RE: In a Pig's Ear - Day 478: 5 Minute Freewrite: Sunday - Prompt: pig's ear
LOL! To be fair, I edited this after @negativer's astute observation that Rocko was not officially declared dead.
I must read "Silver Chief - Dog of the North" !
Funny: I finally kill some protagonists, and readers plead for the life of the dog. :) Ha! I feel vindicated!! *The Dog Must Live! I purposely did not describe the dog much, hoping readers would fill in the blanks with their own most-beloved dogs. Then I went back in and made Rocko part cattle dog. But I left out his most endearing traits. Ted the Red Heeler was a devious dog, too smart for anyone's own good. He could confiscate chocolate bars from the countertop - and eat them - and not get sick. He'd eat baby diapers after pilfering the trash can. For 16 years he was fed the cheapest dog food, Sam's. Yes, he was our neighbor's dog, but he spent so much time at our house we regarded it as Joint Custody.
Now I'm thinking about that "Gone! In the wink of an eye!" bit of purple prose. The ending, I thought, was too understated, and it seems some are misreading it as her missing the dog but not the husband. I almost had her fill up the farmhouse with rescue dogs (@tarc, @rhondak came to mind!), but I remembered Sam Bellotto's comments on her Space Horses story - that less is more - that a short story crystallizes one moment. I'm always guilty of trying to pack too much in. Lighten the load. I know, I know. And trust the reader to get understatement - never mind that my daughters to this day do not get it, not in my writing.
Thanks @crescendoofpeace for the many thoughtful comments!
Lolol . . . I remember when I saw Jaws for the first time, being perfectly okay with the shark eating a plethora of beachgoers, but I still root to this day for Babette the black lab to somehow survive.
Of course, being an avowed shark nut from way back, I rooted for the shark through most of the film.
He did piss me off when he ate Quint though. Robert Shaw was always a favorite of mine. Bad Bruce.
Can't bitch too much, though, as in the book, Richard Dreyfuss' character Matt Hooper also bit the dust, so I far preferred the ending in the film.
Of course, Jaws stands out for me as one of the few films that was better than the book, which was also true of The Deep, which came out a couple of years later, was also written by Peter Benchley, and also starred Robert Shaw. Really good film, with great underwater footage, and no CGI.
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I'll have to watch The Deep - the only thing I remember about **Jaws is that my mean sister Lori was the ONLY ONE in the theater who laughed when heads bobbed on the water. Everyone else was screaming. "Bad Bruce" - there's another one I should make sure I don't miss. I don't even remember the classic road movies with Paul Newman and McQueen. None of the best stuff is on NetFlix. Gotta dig deeper to find online movie rentals. LOL - I'm not surprised you'd side with the shark! I always felt bad for grizzly bears getting gunned down in movies even if they did kill people first.
Jaws is an absolute do-not-miss film, one of the finest of the man-against-nature genre, and the chemistry between the three lead actors is simply amazing and wonderful. They clearly had fun during filming.
And John Williams' score helped to make it truly spine-tingling, and thrilling during the chase scenes. Still one of my favorite film scores.
My sister saw the film before me, so I had some minor foreknowledge, though she was careful not to tell us too much. I saw it with my mom the first time, and we were a tad concerned when a couple with two little kids sat in front of us, but the kids were fine . . . the little boy sat in his mom's lap throughout, and the little girl climbed up in her dad's lap for the scary parts. They were better behaved than some of the adults attending.
My favorite moment came when some dimwit commented that he could tell the shark was fake, which I could have agreed with at the end when the shark leapt onto the stern of the boat, but he made the comment during one of the scenes filmed by Rod Taylor in Australia, of a very large, alive and real great white shark. ;-)
Of course, since I was already a shark nut at the time, all my friends wanted to see the film with me, so I wound up seeing it eight times that summer.
Now I want to see it again. ;-)