My Thoughts are Broken

  And then we went to the theatre…

(The ‘we’ here is my high-school friend Mathew and I, going to see theatre in question: The Shark is Broken in Toronto. I had flown across the country to see it. Mathew drove in from Hamilton. AND… OUR mutual childhood friend Demetri was co-starring as Roy Scheider - he of Jaws fame… the play being about the behind the scenes personality clashes during the shooting of Jaws. The play was written by Rober Shaw’s son Ian… who stars as his father in the play. The third actor, Liam, plays a young Richard Dreyfuss. The show was transplanted from a successful run in London’s West End nine months prior.  Now you are all caught up on ‘the story so far…’)

The play charitably opens with an extended scene between Dreyfuss and Scheider. I suppose this kind of builds anticipation for Shaw’s (the actor and character and son and father) entrance - though layers of this will be lost should there ever be a production without Ian Shaw. But it also allows the audience some time to experience two talented actors working in tandem with great intertwined chemistry before you are subjected to the spectacle to follow.

In those five or so minutes I went on a journey. It was not unexpected. I’d been anticipating it for months - years by some measure. In those years the moment had gained layers of significance that I could not have anticipated back when Demetri told me about getting cast, back when we were riding the train from Bloomsbury to Beckenham on the first outing of our musical odyssey to a quilt of London locations that represented significant points in the map of the history of the music that we grew up loving together (but that is a story for another time).

So many of the layers that had built up had been laid by the silty accumulation of all that has been lost in the Covid pandemic. It was as though nearly three years of confinement and distancing and chaos culminated in those few minutes on stage. It was undoubtedly more significance than the play itself could fairly bear, nor was it a depth of meaning that was present for anyone else in the theatre - even my seat-mate.

From the bookend of being told about the show only barely pre-pandemic through to the closure represented by the freedom to frivolously go across the country to see a play in a room full of people; with the added baggage that the last time I saw a show with that many people, it was likely how I myself caught Covid; to the synchrony that Station Eleven - which hit me so firmly in the feels during the pandemic that I read it twice and watched the TV series - starts in a theatre in Toronto (not the same one, FWIW); and another connection I’m not at liberty to include.

I found myself on the precipice of tears in those opening moments. I didn’t cry. But I suspect I didn’t only because I’d already imagined that moment so many times that it would have required an entirely unexpected epiphany for me to be pushed to that level of emotion.

Then Ian Shaw came on stage. The play changed. It was here that it became very meta and simultaneously convoluted and it is the danger of the production that that IS the show. Ian Shaw’s performance is remarkable and complex. He is a human time machine, bringing his father back from the dead. We watch a man on stage, likely living the first line of his obituary. It's the show’s inarguable centre, and likely its greatest liability. I will likely never see the likes of it again, and that is its draw - at least so long as Shaw plays Shaw.

I find it hard to watch Demetri anywhere. I always see him - as opposed to the character. It’s the failing of a position of privilege and not in any way an indictment of his abilities as an actor. We have simply known each other, and performed with each other, for far far too long for it to be any other way.
Sometimes he reaches a state closer to the threshold of my willing disbelief. His performance in Snowden, for example. I don’t really know why.

With theatre in general I feel I have a programmed perception of all players as being less ‘real’ than in film. I suppose it is due to being in the same physical space as the actors without a window of reality dividing us. The ‘captured in amber’ medium of film, with its real and/or real-feeling sets assists me in feeling as though life was caught in situ as opposed to the collective experience of stage, where the fiction is a construct shared by all in attendance and on stage. I am willing to embrace that accepted artifice of stage as artifice than the implicit document of film.

….and here The Shark is Broken uniquely breaks my rule.

Robert Shaw appears before us, transported from the summer of 1974 to 2022. He walks across the stage recreating the behind-the-scenes drama of his most iconic performance. And it is wondrous and unsettling and impossible.

The performance sets the two actors on stage with him to an insurmountable task - lacking the genetic advantage of their co-star. So long as he does his job, there is nothing they can do to match him. If they gave the performance of a lifetime and he phoned in his, perhaps the field wouldn’t be so slanted. (One has to hope that this futility is in fact, freeing to Demetri and Liam. Knowing Demetri as I do, I expect so. My brief experience of Liam suggests he has the humility to have embraced the same.)

My brain - the audience brain - can’t fully compute what is going on. The clash between the uncanny within the manufacture of theatre is a unique experience that the mind can’t quite make complete sense of. We know this is not Robert Shaw, more than 40 years dead, yet we also understand that this is more than a simple master class in acting.

On top lies the additional meta-layer as Ian Shaw, the playwright, has a relationship-conversation across time with his father, through his father, in his father’s voice - and his father talks of his father, the grand-father to Dreyfuss and Scheider. The snake gobbles down upon itself in a tangled love-letter to a man and a film that feels as unreachable in meaning as the paradox of the ouroboros.

Its a mind fuck.

There must be a future production without Ian Shaw, at least to explore the possibility that there is more play than just spectacle here; to allow actors playing Dreyfuss and Scheider to act at par without baggage brought on stage for them alone to carry, whether they are willing or not, by the supernova that feels so inevitable and critically important to this theatrical experience that is Shaw as Shaw.

There is not a lot of plot. This is a fine theatrical tradition of dialogue and ideas that has lasted for generations. Three men, stuck on a boat for weeks. They clash. They face demons. They come to terms. We laugh along the way. It is enough.

I can’t help but wonder if it is enough with an entirely different cast. Clearly - I may have beaten that horse a bit much by now. 

I wonder if there is an alternate reality where the play embraces the absurdist natures of theatre that the script is already banging up against. There are shades of No Exit here. Hell is other people. Life is interminable - it’s Godot on a boat. The film is never done - at least not on stage, we of course know that the film changes Hollywood. We end with three actors still waiting for that bloody shark.  But in our reality - Shaw’s reality - the film wraps. How I would end it hardly matters, because this version is glorious.

The Truth & Signal Top Films List 2012

Perhaps you've heard about the Sight and Sound Top Films List?

It keeps on cycling back into my life over this past month. It got an awful lot of attention this year (they actually only compile it every ten years) as for the first time since 1952, Citizen Kane was not the number one film. This year the number one was Vertigo.

Naturally this kind of list gets me thinking about my own experience with film. What are my favourite films? What films have had the biggest impact upon me? What movies have I watched over and over again and felt like the well was endless?

So I decided to make my own list. Mine isn't 100 films. I limited myself to 11. I tried to do 10, but I simply couldn't leave one of the 11 I whittled it down to off the final list. My list is not numerated. There is not a number one. The most important - the "most essential" - films in my life.

Only one of my films is on the Sight and Sound list.

Six of the eight directors who I have declared I will watch (but not necessarily enjoy) anything they do are represented - one of them twice.

Only one silent film. Only one foreign language film. 

I am reasonably certain that there isn't a film on my list that I have seen less than 20 times (which is probably why there isn't a film newer than a decade old the list - indeed only one since the turn of the century.)

These aren't necessarily my favourite films (see next note), they are the films that I have found to be the ones I felt compelled to watch the most (Beast of Bottomless Lake excluded for obvious reasons).

For years I have named five specific films as my favourites of all time. They are on the list, but only because as I considered the films that should be on the list those five kept coming up for all the reasons that the other six films did. So they got there honestly. If I were to name my favourite 10 or 11 films probably three or four of the films on this list would fall off. Perhaps I'll make that list some day, but I think by having a pretty solid top 5, I've kind of already done that.

Lastly, before I move on to my top 11 most essential films.... Citizen Kane v. Vertigo? For me it's Vertigo all the way. Spoiler alert - it doesn't make my list. I think it's a fantastic film. But if I were picking a Hitchcock film it would be Rear Window. I've never managed to get through Citizen Kane in a single sitting without falling asleep. I think that speaks volumes.

So, without any further futzing... The Truth & Signal Top (11) Films of All Time for 2012:

(In chronological order of release.)

The General - 1926
I went through a BIG Buster Keaton phase in my late 20s. While a few people would call Sherlock Jr. their favourite Keaton film, there are virtually none who know what they are talking about who would deny that The General is a masterpiece. I hardly know where to start. It is a whopping adventure, and Keaton is spectacular in his stunt-work. Watch any of the action sequences and they actually challenge action sequences of today for their excitement, largely because most of them are single un-cut takes. It features the most expensive shot in film history (for its day) and it manages to tell it's tale with less than fifty title cards. (Trust me. I've watched a lot of silent film. For a feature, that is amazing.) Keaton's most famous single stunt (and shot) may be in Steamboat Bill Jr. but for prolonged sequences, The General is the show to see. Of all the films on this list it is the one it has been the longest since I've watched it... that will probably be rectified soon.
FUN FACT: The General (which is the one film on my list that is also on the Sight & Sound list) was a box office failure when it came out. Keaton was known for comedies. The General is an adventure. He may have made his best film, but it wasn't what audiences were used to seeing from him. It took decades for people to respond favourably to that disconnect. Those who still haven't still think Sherlock Jr. is the superior film.

The Great Escape - 1963
This is probably the hardest film to defend on this list. Jodie has never made it past the introduction to the camp - which is too bad, because the best is yet to come... however, I don't think that much of the rest would change her mind. Admittedly, it is a film that is populated about 99.6% by men, and it takes a lot of criticism for that. But a lot of that would be a result of the fact that it was men who were on the ground in the 2nd World War. 
FUN FACT: If you listen to the commentary of the collector's edition of the film, there is a point where they address this fact and mention that the producers wanted to shoehorn some women into the movie in the most cynical of ways and that the director, John Sturges, put his foot down. 
Why do I love this film? Because it's clever and fun and tragic. I suspect that a lot of my aesthetic came from that juxtoposition. "Hey this is all jaunty, but a lot of despair can come from it... and that despair might actually be a victory in its own right."
And sure Steve McQueen's motorcycle stunts are lame by modern standards as well as being historically inaccurate, but I've never found them to be any less cool (and, hey - its a movie, not a history lesson).

Jaws - 1975
Jaws was already over two decades old by the time I saw it (oh yeah, I saw it later than all but three movies on this list) because I had been the perfect age to get the message (when it came out) that it was the most terrifying thing a person could see on screen. Yet despite all that build up, it survived. It was my friend Keith's favourite film and I finally gave in in 1997 and watched the damned thing. And it is a masterwork of storytelling. All other aspects aside, whenever I go back and rewatch it, it is the parcelling out of information that stands out to me as being the most fantastic element of the film. Each sub-element of stakes and character is revealed at exactly the right moment until action has to happen - and all of that occurs with the weight of the set up on top of it. Face it, the film doesn't even need the shark until 82 minutes into the film. It is that well crafted. Spielberg was the first director who I ever knew the name of. He is probably the most important director of my life, even if I'm generally less fond of his work these days.

Star Wars - 1977
There is simply no way this film cannot be on my list. It is flawed. The sequels are flawed. (Though Empire Strikes Back is the superior film of the bunch.) But there is no film I have watched more times and there is no film which directed the course of my life so much, nor from such a young age. It is still a lot of fun. Most of what I get out of it now is nostalgic, sure I have mostly contempt for what George Lucas did to the second/first three films, but it had to be on this list.

Alien - 1979
I doubt that this was the first film that ever scared me, but it absolutely is the first one that left an indelible mark. I first saw it at a birthday sleep over when I was about 12 and it scared the bejesus out of me. We ended up watching it again the next morning too. I've never really quit. The first sequel would probably make it's way onto my top 20 list. The 3rd installment has some terrible early CGI, but isn't that bad a film - and importantly was the first feature of the only director to appear twice on this list. And unlike Ridley Scott's other big early masterpiece, Blade Runner, it doesn't feel dated. (Yes, I did just say that.) Scott is one of the six directors on this list whose work I will give a chance to at any turn. His latest, Prometheus - the prequel to Alien - was rough, but ultimately it was gorgeous and it passed the "Did it entertain me?" test, despite its faults. (Which I can't say about the fourth Alien film - which I rarely acknowledge the existence of, so bookmark this page - or the AVP spin off.)

Das Boot - 1981
I first saw Das Boot when it was still called The Boat on these shores and only ran around 2 hours in length. I had snuck out of my bedroom in the wee-hours of a pay-TV free movie weekend to see what was on. I didn't actually know what it was I was watching because I had missed the beginning. (It would be some years before I would discover that I had only missed a few minutes, though I did figure out what it was I was watching that very night.) Nonetheless I was enthralled pretty much right from the start. It was likely the first subtitled film I ever watched through to the end. I saw it once or twice between then and the mid 90s when I really sunk my teeth into the Director's Cut and since then have watched it nearly annually (though parenthood is putting a dent in that average.) I even bought the full 5 hour version. I've only watched it at full length twice, and probably never will again (well maybe once more in many years time) as it doesn't really add much to the superior 3+ hours cut. To this day I still find the tension of certain sequences to be such that I feel like I can't afford to blink. Wolfgang Peterson is another director whose work I will always give a chance to.

Goodfellas - 1991
Much like with Das Boot I started unwittingly watching Goodfellas in the opening few minutes and was instantly hooked. The film is a clinic. It is outrageous that Martin Scorsese took another 15 years (and several worthy contenders) to finally win the Best Picture Oscar. Goodfellas (and to a lesser degree Casino) are the films that put the lie to the rule that voice-over makes for a bad screenplay. That is a pretty good hueristic, but it simply isn't a universal truth. There isn't really anything that hasn't been said about this film that I can add. It's fantastic. The four leads each give some of the most important performances of their careers, the pacing is spot-on, the music could not do a better job of both moving the film forward and placing it in time (after time after time), and the camera work is as close to flawless as any film gets. (Insert ubiquitous reference to Karen's introduction to the Copa here.) And yes, I'll watch any Scorsese film once.

Seven - 1995
Another film that breaks the voice-over rule, albeit only for one line. I'm not sure it needed to, and it's probably the only weak choice in the movie. I first saw Seven (or "Se7en" if you insist on being a wanker) on a last moment whim. I was on my way to see The Shawshank Redemption when the poster for Seven caught my eye. The friend I was with, Todd, suggested we take a chance and see this film we'd never heard of instead. BEST MOVIE GOING CHOICE EVER. (It took me nearly a decade to get around to seeing Shawshank. A great film, but I've only felt the need to watch it once.) When the film was over, Todd and I sat for about two minutes in silence after the credits were over before either one of us spoke. I can count the number of times on one hand that a movie has made me feel like I've never seen anything like it before, and the only film that ever made me feel that way that isn't on this list is The Matrix. The fact that two of those films were directed by David Fincher is pretty much why he is my favourite director of all time.
On a side note, only one other time have I changed my choice of viewing at last moment based on a poster. I ended up seeing Hardware instead of Miller's Crossing. WORST MOVIE GOING CHOICE EVER.

LA Confidential - 1997
For my money, the best crime drama ever told. I can't even recall at which turn in the plot I spontaneously cried out in the theatre "what the fuck is going on?!" The woman beside me whispered "Yeah. Isn't it fantastic?" Damned rights it was. The plot-lines which spin-around each other towards the abyss; the cast that is populated by a host of characters (mostly police officers) who are each in their own way terrible people (and variously bad cops) but all thoroughly compelling; the fact that most audience members were seeing both Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce for the first time and not having the slightest clue they were Aussies; the pitch perfect scenic design and matching camera-work; and a plot which seems so insanely convoluted, yet comes out being perfectly clear and seemingly inevitable....  sigh; it is so frikkin' good. If it hadn't come out the same year as Titanic it would have cleaned up at the Oscars.
I went on to read the book, which is now one of my favourite books of all time, and discovered that the screenplay is even more brilliant than it at first seems. James Elroy - the novel's author - declared the book un-adaptable. It is a miracle he was wrong. The book and film could not be much more different, yet satisfyingly still be the same story. I could not concisely sum up how without giving far too much of either one away.

Fight Club - 1999
David Fincher is of course one of the directors whose work is on this list whose movies I will always see. Fight Club is probably the best example of a film which spoke directly to who I was when I saw it when it came out, and on top of that, it's a ripping great yarn. This was the first time we really got to see Fincher put his technical savvy front and centre... and the fact that the script and his cast manage to not get upstaged by it is why this is such a fantastic film. Again, this is a film which can't be talked about much and really just needs to be experienced. If forced to make a Sophie's choice and pick one of my top five films of all time as my number one, I could make the choice a different way on any different day, but I think the smart money would be on Fight Club.

Memento - 2000
Memento backs its way onto this list, but I don't mean that in any way which lessens the film that it is. When I was considering my criteria - the  "most essential" films" I watched over and over again and felt like the well was endless," Memento fit the bill at least as well as two or three others on this list that popped to mind immediately as contenders without considering the criteria as the determining factor. I have analysed the living shit out of Memento. I watched it in the edited order (of course) and even before I had a DVD copy with the option to watch the events in chronological order I did so - on VHS, which took some doing. Christopher Nolan is the most recent director to work his way onto the list of directors who work I will always see. Memento probably isn't even his best film. But it is the one that worked it's fingers deepest inside of me.


Some clean up:

So, for the record, who are those eight directors whose work I will always see?

Spielberg, Fincher, Scorsese, Peterson, Scott (the Elder), and Nolan - all on this list. As well as, the Coen Brothers (Who I am counting as one as they do not work without one another, and for me have the widest range of hits and misses of directors on this list, erring towards misses, but damned interesting ones.) and Steven Soderberg (Whose work I probably have the worst record of actually seeing - largely due to the manner of release of his lesser known work.)

What came close?

Its a long list, but three films stand out as movies that I really have rewatched at length:
Brazil (Though I suspect that if I was going to add it, I would have by now.)
Primer (Though in the grand scheme of things I watched it a LOT to try to untangle its compellingly fascinating and complex plot, not to re-appreciate the quality of the film itself. It's kind of a false positive. I figure this is the most obscure film on the list.)
Children of Men (I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the main reason it didn't make the list is that it hasn't been out long enough for me to watch it enough times to really earn it a place. Given some more time for consideration, I think there is a real chance that it will either un-seat a film on the list, or earn it's own place on a list of 12. Perhaps I shall do it all again when the Sight and Sound 2022 list is published.)

Of course there are many many films that I LOVE and with different parameters, many of them could have made the list instead of these, but I believe there is a need in this realm of discussion to ask how important these films are in my life and that is different than how beloved they are to me (though there is some overlap).

The Shark Game

December and I have organically found our first game.

I call it the shark game, but renaming it after the movie that gave it's inspiration might be worth consideration.

December, someday in your future you are going to read this. It's probably best that you read this before you see Jaws - and trust me, someday I'm going to show you Jaws.  But you should know before you see that movie that you may be betrayed by a pavlovian response while watching it.

Here's how the game works:

I lift December over my head.  I've been doing this almost from the very beginning, but as the months have passed she has come to enjoy it more and I've been able to be a bit less ginger about it.

Once she's been up there, arms and legs flailing like a swimmer... those of you familiar with the fate of Susan Backlinie in the opening of Jaws know where this is going already, don't you?  ...once she is up there enjoying her view of the world, I begin.

"Daaa - dum..."  I say.  She smiles with glee.  She knows where this is leading.
"Daaa - dum..."  I often laugh at this point, 'cause the squirmy-delight of my daughter is completely at odds with the associations I make with John William's most infamous two notes.
"Da-dum da-dum da-dum-da-"  I begin lowering her closer and closer to my mouth... like I am a shark surfacing towards a skinny-dipper.
"dum-da-dum-da-dum-da!"  And then, just as she reaches my mouth I imitate the trumpet blast from the music and kiss her furiously where ever happens to be closest.

And then usually we start again.

So, December, my little Padawan...

You need to know that when you first watch Jaws, that the instinctive feeling of joy and content you feel in your gut is about to turn into a sucker-punch.  Be prepared.  I tell you this because I love you and want to assuage your trauma. 

Remember the good times we had.

Daaaa...dum...

Cloverfield vs. Jaws & The Art of Missing the Point

WARNING! SPOILERS!

So I went and saw Cloverfield last night.

It was a wild ride. I totally loved it. When I left the theatre I mentioned to the friends I went with that I expected that most of the criticism that would be lobbed at it would be how it failed to explain the initiating circumstances or the implied victory over the monster. I also had heard people couldn't handle the 'handy-cam cinematography' a la Blair Witch Project.

So this morning I took a look at what was available on-line.

Sure enough.

Other criticisms: Lame witless dialogue. Exploitative 9/11 imagery.

Every single one of these criticisms are complete and utter bullshit.

For starters I can name a dozen film (easily) that feature an enormous creature rampaging through a city. Most of them include the word 'Godzilla' in them, but it's hardly limited to that franchise. I highly recommend The Host. Despite The Host's rather refreshing look at the genre, it needs to be said about the genre as a whole - "Been there, done that."
We've all seen the tale of how the plucky team of scientists, intrepid military men and the token civilian pulled into the thick of things band together to vanquish the building-sized monster.
What hasn't been seen is the story of the guy who we see get crushed under it's foot before the final reel. THAT is this story. Uncompromisingly so. J.J. Abrams & Director Matt Reeves are never tempted to swerve to a place where our heroes become instrumental in the creature's demise. They come close, witnessing the inital bombing runs on it, but then they become the victims of the obligatory swipe at a pesky helicopter. As our beaten heroes lay in the rubble at the end of the film waiting for it to all end, their hideout becomes collateral damage to the final all-out attack on the creature.

We can assume that the creature is defeated - it is strongly implied by the nature of the faux government tag applied to the start of the film, one which indicates an inquiry into the incident. Did Rob and Beth survive? Probably not, but we don't know. Did we hear the creature's demise? We don't know. (There are reports that if you play the final radio transmission backwards that it say's "It's still alive." Even if true, frankly 'backwards masking' doesn't really exist in the world of this film. But the concept of the film directly prevents us from knowing based on the internal context, and that is how it should be. Anything else would be a cheat.

And the same applies to the cinematography and the dialogue. Both were slavishly realistic. Real people aren't capable of tossing out witty one-liners in response to their strife every two minutes for 90 minutes (or seven hours - the time the film plays out in). The film even subtly comments on it - "Why don't you ask me if I've ever heard of... Garfield." A line so witless, commenting on another character's lack of wit... it's genius.

And nothing can better put us in the situation than to see it all first person... though naming the character with the camera 'Hud' (Hudson/Heads Up Display) walks the line of self-reference. This does mean that we don't see much of the monster, 'cause naturally the protagonists are usually running in the opposite direction, but refer back to my first point - WE'VE SEEN THIS MOVIE BEFORE! Not only do we not need to see the monster, it's a refreshing and more realistic to show it to us this way.

Which leads me tot he complaints of exploitation of 9/11 imagery. Exploitation? Go to hell. If anything it's the greatest of respect. I've got this theory - stay with me here - that if we were all to be exposed to the horror of being in the chaos of the hot zone it owuld happen a hell of a alot less. And the hot zone could be anything from Ground Zero at the World Trade Centre or downtown Baghdad in April of 2003 or Guernica in 1937, or Dresden 1945... I can go on of course. In all these cases a common trait is that the civilian victims (and survivors) at the centre of the storm have little notion of what is actually happening. They might know 'we are being bombed' but even that may be obscured (note that many people thought 9/11 was a bombing while it was happening - despite the jet-liners flying into buildings overhead.) Cloverfield presents this reality clearly (in it's obscurity) from start to finish. In his final address to the camera, Rob says "If you are watching this you know more about what's happening than I do." This is thematically a very important moment. What is the name of the film? "Cloverfield." A military slang term referencing the appearance from above of an area which has just been carpet-bombed, as the dust is still settling. Could this be any more clear? What is it like to be in the horrific heat of that moment? Cloverfield attempts to capture that. Again, the first-person view is an unrelenting choice which hammers this point home and never breaks it's own rule. Having the attack in question be a movie monster rather than a military power is almost irrelevant. Part of the point is that our protagonists only know a tiny sliver of the story, so it might as well be Godzilla - or whatever.
Let's face it, being a giant monster gets more people through the doors. Just look at the record breaking box-office figures of the first week. In that sense it's more exploitative, but if it had been an attack by a military power (which in New York would be even more absurd than a movie monster in today's day and age, the supernatural allows the leap of willful suspension of disbelief) half the people would come out to watch the movie... and the political subtext would be far too on the nose and less powerful.
My ultimate point here - if you've missed it - is that Cloverfield actually honours the victims of 9/11 (and more importantly, more horrific events - some people (cough, cough, New Yorkers, cough) really need to get over themselves) by bringing us inside the horror of such events so that we can all understand what it might be like, how confusing and terrifying it can be, and hopefully steel a little more resolve in each of us to prevent it from happening again.

Okay, I'm off my soap box for the moment. But that doesn't mean I'm finished!

A few more thoughts...

Titanic was a love story set against the backdrop of the world's most famous passnger liner sinking. Cloverfield does the same by putting a story against the backdrop of a Godzilla-like attack. The attack isn't the story. Surviving in the heaping rubble is.

I went home and rather randomly put Jaws in the DVD player. Watching the infamous first opening scene I had a revelation. Spielberg knew exactly what was going on underneath the water as Susan Backlinie was attacked by the shark. None of what happens is random. I know that making a reality of what is unseen is an important creative tool, but suddenly with outrageous clarity I saw what was going on beneath the surface. A taste... a bite and tearing a piece (leg or legs) off. A moment's respite as she clings to the buoy, legless, in shock as the first morsels go down and the shark circles for a second attack.... I imagined it all in greater clarity than this. (In a side note - I got to see our Jaws tribute scene edited last weekend. Made me very happy. It was always one of my pet scenes in the "Beast..." script.)

It occurred to me that Abrams and Reeves similarly knew at any given moment in Cloverfield what was going on in the bigger picture. What stage of any pedestrian creature feature would be going on in the world of the film.

Okay, I'm done.