Jaws Unmade

Jaws Unmade: The Lost Sequels, Prequels, Remakes, and Rip-offs by John LeMay, 302 pages

Jaws is sometimes regarded as the first summer blockbuster, and, as such, the prototype for all those that followed.  Whatever caveats ought to be attached to that claim, it was certainly wildly successful (indeed, the highest grossing film in unadjusted dollars to that point) and like successful movies before and since it spawned a legion of imitators, some more flattering than others, from its own sequels and major studios' attempts to bottle the same lightning to the inevitable parade of Italian rip-offs.

Jaws Unmade chronicles these more or less misbegotten children of Bruce, both legitimate and illegitimate, not only describing the movies that did get made but, just as intriguingly, all those projects that miscarried.  There are the well-known early versions of Jaws 2, one featuring Quint's son and another angry mobsters.  There's MST3K favorite Devilfish (aka Monster Shark, not to be confused with Bert I Gordon's aborted project Devil Fish, which is also discussed).  There's the legendary unmade spoof Jaws 3, People 0, which Universal spent 2.5 million dollars developing before cancelling the project for fear of alienating Steven Spielberg.  There's Bruno Mattei's 1995 film Cruel Jaws, sometimes marketed as Jaws 5 ("This time it's even more personal than the last time."), which piles on subplot after subplot seemingly without purpose, until, that is, you learn that the main plot rips off 1981's The Last Shark to the point of actually stealing entire sequences of footage.  There's Joe Dante working on Piranha and James Cameron working on Piranha II and John Sayles working on anything that pays the bills.  There's Roger Corman and Dino De Laurentiis and a surprise appearance by John Carpenter.  There's George Clooney and Laura Dern getting eaten by a giant grizzly bear.

If this is your idea of fun, it is tremendous fun.  It isn't clear how extensive or accurate LeMay's research is (his cites sometimes go no further than an IMDB trivia page), and the book is riddled with homophonic errors that suggest the proofreading was limited to a spellcheck, but the author's love of this material, as misplaced as it seems at times, is truly infectious.

Echo After Echo

 Echo After Echo by Amy Rose Capetta   432 pages

Pennsylvania high school student Zara Evans wants to be an actress. Her favorite play is the Greek tragedy “Echo and Ariston.” Not only, in her opinion, is it the most romantic play ever written, it has taught her everything she knows about love.

Zara sends in an audition tape and is asked to read. She arrives in New York at the old Aurelia Theater. The Aurelia, rumored to be haunted, is home to the visionary director Leopold Henneman, himself as much as a myth as the Aurelia.

On her first day at the old theater, the lighting director mysteriously falls to his death. Although Zara doesn’t witness the event, she does discover the body. There are rumors that the Aurelia is cursed, which causes her to become skittish. Then, shockingly, Zara lands the lead in “Echo.”

Henneman demands that she allow no distractions in preparing for the difficult role of Echo. Zara agrees, she quits school and focuses all her intellect and emotions on the role. Then the re is a second death. Could it be another accident, is the theater really cursed or is there a murderer hiding in the shadows? Zara isn’t sure.

She befriends Eliza “Eli” Vasquez, the assistant lighting director. With her brusque manner, myriad tattoos and mysterious demeanor, Eli captures Zara’s heart in ways no one has ever done.

The two share a passion for each other that is only rivaled by their individual passion for the theater.

This story, to me had overtones of Gaston Leroux’s “Phantom of the Opera.” The prose is beautiful and often lyric, but I didn't quite understand the visions Henneman kept having. He seemed too melodramatic for his role. Therefore, Echo After Echo receives 4 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.