Jaws, Part 3
The Best Surprisingly Meta Ending to an FLP Trilogy Ever
HAPPY THANKSGIVING! I’m thankful for many things, most immediately, that you’re here.
Even if you were here for Part I, and Part II, it’s been a while, so, to get everyone up to speed:
Previously, on The Film Lit Pitch: Jaws, Part I.
And more recently but still previously, on The Film Lit Pitch: Jaws, Part II.
“All this machine does is swim, eat, and make little sharks.”
Gary Gulman is my favorite celebrity. He’s a brilliant comedian, legendary among his fans for his crisp prose, his intricately structured and tangent-filled stories, his countless allusions, and, perhaps most importantly, his empathy and his bravery.
If you’re not familiar with his game, you should get familiar with it. (For the uninitiated, here’s perhaps his most famous joke.)
In 2019, Gary did one of the coolest things in Twitter history. Every day of the year, he tweeted out one tip about comedy and storytelling. It was a fun and entertaining and educational exercise, and it ruled. And then came the coolest most patience- and design-indicative tip: the one for November 27th.
November 27th was (around) the 333rd day in that year, and on that day, Gary tweeted about the importance of the Rule of 3. (Guess when the 333rd day of 2024 is!)
3 is the—the—most important number in storytelling. You already know that, implicitly, at least. Most jokes and stories are based on a very simple, efficient, and familiar structure:
Step 1: Establish
Step 2: Confirm
Step 3: Reverse
And once you do know that storytelling principle explicitly, you’ll see it evvvverywhere.
Some day I might do a whole Pitch on my favorite Rule of 3 scenes or jokes. For now, I decided to write a 3rd Jaws Pitch about 3 scenes that use the Rule of 3 well.
“Chief Brody, you are uptight.”
Let’s start with the famous Act I-ending raft scene, which is a textbook-perfect lesson in structure.
The sequence opens with the audience meeting characters in passing. There’s a moment when we see the woman in the striped swimsuit, Pippet, and Alex Kintner all in the same shot. By the end of the scene, two of them will be dead.
As I mention in class, Spielberg uses at least a little bit of gallows humor here, leading the viewer to believe that the shark—presumably wanting to maximize the efficiency of its hunt—will target the woman in the striped swimsuit. Of course, that’s not the case, and the scene in fact establishes, among other things, that the shark has victimized a young woman, a helpless boy, and a dog; if you’re trying to evoke sadness and sympathy, to get the audience to feel this story, you’d have a hard time coming up with a better list than the first 3 victims we get.
Spielberg next does something else brilliant to get the audience to feel. And it’s an important lesson in filmmaking and storytelling. It’s the conversation between Alex Kintner and his mom. It’s just eighteen seconds, but it adds depth and stakes. It reminds us that Alex was loved and will be missed. And it also tells us that while Mrs. Kintner will forever and rightly blame Chief Brody, she will also carry tremendous guilt the rest of her days. I mean, can you imagine? Being a parent and knowing for a fact that if you had held your ground and kept your child out of the water, he’d be alive today? Eek.
Brody is the only one on that beach who knows the truth of Chrissie Watkins. And that’s why Spielberg has said that the scene is, at its core, about Brody, what he knows and what he is hiding. To center Brody’s experience, his anguish, Spielberg shows us a series of wipes created by bystanders who cross between the viewer and Brody. These wipes do one of two things: either get us closer to Brody, or present Brody’s point of view.
And that brings us to the scene’s implementation of the Rule of 3. Brody sees a shark descending upon the woman in the striped swimsuit. He freaks out. Turns out, it’s only “Bad Hat Harry” (a bit character immortalized by a very problematic production company). So we establish: Brody is wrong to be afraid; there is no shark in the area.
Next Brody hears a young woman being attacked by the shark. He freaks out. Turns out, it’s just a young man hoisting her playfully on his shoulders. So we confirm: Brody is wrong to be afraid; there is no shark in the area.
And then, one of the most efficient indicators of dread in film history, the shot of Pippet’s floating stick. Because that simple stick tells us the shark is there. We know. And so we have a reversal: Brody was right to be afraid; the shark is in the area, and hunting.
“Let Hooper take a turn.”
The iconic “You’re gonna need a bigger boat” scene also brilliantly employs the Rule of 3, lulling the audience into a false sense of security to set up a terrifying reveal.
The scene opens with a telling dissolve, from a long shot of the Orca to Quint in the crow’s nest. At this point, despite all his braggadocio, Quint is leading a failed mission; they have no confirmed shark sightings, and are not demonstrably closer to killing the shark.
In a controlled panic, Quint looks down at Brody, who is working on his knots. Eager-desperate to look like a leader, Quint tells Brody to “get that chum line started.” Brody—who, remember, is so afraid of the water that he freaked out when he got ankle-deep trying to get people on land in the Alex Kintner death scene—snarkily responds, “Let Hooper take a turn.” That someone that nervous is confident enough to be sassy in this environment establishes: it’s really boring out here.
Next, Quint descends from the crow’s nest, and seeing Hooper playing solitaire, employs double-entendre and quips, “Stop playing with yourself, Hooper!” That Hooper is engaged in what many people consider an activity that is scraping the entertainment barrel confirms: it’s really boring out here.
Then, still comfortable and resentful enough that he encourages Hooper to “come down here and chum some of this sh*t,” Brody sees the shark and has his life (and death) flash before his eyes. We thus reverse: it’s really not boring out here. It’s as scary as it gets.
“You’re wearing a sweater.”
Before we get to our third and final Rule of 3, I want to quickly mention one of my sneaky favorite scenes, the wound-exchange scene. Of course, we all love the growing and begrudging respect we see between Hooper and Quint. And yes, it’s just adorable and wonderful that even as they grow closer, they relentlessly compete.
What I love is a small moment (1:46 in the clip) when Brody lifts up his shirt and checks his own wound, before he decides not to enter the discussion with his story.
Now, I haven’t read the novel, but I have a theory as to the origin story of Brody’s wound. I think it’s an injury he sustained on the job as a police officer in New York City. And I think that’s why he’s in Amity in the first place. That is, I think someone either shot or stabbed him, and, motivated by self-preservation, Brody immediately started looking for another job.
It would explain a lot about our newcomer to Amity. Think about one of Brody’s drunken throwaway lines while he and Hooper are on Hooper’s boat at night: “But in Amity, one man can make a difference! Did you know that in twenty years, there hasn’t been a shooting or a murder in this town?”
Hold up. If you are genuinely interested in making a difference, Brody, then why did you go someplace that doesn’t need any differences made? The answer is that you were too afraid of continuing on the streets of New York, and you wanted to find the safest police job you could, and miraculously stumbled on Amity Island Police Chief. And that progression makes your guilt even worse, because you know you sold Amity a false bill of goods. They believed they were getting a tough and courageous cop; you gave them a coward, and you let them down. And you know it.
Brody’s self-inspection leads us right to the legendary “Indianapolis” monologue, which leads us right into the group singing “Show Me the Way to Go Home.”
I love how it begins. The sound of whales singing leads Quint to sing “Farewell and Adieu to You Fair Spanish Ladies.” Uninterested in singing a song that Quint gleefully sang to Hooper to let him know that if he has to get in his “ant-shark cage,” Hooper will assuredly die, Hooper counters with “Show Me the Way to Go Home.” Fair enough, Quint’s body language says, and he starts singing along. Brody, insecure but now giddy that he got implicitly invited to the cool kids’ table, makes his way over. (His effort to sit down is adorable, by the way. OF COURSE the awkward guy hits his head on the lamp as he sits down—nothing is easy for this guy. And OF COURSE our nice guy politely checks the lamp to make sure it’s undamaged. So lovable.) And now they’re all singing together; finally, we (literally) have a moment of harmony.
And then we see the shark approach. And then.
Quint stops singing, and thus establishes that there’s a problem. And it makes sense that he’s first, because it’s his boat.
Hooper stops singing, and thus confirms that there’s a problem. It makes sense that he’s second, because he’s not as savvy as Quint, but he’s no amateur.
Brody stops singing, and there’s a cute reversal, because he doesn’t know there’s a problem. He just wants to know why everyone else stopped singing. There’s this adorable pause before this amateur finally realizes the full extent of this crisis.
“This shark . . . swallow you whole!”
There are many other applications of the Rule of 3 in this film. Every time I watch it I gain more and more respect for the entire enterprise; it really is a film miracle.
If you’ve made it this far, and reading this Pitch on its publication date, enjoy your 333rd day of 2024. Have a great Thanksgiving. I’ll see you next time, for Interstellar (2014).