Back from a three-day beach weekend with spotty Interwebs access…
On Saturday — scattered amongst dog-walking, sightseeing, storm-dodging, and various other activities — The TV Network Whose Name I Cannot Type offered some sort of monsters-of-the-deep marathon: maybe six or eight films about giant sharks, reptiles, squid, etc., threatening the lives and livelihoods of people living in waterfront communities. Only a couple of these movies had been made for theatrical release; the quality, therefore, was a little uneven.
I had no notebook at hand, so I can’t swear that the following snippets of dialogue are verbatim. But in each, the central phrase remains intact.
- If you’re familiar with this genre, you know there’s often on hand a seen-it-all, weatherbeaten old veteran of combat with exactly the sort of beast now threatening everyone. (The template for this role: Robert Shaw’s character Quint, in Jaws.) In one of Saturday’s films — it might have been Super Gator, or perhaps Croc — this character gives the others an example of the monster’s extraordinary toughness. A disbelieving bystander says, approximately, “Can these creatures really do that?” The grizzled old guy replies:
Yep. Why, I seen one o’these things run five miles across a rough road just to—
[I didn't notice what the thing meant to do after its nightmare steeplechase; my attention kept returning to the first part of the sentence.]
- In another film, off the coast of California, severe underwater tremors have caused two very unpleasant events:
- They have disturbed a school, or pack, of prehistoric sharks, called goblin sharks (there really are such things), bringing them to feed near the surface instead of at their usual great depths; and
- they have launched a tsunami.
With no operational radios, cell phones, or land lines, two groups of survivors of the tsunami must deal with the sharks on their own. At one point, some of these survivors are wading around the lower floor of a building under construction, and they meet up with the rest of their party, whom they’d feared lost. They compare notes on their experiences, and Guy A from one group asks Guy B from the other if they can escape by going out the way they came in. Says Guy B:
No. There’s a shark in the parking lot.
Were I a screenwriter, I’d live for the experience of building a script around a line like “There’s a shark in the parking lot.” Just once, though.
Funny how one line can provoke a lot of thought.
I think I tuned in briefly on Saturday. There was a grizzled old woman in the role of the “old wise man”, she had been feeding these giant
crocs the meat that the “FDA threw out”. Now I really, really want to know where that dumpster is, ’cause I can’t imagine…well, of course, I really can, but you get the idea.
Great line…shark in the parking lot…
Recaptcha: wombat family, hmmm?
“There’s a shark in the parking lot!” Hahahaha…
Watch, I’m going to say that at work now, and everyone will think I’m crazy.
I kind of want to see a few of those movies now! I’m ambivalent about Jaws. it’s so wonderfully old and cheesy-ish, but I could have done without the “Six Minutes of Quint Munching” bit at the end.
Travis: Truth. I like just about everything about “There’s a shark in the parking lot,” but it did make me wonder: if someone really said it in those circumstances, would anyone else present sort of start laughing hysterically?
Some lines suggest story after story…
cynth: You did know that the grizzled old woman was Cloris Leachman, right? That was Lake Placid 2, and I should be embarrassed to admit we’d already seen it a couple months ago. So after the first 15 minutes, I skipped it on Saturday. (The Yorkie was restless then, anyhow.)
Miriam: You know, I think I’m going to try saying that at work too. Maybe it’ll start a trend. I think the proper situation would be when someone asks if something is do-able, but I have special access to information which makes it obvious the answer is No. (Computer people need handy replies like that all the time.)
“Can you make the system retrieve [insert name of random, irrelevant chunk of data here]?” “Well, umm, no actually. Guess you could say there’s a shark in that parking lot.”
I, also, am going to try to talk about sharks in the parking lots just ONCE this week.
I think my five-year-0ld, a budding oceanographer, can tell you all about goblin sharks. Because she wants to read all about ocean animals, I actually knew about them, too.
She makes me smarter.
You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen “Jaws” ALL the way through. For shame. Will you still speak to me?
Jules: I may just drop a reference to a shark and a parking lot in my next 7-Kicks comment.
The goblin sharks in the movie differed in dramatically convenient ways from their real-world counterparts. The real things get that weird double-snout look only when they extend their mouths, which are normally tucked back inside somehow. (I’m thinking the way the Alien monster extends its little snoutlet full of teeth.) But in the movie, the mouths and teeth were always on display, and the “nose horn” was used like a battering ram for, like, busting into buildings.
I’m actively wincing at your revelation about Jaws. You do need to see the whole final scene with the sheriff, grizzled-old-guy Quint, and oceanographic whippersnapper Hooper on the boat going out after The Monster.
But I think you’ve got movie-goer’s cred to spare. So, no shame.
My husband is just as appalled as you that I haven’t seen it all the way through. But then, he’s used to this. I’ve also never seen “Ghostbusters.” GASP.
I will do my best to catch your kicks-parking lot/shark reference, assuming you’re cryptic about it.
Jules: the thing about movies is, there are just so many of the freaking things. So while, yes, I’m gasping that you don’t (yet) know Ghostbusters and thus cannot speak with authority about The Keymaster and The Gatekeeper, I remind myself that you are probably way more up-to-date with (say) Will Ferrell and Mike Myers movies than I’ll ever be.
The Missus recently sent me one of those “notes” on FB — the lists of experiences of one kind or another, which you’re supposed to “X” if you’ve done or leave blank if not, and then send it on to other friends, and so on. This one was on books — classics — one has allegedly read. I’m sooooo embarrassed by the holes in my reading that I haven’t yet filled it out. At the same time, I know that if they’d made up the list so it consisted of books only written since, say, 1920 or so, I’d have killed. Alas.
You know you could work that “sharks in a parking lot” line into a bunch of conversations relating to be incredulous incidents…Yeah, me reading Jane Austen in school was about as like as, well sharks in a parking lot! It works! I know know in the vein in which the original meant it, but it could work.
Do you remember younger brudda during Jaws? That’s what I remember of the movie, not necessarily the movie itself. Just the sibling reaction!
I meant NOT in the vein, but fingers just don’t cooperate some days.
cynth: Or combine this phrase with another (more common) one, the whole thing meaning “It simply defies belief that a show could have survived as long as [insert TV series name] has, given [insert description of ridiculous lengths to which the writers have gone to keep the thing going].”
As in, “The X-Files jumped the shark in the parking lot when they started playing up the whole ‘Mulder’s kid sister’ angle so much.”
I’m imagining the actor who had to say that line being nudged at parties after everyone’s had a few too many beers, “Hey, dude. Say the shark line. Come on say it. Hey everybody–he’s the shark in the parking lot guy!”
Other folks wave their cans around, “Yeah man. Say the shark line!”
Of course, no one hears him because by now everyone is saying the shark line.
This scenario only works if we presume that someone else other than you has seen this movie.
recaptcha: Alex looneys
looneys indeed.
marta: Ha, right — that’s a great depiction of the party.
The thing which made the line much funnier was that it was pronounced in an utterly deadpan way (I can’t imagine how an actor manages that), and that all the other actors (as I remember) sort of nodded solemnly. But you’re right: if I tried to just insert the shark line into a conversation where nobody else had seen the movie, there’d probably be this sudden lull. And everybody would look — not quite surreptitiously enough — at their watches.