Week 2 Discussion
Part One:
When Field writes that the purpose of a scene is to either move the story forward or reveal information about a character, Quint’s monologue of survival about the real-life sinking of the USS Indianapolis (p.103-105) in Benchley and Gottlieb’s script for Jaws, is an incredible context-building bridge between the conflict of the shark attack in the second act, and the resolution framed by the final attack in the third. It is a breath of pause which reveals why Quint’s purpose for pursuing the shark. Through the retelling of Quint’s survival trauma, the script is able to enrich the context of Quint’s relationship with the shark, help us understand Quint’s purpose, and provide the content of the memory in the film.
The script’s elements are crisply focused on Quint’s dialogue, with an action prompt which simply states ‘Quint remembering’ followed by the scene direction of CLOSE ON QUINT. The only elements which punctuate the next two pages are parentheticals calling for pause as Quint holds on a specific beat of violence. It’s one of the most powerful scenes in the film, especially coupled with Robert Shaw’s incredible execution, and strongly infers the subtext of Quint’s obsession with the shark is more than personal. It’s driven by revenge. But the monologue also foreshadows Quint’s own death. He describes the shark’s lifeless eyes biting his shipmates in half, and how the ocean turned red. As we pause between attacks in the present, the trauma of Quint’s monologue reveals his past and his future.
Part Two:
There is a scene in my script where the protagonists, two young boys from Manhattan’s East Village, break into an abandoned tenement building in search of a dead body. John (14) and Mike (12) have been warned off going into the building by their parents, but are there to prove them wrong by exploring the haunted apartment. Established with dialogue, their relationship positions John as more confident and experienced, Mike quieter and more submissive. But as they stand at the entrance to the doorway where the body is rumored to be, the dialogue stops and the relationship changes. The cockier John tries the door, before gesturing for Mike to go first. Mike sighs in disappointment and shakes his head, and we infer this is not the first time. It collapses the confidence we’ve seen so far in John, and inverts their relationship where we now understand the younger, quieter Mike is the one with the guts. I am establishing John’s confidence with dialogue, but removing it in silence.
Location context is important here. They are on the threshold between being inside the haunted apartment and outside in the safety of the stairwell. Outside in the known environment of the hallway, John has strength. Inside in the unknown, he doesn’t, and what takes place in the limbic space between the two inverts the relationship of power between the two boys. Coupled with Mike’s disappointed head movement, we create a subtext through visual storytelling that John has always been all talk.
