Sometimes, a "Mistake" Can Be a Good Thing

I'm pretty down this week so I'm going to talk about the movie Jaws to perk me up, at least for a little while.

We happened to watch E! True Hollywood Story about Jaws the other day. Just for the record, I wasn't even born yet when Jaws came out in 1975. (It's a different story for Eng Tiong, but this is my entry, isn't it?)

I only remembered watching Jaws 3-D in the cinema when I was young. That film came out in 1983. I caught Jaws on TV. Can't exactly remember when though.

Anyway, that's not the point. The point is that E! THS on Jaws tells of how painful the whole production process was. One of the headaches is that the mechanical shark malfunctioned most of the time. With the shark as the star of the movie, that is indeed a HUGE headache.

But they found the most clever way of getting around the problem. Instead of showing the physical shark all the time to show that it's a big, scary, menacing beast, they decide to show how it is so. They infer the nasty characteristics with end results - what is left of a woman; what is left of a boat, etc. They "replaced" the physical presence of the malfunctioning mechanical shark with bright, yellow barrels. And guess what? It worked! That scared the shit out of us!

Wow.

And I wasn't even born yet.

If I remembered correctly, Steven Spielberg had a similar treatment with Jurassic Park. In the opening sequence, we see workers moving a huge metal cage. Wooo.... mysterious. What's inside? The next thing we know, a worker got caught in the cage and we can only hear his wretched screaming. Whoa... something really nasty is in that cage. So nasty to make a grown man scream like that and killed him. What is in that damn cage?

So, right at the beginning of the movie, you're hooked. And that's the power of a good movie.

Steven Spielberg is probably one of the best screen storytellers. We've a lot to learn from his movies!

But, like what Eng Tiong always said - sometimes, great works are "mistakes." I have to agree.

Not that "mistakes" are wrong or bad, they are just the end products of a gruelling battle, of overcoming obstacles after obstacles to finally reach the destination. Like Jaws, the problem became some sort of a blessing. Maybe it doesn't happen all the time. But it's great to know that - sometimes a "mistake" can be a good thing.

:)