S01E19 — Jaws
SPOILER ALERT: This episode and transcript below contains major spoilers for Jaws.
Apple Podcasts • Spotify • Audible • Amazon Music • iHeart • Pandora
Featuring hosts Timothy Haynes, Donna Haynes, Rebekah Edwards, and T. Josiah Haynes.
Jaws was one of the most successful debut novels in history, and its film successor literally invented the summer blockbuster. So… how does this classic adaptation hold up? Was the book the better work, despite the continued fame of the film?
As the book celebrates 50 years (we all threw up a little when we read that), the family discusses our thoughts on the incredible quality of the film after so many decades and why we, like Peter Benchley, were definitely rooting for the shark during our read.
Final Verdicts
If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, we recommend waiting to read our verdicts. (But you’re probably grown, so do what you want!)
The Jaws movie trims the book’s messy subplots and focuses on pure shark-induced terror, delivering an iconic thrill ride. The book dives into mafia drama, marital affairs, and unlikable characters, but the film keeps things sharp, streamlined, and suspenseful.
Tim: The movie was better
Donna: The movie was better
Rebekah: The movie was better
Josiah: The movie was better
Other Episodes You’ll Love
Full Episode Transcript
Prefer reading? Check out the full episode transcript below. It’s AI-generated from our audio, and if we’re being honest… no one sat to read the entire thing for accuracy. (After all, we were there the whole time.) 😉 We’re sorry in advance for any typos or transcription errors.
[00:00:00] Rebekah: Welcome to the book is better podcast. We are a family of four reviewing book to film adaptations. This is a clean podcast, although we do talk about content that can be a little, you know, not the best for the youngest listeners. We love to start off by introducing ourselves and giving a little fun fact about us.
So today’s fun fact is. What is your most memorable experience involving the ocean? Um, so I’ll go first. My name is Rebecca. I am the daughter slash sister of the family and I do have a rather memorable experience. Uh, we were on a missions trip in the Bahamas in, I guess the early 2000s and I’d been to the ocean before, but I think this was like the most time I’d ever gotten to spend out there.
And I was standing in the ocean with like three friends and suddenly. felt something wrap itself around my leg, at which point my leg began to burn and it was awful and it was the worst feeling in pain. And so I had been, uh, obviously, uh, stung by a jellyfish and I ran out of the ocean and up onto the beach.
And because I had watched an episode of friends about how to get rid of the sting from a jellyfish, I began to say, please someone pee on me and started begging someone would pee on my leg. And you know what? Nobody stepped up. My dad was there and nobody stepped up. I’m just saying, I just, I’m just saying, if I didn’t know if that was real, I would have peed on your leg.
Thank you, Mother, for being the only one who cares about me for real. Also, I do actually have a memory of that day that when Dad and I were talking about it after I was like in less pain, because he was on the beach at the time, he looked at me and he said, I have never seen you run that fast and you were in the water.
[00:01:52] Josiah: Which tells you a little
[00:01:53] Rebekah: bit about me.
[00:01:54] Josiah: Yes, peeing on a jellyfish sting is fake. I’m Josiah. The brother slash son of the group, the resident P. E. on jellyfish sting expert.
Now, in my most memorable experience involved in the ocean, I don’t really like the ocean that much. Despite everyone around me telling me this did not happen, I remember when I was like four or five, I want to say Myrtle Beach, a big wave crashed over me, little four or five year old T. Josiah, and oh, it went up my nose, oh, I was like, I was turned upside down, I couldn’t tell where gravity was, and I came out of it, With a horrifying fear of going underwater.
So this is what I remember. Sorry that we’re
[00:02:49] laughing. Mom is literally on the camera going, What?
[00:02:56] Josiah: And I remember Meemaw was there too. Who passed away when I was six. So I was six or younger. And. Uh, so I remember this thing probably didn’t happen, but how about you guys explain why I have a fear of going underwater?
[00:03:11] Tim: I was thinking a fairly reasonable explanation for it might’ve been that my mom and dad might’ve taken you to the beach, walking on the beach. One of them would probably have had your hand. My mother would never have let you walk on the beach alone. Um, she would have been absolutely terrified of, to let you do that.
So she would have likely been holding your hand. So flipping upside down and not knowing which way was up, uh, probably your perception that she was probably still holding your hand. It’s likely that a, that a wave hit you, knocked you down. Yeah, water went up your nose. I can see that.
[00:03:45] Rebekah: So yeah, change your trauma and never react about that way again.
[00:03:49] Josiah: The thing I learned just today was the reason that all of you have denied that happened for Twenty five years is because none of you were there. None of you told me that part. All of you have denied that happened because Mama Mima and Papa brought me. I didn’t know. Liars. I didn’t
[00:04:08] Rebekah: know I wasn’t there because it didn’t happen.
I mean, because I don’t remember it.
[00:04:12] Donna: So she’s dead and he’s a very. Old man, are you going to haunt him with it now? Or
[00:04:18] Josiah: we haven’t asked him. It’s a nicer way to say it because we haven’t.
[00:04:25] Tim: My name is Tim. I am the husband and the dad of our wonderful crew. We’ll call us a crew today. And I have lots of memories of, of the ocean and different things like that, because I grew up 70, 80 miles from the, from Myrtle beach. And that was a regular common place for us to go. But I remember when I was about 15, when I discovered I had the strangest allergy I’ve I’ve ever heard of.
And for a long time, I thought it was the only person in the world who had it. But I am actually allergic to cold and water and cold water is the worst. And I experienced that sounds
[00:05:03] Rebekah: like it’s not real, but it actually is true. It is actually real. Like we always clarify.
[00:05:07] Tim: I break out in hives and if it gets too bad, it can cut off blood flow.
So. I’ve only passed out from it one time. I learned after that. But the first time was when I was at the beach. Mom was out on the beach and I was in the water and I came back up out of the water. And when she looked at me she said, It looks like you’ve been stung by a jellyfish. Because I had red spots all over me.
I was breaking out in hives apparently. And, uh, so she took me, took me back to the campsite, uh, where we had, where there was an outdoor shower. Well, just before you got to the campsite, there was an out, outdoor shower. So she, she had me rinse off the salt water and actually it made it worse.
[00:05:48] Donna: So I’m Donna.
I’m the wife and mom of our group. And my. I really thought hard about this. I have been to the beach several times and over the years with concert choir in college, with dad at different times during marriage, but the one thing that first popped into my mind was, uh, I was young, probably seven or eight years old, and my family would go to the beach.
Each summer, like a lot of inland coast people, we lived inland. So we were in West Virginia. You took a big, you know, took your big vacation in the summer. We left on Friday after dad got off work, drove overnight to Myrtle beach. And you stayed until the next weekend, so that was your big vacation of the year.
We stayed in the same little, little motel every year that mom and dad knew the owners and uh, so they, they expected us to be there and, and then Myrtle Beach was a little more small town feel. It was still a tourist place, but. Not like it is now. Um, so we had this little place that this little hotel we stayed at and Butch and I would sit in, uh, sit at the table outside our room.
There was like a deck area and we would sit at this table with fly swatters, killing flies, and we would have contests. To see who killed the most flies. And I can remember West Virginia entertainment that
[00:07:21] Rebekah: I have ever heard. And I
[00:07:24] Donna: thought I have racked my brain or other beach memories that were more prominent, but we were on the beach.
The hotel was on the beach.
[00:07:34] Rebekah: I just want to clarify your beach memory is swatting flies
[00:07:40] Tim: sitting near the beach.
[00:07:42] Rebekah: Well, why don’t you. Can he tell us what this story of Jaws that we’re discussing today is all about?
[00:07:48] Tim: Jaws is the tale of a great white shark that terrorizes a small resort town called Amity Island.
Just before and during the July 4th holiday, the shark’s attacks create panic among the town’s residents and visitors. That spurred on by the hesitation of the town’s leaders close the beaches because that would lead to a terrible economic downturn. But keeping the beaches open leads to more attacks.
Local police chief Martin Brody becomes determined to stop the shark. And he is joined by a marine biologist, Matt Hooper, and a seasoned shark hunter, Quint, just one name. The three set out on Quint’s boat to hunt and kill the shark. And the story culminates in a tense and dangerous confrontation between the men and the shark at sea.
Da da da.
[00:08:42] Rebekah: So let’s talk about how Jaws the book and Jaws the movie are different. For those of you who follow our format, we usually talk through three different types of changes. One is setting changes, two is plot and or timeline changes, and then the third is differences in characterization. Now we’re actually not going to discuss any setting changes for this book because there really aren’t any.
Let’s start with the changes that we noticed to the plot and timeline.
[00:09:08] Donna: Big one, big change that occurred right, right off the bat in the opening scene with this shark attack that happens to this young girl, um, in the book, there was not much left of her for them to work with. In the movie, they had more body parts available, more, um, I, I think they did it for the purpose of being able to explore what could have happened to her.
I think that was
[00:09:33] Tim: the reason they used. Let’s be clear. When the coroner takes her body out of the refrigerator, he is carrying a busboy’s dish pan. Yeah, it’s like, there’s almost nothing left. It’s the size of a chafing dish. There’s still not much.
[00:09:50] Rebekah: And I don’t remember, was her head left in the book?
[00:09:52] Tim: I think her head must have been left because they knew, they knew it was a woman.
[00:09:57] Rebekah: Yeah.
[00:09:57] Tim: Um, had no difficulty identifying at least that it was likely the person who had, Boy had said was missing.
[00:10:04] Rebekah: Now mom, you had found some interesting trivia about that. Do you want to like share kind of how that all worked? The girl that played this
[00:10:10] Donna: part, and I think her name was Chrissy? Yeah, if I’m right.
[00:10:15] Josiah: There’s Chrissy in one version and Christy in the other.
[00:10:18] Donna: Okay. The actress who portrayed Chrissy or Christy was named Susan Bacliny or Bacliney, I hope I’m pronouncing that correctly or close. She, uh, I went through several interesting situations to get some of these scenes filmed, and of course there were props used in other scenes, but a few things I found.
This was filmed at Martha’s Vineyard, so I’ll put a lot of things together here. Martha’s Vineyard, about 12 miles out into the ocean. The ocean floor is still like 30 feet deep. So the ocean floor is still pretty shallow, relatively shallow that far out. So that worked for a lot of different reasons, but, um, it, it was great for some of the stuff they had to film that would take time and take set up, you know, time to set up or whatever.
Um, but to film the opening sequence where she’s out in the water and is actually getting attacked. They, two 300 pound weights attached to her and were pulled by men through two crews of men back on the beach, pulled left and right to achieve this jerky shot of her being jerked around in the water. It took three days to film.
Oh my gosh. To create the sound of her drowning, she was positioned head upturned, and I tried to imagine this. And it was horrible.
[00:11:42] Rebekah: PJ’s having a heart attack reading this.
[00:11:44] Donna: Head up turned in front of a microphone while they poured water down her throat. The
[00:11:52] Tim: original waterboarding.
[00:11:53] Donna: So they can hear the sound of her swallowing.
I hate everything about that. And gurgling or whatever. And then the last one that doesn’t involve her specifically. But it’s connected to the scene. Spielberg didn’t like the prop arm that they use sticking up out of the sand. They took a female crew member, buried her in the sand and had her arm stuck up out of it to do the film, to film the shot.
So it was a human arm. So I thought some of those things were interesting and just, they’re a great reminder of what some of the very simple. Things that you can think up to create some of these shots. You know, we all think, Oh, CG could be used to do blah, blah, blah. But a lot of times it’s really simple things that the that the director comes up with or the props people come up with.
[00:12:41] Josiah: Like pouring a bucket of water down a poor
[00:12:45] Donna: woman’s
[00:12:45] Josiah: throat.
[00:12:46] Donna: Oh, I just was like, poor girl. I’m so sorry. It
[00:12:50] Rebekah: reminds me of like the stuff we talked about during The Shining is like, you can’t treat people like that. Why did anyone do that? Can’t you use
[00:12:56] Tim: a Foley artist?
[00:12:58] Rebekah: I think it’s interesting because, um, movies that do hold up, which I would say Jaws definitely holds up for like, Obviously, it’s a period piece, like it feels like it’s from the 70s, but it, it holds up as a still an interesting and watchable movie by far today.
And I think it speaks to that when you talk about using practical effects. Honestly, the thing about this movie that doesn’t hold up is the shark. Which was like a practical effect, but it was using animatronics that at the time, like, we’ve come a lot further with those kinds of things as well, or just using CG.
The
[00:13:28] Tim: shark in this one works better than it would have because Oh, yeah. It wouldn’t work right, and they couldn’t show it as much as they wanted, and they had to keep it in the water more often. So it actually turns out it worked. Better because it wouldn’t work the way they wanted it to work.
[00:13:48] Rebekah: I’m not trying to get too off topic, but that’s funny because when they first did the tram ride at Universal, with the Jaws shark being just like on feature, like people could see it and it was cool.
But when they opened the full length ride, It literally, for two years, broke down so often that they had to redesign the entire ride. And the whole problem was that the animatronic would not work the way that they wanted. Okay, so going back to the plot, I thought it was interesting, uh, there was no attempt, and I, this was one of the first things I noticed in the book that kind of goes on a theme.
There was no attempt to change the coroner’s report, to change, like, the cause of death. of Chrissy slash Christy, uh, to something other than a shark attack. So, in the book, it’s a shark attack, is like the assumed cause of death on the coroner’s report, etc. But I think it’s an interesting kind of insight into, in the movie, they kind of show this, Like undertone of, Oh, we got to hide this.
We don’t want the people to know about it. And that plays out in a lot of ways in the book, a similar thing happens, but they kind of deal with it in a different way. And so the coroner was kind of like the coroner was never part of the attempted cover up and all this other stuff. So I thought that was interesting.
[00:14:57] Josiah: Yeah. In the book, it’s a lot more nefarious. The cover up, whereas in the movie, it’s very bumbling. Very, Oh, I just don’t believe that because it’s, it’s not what I want. And you know, I’m, I’m evil and selfish
[00:15:13] Tim: days before the biggest weekend.
[00:15:15] Josiah: Yeah. And people’s lives are worth that. Whereas in the book, I don’t know if we’re going to really get into this later, but in the book, the mayor.
Is bought out by the mafia.
[00:15:28] Rebekah: I’ll just kind of explain that since it’s on the same line, the book finds that mayor Vaughn had received like 10, 000 to pay for his wife’s surgery when she was on her deathbed earlier, like 20 years before or something. And kind of as it plays out, he had tried to pay them back a couple of times, but the mafia person slash loan shark who had given him the money wouldn’t let him pay that out, pay that off and said, Oh, you show me a favor.
And so Right before all of this happens, they kind of have this whole subplot of like they had gotten Vaughn to put down and he was he made a lot of money and so he had money in the bank to do this with he had put down prompt short term promissory notes to buy a bunch of different properties, assuming that those properties would get rented slash bought.
For the busy summer at Amity. And so the reason that Mayor Vaughn is so, I mean, he’s literally in the book. He is so frantic about it the entire time that he ends up leaving town. Like he does not even, he can’t even stay like it’s a whole big deal. He had spent almost a million dollars, which I mean, that’s a lot of money, even today, much less 50 years ago.
Um, 50
[00:16:33] Josiah: years ago. Oh my goodness.
[00:16:35] Rebekah: I know. But the reason he was freaking out was because the beaches being closed meant that people kept not renting and not buying houses and all this stuff. And he couldn’t kick back
[00:16:43] Josiah: to the mafia.
[00:16:44] Rebekah: Right. He wasn’t going to be able to do that. And so I think he was kind of afraid for his life and all that.
It was a really interesting subplot to me, but I 1000 percent preferred the way that they did it in the book or in the movie rather.
[00:16:56] Tim: He just seems terribly selfish, self centered. Yeah, he just
[00:17:00] Rebekah: doesn’t want the town to lose money. Like, he’s the mayor, he doesn’t want to not get re elected.
[00:17:04] Josiah: Right, and I was surprised, I was a little surprised when I watched the movie at how early he had like a full change of heart, where the big beach day and he, he’s in the hospital and he says, My kids were on that beach too, and I kind of thought, yeah, oh, this feels a little early to, for him to have a change of heart.
And, but then by the end of the movie I’m like, oh, that was his last scene. That was the end of his character art. ’cause that was his last scene.
[00:17:31] Rebekah: Yeah, the whole point was just in the movie, he’s just a mayor. He wants to get reelected. He’s touched. I, I thought it was a very emotionally. Like it was a good emotional moment for him to end on.
My kids were on that same beach, whereas like in the movie, in the book, he’s like just this kind of not a bad guy, but like he got caught up in a really bad situation. And honestly, like he kept. pushing for the beaches to stay open, to the point where it was like he was fine with putting anyone’s life in danger because of his problems.
And I liked that the movie, he was kind of a jerk for a little bit, but like, he definitely gets redeemed.
[00:18:07] Josiah: I think I’m, I mean, I don’t want to jump ahead, but I was surprised that the movie, even more so than the book, took its entire second half to be on the Orca boat.
[00:18:19] Rebekah: In the book, that’s a pretty short
[00:18:22] Josiah: And we’ll get, we’ll get to it, but they also make changes in the book, how in the book, they come back at the end of every night.
And if you imagine that in the movie, you know, they, they stay on the boat on the, in the movie. Wow. Yeah. And it really ups the stakes when it will not go back to shore until they get it.
[00:18:39] Tim: One of the, uh, One of the plot timeline differences is the little boy, Alex, was killed by a shark on an almost empty beach in the book.
There was a witness, but he wasn’t sure what he saw, and the boy went missing rather than coming up onto shore. In the film, Alex was killed in the midst of a busy beach with plenty of witnesses. We didn’t even mention it, but the dog also We didn’t show that pack showed the shark attack on the boy, but the guy that was playing with his dog and dog was playing fetch.
He, uh, kept calling his Pippin. He kept calling for Pippin and we didn’t see. Yeah, and that’s, that’s the day that the mayor said my, my kids were on that beach as well. And if the shark killed a dog, kill that shark.
[00:19:30] Rebekah: Right. I think that it was interesting the way that they kind of shrunk the complexity in the movie of like, you kind of understanding how dangerous it is.
It was like in the book, it was so much more nebulous. And like drawn out, which obviously that’s kind of just the opportunity you have writing the book rather than trying to fit stuff in a film, right? It’s an hour and a
[00:19:51] Tim: half, right? It’s like just over 90 minutes,
[00:19:54] Rebekah: but I feel like it was just interesting to see how they shrunk it down.
And I thought the Alex being on the flow, like when I loved the thing where the mayor made one of his, like, uh, what, what are they called the men, men, um,
[00:20:09] Tim: there’s a, another term they use as well.
[00:20:12] Rebekah: Yeah, but I thought it was a really effective for him to be like, Hey, people don’t want to swim. You got to go.
And so he like gets in the water and everybody goes, whereas in the book, it was like still several days before the July 4th holiday, they start on July 1st. And so there’s like this like rush to get things reopened and stuff like that. And so I think that it was just really interesting how they did that.
But I thought Alex’s death was a lot more. Yeah,
[00:20:38] Josiah: well, in the book, a police deputy, Hendricks, I think, comes to the police station after Alex’s murder and Brody, the kind of the main character, was attempting to stave off the, the New York Times reporter. And during that conversation is when Hendrix lets the chief know of a shark attack.
And this was one of my favorite parts of the book, where Brody says, I know, I know, the little boy died, or something like that. And Hendrix says, No, it was some old guy. And it’s like, oh my goodness, the shark killed two people right after another. It’s like, to me, that upped the stakes in a really cool way of, this is not a one, one death per day.
This is not a one murder per chapter type shark. The shark is attacking indiscriminately, quickly, until you close down the beach. And that, Drove the point home for me in the book, and they didn’t do that in the movie, which is fine. I think they did something different and it worked. The
[00:21:48] Tim: film did another death.
Remember after, after this stuff with Alex and I’ll know they’re getting everybody back onto the shore, they noticed that the shark goes into the, what they call the pond, which is an inlet, um, where it’s safer for everyone and attacks. gets ready to attack a raft full of boys and there’s a guy in a canoe that actually ends up being killed in that.
That’s part of that same episode. Oh, the guy in the canoe dies, doesn’t he?
[00:22:19] Rebekah: So is that to be the old man, like,
[00:22:21] Tim: from the book? I think it’s, I think it’s to ramp up the, you know, Josiah was talking about the fact that these two deaths kind of ramp up the, the desperateness. This is two attacks in the same day and that sort of thing.
And I think it’s that same, it’s the vehicle they use to get to that same point.
[00:22:40] Rebekah: Does that guy die?
[00:22:41] Tim: We see his leg go to the bottom of the water.
[00:22:44] Rebekah: Is that near when Brody’s wife thinks that their son is about to die?
[00:22:48] Tim: Yeah, because his son is, his son was, his son is one of the boys in the raft.
[00:22:52] Rebekah: Yeah, so they, basically the takeaway is they reworked the, the order of deaths and how they worked to kind of lead into the beaches being closed or not closed and all that stuff.
And
[00:23:04] Josiah: ramp up the danger. Again,
[00:23:06] Rebekah: I liked, I personally thought that the movie did a good job with it.
[00:23:10] Josiah: Yeah, that was, that happened to be my favorite scene in the book. And I think the film just did something different that wasn’t my favorite scene in the movie. So. I was also thinking about Alex the Little Boy, who was killed by the shark in both book and film.
In the film, also, Alex’s mother offers a cash reward for catching the shark, which leads to the capture of a tiger shark that is not the great white that we know as Jaws. The book doesn’t have any such reward mentioned. There is sort of less plot around that area in the book, uh, in the book, Quint is hired by Brody at a paid rate to help capture the shark much later in the story, whereas in the movie, Quint has one scene early on, let me think, I think it’s when, Alex is first killed and the mother offers the reward, it’s like 3, 000.
Quint once at a meeting, he’s in the, it’s a little bit of a cliche, but it’s also kind of epic, uh, and savage. And Quint’s at the back of the room and says, I’ll find your shark for 3, 000, but I’ll kill it for 10, 000. And so it’s much later in the book when he is introduced, so I think that was a very good film change.
[00:24:34] Rebekah: I looked down at the audio book timing and it was almost exactly 75 percent of the way in the book that we first meet him, which I thought was kind of wild. Wow.
[00:24:42] Tim: Another one of the changes in the plot and timeline, Sheriff Brody seeks out Ben Gardner’s boat with a deputy, not with Hooper as in the film.
Uh, they retrieved a shark, a shark tooth in the book. In the film, it was Hooper, however, and he went diving. It was after dark. He went diving to see why the boat was there. You know, was partially sunk and looked like it had been destroyed. And he finds the shark tooth, but he drops it when Ben Gardner’s face pops into the hole, dead face pops into the hole.
Great musical cue there. Super effective in the film.
[00:25:21] Rebekah: I think that this part and some of the additional things we want to say, I want to just clarify something character wise, um, instead of waiting to get there. So, um, in the book, they have a journalist, Terry Meadows, who is like the local, uh, editor in chief of their local paper.
And they have Matthew Hooper, who’s the scientist. We’ll talk a little bit more about them in general later. However, The film kind of combines some features of the journalist with like who Hooper is, and they change the character of Hooper quite a bit. And so in the film, Mayor, or sorry, uh, in the film, Brody and Hooper are kind of like paired up on the same page.
Like they’re, they’re trying to like find the shark, save the townspeople, whatever. In the, in the book, Hooper and Brody are. Let’s just say very much at odds. We haven’t quite gotten there yet. They’re very much at odds and Meadows is actually the person who kind of works with Brody to expose some of this stuff and try to help him in his efforts to get the shark exposed.
So I just wanted to say that because, um, there’s a reason that like Brody was not with Hooper to look for Ben Gardner, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:26:28] Donna: Um, but they crunch the timeline and take out this whole day of shopping for Ellen. Uh, and she meets Hooper out on this shopping trip, whatever, and makes a connection with him from her past.
She plans a big dinner party, has family, and has some couples in, and, and, uh, invites him. The Hoopers, the Meadows, invites Hooper, the Meadows, and Daisy Wicker at Brody’s request to bring in a female for Hooper to, to pair up with maybe, so he doesn’t feel like a fifth wheel. Um, so that’s kind of a, a lengthy thing in the book.
Her
[00:27:09] Rebekah: shopping
[00:27:10] Donna: day was
[00:27:10] Rebekah: the first point in the book that I was like, What is going on? I’ve got so like, oh my gosh.
[00:27:16] Donna: It was very superfluous to flow of everything. 100%.
[00:27:21] Rebekah: The stuff in the book with Daisy Wicker was really funny to me because Brody was just so convinced that he would get Hooper to hook up with her.
He even sent Hooper to take Daisy home after their dinner party. And Turns out Daisy Wicker is a lesbian and she is currently living with her partner and had zero interest, uh, in Hooper whatsoever. So then I said, you know, this, her shopping trip and the kind of dinner party at that point, the book loses me.
Cause it’s up to this point, I’m kind of reading the book going, Oh my gosh, I like this. Like, it’s really interesting. There’s a lot more depth. Like a lot is going on that I find very fascinating. Then it gets boring. Then it gets like, Pornographic. So Ellen, who is a completely different character than in the film, uh, Ellen in the book is, you know, I’ll, I’ll just say this.
Ellen in the book grew up in a rich family. They spent their summers in Amity. That’s like how she met Brody. And they kind of develop this whole subplot around her being really bitter about being not poor, but like middle class and all of this stuff. And so she’s kind of obnoxious. She’s like clearly kind of a snob.
And earlier in the book, she kind of seems to proposition Hooper when she meets him out on that shopping trip. So they have the dinner party. The next morning, Ellen in the book wakes up and decides to lie to her husband and set up a date with Hooper out in some place where nobody’s ever seen them. They end up going to a hotel, having an affair.
And then like, there’s this whole thing going on throughout the book that like the rest of the book where Brody kind of suspects what happens and he starts to hate Hooper even more and Hooper acts really defensively because he should, because he slept with his wife. It is literally, I was like. I was angry when I started listening to this part of the book, I started texting everybody like, are you in chapter six or eight or whatever it is.
I was like really upset. Yeah. Chapter eight. I was very upset because it just, I mean, first of all, like I said, it had just like kind of taking you out of the plot of the shark is terrorizing the town. And then not only does it bore you, then it goes into this. I was so upset.
[00:29:33] Donna: And it makes so much more sense in the movie.
That Brody and Hooper band together, because, and I realize other plots, subplots were written around it, but it just made more sense. Yeah, you see these two guys band together, they’re like comrades at arms, you know, that kind of thing. So, good choice for editing, for sure.
[00:29:54] Tim: In the novel, Cooper attempts to convince Brody that opening the beaches for July 4th is the right call, uh, but in the film it shows that they are on the same page as Rebecca had said before, um, the change, the changes to the plot, I think, in the movie make for a much cleaner It allows Hooper and Brody to be comrades, uh, and to be able to work together.
Um, Brody doesn’t, doesn’t like boats. He doesn’t like the water. Um, I, I like the changes that were made for the film. I think it’s a lot cleaner. Rather than all the other subplots where they would be opposed to one another or, you know, suspicious of one another.
[00:30:39] Donna: Another change from book to film that goes along with what Tim just said, it made things a lot cleaner.
There was a scene in the book where, one of us has mentioned there was some mob connection going on and And some stuff like that and different, um, hints to people in the background trying to get this person and that person and, and scare tactics and that kind of thing. There’s this scene in the book when a friend of Vaughn’s, and it wasn’t really ever a hundred percent clarified that it was his friend, but it pretty much sounds like it.
goes into the yard, a brody’s yard, his young son is standing there, he pi this man picks up one of their cats, twists the cat’s neck until it breaks in front of the boy, and just drops the cat in the ya in the yard. in front of the boy and, and, um, makes a statement to him about being subtle. And that’s how they tied it back to Vaughn because Vaughn had said that.
Doesn’t
[00:31:42] Rebekah: he say, he like quotes him. Yeah. Yeah. It’s like it, he said, it’s like a direct quote from what Vaughn had said earlier.
[00:31:49] Donna: Something about subtlety or whatever. But yeah, it was, it was a quote of Vaughn’s. And, um, they, Brody comes home and, and takes care of the, of the animal and then he goes back to Vaughn and, and like goes after him and, you know, you ever do this again, blah, blah, blah.
You know, so it was this little snippet in the snippet section in the book that was like, okay. And again, killing animals in movies is a huge. risk to take that it’s just, you just hardly ever see it. So it was a smart, I thought it was a smart edit. But when you read through it in the book, it’s like, oh brutal.
Um, right in front of his son, you know, I thought that was, that was pretty sad.
[00:32:32] Rebekah: I just to clarify like how the kind of timeline of that, it’s very quick. So when Hooper is in the room at the police station, Saying he agrees like let’s open the beaches on July 4th in the book in the film Like I said, they kind of take out Meadows’s character the editor in chief guy So Meadows is the one in the book telling Brody like no, you shouldn’t open them Like I agree with you Meadows helps him find out what happened to Mayor Vaughn Mayor Vaughn, like, listens over a call between Hooper, er, sorry, between Brody and the editor dude Meadows, where Meadows is explaining all of this stuff, Vaughn freaks out, kicks out all of the other councilmen people, and then basically Brody says, well fine, you, you can fire me, but I’m going to close the beaches, and he’s like going through all this stuff.
When Brody gets home that night from work, is when this thing with the cat happens, and then within, like, 24 hours, Vaughn comes. to tell Ellen, Brody’s wife, that he’s leaving town. He says, there’s nothing here for me anymore. And then he like hits on her and says that he, they could have made a great pair because he was rich.
And she, she had been rich and like, he could have made a good life for her. Is his wife even dead? Like, I, I think his wife’s alive in the book. It was, yeah, it was
[00:33:48] Tim: very, very bizarre. She calls Brody to come and talk to him because they were supposedly friends for a long time.
[00:33:55] Rebekah: So wild. Yeah. So anyway, that’s kind of all like really crunched.
Like it goes from, you know, Mayor Vaughn being like in charge, trying to get all this stuff to happen within like a day. Now he literally is leaving town because of everything happening. And then from that point, it’s really just a back to about the shark. Honestly, in my opinion, you could have cut. All of it.
Like, from when Ellen goes on her shopping trip to when Vaughn decides to leave town. Like, all of that just felt like fluff. I would have rather the book been shorter.
[00:34:23] Tim: Yeah. During the final confrontations with the Great White, the book, both Quint and Hooper die. Hooper in his shark cage trying to lure the beast and Quint dragged into the water when his foot catches a harpoon rope.
Uh, catches on a harpoon rope. The film shows Hooper escaping by hiding underwater. to Brody kills the fish, although Quint does die in the fight, uh, this time being eaten by the shark. So there’s some, there’s a good bit of, here again, cleaner, it’s tighter, and because you haven’t made, um, Brody and Hooper, You’re excited that he lives as well.
So I think, I think those were all really, really good wives
[00:35:08] Josiah: changes. I liked in the book, Hooper down in the shark cage. I thought it was, I’ve heard some people call this sort of thing, a vibe check. Where. You suddenly change the mood and it’s, it’s very, it’s a very compelling scene where I suddenly felt, oh, I’m underwater.
I thought it was a nice thing and, and correct me if I’m wrong, correct me if I’m wrong, but when Hooper’s death, is it, am I imagining, this is so stupid. Did I imagine that his death is a little mellow?
[00:35:39] Rebekah: I think, like, Brody reflects on, like, his corpse falling down into the water, but I feel like it was kind of mellow in the book.
It didn’t actually feel as, like, um, high stakes as, uh, the Quint death.
[00:35:51] Josiah: It was a very interesting vibe to be like, Okay, I’m down here with the shark. I finally get to behold its beauty. The, the sound reverberation underwater, the light refraction, I felt it all. I felt like maybe this was me interpreting it my own way, but I felt like Hooper dying by this shark was how he would have wanted to go as a shark studier.
He’s like, well, Oh, seeing this, it’s this is all I ever wanted to see. And in the film, him surviving is heartwarming, but stupid that he was just able to swim away from a shark.
[00:36:34] Tim: But he hides, he hides in a reef or something where, where the shark can’t see him. Get to sure that’s that’s how he hides. Well, I remember him hiding behind seaweed.
That’s what I remember. There’s a lot of characterization differences as well. You know, the stuff that Rebecca was talking about with, you know, Trist and the relationship between Hooper and Brody as well. In the book, Brody has been on the island. He’s from Amity Island. I’ve been a police officer there for quite some time, and his wife was one of the summer people that met him there when she was 21, uh, on vacation with her family.
But the film, uh, the film shows them moving from New York City. Uh, Brody doesn’t like an island, and he said it doesn’t look like an island as long as you don’t look at the water, or if you’re not out in the, out in the water, you can just pretend that I’m on land. So there’s a whole lot of things that That leads to, you know, you don’t have to, you know, she wasn’t one of those summer come to the island people that leads to some of the other parts of her plot.
Thank God, I’m so glad they cut that. Yeah, he is, Brody is afraid of the water. Um, but he’s not an Islander. And so he’s an outsider and the mayor kind of brings that up. You know, you’re not from here. You don’t know how this works. If this summer doesn’t go well, the whole winter time, most people are on government assistance and all that kind of stuff.
So
[00:38:08] Donna: a very small bit, um, Brody and Ellen have three children in the book version. Not to, um, the oldest one is. It’s like pre teen or teen, old enough to have like a summer job, he mows lawns and makes a little extra money. In the film, they just have two. They’re younger. I like the fact that they have both the boys younger.
Because it adds a little bit of tension with them once they realize the shark’s out there. It’s just a little bit of added anxiousness for the mom and the dad. And the little boy looks up to his brother and wants to be where he’s at. So you, it, they use it well. And so I thought that was a, I thought that was a good change.
[00:38:52] Tim: One of the cute scenes in the film for me, Is when the mom, Ellen, is talking to Brody about how scared he is of the shark and he doesn’t want to let their, their son go and sail in his new, uh, sailboat that he got for his birthday and, you know, she’s, you know, he’s scared of all of that and through their conversation, she’s trying to convince him that it should be okay, he’s just going to go in the estuary, the pond, they call it, Um, and it’s isolated somewhat from the ocean and, uh, then he says something about, about the shark and, and she yells outside and tells the sun, you’re not getting in the water.
You know, so very quickly, I thought that was very convinced her, you know, that was just one of those scenes where she’s trying to convince him not to be so uptight about it. And then suddenly she’s so uptight about it. She has that funny line. I
[00:39:45] Rebekah: thought it was, I liked the way that they changed the plot, where Brody and Ellen were like, they were a central part of the plot, similar to the book, but completely rewritten.
And I like that, like, their child was like in danger at one point, because that never happens in the book. In the book, their children are like props. They’re just completely irrelevant, other than the fact that they exist. And so I like that. I was also going to say I loved Ellen in the film. Like, I was so surprised by how much I disliked her in the book, and so I really liked her.
[00:40:18] Donna: The scene where Brody’s upset at the house and he’s about to lose it before things really start to show some possibility of, of resolution. And the little boy comes to him and he’s concerned about him and they have this real close face to face little love thing there where the little boy’s face, I mean that was captured.
Really well. I am that one little bitty scene. I’m always moved by that because he totally brings Brody back kind of to reality and I need you to be dad. I, you know, I don’t know why you’re upset and I don’t want you to be. And I think that I thought that was a great thing for Spielberg to put in there.
And I have like up and down feelings about Spielberg films. And so little things like that. Make me like him a little bit more because it just, it was just a little touching thing that took 30, 40 seconds, but it softened things down for you. And kind of gave you a breather in the midst of all the tension.
[00:41:21] Josiah: Well, in the book, I wanted to talk about the difference between Matthew Hooper’s appearance there versus in the movie and how he is as a character in the book. He’s a handsome, tanned, taller than Brody, rich boy. But in the film, he’s average looking. He’s nerdy. He is a little quirky. He, we find out later that Ellen in the book dated his older brother, David, as a young woman.
And Hooper, remembered her. He was a child at the time. The Hooper of the book is, uh, rich, like in the film, but more snobby. He’s also suave and he’s attractive to Ellen, as we’ve talked about them having an affair in the middle of the book for some reason.
[00:42:10] Rebekah: Yes.
[00:42:11] Josiah: I wanted to say that when I saw Richard Drive, I don’t think I’ve ever seen, I saw Mr.
Holland’s opus. Which is him 20 years after this, but I, I had never seen Richard Dreyfuss in a younger role. And I thought, you know what? He is, he is my typecast. And so now I need to look up more Richard Dreyfuss films. I don’t know if you believe me. I see it. I think I could have played Hooper. I’m
[00:42:39] Donna: embarrassed.
I’m, one, I’m reminded that, again, I’m a her, uh, a herrible, I’m a herrible porn addict. I’m a horrible parent, uh, I’m a horrible parent for not having you all watch things like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which is the, at the beginning of the sci fi films that made everything we see today possible.
I mean, I cannot please say that you’ve seen it and I just didn’t know it. What movie? Close Encounters of the Third Kind. No, I’ve It’s No. It sounds like a B movie you’d see on, you know, whatever. No, it is It was Steven Spielberg’s follow up to
[00:43:23] Josiah: Jaws, wasn’t it?
[00:43:24] Donna: I’ve seen the B movie. Oh, no. So, let’s, let’s say then, uh, listeners, we’ll let you in on our, our plans.
We’re gonna spend spring break together in March. Let’s, let’s promise to watch Close Encounters. Uh, it’s, it’s iconic and I think we should, should do it together. But Richard Dreyfuss is in that after this movie, but Dad and I know, and I already know you’re not going to know the answer because you didn’t know Richard Dreyfuss.
He was in one big movie before Jaws as a younger man. Oh, I
[00:43:54] Josiah: think I do know. I think I, cause I looked him up on Wikipedia. Yeah. Um, cause I was interested in, okay, what sorts of things did he do? Cause those are the sorts of roles that I could probably do.
[00:44:06] Donna: You would love them.
[00:44:07] Josiah: I feel like I’m a 50 years later Richard Dreyfuss type.
[00:44:11] Donna: Yeah.
[00:44:11] Josiah: Uh, that’s what I should maybe go for.
[00:44:13] Donna: Was it,
[00:44:14] Josiah: was it uh, George Lucas first film?
[00:44:17] Donna: Yes, I, I think. I don’t know who George Lucas is. Yes, you do. He’s Star Wars with Steven Spielberg. Oh, Star Wars 2. Oh
[00:44:24] Josiah: my goodness. Got it. Josh, keep that in. My brain did not put that together. We just lost all of our credibility.
[00:44:30] Rebekah: I’m so sorry, everyone. We are worst parents ever.
[00:44:35] Josiah: We are worst parents. I don’t know who George Lucas is, she said.
[00:44:38] Rebekah: I didn’t connect it. Okay, wait, but do I know this answer too? Because I had just pulled up a Google thing of like all Richard Dreyfuss movies. So I was looking at the very early ones. You’re cheating.
Sorry, I use
[00:44:48] Josiah: Google for my job. Did you say, I think I know this because I Googled it.
[00:44:53] Rebekah: Well, he was in seven movies before Jaws, but she said he was in one big movie, and I’m guessing it’s The Graduate because it’s the only of the seven movies that I’ve ever heard of.
[00:45:02] Donna: He wasn’t in The Graduate.
[00:45:06] Rebekah: The Graduate is!
How would I know if he’s in it? The
[00:45:09] Josiah: Graduate was Dustin Hoffman’s first big film.
[00:45:14] Rebekah: I’m really sorry. Okay, so which thing are you talking about? TJ, what were you gonna say then? The
[00:45:20] Josiah: movie American Graffiti.
[00:45:22] Donna: Yeah. What is American Graffiti? Again, you should have seen it. Oh, Lord. It’s, it’s, it’s
[00:45:27] Josiah: George Lucas only big film before Star Wars, and it had Harrison Ford in it, and it was a fifties nostalgia bait movie, completely unlike Star Wars.
[00:45:39] Rebekah: Oh, yeah. Um, the last character thing we did notice, uh, from book to film was, in the book, there’s a character named Minnie. She’s the headmistress of the post office. Uh, and she is omitted from the film. So Minnie is essentially like very, they call her preternatural, like she’s familiar with the preternatural.
Yeah. And so, um, at first she’s kind of introduced as a crazy person. And then as the shark continues targeting Amity in the book, they kind of, I think Brody at one point is like, I don’t understand, like sharks don’t normally do this, right? Like, why is the shark targeting our specific spot, but no other?
or anything else. And so then
[00:46:21] Tim: when it says God, many becomes God,
[00:46:24] Rebekah: many becomes a person who’s like, maybe quote onto something as it turns out, like that she kind of had an idea as to the more preternatural or supernatural cause of, uh, the shark attack.
[00:46:37] Donna: Let’s look at a little basic info book released in February of 1974.
[00:46:42] Rebekah: Which
[00:46:42] Donna: is
[00:46:43] Rebekah: exactly 50 years ago from when we are recording this episode, right? Oh my gosh. You would
[00:46:49] Donna: think we would have, you know, waited till the 50th anniversary of the movie, but we didn’t. We wanted the 50th anniversary of the book because the name of our podcast is The Book is Better. You know, I agree with that a lot, but
[00:47:05] Rebekah: I know I find that we agree with that less and less than I thought we would.
[00:47:09] Donna: Movie release was a summer blockbuster, June 20, 75. I was 14. Um, the book rating 3. 96 out of five. There were a lot of, uh, I don’t have a lot of details about this, but there were a lot of opposing. Views on the book. There were people, several, uh, several reviewers, critics were like, it’s, they thought the characters were like,
[00:47:33] Tim: I
[00:47:33] Josiah: mean, the characters were bluff, right?
[00:47:36] Tim: According to Wikipedia, uh, many book reviews were scathing. But others were more positive. Here’s, here’s a few of them. None of the humans are particularly likable or interesting as the rooting for the shark. Um, well, even Spielberg said when he read the book, he was rooting for the shark. Another one said cliche and crude literary calculation.
[00:48:00] Josiah: Ethically speaking, when Steven Spielberg and the producers would have sent book copies to influencers, they would They would not have ethically asked them to give it a good review necessarily. So, I think it’s interesting to think that some of the negative reviews could have come from people who Steven and the producers sent the book to.
Yeah,
[00:48:23] Donna: movie rating, Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 97%. Production cost, seven million dollars. That’s a pretty tight, tight budget to work on. I think it was
[00:48:32] Josiah: probably like double, double what they,
[00:48:36] Donna: They only paid extras in Martha’s Vineyard, 64 each to run out and scream around the beach.
[00:48:43] Rebekah: That’s so good. Hey, how much is 7 million in 1975 worth today?
[00:48:50] Tim: We don’t know. Is it 20 million? I would guess it’s 28.
[00:48:53] Donna: Okay.
[00:48:54] Tim: Anybody else? 20 million.
[00:48:56] Donna: 737 billion dollars.
[00:49:01] Rebekah: Mom’s closer. No. The answer is 41. 3 million dollars. Yeah. In 2024. So that’s, today, that would be a relatively inexpensive movie, right? Yes. Like, or maybe average, I
[00:49:12] Josiah: guess. Yes. But also, they were anticipating this to be, Uh, a very low performing like, Oh, just something that people can go to see during the summer.
No one goes to see movies during the summer. It was the first summer blockbuster. Rebecca, you know this. You love history.
[00:49:29] Rebekah: I love history. It’s my favorite. Did you know
[00:49:32] Josiah: Jaws invented the summer blockbuster?
[00:49:34] Donna: Dad told me that. Production cost 7 million. The opening weekend. was 7, 761, 513. But opening weekend, it was only on 490 screens in the U.
S. Within 11 weeks, so within three months, it was the highest grossing film of all time at that time.
[00:49:57] Rebekah: There was a 2022 re release in 3D approved by Steven Spielberg. I did not go see it when it re released in the theater. I kind of wish I had. I didn’t realize this happened. Um, but that made about like a little over six million dollars for the re release as well, so.
Not like a ton, but for a re release of almost 50 years later, it’s pretty cool.
[00:50:18] Tim: Although most of the film was shot in, uh, on Martha’s Vineyard, uh, there are two, two scenes that weren’t, two particular scenes. The scene where Hooper goes down in the cage, was shot in Australia because with the tight timeline of production he had to get in the water and the Martha’s Vineyard things could have been shot when it was colder weather, cooler weather, but it would be hard to be down under.
But then after the film had wrapped shooting, Spielberg had a new idea. And thus comes the scene where Hooper goes down to see the, the mostly sunken boat, uh, and the head pops out. And most of that scene was filmed in a pool.
[00:51:05] Josiah: Okay, well, I think that him rooting for the shark, May or may not have been on purpose.
Peter Benchley, the author, was fascinated with sharks since he was young, fishing with his dad in Nantucket. According to articles written about him, the story was further inspired after reading a 1964 account of a shark captured in Montauk, New York.
[00:51:30] Rebekah: It’s interesting. I hadn’t thought of that until you just said it, but maybe it was on purpose that we hated everybody in
[00:51:35] Josiah: the book.
Yeah, no. Oh, I think he did work hard to make the characters unlikable. I think of Jean Paul Sartre’s, uh, Hell is the People You Spend Life With or something like that. That is kind of what I got from Jaws the book. Very different than the movie.
[00:51:50] Rebekah: Yeah, so eventually ended up really regretting the way that Jaws portrayed sharks and how it influenced the way people treat sharks in the real world.
So I think I read some stuff that like after Jaws, even though obviously it’s a movie, it’s a piece of fiction, um, there was a very strong uptick in like, uh, shark hunting and people would go and purposefully hunt down sharks to kill them. And it was, you know, largely based on what they thought would happen.
Now, Benchley, at the time, believed, this was like a common, uh, myth, I guess, that great white sharks would target human victims. And so it was kind of widely accepted for a long time that great whites would do that. As it turns out, that’s not true. That’s not actually the case. So Benchley ended up spending a lot of the later part of his life, um, trying to reverse some of those things and advocating for better treatment of sharks.
He said early in the 2000s, a couple of years before he died, quote, I couldn’t write Jaws today. The extensive new knowledge of sharks would make it impossible for me to create in good conscience, a villain of the magnitude and malignity of the original end quote. I thought that was really interesting, because it did, like, people still are kind of afraid of shark attacks, despite the fact that they don’t generally target human beings.
[00:53:03] Tim: But I don’t want to be mistaken for their normal food either. That doesn’t really make me feel a whole lot better. Oh, they mistake you for a particular kind of fish, you know, but they still ate off your legs. Spielberg, apparently, named the mechanical shark Bruce, uh, after his lawyer. Interesting. In the 2003 film Finding Nemo, the shark was named Bruce, reportedly as an homage to the mech shark in Jaws.
[00:53:38] Donna: Fish
[00:53:38] Rebekah: are friends, not
[00:53:40] Tim: food.
[00:53:41] Rebekah: Yes. So, another thing that I always loved, obviously, about Jaws, That everybody knows is the iconic, uh, and so I, uh, I thought it was funny that, uh, on IMDb we found that when John Williams played the score for Steven Spielberg, he laughed and Spielberg said, that’s funny, John, really, but what did you really have in mind for the theme of jaws?
They ended up using it. And Spielberg said that without that score, the film would have been only half as successful. And according to Williams, I mean, John Williams. is, you know, the man, he believes that Jaws jumpstarted Spielberg’s career. And so, like, without that song, that would not have been possible.
I’m
[00:54:22] Tim: not sure anybody realized how important American graffiti was until after he produced Jaws and later things. Yeah, they went back and said, Oh, this one was good, too.
[00:54:33] Donna: Oh, interesting. I did not realize he is 92 years old. Oh,
[00:54:37] Josiah: wow. He was composing in the 50s.
[00:54:39] Donna: Music is everything for me. It affects me. More than anything else that I encounter in my life and to see I went in and looked at John Williams body of work and just started reading and to see the things that he’s written scores for and realizing what impacts those movies had on my life.
And then I saw he was 92, I sat and wept yesterday realizing he’s not, he’s not immortal. And there are other great composers coming after him. I mean, there are great composers out there. And I would say my son is coming after him and is a great composer. Uh, but I will say I was so shaken by that, like just realizing the things that he did And, um, he received five Academy Awards for Best Original Score, and one of them was for Jaws.
And, uh, so I thought, nod to John Williams. I’m just awed by, by what he’s done in his career.
[00:55:44] Rebekah: The
[00:55:44] Donna: last score
[00:55:45] Rebekah: was for the new Indiana Jones, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. And you said, like you were talking about this and the thing that came to my mind is there already has been or will be a last John Williams score.
And that is
[00:55:59] Josiah: insane.
[00:56:01] Donna: And I really would hope it’s not the last Indiana Jones movie. Oh, you know, you’re not wrong. If you have a chance to listen to Jaws again. You can not watch and just listen to the music that’s going on. It’s really some pillar, uh, uh, music that’s backing this up. Fantastic. And it does move, it will move you emotionally without watching if you, if you do it, I think.
But in the first scene, there’s a great clarinet part and I was a clarinettist in, uh, high school and college. There’s a great clarinet part, and Spielberg played it, he was first clarinet, uh, he asked if he could do that when John recorded it with the orchestra.
[00:56:43] Josiah: One thing that I have learned about writing is that if you need something to land, if you need a big reaction from the audience, if you want the audience to know that something is a big deal, give them time to react to it.
[00:57:00] Donna: Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
[00:57:01] Josiah: And how do you make the, how do you give them time to react to it? Make the characters react to it. Make them take time out of the busy plot to react to what’s happening. And whenever the shark popped out of the water and Brody backed away, as a filmgoer, not in a theater of a bunch of people screaming, I thought, oh, Brody is, Brody is dumbstruck by this.
He is horrified to the point that he, he can’t even say guys, there’s a shark over there. He realizes how terrifying it is. And so I feel that so I can react to it. And it leads up to a big moment. You’re going to need a bigger boat. Just seems perfect to round off our trivia. I thought it would be fun to mention some.
Alternative titles for Jaws that the author was considering. So here, here’s some interesting ones. You have Great White, which I thought would have been okay. I think Jaws is iconic. He made the right choice, but Great White is a pretty good one. Dark Water. I liked some that I think maybe weren’t as good.
The Visitor to Shimo, The Shark of Shimo, The Beast of Shimo, The Fish of Shimo.
[00:58:19] Rebekah: What is
[00:58:19] Josiah: shimmo? It says shimmo. That might have been what it was called before. Amity is my best guess, but you can check. There’s also the fish, haunt, horror, the coming, throwback, Leviathan rising. I don’t,
[00:58:36] Rebekah: I like that
[00:58:36] Josiah: one. Yeah.
I’m glad he
[00:58:37] Rebekah: didn’t use it, but
[00:58:38] Josiah: yeah. I don’t know if this one is a title or a note, but he just writes one of these lines, Peter Ginkgo. Uh, there’s the edge of gloom. There’s ma MAW, so that’s similar to Jaws. The white All right here. The white . I’m really glad he didn’t go with that one. White evil, white Menace,
Oh gosh. Yeah. These were just some of the. Other titles that were considered by the author and he only decided 20 minutes before sending it, which I think is is mood
[00:59:13] Rebekah: All right. Well, I think it’s time to give our final verdicts who wants to go first is was the book really better?
[00:59:18] Donna: I’ll go first I was gonna say I like some parts of the book think I kind of had a love hate relationship with it because of some of the things we’ve, we’ve remarked on.
I thought the section with, with Ellen and the way that changed, that was weird for me. And so, Quint and Hooper and Brody were, were, I liked what he did with their characters, the scary parts. They were, they were tense, you know, scary, that kind of thing. So I thought that he achieved some good things with the book, but I’m gonna go with the movie on this one.
I have a fond memory of watching it. When it first came out on HBO, we didn’t go to the theater when I was young. When it came out on HBO, my family had just actually gotten HBO on our television, and we were poor grown ups, so that was a massive deal for us. And Jaws was coming on, was their Saturday night feature, just before the movie came on.
A guy called me and he was my high school boyfriend for the next six years. And so all that’s tied, so I’ve got memories tied around Jaws. So Joe, if you happen to listen to our podcast, nod to you, man. Um, you and, you and a shark, uh, were great, great, lovely memories for me. Uh, 10th grade. So, yeah, I’m gonna go with the movie on this one.
[01:00:40] Josiah: Certainly happily married now to Tim.
[01:00:43] Donna: Oh, did I need to qualify that with the two of you? I’m sorry. I
[01:00:47] Josiah: think Joe already knows it. No, it, no, you were giving me big Ellen vibes, book Ellen vibes there.
[01:00:54] Donna: Oh my gosh, now I’m Facebook and remind him he needs to listen to this episode. He’ll get a huge kick out of that.
[01:01:04] Josiah: Well, I think the movie is clearly better. It’s a classic. It invented multiple cinematic genres, if you will. Learning about this film with both Steven Spielberg accidentally hiding the shark because of mechanical problems, And thinking that John Williams score was a joke, I’m thinking, why is Steven Spielberg a famous director?
He’s, he’s stumbling into all these great successes. He’s learned. Yes, and we need to give young people opportunities to learn like we, like Steven Spielberg got. Yeah. Anyway, the uh, I thought the film beautifully illustrated, it wasn’t a shark that we were scared of for most of the film. It was being in the water, not being able to see underneath the water was terrifying.
And the, the book had tense sections, but I found it similar to the Die Hard book, where Die Hard’s book was so much more cynical and depressing compared to the movie. And I think that the author of Jaws, the book, was going for a purposefully cynical approach, but the movie Going for, there are clear good guys, clear bad guys, and the good guys win at the end of the day.
There’s more good guys, and there’s more living good guys at the end of the movie. I think all of that makes for just a more enjoyable experience, while Steven Spielberg also used, whether accidentally or on purpose, used his art to create a visual masterpiece. Even though, oh, it’s a cliche that’s everything’s so happy good, you get the happy good times, and you get the stronger artistic vision.
So overall, the movie was definitely better than the book in this case.
[01:02:49] Rebekah: So I really enjoyed the first, I don’t know, third ish of the book. Um, I thought, okay, this is going to be an instance where I actually think the book is better again, you know, and pretty consistently. And then we got to Ellen’s shopping day and then the dinner party.
And I thought, Okay, I don’t know what happened, but we were in the middle of an interesting story, and then it became really boring. At that point, I thought, okay, well, maybe they’re, they’re gonna get back on track. Then we have this whole subplot about Ellen having an affair with Hooper. And honestly, it was at that point where I just lost total interest in the book.
I was so angry. I hated at the dinner party that even Brody, who in the movie is like a very good person, like you’re rooting for him. He is like the hero. Um, Brody is kind of like hitting on the girl, Daisy Wicker. And like, it just, all of it just completely fell apart for me. And again, as discussed, obviously the.
The characters in this aspect, the fact that they were unlikable wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, um, because it was supposed to be more about the shark. But I thought that that was a kind of a, not a good departure. And then from then on, I had to kind of go, okay, I have to finish this book for the podcast.
Like, I just didn’t really want to read it anymore. Um, so I was, I was disappointed in that in general. The movie kept you interested, I liked so much of how they reworked the timeline and how they kind of reduced certain things and switched characters around. I thought, for me, I just purred so much watching a movie about people that I was like rooting for and cared about and, and things like that.
Obviously the movie is iconic and in that way, like, you know, I don’t know a lot of people who have read Jaws, but I know a lot of people who have seen it. And even our, you know, 20 year old. All of our surrogate kids, like, we sat and watched this movie when we were at the cabin last weekend with you guys.
So, like, even they found it really interesting. So, I think it’s pretty clear in this case that the film was better and I’m really happy about it.
[01:04:51] Josiah: And I think some people in this instance would reference nostalgia or something, but Rebecca, you and I both read the book before we saw the film, right?
[01:05:00] Rebekah: Yeah, I saw the film like last year for the first time.
I read the book last week.
[01:05:04] Josiah: Oh, okay. I read the book and then I watched the film, so there was no nostalgia for me. Alrighty, well, I
[01:05:10] Tim: can close this part up. I saw the film in theaters. I read the book this year, so I had not, I had not read the book before either. But I’ve seen the film several times. I think that it stands the test of time as a film.
I think the book has a lot in it that would cause you to say, that’s a little cringe today, or that’s a little strange and, you know, other things like that. But I think the film holds up. I would say I like the film better. And I’m amazed at some of the things about the film. One that, you know, the shark didn’t work the way he was supposed to, which actually made him scarier.
I love the sound editing. There are times in the movie when the mood is supposed to be chaos, and I think the sound editing is so wonderful because today, a lot of times, if you want to hear the actors say their lines, everything else really gets quiet. But in those scenes, they’re talking over all of the chaos, and it just adds to that chaotic feel.
I think they did so much with, uh, with the score, and that is so iconic, duh duh duh duh, and you know something’s getting ready to happen, and I just think the movie really took concept and turned it into a really iconic film. I like the film better.
[01:06:32] Rebekah: Well there you have it folks, that is our review of Jaws the book adapted to film.
Film. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a five star rating or review. Those reviews help us a ton. You can find us online at bookisbetterpod just about everywhere. If you got some feedback, you have any questions or you have ideas for what you’d like us to cover in the future, email us bookisbetterpod at gmail.
com. Until then.