More Than Meets the Eye

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In the early 1970s, there was probably no more popular work of fiction than "Jaws."

Nearly everybody read it, and then it was made into what was probably the first true summer blockbuster.

Author Peter Benchley's next novel, "The Deep," was also successful, and the movie it inspired, which premiered on this day in 1977, was one of the top moneymakers in the United States — a considerable feat when you think of the movies that premiered in 1977, movies like "Star Wars," "Smokey and the Bandit," "Close Encounters," "Annie Hall" and "Saturday Night Fever" to name a few.

But neither the book nor the movie did nearly as well as "Jaws."

In its own way, though, I thought the story was just as suspenseful — although it got overshadowed by off–screen controversy about something minor that was on the screen. Jacqueline Bisset played one–half of a vacationing couple (Nick Nolte was the other half) who discovered sunken treasure while diving on the reefs of Bermuda. In the diving sequences, Bisset could be seen in a rather revealing T–shirt.

It is still an iconic image. Ask someone who is over a certain age what comes to mind when Bisset's name is mentioned, and I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that the answer will be her wet T–shirt in "The Deep."

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Given that Bisset has been in several dozen movies, that doesn't seem fair, and it almost certainly would not raise any eyebrows today, but remember this was 40 years ago.

It is also important to remember that "The Deep" was made when Bisset was 32 and still getting movie roles primarily because of her youthful beauty. Still beautiful but no longer young, she has continued to make movies into her 70s, proving that looks may change but talent never does.

There can be no denying the boost those shots gave the movie at the box office. Even its producer believed they made him a wealthy man, but the story was enough to keep audiences on the edges of their seats.

The divers found all kinds of treasure — the old–fashioned kind (jewelry and the like) and the new kind (ampules of morphine from a ship that sank during World War II).

And therein lay the plot of the movie. In the grand tradition of shallow summer escapism, the movie had nothing remarkable to say. It was just a good movie to watch on a summer afternoon or evening.

In 1977 that sort of thing was believed to be behind us. It was practically an article of faith that escapism movies would dwindle in the years ahead and deeper and more complex topics were the new order. But the summer of 1977 was loaded with escapism.

So much for that theory.

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What made "The Deep" work for audiences, I suppose, was the fact that it was plausible escapism.

"Jaws" wasn't really plausible. It was inspired, as I understand it, by a real event — but the very rarity of that event (a great white shark in the North Atlantic) is what makes it implausible. Like most horror stories, believable implausibility made "Jaws" work.

The story of Nolte and Bisset was the kind of thing that, seemingly, could happen to anyone.

Benchley, of course, is not remembered for "The Deep." He is remembered for writing "Jaws" and the series of movies it inspired.

Ironically, I guess, two members of the cast of "The Deep" appeared in the "Jaws" movies — Robert Shaw played the shark hunter in the original, then played a treasure hunter in "The Deep" and Louis Gossett Jr. was a drug kingpin in "The Deep," and then played a SeaWorld park owner in one of the "Jaws" sequels.

The Windbag and the Lion

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As I have mentioned before, I like movies that are based on actual historic events.

It goes with the territory, I suppose. I have always been something of an amateur historian. I even minored in history in college. Historical movies (sometimes they are called "biopics" even if they aren't biographical in nature, although I usually reserve the term biopic for movies that really are biographies, not just movies about events that played prominent roles in the subject's life).

But, in a way, I feel torn about "The Wind and the Lion," which premiered 40 years ago today. It isn't really a biopic. It is loosely based — very loosely based — on a rather obscure event called the Pedicaris incident.

Now, I like to think I'm a reasonable guy — and, even though I'm that history geek you were warned about, I'm not as rigid as you may think. I can be flexible about movie adaptations as long as they are basically faithful to the truth. I'm willing to allow for some poetic license in the crafting of dialogue, for example, or some other details. I don't get bent out of shape, say, if the cars in a movie did not exist until a year or two after the event in the movie took place. My brother is the one who inherited the mechanical aptitude in the family, and he might get worked up over something like that, but, to me, it is a general detail that I can overlook.

What I find significantly more difficult to overlook is a movie that rewrites history. It doesn't have to be as blatant as, say, a movie about Pearl Harbor in which the blindsided Americans waged a counterattack that drove the Japanese from the Hawaiian islands before they inflicted as much damage as history tells us they did. It can be more subtle than that.

It wasn't hard for "The Wind and the Lion" to be subtle, being as very few people knew about the Peridcaris incident, which took place in 1904, at the time it happened — or for decades thereafter — much less in 1975 or after.

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So the folks who made the movie apparently felt free to fudge on some details — like, for example, the fact that a man, not a woman, was abducted by turn–of–the–century Arabs who provide an interesting contrast with groups like Isis today.

The leader of the gang, played by Sean Connery, proudly asserts that he doesn't kill women and children; the leader of radical Muslims today could make no such claim — although that leader no doubt would agree with Connery's character when he asserts that he is merely Allah's instrument and that whatever happens is Allah's will.

That's a pretty common assertion from anyone who absolutely believes God is on his side — and that it is a blank check for him to do as he pleases.

The woman was played by Candice Bergen, who was 29 and rather pretty when the movie premiered. The man who really was kidnapped in the incident on which the movie was based was a rather plain businessman in his 60s. In the movies, sex appeal trumps the truth — but that really isn't a surprise, is it? Sex is profitable; the truth rarely is.

Speaking of truth, I have my doubts that the portrayal of President Theodore Roosevelt, who was seeking a full term after becoming president following the assassination of President McKinley three years earlier, was entirely accurate. Teddy, who faced the challenge as president of doing something to save the hostages, was played in a cartoonish way — always a belligerent windbag who frequently appeared to be more concerned with his image than anything else — by Brian Keith.

Now, I have no doubt that Roosevelt possessed such qualities — I have read many books about his life and presidency — and I agree that he was a strong–willed man, a rugged individualist who craved adventure — but I don't think he was always the blowhard that he appeared to be in "The Wind and the Lion."

Of course, I could be wrong.

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At the Oscars, "The Wind and the Lion" received two nominations — for Best Original Score and Best Sound Mixing — and lost both to John Williams' score for "Jaws."

When Folks Weren't Afraid to Go in the Water

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I remember when "Jaws" was the hottest bestseller I had ever seen — in the spring of 1974.

Everywhere one looked, a copy of the book could be seen — even in my small Arkansas hometown. I know there were bestsellers that swept over the landscape before, but I had never noticed one. Of course, I was a boy at the time. I didn't have much firsthand knowledge stored away in my mental files.

I have seen similar phenomena since, but I still don't think I have seen anything truly comparable to "Jaws."

It was first published in February of 1974; the movie rights were purchased before that happened so there was a lot of anticipation long before the book hit the shelves. It was on the hardback bestseller list for nearly a year.

The next year, everyone in my school seemed to be reading the paperback. Teachers tried for awhile to conceal their fascination with the book, but their cover was blown. Too many copies of "Jaws" had been spotted clumsily hidden in desks and purses, under jackets, even in the teachers' cars in the parking lot.

Students carried copies with their textbooks, and I was no exception. It was a real page turner, and I raced through it. I looked forward to the movie, which was scheduled to be released that summer. The movie is remembered now as the original summer blockbuster — although I never understood why savvy marketers never figured out before that summer was a great time to tap into the youth market.

There were several differences between the book and the movie. Most of those differences were minor, I suppose, although I thought there was one aspect of the novel — an affair between Sheriff Brody's wife and the young shark enthusiast, Matt Hooper — that was significant. There was no such affair in the movie, which changed a lot of other things about the story.

In the book, the sheriff suspected the affair and the thought gnawed at him even though he could not prove it. He bickered with Hooper when they were on the boat that went out in search of the shark. Frankly, when I read the book, I felt more empathy for the shark than I felt for the humans in the story.

The shark in the book finally died of injuries it had sustained in its battles with Brody, Hooper and the captain of the boat, Quint. It wasn't blown up in the Hollywoodesque way that Roy Scheider accomplished it in the movie.

In the novel, Hooper didn't survive his underwater encounter with the shark the way he did in the movie. It was Brody who made his way back to shore alone.

I don't remember people being hesitant to go in the water at the beach in the summer of '74. I remember when my family went to the beach in the summer of '74 and we all went in the water, but I do remember that anxiety in '75. Maybe I just imagined it based on media reports I read or saw. Isn't it funny how the visual influences us?

Man Against Nature

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I suppose there were two names that hovered over John Sturges' project, "The Old Man and the Sea," which premiered on this day in 1958 — Ernest Hemingway, who wrote the original novella, and Spencer Tracy, a much–beloved actor, possibly the most beloved of his generation, who played the Old Man in the movie.

Little needs to be said of either, I suppose. Hemingway has been admired for decades for his writing style, so accessible to ordinary readers, in no small part because he continued to follow the style rules of the Kansas City Star, the newspaper for which he worked as a teenager — "Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative."

(I find that credible. I spent many years working for newspapers, all of which followed Associated Press style religiously. I haven't written for a newspaper in quite awhile, but I still write in AP style. It's a part of me now.)

Anyway, I guess that accounts, at least in part, for the popularity of the book — although I wouldn't underestimate the story and the brilliant character study of the Old Man, whose name in the book was Santiago.

And what can one say of Tracy? He was a legend nominated for Best Actor nine times — an accomplishment in that category that has been matched only by Sir Laurence Olivier.

In the movie Tracy was called Santiago by The Boy, but my memory is that most of the time he was simply called the Old Man. It's been awhile since I read the book, but in Hemingway's novel, I believe he was referred to as Santiago more often. He was still called the Old Man but not as frequently.

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Well, anyway.

Both the book and the movie told the story of the Old Man's solitary battle with a marlin. The Old Man was a Cuban fisherman who had gone 84 days without landing a fish and had gained a reputation for being extremely unlucky. Because of this, the Boy had been forbidden to go fishing with the Old Man and was encouraged instead to go fishing with the more successful fishermen from the village.

(By the way, the Boy had a name in the book, too, and it may have been mentioned a time or two in the movie, but I don't remember for certain.)

The Boy continued to visit the Old Man, though. He brought him food and talked about baseball with him.

Early on the 85th day, the Old Man once again set off in pursuit of a fish, and the rest of the movie was really more of a character study than a telling of his battle with an enormous marlin. Still, the battle played an important role. After hooking the marlin, the Old Man was dragged farther into the Gulf Stream in the next two days and nights than he ever intended to go.

On the third day, the marlin was visibly tiring, and the Old Man was practically delirious. He managed to pull the fish close enough that he could stab it and end its life, but he called it "brother" even as he did so.

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Ever since I first saw the movie, I have marveled at how calm the seas were. There were hardly any waves for Santiago to face. He was able to devote all his attention to his struggle with the marlin. I don't remember now if that condition was mentioned in the book — or if it was a by–product of filming on a Hollywood set.

Nevertheless, an epic struggle it was. For Santiago, it was his ultimate test as a man — and, after he won it, he pondered the price the magnificent fish would bring as he turned his boat for home. In the book, though, during his battle with the fish, the Old Man had decided that the marlin had proven himself, and no one would be worthy of eating him.

That was not a problem because sharks were drawn to the carcass by the blood in the water, and they devoured most of it even though Santiago tried valiantly to fight them off. He lost his harpoon in the process and tried to fashion a makeshift harpoon by tying his knife to an oar, but that, too, was lost.

When the sharks had been repelled, though, the Old Man spoke to what was left of the fish, even though it could not hear him (and would not have understood him if it could). He explained that he had gone out farther to sea than he had intended, and he apologized to the marlin.

Only a skeleton remained when the Old Man finally returned to shore. Exhausted, he collapsed in his bed in his modest shack and fell into a deep sleep. While he slept, a group of fishermen congregated around the boat and looked at the skeleton.

In the years since I first saw "The Old Man and the Sea," it occurred to me that it was reminiscent, at times, of two other movies.

It reminded me of "Jaws," obviously, because of the role other sharks played in the story — although they weren't the focal point of the story (and the shark footage was real — no mechanical sharks were used in the '50s).

And it reminded me of "Cast Away" — a story of a man struggling against the elements (and talking to an object that was incapable of responding).

Tracy was nominated for Best Actor, but he lost the Oscar to David Niven. The other nominees were Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis — pretty formidable lineup.

I always thought Tracy was ideal for the role. I doubt that anyone else could have been plausible in it.

Hemingway's book, a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1953, was well received, coming on the heels of what may have been his most disappointing work. It was also his last book to be published in his lifetime.

Most of the time, writers aren't particularly pleased with movie adaptations of their work, but my understanding is that Hemingway was pleased with this movie. Leland Hayward, the producer, reported that Hemingway was even complimentary of Tracy — and the two of them were known to have argued.

Sturges, however, was not as pleased with the final product. TIME reported he called it "technically the sloppiest picture I have ever made."

We should all be so sloppy.

The Scariest Villain Who Was Hardly Seen

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As I observed last year, it was on this day in 1975 that the practice of heavily promoting the summertime theatrical release of a motion picture (i.e., a "blockbuster" movie) began.

And I guess there was no more harrowing film sequence that could have ushered in that era than the opening of "Jaws."

Actress Susan Backlinie was only on the screen a few seconds, really, but her character's violent death while taking a moonlight swim resonated with audiences as surely as the infamous shower scene in "Psycho" 15 years earlier.

I presume, though, that, as audiences projected themselves into each situation, they could imagine circumstances in which they could get away from a knife–wielding intruder, even if they appeared to be cornered, naked, in a shower. It was much more difficult, if not impossible, to imagine being attacked in the ocean by a shark — and managing to escape.

It couldn't have surprised anyone who had read Peter Benchley's novel upon which the film was based. The cover illustration of a young woman swimming along the surface while a shark, its mouth agape, rises from the murky depths has become iconic.

That illustration was used in the movie posters so I can't imagine that the opening sequence surprised many of those in the audience who had not read the book — but, even so, I always wondered how many people were genuinely shocked by what they saw.

Admittedly, they saw very little of the shark.

And that, I suppose, is what made "Jaws" truly terrifying — the menace lurking in the murky depths, unseen until it was too late.

It's interesting, isn't it, that both of those fearsome images involved water — the life–giving substance, cleansing, refreshing, restoring. On a hot summer's day, when one is grimy and sweaty, there may be nothing more appealing than a cool lake or stream. I've never been a big fan of beaches — I guess they've always been too crowded for my taste — but I suppose most beachgoers fancy the beach as a large swimming pool.

And a pool isn't usually threatening — unless you're behaving recklessly.

But there was nothing reckless about the young woman's behavior at the opening of "Jaws." You may draw whatever conclusions you like about her moral behavior, skinny dipping at night — and originally intending to do so with a young man she had just met — but, as I understand it, sharks are drawn to movement, and she was doing that alone (and, it can be assumed, she would have been doing even if she had been wearing a bathing suit and her male companion had not fallen on the sand and remained there in a semi–conscious stupor, unaware of the struggle she was waging for her life not far away).

Of course, the actual shark in "Jaws" wasn't real. He was a mechanical shark that was given the name Bruce — after, as I understand it, Spielberg's lawyer.

I suppose there's some significance to that — perhaps adequately explaining it calls for someone who is certifiably anti–lawyer, and I'm not sure I belong in that group. I mean, I recognize the need for lawyers. They don't just exist to run up outrageous bills. They do provide a legitimate, specialized service — one for which I hope I will have little use in my life, but that's beside the point.

Later, I guess you could say Benchley "saw the light." In his later years, he claimed that the image of the shark as man's predator was false, and he warned that they were endangered by man's aggressive treatment of them and their environment.

"Jaws," he said, could not be written today with the shark cast as the villain. "[I]t would have to be written as the victim for, worldwide, sharks are much more the oppressed than the oppressors."

That may be true, but I read "Jaws" back when it was a bestseller, and I'm sure I would get the same chills down my spine if I read it again today.

The movie still does that to me.

The Summer Blockbuster Enters Middle Age

You may not realize it, but the concept of the "summer blockbuster" was born 34 years ago — on June 20, 1975, when Steven Spielberg's "Jaws" made its much–heralded debut.

Its opening weekend earned an eye–popping (for those days) $7 million — a figure that is dwarfed by the hundreds of millions that movies like "The Dark Knight" or "Spider–Man" are capable of drawing today.

Of course, a ticket to a movie cost a lot less in those days than it does today, and common sense would tell you that higher ticket prices mean higher box office receipts. But, even so, the earnings of some of today's motion pictures really are astonishing.

Still, that doesn't take anything away from those early "blockbusters."

But I have to wonder why no one figured out until 1975 that summer was a lucrative time to bring out movies that were likely to attract a lot of attention. The biggest box–office draws before "Jaws" came out typically were released around the Christmas holidays. The record–holder — even after the "Jaws" frenzy of '75 — was "The Godfather: Part II," which was released in December 1974.

And the movies that didn't quite earn what "Jaws" did in its opening weekend — "Magnum Force" (1973), "The Jungle Book" (1967), "The Poseidon Adventure" (1972) and "Diamonds Are Forever" (1971) — were not released in the summer. A noteworthy exception, I suppose, was "Psycho," which was released in June 1960.

Even two years later, when "Star Wars" caught everyone by surprise in the summer of 1977 and earned nearly $17 million in its opening weekend, the "blockbuster" marketing concept was not an accepted part of the movie business.

But that, too, has changed. For the last 30 years, the top moneymaking movies have been released in time to capitalize on the summer months — when young people have had time on their hands and money in their pockets.

Will the horrid economy affect the anticipated blockbusters this summer? It's hard to say. So far, only one of the top 10 moneymakers of 2009 — "Up" — has been released since Memorial Day.

I suppose we'll get something of an answer to that when the next "Harry Potter" film is released next month.