The 12 Days Of Jawsmas
If the Wombles, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Mr Blobby and Bob the Builder can have songs at Christmas - the latter two the coveted number one slot even - then I thought it was about time Bruce did a Christmas song.
There's been lots of talk about whether Die Hard was or wasn't a Christmas film and although Jaws isn't (Jaws The Revenge actually is set at Christmas, perhaps that is why it is a turkey of a film. Check out my 30th anniversary look back at it here "Jaws Poor"), I thought the original Spielberg classic had many elements that lent itself to the Christmas story (sort of).
But Jaws is set in July!
It is, although Bomb the Bass once sang about Winter in July. Apart from being set in the wrong season Jaws could have so easily been considered a Christmas classic, as it features many of the essential elements - see the end of the article for more on that spurious claim.
And I just wanted to make it that little more Christmassy by giving the film its own Christmas inspired homage. After all we are seeing more Santa Jaws t-shirts etc so the formal fusing of Jaws and Christmas seemed right.
There's so many great and memorable elements, moments and characters (big and small) in Jaws that I felt the only song that gave it any scope was The 12 Days of Christmas.
To be honest it pretty much wrote itself and probably took about 24 minutes (24 minutes is like three weeks). Your Song by Elton John took about 15 minutes apparently, so you know, I'm in good company (ahem).
I know I can't sing, I wouldn't even call it that but once the parody idea was in my head I had to see it through and for it to it would only work as being - attempted to be - sung.
I couldn't reach the heights of your Aled Jones so had to settle for the 'Show Me The Way To Go Home' warbling. Hey, it seemed to work for the Billy Mack character played by Bill Nighy In Love Actually.
Think of this as an antidote of sorts to all those people squabbling about whether Die Hard is or isn't a Christmas film. Sighs hard, who cares. It's set at Christmas and has a few jingles in the score. It's like saying The Poseidon Adventure is a New Year film.
The Video
Cheap and cheerful, like the parody was the order of the day. I knew it would be quite repetitive with the images relating to the lyrics having to keep cropping up and wanted to break it up a bit.
I was lucky enough to come across a shark hand puppet in Sainsbury's (other supermarkets and shark hand puppets are available) for just £6 and figured this would by my perfect video star.
Perhaps they'll start marketing it 'as featured on The Daily Jaws'?
Somewhat ironic that due to constraints I ended up having to do the opposite of Spielberg and show more of my shark. I still wanted to give him that dorsal fin intro though.
I then stuck him in front of our Christmas tree and filmed away. I think my favourite element of the video happened as a sheer fluke. When I was editing I noticed in the rushes that there was a blue bauble that reminded me of the Universal globe.
I filmed it again that evening as a slow tracking shot to emulate the old Universal logo at the front of Jaws and then superimposed a gold UNIVERSAL over it.
It's just a bit of fun really and I hope The Daily Jaws get as much fun seeing it as I did making it. I think it's pretty catchy, but perhaps that's just hearing it over and over in the edit suite.
And what about next year?
Well, Slade and Roy Wood kept on re releasing their Christmas classics so maybe we'll go symphonic next year or do it with a proper choir. Slash is a fan of The Daily Jaws, perhaps he'll do a guitar solo on it?
Jaws Christmas story elements
Three wise men
Obviously I'm talking about Brody, Hooper and Quint. They are quite a team in the end, with their gold barrels, frankincense shark cage and Brody of course worked for Myrrh Vaughn
King Herod
Okay so Myrrh, I mean Mayor Vaughn may not have ordered the death of newborns but as leader of Amity Island he presided over the described to send people in the water knowing full well that a killer shark was patrolling the shore. Alex Kintner's blood is on his hands. He is therefore the killer of children.
Virgin Mary
Quint sings about a virgin called Mary when Hooper and Brody are getting ready to board the Orca.
'Here lies the body of Mary Lee; died at the age of a hundred and three. For fifteen years she kept her viginity; not a bad record for this vicinity.'
Star of wonder
Amity is nowhere near Bethlehem so we aren't talking the star that the three wise men followed to the stable, instead we are talking shooting stars. Several can be spotted during the night scenes at sea on the Orca.
