Continued from Part 1

For a five year old kid—especially a five year old in 1978—the cinematic experience comfortably resided somewhere between magic and reality.  Back in the days of cathode ray tube televisions and corded phones, we didn’t have fifteen news channels pumping information at us 24/7.  We weren’t privy to high speed internet whose ability to suck the mystery out of just about everything bothers me even now as I type this.  I grew up in the country.  Not a suburb.  Not a small town.  The country.  There weren’t any kids my age for miles around, and I spent most of my time playing by myself—which really is very different from what I do now.

Anyway, to make my point, I lived a very sheltered childhood, so my wonderment of movies was probably even more pronounced than other kids my age.  I was able to simultaneously obtain a total suspension of disbelief and maintain a realistic “this is only a movie” comfort zone.  It’s hard to explain.  It’s like I some mild and deliberate form of dissociative or schizophrenic disorder where I was able to enter a hyper reality for the roughly two hours that a movie lasted.  All I remember is that it was really cool, and I really miss it now that it’s for the most part gone.

So for the entirety of Jaws 2, I rode along with Chief Brody in his police boat as he searched for his sons and their friends, who unbeknownst to them, were in turned being stalked by a twenty plus foot long maniacal great white shark.  And I stowed away with those same marijuana and Bee Gees inebriated teenagers as they fought off the creature and acted generally idiotic during the lulls.  And I believed every minute of it.

I loved the original Superman film.  Christopher Reeve is a legend.  And I marveled at the light saber skills of Luke Skywalker.  But to me the true movie hero of the seventies will always be my first, and he has the face of Roy Scheider.  Chief Martin Brody didn’t have superpowers.  He wasn’t a Jedi.  He wasn’t really that good of a cop.  But he still faced down two separate insanely large great white sharks in his career.  And he sent each of them to a watery grave.  It was more than that, though.  At the time, Roy Scheider—at least to me—had more than passing resemblance to my father.  So it wasn’t just Chief Brody fighting the shark.  It was my father.  It wasn’t just Brody staring death in its black doll-like eyes.  It was Daddy.  I can remember being so afraid for him, and I was sure Brody/Dad wasn’t going to make it out alive.

There were so many scenes in Jaws 2 that I remember fondly, even it that memory is tinged with a very real sense of dread.  The one that stands out the most, however, is the scene involving Tina and Eddie.  If you remember, Tina and Eddie were the horny little teenagers in the red sailboat.  They had let the rest of the group sail ahead while they anchored for a little make out time.  Back then, this was a “yuck” moment for me because supposedly girls were gross for a five year old boy.  Even back then, though, I can remember having an instant and powerful crush on Tina.  Tina was hot.  With her long, straight blond hair and natural good looks, she was a no nonsense old school hottie—I’m drifting, sorry.

Eddie and Tina are getting ready to swap spit, and Jaws suddenly rams the boat, knocking Eddie into the water.  The shark pulls the sailboat—and Tina—for a brief moment, furthering the distance between Eddie and the craft.  Neither one of them is really sure what just happened.  Right about then Tina—who’s still hot even in a crisis—sees the famous big fin rise out of the water on the opposite side of the boat as Eddie, a fin which is obviously rigged with speakers to pump out John Williams’ menacing score.  Realizing what is about to happen, Tina screams for Eddie to swim.  There’s a subdued, surreal moment where the shark silently glides under the boat on its way to make not-so-nice with Eddie.  It was as terrifying as it was quiet. I recall wanting Eddie to swim.  I wanted him to swim even more than Tina did.  I think I wanted Eddie to swim even more than Eddie did.  Tina screamed, “Swim faster, Eddie!  Swim faster!”  Even to this day, as a thirty four year old watching this weathered film, I still hold out hope that Eddie will make it to that boat before the shark makes it to Eddie.  But he never does. He never does.

Jaws 2 was no masterpiece.  It didn’t win any Oscars.  It didn’t make loads of money, although by now I figure it’s made a fair penny since it’s shown about fifty times a week on as many stations.  Regardless of its meager position on the Hollywood totem pole, however, it will always be a masterpiece to me.  It started a love affair with movies that burns just as strong today.  I do miss the suspension of disbelief that time and tragedy and life’s bumps and bruises have taken away from me.  In a way, life can be like a killer shark.  Sometimes it claims its victims, and sometimes they swim fast enough to get away and fight another day.  But unlike Eddie, I’m holding out hope that one day I’ll make it back to the boat in time and regain that magic.  Hey, the five year old kid inside this adult's body can dream.  And sometimes that’s all we’ve got.