Sharksploitation (2023)

Speaker 1: Hold Your ears, folks. It's show time.

Speaker 2: People pay good money to see this movie. When they go out to a theater, they want cold sodas, hot popcorn and no monsters in the projection booth. Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.

Speaker 3: Turn it off.

Speaker 4: There is a genre alive today that has survived 90 years of evolution causing people to live in fear. Hollywood has created a monster and given it the name Shark exploitation. It's because of Jaws Shark craze which has gripped America.

Speaker 5: Suddenly society developed this massive the fear of Sharks, Shark mania movie that made $100 million and everybody wanted some of that.

Speaker 6: Our focus was creating a Shark. We weren't thinking about what he was going to do to the future. Great whites man eater. Deep Blue Sea shat.

Speaker 5: Sharknado, the shallows. The Sharks were everywhere.

Speaker 7: You watch Shark movies, you watch Shark documentaries. This creature is a Hollywood celebrity. The Shark is a natural monster in the ocean.

Speaker 5: Why we are scared when we're standing in 3 ft of water at the shore?

Speaker 6: Sharks, it ignites something in us that makes us feel alive.

Speaker 4: Shark exploitation stream. Now on shutter. MIKE WHITE: Hey folks, welcome to a special episode of the projection booth. I'm your host, Mike White.

On this episode, I'm talking with our old friend Stephen Scarlata, talked to him a long time ago about Khodorovsky Dune. He's been on the show several times including on our wonderful Hudson Hawk episode. Now he's back talking about his latest film, his directorial debut, Shark exploitation. The film is a terrific look at the Shark exploitation movement subgenre whatever you want to call it within film predates Jaws.

But Jaws was definitely an influence on both it and on Mr Scarlata Shark exploitation is currently streaming on shutter. I highly recommend that you check it out just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water. We've got this interview. Hope you enjoy it.

I didn't realize that this was your first directing gig. STEPHEN SCARLATA: Yeah. First directing gig, mostly produced and stuff like that. So I got burned out with producing and then I was just like, you know, I guess it's time because I do a lot of the research on all my projects anyways.

And plus those are personal projects. So it was like I had to do it. But yeah, I'm happy it's getting a nice response. So the first thing I directed is get a good response.

MIKE WHITE: I'm very who, what's your history with Sharks and Shark exploitation? STEPHEN SCARLATA: It's Jaws. Of course, I always say it cursed me to want to become a filmmaker and it got me obsessed with Sharks after Jaws came out, I couldn't stop drawing Sharks in elementary school. And every time I went to the library, Shark books, all that stuff, I think a lot of people had the same impact with Jaws.

But the thing with Jaws, it was like a drug where I had to keep chasing that dragon of every Shark movie I could catch on television. I had to watch and going through the TV guide and seeing, oh, shit up from the depths is gonna be on at 11 o'clock on channel nine on Saturday. And then it was just chasing that, that dragon which you're never able to catch because Jaws is to me. Perfect.

And my favorite movie ever. MIKE WHITE: How old were you when you saw it? STEPHEN SCARLATA: I saw it in the theaters a few times but I believe I saw it during the rerelease because you remember back in the day a movie before I came on HBO and before HBO was, like, really popular movies would just get rereleased all the time for people to go back and watch them because just the way it was, it wasn't on TV. Yeah, I saw it a few times during one of its re-released and my dad was a navy guy.

So he would drive home from work and be like, let's go see Jaws and we go to the theater and just pick it up from any point in the movie. I grew up with it. Like huge impact. So, but Sharks, yeah, I just had to keep watching Shark movies.

Anything with a Shark in it. There was a TV ad, it was gonna be Shark episode. I'm watching it. Anything Aquatic horror also I had to watch.

MIKE WHITE: I think we must be somewhere right around the same age because there was a lot of things inside of Shark exploitation that just spoke to me so much, the whole idea of Mr Jaws and like how Sharks infiltrated television and just how they were everywhere for so long. I'd love that. You use the timeline in your documentary. What's that tail off from Jaws to like where there weren't Shark movies for a little while.

It had to have been at least 56 years where there were tons of Shark movies. STEPHEN SCARLATA: The timeline was the idea of one of my producers, Carri Dignam Roy and that was, it was a great idea and I gotta just give her props for that. And the timeline was from my Excel Sheet of every Shark movie I believe I have them all in here could be a chance. I'm missing like a bizarre one or something.

But this is a deep dive Excel Sheets. So you're saying, yeah, so Jas of Revenge comes out summer 87 and then the next the theatrical ones in 1999 Deep Blue Sea. But between Jasda Revenge and Deep Blue Sea, we got Night of the Sharks treat Williams movie. That seems like a pure alley, that one.

And then you got a couple of Aquatic horror movies like The Evil Below. And then there's deep blood in 1990 which doesn't have like really any Shark. It's like stock footage of a Shark. A movie called Frenzy directed by Ray Carter Junior is in 1990.

And then we had the books come out. Beast came out Peter Benchley's book, White Shark came out, Peter Benchley's book and then the Meg book came out. Yeah. And another Meg book called Extinct came out and they try to make that into a TV movie.

And then, yeah, and then you get Deep Blue Sea in 1999 it was a long way to get to Deep Blue Sea. Like I'll never forget. I think it was in the Entertainment Weekly. It was a preview of the summer movies.

Now it was the first time I heard a Deep Blue Sea and I saw it. I was like, holy shit. There's a Shark movie coming out. I can't tell you how excited I was with that one.

MIKE WHITE: And I'm just sitting there watching the clips going. He's gotta use the clip of Sam had he has to do it, he has to do it. STEPHEN SCARLATA: It is, it's incredible. It really is, right?

The effects don't hold up as much. But that was such an incredible theatrical experience with that happening millennium films or what they called new image then. They started cranking out all these Shark movies for video. And after the Deep Blue Sea it just either became, it's a Deep Blue Sea rip off, but in some underwater laboratory and dealing with the fish or it's a straight up Jaws rip off where they're coming to the shore.

But there were movies like, what is that one blue demon that was about scientists playing computer chips into the brains of CG I Sharks and then the terrorized people. So I guess, yeah, still Deep Blue Sea influenced. MIKE WHITE: Let's win too because you've got that almost offshoot of Leviathan. What was the one with Jacqueline Bassette in her amazing t-shirt?

And the sphere goes along those lines, but it's not Sharks, but it's like other terrors from the deep. And I know that again, those were so influenced by Jaws. STEPHEN SCARLATA: Was it 1989? It was like this insane Aquatic horror year.

Yeah, Deep Star Six came out. Then I think Leviathan came out then Roger Corman's Lords of the Deep came out and this was all gearing up for the Abyss that was coming out in. I think it came out in August of this. I could be wrong.

But all these underwater Aquatic somewhat horror films, I'll beat the Abyss. But I love those movies. That was an exciting year in 1989. Even though there's no Sharks.

Actually, if you, do you ever read the script to Leviathan? MIKE WHITE: I have not. STEPHEN SCARLATA: No, there is a cool sequence at the ending of the script of Leviathan that, that they're dealing with Sharks and they're dealing with the monster. It's pretty bad ass actually.

MIKE WHITE: Tell me more about the origin of Shark exploitation as far as for you. When did you decide? Hey, I know enough about this subject. It's something I've been obsessed with for years.

I'm gonna make a documentary about it. STEPHEN SCARLATA: I think first I was kicking around maybe a book but I'm dyslexic and I know that's not gonna happen. It was definitely around the time during Joy's do where I kept thinking about it and thinking about it. And then I started then vision it as a documentary and then I would start an outline and then I would stop, I would start an outline and then I would stop because I just didn't want to make a movie that's beginning to end Shark movies and Shark movie clips and making of because you're just, I don't know, to me when Jodorowsky Dune came out, people loved him and how he wasn't bitter about it.

And it influenced artists that were watching the movie. It was the way he thought about the failure and people loved that. And that was like this b story hook that just started happening when we're editing that movie. And so with this one, I immediately knew I need a B story hook.

I can't just go shooting and doing the short stuff without the hook. And then that's when I figured out the Peter Benchley angle that he has to be the heart of the story. But then it was probably if I have to Joy's doing, trying to figure out what to do next. And then that's when the outlining got more and more intense.

And then I met up with Josh Miller who is the producer on this, who I do my podcast with best movies ever made. And we were talking about for a second there again about doing a book on it because now I've helped with it. But then it just became, you know what, I'm gonna do a documentary on it. And Josh was in and then my cinematographer, Jim Coons was in, couldn't not made it about Jim Coons.

And then like I brought up earlier Carry Dignan Roy, awesome producer. And we had a good editor, Patrick Huber and Jim told me we were shooting the novelization Doc and I was on a long road trip and he was like, he kept hearing me talk about this Shark documentary I want to make. And then he just said, dude, if there's time on my schedule and you could line up interviews, just do it. And then that's thanks to him, that's why I was able to do it because he's like a, so he's a sound and he's a cinematographer and then it all just started coming together and I made this insane Shark movie list on Excel.

And so I started to highlight like in green, what the most important movies are that we should definitely cover. And then another color for like B tier that could be great to talk about. And then C level, this would just be fun to pepper in if I can stuff like that. And we began and man, if I would have known we're gonna be shooting over a 35 interview would have probably second guessed it.

But I was just way too deep at that time. MIKE WHITE: And it ties into your podcast because you talk about Jaws Three people Zero, which is one of the greatest movies never made ever. STEPHEN SCARLATA: Yeah. God, man, I wanted to cover it so bad in this and we were so lucky to get Mattie Simmons.

He was so nice and he was cool. And then because we got Joe Dante for Piranha, it was just bonus to get him talking about jazz three people. Zero. So that just came together.

And I guess it makes sense in the movie because it's part of the whole jazz cycle. MIKE WHITE: Yeah, which is again, these nice milestones that you've got. But yeah, talking about that bee story of Benchley and then having all of those oceanographers talking about real Sharks and what it's like to be an oceanographer. They're not all dressed in denim from head to toe like Matt Hooper.

STEPHEN SCARLATA: Yeah, they were really cool. I was very lucky and to get them. I spent extra time writing those letters because the other thing was is that I ended up doing, it was sneaky. I don't like doing it, but I had tried to hide the title of the movie away from them just because I didn't want them to think I was doing something exploitive.

Even though Sharks wait, it's the genre and they were exploited. It's Sharks. But I think it's like a dual title and I didn't want to get to the point of trying to explain that to them. And they saw the title was completely turned off.

So they didn't see the title until they were citing their release, but they're all cool about it. And I was very lucky. They trusted me. None of them seen Joy's do because I can point certain filmmakers to Joy's do watch that.

And that's what I wanna do, not exploiting artists. It's just telling the story I'm not about, but they were great. The marine biologists. Awesome.

And when you have to ask a marine biologist about a Megalodon, the expression on their faces is always priceless. Like, really, I have to talk about me, one of the guys just like I felt so bad. I'm like, yeah, we have to, I was lucky Vicky Vasquez likes Shark movies and then so she was great and so is David Schiffman. He loves Shark movies.

So Greg Stone doesn't watch any of that stuff, but he was best friends with Peter Benchley. But getting two marine biologists that loved Shark movies was gold because they were happy to talk about it. And there was still a little, if I brought Megalodon in real life, they still, but still they were great, such great spirit and very supportive. They were.

And yeah, I definitely needed that because I just knew I'm doing a genre documentary and I have to make sure it's a good genre documentary to touch on stuff that people are not gonna expect. Because when I've been doing all the social media, I'm throwing out there a lot of wacky Shark movies. But when they sit down and watch it, I hope I want to throw them off that they're getting something a little bit more impactful. And it took, yeah, a lot of outlining.

I had these two boards up on my wall in front of me. One was the whole history of Sharks on the left and then on the right was all the sub categories and I literally had fucking yarn from one thing to the other. It looked like a crazy FBI profiler and my co producer, Carrie and Patrick by editors. But they had, yeah, because every two minutes it was like, no, we gotta fit this in.

This is important and that just came to a point of you can't fit everything in. You have to keep it under two hours. But that was the hardest part was doing all that was just keeping it in at a doable length. MIKE WHITE: Over some of the things that fell on the cutting room floor.

STEPHEN SCARLATA: I want to go into more Chinese movies. I wanted to end with, I just didn't get time Shark Night 3d, unfortunately, which kills me. I wanted to really touch on that because it has a whole angle with Discovery Channel on Shark Week. But I just, it's like when a flow of when a flow is going and you try to insert stuff just to put it in there, it can totally disrupt everything.

It's, it's hard. And we tried so hard to keep that in. We wanted a bigger section on the Man versus Shark scene from zombie. But I couldn't really find a lot of people.

It was also hard because we had this fast post schedule and you're really trying to find certain people and scheduling wasn't lining up and it just happens. It's a part of when I did Jay's Dune, it was like we submitted to Can we didn't get in, we submitted it to Sundance, we didn't get in and then next can we got in. I didn't have that type of editing scheduled. This was like it has to be done.

And when I had a couple of months to squeeze 90 years of Shark history, and so I'm just very thankful that people like it and it got finished. So very thankful. MIKE WHITE: I was really glad to see that old Edward G Robinson movie in there because I had heard about that one and I don't think I made it through that one. It was a little tough.

Some of these are tough to watch. Yeah, I had. STEPHEN SCARLATA: To watch him for the movie Edward G. Is that the Tiger Shark one is?

Yeah, because that was another thing I cut out there was like an interesting, he does remind me of Quint so much. And that was like another thing I had to hit the, hit the floor. But yeah, those movies they were tough to watch. I'm not gonna lie.

I didn't mind that much of, the Shark. God. And then what's the other one? I like, I somewhat enjoyed the treasure hunt movies.

Like underwater and September Storm. They're all right. I will never rewatch them again. It was homework.

So I had to watch them all. But, yeah, I'm with you the earlier Wednesday. I'm never gonna really go back and revisit them. I don't think it's just a different time period and certain generations won't watch nineties movies anymore.

So I guess that's me with 19 thirties and forties. They're not my thing. MIKE WHITE: We talked about the marine biologist, but you have other amazing interviews in here who were some of the ones that you were happiest to get. STEPHEN SCARLATA: Mario and Peebles.

He was tough one to get. But, and then when we finally got him, nicest guy in the world. Really cool. Wendy Benchley was someone I knew from the very beginning.

So I was very careful how I approached her. I took my time wrote multiple letters before I sent her the right one because it's the heart of the story. I can't mess it up. That's like probably the top tier is Wendy Benchley for this movie.

And then we got a lot of cool people. I gotta say like Emily Zara is in it and she's a monster expert. She's awesome. So smart Joe Dante getting him and hanging out with him and then him literally telling us like, why are you making this movie?

What is this movie? What is this about? It was so funny and I was trying to explain it to him, but he's just but he was nice and he did the interview and he, and he's great. Rebecca mckendry was awesome.

She was really cool. Like I just knew since day one she has to be in the movie because she's a big Shark fanatic. She was really cool. MIKE WHITE: Carl Gottlieb tells stories like nobody's business and then Joe Elves was great and then I always forget that he directed the third one.

STEPHEN SCARLATA: Yeah, Giles is really cool. Such a cool cat man and the fact that he built that Shark, it's pretty. Yeah, he's an amazing guy. He was a great get.

So he was a great guy. I was lucky with a lot of these people I got in the movie, to be honest, I looked in with Tom Vitale who was the sci-fi channel president because he just really helped fill in that section. I was lucky to get a lot of these people like the 47 m down guy was cool. Telling us all about making that David Worth was really cool.

There's a lot of him missing from the movie, but he's awesome. He had a lot of fun making of Shark attack two stories, but which was in the original cut and then we had eventually take it out because the movie was, which killed me. MIKE WHITE: But yeah, I can't even imagine how many cuts there were of this thing. STEPHEN SCARLATA: It was a passion project.

So for me, it's like I see everything but now I feel way more relieved that people are really digging it because trust me, like I was driving my producer, that's Josh Carey and then my editor Patrick crazy with stuff that I really wanted to get in there. You gotta squeeze this in because I was going crazy. MIKE WHITE: What were some of those must haves for you? STEPHEN SCARLATA: You have to touch on Jaws.

But I tried to do with Jaws is maybe take a, I tried my best first. I wanted to do something with Jaws. Like I wanted to tell stories that weren't already out there, but it's impossible in a way. So Jaws was a challenge of how to do it how to keep it brief because everyone knows about Jaws.

That's why we mostly touched on Jaws with thas of Phobia, fear of the water and fear of going to the beach and what really happened after Jaws with all the tournaments. So it was a very important movie and I definitely want to get Perran in there because that was pretty big hit. And plus a huge Joe Dante fan, but it really fits in the movie. A Deep Blue Sea was a must, had to have Deep Blue Sea.

I just wasn't able Renie Harland and I believe doesn't live in the country anymore so I couldn't get him, which was heartbreaking. And then it was nice to get the guy who directed open water. Such a nice guy and opened up and told us all these cool stories about making that movie and the Reef guy, he's in Australia and he was nice enough to shoot his own interview. So that was really cool.

A lot of these people in this movie, I'm just very thankful for them agreeing to do it and to trust me. MIKE WHITE: Yeah, everybody seems very genuine and very well spoken, which is so nice. And the person, the gentleman that shot some of that and I can't the name of the film, but the real underwater photography of the Sharks, I think they were killing some of the Sharks or the, you could see the one person who used like the stun gun on the Shark, which is really heartbreaking. But his stories were wonderful.

STEPHEN SCARLATA: Yeah, he's great. And if you've seen another movie I wanted to fit in I could, which was the Life Aquatic with Steve Zuzu. There's a guy in that movie that's playing guitar on a boat and that's taken from Bluewater White Death. The guy we interviewed, he has all these music interludes.

He's just do, he brought his guitar with him and started doing these little jams that's in the movie and it's cool to see that Wes Anderson movie, put that character in it, which is pretty cool. MIKE WHITE: And of course, sci-fi just exploded with Sharknado and all of the Shark movies after that. And you could just make a documentary just on the sci-fi movies. It must have been so tough to choose what you're even gonna highlight.

STEPHEN SCARLATA: Yeah, that one's tough because throughout my outline, it's Deep Blue Sea is green, like Prata is green, great white. The last Shark is green. I wanted to definitely touch on that. But when it comes to the sci-fi channels, I think like the two most important are Mega Shark, vers giant octopus and Sharknado.

And I believe with Mega Shark versus giant octopus, that's the movie that I think really broke the Shark genre because before then there was open water was in 2003, that was a serious Shark movie. And then you just got a lot of those new image, new millennium movies. They were just, they were very serious. And then their last Shark movie they did was Sharks in Venice.

And you would think, oh, that's gonna be a silly fun movie. But it's like a dead serious movie. But then Mega Shark, first Giant octopus comes out in 2009. The moment that comes out, then you get mega prana, then you get sha octopus.

Then you're getting Dino Shark, swamp Shark, super Shark, two headed Shark attack sand Sharks. All of this is coming out before Sharknado in 2013. So like it's insane to think like Mega Shark first giant octopus comes out in 2009 and then the numbers of Shark movies coming out per year starts to rise a bit and then it goes out of control. When Sharknado comes out.

Now you're getting like 7 to 9 movies a year. Shark movies a year because you pitch this thing everywhere. And one dude told me it was like literally sometimes pitching just to get turned down. I don't even know why people want to meet this.

One dude is like, it doesn't even make these movies anymore. So I don't know if there's gonna be a lot of interest in this documentary. And I was just like, all right, you're saying they don't make these movies anymore. And I said after Sharknado is like 7 to 9 and then in 2020 2021 I think was the record I think the 17 Shark movies that came out.

It's insane. Sharknado comes out in 2013 and then in 2015, 12 movies, 2016, 12 movies, 2017, 8 movies, 2018, 9 movies, 2020 19, only one Shark movie 47 m down on Cage, which I think is a great movie underrated. And then 2020 comes around nine Shark movies released and then 2021. Yeah, 17 Shark movies and then 13 I believe came out last year and I am including all the micro budget and all the weird because they are Shark movies.

They count. I made that list after he told me that. So I was like the next person that says that to me, I am gonna pull out this list and I'm gonna count how many movies per Shark movies per year. We actually got.

MIKE WHITE: Big kudos to you and to your editor too. I loved all the boxes with all of the same type of things going on. You break down the plots of these movies and it's like now this happens now this and seeing that repeated over and over again. That was wonderful.

That was so nice to see. STEPHEN SCARLATA: Oh, thank you. Yeah, I believe that was the editor and carry my producer that helped figure that out. So like you do split screens.

So I was like, really you could do that and yeah, and I love it. And that's one of the things people were complimenting too. Yeah. That was such a good way to fit multiple instead of showing one scene and cut into another scene to another scene.

That was a great way to, yeah, props to them for figuring that out. That was great. MIKE WHITE: I can't remember if it's what I have on VHS as Jaws Five Cruel Jaws or if it's another one, but it's a knockoff. The one that is beat for beat Jaws, one and Jaws two mixed together.

STEPHEN SCARLATA: You have the right title Jaws Five. That's what it was also called Jaws Five. Cruel Jaws. I think it was, that was, I bought it like a Thailand disc of it and that was on the cover and yeah, you know what's also crazy about Cruel Jaws.

Not only is it taking scenes like you just said from just two and then using all the Shark footage from Great White, but when I was re listening audio book of Peter Benchley's Jaws and then I just started noticing there's scenes in Peter Benchley's book that they just put in Cruel Jaws. They just filmed the scenes like there's this scene in Jaws where in the book Jaws where these tourists come into town just because they want to see the Shark or they want to see the Shark attack someone. And they had this long scene with Sheriff Brodie who was trying to look over the ocean with them about it and they brought their kids Where's the Shark?

You want to see the Shark? That's in Cruel Jaws. They shot that scene from Peter Benchley's book practically. And I think even the scientist, the way he's talking there's like lines almost exactly from Peter Benchley's book.

So, man, they really did their homework, their Jaws homework with that movie. MIKE WHITE: I can't tell you how many times I've seen the Meg because my wife loves these movies. When I found out that there was Deep Blue Sea two and three. I had to get copies for her.

She loves the Meg. She's seen it so many times. I was just about to pre buy tickets for the Meg two coming out because I know we're gonna go see it. So I think I was telling you via social media, like super excited to watch this movie with my wife because she loves Shark exploitation.

And I'm surprised she wasn't there like writing out titles. STEPHEN SCARLATA: Meg is a fun one. My cinematographer hooked me up, put a screening of it a year before it came out. I really wish I could remember more stuff that happened in that version because I remember it being a little bit darker.

They had to do, make this nice crowd pleasing movie to make sure if it's gonna make enough money to do the sequel because I don't watch trailers. But when I'm hearing the sequel sounds like it's gonna go a little bit harder than the first movie, even though it's still PG 13 but there wasn't a lot of casualties in the first Meg. The Chinese posters for the Meg two are awesome. Maybe you wanna look up, look them up after you see the movie.

So you don't get things spoiled. But Chinese posters for the Meg two are incredible. They are just incredible. MIKE WHITE: You mentioned the novelization project.

How is that going? STEPHEN SCARLATA: It's going, it's all out of the director's pocket. So that's why it's taking a little bit of time. And it's also when he has free time, we can shoot extra interviews and editing it.

It's a Beast also, but it's been going good. We got a lot of really cool people in it. A lot of cool authors. MIKE WHITE: Are you still working on the podcast?

STEPHEN SCARLATA: We just went up last week. It was three people, zero episode. So now we're back and we had to take some time off. But yeah, we're back and then we're gonna be doing the Meg for the rest of August because that's such a, you probably know.

And then that shit was supposed to come out in the nineties. So that has a long history of trying to get made different studios, start off with Disney. And then I went to New Lion Cinema and now we got this version, as you said, like the Chinese co-production. MIKE WHITE: And I'm so glad to see so many people talking about Shark exploitation and I hope that the numbers are through the roof because you really deserve it.

It's such a great film. STEPHEN SCARLATA: I appreciate it, man. Seriously, I've been really blown away by everybody on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. It's like I said, I was gonna step away from social media because I thought I was gonna get, I don't know.

So I'm happy people like it. That's all I gotta say. I'm really happy. People are digging it and yeah, and thank you.

Thank you for all your support, man. It's been like always there. MIKE WHITE: Hey, keep doing good work and I'll be here, Stephen. Thank you so much for your time, man.

This was great talking with you again. STEPHEN SCARLATA: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Speaker 3: The show has such teeth and a show. Just a Jack has old Maggie baby and it keeps it to us out of saint, you know, when that Shark this Scarlet below practices and old Maggie Heath baby. So there's never a tracer in now on the Sunday morning. -huh Eye as a body just do in life.

Get something once around the that's a they suck down by the river. Just two ban on or yeah, to have to draw him out. Yeah. On now again said John, ok.