PCPS Light: Jaws at 50

Speaker 1 0:00

When you crave it, a pop culture bite, tune on

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into PCPs light. It's short and sweet, but pack the fun Gen X memories for

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everyone, six little sips to keep you keen. So we're back with season 17. Oh,

Unknown Speaker 0:20

it's PCPs light.

Kristin Nilsen 0:23

Welcome back to another PCPs lite episode while we're busy planning and recording our episodes for season 17, just as a reminder, instead of encores, we're bringing you light and refreshing off the cuff conversations with half the calories and a lemony twist, which means no research, no editing, no clips, just us uninformed, unprepared and unedited.

Michelle Newman 0:46

You've been warned the raw and the real.

Kristin Nilsen 0:50

This summer, this is our topic for the day. This summer marks the 50th anniversary of the release of the movie that gave a name to the phenomenon of people lining up around the block to get into a movie theater, aka busting the block, aka blockbuster. So the movie that coined the term blockbuster is celebrating 50 years this summer. We of course, are talking about the movie Jaws, released in 1975 this is the movie that made Gen Xers afraid to swim, not just in the ocean, but also in lakes and neighborhood swimming pools. So And one time, we had a commenter who said she hadn't been in the ocean since 1975 Oh, wow. Remember that it was in our blockbuster episode, and she's like, Yeah, not since 1975 I'll go to my knees. Okay, so in celebration of the 50th anniversary, the three of us just watched the documentary called JAWS at 50, the definitive inside story. And if you haven't seen this yet, it is totally worth it, because nobody knew. None of us knew in 1975 how historic this movie would be or what it represented. And in case you didn't know, you will have the opportunity to celebrate the movie's 50th anniversary by seeing it on the big screen once again when the movie is released into theaters for Labor Day weekend. And I just got my tickets,

Michelle Newman 2:09

yay. We just watched it at home. I have a thing maybe in June, and I kind of wish I wouldn't have we're gonna go see it in the theater as well, but I feel like because you have to help you right screen, but I wish I wouldn't have, because I hadn't seen when I watched it in June. I hadn't seen it in decades, and I kind of wish I would have waited, but I'm still excited to go see it again. Okay, I

Kristin Nilsen 2:32

forgot to set our timer. Hold on one second. Don't speak. Carolyn, wait because, you know these light episodes, they have to, we have to stop talking at a certain point when this alarm goes off. So there it

Michelle Newman 2:41

is. I just said, it's like the internet. Mid sentence, yeah, we just right. We're just gonna stop. I would love to just circle back to what you said, Kristen, about how you know in 1975 none of us knew how big this movie was gonna be. And I would like to point out that if you watch this documentary, someone who also did not know how big this movie was gonna be Steven Spielberg, right, exactly. I mean, gobsmacked at how big this movie because he was, you're gonna learn how behind schedule they were, how that damn shark never worked, how it was just it was the conditions, the cold water, the all this. It was almost like everything was going against him? Yeah, when he when he was like, I want to direct this movie, he thought it was going to ruin

Kristin Nilsen 3:27

his career, right? That was one of the major tools of the documentary, was that this was going to be the end for Steven Spielberg, because he did it so poorly. He managed it so poorly. It was so over budget. And would it even be good? And would anybody want to go see it? And he actually suffered some legit PTSD after and panic disorder after the movie was finished, because he just thought he was over, right?

Carolyn Cochrane 3:53

But you know what? Even with people telling him that, and almost like suggesting perhaps he throw in the towel, he was going to see this through no matter what. Like, yeah, it's like he didn't even, I'm sure he cared, but the fact that it might derail his career or end it, that was not a factor in the in him saying, I'm going to keep doing this. I have to see this through to the end. You have

Kristin Nilsen 4:15

a job to do, and let's take care of it. And let's we need to, in order to talk about the difficulty of the movie. We need to talk about the setting, because the setting is the reason that this movie was so difficult to film. So in the movie, it is a fictional town called Amity on a little island off of the east coast somewhere. The filming location was actually Martha's Vineyard. And so if you go, and I've been to Martha's Vineyard, and I didn't know any of this, but there's some very famous locations on Martha's Vineyard that you can go to today that they very proudly claim as this is the jaws bridge. And I guess it's like a rite of passage to jump off the jaws bridge. Well,

Michelle Newman 4:53

especially this summer. Yes, they've like gone all out. They've gone to the jaws merch, the jaws signs.

Kristin Nilsen 4:59

Yeah, and so what was difficult about the filming was filming on water, because anytime you do something on water, it makes it exponentially more difficult, because you can't hold a camera still when you're floating on the water. You can't even keep a boat in the same place when you're floating on the water, things drift. Then, of course, you have weather, you have storms, and it was just like, and everybody they're showing like, these camera people, and they're like, blue and the face, and they're shaking, and the temperatures, remember, you might have started filming when it was warm. By the time you were done, it's November, and you're on the ocean, and it was just a nightmare. But the other thing that was so interesting to me about Martha's Vineyard is that they only hired eight Hollywood actors for the film, everybody else in the film. And you'll see there are tons of people. There are hundreds and hundreds, even even major roles. Those are all locals. Those are all local Martha vineyard. Martha's Vineyard people even like the little boy that gets eaten on the beach. That is a little boy from Martha's Vineyard, and he gets eaten in the water. Yes, that's true, but his mom's got the big floppy hat on. She's like, you're a little boy. Where's the

Michelle Newman 6:11

boy? Well? And he talks about how cold it was, yeah, there, yeah.

Kristin Nilsen 6:15

And there. Most of those people, you know, if you're an island person, you probably will remain an island person, and so all of those children that are running around on the beach, they're all speaking to the documentary filmmakers as grown ups, oh, yeah, of their

Michelle Newman 6:29

and they're and they're all about our age. The ones that were children are, yeah, and I'll say too, you know, they there's kind of that old adage, like, don't, I don't know, you don't make a movie with, like, kids or pets or something. Yeah, let's add mechanical sharks to that, because there is, I mean, they take quite a bit of time in this documentary, not only showing how the shark was created, which is super cool, but basically it just never worked. Richard Dreyfus says he just always remembers, just like, sharks not working. And then all of a sudden it would be like, and they would just be waiting and waiting, and sometimes for days. And then all of a sudden it'd be like, the sharks working. The sharks

Kristin Nilsen 7:12

were like, three in the morning.

Michelle Newman 7:16

Yeah, I think that going back to Steven Spielberg's PTSD, which was very legitimate. He says For years he had dreams where he was still on that boat, oh, my god, still on that island. And I would like to say, probably still working with that damn shark that just just worked about 20% of the

Kristin Nilsen 7:37

time. They had, they had shark mechanics the way you would have car mechanics. You know, at a I'm trying to think of a car oriented thing, a race, a car race. What do they call car races? Oh, like your pit crew, thank you.

Michelle Newman 7:52

But it is so primitive. And so 1975 they were so say the shark is in the water and they're on a little floating raft with their little like joysticks, like, like, you're like, you're working a little remote control car from 1975 think about how it would be done today. They would have made a shark. I wonder if Steven Spielberg thinks about that today, like, how different this would be. But yeah, I was super impressed to Carolyn's point earlier, about Spielberg's the dedication and the belief he had when, even through all of these hardships, the weather, the the shark, right? The the delays, the pressure from, you know, the producers, basically of how much more money this is costing he's already getting negative press. This isn't going to be a good movie. It's already delayed. It is such a testament to to the reason he's as successful as he is today. If this was the dedication and the belief he had straight out of the gate. Now, he had that other movie about that truck. Remember that highway TV

Kristin Nilsen 9:00

movie duo, yes, right? His second, but this was his first feature,

Michelle Newman 9:04

first feature. But like, if he if this was the type of character and the type of work and belief in his craft and belief in his dream and his vision that he had, it's no wonder he's gone on to be one of the most successful directors. Yeah, alive and dead,

Carolyn Cochrane 9:21

one day. You know what I mean? Yeah, and, you know, I wanted to your point, Kristen, about using all the locals, and also to the point of, if it was made today, it would be so different, it would not have there was something about it that made it seem almost like a, I don't want to call it a documentary, but it just had this real feel like it could have been somebody's, you know, eight millimeter camera that they were taking all of this video in. There was just enough amateur Ness, in a way, in terms of the people, that it felt so believable if it had been some polished actresses and actors, you know, saying some of these lines. And especially the beach goers and the townspeople, it just would not have had the same effect. This was this could have been us,

Kristin Nilsen 10:07

and I never thought about that. It's true all like the kids who are on the and when I say kids, I mean like the teenagers who are running out into they're having the bonfire and they're gonna run and go swimming, the way they were talking was not scripted, and they just seemed like normal kids, and it has sort of that patina of 1975 like, everything's a little yellow or a little orange. Everybody's clothing is a little orange. Well,

Michelle Newman 10:31

yeah, think about all the suits and the dresses of the adults walking around town or in that meeting. And like, like Kristen said earlier listeners, these were all actual Islanders, which means not that you vacation there, not that you you know you come every summer. You have to be there. You have to be like born there and live there your whole life. But think about all their clothing. It was that. It was the mustards and the avocado greens and the oranges, but it's all just kind of faded, yeah, just a little

Kristin Nilsen 11:02

a little faded, yeah, just a little even the shark. I really loved the coverage. So much coverage to the shark, because, like you said, the looming issue about the shark is that today they wouldn't have even made a shark. They would have animated a shark. It would have been CGI. It would. And I was so grateful for all those problems they had with that damn shark, so that we got the benefit of seeing an actual physical, tangible creature, as mechanical as it was, crashing onto the bow of that boat.

Michelle Newman 11:35

Could you guys believe that? And this is a little bit of a spoiler, not really. But could you believe that that shark, like, decades later was just like, gonna get thrown out? I like, when the guy, the minute the guy bought it and, like, restored it, and when they were, when he's, like, we found it in like, a warehouse, like, all crumbly and like, about to be thrown out. I was like, how is that not immortalized in the Smithsonian that should be on in Martha's Vineyard? It could be like they're up on a big like a park with it. I thought that'd be kind of scary for little

Carolyn Cochrane 12:10

kids. Speaking of scary, but I just wanted to say, you know, we're talking all about the shark and how mechanical it was, and how large it was, all these things, but they talk specifically, and they interview other filmmakers during this documentary. So you really get people that are current day filmmakers, like Jordan Peele, and he talks about the initial scene in the movie. It, it's one of the scariest, if not the scariest, to me, and it does you don't ever see the shark. The shark is not even part of that. And it just again, lends itself to what great directors these are. I mean, the things that they were pointing out when you were listening to these famous filmmakers like James Cameron, and it was so interesting, because I saw it when they were talking about it. But never think about it when I'm watching a movie for sure from

Kristin Nilsen 12:59

a technical point of view from, like, an artistic and technical point of

Michelle Newman 13:02

view. Yeah, well, when they're talking, you know, like George Lucas, like and Carolyn, like Carolyn just said James Cameron, Jordan Peele, they're, they are basically praising Spielberg directing choices for some of these movie moments that have stuck with all of us forever, for decades, that he made that choice, and he was what, 2027 2927 so again, goes back to the brilliance of Steven Spielberg. I don't think any of us have to, you know, convince anyone else of his brilliance. But when you think he he was doing all this stuff on his first movie, when your first movie out of the gate like that becomes this generational. I mean, one of the a teaching tool, yeah, just one of the greatest movies of all time. Yeah, I would say, can we talk about that for just a minute? Like and in all our episodes? Listeners, you guys probably know this, but we always like to connect whatever we're talking to to our own childhood experiences. And we did a little bit with this movie in our summer and our summer blockbusters, but I want to take us all back to 1975 just for a second. We're all at different ages. Summer of 75 I'm six. Kristen, seven. Carolyn, you're 10, yep. So like, what are your memories? Because when I think back, I asked my husband this after he watched the documentary The other night. I said, honestly, is there a more iconic piece of pop culture, if we're talking media from the 1970s than jaws and Star Wars? Such a powerful piece of pop culture, the image, the movie poster, the you know the woman swimming with the shark underneath her, but at age, at age seven, how old was I? Wait? I didn't see it, but I was so aware. I feel like someone in my family read the book, and it has to have been my sister, because my mom wouldn't have but I remember the book being.

Carolyn Cochrane 15:00

Our house. Sister could not have read it because she's my age at 10. But I can't

Michelle Newman 15:03

imagine my mom. And it doesn't have to be in 70 I'm not talking about in 75 I might have remembered the book being in my house later, but I remember that book. But as far as as memories of it, I remember jaws. I remember then when the little game came out, and I remember that image, the posters, people having it on their T shirts. I don't I did not personally see it at age six. I saw it probably a year or two later. I don't know how long, but what are, what are your guys's memories of, how did, how did the phenomenon in 1975 affect you? And that's

Kristin Nilsen 15:35

kind of the beauty of the 70s, is you didn't have to see it to be part of the phenomenon, which is different from right now, when something became a part of the culture. It was everywhere. It was on Saturday night, live, and it was, you saw the trailers on TV. There were everybody, like you said, on the shirts, the poster and everything. It was on variety shows. So and you knew all the iconic moments, maybe from watching Entertainment Tonight, or we didn't have Entertainment Tonight, but whatever show it was, you know, we all knew it. And then if, even if you didn't see it, your maybe your parents went to see it, or your babysitter went to see it, and people would tell you about it. And so it seeps I didn't see it until, I don't think I saw it until I was an adult. And yet, my experience,

Michelle Newman 16:17

think about how many times you drove past a movie theater in the 70s and the 80s. And you saw the movies Lister. I can see it in the red, like, you know, on the white marquee, but the jaws like up there, and then maybe something else was underneath it, yeah. Well, I got you, Carolyn,

Carolyn Cochrane 16:31

I wasn't allowed to see it, I'm sure. So I did not see the movie, but we did have the book, and I think I talk about this in our blockbuster episode, because, if you remember, we just talked about the opening scene of the movie, which is also kind of the opening scene of the book, where it is a young girl who is skinny dipping you guys. And in the book, it gives you a little more detail, because you don't have the visual. And I can see the paperback, and I would go and sneak it off the shelf, and I would just go look for those words, like nipples or penis or whatever, and that's so the book is almost the thing that is more indelible in my memory than the movie is. And then I loved in the documentary, they gave a good little nod to the book. Oh, it's a beater, yes. And I, I think that was the most interesting part of it to me, because I could relate to that a little bit of when they showed the cover of it, and how he struggled with what to call it. I mean, you talk about titles of things they share in the documentary for months, and they, he had pages and pages and pages of possible titles, and then he couldn't come up with one, and it's time to come, you know, come to one, and his publisher is asking him, and he said, Well, the only one that there's been any kind of agreement on is jaws. And there it was. And so that, to me, was super interesting.

Kristin Nilsen 17:56

And the others were like, Leviathan or something, yeah, exactly, you know. And then m, I can't remember what it was, but it was always dumb, yeah, like Maelstrom,

Michelle Newman 18:06

yeah, that's right. A fun fact is, a few months ago, when Brian and I were in Austin, we went to the Lyndon B Johnson presidential library, and there was a huge Jaws, just like a huge Jaws, you know, display or not, display, but the exhibit, Johnson exhibit. And so I'm like, What is going on? Why jaws? But that was, I'll be quite honest with you. I was like, that's the first thing, you know, we're looking at the little map, and the lady the little docents, like, and then the jaws exhibit is up on, you know, floor three. And I was like, we're going to that one first. And it was very cool. Lots of stuff from the movie, lots of like, wetsuits and stuff from the movie. And you're like, where's the connection? The writer of the book was a speechwriter for Lyndon B Johnson, no way. And they didn't mention that in the and they didn't so you see his typewriter, and you see some of in the exhibit, there were some of the first drafts of the book. Wow.

Carolyn Cochrane 18:56

One of the things that I found the most interesting and the most telling, in a way, was Peter Benchley is sharing, you know, the book's popularity, and when they're getting ready to it was maybe the paperback edition put it out. He had received an unlikely and very interesting quote from someone who really enjoyed the book, and this was Fidel Castro. Oh, geez. And Fidel Castro's quote was very on point, particularly for me now as watching this all as an adult. Because according to Fidel Castro, he said that this book was and hold on, here we go. He said it was a marvelous metaphor about the corruption of capitalism. Because if you remember the underlying kind of what makes this so dramatic is that the powers that be don't want the word to get out that there's this shark in the waters, so they want to play it down, or just basically not tell anyone. So the beaches will stay full, and people will be there, the tourism dollars, whatever. And so because of that decision, people are going into. Water. No one's telling them how careful they should be, and we see the effects of that. And Fidel Castro saw this as, basically, it was to keep the markets going and everything people were willing to risk human life. And it just, you know, there's some, maybe some moments now in our current history where you could say, or our current moments, that we are looking at the money and the dollars more than we are at the human beings. And I think probably the book might give us a little bit more of that, that storyline than the movie did, but there would be no movie if it wasn't for that plot point, that they're not telling people how unsafe things are because they want to bring in the dough, and hence we have this carnage.

Kristin Nilsen 20:45

Yeah, it makes me want to read the book. It really does. And same. It's the same. We've talked about this before, those, those, oh, we don't have mass market paperbacks anymore, those big bricks. Oh, you can smell it. Yes, it's like a small, small, tiny book that's super thick, and the pages were so thin, yes, the original

Michelle Newman 21:03

beach paper, yeah,

Carolyn Cochrane 21:08

at the beach. My mom would read them at the beach and at the pool. And so they'd get fatter, you know, because they'd absorb the humidity, which we had a ton of in Texas, and so they'd sit kind of warped, yeah, places, and they have

Michelle Newman 21:20

them at Safeway, at here in Denver, like when I leave Safeway, there's a big magazine rack, and it's tons of those paperbacks, like the Nora Roberts and the, you know, Tom Clancy's. But I think it's so funny because I'm like, Who leaves Safeway? And they're like, you know, what I need is one of these books I can't actually read. That's how it

Kristin Nilsen 21:38

used to go. I think that's

Carolyn Cochrane 21:40

where they're anything on the spinners?

Kristin Nilsen 21:43

Yeah, I loved it. Yes. One, I want to go back to that opening scene, which that Jordan Peele moment really spoke to me, Carolyn, this person who is our age, saying that was what taught me how to make a horror movie. You make people afraid by not showing them the monster. Don't show them the monster. You just imply the monster. And so if you recall, the girl goes in skinny dipping, and then there's a jerk, and she gets violently jerked, and then she's like, what? And then Jerk, jerk. And so we get to see in the documentary how they do the jerks. I love this so good. She's basically hooked into a harness with people pulling on ropes in various different directions, and then they had to choreograph when to jerk, and they had to pull her under. So both this girl, both the skinny dipper, and the little boy on the beach, who also gets killed at the beach, and he's much younger, he's like nine, in the water, and yeah, in the water, yeah. Sorry at the beach, in the water, yeah. Land shark. Land shark,

Michelle Newman 22:43

land shark.

Kristin Nilsen 22:45

They have to be pulled under. It's almost like they have to give their consent, right? You're gonna, cause that would be so terrifying.

Michelle Newman 22:53

Give them oxygen under. Oh, God, if anybody put a mask under me, if I was already underwater, I would be like, Well, I'm gonna be breathing in water. Like, how? Because the little boy, you're right, he said they pulled him and then they would pop him up, yeah, and then pull him back down and pop him up.

Kristin Nilsen 23:09

So scary. As a child, I never would have consented to that. I'd be like, I'll be leaving now. You can find somebody

Carolyn Cochrane 23:16

else. As an adult, I still don't quite understand snorkeling. Like, people go. I still have a fear, like, I won't know where I am, and I'll go a little bit too deep, and then I'll suck in all this water. Yes, I know it's a whole teacher not to, but that's kind of what I think. So, yeah, but again, the movie, if it was like all CGI, or, you know, the actors had those little dots all on them, I don't Is that what CGI is when you watch how movies are made today, and, you know, they made all the jerky stuff just not real, like it didn't actually happen. There's just something to her face and stuff. When it's really, truly happening to you,

Kristin Nilsen 23:50

it's more, it's, it's a, it's an IRL experience, which is what is scary. Like, this could actually happen. That is scary when everything is fantasy, I'm not scared. Yeah, it's not even a horror movie.

Carolyn Cochrane 24:02

It couldn't even happen, no, but I one of the things I did find interesting, and I guess probably because we were so young, I just always thought that sharks were always like, super scary, and we were always aware of them, and we're always looking out for that Finn and our parents did when they were kids. But really it was jaws in the movie that put sharks on the map in terms of making them this kind of pop culturey pariah. Eyes out, yes, yes, and pop culture pariah. I love that. And sadly, what we as a whatever, as humans, what some evil ones did in terms of just going out hunting, basically sharks, so they could bring them in, and people would just stare at them on the, you know, on the beach, or they'd have them hanging up where that wasn't a thing before, like the shark Association really went way, way down because of this movie, which didn't really ever think about that. That could be consequences. Of this movie, and was

Kristin Nilsen 25:01

it Peter Benchley and his wife who were actually the ones who are, I'm trying to figure out who the characters and the doc characters, you know, the people speaking in the documentary, but I feel like was Peter Benchley and his wife who were calling this out as a dilemma, like, what was the shark? People

Michelle Newman 25:15

like the shark, the oceanographers. And the first movie, there was a Yeah, and there was a statement one of them made that I just loved. I wish I'd have written it down, but it was basically how everybody is like, oh, let's go kill the sharks, because they're killing the people, when what you have to remember is we're the ones in their habitats. Yeah, right, you know. And so it's really sad, and sharks are needed. I mean, it's a circle of life, and it keeps the ocean, you know, it keeps everything moving the way it's supposed to. It's

Kristin Nilsen 25:42

like mosquitoes. You can't get rid of mosquitoes, people, you can't get rid of bats. It's an ecosystem.

Michelle Newman 25:48

Yeah, you know, I love behind the scenes, facts and tidbits and gossip. Basically, I love the Robert Shaw who plays Quint how he has that great monolog and the boat about the war that was fascinating too. So listeners are like listeners haven't watched it. You guys have to watch the doc, the documentary, but if you're familiar with the movie, Quint has a big monolog about why he has this vendetta against the shark, and it has to do with being in the war, and a lot of his you know, his friends, his his buddies that were killed by sharks, and

Kristin Nilsen 26:24

in the sinking of a ship like in the sand, yeah, sunk, and they all got eaten by sharks. But then

Michelle Newman 26:29

there's a behind the scenes about how he needed to have, he asked Steven Spielberg if he could have a little nip, little drink before that scene was shot, so that, because he's supposed to be drunk, right? He's supposed to be drunk. And he so he wants to be believable, but also, I think, because he wanted the courage to, you know, have this scene, and shows up, and he's like, so drunk that he couldn't even do it, but then he comes back the next day and nails it. So, yeah, they actually say, Steven Spielberg says that is a scene he could watch over and over and over again in this movie. And it is a powerful scene. I

Carolyn Cochrane 27:00

mean, it has everything to do with sharks, but it doesn't include any of you know, doesn't include jaws. It doesn't include those scenes. It's emotional and edge of your seat and human, I think, which was really a fun part, not a fun part. But there's more to this movie than just a Shark Eating people. Yeah, as an adult, I would pick up on more so than I would have when I was a kid. But I want to talk about that really fast, about the whole kid aspect. So I was 10, and I am old Gen X, like, that's the first year of Gen X. And of course, there was, I was not seeing it, and I'm sure people a lot younger saw it, but for the most part, I mean, it's an adult ish movie. There's kind of some nudity, and there's obviously blood and all of that. But then the merchandising of it, which obviously came after because they didn't have any idea, like they would now, where they would pre pump us with all the stuff half the time before the movie comes out. This was all after the fact. And, you know, they had the Halloween costumes. And I think at one point this little girl in the documentary is reading a book, and I think it's a golden book. I think that the spine of the book is like a golden book spine. And I was just thinking the marketing to little kids. This is a scary, scary movie. It is not kid appropriate at all, and the games, and again, the marketing of it and the capitalism of what they did to this movie was kind of interesting. It's

Kristin Nilsen 28:25

like, I wonder, was there's another movie we'll be talking about later where there are two different versions? I wonder, was there a TV version of JAWS that wasn't as scary?

Carolyn Cochrane 28:36

I wouldn't think so. I wouldn't think a TV one maybe came out many years later, yeah? Like, what I remember from my little like, growing up and finding out stuff from my mom, is that there were so many years that before a movie could be put on TV, yeah, some time had to elapse and then it could be edited and put on TV. So I'm sure there was a time when it got put on TV, but that was way after this initial Halloween costume, you know, game, Golden Book. I mean, it's just amazing

Michelle Newman 29:06

little figures too. We have a social media post coming out this week that will show some of the merch. And, you know, the game, we all know, where you can pull the little, you know, the the life preserver out or the piece of the boat, or, you know, out of his out of the shark's mouth. But, you know, there were action figures as well as as some of the other things. So they definitely were toys.

Carolyn Cochrane 29:29

You didn't have to see the movie like Kristen, like said this was, and I'm going to quote, I don't know who it was in the documentary, but I loved this term. They called it a generational phenomenon, so something that touched all the generations in some way, shape or form, and I don't know that we, I can think of the last thing that everybody, no matter your age, was so gung ho on,

Kristin Nilsen 29:56

or at least had knowledge of, right? Oh, you knew what I mean. I guess we could say Taylor Swift is the only thing that everybody knows about,

Carolyn Cochrane 30:04

things that could cross all of that. You know, my grandmother probably read the book, I'm sure saw the movie, and then I could have turned around and had the Halloween costume. And, you know, my mom's reading the book, and it's just, I it was legit entertainment for across the board, generationally, where I'm not sure my grandmother would have thought Taylor Swift was was great, but this all had something for everybody.

Kristin Nilsen 30:28

Oh, yeah, that's true. It's more than just knowledge of it, like it could be entertainment for all of those people. Old people are gonna go see jaws, and apparently, children are gonna go see Jaws too. Oh, we have, in

Michelle Newman 30:39

our blockbuster episode, we have, we have listener, yeah, stories, wasn't it? Someone saw it when they were so little, when the head pops out, yeah? When the head pops out, their candy, like, rolled down the aisle and you just kept hearing it going, clunk, clunk. Like, or they dropped all their, like, I don't know, lemon heads or something, and they all went rolling down the aisle, yeah, so, like, I think I said a couple weeks ago in these episodes, since we're not doing encores, we definitely always have, we've got an episode for that. So this week, the related episode definitely would be our summer blockbuster episode, which is full of fun stories from Jaws and lots of other summer blockbusters throughout the 70s and 80s, pretty

Kristin Nilsen 31:22

they never started it. Yeah, JAWS started it. So obviously, we're excited about this documentary. We highly recommend it. I'm trying to, I'm trying to decide if it's smart to watch the documentary before going to see it on the big screen, because there is so much that you could learn, like Quint speech, you know, you learn background information that would give you, it gives more gravitas to some of the things that you're seeing on the screen. I'm going to see it with people, and one of, one of whom has, one of the people has not seen it before ever in her entire life, and so I'm trying to decide if I tell her to watch the doc first.

Carolyn Cochrane 31:58

I don't know, that's a good question. I think,

Kristin Nilsen 32:00

after, you think after, yeah,

Michelle Newman 32:01

because you kind of don't want to see how the sausage is made, you know. Oh, maybe, okay, yeah, you might be right, you know. Because then you're watching it and you're going, oh, somebody was, you know, had her in a harness underneath the water and pulling her back and forth, you

Kristin Nilsen 32:13

know, I think you're right. I think, I think, yeah, watch the dog after, to inform yourself about what you just experienced. And then, of course, you'll want to rent it again, and you'll see

Carolyn Cochrane 32:20

it on, well, yeah. And I was gonna say, nowadays, say nowadays, we can do that before, when it was at the movie theater, you know, you'd have to go pay again at times and go see it. Now you can, she can immediately after she watches the doc, go and find it. Yeah, stream it.

Kristin Nilsen 32:33

So needless to say, this has become an iconic summertime movie. This is one of the movies that you'll they'll show at the park right there is always a showing of jaws in the summertime. It's become a yearly seasonal event, and I'm super excited to see it over Labor Day weekend. I think we're wrapping it up. You guys. That was a great conversation. It was refreshing, so refreshing, so refreshing. Let's go to the beach. So thank you everybody for joining us for PCPs light today. We hope it quenches your thirst without being too filling. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next time for another uninformed, unprepared and unedited conversation. Off the top of our heads, God help us. In the meantime, let's raise our glasses for a toast courtesy of the cast of Three's Company to good times,

Michelle Newman 33:21

two Happy Days to Little House on the Prairie. Cheers. Cheers. The

Kristin Nilsen 33:25

information, opinions and comments expressed on the pop culture Preservation Society podcast belongs solely to Carolyn the crushologist and hello Newman. And are in no way representative of our employers or affiliates. And though we truly believe we are always right, there is always a first time the PCPs is written, produced and recorded in Minneapolis, Minnesota, home of the fictional wjm studios and our beloved Mary Richards Nanu. Nanu, keep on trucking and May the Force Be With You. You.