“You’re Going to Need a Bigger Boat”

Sweet Talk

From the brain flow of Paste's Editor At Large:

Some nefarious music hounds from Decatur twisted my outsized ego into creating a dialogue littered with opinionated recommendations and myopic rants. Therefore, to put a smidgen of decency back into nepotism, I have stolen the title "Sweet Talk" in homage of my father who had a weekly sports and leisure column of the same in the early 70's that was syndicated in several small town newspapers in the land the gods made great, New England (sans Connecticut of course). Luckily this space will focus more on sporting leisure, my favorite kind.

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“You’re Going to Need A Bigger Boat”
-Chief Brody to Quint after seeing Jaws for the first time.

As our own Sean Gandert published yesterday, the man who uttered the memorable line above, actor Roy Scheider, died at the age of 75 of cancer last Sunday.While he was a fine actor and had a long career, I would argue that this snippet of dialogue ranks in the top twenty movie quotes of all time and more importantly helped me overcome fear of “the big boy.”

The line has been co-opted countless times. In fact I recently heard it used by a pundit during the fast sinking Edwards’ presidential campaign (RIP). The words, the situation, and the delivery are such a perfect cocktail of fear, humor, and understatement it is easy to see why it has permeated our lexicon. However as a surfer and lover of the ocean it runs a little deeper for me.

Having spent a considerable amount of time in Martha’s Vineyard in my youth, my sensitivity to this line is heightened. You see the Vineyard served as the location for the fictitious Amity Island and since I was six years old the summer the film was released, you could imagine why “You’re Going to Need a Bigger Boat” lodged firmly in my gray matter. As I frolicked in the same waters as the Spielberg’s menacing mechanical monster, I would constantly mutter this line. While my friends assumed I was simply trying to elicit laughter, secretly the repetition was to calm my nerves as my scrawny legs dangled over the great abyss where all the child eating beasts lurked. I still vividly recall my good buddy George’s uncanny ability to mimic the opening scene where the woman swimming is propelled through the water by an unseen force and thinking the more we joke the better chance karma in the form of a twenty footer is going to rear it’s ugle head.

Scientists say that our fear of sharks is primal and inherent, but I say it’s because of Jaws. Either way I am paying my respects to Scheider for helping me overcome it evertime I paddle into the big blue.