskin 28:12

so perfect for the story that monolog is one of the best

Pat Jankiewicz 28:15

I know. I would also recommend, if you really want to get into the jaws vibe, find a book by an author named Michael capuzzo, called close to shore. Close to shore is about the shark attacks in 1916 it's the best book on that. You can see how it influenced eventually, for JAWS, the shark going into the creek in Matawan when no one was expecting it. That becomes the kitner boy in the pond. And the big showdown with the shark in real life took place at Raritan Bay, and to this day, they're still arguing whether or not it was a bull shark or a great white. The bull shark argument seems to make more sense, but the shark that they killed at Raritan Bay was a great white. It had a human leg in its stomach, and that's the one. It was a young Great White, and that's the one that the literal. There's a joke, one joke about, wait till the taxidermy man sees what I brought him. I brought a guy who killed the shark in Railton Bay. They believe was the Matawan man eater. That's the one that they would they taxidermied it, and they put it in a store window and charge people 50 cents to look at it. My friend Joseph lives in Matawan Creek, and he actually went not he doesn't live in metal on Creek, but he lives by it. He got me these amazing pictures, which, if you join, I have a Facebook page just when you thought it was safe for Joe's companion. So if you go through that, you will see Joe's amazing pictures of medawan Creek. They put a mural up. They put the shark's mouth. There's the tunnel that the shark entered when it ate the child. It was the kid was floating on his back, and it came up and ate him, and then it went the wrong way. It was trying. The shark was trying to get out of the creek. And originally they said, you know, a saltwater creature wouldn't live that long. But then a pot of dolphins got lost there. I think 87 or 90. Seven. So they saw that it did the same turnaround that screwed up the medawan, mad eater. Even though both sharks can live in salt water and tidal creek, this thing, they think, because the dolphins made it through when they found their way out, they think the shark could have been, you know, a curry White could have gotten caught in there for a certain amount of time. They wound up eating the stillwall boy, and it went down to the creek, because it was like a horseshoe, and went around it wound up eating. It would wound up biting the leg of another child about two miles downstream. And it got out of the creek and it ate a man. Again, the 1916 shark attacks are so horrific, it ate a man, Stanley Fisher, who went in to save the body. He went to rescue still was body, and then when he found Stillwell underwater and started pulling him up because he thought he was trapped. He thought the kid was trapped under what looked like a pilot. It wasn't a piling, it was the shark, and it attacked him with the waist. Stanley was a tall guy. He was like six six. So he battled this thing for about 10 minutes, but it got him so bad at the hip and everything, it opened an artery. And in those days, you had to wait for a train to take you to a better hospital. There was no hospital at that part of New Jersey, so he bled out waiting for the train.

Jeff Dwoskin 31:16

Wow. These are horrific inspirations for the book. Oh,

Pat Jankiewicz 31:19

yeah. So Coast ashore is where the look. There's 12 Days of terror. The TV movie, that one's really good. It's from the director of the hidden Jack shoulder. It's a good shark movie. It's written by Tommy Lee Wallace, who did a lot of John Carpenter's great sequels and stuff. So it's fun. It's it's worth in Jack shoulders directions, great. The shark attack on the still woke kid is really, really good. But I, you know, nothing beats jaws. I mean, it's just, it's the perfect movie.

Jeff Dwoskin 31:46

Oh yes, it is amazing. Speaking of it being the perfect movie, it seems that when you watch, and a lot of this has been told over and over again, like, the shark never really worked, and the budget doubled from it's like, and they're shooting on the water, which is horrible in itself and heart very difficult to do, like it seems like there was a lot stacked against this movie, just in general, to ever actually be not abandoned and to actually be completed.

Pat Jankiewicz 32:11

That wasn't one of the big questions, because they fired John Hancock off of Jaws two. And John Hancock and his wife, Dorothy Tristan, they had a really great take on the material. I mean, if you, if you find the script, which is online, and it was used for the Marvel adaptation of Jaws, two Brody has PTSD, and the town is kind of sick of him and sick of sharks, and the town is going slowly bankrupt because of the events of jaws. It's a really great downer movie, the Hancock, of course, ran into all the same problems and more. And the only Hancock shot footage, he had lunch with Spielberg, and he goes, Spielberg wasn't a demigod, yet. He was just a guy who was seen as lucky because it was his first movie. Spielberg told Hancock the one thing he would do for the early part of the movie is he goes, You have seagulls, you'd have dog pilings, and you would have the shark entering Amity. You would you would show the shark swimming in in the early morning hours. And Hancock used that, and that became the first Jaws two trailer, and arguably the best Jaws two trailer, everything became more or less a happy accident. Bill Butler told me he and Steven Spielberg had worked for universal, and he said, after he said, the rules at Universal were very, very simple. If you were a day late, the black tower, which was the scary where all the executives were at that point in universal, black tower is there to live this day when you, whenever you're outside, you'll see the black tower. That's what they called it. That's where you would get fired. That's where Wasserman was, that's where Sheinberg was, that's where Ned Tannen was the screaming exec who was and here's Okay, you want a fun jaws. Fact, Ned Tannen became the name of fifth Tannen. They named the angry Exec. Ned Tannen was used as the name of the bully. And Back to the Future and Lorraine Leah Thompson. Lorraine is named after Lorraine Gary. And there's also a character named Sid in Back to the Future. All that was an homage to them in the black tower. And what's interesting is that Bill Butler was sitting with Spielberg, and he said Spielberg was really nervous. And he said, What do you think he goes? You have nothing to worry about. Spielberg goes. What do you mean? He goes, You know the rules as I do as well as I do. Steven, after a day at Universal, if a director went over a day, you got a warning. If you went over two days, there was another director sitting in your seat. Butler said they must like the footage, because we're still here. And David Brown talks about in his book The difference between Steven Spielberg and John Hancock is apparently Hancock wasn't getting the footage they wanted to need it. And the problem poor Hancock had is because the town was supposed to be economically destroyed in Charles two none of the shop owners during the summer seasons were going to put going out of business or paper over their signs like. Nobody was there. They couldn't do what he needed them to do,

Jeff Dwoskin 35:04

right, to create that atmosphere,

Pat Jankiewicz 35:06

right, right, right. So they were fighting him on the vibe he was going for. But I still argue that John Hancock, Josh too, would have been a great sequel, better than the beat for beat remake they made,

Jeff Dwoskin 35:17

right? There was a whole because I talked to Billy Van Zandt and he, I think he was the only one that survived from the original jaws. Two cast before they recast

Pat Jankiewicz 35:27

it. A couple of them made it. One of them was reportedly a mistress of Ned 10, and that's one of the reasons hand jog was on the firing line. You know what I mean? I mean that was one of the more interesting rumors about Joshu. The thing is, Ricky Schroeder was cast as the original Sean Brody in Jaws too, but he lost his part. Chris Gilpin got it very nice kid, and unfortunately, he passed away last year. His sister Perry Gilpin was Roz on Frasier. Oh, okay. Templer cast lost their parts when that

Jeff Dwoskin 35:55

happened, well, let's say, let's say, changed the story. It is Billy Van Zandt told me the I think his character was originally, he may have been quint's kid or something like

Pat Jankiewicz 36:04

that. Yeah, he was supposed to be the son of Quint coming to get his three grand from the original film, and he would team up with Brody's son. And then it just became Jaws, too. It became Jaws, you know, Team Jaws, basically, yeah, and I'm glad they didn't go that route. And the worst part of sequels are the ones that they don't just defile themselves. They defile the original film. You know, Halloween two finding out Michael Myers is her brother, just means the Jamie Lee Curtis character got all our friends killed, and it doesn't bring anything to the party.

Jeff Dwoskin 36:35

Yes, yes, yes. All right, let's talk about All right. So the movie's made. It gets released. It's the first movie to make $100 million at the box office. So it's it pretty much invented the blockbuster as we know it today,

Pat Jankiewicz 36:47

completely even merchandising, album sales, T shirts, all of that, a little bit of toys, but mostly the John Williams album goes sells like crazy. You hear it all summer long, made more money than any movie had made up to that point in history. Spielberg is suddenly he's basically justified. Everything he does is now justified, which is very exciting. And he gets to do close encounters, and, of course, you get a slew of rip offs. I think the first one really out of the gate, was grizzly. I have a story on grizzly coming up on dread, central to the the site, if you want to look at that, Grizzly made more than any of their jaws rip off and made 40 million. And the reason for that is it's not a good movie. It's not piranha, it's not alligator, which are the gold standard of Jaws rip offs, you know, both written by John sales, piranha, of course, beautifully directed by Joe Dante and Louis Teague, of course, did alligator, but when grizzly had it was the first Jaws rip off since Jaws, more importantly, it had this beautiful poster by Neil Adams. Neil Adams comes up with this conceptual poster where he does jaws in reverse. If you've seen the poster, he puts the victim at the bottom and the bear at the top. It's a great poster. So I have the late Neil Adams on drug central this week talking about how he just reversed the jaws poster and made 40 million. But yeah, for the next three years, everybody rips off jaws and then, and then everyone had belatedly hops in the Star Wars train.

Jeff Dwoskin 38:16

Yes, yes, yes. I ran. I looked up the numbers. I'm assuming these are out here, but it made 260 million in the US. Now this is 1975 Yes, it made 210 outside of the US. So about four 10 million, which, by today's standards, if somebody made four 10 million, a bit crazy good, right? Depending on the budget, I guess,

Pat Jankiewicz 38:38

oh yeah, on a $9 million budget, yes, that

Jeff Dwoskin 38:41

would be two. The four 10 million in 1975 is equivalent of 2.3 billion today.

Pat Jankiewicz 38:47

And considering what they had and how it came off, Fidel Castro in Cuba reference jaws in his speech, this movie travels all over the world. It's in every language. It's in every and it has the same reaction. I mean, it frames everybody. It has a huge impact. And so, yeah, I mean, made more money than any movie ever. Won some Oscars, Best Editing mother cutter, John Williams wins for Best Music and Spielberg, sadly, you know, wasn't even dominated, right?

Jeff Dwoskin 39:19

This would be the start of his shunning until he wins his Oscar. But the downside to the legacy, which think Peter Bentley has talked about in the past, is that it caused a unnecessary fear of sharks and killing of sharks as well, probably

Pat Jankiewicz 39:37

did a boom for shark charters and everything else, which is unfortunate, but it also it gave everybody a fascination of shark as well. There's a lot of ichthyologists who got into their fields because of jaws. I have friends who went to Scripps, and she a friend who told me she got into it specifically gets Jaws freaked her out as little girl. It eventually led to the creation of shark. Week and the Discovery Channel, and that led, you know, once you had Shark Week, and, you know, conservation eventually, eventually felt a lot of guilt. He talks about that in his book shark life. I mean, JAWS, I don't think ever hit number one in the best seller list, according eventually, in the book, in hardback, it was held out of the top spot, he says, in Shark life, by the book, Watership Down, which is talking about a depressing movie. You know, you want to see a bunch of cartoon rabbits die horribly. But when it went paperback, they used the book's poster for the movie, but they had the artist. I interviewed the artist as well, and they told him, we want the shot three times bigger than he has in the book cuff. So Roger Castle painted the shark even bigger on the cover of the of the movie poster. Oh,

Jeff Dwoskin 40:47

I know it's a big shark. Oh, dear, yeah.

Pat Jankiewicz 40:51

He did jaws. And then after that, he did the poster from the Empire. Strikes

Jeff Dwoskin 40:54

Back another great poster. Oh, yeah. So here we are, 50 years later. It's just amazing, right? I mean that they was talking about it, and it still is revered today. Is

Pat Jankiewicz 41:04

when I wrote my book. It was one of the five most often run movies on basic cable. It was like Top Gun that, but it was one of the five most run movies on basic cable. And the fact that there are July, there are July 4 and Memorial Day marathons a Jaws marathon, even though there's basically one good movie, you know, the others. I mean, I went into the I went in the minutia of the others and the behind the scenes stories, you realize what a rabbit's foot Jaws caught the first time around. Having Spielberg, having Carl Gottlieb, having the amazing Bob Matty, Roy Arbogast shark. They had a talented team that went with everything on the other ones, it was more we need to fill the summer slot. We need a Jaws movie here. It did not, they did not capture even on Jaws two. Brody co so clearly does not want to be there. Roy shiner did not want to make that movie. And you can tell in his performance. It's just, it's he got so sunburned, deliberately tanned and tanned and tanned so much. Janelle Schwartz told me they couldn't color correct him. He did not want to be there. They wanted to kill him off at the beginning of Jaws The Revenge. He did a movie called night game and something else, just to make sure he was unavailable, in case they wanted them for jaws of revenge, which they did. They were originally going to kill Brody in the beginning of jostle revenge, and he did not want even though they were dangling a million dollars for nine days. He said, No temptation offered by the devil will make me do another Jaws movie.

Jeff Dwoskin 42:37

God bless him for saying no.

Pat Jankiewicz 42:40

Who wanted to see Brody in by a shark? I asked you nobody some

Jeff Dwoskin 42:44

movies, they just don't work. I enjoy Jaws too, don't get me wrong, and I can do

Pat Jankiewicz 42:50

it's fun junk, but you have to admit if, if you put up two TVs and watch them side by side, every beat is from jobs. The dead water ski are good. The woman driving the ski boat coming up instead of Ben Gardner's head, exactly that the same time and everything else. And you know, JAWS doesn't date. Jaws two is very, very dated when you made it about 70s, teenagers, their hair, their clothes, their style. It just dates the movie horribly.

Jeff Dwoskin 43:19

I still enjoyed it as a sequel. No, it's not what you're saying. Does 3d You know, I I hold on to I have an affinity towards it because I was remember

Pat Jankiewicz 43:30

seeing it like in the movie. It's a different movie in three if you accept the movie, I actually prefer Jaws 3d to Jaws two, because Jaws two is trying so hard to be jaws. It just, it doesn't work for me. I mean, you can tell Brody doesn't want to be there. You can, you know, there's some good shark attacks. The attack on Eddie, I think, is fantastic. The death of Mar just touching. But, I mean, there's like, four characters going into shock. There's some good shark stuff. The shot looks crappy. He's got an under bite. He doesn't match the shark from the original film. Roy Arbogast told me you can see the smoke coming out of the shark's eyes before he catches fire at earlier scenes, because he said universal wind spring for the cylinders they used for jaws on the eyes of the shark and jaw. So, yeah, no, I think Jaws two has the best catchphrase of a sequel I use in my book and jaws two. The reason Jaws two exists, in my opinion, Geno Schwartz was told by the head of production that they owed him a favor, and again, to bring it all full circle, he used that favor by taking the best script he ever read, Richard Matheson somewhere in time, shot in Michigan, Mackinac Island in Michigan. He used his cloud Jaws two to get somewhere in time made. And I think somewhere in time is the movie we all remember Geno Schwartz for more than Supergirl, than Jaws two. Junot wanted the two a love story. And he did a love story. And the fact that elements of somewhere. Time found themselves in Titanic and 1000 other movies shows that influence and Geno made it clear that he was doing Jaws two to help them out. And remember, it was a nice revenge version. Oh, you know, did a movie called bug that opened on Wednesday, June 18, 1975 on June 20, that Friday is when Jaws opened 50 years ago, and, of course, crushed bug. So letting Geno have the 10th highest grossing movie in the 1970s was kind of a nice reward for what happened to him on the earlier film.

Jeff Dwoskin 45:32

Yes, and somewhere in time is a classic, and you can still go, if you go to Mackinac Island, to some of the places where they shot certain scenes.

Pat Jankiewicz 45:40

As a kid, my brother, Don, my mom and I were in the Renaissance Center. Ran into Christopher Reeve. He was very nice. Yeah, Chris,

Jeff Dwoskin 45:46

Jane Seymour, people that love that movie, love that movie. It's, I think, oh, yeah, revered, very revered. Pat. I want, I can't believe it took this on to get you back on the show, but I'm glad you're here. I'm honored. Good sir. Thank you. Glad we're talking Jaws, everybody, let's, let's pitch the book one more time. A Jaws companion, just when you thought safe, a Jaws companions. I was reading it backwards. There I was reading it, uh, Grizzly, top down, not. Oh, right, yeah. So

Pat Jankiewicz 46:14

Okay, watch tread central for my Neil Adams piece, where he talks about knocking out the grizzly poster in two days,

Jeff Dwoskin 46:21

I met Neil Adams at a comic con. Obviously, before did you like him? He's very nice man, very nice man. You know, he wrote, he he drew Superman versus Muhammad Ali. He

Pat Jankiewicz 46:31

did. He helped plot it, too. His son, Joel, is a good friend, and it's like when you met Neil Adams. One of the things about him he never gets credit for is he used his fame at the risk of getting blackballed. He used his fame and Marvel and DC to help comic book creators who've been classically screwed. He's the one who helped Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the creators of Superman, get their pension from DC Comics get their credit on Superman The Movie, even before, not too long before corneal died, he made sure Marvel kicked in money to help Dave Cockrum, who co created the new X Men, because he just, he got no money out of it. He it would be like Todd McFarland when, you know, getting money for Jack Kirby, there was nothing in it for Neil. Neil had kids to feed. But he wanted to make sure these two guys, he said that. He told me it was the right thing to do. He they created this industry, and they're being screwed. And he goes, we have a chance to stop that in their lifetime. And I, I thought, wow, how amazingly commendable.

Jeff Dwoskin 47:34

That is amazing. I love that. You know what else I love your book, just when I thought it was safe, a Jaws companion available on Amazon, and I'm sure everywhere else

Pat Jankiewicz 47:43

you made my day. Jeff, thank you so much. I never get in the way of

Jeff Dwoskin 47:46

commerce. Pat, thank you so much for hanging out with me. Thanks for talking

Pat Jankiewicz 47:51

jaws. The pleasure was mine. Good sir. Have a good day. Have a good day.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai