Two movies about the realities of the American Dream, becoming a legend, and loving yourself — it’s Citizen Kane vs Barbie.
Close-Knit: Thelma & Louise vs Life Partners
Under the Surface: Jaws vs Bombshell
Episode Transcript & Breakdown
Every episode of Tasteless, I take a critically acclaimed film and compare it to one that shares the same themes but didn't get the attention it deserves — and explain why that second movie is my pick. This week: two movies where the villain is shrouded, where humanity and decency must triumph over convenience and greed. It's Jaws versus Bombshell.
Jaws
When a massive killer shark unleashes chaos on a beach community off Long Island, it's up to the local police chief, a marine biologist, and an old seafarer to hunt the beast down.
This movie came out in 1975, has a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes. It won three Oscars — Best Sound, Best Film Editing (by the way, a woman, Verna Fields), and Best Original Score — again our guy John Williams. Will he ever be on the right side of a Tasteless pick? Looking at his long IMDB of classics, probably not. Jaws was also nominated for Best Picture, but lost to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
What struck me about Jaws is when the Kintner boy is killed and his mom puts out a reward for capturing the shark that did it. The reward is $3,000. People go to fight a shark for $3,000. And you're thinking, oh, that was old-timey money. Well, in today's purchasing power, that would be $14,586.36. Excuse me — would you go into the ocean to catch a shark for a little under $15,000? I don't think many people would.
We've got our classic characters here. Brody, played by Roy Scheider — he is the sheriff of this town, the law. He's a nice guy, he has a wife, he has kids, he wants to do what's right. He gets the famous line which, according to writer Carl Gottlieb, was not scripted but ad-libbed by Roy: you're gonna need a bigger boat. How many times do you think people say that to him every day? I would lose my mind.
Then we have the scientist Hooper, played by Richard Dreyfuss. I didn't remember that Hooper is rich. He comes to this town and he's like, hey, I hear shark stuff is happening. What's up? I got a boat, I got equipment. Also, I have all this stuff because I am very wealthy. My family is very wealthy and they just put me on a boat and said, go for it, man. He's out here measuring shark mouths, just having a good time.
Then we have Quint, played by Robert Shaw, wearing a sweater that looks very itchy. Quint is the seafarer from the plot description — he's the shark-hunting expert. His ship, his rules. He's like Boomhauer of the ocean.
Some insane IMDB trivia: though respected as an actor, Robert Shaw's trouble with alcohol was a frequent source of tension during filming. Roy Scheider described his co-star as a perfect gentleman whenever he was sober — all he needed was one drink and then he turned into a competitive son of a B. When it came time to shoot the infamous USS Indianapolis scene, Shaw attempted to do the monologue while intoxicated, as it called for the men to be drinking late at night. Nothing in the take could be used. A remorseful Shaw called Steven Spielberg late that night and asked if he could have another try. The next day, Shaw's electrifying performance was done in one take. Okay, I feel like he's getting an awful lot of leeway. Also, Shaw apparently bullied Richard Dreyfuss, which honestly, when you look at him in this movie, I wanted to bully him too, so I don't blame him for that.
When we talk about Brody, Hooper, and Quint, I cannot imagine three people I'd want to be stuck on a boat with less. When they're showing off their scars and it's supposed to be this great bonding scene, it's like — an eel bit me. Okay, cool, I guess. I don't know, are eels supposed to bite you? That's not a cool thing. I was arm-wrestling because I hate my ex-wives and now I can't extend my arm. Okay, great brag, Quint. What are you talking about?
I have a hard time with this movie because I am on the shark's side 100%. Just let this shark have the ocean. It's his. You lost. Your fleshy bodies keep getting eaten. Find somewhere else to hang out. Build a pool. I'm Team Bruce. Bruce, of course, is the name of the mechanical sharks they built for this set. In addition to the well-known nickname of Bruce, Steven Spielberg also called the shark "the great white turd." Notoriously, the shark broke down, didn't do what it was supposed to — they built it and were like, it works great. Then they put it in water and it didn't work because it didn't work in salt water. Nonsense.
But I am very scared, not of sharks, but of animatronics. As a child, probably 11 or 12, I went to Universal, went on the Jaws ride. In the ride, a big mechanical shark comes up to your boat and kind of splashes around and your tour guide is like, oh no, oh no, and shoots at it and flames explode. And I had nightmares for months after — not about being eaten by a shark, but about falling in and having the gears and mechanics grind me up that made the shark go. I did the Universal Studios tour in California within the last couple of years and again saw that mechanical shark and was like, no, he's gonna get me. He's hanging out in the Murder, She Wrote village.
Everyone has seen Jaws. You know the plot. There was a very fun trivia fact: several decades after the release of Jaws, Lee Fierro, who played Mrs. Kintner — the mother of the boy who gets eaten — walked into a seafood restaurant and noticed the menu had an Alex Kintner sandwich. She commented that she had played his mother so many years ago. The owner of the restaurant ran out to meet her. He was none other than Jeffrey Voorhees, who had played her son. They had not seen each other since the original movie shoot. Very cute. Very chill name for that kid, Jeffrey Voorhees.
Bombshell
A group of women take on Fox News head Roger Ailes and the toxic atmosphere he presided over at the network.
This movie came out in 2019, has a 68% on Rotten Tomatoes. It actually won the Oscar for Best Achievement in Makeup and Hairstyling for Kazu Hiro, Anne Morgan, and Vivian Baker.
My old roommate slash good friend is an incredible makeup artist, and she brought me along to a makeup guild screening of this film. It was such a great movie. I loved it. It had one of the best trailers of all time, as far as I'm concerned — where the three stars get into the elevator and that song is playing and they're looking at each other. It's so good.
At the screening, Kazu Hiro was there and mentioned that he had worked on Mighty Joe Young with Charlize. As it turns out, Charlize Theron coaxed prosthetic makeup artist Kazu Hiro out of retirement for his work on this film, and he won his second Academy Award for his efforts. He had previously won for Darkest Hour after turning Gary Oldman into Winston Churchill. When I saw the trailers, I thought her Megyn Kelly makeup was going to be distracting, but once you're watching the movie, it really works. She does a good job of recreating Megyn's look and vibe.
Charlize was nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars and Margot Robbie was nominated for Best Supporting Actress. Charlize lost to Renée Zellweger for Judy — people love a sad biopic — and Laura Dern won Supporting Actress for Marriage Story, which I am highly uninterested in. I think Margot's performance in this movie is incredible, as is Charlize's.
Let's talk Charlize. She plays Megyn Kelly, a real person, a Fox News host and anchor. She wields the word "feminist" like it's disgusting. She says at one point, I'm not a feminist, I'm a lawyer. The way they use the word feminist as an insult does remind the viewer of where we are, of what world we're in — slash just the human world. Having Charlize as Megyn narrate the story, talk to the camera — I really enjoyed it. When that works, it really works.
There's a hardness to her because there has to be to survive in this world. I am not a fan of the real Megyn Kelly — the one kind of big thing they allude to is that she said Santa is definitely white, which — okay, he's imaginary, so I don't know what you're talking about. But I'm not endorsing the actions of any Fox News employee by saying I love this movie. Regardless of party lines, this is a story that is important, a story that needs to be told. The fact that so many of these women had the same thing happen and all were worried about coming forward, about losing their livelihood — when Gretchen Carlson came forward, it broke a dam. There is bravery in that. We can't just care about crimes happening to people we agree with. That creates a bad system for everyone.
Nicole Kidman is perhaps the most sidelined in the movie as Gretchen Carlson, even though she gets the ball rolling on the charges against Roger Ailes. We see her talking to lawyers about the way she's been treated, playing back tapes of all the times on air that men said disparaging, disgusting things to her — and she bit back, but had to laugh it off, because otherwise it's going to be awkward. She had to act like she was in on the joke, like it was all in good fun. Because there's that famous saying: men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them. You don't want to set someone off.
It's very affecting to watch her watch herself. Think back about how you've handled difficult situations — I don't think all of us have always been at our best. She wants to make it clear that just because she laughed along awkwardly, that's not what she wanted. She doesn't want to be treated that way. And it's important to remember that just because someone laughs along, doesn't mean you should be saying those things.
Margot Robbie plays Kayla, the composite character of the trio — not based on a real person, but instead an amalgamation of various reports about working at Fox News. She's a quilt of the bad experiences these women have faced, and we empathize with her bright-eyed optimism, her wit.
The scene of real-life character Roger Ailes asking the fictitious character of Kayla Pospisil to lift up her skirt was filmed with multiple cameras capturing all the angles at once. Jay Roach didn't want Robbie to have to perform that scene for more than one take. This is a brutal scene and she plays it so well. It's so real. It's so striking.
Basically she goes in to meet with Roger and he says, stand up and do a little spin. And she's kind of like, what? He says, you know, on-air talent, you're going to be on camera, I just want to see you. And she goes, oh, okay, and does a little spin. He goes, okay, lift your skirt up a little bit. She pauses a little longer and pulls her skirt up a little bit. He goes, higher. She pulls it a little higher. Inch by inch, it comes up so you can see her underwear and she is mortified. She is humiliated. And he's like, okay, great, well, you better prove your loyalty, and sends her on her way. And the other heartbreaking thing — she's like, could you not tell anyone about this? And he's like, of course not. She doesn't want people to know, because she'll be blamed. She did it. She agreed to do it.
A reason it's so hard to watch is because, to a lesser extent, we've all been in situations where we go along with something we're not comfortable with so as not to rock the boat. Maybe someone says something inappropriate and you just sort of laugh and brush it off and hope it goes away.
Margot to me was the character I related to the most, and her relationship with Kate McKinnon is one of the more touching aspects of the film and one of the more frustrating and heartbreaking. Kate McKinnon plays a closeted lesbian, closeted Democrat who works at Fox and takes Margot under her wing. Kate basically says, here's how you survive here. Here's what you want in stories — you want to frighten and titillate. Ask yourself what would scare your grandmother and piss off your grandfather. That's a Fox News story. She's funny, but it's also sad that she can't be herself. Her and Margot wind up going home together, sharing a bed. There's a chemistry there. But neither can be who they are, and Kate has shoved her feelings so far down.
John Lithgow plays Roger Ailes in a lot of prosthetics. He's great. I love John Lithgow. Malcolm McDowell plays Rupert Murdoch. The supporting cast in this movie — I'm going to run through it. Darcy Carden gets to yell at Margot Robbie. Lennon Parham eats some grocery store sushi. Connie Britton plays Roger's wife and says at one point, very genuinely, hoodies are creepy. Alanna Ubach plays Judge Jeanine Pirro. Holland Taylor plays the secretary to Roger. Rob Delaney plays someone who works with Megyn. We've got Brie Larson, Josh Lawson and Ben Lawson as brothers, Liv Hewson, Richard Kind, Alice Eve, Madeline Zima, Ashley Greene, Katie Aselton, Tricia Helfer, Robin Weigert, Mark Duplass, Jennifer Morrison, Allison Janney. It is quite a cast.
Jay Roach directed another great political film, Game Change — and he directed all the Austin Powers movies, and that is called range.
Bombshell is a movie that I think you need to watch. It really does a good job of putting you in someone else's shoes. Would I have thought I'd watch and love a movie about Fox News? No. Absolutely not. But this movie did a great job of stripping away my biases, getting me on board with the universe we're in. Some people think it excused the women of Fox News, and that's where we get into a gray area, and we don't need to villainize. This is a story about assault. The villains here are the people who have built a system that allows that to happen without consequence, and that can happen to anyone.
Shared Themes
Jaws and Bombshell both have a villain that is lurking under the surface — an iceberg with most of the threat going unnoticed until it is far too late. A villain that people disagree on how to face. Some think their presence should be brushed under the rug, while others want to confront this villain head-on. It's insidious.
The villains are a real mean shark and workplace assault and objectification. Two sides of the same coin. Only those who have faced these threats themselves really understand the dangers. And other people are of the opinion: out of sight, out of mind. Don't go in the water. Don't wear a short skirt. But that's not feasible and it's not fair.
Jaws has one of the most iconic antagonists of all time in the form of its great white shark — a shark that gets only four minutes of screen time. The threat of the shark is what looms over the people of Amity, but the issue is that they disagree on just how big of a threat it is. We see this so clearly when Brody's wife comes in — Brody's reading a shark book and she's like, man, let's get drunk and fool around. The kids are out on some boat and Brody's like, oh my God, kids, get off the boat. And the wife goes, don't worry about it, they're fine. Then she flips open his book and sees a picture of a shark ripping flesh and immediately starts screaming at the kids to get back on land, listen to their dad. It takes seeing that picture in the context of her kids out on the water for it to feel like a real threat to her.
The fishermen that rush into the ocean to get their reward are giddy at the thought of this excursion. Chumming the waters, captaining their dinky boats, no fear, no respect for the wildlife. When Quint gets there, he basically says, hey dummies, sharks kill people. This is a problem and I could solve it. Everyone else had been very wishy-washy about wanting to keep the beaches open. They have this town hall meeting — the beaches are going to be closed? We gotta go to the beaches. Be quiet. Go away. People will come back to your beach. Chill out.
The main antagonist of Bombshell is Roger Ailes, though we explore the system that put him in power. If he had had beady little eyes and maybe too many teeth, would he have been taken down sooner? Seen as a real threat by those in his orbit, those who aren't directly threatened by him? Most people don't see Roger on a regular basis. He's on his own floor, his own office, with Holland Taylor guarding the door and a clicker remote that opens it. Very disconnected.
People joke about the workplace culture. They talk about how Roger has a separate elevator for women to arrive in. They joke about the other men there, like Bill O'Reilly. It's all said with a laugh, with no real threat. Margot loves Fox — it's been her dream to work there. She hears the stories about the misogyny in its ranks but continues to idolize the network until she comes face-to-face with Roger's harassment. Till he makes her lift her skirt.
She tries to bring this info to Kate McKinnon and is shut down. When Gretchen Carlson tells her story, many women of Fox scramble to support Roger, not wanting to look disloyal, knowing they can be replaced. Many women say it never happened to them, and one man comments that the women it hasn't happened to are not attractive. We see older people talking about how nice Roger is while younger women get more leg out to please him. We also hear the other side of Roger — the man who pays for cancer treatments and supports his employees. Some people think that gives him the right to act as he pleases.
It takes determined people from all walks of life to take down the shark and to take down Roger.
For Jaws, it's Brody with his guilt over the Kintner boy, with Alex's mom's funeral attire stuck in his mind — he is dedicated to keeping his town safe. He's scared of the water but goes in because it feels like his duty. Hooper joins because he's an expert, the person who has determined that the other shark caught isn't the threat. He's passionate about the field. Quint is the expert on the water, here for the money. He has the experience, the grit, the boat. These three different motives come together. They attack from all angles — with knowledge, with grit, with brains — and that's how they accomplish their goals.
For Bombshell, we have Gretchen Carlson, who has finally had enough, who has been humiliated and demeaned and shuffled to the worst time slots. She decides to do something, to say something. She gets the ball rolling with her public accusations and lawsuit. This leads to Megyn Kelly's crisis of faith — should she admit what has happened to her? She starts an investigation of her own, and when she finds out how many other women have been affected, she decides her voice is necessary. Having it come from a veteran of the station adds weight, adds truth.
Each person who comes forward has to weigh their options. And okay, Roger gets an incredible severance and is living a nice life. But the fact that Gretchen gets an apology — she even notes, like, that's very rare.
Unfortunately, convenience, ease, and greed all trump humanity in Jaws and in Bombshell. The worst mayor of any town is this dude in Amity. What a freak. And right up there with him are the many employees of Fox News — people more concerned about the bottom line than lives being ruined.
The Kintner boy's mom walks up to Brody and slaps him right in his face and says, look, you knew last week a woman had died in this water and you didn't do anything. In the book, it's revealed that the mayor is being blackmailed by the mafia to keep the beaches open. In the movie, he just sucks. He keeps saying, don't scare anyone, keep the beaches open, I'm sure that shark is gone.
Brody gets that slap and I don't know that I fully blame him. It's fair for him to think the first body that turned up was a boat propeller that killed her. But I do know the town does not want it to be a shark and would rather believe anything else. The mayor fights to keep the beaches open, promises to have the problem dealt with in 24 hours. And then when everyone is out on the beach, when it's been deemed safe because some other shark has been caught, the mayor is truly walking up to people like, hey, go out in the water. Why are you sitting over here? And this old man he's haranguing is like, what? I just put my suntan lotion on. I'm letting it seep in, but okay. And he walks off into the water, and then — boom, shark.
Suntan man lives. He doesn't get bit. But others die. And Brody's kid is in full shock. Brody had been worried — he couldn't help but wonder if Hooper's analysis of the shark's mouth was correct, if they hadn't caught the right shark — but he didn't want to deal with that possibility. He didn't push it. He allowed the beaches to open again. Luckily, his guilt and his goodness do make him swing back in the other direction, demanding the mayor approve hiring a shark-catching expert. He will not let something like this happen on his watch again.
In Bombshell, the network doesn't want to admit its mistakes and be liable. The women don't want to support Gretchen and lose their jobs. Kimberly Guilfoyle makes everyone wear shirts showing their support for Roger and Fox. She's so far in the opposite direction trying to prove he's good.
Here's the deal: if my coworker, my boss, was accused of assault, I think I'd take a beat before I went gung-ho supporting them. This person isn't your best friend. How much can you even really know about your super-rich boss who has their own weird button to close their office door?
But these women don't want to be wrong. And there's a more insidious fear — that if one woman got promoted by allowing Roger's treatment, people will think all the women did. No one wants the public believing they got their job based on what they were willing to do for Roger behind closed doors. It's embarrassing.
One of the most heartbreaking moments in Bombshell is when Margot comes out of Roger's office after he's inappropriate with her and goes to her friend Kate McKinnon. Margot starts to confess what has just happened. Kate interrupts: "It's actually better if you don't involve me in this." At the end of the day, Kate values her job security over her friend.
She had said earlier that she applied to a million jobs and only Fox called back. And now no reputable place wants to hire her because she works at Fox. She feels stuck. She sees her only option is to not support those who have come forward.
People must choose hardship. They must choose the possibility of losing their job, their reputation, of being unpopular. Some must admit something they have held secret for so long. And that's not easy. It all bubbles under the surface. It's the humanity that gets Megyn to admit what has happened — because she thought, in the abstract, I'm sure it's not happening to that many people. But when she starts paying attention and listening and hearing how many women have been treated inappropriately by Roger, by other people at Fox, she can't sit idly by. She chooses humanity over job security.
Both Jaws and Bombshell explore gender in a different way, a more honest way, a way that aligns with real life.
When I was watching Jaws, I actually Googled "nice friendship Jaws" to see if other people saw what I saw. And I was glad that the internet agreed that the bond between these men shows another side of masculinity, one we don't get to see as often. Do I hate these three men? For sure. I do not like them. But I like that once they gain each other's respect, all three are all in as a team. There's no fight to be the one who takes the shark, no battle for dominance. Each man brings something to the table and each man steps aside when someone else's expertise is needed.
There's some arguing, as there is with anyone, but it really was a well-oiled machine because these men trusted one another. Brody is perhaps the most sensitive of the three — he loves his family, takes Mrs. Kintner's slap in stride thinking he deserves it. Quint is an aggressive jerk, but as soon as he realizes Hooper knows his stuff, he chills out and offers a drink. Hooper is a rich dandy, basically — someone who you'd think would not do well on a rickety boat chasing a giant beast, but he is right at home. None of these men are posturing. They're simply themselves. There were a lot of ways for these to be three macho guys off fighting a shark. But no — these are two pretty normal guys and then a weirdo who truly looks like he just got dragged up from the depths of the sea.
Bombshell's exploration of gender is a little more confronting — it's the purpose of the film. Seeing the truth of how women survive, what we do to fit in. The constant remarks to the women about their legs. The heels with band-aids for blisters. There's a truth here that is hard to stomach. Instead of just seeing the bright shiny faces that wind up on news screens, we see the dark underbelly of what goes into creating the image of the perfect conservative woman.
There are sacrifices women make so that our lives will be easier, things we put up with. If you're picking a fight every moment of the day, it's just too exhausting. When we see Gretchen Carlson's show with no makeup and she talks about Day of the Girl and how important it is, we also see the backlash she gets — the anger from viewers and the network about having to see a woman's real face. Our characters work to fit the mold, to keep their jobs, while also wondering at what point is it too much. This is the truth behind femininity — a game of inches, compromises. I'm not saying women don't want to wear makeup and look nice. But at Fox in particular, it is a very specific mold these women must fill. Honestly, in entertainment, it's a specific mold — a way you must be perceived.
What Bombshell Did Better
Jaws led to real innocent lives lost, while Bombshell opened our eyes to suffering we may not have been aware of, or at least weren't confronted with in the same way. Jaws invented a villain while Bombshell brought a real person's crimes further into the light.
The shark in Jaws may as well be Godzilla. The entity itself is a complete fabrication. But the unfortunate thing is that people viewed this movie as gospel. Much like the scene in the film where fishermen went out in droves to get their $3,000, many fishermen decided to take on sharks after seeing this movie to prove that they could. Commercial fishing at a large scale began contributing to deaths of sharks. The general populace's view of sharks as evil entities was really helped along by Jaws. Author Peter Benchley, who wrote the book the movie was based on, has said that if he had known about the actual behavior of sharks, he would have never written the book. He told the Animal Attack Files in 2000: no one appreciates how vulnerable they are to destruction. It shows the power of media. Sharks are this apex predator, but they are in so much danger because of the ways they are used — like shark-fin soup. They get caught in nets meant for other things. Having us hate them does not help.
When Bombshell came out, people seemed genuinely frustrated that it gave humanity to Fox News employees, which I think was an important and interesting lesson. We don't know everyone's story. But if someone is doing evil things, they should be punished for it. The film showed the evil lurking under the surface. I'm sure many of us had heard about Gretchen Carlson's lawsuit and that Megyn Kelly added her voice, but it was easy to ignore as someone else's problem — stuff happening between rich people, rich conservative people. Because to be frank, it tends to be the liberal side that more often gives air to these stories, that more often takes these accusations seriously. So when we were finding out about what happened to conservative women, I think there was a little bit of an attitude of, they were asking for it. But this affects everyone.
In Jaws, the biggest tragedy is the death of the Kintner boy, and the fact that it could have been avoided had people known to stay out of the water. We see the effects of the boy's death for only a few moments with his mother. Brody's family has a couple of close calls — his son is shocked by an attack but not injured. Hooper has a much more scientific stake than an emotional one. Quint dies, but he kind of deserved it. He was a little off the handle. I enjoyed the exploration of Brody's guilt, but he also has the peace of a wife that loves unconditionally, two young boys who are healthy. The stakes Brody, Quint, and Hooper have in capturing the shark are definitely diluted. None of these three have faced real tragedy in what we've seen, besides Quint's USS Indianapolis story.
In Bombshell, we follow the tales of women who have had everything taken from them — their dignity, their voice. We see Gretchen's fear and isolation when at first no one comes to her support. We see Megyn's anguish over whether coming forward would ruin the lives of her family. We see Margot break down sobbing into her phone outside a fancy restaurant, wondering what it means that this has happened to her. These are the people directly affected, and there are dozens more who we visit along the way.
All movies don't have to tell the stories of all people. But Bombshell is something that has stuck with me since my initial viewing, much in the way that the Jaws theme has stuck with us all. I'm glad stories like this are being told from all sides. If you haven't seen it, I hope you will give Bombshell a chance. And honestly, you can always rewatch Jaws.
Hit me up at @tastelesspod on social media. Let's talk about all the incredible people who are in Bombshell — Holland Taylor, Darcy Carden, Lennon Parham, Jennifer Morrison. What a dream cast. And Margot should have gotten that Oscar. The scene of her lifting her skirt is abhorrent and beautifully acted.
Where the Heart Is: Terminator 2: Judgment Day vs Family
Two movies about non-traditional families and changing how people view you (and ultimately how you view yourself) — it's Terminator 2: Judgment Day vs Family.