Since doing this On The Lot thing, I’ve been pondering the films
that had the most effect on me. Steven Spielberg is a prolific
filmmaker, but one of his first, JAWS, really sucker punched my
imagination awake.
I love Spielberg’s films - from Saving Private Ryan to Close
Encounters of The Third Kind - so many movies of visual brilliance and
great content. But I have to say, Mr. Spielberg, you ruined the water
for me.
I was a mere 5 years old when JAWS came out, in 1975. Remember the
TV ad where there was just lot of black water and the “duh-dum” theme?
Then at the last minute the shark jumped out? OH MY GOD…I was literally
sitting inches away from the screen - as little kids did in those days
- and nearly wet my pants. From that moment on, anything resembling a
shark sent me into a tizzy. Forget about learning how to swim - the
blue of the pool reminded me of sharks, and the fact that I couldn’t
see 360 degrees around me in the water, along with the panic response
of not being able to breathe - well, no hope was had for me becoming an
Olympic swimmer. Or even a floater. Hahahaha…
And large bodies of water - NO WAY! I could barely step into a fresh
water lake without imagining the shark jumping up on land and chomping
me in half. To be near the ocean almost made me cry.
If you remember the late 70’s/early 80’s JAWS-A-THON - one after
another - and all the marketing that went along with it, (you could not
even buy a gumball at the skating rink without it having a JAWS image
on it), there was no getting away from that damn shark. And given my
overly active imagination, I could not get JAWS out of my psyche. It
represented all that I feared, and then some.
My family had a running gag with this fear. First of all, I was born
in LA but grew up in northern Ontario, Canada. NO CHANCE OF SHARKS
THERE! So it was a bizarre phobia, in the land of ice and snow. My
older brother kept me out of his bedroom by keeping the movie poster on
the back of his door. My younger sister liked to put the JAWS trading
cards under my pillow. My mother let me stay up late to watch SNL and
would laugh when I covered my eyes during the “Land Shark” bits. It was
out of control.
I ventured to watch it, through my fingers, several times during my
teens. Sometimes I could take seeing the shark, most times I couldn’t.
It was truly embarrassing. In my early twenties, I forced myself to
watch it, and wow, that shark looked kinda fake. But it still scared
the pants off me.
Then, in my thirties, (where I am now - 36), I watched a rental of
Deep Blue Sea. THE WHOLE THING. Alone. Late at night. Somehow, it
wasn’t nearly as scary to me as JAWS. Scary, but you saw the sharks too
much. I could handle Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. Even came to
respect and love Great Whites for their jumping abilities and swimming
power. I understood sharks don’t really like to eat people - they spit
them out whenever they do take a chunk, thinking surfers look like
seals. But JAWS…nah…
So I decided to go swimming with the sharks in the Bahamas.
Stewart’s Cove, to be exact. Snorkeling above a frenzied gaggle of reef
sharks. I was able to do it for 15 minutes. Not bad for a selachophobic.
But you know what finally got me over, mostly, my fear of JAWS?
Being a filmmaker, specifically a shooter and editor. Because now, when
I watch a film I’ve seen a couple of times, and I’ve seen JAWS about 30
times at least, I start to take it apart shot and editing-wise.
To Mr. Spielberg, I’m sure you’ve heard this a millions times, but I
want to say thanks for scaring me so much I needed to know how it was
all done. So thusly, JAWS became part of the reason I’m a filmmaker
today. It fed into my vivid imagination and forced me to explore dark
corners. I’m 95% selachophobia free, but don’t ask me to ride the
Universal Studios JAWS boat thingy. Not gonna happen. I’d rather scuba
dive with the real thing.
What’s your Spielberg moment?
Peace,
Melissa
