Dispatch from The Quest: Ben Odgren
Last week as we did here on GITS, the Quest writers focused on the subject of Dialogue. Today’s dispatch: Ben Odgren weighs in on a movie that forever changed the movie business:
Jaws was finally released on blu-ray last week. It’s my favorite movie of all time. It’s got it all. Great characters. Stellar performances. Exciting direction. Giant shark. Basically everything a movie needs, and Jaws is arguably a perfect one.
One of the things I like best about Jaws is how engaging it is. Even though it’s a movie at its most popcorn-iest, it doesn’t just let you sit there without doing a little bit of work. There’s that Pixar idea (I think?) about how they give the audience 2+2 and let them figure out 4 for themselves. I think Jaws does that well, especially when it comes to using dialogue in interesting ways.
There’s an exchange in the first half of the film after Chief Brody gets slapped by Mrs. Kintner. He’s at his house, and Hooper comes over with a few bottles of wine. Brody peels open the bottle of red and begins to pour it into his glass.
Hooper interrupts him, “You know, you oughta let that breathe a little.” But Brody keeps pouring. Hooper lets it go with a wave of his hand, “Nothing. Nothing.”
You learn a lot about Hooper with that little exchange. He’s a guy who feels the need to tell people the proper way to drink wine. He’s smart, cultured, and wants people to know it. You could maybe even assume he’s got some money, and you’d be correct. Five minutes later we learn he has a state-of-the-art boat loaded with scientific equipment, and he lets Brody know that he and his whole family are quite wealthy. The subtext peels back a little of the character’s background.
A little later there’s a scene where Brody and Hooper are trying to convince Mayor Vaughn to close the beaches. Hooper shows him a vandalized sign of a woman with a giant shark fin behind her.
“Mr. Vaughn, what we are dealing with here is a perfect engine, an eating machine. It’s really a miracle of evolution. All this machine does is swim and eat and make little sharks, and that’s all. Now, why don’t you take a long, close look at this sign. Those proportions are correct.” says Hooper.
Mayor Vaughn responds with a dismissive, “Love to prove that, wouldn’t ya? Get your name into the National Geographic.”
It’s like the Mayor is trying really hard to completely miss the point. Anything Hooper (or anybody) says is just going to be pointed right back at them.
Mayor Vaughn is actually a great example of a character who never quite says what he means. The kind of things I didn’t notice the first time around, but countless viewings later have picked up on.
There’s that great line when he’s being interviewed by a reporter: “We have caught and killed a large predator that supposedly injured some bathers.” I suppose that’s one way of putting it. Anything to make the situation more palatable, all in service for those summer dollars.
Or the scene in the hospital when he finally realizes he was kind of being a monster. He can’t say he was wrong, or that he was sorry. Instead he says “My kids were on that beach, too.”
There are a ton of other examples in the movie, but this is long enough as it is. Basically, Jaws makes everything look easy. It’s engaging in every single way possible, and the dialogue is no exception. Not bad for a movie about a man-eating shark.
There’s a way writers refer to dialogue: “on the nose” and “off the nose”. Sometimes the former works, but generally the latter is the best approach. It’s another way of thinking about subtext where characters speak indirectly about what they mean. That almost always makes for more entertaining dialogue.
Tomorrow: Another dispatch from The Quest.
About Ben: Maine writer with a love for pulpy genre movies, keeping library books out for a little too long, and strong coffee. Twitter: @benodgren.
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