Anyone up for a swim?
I remember it well. I was anxious for months before the movie came out. It was all I could talk about, the ONLY thing worth talking about, really. What would it look like? Was it real? Would we be scared? My mother kept telling me to forget about it, I wasn’t going. I begged, I cried. I stopped speaking to her for two weeks. Finally, she caved, I was going to my first movie. I conned both of my parents into taking me and my best friend “into town” to see our very first movie on the big screen. I remember my dad swinging the car into the parking lot of CMP on Main Street in Lewiston and we anxiously climbed out of the car and headed up the hill to the Empire Theater. The marquee was huge to us, hanging high above the sidewalk. From the bridge I would see the four big black letters on it that would forever change my life. Four simple letters that would change the way I would forever feel about the coast I had grown to love. Four letters, that to this day, make me unable to set foot in the ocean. JAWS. I was only eight years old in 1975 when the movie opened, but I was never much of a Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty kind of girl. I liked the blood, guts and gore–or so I thought. On that day in 1975, as I sat between my parents, I was transposed to Amity Island. I could smell the ocean, feel the sand between my toes. I could hear the distant cry of a seagull and I could hear the waves crash ontot he beach. Oh yes, I was in Amity. Then the shark came. The “da dum, da dum” music started and the beautiful swimmer was nothing more than an appetizer. That was the end of my swimming in the ocean, as well. Today, thirty one years later, I will not set foot in the ocean.
Last weekend, M. Night Shalaman’s movie, The Lady In The Water opened. It was God Awful, as Mark said, and they’ll never be another comparison to JAWS. It was the first movie I had ever seen and it had the biggest impact. Talk to me about your first movie…
