'Jaws’ and ‘Nashville’ Turns 50

Summer has long been embraced as a time away from school, from work, and from the usual routine. 

I will do some of this as I give Progressives Chat some rest. 

Rather than a weekly schedule, Progressives Chat will have July and August 2025 topics scheduled for the 1st and 15th of each month. Four topics. 

In July, these dates will fall on a Tuesday. In August, they will be on a Friday. This is to give me, frankly, some break. I am honestly needing it. (I have some personal matters but will still post in Comments.)

Progressive Chat will return to Mondays beginning on September 1, 2025.

I have expanded Comments to allow up to 30 days from a blog topic’s publishing date. 

For this first entry in July 2025…

Fifty years ago, in 1975, saw the releases of two acclaimed motion pictures.

Wednesday, June 11, 1975 was the date director Robert Altman’s groundbreaking film, Nashville, was released.

Friday, June 20, 1975 was the date director Steven Spielberg’s Jaws was released in movie theatres.

Jaws is better known, to most people, and it is the ultimate thriller. The enemy being a shark who goes on the hunt at a New England beach. Roy Scheider plays the police chief. Richard Dreyfuss as the marine biologist. Robert Shaw is the shark hunter.

Jaws was adapted to the screen by Carl Gottlieb and Peter Benchley. It is based on the latter’s 1974 novel. It was of the early-enough blockbuster films which changed the course of Hollywood standards in movie-making. It is genius work by Spielberg.

Nashville was my favorite film of 1975, the 1970s, and of what I have seen in motion pictures during the second half of the 20th century. It is an all-American look at 24 different and complicated individuals who are gathering for a presidential candidate. The music is, mostly, Country.

Jaws and Nashville are masterpieces for directors Spielberg and Altman. But, I must apply that old adage, “Behind every great man [there] is a great woman.” They are Verna Fields and Joan Tewkesbury. Fields won the 1975 Oscar for Film Editing and is key to why Jaws grips and scares the hell out of people. Tewkesbury wielded magic in her written-directly-for-the-screen Nashville with convincingly integrating and circulating those 24 characters in the same orbit.

Jaws was Oscar nominated for Best Picture of 1975 but, amazingly, Steven Spielberg was not nominated for Best Director nor were Carl Gottlieb and Peter Benchley for Adapted Screenplay nor Robert Shaw for Supporting Actor. 

Nashville won the 1975 Original Song Oscar, for “I’m Easy,” for its songwriter and performer and actor Keith Carradine. It was nominated for Best Picture, Director for Robert Altman, and Supporting Actress for each of Ronee Blakley and Lily Tomlin. Strangely, Joan Tewkesbury was not nominated for Original Screenplay nor was Henry Gibson for Supporting Actor.

Much more could be written of both films. But, I will post more in the Comments.

The following two clips include something having to do with a boat and an astonishing opener…