Richard Schickel’s documentary “Spielberg on Spielberg.” Just finished talking about “Duel” (what I maintain to be a top five Spielberg effort to this day) and “Jaws.” Ths is critical viewing to anyone interested in filmmaking. It’s a treat to hear the director talking at length about his own work. This is a guy who has never provided a director’s commentary track for a DVD release, so it’s a rarer treat than you’d expect.
Speaking of “Jaws” (a personal all-time top 20er and a finalist in our influential films poll), I’ve always laughed out loud at Roy Scheider’s reaction to first seeing the shark. You know it well, the “chum” scene. That bolt-upright snap of his, cigarette sticking out, that unmistakable “holy shit” look of shock. I don’t know, cracks me up every time.
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9 responses to “On TCM now…”
Man do I miss Scheider. I wish he could have had better roles later in his life.
I DVR’d this, am anxiously waiting to check it out. Criminal that it’s still not on DVD-it’s almost two years old!
Brian,
I would imagine that the amount of money needed to retain the clips in the documentary is exorbiant.
I almost didn’t set my DVR to record this, but thankfully, I did a couple of days ago. I’ll be checking this out in the next couple of days.
I surely hope that Peter Jackson can convince Spielberg of doing commentaries. He and Scorsese are both such passionate lovers of film.
Here’s Spielberg on Inside The Actor’s Studio (one of the very best episodes):
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YSObVGByfc
Grab the rest in the Featured Videos column. If you have any interest in Spielberg, you MUST watch this.
If Hollywood only had the balls to make character driven Summer films like JAWS. If that film were made today the studio would want 80% shark and 20% character development. Brody, Hooper and Quint, It doesen’t get better that that! Scheider was a GREAT leading man.
Not a Man-boy but a man!
chuck
Love the “man-boy” part :D.
I hope the doc will be released on DVD someday.
Sometimes you can find Emmy FYC screener DVDs on ebay. I just snagged one recently. But yeah, it’d be a trick to clear all the rights and release it for consumers.
Glad to hear that you’re a great admirer of “Jaws”, Kris. It’s my personal all-time favorite!