Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. After being in the works for years, THE SHARK IS STILL WORKING finally premiered. I heard from many readers that were attending before the event, but so far only one review has come in. I'm interested in others if you were there. Anyway, this sounds like it holds up from my first viewing of a longer, rough cut... in other words, a Jaws nerd's dream. Here's "happydude" with his thoughts on how it plays out!
Hola friend(s). I'm a long time reader first time reporter and full-time Jaws nerd. Maybe not crazy enough to don fake mutton-chops and a mustache (outside of the bedroom anyway) but crazy enough to alienate those who love me. I attended the Official World Premiere of The Shark is Still Working last nite here in Los Angeles and thought you might be interested in impressions from someone who's been following this production closely from the beginning. First off, this is considered by many in the know to be the be-all, end-all bible of the making of Jaws full of new revelations even for those who eat, breath, and sleep this movie. Bottom line? It is. With some reservations. The finished product was a lot shorter than previous reports though it still clocked in at around 2 1/2 hours- longer than the actual film itself. Apparently to get the run-time down a lot of unlicensed footage was removed. I'm assuming this was mostly actual footage from the production that went unused in the film since there was plenty of footage from the actual movie. This was my biggest disappointment since when I first heard about this movie I began dreaming of seeing outtakes of the many attempts at getting the Indianapolis speech down- long-time Jaws fans will know the lore behind this. There was some deleted material but, and I may be wrong, no 'official' deleted material that wasn't also included on the 30th and 25th anniversary dvd's. What the film had a-plenty, was home movies and deleted material from other sources- one of the holy grails of which is the Alex- Kinter-meets-his-demise material. And a scene that actually revealed the 'karate-ing of the picket fences.' The behind the scenes footage was also pretty great: see Spielberg's mock (but kinda not)-despair in Hollywood as the Academy Award nominations are announced and he's shafted for Best Director. There were plenty of stories that I hadn't heard before. Dreyfuss talks a lot and candidly about his relationship with Robert Shaw. Roy Scheider had a couple of great anecdotes about Shaw's antagonism of Dreyfuss. These are things you need to hear from the horse's mouth, so I won't spoil them here. In fact all of the talking heads material and interviews were a lot more candid than we've heard before. Much of Spielberg's interviews were new takes on familiar stories as were Scheider's. Dreyfuss was Dreyfuss and always a hoot, but I'm sure most of the folks who will be seeing this don't ever need to hear him mimic a p.a. claiming 'The shark is not working' again. Now: the not-so-great (and there's very little): I could have done without most of the Jawsfest material. It's great to see the Amity locations today, but I didn't necessarily need to see fellow nerds on-stage with Deputy Hendricks at a live event quoting all of his dialogue back to him. Although as I write that I admit it does sound pretty terrific. This is the definitive behind-the-scenes on Jaws, even more in depth than the Bouzereau doc from laser-disc days and fans will want to seek it out. Though how they'll be able to see it is still, from what I understand, up in the air. If Universal does the right thing, this will be a bonus feature on the next release, though I'd certainly recommend it as a stand-alone if that's the route these folks have to take. If you use this, call me happydude.
