Voir (2021–…): Season 1, Episode 1 - Voir - full transcript
It follows a series of visual essays celebrating cinema.
When I look back on my life,
I see it on the big screen.
A collection of memories
as full of light and color as the sky.
I can remember the exact moment
I fell in love with movies.
I went in knowing nothing
and came out knowing
that if I could be in a movie theater,
I didn't wanna be anywhere else.
I was ten years old that summer,
with nothing ahead of me but a whole life.
On June 20th, one movie opened
that changed everything,
and not just the future of Hollywood
but the lives of an entire generation.
I know because I was there.
I came of age in a dark theater,
staring up at that big screen,
watching the same movie
over and over again.
It was not just a movie.
It was the movie.
And that traps it in amber,
along with the best things
I remember from that summer.
The year was 1975,
and that movie was Jaws.
Oh God, help!
God! God, help!
It hurts! It hurts!
Oh my God! God, help me!
God, please, help!
After that,
nothing would ever be the same.
Not summers, not movies,
not beaches, and not me.
♪ I wish that I knew what I know now ♪
♪ When I was younger... ♪
We grew up in Topanga Canyon,
which, in the '70s, was a wilderness
of communes and health food stores
between the beaches and the Valley.
We grew up like everyone
grew up back then, fast and free.
Probably a little too free.
Childhood wasn't eternal
or monitored like it is now.
Our movies, our clothes, our music
all told us that growing up was
way better than being a kid.
My ten-year-old's reality was
stolen kisses at hippie bonfires
on Topanga Beach.
We didn't have social media to reflect
the fun we might be having.
No texting, no TikTok.
We didn't have much of anything
except our imaginations
and, every so often, the night sky.
We'd stay up all night counting stars,
imagining what our lives might become.
We told each other the dumbest shit,
like how Donna Summer did real sex...
...while recording "Love to Love You Baby."
Or how Bubble Yum was literally filled
with tiny spiders. Or that Mikey...
He won't eat it.
He hates everything.
...had eaten Pop Rocks,
chugged soda, and died
when his stomach exploded.
He likes it! Hey, Mikey!
There wasn't much
we wouldn't believe.
It is as if God created the devil...
...and gave him... jaws.
Rated PG.
May be too intense for younger children.
By June of 1975,
you could not escape Jaws.
Universal made sure it was everywhere.
The Benchley paperback
everyone was reading.
The trailer everyone feared.
The poster everyone wanted.
The T-shirts everyone wore.
That massive, razor-toothed monster swam
inches beneath the same American culture
that had just survived Charles Manson,
the Vietnam War, and Watergate.
Everybody has a Jaws story.
Mostly you hear them from boys,
who took ownership of that summer
as their fanboy-nation origin story.
But girls, we were there too.
Fuck yeah, we were there.
♪ That's the way, uh-huh
Uh-huh, I like it, uh-huh... ♪
Between welfare and food stamps,
our mom could barely afford admission,
let alone popcorn.
But we made a deal with her.
if she dropped us off
in time for the first show,
she wouldn't have to pick us up
until after the last.
What should I do while you're gone?
At the cost of one ticket each,
that was how my sister and I saw Jaws
at least 40 times that summer.
I'll be back in two minutes.
But back then, to see a movie,
you had to actually go to the movies.
And since there were
no theaters in Topanga,
we had to drive 30 minutes
to the San Fernando Valley.
For Canyon rats like us,
that was like visiting a utopian America
only seen on television.
It was boys who looked like Greg Brady
and girls who looked like Farrah.
You know, normal people.
And it was so hot
you could barely breathe.
♪ Take me in your arms ♪
♪ Rock your baby ♪
Movies can freeze time,
like vanilla ice cream melting down
your wrist on hot summer afternoons can.
Like sleeping under the stars can.
Like first kisses can.
But you can't freeze time forever.
That summer, there was a new man
in our mom's life,
teaching her how to flip houses,
promising to get us off welfare,
and tame the Topanga out of us.
There were a lot of distractions
that summer, and we needed them.
But Jaws was more than a distraction.
It gave us something to turn to
instead of someone to run away from.
Jaws wasn't just a blockbuster
or a pop culture phenomenon.
It was a time and a place, a feeling,
an atmosphere
that can never be fully appreciated
by anyone who wasn't there.
Jaws transformed our lives
in the ways we needed it to.
And from then on, we willed
our childhood to be Jaws.
Amity Island became our island.
We reenacted Chrissie's death scene
any time we were near the water.
A tree house in our backyard was our Orca.
The Jaws Log, the must-have handbook
for all self-respecting fans,
was our bible.
We became self-taught experts
on the Carcharodon carcharias.
We scoured the beaches for sharks' teeth.
We got our hands on Super 8 cameras
so that we could make our own movies.
We fell in love with the movies
that summer.
No matter where we were, what we did,
all we could think about was
sitting in the dark,
elbow-to-elbow with our other family.
When do I become an islander?
Ellen, never.
And it didn't even have to be inside.
By taking advantage
of the kids-hide-on-the-floor discount,
we could go to the Van Nuys Drive-In,
and Mom could come with us.
Especially on those hot summer nights
when all you wanna do is sit outside.
♪ For the court of the crimson king ♪
♪ Ah-ah-ah ♪
♪ Ah ♪
♪ Ah-ah ♪
♪ Ah-ah-ah ♪
$3,000 buys an awful lot of roast.
As much as I loved Jaws then,
I was not capable of fully understanding
the complexity of the characters
or the mastery of the filmmaking
at ten years old, maybe not even at 20.
But if you watch a movie enough times,
you start to notice things.
Can we go home?
The more times I watched it,
the closer I looked.
The closer I looked, the more I saw.
Things I didn't catch
the first, oof, 30 times.
And with each new discovery,
it was like a whole new movie appeared.
It was the ridiculous
and the sublime.
The exhilaration.
Fast fish!
Watch my hand!
Steven Spielberg, serving up
unflinching terror and childlike wonder
in one perfectly composed shot
after another.
His whole creative team
firing on all cylinders.
The landmark score by John Williams,
not just music but storytelling,
deployed with such restraint.
The shark theme is the shark,
and when there is no shark,
there is no theme.
Screenwriter Carl Gottlieb's
brilliant foreshadowing.
It... it's all psychological.
You yell "barracuda."
Everybody says, "Huh, what?"
You yell "shark"...
Shark, three-five-zero!
...we've got a panic on our hands
on the Fourth of July.
Spielberg and editor Verna Fields'
careful modulation from full-blown panic...
...to the depressurization of comic relief...
He made me do it! He talked me into it!
Rising again
into dread and horror.
Sha... shark! It's a shark!
It's going into the pond!
The shark's in the estuary!
- Now what?
- In the estuary!
Michael's in the pond.
Shark is in the pond!
Shark! In the pond!
Jaws comes alive
in all the senses.
You smell it. You hear it. You taste it.
You live it.
And the second it was over, I wanted
to get right back in line for more.
And more.
And more.
After that,
the summer blockbuster was born.
From then on, my sister and I
were full-blown movie geeks,
waiting in line three hours for Star Wars,
acting out the Chestburster scene
from Alien,
tape recording Raiders
so that we could memorize every line,
and scamming our way
into a sneak preview of E.T.
We were standing in the same lines,
sitting in the same seats,
but sometime between Jaws and E.T.,
we looked down, and there were... boobs.
♪ I'm standing here on the ground ♪
Somehow, boys could grow
into men and still be fanboys.
But once hormones were part
of the equation, they went one way,
and we went the other.
We were no longer on the same quest
but the prize at the end of it,
a thing to fear, to woo, to win.
And it wasn't just that.
Hollywood changed too.
At some point
in this blockbuster narrative,
girls got left on the cutting room floor.
Hollywood bet big on boys,
and it paid off.
We watched the rise
of branded, packaged properties
based on video games and comic books,
financed by sell-through DVD revenues,
all aimed at a reliable middle-school
male demographic.
But sometimes you had to wonder,
"Are these even movies?
What happened to the story?"
Could Jaws even be made today?
Could it survive the gauntlet
of Rotten Tomatoes,
CinemaScore,
the dreaded Oscar-worthiness test?
Could it survive the scrutiny
of its mechanical shark,
whose rubbery performance was irrelevant
back then but wouldn't be now?
Could it survive the hive mind on Twitter,
picking over Spielberg's every intention?
Jaws went so far over budget,
it could've been
one of Hollywood's biggest disasters.
Instead, time has revealed it to be
one of the greatest films ever made.
But it also set an unrealistic bar
for what box office success meant.
So are moviegoers the victims
of Jaws' success?
Are all of us who showed up faithfully
over and over again
to see this one movie,
to relive this one experience,
are we to blame for the death
of all good things in cinema?
Smile, you son of a...
Yes.
And no.
You can't blame movie fans
for liking what they like.
But Hollywood seemed to learn
the wrong lessons
from the summer of the shark.
They chased a spectacle
and the numbers game
but forgot what really made Jaws Jaws.
It was a great story, brilliantly told.
For me, movies will always represent
the manifestation of the surreal,
the beautiful, and the terrifying.
Movie theaters offer
both the wonder and danger of Oz
and the safe haven of Kansas.
The best movies, like the worst people,
can leave you with scars,
with courage in the place of fear,
and, if you're lucky, hope.
And when there is no hope,
there may be sharks
and long-lost summers
and little girls in dark theaters
quoting the lines of a movie...
- I used to hate the water.
- ...they already know by heart.
I can't imagine why.
I see it on the big screen.
A collection of memories
as full of light and color as the sky.
I can remember the exact moment
I fell in love with movies.
I went in knowing nothing
and came out knowing
that if I could be in a movie theater,
I didn't wanna be anywhere else.
I was ten years old that summer,
with nothing ahead of me but a whole life.
On June 20th, one movie opened
that changed everything,
and not just the future of Hollywood
but the lives of an entire generation.
I know because I was there.
I came of age in a dark theater,
staring up at that big screen,
watching the same movie
over and over again.
It was not just a movie.
It was the movie.
And that traps it in amber,
along with the best things
I remember from that summer.
The year was 1975,
and that movie was Jaws.
Oh God, help!
God! God, help!
It hurts! It hurts!
Oh my God! God, help me!
God, please, help!
After that,
nothing would ever be the same.
Not summers, not movies,
not beaches, and not me.
♪ I wish that I knew what I know now ♪
♪ When I was younger... ♪
We grew up in Topanga Canyon,
which, in the '70s, was a wilderness
of communes and health food stores
between the beaches and the Valley.
We grew up like everyone
grew up back then, fast and free.
Probably a little too free.
Childhood wasn't eternal
or monitored like it is now.
Our movies, our clothes, our music
all told us that growing up was
way better than being a kid.
My ten-year-old's reality was
stolen kisses at hippie bonfires
on Topanga Beach.
We didn't have social media to reflect
the fun we might be having.
No texting, no TikTok.
We didn't have much of anything
except our imaginations
and, every so often, the night sky.
We'd stay up all night counting stars,
imagining what our lives might become.
We told each other the dumbest shit,
like how Donna Summer did real sex...
...while recording "Love to Love You Baby."
Or how Bubble Yum was literally filled
with tiny spiders. Or that Mikey...
He won't eat it.
He hates everything.
...had eaten Pop Rocks,
chugged soda, and died
when his stomach exploded.
He likes it! Hey, Mikey!
There wasn't much
we wouldn't believe.
It is as if God created the devil...
...and gave him... jaws.
Rated PG.
May be too intense for younger children.
By June of 1975,
you could not escape Jaws.
Universal made sure it was everywhere.
The Benchley paperback
everyone was reading.
The trailer everyone feared.
The poster everyone wanted.
The T-shirts everyone wore.
That massive, razor-toothed monster swam
inches beneath the same American culture
that had just survived Charles Manson,
the Vietnam War, and Watergate.
Everybody has a Jaws story.
Mostly you hear them from boys,
who took ownership of that summer
as their fanboy-nation origin story.
But girls, we were there too.
Fuck yeah, we were there.
♪ That's the way, uh-huh
Uh-huh, I like it, uh-huh... ♪
Between welfare and food stamps,
our mom could barely afford admission,
let alone popcorn.
But we made a deal with her.
if she dropped us off
in time for the first show,
she wouldn't have to pick us up
until after the last.
What should I do while you're gone?
At the cost of one ticket each,
that was how my sister and I saw Jaws
at least 40 times that summer.
I'll be back in two minutes.
But back then, to see a movie,
you had to actually go to the movies.
And since there were
no theaters in Topanga,
we had to drive 30 minutes
to the San Fernando Valley.
For Canyon rats like us,
that was like visiting a utopian America
only seen on television.
It was boys who looked like Greg Brady
and girls who looked like Farrah.
You know, normal people.
And it was so hot
you could barely breathe.
♪ Take me in your arms ♪
♪ Rock your baby ♪
Movies can freeze time,
like vanilla ice cream melting down
your wrist on hot summer afternoons can.
Like sleeping under the stars can.
Like first kisses can.
But you can't freeze time forever.
That summer, there was a new man
in our mom's life,
teaching her how to flip houses,
promising to get us off welfare,
and tame the Topanga out of us.
There were a lot of distractions
that summer, and we needed them.
But Jaws was more than a distraction.
It gave us something to turn to
instead of someone to run away from.
Jaws wasn't just a blockbuster
or a pop culture phenomenon.
It was a time and a place, a feeling,
an atmosphere
that can never be fully appreciated
by anyone who wasn't there.
Jaws transformed our lives
in the ways we needed it to.
And from then on, we willed
our childhood to be Jaws.
Amity Island became our island.
We reenacted Chrissie's death scene
any time we were near the water.
A tree house in our backyard was our Orca.
The Jaws Log, the must-have handbook
for all self-respecting fans,
was our bible.
We became self-taught experts
on the Carcharodon carcharias.
We scoured the beaches for sharks' teeth.
We got our hands on Super 8 cameras
so that we could make our own movies.
We fell in love with the movies
that summer.
No matter where we were, what we did,
all we could think about was
sitting in the dark,
elbow-to-elbow with our other family.
When do I become an islander?
Ellen, never.
And it didn't even have to be inside.
By taking advantage
of the kids-hide-on-the-floor discount,
we could go to the Van Nuys Drive-In,
and Mom could come with us.
Especially on those hot summer nights
when all you wanna do is sit outside.
♪ For the court of the crimson king ♪
♪ Ah-ah-ah ♪
♪ Ah ♪
♪ Ah-ah ♪
♪ Ah-ah-ah ♪
$3,000 buys an awful lot of roast.
As much as I loved Jaws then,
I was not capable of fully understanding
the complexity of the characters
or the mastery of the filmmaking
at ten years old, maybe not even at 20.
But if you watch a movie enough times,
you start to notice things.
Can we go home?
The more times I watched it,
the closer I looked.
The closer I looked, the more I saw.
Things I didn't catch
the first, oof, 30 times.
And with each new discovery,
it was like a whole new movie appeared.
It was the ridiculous
and the sublime.
The exhilaration.
Fast fish!
Watch my hand!
Steven Spielberg, serving up
unflinching terror and childlike wonder
in one perfectly composed shot
after another.
His whole creative team
firing on all cylinders.
The landmark score by John Williams,
not just music but storytelling,
deployed with such restraint.
The shark theme is the shark,
and when there is no shark,
there is no theme.
Screenwriter Carl Gottlieb's
brilliant foreshadowing.
It... it's all psychological.
You yell "barracuda."
Everybody says, "Huh, what?"
You yell "shark"...
Shark, three-five-zero!
...we've got a panic on our hands
on the Fourth of July.
Spielberg and editor Verna Fields'
careful modulation from full-blown panic...
...to the depressurization of comic relief...
He made me do it! He talked me into it!
Rising again
into dread and horror.
Sha... shark! It's a shark!
It's going into the pond!
The shark's in the estuary!
- Now what?
- In the estuary!
Michael's in the pond.
Shark is in the pond!
Shark! In the pond!
Jaws comes alive
in all the senses.
You smell it. You hear it. You taste it.
You live it.
And the second it was over, I wanted
to get right back in line for more.
And more.
And more.
After that,
the summer blockbuster was born.
From then on, my sister and I
were full-blown movie geeks,
waiting in line three hours for Star Wars,
acting out the Chestburster scene
from Alien,
tape recording Raiders
so that we could memorize every line,
and scamming our way
into a sneak preview of E.T.
We were standing in the same lines,
sitting in the same seats,
but sometime between Jaws and E.T.,
we looked down, and there were... boobs.
♪ I'm standing here on the ground ♪
Somehow, boys could grow
into men and still be fanboys.
But once hormones were part
of the equation, they went one way,
and we went the other.
We were no longer on the same quest
but the prize at the end of it,
a thing to fear, to woo, to win.
And it wasn't just that.
Hollywood changed too.
At some point
in this blockbuster narrative,
girls got left on the cutting room floor.
Hollywood bet big on boys,
and it paid off.
We watched the rise
of branded, packaged properties
based on video games and comic books,
financed by sell-through DVD revenues,
all aimed at a reliable middle-school
male demographic.
But sometimes you had to wonder,
"Are these even movies?
What happened to the story?"
Could Jaws even be made today?
Could it survive the gauntlet
of Rotten Tomatoes,
CinemaScore,
the dreaded Oscar-worthiness test?
Could it survive the scrutiny
of its mechanical shark,
whose rubbery performance was irrelevant
back then but wouldn't be now?
Could it survive the hive mind on Twitter,
picking over Spielberg's every intention?
Jaws went so far over budget,
it could've been
one of Hollywood's biggest disasters.
Instead, time has revealed it to be
one of the greatest films ever made.
But it also set an unrealistic bar
for what box office success meant.
So are moviegoers the victims
of Jaws' success?
Are all of us who showed up faithfully
over and over again
to see this one movie,
to relive this one experience,
are we to blame for the death
of all good things in cinema?
Smile, you son of a...
Yes.
And no.
You can't blame movie fans
for liking what they like.
But Hollywood seemed to learn
the wrong lessons
from the summer of the shark.
They chased a spectacle
and the numbers game
but forgot what really made Jaws Jaws.
It was a great story, brilliantly told.
For me, movies will always represent
the manifestation of the surreal,
the beautiful, and the terrifying.
Movie theaters offer
both the wonder and danger of Oz
and the safe haven of Kansas.
The best movies, like the worst people,
can leave you with scars,
with courage in the place of fear,
and, if you're lucky, hope.
And when there is no hope,
there may be sharks
and long-lost summers
and little girls in dark theaters
quoting the lines of a movie...
- I used to hate the water.
- ...they already know by heart.
I can't imagine why.