For the last month, I’ve been sharing a confession with my friends and family and I would like to share that story with you today because tomorrow is the 4th of July, and we are going to be open for business. It’s going to be our best summer in years. If you’re so concerned about the beaches, you two, you do whatever you have to to keep them safe, but with you or without you, those beaches will be open for this weekend.

I’m sorry. Random JAWS quote.

You see, JAWS is my favorite movie. I can’t remember the first time I saw it but I bet it was a VHS rental from the Executive Video down the road. I love everything about it. The suspense. The score. The scenes. The quotables. The Orca. The shark. And of course, those three incredible characters. It’s THE blockbuster. A perfect summer movie. A timeless classic.

It’s for all these reasons that I found myself in a panic one year ago. I was worried that someone might reboot JAWS. Let’s be clear. There are no plans to remake JAWS. Why the hell would you? It’s perfect. However, I still managed to work up quite a rage at the possible studios, directors, and actors involved with this tragic decision. Idiots! The fear was overwhelming and I knew I had to do something. I decided the most practical course of action would be to preemptively reboot JAWS myself. It was a way to face my fears.

Recasting

I cleared a dry erase board and wrote down the original cast. I then gave myself the simple task of choosing a new actor who is still alive that could take on one of these crucial roles. Let’s start with Brody.

Police Chief Martin Brody is portrayed as a family man who decided to move from the city to Amity island. At the beginning of the film, he is helpless in both his fear of the water and his inability to enforce local order. By the end of the film, he shoots an air tank lodged within the sharks mouth, causing the shark to explode. All while uttering the line, “Smile, you son of a BITCH.” To me, there is only one person I would trust with such a transformation over the period of a single film. Bryan Cranston. His portrayal of High School Chemistry teacher turned Heisenberg in Breaking Bad is exactly the type of arch I’m looking for. His initial softness would lead to a moment where he exclaims to the shark, “I am the one who knocks.”

Ok, this is actually pretty fun… let’s try Hooper. Matt Hooper is a young oceanographer who was hired by Martin to make sense of the shark attacks occuring in Amity. He’s an ivy league trust fund know-it-all, who brings a vast knowledge and a lot of modern gear to the table. Through the film he gets to test both his technology and his wits, which don’t always go as planned. He is extremely passionate in his beliefs. I especially like his moments with Martin and Quint individually. Whether that’s assisting in Martin’s quest to keep the town safe through diplomacy or arguing with Quint aboard the Orca. This was a hard role to cast but I settled on Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Calm down. Let me explain. In my reboot of JAWS, Hooper will appear much younger and fresh-faced to increase his age dynamic with both Martin and Quint. We all know Joseph could play an ivy league kid but he also looks cool handling gadgets in roles like Inception. How about this… it’s either him of Shia Labeouf. Oh, you’re done? Okay, let’s move on.

The final role is that of Quint, the shark hunter. He’s rude. He’s eccentric. He’s also a man of mystery with an icy pair of eyes which we learn have seen terrible things. He’s capable of handing out stern orders but also randomly breaking out into song. This imbalance of personality intensifies once out on the open water. He refuses help and truly doesn’t understand he’s beaten until he’s eaten alive. I love this character and Robert Shaw portrays him perfectly. I think you can safely slot someone like Robert Redford into this role but I went with Jeff fucking Bridges. Jeff can do it all. He can be tough, grizzled, and dirty, and I would pretty much die to hear him do Quint’s opening nail-scratching monologue. “Y’all know me. Know how I earn a livin’…” Jeff can also play the part of the mad man. I want us to all regret being on that boat. Not because there is a shark in the water but because there is an unstable veteran on deck.

This took me the entire day. Once I was happy with my choices, I decided to make a fake movie poster to see how things looked. In order to complete the poster, I dropped in Peter Jackson as director because we’ve let him mess with mega-classics like King Kong before. I’m not arguing that he should do it, only that his name looks good on the poster and makes it believable. Naturally, you’ll need Spielberg to be a part of it and John Williams to contribute as well. Here’s the final teaser.