Aliki Caloyeras

Presentation: American Graffiti and Jaws

I. American Graffiti

a. The Making of AG:

~ Universal Pictures/ Ned Tanen:
After films like Easy Rider and The Graduate became hits in the late ‘60s, studio executives mortified . . . scrambled to tap into youth market.
Lew Wasserman made Ned Tanen the head of Universal’s new “youth devision.”
Tanen (used to be a music executive at MCA, Universal’s parent company) wanted to make inexpensive films ($750,000) where actors would be paid scale (i.e. no stars). American Graffiti was such a film.

~ Coppola
Wanted to produce AG independently, tried to get a loan for $700,000, but was dissuaded by his wife and others, because if AG was a flop, it could mean financial ruin for the family.

~ George Lucas:
After the failure of THX, Lucas was disappointed that there wasn’t a market for the American “art film.” So, he responded to the challenge to make something “more human,” a commercial film that would appeal to wide audiences. Lucas recognized that the films of New Hollywood were negative and depressing–all about “sex, violence, and pessimism:”

“We all know, as every movie in the last ten years has pointed out, how terrible we are, how wrong we were in Vietnam, how we have ruined the world, what schmucks we are and how rotten everything is. It had become depressing to go to the movies. I decided it was time to make a movie where people felt better coming out of the theater than when they went in. I became really aware of the fact that kids were really lost, the sort of heritage we built up since the war [World War II] had been wiped out by the ‘60s. and it wasn’t groovy to act that way anymore, now you just sort of sat there and got stoned. I wanted to preserve what a certain generation of Americans thought being a teenager was really about–from about 1945 to 1962” (Lucas qtd. in Biskind 235).

So, they made AG with Universal for abuout $750,000, spent about ½ mil. or so on promotion and distribution, and the film was a huge hit–broke house records, made over 50 mil in rentls–became one of the most successful films of all time. (Nominated for Best Pic. Oscar.)

b. Nostalgia Film
i. Jameson calls AG a “nostalgia film,” a film about a certain generational moment in the past. When we can’t deal with the current culture, can’t represent current experience we return to the past.
ii. Ad, “Where were you in ’62?,” Lucas wanted to reach a wide audience, so the ad was meant to key into audience’s individual personal memories. . . “remember a happier time??”
[Show scene where Milner and Carol get pulled over by the cop.]
Discussion Questions:
1. Following Jameson, how does American Graffiti deal or not deal with current experience by being about 1962?
2. If we are condemned to see the past only through our images of the past, and the past is really a representation of the present, that what does AG tell us about the present of 1973/ New Hollywood era?
Some observations about scene:
~ Milner is “rebel character” a type from 50s films, but he’s totally nice guy; scene is totally innocent. When carol threatens to tell cop that he tried to rape her, audience knows how ridiculous it is, that there’s no threat. That’s another movie.
~ Milner tells cop that they were at the movies and staying out of trouble–this is a time when movies were innocent fun.
~ Discussion of death of Buddy Holly, elegiac moment death of rock n roll rebels. Carol and Milner often talk about death–junkyard scene, M talks about death of “good drivers” in drag racing accidents–foreshadows his own death by a drunk driver two years after setting of film (which we are told at end of film).
~ What do you make of Beach boy’s music? Milner hates the beach boys, they continue to play throughout scene.

iii. Music: Compilation Score: Music is so important to the film (and MCA was about to market and make even more money off the soundtrack after film.) In The Sounds of Commerce Jeff Smith calls AG the paradigmatic example of the compilation score:
Compilation Score:
~ Achieves dramatic aims through association and allusion
~ Relies on the audience’s familiarity with the music to fill in the gaps of character motivations or to comment on characters’ actions
~ Commercially self-aware alternative to neo-Romantic orchestral scores of Hollywood’s Golden Age
Oldies Soundtrack of AG:
~ Serves overall narrative structure
o Music was part of concept of film from the beginning (Lucas’ pitch included playing songs that would go with specific scenes in film). Opening song is “Rock around the Clock,” which suggests structure of film–that it will talk place in one night, the music will carry us through. Last song at Curt’s departure, “Goodnight, It’s Time to Go,” is fitting end.
o Each scene is roughly the length of one song
~ Informs film’s visual design:
o Jukebox lighting; also “radio lighting” (dark except for car radio lights–think about scene we just saw with Milner and Carol)
o Film is reminiscent of 50s beach movies, teen movies (i.e. Rock Around the Clock)
~ Offers convenient interpretive schema–connects to personal memories.
[Show Curt watching TV scene–Tell class to pay attention to music and visual design]

Questions and Observations:
~ What do you make of music and visual design of this scene?
~ How is this scene related to the film’s larger themes?
~ How is this scene a comment on New Hollywood? TV anyone? (The film’s TV spin-off’s)
~ Gang is again a type from 50s movies, but also from exploitation films. Here they pose no real threat, even though they say they’re going to drag Curt from their car.
~ Curt meets the Pharaohs and is eventually initiated into the gang–parallel’s the film’s theme of coming of age–leaving Modesto behind and going off to college.

. . . And the Richard Dreyfus goes off to college and becomes an oceanographer in Jaws.

II. Jaws
a. The Making of Jaws
~ Steven Spielberg, director
Spielberg, unlike Coppola and Lucas, had no intention of being an “auteur” or making art films. He was a studio man, a part of the establishment. He was nurtured by Universal–was really interested in the business of film.

The making of Jaws was a complete and total disaster: A lot of infighting among cast and crew members; Spielberg didn’t like Benchley’s script, so they improvised as they went along; Spielberg insisted on shooting on the ocean rather than in a tank, so none of the shots matched because of changing weather; Spielberg had anxieties about movie being another Duel or a cheap exploitation version of Moby-Dick.

When they finished shooting in Sept. 1974, they were 104 days over schedule and 300% over budget (final budget was $10 million).

~ Verna Fields, editor (Mother Cutter)
Fields was also the co-editor of AG (with Marcia Lucas). A lot of the footage was really bad and unusable–the shark looked terrible on camera. Fields realized pretty soon that, “what you could imagine was worse than what you could see” (277). (Spielberg later claimed that he realized this during shooting: “I threw out my storyboards and just suggested the shark” (277).

~ Promotion/Distribution [They weren’t expecting Jaws to be a hit, so they focused on promotion, which you read about in the Cook]
~ Released timed for summer due to subject matter
~ TV ads
~ Wide release (opened in 409 theaters; made $129 million in rentals)

“Special Event Film” Schatz talks about how this changes the film industry in the article we read for today. Cook, too, talks about how this is a turning point for the film industry: spend money to make money.
Schatz also calls Jaws a genre film (and Spielberg was worried it would be a bad genre film)

b. Genre Film (Action/Thriller)
~ Thomas Schatz says Jaws effectively melds various genres/ story types: “revenge of nature”; supernatural/Satanic; high-gore slasher; seagoing chase; buddy film; initiation film (Schatz 18).
Set up scene:
~ Slasher-type opening, where naked girl gets eaten by shark
~ Brody wants to close down beach, mayor (post-Watergate stereotype of corrupted authority figure) won’t let him because they’ll lose money on the summer season.
~ Think about use of sound in and pacing of this scene

[Show first beach scene]

Spielberg claims that during first screening an audience member got up and ran out during this scene–he threw up in the theater lobby, went to the restroom to clean himself up, and then returned to his seat to watch the rest of the film. This is when Spielberg knew he had a hit.

Discussion Questions:

What’s good about this scene? What do we like about it?
Schatz discusses changing nature of film narrative with films like Jaws: “we see films that are increasingly plot-driven, increasingly visceral, kinetic, and fast-paced, increasingly reliant on special effects, increasingly ‘fantastic’ (and thus apolitical), and increasingly targeted to younger audiences” (23).
Return to cinema of attractions (Cook 43).

How does story of Jaws’ making and marketing as well as audience response relate to Jameson’s concept of postmodernism and consumer society?
“. . . at some point following World War II a new kind of society began to emerge (variously described as postindustrial society, multinational capitalism, consumer society, media society, and so forth). New types of consumption; planned obsolescence; an even more rapid rhythm of fashion and styling changes; penetration of advertising, television, and the media generally to a hitherto unparalleled degree throughout society. . .” (Jameson 201).

Last Thoughts:
Benchley, author of Jaws the novel and screenplay said in LA Times: Spielberg “has no knowledge of reality but the movies. He is B-movie literate. . . [He] will one day be known as the greatest second unit director in America” (Peter Benchley qtd. in Biskind 278).

Biskind’s commentary: “In one obvious way, Benchley was completely wrong, Spielberg having become probably the most celebrated director in America. But in another way, he was right: Spileberg is the greatest second unit director in America. What he could not have foreseen, however, was that such was Spielberg’s (and Lucas’s) influence, that every studio movie became a B movie, and at least for the big action blockbusters that dominate the studios’ slates, second unit has replaced first unit” (278).

Sources:
Biskind, Peter. Easy Riders and Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock ‘n’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998.

Smith, Jeff. The Sounds of Commerce: Marketing Popular Film Music. New York: Columbia UP, 1998.