Deepest, Bluest

As promised, I’ll get back to my discussion of writing/creativity in my next newsletter, but since this edition is so close to the election, I thought we could do with an especially light topic. Something that takes our mind off the world a little bit. Thus…

What unites humanity? When it comes to movies, if we’re honest, I think that what we all really want, most of the time, is the kind of film that used to be called “a cable classic.” 

The “cable classic” frame probably doesn’t mean much to children of the streaming era, but anyone who used to flip up and down the TV channels on a lazy 90’s weekend knows exactly the stuff I mean – the movies that basic cable networks with vaguely-defined personalities (your USAs, TNTs, and TBSses) would program in constant rotation.

Sometimes these pictures were legit hits, and sometimes they were only moderate critical/commercial successes; but either way, they became beloved parts of our cultural fabric through a combination of watchability and always being on TV somewhere. I’m talking about your My Cousin Vinnys and your Office Spaces, your Road Houses and your Twisterses. Stuff like A Few Good Men, Sixteen Candles, Independence Day, Major League, Midnight Run, or Legally Blonde. 

Yes, this encompasses such a wildly diverse spectrum that it begins to feel like nonsense as a category – from straight up Oscar bait to sleepers; from films I would argue are kind of secretly brilliant, to… I dunno… sequels like Beverly Hills Cop II or Ghostbusters II, that aren’t actually all that that good, but kept enough residual affection to engage viewers. Still, even though the category's parameters are hazy, I daresay you know exactly what I mean. These are the 3 or 4 out of 5-star movies. The ones film buffs might never get too publicly enthusiastic about, or the ones that aren’t quite idiosyncratic enough to be your all-time “favorite." Instead, they’re the movies where you turn to your partner afterward and say “that was fun.” And then you both wonder what else is on.

Cable classic-passion is what put The Shawshank Redemption at the top of the IMDb user ratings for many years, even though it’s not remotely significant enough for that honor – it’s more like a well-constructed chair: comfortable, reliable, and good for a nap if the mood strikes you. 

Not that I’m immune! It's true that, as a baby film buff, I was obsessed with the “great” movies. I read lists and collected them like Pokemon, and that completism introduced me to a lot of wonderful art. It's also true that, now that I’m jaded and grizzled, I frequently seek out “bad” movies, because they’re likely to show me something new and strange – I’m a Cenobite riding the edge of pleasure and pain. But when I flip through the overwhelming streaming options, looking for a movie, what I’m secretly hoping to find isn’t necessarily high art or cheap thrills, but one of these solid, pleasure-center-massaging exercises in psychically-undemanding craft. 

And let's not damn these movies with faint praise! Craft at this level is HARD. Crowd-pleasers are beloved because it’s tough to please a crowd. So before we move on, here's a PSA touting a few movies that, in brighter days, would blanket TNT 24/7. Allow me to recommend Confess, Fletch and The Burial (both kind of dumped to streaming) and also The Fall Guy and Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (both moderately successful in theaters, but not like they should’ve been). 

Anyway, that’s all kind of preamble. I’m here not to praise a basic cable classic, but to bury it – or at least bury part of it. The 1999 film Deep Blue Sea lies on the sillier end of the basic cable classic spectrum, but I still enjoy it a bunch – except for the ending, which is bad and makes no sense.

I’ll return to why, but for those unfamiliar with the “What if Jaws, but, like… more and dumber?” classic, here’s a primer:

Renny Harlin is the director, and he brings an unmistakable “Renny Harlin-ness” to the project. He’s the auteur behind the Dennis Franziest of all the Die Hards, Die Harder. He helmed the bonkers Mindhunter, a Christian Slater vehicle about FBI serial-killer-hunters who chill on an island that the bureau apparently owns (I want my taxes back), only to find that one of them is a serial killer who’s rigged the place with Home Alone murder traps. He did Cutthroat Island, the movie that almost single-handedly labeled “pirates” box office poison, until Johnny Depp briefly redeemed them, only to re-poison them via sequels and being Johnny Depp. And let’s not ignore A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, the one where a teen girl does bench presses until her arms break open and skin peels off, because Freddy turned her into a cockroach, in a Kafka adaptation totally guaranteed to land you an ‘F’ if used as a study guide.

Harlin excels at taking gloriously dumb premises and lacquering them with 50 coats of coked-up blockbuster gloss, and Deep Blue Sea is firmly in his wheelhouse. Plot? It’s a shark movie about a chef played by LL Cool J, who’s in love with a parrot. Oh, also Saffron Burrows wants to cure Alzheimer's. In pursuit of this noble goal, she does what anyone in her position would do: create super-huge, superintelligent sharks. These sharks are studied in a floating research station, by a team including Thomas Jane, Michael Rappaport, and their visiting billionaire benefactor, Samuel L. Jackson. There are other people too, but they might as well all be named “shark food.” Forget them, Jake. They’re chumtown. 

Anyway, the super-sized sharks escape and kill nearly everyone, and the survivors try to avoid these genius sharks and get to the surface of the flooded station. At the climax, the only characters still extant are chef LL, Saffron the scientist, Jane the shark wrangler, and one surviving superintelligent shark. 

BAD ENDING INCOMING!

Shark-whisperer Thomas Jane makes the kind of logical leap beloved by B-movie thrillers and intuits these Mensa-applicant fish’s fiendish plan. They’ve been herding the humans topside, so the sharks can escape to open water and live out their CGI lives in peace. Now that the security fences are down, nothing’s keeping the remaining shark from the sea! So Burrows decides she must act as bait, sacrificing herself, so that the others can kill the shark.

Here’s my objection: Why?

The shark is leaving. Instead of Saffron Burrows saying “The shark is escaping! I must sacrifice myself for shark murder!” allow me to suggest alternate dialogue: 

“The shark is going away! Huzzah! Let’s have tacos!” 

FIN. (The French kind, meaning “The End,” not the shark kind.)

Cue L.L. Cool J’s end credits song, which – and this is completely true – is called “Deepest Bluest (Shark’s Fin),” and contains the refrain “Deepest bluest, my hat is like a shark’s fin,” a couplet which Genius.com helpfully explains: “The ocean is also home to sharks, creatures that served as inspiration for LL Cool J’s hat. The shark’s fin is considered by sharkologists to be the hat of the shark.” 

I first assumed that “sharkologist” referred to shark scientists, which led me to wonder – what kind of scientists classify body parts by the “item of clothing” they’re most like? (“As DeVry’s premiere sharkologist, I’d like to postulate that the shark’s dual penis is the cargo shorts of the shark.”) 

However, if you Google “sharkologist,” Urban Dictionary says it’s actually a member of a religion who believe sharks to be humanity’s equals, and try to integrate “the way of the shark” into their daily life – presumably by sleep-swimming, wearing dentures to simulate a shark’s extra teeth, and appearing in Renny Harlin movies. Of course, this is Urban Dictionary, so who the hell knows if it’s just bullshit, but I found it, so now you have to deal with it.

Anyway, I’m drifting from my key point, which is this – what are the actual consequences if the shark just... left? 

I’d argue: none. And I’ll back up my thesis with three points:

POINT 1: THE OCEAN IS BIG.

The ocean is big. Go steal a globe from an elementary school. That blue part is the ocean. It covers 71 percent of the Earth’s surface, and contains 99 percent of the planet’s livable area. By contrast, how big is a shark? Even a genetically enhanced super-shark spans an amount of the Earth’s living space statistically approaching zero. 

Expressed more simply: it’s ONE fucking shark in the whole damn ocean. Who gives a shit? This shark poses no danger. It just wants to get married, settle down, and raise baby sharks it can write irritating songs about.

Speaking of shark families: you might say, “Dan, you’re missing the point! If that uber-shark gets out, it’ll breed! It will sire a race of hyper-intelligent sharks that will ultimately destroy humanity and rise to power, in a way reminiscent of, but legally different enough from Planet of the Apes to avoid copyright issues.” 

Well, to that I respond --

POINT 2: THAT’S NOT HOW IT WORKS

Large sharks only reproduce every two to three years, but let’s assume this shark is a real fuck machine, trolling Fin-der for hookups, and as a result has a ton of babies – because while there’s a lot of friendly crustaceans under the sea, there are few contraceptive options. I won’t slut shame you, shark. Get it girl. Even with a shit-ton of offspring, the likelihood of intelligence being inherited ranges from 50-80%. Now, 80% may still seem like a high probability of a super-shark army, but remember my earlier point: this is ONE goddamn shark. All of the OTHER sharks are normal. So, even if this shark breeds, its superintelligent genes are mixing with shark-level intelligent genes. And sharks are dumb. Not ONE of them has ever won Jeopardy. The gene pool (gene sea?) won’t suddenly be flooded with shark Isaac Newtons. At best you’ll get some Bills Nyes the Science Selachimorphae. 

Bottom line, Deep Blue Sea represents Hollywood’s worst misunderstanding of breeding since A Muppet Christmas Carol taught us that if a frog and pig mated, you’d get boy frog kids and girl pig kids, instead of the truth, which is that if a frog and pig mated you’d get a green pig that screams “I’m an affront to God! Kill me!” in an adorable Muppet voice.

Thus, the danger of a new race of super-sharks is vanishingly slim, which means that the only possible other reason to -- let’s not forget this part -- WANTONLY SACRIFICE SAFFRON BURROWS for fish murder is if we think this super-shark may harbor a super-grudge against its creators. In response, here’s a variation on my first argument: 

POINT 3: THE WORLD IS BIG AND ALSO SHARKS CAN’T WALK ON LAND

Let’s say that you kidnapped me and used science to make me huge and superintelligent, before returning me to my natural habitat (sleeping on the couch in front of Who’s Harry Crumb?). In the unlikely event that I chose revenge, rather than just thanking you for my enhanced abilities, I doubt I could even locate you, since I assume that -- much like the relationship between scientists and sharks, we’re work colleagues at best. I write – you read. We’re basically strangers. (I say “basically,” because, while I don’t know anything about y’all, you do know stuff about me – for instance: “Dan’s spent too much time thinking about Deep Blue Sea.”) 

Anyway, imagine this shark wants to comb the world for its creator. As an aquatic creature, its first obstacle, just off the top of my head, would be “land.”  Mostly breathing on it, but also walking, and earning bus fare, when it discovers Saffron Burrows lives beyond walking distance. 

To synthesize my three points: my policy is this: 

“Is a shark attacking me? Fine. Let’s consider some human-on-shark violence.” Conversely: “Is a shark leaving me alone? As Elsa sang, ‘LET IT GO.’”

Now: why did this movie end this way? Why did Saffron Burrows have to die, to keep this shark from a promising future as a drummer in a teen interspecies rock band? I’ll tell you why, which is a power I have when I’m the one asking rhetorical questions. Test audiences disliked Saffron Burrows SO much that they wanted her to get punished, even though the whole “giant sharks swimming amok” thing only happened because she wanted to CURE ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE. So the filmmakers did reshoots to adequately punish her for… trying to help people.

Why did audiences hate her so much? What could possibly motivate them to have an irrational dislike of this particular character? Because when *I* watched this movie, I thought:

“What a wonderful thing to cure Alzheimer’s!"

“Oh my god, I’m so happy she’s curing Alzheimer’s!”

“My lord, how great that would be – to cure Alzheimer's!”

“Amazing job, Saffron Burrows!”

“Neato!”

I saw her and thought, “Why would Americans possibly have a problem with such a strong, motivated, fearless, confident, unapologetic, take-charge character? To the degree that they insisted she DIE for her hubris?” 

(ironic shrug emoji)

Evidence that Deep Blue Sea may not be the world’s MOST progressive film, gender-wise, can also be found in the scene in which Burrows’ character strips to her soaking wet underwear, so she can stand on her wetsuit as “insulation” against getting electrocuted by live wires. This mid-shark-massacre striptease happens even though one might assume that remaining fully dressed in that exact same wetsuit would provide MORE protection, since her whole body would be covered in the fabric she just removed to stand on. I guess the movie subscribes to the Red Sonja theory of protective clothing, where her chainmail is mostly boob-and-thong centered, despite all the vulval chafing that implies. 

Hey movie? If you’re making me, the man my podcast co-hosts have fondly(?) nicknamed “Pervazoid #1” argue against someone taking off their clothes? You’re doing something very wrong.

For perspective, consider another Renny Harlin joint, Cliffhanger. That film kicks off with mountain-rescue-specialist Sylvester Stallone attempting to save his best friend Michael Rooker’s girlfriend, only for her to plummet to her death. Michael Rooker girlfriends don’t grow on trees, Sly! He’s a great actor, but he’s also Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. You can’t just fecklessly drop women willing to put up with that kind of fixer-upper off the top of mountains!

Anyway, Stallone, like Burrows, starts the movie by being an accidental party to someone’s death, but the opening lady-fridging is there to give Sly’s main character soulfulness and depth – a failure to redeem, to add narrative weight to his later travails. Sly gets to live at the end of his movie, and he barely tried to cure Alzheimer’s at all! Test audiences didn’t demand that the Italian Stallion be taken to the glue factory. Similarly, at the end of Harlin’s The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, the titular character was allowed to live, even though he was Andrew Dice Clay! 

The whole situation reminds me of one of the most famous test-audience-dictated rewrites in film: Fatal Attraction. Originally, Adrian Lyne’s seminal (tee hee) erotic thriller ended with Glenn Close’s character slitting her own throat and framing Michael Douglas for her murder. A downer, certainly, but also a denouement that dared reckon with the sadness of her character, after Michael Douglas treated her like yesterday’s issue of Cigar Aficionado. 

I don’t think sexual transgression always needs to be punished. That would be a bad cinematic lesson. Life is complex and even cheaters can have their reasons. And even if I WAS that morally rigid, framing a guy for your suicide (with casual bunny-boiling along the way) isn’t the most proportional response. But narratively, the original ending is clearly superior – it carries actual thematic weight, and sympathy for the woman Douglas treated as a casual conquest to use and discard. But sympathy wasn’t what audiences wanted for Glenn Close. Audiences hated sympathizing with her.

Instead, in the released version of Fatal Attraction, Michael Douglas drowns the woman he’d slept with mere weeks before. Then, to underline the cheap thriller ending, she lunges out of the bath like a suburban Jason, in a final jump scare that literally turns her into a horror monster, only to be shot by Douglas’ wife, in a move that says, “Don’t worry, everyone. She’s being killed by a woman, so this isn’t sexist.” 

Hmn. Maybe I didn’t avoid talking about the election after all. It feels like maybe this ties in somehow… Because it sure seems like there’s one candidate who HASN’T expressed admiration of Hitler, held a rally where Puerto Rico was called a floating island of garbage, or threatened to use force on American citizens – and yet, somehow, she’s tied in a statistical dead heat with a man who has.

I wonder why.

(Vote. Not for that guy. I want y'all to make it a deep blue sea.)

For earlier posts, check out the archive. In my other life, I’m a podcaster. Listen to my show The Flop House, here. In my other other life, I’m an Emmy-winning comedy writer. If you’re looking to staff, get in touch! And if you love the newsletter, you can always consider tipping me, by enrolling in the paid tier!