Welcome to Refresh My Memory – where we mix movies and refreshments!
Will it work? Only time will tell. And maybe the Comments Section.
Your biting hosts are Jason Dedrick, Eric Fell and Vicki Van. They’ll be discussing the 1975 Stephen Spielberg classic tale of shark vs. character actors. Refreshments appearing in the film will be served and discussed.
If you’d like to make the “You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Glass” drink discussed in the episode, here’s the recipe:
- Take a Blue Hawaii (not a Blue Hawaiian) which is:
- 3/4 ounce vodka
- 3/4 ounce light rum
- 1/2 ounce blue curaçao
- 3 ounces pineapple juice
- 1 ounce sweet and sour mix (or simple syrup)
- Blend together with ice
- Chop up an Amerena cherry in syrup and sprinkle on the drink (to simulate a shark attack)
- Let some of the syrup pour down the sides of the glass – enough to get the beach shut down
- Maraschino cherries are also fine
- Top with a gummy candy shark
- A salted rim is both optional and we forgot to do it in our version
If you make the drink or come up with one of your own, please send a picture by clicking here! Even of you don’t, we’d still love to hear from you.
Music by Chris Roberts
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Congrats on your first “Refresh” podcast. I feel sorry for anyone who didn’t see Jaws first in a dark sold-out movie theatre with a good sound system. It was a wild ride. From reading the book as a teen, I learned red wine was “supposed” to be served with one kind of meat and white wine with another. So when Hooper turns up for dinner with Chief Brody and his wife with two bottles of wine, that was to show he came from a sophisticated and privileged background! I guess the movie Hooper was a bit of a wine snob as well as a shark expert.
Yes, it’s such a nice little character detail! The book makes a bigger deal about the divide between the Islanders and the rich people who visit every season. Spielberg gets it across a lot more efficiently.
I hope to make the “You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Glass” cocktail; i just have to clear my calendar. An interesting movie from that era is Mel Brooks’ “Silent movie”. I haven’t seen it since 1976 and maybe silent films are not as popular now as they were then.
Jaws was about the impotence of a sheriff and his family in a small island. It took from Moby Dick by Herman Melville and Duel by Spielberg. Spielberg’s pwn parents divorce plays out in many of his early films. The abandonment of parental responsibility, adult supervision all play out in his films.
Podcast could have gone deeper into these themes specially in comparison with the book version. But this was lost in a conversation about wine.
The impact of divorce really is a big part of early Spielberg. For a deeper dive on the film let me recommend https://www.sneakydragon.com/podcast/the-fansplainers-jaws/