How to make a shark eat Samuel L. Jackson

August 3, 2019 2:12 AM

The Sooner You Kill Me, the Happier I'll Be. An oral history of the best death in the history of movies about genetically engineered marine predators.
posted by gottabefunky (33 comments total)

I am not surprised to learn that there was conflict between the director, who thought this was all very serious and frightening, and the actors and crew, who were painfully aware that it was silly. That tension is part of what makes this movie so wonderfully terrible. It is vital, in bad movies, for there to be someone making it in absolute sincerity.
posted by Scattercat at 3:35 AM on August 3, 2019 [23 favorites]

It is vital, in bad movies, for there to be someone making it in absolute sincerity.

I call this the Deep Rising Principal.
posted by um at 4:29 AM on August 3, 2019 [3 favorites]

That shark looks so bad, mid-nineties CGI really hasn't aged well.
posted by octothorpe at 4:34 AM on August 3, 2019

*Morrissey voice*
🎶 the sooner you kill me
the happier I’ll be
you’re wasting your time 🎶
posted by incomple at 5:28 AM on August 3, 2019 [14 favorites]

I really appreciate this movie's 100% accurate portrayal of the relationship between a parrot and their human.
posted by tobascodagama at 6:08 AM on August 3, 2019 [5 favorites]

If the test audience had been the audience I was with they might have kept the original cut. I remembered this really loud betrayed gasp that the name actor/hero died, then silence, and then a beat later, my friends and I just cracking up in our seats because that's all just perfect.
posted by cendawanita at 6:10 AM on August 3, 2019 [4 favorites]

The animatronic, free-swimming sharks in DBS are a fuckin' marvel.

I call this the Deep Rising Principal.

Nitpick: Deep Rising was made by the dude who did the Weisz/Fraser Mummy movies and is quite intentional horror-comedy.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:29 AM on August 3, 2019 [6 favorites]

The credits!
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 6:57 AM on August 3, 2019 [1 favorite]

Missing the #myhatislikeasharksfin tag
posted by kryptondog at 7:28 AM on August 3, 2019 [3 favorites]

A fun read! Really enjoyed that movie - obviously the sharks were not real, but when you think about just *how bad* the shark looked in JAWS (and its sequels), well - these sharks looked utterly awesome.
posted by davidmsc at 7:39 AM on August 3, 2019 [2 favorites]

I've had it with these monkey-fighting sharks in this Monday-to-Friday research facility!
posted by dephlogisticated at 8:28 AM on August 3, 2019 [10 favorites]

God, I love DEEP BLUE SEA. I remember some review or another stating that the sharks would have been literally taunting the humans outside the windows if it had fit the logic of the movie. I think that's accurate.

Also, yeah. DEEP RISING is intentionally humorous. Sommers is a funny guy and I wish he'd return to filmmaking.
posted by brundlefly at 8:51 AM on August 3, 2019 [8 favorites]

I call this the Deep Rising Principal.

Deep Rising was one of the movies I reviewed with my college roommate for our school newspaper. Due to the ridiculous amounts of cutting back and forth between the cruise ship and Pirate Treat Williams Absurdly High Tech Speed Boar, our review contained the immortal line (to us anyway)

"Meanwhile, meanwhile, on the other, other boat."

The editor wasn't going to let us keep the line, but then she saw the movie, and said it made perfect sense.
posted by Ghidorah at 9:50 AM on August 3, 2019 [10 favorites]

I was confused reading this. The article makes it sound like the final cut resembled Jackson's desire for the shark to eat him before he had to say more than a couple sentences, but in the clip he goes on and on and on before the shark attack.

The director used multiple takes to get the whole speech? But then they changed it? But it's still really long anyway? Was the director's first cut even longer?
posted by straight at 10:38 AM on August 3, 2019 [2 favorites]

7 pages of dialogue would be about 7 minutes of screen time. I don't think he goes on for that long.
posted by tavella at 10:47 AM on August 3, 2019 [4 favorites]

If the shark in the original Jaws had looked better they would have been tempted to show it on the screen more, to the detriment of the movie.
posted by Pryde at 10:51 AM on August 3, 2019 [7 favorites]

The clip embedded is only about 2:30 minutes and he got bit at just about 1:30-ish so yea, he definitely didn't deliver the whole thing. The first (serious) cut is the one they referred to that even needed additional v/o from another actor who can fake the voice, so maybe that did hit a whole 7 minutes, but the final more comedic cut probably took most of the additional dialogue out.
posted by cendawanita at 10:58 AM on August 3, 2019 [1 favorite]

Pirate Treat Williams Absurdly High Tech Speed Boar

I hope that now there are people who haven't seen Deep Rising wondering if it has a cyborg porcine The Flash.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 11:29 AM on August 3, 2019 [4 favorites]

...I guess it would be a Rat Thing but piggie-based?
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 11:29 AM on August 3, 2019

And they did this for, like, 20 takes, with Sam explaining to Renny that he thinks there’s no way to say this dialogue. So, I got involved after take two or three, and said, ‘Renny, Sam and I thought it’d be much cooler if he’s attacked before he says the speech, because the audience is thinking, ‘Oh, well, he’s the star, he’s got this big thing, and it’s just sort of like a National Lampoon joke and then the shark just wipes him out.’

And Renny goes, ‘What’s National Lampoon?’ I said, ‘It’s like the Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indy goes to fight the big sword wielding guy, and he just pulls the gun and shoots him, instead of engaging.’ And Renny goes, ‘That won’t work.’ So, on and on it went, very contentious, in a kind way, between Sam and Renny.

I am not surprised that Renny Harlin does not understand how other movies work. I am mildly surprised that he doesn’t know how his own movies work
posted by ricochet biscuit at 12:06 PM on August 3, 2019 [10 favorites]

I honestly thought the "seven pages" thing was like saying "a zillion pages of dialog." Wow. Seven minutes? That would've been insane. And possibly even funnier?
posted by straight at 1:18 PM on August 3, 2019

This is a great li’l story!
posted by Going To Maine at 3:11 PM on August 3, 2019

Also, FWIW, in the embedded clip Jackson starts speaking at ~:20, and the kill is at ~1:40. So… a page and half?
posted by Going To Maine at 3:15 PM on August 3, 2019

I hope that now there are people who haven't seen Deep Rising wondering if it has a cyborg porcine The Flash.

such an addition could only benefit that hilarrible atrocity
posted by poffin boffin at 4:21 PM on August 3, 2019

(stupid typos...)
posted by Ghidorah at 4:36 PM on August 3, 2019

Sometimes you have to accept a typo as a gift from the divine
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 4:39 PM on August 3, 2019 [2 favorites]

Pirate Treat Williams Absurdly High Tech Speed Boar

If I send cortex twenty bucks, can I change to this user name?
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:23 PM on August 3, 2019 [3 favorites]

Was gonna say for a fiver that's a good sock-puppet account name.
posted by dazed_one at 5:27 PM on August 3, 2019

Fiiiiiiine. Call it The Relic Principal then.

Deep Rising and The Relic are ineluctably joined in my mind because they both feature scenes of rich people panicking and trampling each other to death in their frenzied attempts to escape.
posted by um at 5:31 PM on August 3, 2019 [2 favorites]

I have to point out here that seven pages of *standard back-and-forth dialogue* is about seven minutes long. It looks something like this on the page:

PERSONGUY
Blah.

HUMANWOMAN
Blah blah?

[A GIANT SHARK suddenly enters the room and eats HUMANWOMAN.]

PERSONGUY
Blah!

Seven pages of *monologue*, on the other hand, is a HELL OF A LOT LONGER THAN THAT. It looks something like this:

TALKYFELLOW
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah! Blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah; blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah? Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

[PERSONGUY and HUMANWOMAN continue to listen, rapt in awe, as TALKYFELLOW talks.]

TALKYFELLOW
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah! Blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah; blah blah blah...

And so on. It's much denser.

We're talking the movie stopping dead for a fifteen minute speech at the absolute minimum.

If he got cut off after a minute and a half that's probably less than one page of the full speech.
posted by kyrademon at 5:39 PM on August 3, 2019 [6 favorites]

both feature scenes of rich people panicking and trampling each other to death in their frenzied attempts to escape.

Or as your grandchildren will refer to it, “just like LA in 2028.”
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:02 PM on August 3, 2019

We're talking the movie stopping dead for a fifteen minute speech at the absolute minimum.

At fifteen minutes, that would be even funnier imo. He's going on and on, the other actors are looking at their watches, scratching their heads. Maybe one or two start dozing off. Another one just kind of wanders away...
posted by Literaryhero at 10:49 PM on August 3, 2019 [5 favorites]

One thing I liked to do with Deep Blue Sea when watching it with people who hadn't seen it before is tell them "Only two of these characters will still be alive at the end of the movie. Try to guess which ones!" One is kind of an obvious choice, but nobody ever guessed both correctly.
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:11 AM on August 6, 2019 [1 favorite]