Podcast, the parrot is winning. That's what James was in. Come to the Pope cast. Sit down and enjoy a pint.
Okay, welcome back to the podcast. We are keeping the beaches open as we break down Jaws this time. We recorded this just after the 45th anniversary of Jaws opening weekend, and this time Rob Nash joins us, which is our first new guest in a while. And of course, Rob gives me the, we're going to already, are you recording on the Top of the Shell, which is always fun.
Jaws is a classic, arguably Spielberg's best movie, but certainly is most quotable. So here's Allison, Eric, Rob, and me breaking down Jaws. There is a creature alive today who has survived millions of years of evolution without change, without passion, and without logic. It lives to kill a mindless eating machine.
It will attack and devour anything. It is, as if God created the devil and gave him Jaws. This is Universal's extraordinary motion picture version of Peter Benchley's best-selling novel, Jaws. I just found out that a girl that killed you last week, you knew it.
You knew there was a shark out there. You knew it was dangerous. It's him anyway. Hey!
You yelled Maricuda. You're right, sir. What? You yelled shark.
We've got a paddy on our hands on the foot. You lie. Is it true that most people get attacked by sharks in three feet of water, about 10 feet from the beach? Yeah.
What we are dealing with here is a perfect engine on eating machines. We're not only going to have to close the beach, we're going to have to hire somebody to kill the shark. Hey, it's him, but I'll catch him. Have to kill him.
Did you hear your father, Al? This shark. Swallow your hole. You're going to need a bigger boat.
That's the 24th. 25. Three times, Al. Oh yeah, he's every single one.
Don't shoot him. Don't wait for me. Now! Shoot!
Man, this man doesn't go evil and compared with the reality of Jaws. Roy Shider, Robert Shaw, Richard Drifas, Jaws. See him before you go swimming. Did you watch our little uh, little movie this week?
I, I will say, are you recording? As you know, I'm always recording. I will say I have not studied a subject this ardently in probably 15 years. That's why you're on the spot, Jaws.
I watched the movie or re-watched the movie. One and a half times over three days, I've done significant searching and researching and I was coming up with the answers to some of your questions as I walked down the stairs. Wow. All right.
I think you may have overprepared. I, I, I whipped my stuff together in about 17 minutes. Yeah, I think it reflects more of what's going on in my home and my life than any other. Well, so this is the fourth.
Fifth, fifth one, the three of us, me, Al's and Ricky, done. And I think we're getting sick of each other. We know each other's tricks at this point. So it's time for me to start changing it up and you are the first new guest on this one.
I'm not, I'm not sure. Yeah, it's very important. All right, is everybody ready? I think so.
Yes. I'm having non-secular, you mean non-seculars that I'm not holding back for the show? Yes. Yeah.
No, I'm good. All right. All right. Jaws 1975 here is the plot explained by IMDB.
First, I hate these and now I'm starting to like them because they're so like deadpan and to the point and just telling you the basics of what happens in the story. I feel like that is your personality sometimes. No, I like them because they're so ridiculous. You don't get the theme of the thought of the story at all or that.
Yeah. No, Allison, it's like Brendan, it's Brendan relating any emotional event. No contact. It's Brendan answering the question from a police officer when he gets pulled up.
No, no. Laura, where are you going? Driving. How fast are you going?
I don't know. That's the lead to it. That's a good shot. Okay, when a killer shark unleases chaos on a beach community, it's up to a local sheriff, a marine biologist, and old seafarer to hunt down the beast down.
An old seafarer? Is that how we're going to describe Quint? Yeah, I think someone had easy access to a source. Seafarer.
Yeah. Okay, let's start with you, Nash, and fear the new blood. Do you remember? I mean, were you obviously not old enough to go see this when it came out?
No. So, anyway, you saw it? You know, it's funny that in thinking of this question, I was three years old in 1975 and probably two and a half when this came out. And but I do remember my cousin taking me to Jaws 2 in the theater, which was wholly inappropriate a few years later.
I remember seeing Jaws on the ABC Sunday night movie. Remember how they would always show a movie? Oh, yeah. That's not right.
Yeah. They were short an hour earlier, like at 6 p.m. I think. Or maybe it was Disney from 6 to 7, and then the movie would come out.
But I just remember begging my parents to let me stay up to see Jaws. So this was probably late in the 70s, and I got to see the edited version. I know. I think the edited version, I don't remember.
There's no way I was here by it early on. I think it was so sanitized. I think the one money shot they kept in sort of like in terms of the terror was like Quint, and I don't want to jump ahead at the end. If you haven't seen this.
But I think for some reason that image is in my mind, but I feel like I saw that. Yeah. I think you saw like the seven leg and that type of stuff. Not I guess not jumping ahead.
I saw my first time I saw it was a very similar fashion, and I remember them having the part with Quince, but the part that they cut out when they there's a close up on his face, and he spits up a bunch of blood. That was cut out, but the rest of it was the rest of it was it. Yeah. The image of the teeth in his gut, that part was still there.
Yeah. Yeah. So I'm sure I probably watched it around the same time that Eric did, but I could not handle the movie the first few times. I don't remember the scare by it.
The part of the scare was that he grew up on a lake. So, you know, it made it a little bit too weird. You know, we would go for like sunset swims and stuff like that, and then somebody like you swimming underwater and grab your leg and like you completely freak out about it. So it just added kind of a different thing for me.
When I saw it, I was in arguably the most landlocked part of the country. I mean, there was no water within hundreds of miles. It was the whole circle of Hongdong. I mean, it was the middle of the country.
So I had no idea from lakes or oceans. Right. Never saw, never was in them. I had no idea.
And I knew that there are no sharks in the lake in Wisconsin. So like there's no rational part of it, but it really creeped me out for sure. Probably it was so like it changed how you played when you went swimming. Oh, yes.
Well, kids would do the day. Part time it was? Did it? Yeah.
And I had an older brother who was seven years older than me. But he and his friends were just like torture machines. And they would do like the swim on like they would kind of like just lower down in the water. And then you didn't know where they were.
And this thing has evolved. It's a perfect torture machine. All it does is eat and torture and make baby torture machines. Yeah.
All right. Let's try. We were gonna get stuck in a few different places, especially the trivia. There's a lot of trivia here.
I'm sure Nash will have a lot of trivia because he's done all the research. But let's jump into rotten tomato scores. First, the audience. What do you guys think the audience score on this one?
100. Right. That's. That's the question.
Well, now so can I offer an offer a torture and answer? Yes. That's the whole point of this whole thing is torture discussions. I think rotten tomatoes, you know, only goes back.
Like only allows people to vote like from like 2000 on or maybe somewhere on there. Yeah, but I think I think they do compile older, at least for the critics, they can pile older. Yeah, like on the critics, you know, like I can get it. I feel like getting in CVI and the fact that it literally helped to create a genre like people will be like, well, I've seen so many better versions of that story.
You know, if you were born in the 90s or the 2000s, just because you know, you look at it again, like I did this week and you're like, of course, it's terrifying. But you can, you know, obviously see the, see the mechanics have a little bit more. Are you saying this shark isn't real? I'm saying that people may not be as impressed by the.
Oh, what do you think the score was then? After all that to say 100. No, I'm not. I'm going to say 72.
Oh, whoa. Okay. There. I mean, there's, I'm going to say 98.
The audience score for Jaws from Rotten Tomatoes was 90%. Really? Yeah. The low.
That seems, that's really low. What do you think the critic score was? Oh, 98. 95.
How is he going 100 again? 100 again. Eric, does 95, uh, Nars says 98? Because I'm going based on the fact that you had indicated that critics scores from Ben and like everything.
I believe that I believe that's what it is. I haven't looked it up to verify that, but I guess what it is. So, quick score 98%, Nagemey's game over and the bottom. 98 from critics, 90 from the audience.
Yeah. I mean, I think Rob's explanation actually makes sense, but I'm surprised. How would it be that low? It was never about what you saw.
I think that's the thing. I would have expected it to be a higher score because all of so much of Jaws is not seeing it. Right. And so the special effects at the time were good enough.
But I would have thought. Probably good enough for today, honestly. I think it's actually, it's not as bad as just, you know, not like Jurassic Park level. Right.
Yeah. I mean, short of that, you could argue that this is one of a handful of near perfect movies. Yeah. For sure.
For sure. All right. I'm going to jump into the trivia. There are all sorts of directions we can go with this.
I'm going to just run through mine. You guys can jump in and add your own whenever or if there's, you know, blanks. I can fill in the blanks here and there, but I don't want to go. This is one movie we could do 45 minutes on trivia, you know, whatever.
Yeah. It's almost endless. Yeah. I don't know if you're, this is a part of your trivia, but I think we've chosen this movie to do now for one reason.
And then Eric noticed kind of the coincidence as well. What? What? In the movie.
So the 40, it was the 45th anniversary of the release of Jaws this last week, correct? Right. We should go this weekend, right? And, excuse me, and Eric, I'm trying to remember maybe you can jump in on June, today's June 28th, so tomorrow June 29th.
Eric, you notice this? Yeah. Yeah. So in the after the little boy, Alice Kinder is eaten by the shark and his mom puts out the bounty.
There's a, there was a sign posted for us. There's $3,000 in person who gets the shark who, you know, killed Alice Kinder on June 29th. And then later on in the movie, when Robert Shaw is doing his monologue about the Indianapolis and he says he was part of the part where he's rescued. He says, and that was, that was, you know, came out of the water on June 29th, 1945.
So tomorrow is, I guess technically the, if the movie took place in the year it was released, it's the 45th anniversary of Alice Kinder being killed and the 75th anniversary of the sailors being rescued on the USS Indianapolis. Yeah. It's a convergence in the forest. Basically.
Need to be. Yeah. Wow. We're going to be returning to Mrs.
Kinder later. Uh oh. Okay. Mrs.
Kinder of, of the multiple slaps. Slaps. Slaps. Slaps.
Slaps. Slaps. Slaps. Alright, let's start off with some of the easy ones.
There is no Amity Island. It's, Martha's been here. Which I think will play a role, to me it plays a role in when we get to the recasting part, because it's arguably one of the widest places in the country. So.
That's fine. It's funny. I, I, let's talk about diversity in the recast. We will.
Oh, yes we will. Definitely will. I have a preview. I have the widest version of diversity that you could possibly have.
Why does the version of diversity? Okay. Meaning it's like a stereotypical vision of diversity. Oh.
Okay. Well, that's the exact right thing that one of the things I saw about Martha's Vineyard, uh, Brendan was that the physical requirements of the shoot were so crazy, or at least as Spielberg envisioned it, that there were a number of reasons to move it up north there, but one of them was it's so shallow around the island. I never really knew that because they needed to be, you know, they had to lay things on the surface of the ocean in order to shoot it properly. Yeah.
That was a big one. I know very little about that part of the world. I do too, but it apparently for like miles, he could go far enough out so they could spin the camera and never see land, but it was still shallow enough. So we're working.
All right. The three mechanical sharks that played Jaws were nicknamed Bruce after Spielberg was lawyer Bruce Ramer or Ramer. We all know that Eric was the first person to point this out to me. I don't know 10, 15 years ago that the name of the big great white shark in finding Nemo is also Bruce based on this.
Yes. So it's real funny to do. I think I knew this, but I forgotten it. Spielberg was not the original director of Jaws.
Right. Dick Richards, which has a great name. Yeah. The original director was fired from repeating, referring to Jaws as a whale in the pitch to producers.
What kind of an idiot is this guy? So this guy comes over. I think we'll dig. Dick Diggards here.
Dick, you make 16. Yeah. Nice one, Dick. Exactly.
Rob, have you read this book, Eric, have you read this book? I have, it is on my list, but I've never read it. I clearly suffer from a debilitating memory disease because I have read this book, but forgot that I had read it until I started reading into the movie trivia again. So I was, I thought it was funny that the movie cuts out a subplot where Brody's wife has an affair with Hoover.
There's a whole like Hoover Ellen Brody context. So I don't want to jump a gun on our categories, but that's the sequel I want to see. Yes, really. What's going on with those two?
Hoover. Yeah. Brody's famous line. We're going to need a bigger vote.
Excuse me. I like for a moment I hope that line was ad lived by Shiger on the day. That was not in the script. Right.
About that line, one of the other things that I saw was that in an early version of Jaws when they were doing like a preview for audiences, they showed it in like a Midwest theater or whatever. And the jump scare had people so riled up that they missed the line. And so they had to add a bunch of footage just to give enough time for audiences to recover from the other one with the sharp jumps out of the water. And he says that line because he wanted to make sure the audience didn't misalign.
Yeah, that's funny. There's another, I hope this is on the list, but there's another reshoot. Sorry. Go ahead.
There's a, as I was reading, I heard about the edit, but I also heard Spielberg was not happy with some of the shots, especially when they found Gardner's body in the boat. He didn't like the reveal. And so he snuck back onto the lot and stole equipment and went to his friend's house and reshotted it in her pool. He like, he used milk to get the pool to be sort of, you know, I guess.
Yeah, murky. Yeah, murky. And shot at the way he wanted to do it. So it did sound like for the most part though that Spielberg was more nonchalant about this.
It was his like first or second large film, I guess you'd say. And it seems like it's only encouraged him to be more prepared in the next ones, just because this was, you know, so terrible. It's a, it's a famous shitshow. Like this was a horrible production from the get-go.
They just started running in budget and mechanical plan. And mentally it wasn't healthy. Like, you know, there were incidents of like sort of mental exhaustion, I guess they used to call it. Well, and there was fighting in the cast and...
Mental exhaustion, aka being drunk. That sort of. Yeah, I mean, yeah, Robert Shaw, not being able to speak his lines on, that's that, which I'm paying homage to. Yeah, he did that whole, in the end, after listening, he did that whole speech while he was super hammered and couldn't get it out.
Had to be basically drug off the set. And then the next day he came back sober or relatively sober and then nailed it. And I also liked the idea that he and Richard Bifers hated each other. And they were constantly fighting.
And he kept headlining. That's so awesome. Yeah, Robert Shaw had a babysitter through the whole production. He was Robin.
Yeah. Dennis Robin, the Josh, you had Jack Bailey in front of babysitter. I had two other fun facts. One, he was being chased by tax authorities in the UK and the US.
And so every weekend on the shoot, he would head off to Canada to just like touch. It's so great. Neutral territory. Because the tax man was chasing him on both countries.
It's on Canada. I also saw Canada or Bermuda too. Like he's sort of just anywhere but the US. And I think his entire salary had to go to the IRS.
Like for the movie, I don't think he was able to keep anything. He was like a throw down Nicholas Cage. Nicholas Cage or West Side. Okay, where is this one?
Oh, we're talking about Quinn. That guy, Gardner, I forget the actor's name. Oh yeah, he was a local. He was a local.
And apparently he was like the inspiration for the character of Quinn. Like he was this crazy knuckle-headed quote unquote seafarer. It would just say these weird lines and he had the big part shops, sideburns and you can see him in the movie. Whoa, hello?
I'm here. Sorry, someone got out there. Yeah, so I thought that was like, that they created the character and they kind of did. But it was based on a local who is a fisherman and who got some lines in the movie.
Yeah, two things I heard about that. One, that guy apparently was a character. He walked around town barefoot. He would often just sing, walking down the street and kind of random interactions with people.
So I thought it was funny that they then cast him even as this relatively put together guy in the movie. But I thought it kind of actually disappointed me that he based anything about that character on a real person. I know. I either think less of Robert Shaw or Spielberg or somebody.
They couldn't put compelling characters together without a guy they happened to find on the day. There seem to be a lot. I mean, when we get to casting, I'm sure we're talking about a lot of, hey, we're doing this tomorrow and so we need a person. Hey, go find me a character fisherman guy.
Yeah. You were talking about the infamous drinking of Robert Shaw throughout the whole filming. But apparently the guy who played the mayor was out drinking with people and on his way back to the hotel, bent down a pet of cat and it was a skunk. Oh, yes.
And it was totally sick. Yeah. So, Alson, I read the same story except it was Mayor Vaughn. Yeah.
Yeah. Oh, so he said I think he was saying that I said the mayor. I think I'm a garter. Excuse me.
Oh, yes. The mayor. No, it's also. So they had to do like a whole tomato juice bath and everything else in order to be able to go back on set the next day.
Like he thought it was a cat. So not only that's fantastic. I know. Like if I'm drunk or sober, I'm never stopping to pet a cat.
No. No. Like it never sounds like a good idea to me at all ever. It's like something from a looney to his cartoon.
It's. Happy Le Pew. Yeah. Eric, all I can think of is adventures in babysitting, which he's at the bus terminal.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a rat instead of a cat.
Oh, there you go. Why would you hurt a poor defenseless little kitten? Quince boat, the orca sank unexpectedly during filming. Yes.
I love that. I love when insane things like that. I'm not having that possibly. Composer John Williams, when he played the first, when he first played the famous shark theme for Spielberg on the piano, he thought it was a joke.
He hated it so much. Yeah. I saw that too. Again, this movie happened by accident.
Like it's all just. I mean, the music really is a character. Yeah, of course. It's a great way to say it.
I mean, between the mistakes are like all the apparent or, you know, stated mistakes of pre-production. It just seems like so many things came together from the music. Because when you watch it again, it's not just those scenes. There's like music in almost every scene under underneath all the dialogue.
With the music and the casting, even down to the shooting stars. Yeah. There's two shooting stars in the movie and everyone's like, oh, why did you add those? And they're still like, I didn't.
We just got lucky. I noticed them like they stood out. We watched it last night. I was like, well, I wouldn't see that before.
I don't know what happened there. But that's kind of cool. It didn't look like CG though. Yeah.
Yeah. It was not. The one thing I found weird was when they catch that 13 foot tiger shark or whatever it was, and they have it hanging on the hook on the dock or whatever. Apparently that was a real shark.
It was a real shark. They couldn't mock something up and just make it a foam or latex or whatever. Well, and I heard that it was they had to ship it up from Florida or whatever. So it was starting to rot by the time it got there.
And people were getting nauseous by the smell and all of the organs were starting to collapse like down towards the mouth or whatever. So it just was completely rancid and they could be a normal Sunday afternoon. Oh my god. I can't imagine that smell.
Any other trivia that is not cast related or casting related? You know, one thing I didn't want to say because of the Indianapolis speech. I don't know if we're going to talk about it. What?
I mean. Like in general, the movie, you know, has Gottlieb, and actually I forgot the second writer now. Oh, I didn't bring it. Sorry.
But Gottlieb is the axe as the Gazette, like the editor reporter in the movie. Go ahead, Eric. Oh, yeah. He's the newscast around the beach is the author of the book.
Well, yeah, that's the eventually. But the screenwriter for the movie is also the newspaper reporter in town. But it was so funny. There's an uncredited writer Spielberg chipped in.
And then on the Indianapolis speech, they talked about it. Carl didn't write the first draft. He had another writer come in and did a 10 page speech. Good.
More. And then yeah. And then Shaw got a whole bit and he said, let me edit it. So he actually did an active writing role and got it down to the basically what you see on the movie.
And then you described the drunken version and then the sober version. But I just thought it was funny that it kind of passed through three different writers just for that speech. And I can't decide if that's because there was chaos on the movie or it was very cool that they would like pass it around type by. Well, I like that he made it his own.
Yeah. I mean, that's great. But I don't know how that can start as a 10 page speech. Right.
Because I don't know, the speech in the movie is a half a page speech or whatever. It's a one page speech. Well, it's probably what? Three minutes maybe?
We should know that. I guess. But it went from 10 minutes to three basically. It couldn't have been just more than just more of the same.
Just like him telling more stories about seeing a guy like this, another guy like that. Maybe talking about it's, I don't know, food or not having food or not having water or something like that. That really would have just sort of drug it out. It lost a lot of momentum in the story.
The final version failed it. It's only now. Yeah. I have one more kind of funny thing that apparently happened on set.
And that was George Lucas, head stopped by the set and was looking at the mechanical shark. And they he kind of put his head in kind of joking around. And he was Spielberg and somebody else. Close the shark mouth on him and then it got stuck.
And it took a while to get him out and then they were freaking out that they broke the shark again with this little prank or whatever. It stuck in a shirt. Legs flailing. I get the feeling that George Lucas was just the butt of everyone's jokes always.
Just this nerdy little dude with his bouffant hairdo. Yeah. That's so great. Yeah.
Eric, did you have any others? I don't know. I guess we we touched on it briefly about how the movie sort of everything just like came together. But a lot of it ended up like coming together basically out of necessity.
Like the shark didn't work right. They couldn't get it to work right. So that's why they hardly ever showed the shark until the very end. It was sort of the the fear of not seeing it and the building up in your imagination.
That was what created the fear. Like it could have very easily if everything had worked the way they had originally planned. It could have been just like a very generic sort of almost like monster movie. But because it didn't work right, they had to come up with a new idea.
And and that's what ended up making it work so well. Yeah. Yeah. What was the overrun?
Like how far off on their timeline did they end up being was it a year? Was it more? I thought yeah. It was around.
I thought for sure nine months. And it was like a tripling of the budget. Right. Trying to get everything to work and things breaking down and thinking and a young director on his second real movie tripling the budget and being nine months behind.
And I think they were having issues too because they were trying to get like make it look like they're really far out in the ocean but not be that far out in the ocean. And there would be like a boat that would like like a small craft that would show up in the shot. And so they'd have to wait and there couldn't be too many waves or something like like there was a lot of like trying to get the conditions to be just right because the shark at Eric as you were saying was so temperamental that they could like it had to be just right. You try to show them throughout in the deep Atlantic and somebody walks by like like in like we can't.
Yes. Cotton candy. You know I think I think what's under estimated or maybe not given the credit do is the book was such a hit itself and the passion that oh gosh the two producers and I can't remember the producer now they both you know they snapped up the movie rights because the book was such a success. So I think they thought they had something potentially just based on book sales you know they could kind of bank on a certain audience but it is interesting how much leeway they gave a 27 year old guy who would not.
I mean I think if that happens today he's replaced halfway through. I don't think he would even make it to double the budget or triple the budget like once he goes over by a hundred grand or whatever he's out. You replace so quickly. Sorry Eric go ahead.
I'm sorry I just did a quick search. Principal photography for Jaws was supposed to take 55 days and instead it took 159 days. Good God. Wow.
That's that's a crazy number. Yeah and that's when it made more movies back then but that's still crazy but I mean the pure like happenstance of like getting certain people in place in time to do it. It's just you know Spielberg had his like TV movie hit and then he was kind of coming off like you know no real major credentials to make this and then Dreyfus I don't want to get in the casting too quickly but you know he had American graffiti at least filmed and had some credibility from that but one of his interim movies didn't do so well so he was sort of compelled to say yes after initially saying no to Jaws because he thought he wouldn't wouldn't have a career because his previous movie was so bad so it's just funny how like how much like desperation played into everyone trying to get it right. Yeah this whole thing with the whole movie was just like a we got lucky by the way at one time in a row.
Yeah I got the other answer to the question the original estimated budget was three and a half million dollars it wound up costing nine. Wow. That's nuts man and then 1975 dollars. Right.
All right well let's jump into casting stuff since we're we uh Rob's approach to the ready. So I found it interesting that right away the first actors cast were not the leads they were Lorraine Gary who was Ellen Brody she was the wife of the president of Universal. Mary Hamilton as the mayor and the stunt woman turned actress Susan backolini back I'm going with backolini. It was Chrissy the first victim so she got the switch all around.
Yeah she got the job because she could swim and would act nude basically like she would appear nude in the film. And then a bunch of the other minor roles were played by just local residents which is how we got to our crazy quint inspiration. Then we get into the main people I think we've all probably read the same things but let's just go over it. Some of the people considered for the main roles that didn't get them or turned them down for whatever reason Brody like the producers and the author of the book they wanted bigger names.
They were throwing out stuff like Robert Redford for Brody Paul Newman for Hooper and Steve McQueen for Queens but Spielberg didn't want any of that stuff he wanted you know as lower level probably cheaper talent unknown so they wouldn't carry the baggage with them coming in. But all right so some of the Brody ones were Charlton Heston, Robert Duvall as Brody Duvall I'd like to see his Brody. Yeah. Yes.
I don't know about that but Duvall would be way too dramatic if it was Charleston. Yeah I would have a 10-command with him. He would write the beach clothes in tablets right? He just parked the ocean in the shark would just be flopping on the ground in the middle.
Yes. That'd be hilarious. You ought to caught that fish in four seconds. Other guys for other possible Hoopers John Voigt which at the time that would have been mildly interesting.
These other guys I don't know Timothy Bottoms from Johnny God is gone. I don't know him. Joe Moore him. Joel Gray from Cadre and Jeff Bridges.
A young Jeff Bridges. That's a very young Jeff Bridges. I think I saw Jeff Bridges. I thought that was actually a good choice.
You actually see him doing that. John Voigt bottles my mind just because Dr. Fis was so gregarious and outgoing and just I feel like the cycle of Voigt would have canceled out the cycle of Quint. Can you imagine those guys off camera?
Well, it would be uncomfortable the entire time. They got to burn down the whole town. Let's see. So options for Quint.
Sterling Hayden of Dr. Strange Love and Lee Marvin. No, no, take it back Brendan. Sterling Hayden is not from Dr.
Strange Love. Well, he may be but his signature role is Captain McCluskey in The Godfather. Yes, that's true. The man who frisked Michael and then was shot in the restaurant.
I couldn't have been Quint. You want to say was he did not do that yet? Yeah, already. Yeah.
All right. Clusky, dammit. So nine days before the start of production neither Quint nor Hooper have been cast. Nine days beforehand.
Again, they're just wanting to see their pants as an entire production. I'm not sure how they got Schneider for a roadie, whatever. Shaw was reluctant to take the role because he didn't like the book, but his wife and secretary, oh, his wife. Yeah, the wife and secretary said the last time they were telling him to take it.
And the last time they were so enthusiastic was when they were when he took from Russia with Love, the J-Pond movie. So they were right then and they were right at this time. I think Shaw's been a wild card. I've got a thing here about.
Oh, the actor for that Quint was based on his name was Craig Kingsbury, a local fisherman, and legendary eccentric, like Ben Gardner. Good Lord. That is insane. Any other casting rumors or thoughts?
No, I mean, I think it's so funny that they didn't like the appeal of the movie wasn't apparent to everybody. No. It's funny on how there were some decent names being tossed around. Like, Dryfus, for example, mainly was carried on the recommendation of Lucas.
Yeah. You know, George Lucas said, hey, I just filmed this movie, American Graffiti, but it hadn't come out yet. And he said, he's a good guy and he's not paying the ass and he should work with him. And then the fact that he was taking the job because he didn't feel like his acting career was going places either.
So it's just funny how again, they both kind of fell into it. Who do we think was the biggest star coming into this movie? Dryfus, Shider, or Shaw? Shaw had to have the most impressive resume for sure.
Shider probably was the biggest star, though. I guess so. That's what I would have thought. Yeah, me too.
Because like, he was a marathon man, right? Was that out at that point? Yeah. French Connection.
French Connection? I think he was in a series of movies in the late 60s. So he, I mean, Shaw had been a stage actor and a play actor, but not like Shider. All right.
All right. Well, let's move on to everyone's favorite section or part of this podcast. Recastimate. This is where we recast the movie with today's actors.
So Nash, we did better off dead last night. And instead of each of us going through our list, we decided to change it up and go character by character. So we'll do a round of Shider, a round of Brody, a round of Hooper, a round of type of thing. And then I have a couple wild cards.
And we have all sorts of wild cards using after that. So we'll get there and we'll get there. All right. Well, Nash, it's your first or since you're new, your first.
Who would you recast as Brody? So I have a couple options. So I just go with my favorite or list them all. You can, however you prefer, give us your number one and then you can give us like two bench players.
But we generally say three of our maps because otherwise you use up all the good names and you can screw it. Yeah, sure. Sure. I actually think this guy can nail this like not liking the ocean, but feeling duty bound vibe to a tee.
And that's Denzel. Denzel wanted it. But I think Josh Brolin and Charlize Theron could both play the cheap. Oh, Brolin.
Yeah, sure. I don't like Brolin, but I like the Charlize one. Just as a preview of something later, I have Denzel somewhere else. I did too.
Yeah. I could put him in like eight categories, but. Eric, what do you got for Brody? So for me, for Brody, I sort of bounced around a little bit with, you know, sort of like the traditional leading band type.
I had, but sort of a bit on the younger side. I had thought maybe Michael B. Jordan, but changed my mind at one point. I thought maybe Chris Evans, but I settled on Oscar Isaac.
Oh, interesting. I like that one. I like that too. I like that.
I like that one a lot. Yeah. I didn't even consider him. Damn, that's a good one.
I did. Son of a. So I had it happened way too quickly. And I was kind of disappointed, but I kept coming back to him was red pit.
Yeah. Yeah. But I like Rob kind of using your same description. I had Idris Elba as my.
So that's where the whiteness of Martha's Vineyard colored me. My. That was. A mashup of.
How do I change my words here? It affected my choices on some of these except for I do. Be wrong with that. Yeah.
But what if it was a mashup of blazing saddles and jaws and here's a Daba? Wait, did you say iris adaba? Sorry. Have another sip.
Dina Menzel. The other one I had was Jessica Chastain. That's a good one. Yeah.
Yeah. I like both of the female Brody's at this point. Yeah. Brody was one I had the most trouble of casting.
Oh, really? Because he's such an every man. And I don't know. I don't know what his deal is.
I don't know what the character's whole thing is. Like came from New York. I don't know his backstory. Like why is he in Martha's Vineyard?
He's clearly not happy about it or just anything about it. Well, remember it was supposed to be Long Island. So it was like a suburb of New York. Yeah.
Well, yeah. So I couldn't get a vibe for Brody. But so I'll give you some of the ones that I said no to since I'm lasting the Brody thing. I'm going to go over the three rule.
But two of these are bullshit. They wouldn't work because they're way too old, I think. Mark Ruffalo? I think he's fine.
But I do try to keep my suggestions in the age range. And these guys are well over 50. John Hamm. I like John Hamm for this.
I like that. I think he can work. But I said no to him. My one is bullshit.
But the one I picked, which is sort of a came out of nowhere was Jake John Hall. I thought he could pull it off. I'll put it in him for a moment. That's a good one.
That's a good one. That's a good one. I like Jake John Hall. I like Isaac.
And I like the girls too. Jake's good though. I like the boys and girls. Okay.
Back to Nash. Thank you. You're a Hooper. I went round and round.
And I have a couple others if we need more filler. But I'm going to go with Charlie Day. Wow. We have said, we said just last night that every podcast, every time we do casting, we have to include Charlie Day in some way.