Annie Belle submitted an assignment suggesting you talk about 3-5 movie scenes that changed your life. That is right up my alley and I couldn’t resist. In fact, about four years ago I started a formative 10 film series on the bava that I never finished, so I think of this as a kind of continuation of that blog strand, but this time on film rather than all that messy text and broken links. And while I focused on five films that were formative, I have another 15 or 20 for starters I could talk at length about, and I just might given how much fun this was. In this, the first edition of the formative 5, I talked about Jaws (1975), Star Wars (1977), Clash of the Titans (1981), Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Alien (1979). And while it’s utterly self indulgent, I won’t apologize because it’s the most fun I’ve had in a long while and I always think of projects like this as love letters to my children.
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I was surprised to hear your family took you to see Jaws when you were 7 so I looked up the rating and it was PG? That’s ridiculous. Also about your Alien clip, I actually read in an article that none of the actors, aside from the “infected” one, knew exactly how that scene was supposed to happen. All they knew was “it” was supposed to appear. I thought that was kind of amazing that Ridley Scott was able to do this scene filming actual reactions of the actors to this surprise chest burster.
So great. I need to do this.
God I still think about sharks every time I go swimming in the ocean because of that movie.
Interesting note I discovered, the Ben Gardner body scene was shot at Spielberg’s own expense in his editor’s swimming pool. He decided after watching test audiences react to the film, he wanted, ‘one more scream.’ Sadistic bastard, if he only knew 7 year olds would be watching!
@Tyler,
Nice find with the idea that the actors themselves had no idea of what was coming. And the set of Alien must have been awesome, such a great cast, have you ever seen these images: http://bavatuesdays.com/stills-from-alien/
Great stuff.
@Matt,
I can’t wait to see it, it will be epic, I’m your biggest fan!
@Michael,
One more scream, indeed. And that was the scariest scene of all for me. So crazy, so perfectly timed, I still freak out when I see it.