Welcome to You're Wrong about the podcast that occasionally does other podcasts and gives them to you. Yeah.

Is that what we're doing? We do them and then we give them to you.

So just a little intro here to tell everybody that Sarah has a fun new spinoff podcast where I talk about all the movies that I'm constantly bringing up here, but we don't have time to talk about it.

And also like dad issues, which are also interesting.

Thank you. Yeah, I sent you the pilot episode to listen to and listen to while you were riding your bike, which I'm very honored because bike riding time is sacred. Sacred bike riding time. Yes.

But yeah, it's really good. I mean, it's it's it's a podcast where Sarah and her friend Alex talk about movies and the depiction of dads in movies.

Yeah, I mean, I've only heard one episode, but it's extremely entertaining and extremely insightful and thoughtful and exactly what we would expect from Sarah Marshall, who's working on a book about the satanic panic.

Oh, yeah. Well, I guess, you know, first of all, if you don't feel like listening to a different show, I understand that because I am like deeply, deeply, deeply a creature of habit and familiarity. So if this feels like it would be uncanny, I got that. Sure. And if it doesn't feel like it would be uncanny, then I applaud you for being more receptive to change than I am sure.

And yeah, I guess this is a fun project that Alex and I started working on in July. We originally started a different project that we were calling Apocalypse Friends where we were like watching movies about the apocalypse. But in the end we were like, you know, I feel like we're out of the apocalypse phase and our end, like we're into the dad phase, we're into the dad phase.

It's like the first phase of an epidemic is apocalypse. And then dad, I guess it felt like something that made sense in the context of the relationship, because Alex and I have been friends for ten years.

I'm like one of the big themes and the things that we talk about and come back to is like our relationships with our dads, you know, and as an aspect of masculinity, too. And I feel like it has a lot in common with you're wrong about, because these are both shows where, like, for me, the main point is being able to find a structured way to talk to someone who matters to me about things that matter to me.

So it's another one of those. And so we did a first episode of our Jaws, and Alex's wife, Carolyn, is doing the editing and a lot of the music for the show. And it's like very beautiful and dreamy. And the music is great. Music is amazing.

So, yeah, it's just it's another thing I want to make for you. And I think that it's going to be funny sometimes and comforting sometimes and uncomfortable sometimes. And yeah, just adding on to the you're wrong about Cinematic Universe. Yes.

And it's good and fun and people should subscribe and put in their earbuds and get on their bicycles right now as they listen to your first episode.

It's very good on your bike and ride. Yeah. Yeah.

He won the Indianapolis. You know, singing Linda Lanisha, Lifeless Eyes Black, I got down, I. He comes out and seem to be living until he dies. Oh, hello. I'm Sarah Marshall. I have a podcast called You Wrong about and this is a new podcast I am doing with my friend Alex Steed. Yeah, we're going to talk about dads. Hello, everybody, I am the Alex Steed Sarah mentioned. I have a podcast called National Demystified.

I am so excited to co-host. Why are dads with her? Like she said, we are going to dive into all things dad, particularly our and maybe your complex relationship with fathers by spending time with some of our favorite media in taking it in through the dad lens.

We are not dads ourselves. We have known many dads. We were raised by dads and we're interested in dads. We want to talk about dads as a cultural institution, which is a really boring and stressful phrase. And so we're exploring dads through movies, movies that we grew up with, movies that are painful to watch, movies that are joyful to watch, movies that are both.

And of course, in trying to understand the dads in our lives, the good ones, the bad ones, nasty dads, sensitive dads, present ones, the absent ones, big dads, little dads, the shitty ones, the mean ones, the exceptional ones, whoever all kinds of dads.

We're going to try to better understand ourselves and, you know, get to the bottom of who and how and why we are sometimes we'll have guests and sometimes we won't. Whenever we can, we'll try to incorporate original music from our friends and their interpretations of music from whatever it is we're discussing today. We talk about Jaws. Jaws, of course, is Steven Spielberg's wildly popular 1975 adaptation of Peter Benchley's 1974 novel. The film stars Roy Scheider as a police chief.

Martin Brody, who has moved from New York City to the small beach town of Amity with his wife Ellen and their two sons. Richard Dreyfuss plays Matt Hooper, a wealthy and charming, self-funded marine biologist, which was evidently a thing with an interest in sharks.

And the great Robert Shore stars as Quint, a veteran of the Second World War. In a colorful career, fishermen. When a shark begins killing residents of the tourist town, the surviving residents, many of whom depend on the tourist economy, are resistant to acknowledge how bad the situation before them really is. Brody Hooper, Houben Quent eventually team up to confront the shark and each other on the water. As Sarah and I discuss, the film is about at least one literal dead Brody, and it's about other men who remind us of our respective dads sorting through their egos and masculinity while in pursuit of the shark.

OK, that's all the entry you need.

Let's do this jazzes and. This movie exists in your heart, but you revisited it's my summer movie, and I actually think that I keep it as a summer movie so that it stays special like Jurassic Park, you can watch any time of year. Jaws is like to me, so specifically. Attached to the experience of summer, and that reminds me of like, where did we go? There is a beach that you and I went to a couple of years ago where I was like being here is telling me that summer is happening.

Was it in Maine? I feel like I must have been mad. Yeah, it was. It was. Yeah. Because the only other state where we have hung out is Tennessee. No beaches.

This was a Beaky beach with the boardwalk and like those t shirts about how you hate your wife.

Oh, it was it was old Arcady you needed to say.

But yeah, I just I feel watching John's feels to me like, you know, like going someplace like Old Orchard Beach, the iconic summer things are happening and also where the plot is so totally used to the timeline of summer.

And then we have, you know, all this explicit language about. We can't have a panic on the Fourth of July like we are in as we record this, like the jazz micro season. I just always am aware of when it happens. I'm like, oh, it's cause time again, we're also in the jazz macro's season.

It struck me that we have talked a lot about Trump's response to coronavirus in the context of the mayor from Jaws. But I it's been it's been a while since I watched the movie, so I didn't fully realize that that's not the only parallel. It's like literally everything about this emergency and the way people respond to it. You know, people are trying to preserve their their, you know, economic prosperity at the at the risk of everyone's lives. I didn't realize that it's from top to bottom.

Actually, a parallel in when we talked about doing this, George was obviously on the top of the list. And when we talked about doing the first, you had insisted upon doing Jaws because it's July, but also because the vibes are strong. Can you can you say why that is for you? I mean, for me, it's because because yours is a movie where the heroic figures in it are three men from kind of different worlds with different personality types who have to struggle, how to collaborate and get along and then are able to do because they all are able to accept the reality of the shark and to care about stopping the shark more than they care about believing that there is no shark, because it would be comforting, believing that that other shark that the fishermen got is.

The shark and everything's fine now, believing that the shark, that the money that people have to make off of the tourist economy is more important than the shark, which is like that's an uncomfortable parallel to real life and also something that is uncomfortable to think about in the world of the movie, because you're like, you know, yeah, we need to confront this shark head on. But like, what do you do in a place that is dependent on a tourist economy?

And that's something that the book goes into a lot more detail about because the book is a lot less fun.

What made me want to watch this movie and feel like it would be a comforting experience is the fact that it's about characters like dealing with a problem. Why are we doing a podcast about dads?

I feel like our friendship, which is a decade old, is built on a foundation of old dads, you know, and also a nightmare on Elm Street, because our origin story is that we met on Tumblr because we were both fans of a nightmare. And I was like, I can't remember exactly why. But like, that was the main thing that I was talking about on Tumblr at the time. And you were like, yeah, this is these are important films.

And I was like, yes, thank you.

So tying this to old Dadaism, I thought just for a second while watching the movie and had nothing to back this up. But I just had a feeling quickly as I was like, I bet Roy Scheider is exactly the same age as my father, and he's within a year of the same age as my father. So. So he was born in thirty to my father was born in thirty one. My father's been dead for ten years, but I was just watching him and I was like, man, this guy is a lot like my father, like a lot like my father.

And and he shared a lot of. A lot of his traits, sort of a lot of his personality, not not dissimilar people by any means, but certainly generationally similar and and I'm so happy we kicked off with this as a result, because I've never I've never watched Jaws and thought about the dad theme. And it really sort of shaped my perspective on it. But it also helped me relate to it a lot more that I was like, is this guy is a binary for my father.

What about him reminds you of your dad with his, like, aloofness and and tenderness? Right. Is is there's a scene where Hooper goes to the House to essentially announce that they the shark that they got was not the correct shark, and they should go in and sort of dissect the shark that they have.

And when he arrives, he says, I'd like to talk to your husband. And his wife says, yeah, me too. You know, he he he has this kind of inability to connect. He's shut off in a pretty major way and has these, like, phobias he can't really deal with. But at the same time, he's has a really tender relationship with his youngest, with both of his sons, really, even though we only get minimal interactions.

But we get this beautiful interaction where he interacts with his youngest son, who is emulating him, emulating all of his sort of moves and how he has his hands on his face. And he ends that interaction to his with his son saying, give us a kiss in the sun. Says, Why? And he says, because I need it. And it's the only time in the entire movie that he reveals any actual vulnerability.

Give us a kiss. Because I needed. That's true, and that's something very much my father would do, is that, you know, he would never express explicit vulnerability, but absolutely, when he dropped me off to school, when I was a little kid, he'd make me kiss him on the cheek, you know, which is lovely in retrospect. But at the time, it felt out of order with him just being a crusty.

Yeah, I think of it as like if you grow up with a crusty dad, you're like maybe other people are never confused by this. But I definitely spent a lot of time confused and also feeling like there was cultural confusion over, like, how can someone be, like, so crusty and also just like outright mean, like I had I had and have a mean dad and then like me suddenly so soft and so wound a bowl. And, you know, it takes potentially so long to figure out, like, yeah, those two things go together like.

Ranks, Fred, as crusty because it's soft inside. That's why you bake a crusty baguette, if there were nothing to protect, you wouldn't do that.

That's so good. That's such a good way to put it. Yeah, he's he's kind of all Baghat in this in this movie and in context of other characters who we see, he feels less surly because Quint is just next level crust yentas.

Classic surly. Yeah, but but then we also get to his vulnerability, which we'll talk about.

So we have we have we have Brody, who's in New York City, cop who relocated to to Amitay, which you're saying is in Martha's. It's around Martha's. It was.

So the location part is interesting. The movie was filmed on Martha's Vineyard and then the book, I believe, was set on Long Island, like kind of near Montauk. So it's got this sort of place lessness. And I was going to ask you if you consider it to be a New England movie, because it's like not super explicitly sat there, I guess, but like it's filmed there.

So, yeah, in the same way that I always assumed that Beetlejuice was in Maine, even though it was in Connecticut, I assume Jaws was in Massachusetts and it made it may not be, but it just has that feel.

But I mean, you're literally seeing Massachusetts summer people and Massachusetts houses and refers to Boston a couple of times.

So I did sort of assume.

But it's like they're acknowledging the setting like so.

OK, so he's relocated. He's relocated his family from New York City where he felt like disaffected as a cop because he couldn't make a difference there. And so he's super pensive. His wife calls him uptight. He's terrified of the water and he's never really been on a boat.

And then I wrote Not a big talker, because this movie, this movie is almost Altman esque in its overlapping conversation. It is.

And also, there's a great book called Jaws Log that goes into this that was basically written by the screenwriter Carl Gottlieb the summer that they were filming it. But one of the things he talks about is how that the team making the movie basically invented looping. Oh, wow. Or this movie. Yeah, because they had so many scenes with all these, you know, all this overlapping dialogue and where you're hearing you're listening to a crowd having a conversation and they couldn't just use recycled people saying he's an carrot's because they, you know, it was too complicated and they wanted the stuff that you heard to be interesting.

So they pulled it off. They invented looping for this movie.

Hey, here's a quick note for those of you who are not abject movie making, nerds looping, which is otherwise known as ADR, additional dialogue replacement is the process by which filmmakers work with actors to rerecord audio that was imperfectly captured on set or to help create a layered sound and dialogue that could not be captured in the initial production. So the so OK, so they invented looping, I mean, I feel like so much interesting sound stuff was happening in the 70s between that and what they were doing with like multitracking with all is crazy 70s feel like this amazing like.

This adolescent time for American film, like American film, is like 13 years old and has like these big braces and these big zits and his like suddenly like, you know, able to do all these like. You know, just developing physically and all these magnificent and also ugly and unvarnished ways.

Yeah, and every one thing I love about the movie that speaks to exactly what you just said is everyone is a little ugly, like conventional. Yeah. And I love them.

That's also why it feels like it's set in New England. Everyone looks kind of like Wethered weatherbeaten.

And and you know, you know and you as a as a as a native New Englander who spent a lot of time in L.A., I always say, you know you know, especially if you're taking if you're taking a flight from L.A. or the West Coast generally over to New England and you're making stops along the way, you just see people incrementally get more weathered until you get to New England. And everyone looks like an extra just like everyone is crusty, look like a beautiful solid gold.

Exactly. On the scene, the patina is lovely. I mean, that sort of a lovely thing about it. Everyone's a little sweaty like I am now, and that's the case. And then so that's that's an important distinction because I think the most attractive person in the movie is our next character. Who is Hooper? Who's the son of a rich family? It's kind of all we know. He's from from wealth. He's a marine biologist, like a self financed marine biologist with an interest in sharks because of a trauma that he had when he was younger.

And he's a scientist. He's really frustrated that no one will listen to science.

Yes. What a great character. And it's perfect again.

So it's perfect for this moment. He's our future in this situation. And then we have we have Quint, who's a World War Two veteran. He was on the Indian the Indianapolis, which is kind of the center of the most famous monologue from the movie. He witnessed 700 of his fellow soldiers get eaten in the water, which ultimately lays the groundwork for his trauma. We'll talk about that. That everyone is kind of operating from. This movie is about traumatized men.

This conversation they have about the Indianapolis comes from this conversation that they're all having where they're literally comparing scars, which is, you know, such an on the news. Spielberg in metaphor. Yeah. And and then he also just like my favorite thing about him, as soon as they get really gets involved, the movie gets fun because that's kind of when it's a conversation about manhood in one way or another. And as far as I'm concerned, I mean, he gets involved when he announces himself at the town meeting, but he really gets involved when he announces here's to swimming with Bow-Legged women.

And he just he like he sings all these like old rebel, like sea shanties. And one of them, I think my single fondest memories that I have dear friends who used to live in Portland, Oregon, the Portland that I live in, who moved away back to the East Coast where they were from one summer. And like the night before they left, we went to see Jaws and a just for one night summer rerelease at a movie theater in the suburbs.

And it was beautiful. I remember saying goodbye to them the next day as they were about, you know, as they were packing their car and getting ready to head off and. Like, how do I express? This feeling, and I expressed it by going farewell on the Spanish lady's, which is like one of Quint's songs, and it's like this thing that you hear echoing is the men are about to push off. I was also I was looking at the Times and the movie, and I think it's like an hour and 15 minutes.

And we've had this narrative of like shark shows up. Brody's worried about the shark. No one listens. Whooper shows up. They try to warn people about the shark. No one listens. Finally, they take the shark seriously. Hooper, Brody and Quent push off to go find the shark. And from then on, the movie is on the orca on Quinn's boat. And it's like they're departing for the country of men. We have Brody's wife saying cheerfully goodbye to him and him telling her to tell the boys that he's gone fishing.

And then and she kind of, you know, just runs she just like runs away as her husband is like.

And she's like, put him in the custody of the scary old man. You know, he's he's leaving his children. He's leaving his wife. He's kind of going off on this journey. To the heart of masculinity or something like it's I love it. Fell, I landed, do you face Spanish lady? Why did you let. Boy, we've received orders to sail to Boston soon in.

Shall I see? Hooper in the movie is played by Richard Dreyfuss, and I think this was his breakout role and he's a short, nerdy, disrespected by all the other men in the movie Nebish character. And he's very endearing. And he seems kind of like a Steven Spielberg Stand-In to me, like he looks exactly like Steven Spielberg looked in 1975.

I loved him.

And and he's undersized, like this wonderful story that Steven Spielberg, when he was a kid, he was like coming in second to last in a race and like the kid behind him was intellectually disabled. And so, like it became this chant, which you can't feel that angry about given the context. But where all these kids were cheering the kid in last place by going beat Spielberg, beat Spielberg, beat Spielberg, and he did. And Steven Spielberg was like, well, that was nice for that other kid.

But, you know, I don't know who originally said this, but I think some reviewers said that in the book, like you, it's hard not to. Maybe Steven Spielberg said that when he read the book. It's hard not to root for the shark because the people are also unlikable and because the author clearly feels, you know, at best, mild disdain for these characters that he's writing most of the time. And I feel like the Spielberg talks.

I mean, this is similar to Jurassic Park, actually, how like the characters in the Book of Jurassic Park are unlikable, like it's not as bad as Jaws, but like the the book is not very focused on like the journey to accepting the idea of fatherhood. Like, that's not one of its themes at all. I'm really interested in looking at what Steven Spielberg did do to make this a movie.

That to me is so affecting and his characters, I am so invested in what's interesting to me about sort of the way that it unfolds and also touches on sort of who.

You know, whose concern has priority is they don't go after the shark until the dads are feel threatened.

Hmm. The first death is a young, anonymous woman, he's a summer girl. The tension is kind of set up. And I used to think that this was explicitly about masculinity. And now I think it's more explicitly about about responsibility and men, men sort of relationship to their idea of what their responsibility is. And and so so in an anonymous quote, summer girl is killed by a shark. She would have been killed anyway. But she's also killed in the context that she's with a guy from Hartford who's too drunk to go swimming.

What a New England story. That's like Chappaquiddick herself.

Right, right, right, right. This was this was is ultimately kind of responsible because he's so ineffectual for this woman's death. Yeah. Like like Ted Kennedy was the the next death is in in.

Rudy wants to do something, but is kind of immediately shown that he doesn't have the political cachet to do much yet. And he doesn't push against it because he kind of knows what's good for him by way of job security.

The second death, Alex Kintner, the death of this young boy, a mother, his mother is present for the death and she comes in while a bunch of fishermen are celebrating, thinking that they've gotten the shark. That has gotten Alex Kintner in this.

This young woman comes in kind of publicly humiliates Brody by by slapping him in the face and revealing to everyone, you know, everyone already knows that he knew that there was a shark in the water. And then the third the third attack is out in the water when everyone when everyone is back at the beach because the mayor has insisted upon it. Brody's son always is put into shock because he has a very close call with the shark. And also later, we find out from the mayor that he's kind of having a bit of a nervous breakdown himself because he finally has emotionally grasped the fact that with all of his pushing, he put his own kids at risk because his kids were on the beach.

And then we enter this phase of the movie where they're finally allowed to go get the shark because the men are worried for their families. But but an anonymous woman dying doesn't matter. And and a woman who's very upset, who's so upset, she's literally wearing mourning where like we used to do and slapping the chief of police in the face.

So, so, so OK.

So, yeah, we have this we have this first part of the movie where no one is taking it seriously. The first real encounter we have with a competent authority figure is what is Quint's introduction.

Yeah, let's talk about that in so and so what we see happen is the town is having a meeting about this thing. The town is being confronted with the reality that all their shops are going to be closed and their their economic well-being is going to be impeded upon by what's going on.

So you can hear a voice going. They're talking about closing the beaches for 24 hours.

And some of those 24 hours is like three weeks.

It's three weeks. And thought that that was great.

So so we have we have this argument that they're having, which is, again, the argument that the United States had been having starting in March. And then Quint announces himself very dramatically by dragging his nails down the chalkboard and essentially says the thing that we should have been saying the entire time about the epidemic, which is there's and by the way, there's a bounty on the shark for three thousand dollars. And the quint essentially says this is a bad problem.

This shark is a killing machine. It's going to get in the way of all of your businesses and it's going to keep killing three thousand dollars. I'll find it for ten thousand dollars. I'll kill it for this is going to be very expensive. But the exchange, you all won't be on welfare through the winter, which is so remarkably on the nose about this moment that we're having now. And it's just a grown up man being like, hey, we have a real fucking problem and you guys aren't addressing real.

What is your take on that scene?

I mean, I love that scene, obviously, because it's just so it's just so fun. And he just shows up. It's like Schary.

And he's like, I'll find him for three, but I'll catch him and kill him for 10.

I'll catch this bird for you. It ain't gonna be easy, Batfish, you know?

And he's like he's eating a cracker the entire time to stay alive and ended up going to play it cheap in welfare the whole winter.

Robertshaw is just such a delight to me in this role. I feel like he was this like old, complex, sad, drunk, and he was given this this role where he could. It just seems like he knew how to play that character and that there's a lot of him potentially in that character.

I don't want no volunteers. I don't want to make too many captains on this island.

And he also had a hand in writing the Indianapolis speech because he was also a writer. And oh, yeah, that's the scene where we meet this character and we hear this sort of cacophony of voices and no one knowing what to do. And then he really shows up as a town elder. I think also like he has this kind of presence as someone who's like of the sea, he's of the island, but he's not accepted by society like his not scares people a little bit.

You can tell that people recognize his authority because he's like the island shark hunter. There's also a lot more in the book about kind of the ugliness of the job that he does, because there's this absolutely horrifying scene where they catch a smaller shark. They're out, you know, hunting the big shark and they get a smaller shark and quince like, oh, the tourists love this. I'll show you what I do for the tourists. And he cuts the shark open and, you know, throws some of its innards on the water and throws the shark back in the water and then shows how the shark will first eat itself and then some in a feeding frenzy of other sharks, just like this nihilistic vision of like.

Something eating itself, which is a very, you know, apt metaphor for the economics of the story, but he's like the tourists love this and you're like, dang quent, people are terrible, aren't they? Right. And you're like, yeah, I have. I bet they do.

When it is set up for us as a character, who knows what he knows but is incomplete as a human. I think that whooper is that too. And then Brody is someone who like doesn't have knowledge, like he doesn't know anything and he's afraid of the water. You know, to me, the the argument the movie seems to be making is that like both of these experts need this regular man or this regular, you know, father and pop trying his best in order to do what they end up doing.

Right.

Yeah. And he's he's kind of a reconciliation, right. Is the the the tension between him and Brody throughout the movie is that, you know, is that is Quittance like a hardened man. He's a veteran and he keeps making fun of sort of intellectual who's there, who is on the opposite end of the spectrum. But when everything fills in Quint's with unquenched arsenal, he's like, what do you have? You know, how do we use your tools?

Yeah. And the interesting thing, I mean, Carolynn said we were watching it this morning and Carolin said it was so it's still in on the news. It's admirable that this guy has made his life's work about addressing his trauma.

Yeah, that's true.

And it's it's true. Right. And absolutely. That you're such a great observation. It's true. Right up until his death, he dies by they've essentially caught the shark as much as they can. Right. They've stabbed it somehow and tied tied these barrels to it. So it can't go very far.

It really becomes like old man in the shark, like at this point, because they're just like hand-to-hand combat with this shark.

It's essentially tied through suspension to the boat. And the problem with that is he's going full speed with this boat, trying to pull the shark and Hoopers like, I think you should slow down.

And he's like, fuck you, Whooper.

He doesn't have to go full speed. And you see that that's where his trauma is best him. Right. Like he's taken out now. He is in ultimately he's eaten by the shark.

I never thought of that before, but yeah, I think yeah, that is in his abilities, his seemingly up to that point, superhuman abilities are undermined by him giving in to that trauma. He's going to pull the shark full speed and it ends up being his end.

Right. And can we talk about his trauma? Can we talk about the Indianapolis speech?

Yes, absolutely. This is a point where they're all finally getting along and drinking and hanging out and they start when has been giving Whooper an incredibly hard time.

When I tell people if they want to know what my dad is like, they should watch the scenes in Jaws between Quentin Hooper. Yorgos, like Hooper, I'm Hooper and Hooper. Can't do anything. Right. Right.

Right. And and in this, they've they've turned and they're having a bonding kind of tender moment where they're sharing and exchanging about their scars. Yeah. And they're quite drunk.

Brody asks about one scar in particular, which it's revealed is a removed tattoo that exposes the Indianapolis.

I think I think that might be a removal of a tattoo to commemorate him being a soldier.

We learn that Clint was on the USS Indianapolis, which I which was a real ship that I had not heard of before Jaws and whose legacy is now being carried partly by Jaws, which is interesting and was.

Or a pet owned by a Japanese submarine chief and, you know, the ship goes down and all of these soldiers, hundreds and hundreds of soldiers are in the water and they had just delivered the Hiroshima bomb as the other big part of this story. And so you got this also the sense of. Of retribution, I think a little bit in that like that they have you know, it's not just any ship is that like they've they've taken part in this act of war and then they become prey for the sharks.

It was interesting that, you know, there's other shark stories that that that could have been that it was a World War Two and the Sharks stories. And it's just this long. Beautiful monologue where he describes Gus these days and nights spent in the water with all these other men slowly being picked off by sharks. He plays it so well. It's so I was just watching Magnolia, which is another movie we have to do an episode about. And that movie has like a 10 minute long monologue at the end by Jason Robards, who was playing a character who's dying of cancer.

And and I just I love a monologue where a character just explains themselves because lets it all hang out and and truly let someone in in a very intimate way and lets the audience in on a very intimate way. And when that character is an old man who are characters, who in media are often defined by their inability to describe anything or talk about their emotional realities or their trauma at all, like I feel like that's where Quint becomes.

It's almost like a musical. I think one of the wonderful things about musicals is that. We struggle so much as humans living in a mostly nonmusical world to express ourselves in a way that will convey the emotional reality of what we're going through to the people in our lives, rather, whether there are people that we're close to or just, you know, humans generally and musicales kind of allow everyone to have their say like you if you're watching West Side Story than like you're taken inside the heart and mind of these characters one by one.

And you got to experience what it's like to to be them and to feel what they're feeling because they're giving that to you in this very direct way through music. And I almost feel like the Indianapolis speech is kind of like characters bursting into song. You're like I. I would like to live in a world where it's believable that this incredibly mean old man who gets threatened by everything, who's threatened by whooper existing like, will suddenly launch into this expository monologue about like why he is the way that he is.

He's like, by the way, boys, this is why I am the way that I am. And we'll explain it so coherently. And the trauma will be so bad that, like, you cannot help but to be like, oh. OK, of course, here like this, I get it now, which is just something that's the kind of complete communication that I think we don't really tend to get with our parents. Sometimes we do. But I think that, you know, if you are going to understand the basis of someone's trauma and lashing out that deeply, you know, a lot of the time, like you're going to get that understanding over the course of like years and years is not like in a couple of minutes.

Right. And he has, you know, that that that line that I love about, you know. How the shark has dead black eyes like a doll's eyes, you know, and they look at you, they don't even seem to be living, you know, and just they kind of you know, he's looked into the abyss. Yeah. And yes. And they have this, you know, this incredible moment of trauma bonding. And then in that Spielberg and way, like the shark stuff gets serious.

Like it's almost like it was waiting for that to happen. Like the shark was like there, like with its little shark near the bottom of the boat, like waiting for Quint to finish explaining his trauma. And then it's like, OK, they're a team now. They're ready for me.

I need to think about the fact that that's part of why that scene is satisfying. Right. Is you're getting you're getting revelations about about trauma and why someone does what they do in a way where most of the life of a living parent, you are rarely afforded the luxury of hearing. But in the context of what you just said, where you hear that speech in such close proximity to his inevitable death, it reminds me of the fact that it's like as someone who took care of a parent while he was sick and ultimately died, you hear all those truths.

If you're if you're lucky in your parent, kind of knows that they're on death's door, which which my father certainly did. And it seems like maybe Quint knows a little bit in this case they will start to be vulnerable about their truths or you hear that a lot when when parents are are closed in that way. And and I think because I've had that experience, I have I haven't thought about it through the lens that you're talking about, which is before that I never heard any of that shit from my father.

I heard all these tiny glimmers, you know, like watching watching the History Channel and, you know, seeing his eyes get misty about particular conflict or whatever. But I never heard my dad's Indianapolis speeches until the very, very end. And it it seems like Quint new, you know. No, they're not going to. Yeah.

And you feel like he needs to die at the hands of a shark like that seems to be a need that he has. And I need the story has. And then also, you know, I think it's it speaks to how you have these difficult father figures and these moments of bonding are possible. But then even with that, it's like, so when you're not feeling drunk and vulnerable, are you still going to be mean to me all the time?

Because I don't want to deal with that.

And how, like, having a lasting relationship is so much more difficult in some ways than than having these moments of intense connection when circumstances force people to get real, like being honest and vulnerable in daily life is like, you know, something that maybe Quent wasn't up to.

Right? Exactly. Was only capable of being vulnerable again when he realized the inevitability before him, which I feel like is a trap a lot of us feel about our parents.

And right, we'll be at peace with them when they're dead. God, it's almost like the idea of like the special time of having a baby where, like they're doing so much and they're they're learning so quickly and it's you just want to be with them every day, like, I feel like accompanying someone into death. There is a similar sense of like you need to be there, like you need to experience this precious time, not just because it's all going to be over soon, but because they're going.

Through potentially this the stage of development, if they have the the presence of mind and, you know, not too much pain to be kind of assessing what their life has been about. Right.

Yeah. Welcome to our podcast, where the only time you can find peace with some of your parents is when they're dead.

Welcome to the Dead show.

I mean, my relationship with my dad currently is, you know, he's he's 76 years old and he's he loves to talk about how he's going to be dead soon. But he also doesn't really believe in the concept of his own infirmity. And he's not. Vulnerability is still not an option for him, like he's getting increasingly old and frail and, you know, is pushing 80 with an increasingly short stick, but like that's still not enough for him to, you know, to open up if that's ever going to happen.

Like, he's going to have to be truly, like, looking the shark in the face.

There's a difference between knowing that inevitability weaponized and lorded over the people around you and. And actually, in actually looking into the abyss and feeling small, yeah, uh huh, yes, I feel like he's on the stage of telling everyone, you know, being mean to people and then being like there's a shark. And it could get me at any time. And it's like I have been hearing about this shark for my entire life and we're still all here.

Show me the way to go. I'm tired. Then I have a little drink about an hour ago when this guy tried to read. Grow by land or sea your farm, you will always hear me singing this, show me the way you go, show me the way to go home. And Dad and I want to go to bed. But an hour ago, when I went straight to my. I will drop by NPR. You can always hear me singing this song, show me the way to go.

Well, we should say how it ends. So if people don't know they are relieved, they do get the shark. The shark gets went and then Hooper and Brody got the shark and Brody is able and they do it through kind of a combination of all the new means, which is nice. They have Quint's barrels and they have Hoopers oxygen tanks and they are able to write an ending where in a way that is like probably not super accurate, but very narratively satisfying.

Brody says, smile, you son of a bitch, and shoots the shark. And the shark is like has an oxygen tank and the shark explodes.

And then Cooper and Brody swim back to shore with no trouble at all because I guess they're not that far out anymore and it's going to be OK. It's a movie about how I think emotional intimacy allows us to become greater than the sum of our parts. I think Jaws is a movie about friendship and how these three and complete man are able to form this complete task force by asserting this intimacy with each other. Brody is very obviously the father in this movie, but who is the daddy?

Oh, my. Well, I mean, I think Quent is the obvious answer, but I think Browdy actually is I think that Brody has quiet authority and Quent is really like sort of a flailing, drunk uncle.

So if you have a summer romance with Quin's, he's going to throw up on or near you at some point. It's just going to happen. Yeah, you're going to have a moment where you're like, oh, I don't know. No, no, thank you, Hoopers. A fuck who brings a fuck? Boy, you want to have you want to have a finite amount of time with Whooper. You want to meet Cooper in the bar, get whooper drunk.

Not in a sinister way because so he talks more slowly and. Hmm. Yeah. I then take him home and then he would have like a nice fumbling experience. And then in the morning you would be slightly hungover and be like, this is too much, too much talking.

I think I've had a crush on Roy Scheider since I was like 12 years old.

I've always I've always found him extraordinarily a little kid.

Brody is a man that you could spend your whole life trying to figure out what he's thinking about and never know. And that's a daddy. And he also looks like he could he could do some spanking.

Chief Brody, you are a tight core. Quick note, leafing through the actress who played Alex Skinner's mom, a character who delivers to government officials a reality check about the literally fatal consequences of their inaction in the face of a public health and safety crisis died of coronavirus in Aurora, Ohio, assisted living facility in May of this year. She was 91, four years. Fiora was a staple in Martha's Vineyard and a beloved proponent of the dramatic arts. There rest well, Miss Viro.

Please join us next time, when we will be joined by our great friend Candace Hopper for a conversation rich in Jerry Orbach. We will be discussing dads in the context of dirty dancing. We were so fortunate to have production help from Merridew and additional production support from Caroline Kendrick, we also had original music by that same Caroline Kendrick and we also had some wonderful additional music from Mozart Nunez, otherwise known as Mozart to one to check him out, check out Carolynn and that's it.