The Shark Is Still Working: The Impact And Legacy Of Jaws - Everything, Including The Kitchen Sink

Apr

24

The Shark Is Still Working: The Impact And Legacy Of Jaws - Everything, Including The Kitchen Sink

≡ Category: Documentary, Movie Reviews, Recommended, United States |
≅ Written by: Michael Kydonieus

Country: United States
Genre: Documentary
Director: Erik Hollander
Year: 2009

Rating:

TRASH CINEMA RECOMMENDED MOVIE

Die-hard fans of Jaws can sit in front of a TV and watch Jaws lore for hours, with a big smile on their faces the whole time. For people like that, it almost doesn’t matter how astute the observations of the talking heads are, or if there are any astounding new revelations about the material. We’ll take what we can get. The more thorough and detailed the minutae are, the better. Where Jaws is concerned, for the die-hard fan, the rule is, the more, the merrier.

By that standard, The Shark Is Still Working: The Impact And Legacy Of Jaws is brilliant.

The documentary is a little light on the actual process of making Jaws. That part of The Shark Is Still Working: The Impact And Legacy Of Jaws is over in the first twenty minutes. The filmmakers are well aware that Carl Gottlieb’s diary of the filmmaking, The Jaws Log, and Laurent Bouzereau’s documentary of the filmmaking process, The Making Of Jaws, have already been there — the bones on that skeleton are pretty much picked clean.

What The Shark Is Still Working dwells on is, true to it’s title, the impact and legacy of Jaws. It covers, in exhaustive detail, things like the effect on kids who saw the film, who then grew up to be film directors, oceanographers, special effects technicians, and so forth; how Jaws has become part of the cultural language, quoted from The Simpsons to The Wall Street Journal; the impact on the film business, especially how films are marketed; the uber fans and their wacky hijinks; what became of all the props associated with Jaws; the marketing tie-ins from t-shirts to toilet seats, which in turn sparked the Jaws memorabilia business; and on and on. The documentary is something like three hours long, if that gives you any idea of the scope or level of detail.

The filmmakers have also managed to get exclusive interviews with many of the leading lights of Jaws including: Steven Spielberg, Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, John Williams, and just about everyone else still alive, as well as filmmaking luminaries who were inspired by the film: Bryan Singer, M. Night Shyamalan, Eli Roth, Robert Rodriguez, Chris Kentis, Kevin Smith, and so on.

The Shark Is Still Working: The Impact And Legacy Of Jaws is not for the casual fan of Jaws — if there is such a thing. Someone who doesn’t really care about the movie will find their eyes glazing over at some point during the documentary’s three hour running time. No detail is too small for these guys to go into. The intent of the filmmakers is for The Shark Is Still Working to be an exhaustive examination of the impact and legacy of Jaws, the final word on the subject. In that, it pretty much succeeds.

It’s hard to imagine what else these guys could possibly talk about.

So, why am I not giving The Shark Is Still Working: The Impact And Legacy Of Jaws a five star rating? Well, not everyone in my audience is a frothing-at-the-mouth fan of Jaws the way I am. It’s not a documentary for the average trash cinema buff, but for huge fans of Jaws, it’s definitely worth seeing.

The documentary will be showing at the L.A. United Film Festival on May 2nd. If you happen to be in L.A., by all means go, but you’d better hurry up and reserve a ticket, because two of the three screenings are already sold out.

Otherwise, you’re out of luck for now. The Shark Is Still Working: The Impact And Legacy Of Jaws can’t be released independently without either licensing the scenes from Jaws in the doc or taking the scenes out, so you won’t be seeing it at your neighborhood theater any time soon. You might be able to catch it at another film festival sometime down the road if you’re lucky. Your best hope of actually seeing the thing is probably to pick up the 35th Anniversary edition of Jaws when it comes out. Depending on the response to this documentary, Universal might include it in the next major anniversary release of Jaws on DVD and Blueray.

Actually, there is one more way you might be able to see The Shark Is Still Working: The Impact And Legacy Of Jaws. Within a week at the most, I’ll be running a The Shark Is Still Working Giveaway contest, in which I’ll be giving away a screening copy of The Shark Is Still Working: The Impact And Legacy Of Jaws, so check back on the TrashCinemaClub site every day or so. After 100 people have entered the contest, I’ll close it and award the prize. Remember, you can’t get this documentary anywhere right now. I expect the contest will be over within days, so if I were you, I’d jump on the contest when it starts.

(Editor’s Note, 4/27/09 — Due to the request of the producers of The Shark Is Still Working: The Impact And Legacy Of Jaws, the contest has been cancelled.)