On the Big Screen :: A Night at the Movies :: Steven Spielberg's JAWS (1975)

Through sheer serendipity (Thanks, Amy), I discovered that a revival theater was operating less than an hour away a few days ago. And after a little Googling I also learned the World Theater in Kearney, NE, had been open for business for over a year without me even noticing. Honestly, I hadn't been to this sister city for a movie since the old Kearney Drive-In was destroyed by Mother Nature some five years ago. But now, seeing what I had been missing, I'd like to offer a sincere mea culpa for not paying closer attention to these things. (According to their schedule, I completely blew chances at seeing everything from Singing in the Rain to The Big Lebowski to Caddyshack to Harold Lloyd's Safety Last. And that's as far as I dug back because it was getting too depressing.) Now, I intend to make up for lost time and opportunities, starting with a Friday night screening of JAWS.

And with my ticket bought, a mere $5, I headed into the lobby, by-passed the snack-bar, that I believe was selling alcohol to those of age -- lack of funds prevented me from finding out for sure. Anyways, I made a beeline for the balcony steps...

Where I found a seat, dead center, and settled in. And for someone usually trying to squeeze 40lbs. of ass into a 20lbs. ass seat, the seating was a pleasant, roomy surprise with plenty of legroom. Win! Now, The World Theater dates back to the 1920's with a massive (and ill-conceived) renovation in the 1980's that found the theater split into two separate venues by basically just building a wall down the center. In 2008, the theater closed, apparently for good, until a grassroots effort "To save the World" led to a massive restoration effort to its former glory and a grand reopening as a revival theater in 2012.

Before the film started, the owner, Jon Bokenkamp, a Kearney native, who's had a modest filmmaking career in Hollywood, who returned home to ramrod these efforts to save and run the theater, made a quick speech, gave thanks to the film's sponsor, and then thanked the audience for attending. Then, the lights dimmed, the movie started, and the low thrum of John Williams' pulsing score got us all to re-thinking about our place in the food chain...
 

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"Martin, it's all psychological. You yell barracuda, everybody says, 'Huh? What?' You yell shark, we've got a panic on our hands on the 4th of July." 

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"This shark will swallow you whole."
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"Well, this is not a boat accident! And it wasn't any propeller; and it wasn't any coral reef; and it wasn't Jack the Ripper! It was a shark."

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"Fellas, let's be reasonable, huh? This is not the time nor the place to perform some kind of a half-assed autopsy on a fish. And I'm not going to stand here and see that thing cut open and see that little Kintner boy spill out all over the dock."

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"Martin hates boats. Martin hates water. Martin... Martin sits in his car when we go on the ferry to the mainland. I guess it's a childhood thing. It's a... there's a clinical name for it isn't there"

"Drowning."

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"He didn't eat a car, did he?
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"I think that I am familiar with the fact that you are going to ignore this particular problem until it swims up and bites you on the ass! ... 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."

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"Why aren't you in the water?"
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"Martin, my kids were on that beach, too."

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"Back home we got a taxidermy man. He gonna have a heart attack when he sees what I brung him."

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"You know that was the time I was most frightened ... Waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a life-jacket again."

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"Smile, you sonova...
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"I used to hate the water..."
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What a great movie. And, all in all, this was a pretty amazing movie-watching experience. A large but respectful crowd. Again, I sat in the balcony, which wasn't refurnished like the rest of the theater, with hardwood floors and carpeted walkways that had me instantly regressing back to 1975 and the old Rivoli theater, where I saw JAWS for the first time when I was barely five years old.

Some forty years later, this second time on the big screen experience, highlights remembered were watching the audience jump when Ben Gardner's head pops out of that ersatz porthole, even though 95% of us knew it was coming. Joining in on the laughing and gasping, again, even though I know this movie backwards and forwards. Marking how quiet and still things got during Quint's harrowing U.S.S. Indianapolis speech as the entire audience was enthralled by the magic onscreen while riveted to their seats off. And then applauding along when Brody finally hits his mark and Bruce the shark, with chunks of Quint still stuck in his teeth, explodes. And then applauding again when Hooper surfaces. And then applauding one last time for the closing credits. 

I tell ya folks, to me, there's nothing closer to heaven than looking up in a darkened theater and seeing the dust motes waft through the flickering projector light. Damn. Wow. 

And then the house lights came up, I exhanged a few pleasantries with the family sitting in front of me as we filed toward the exit. Outside, a light rain was just starting to fall as folks congregating in the lobby and under the marquee on the sidewalk in front of the theater, recalling and reenacting their favorite bits, some for the umpteenth time, others for the first, judging by the age of some of the attendees. 

And I'll wrap up this pleasant recollection about a night at the movies by thanking the owner and operators of the World Theater for creating this venue to bring back these kinds of cinema classics to be enjoyed on the big screen again. I hope they can keep it going, and judging by the size of the crowd I'd say they have a pretty good shot. All I know is they're showing The Blues Brothers in a couple weeks. I know I'm going. Now who's gonna come with me?