"We're Going to Need a Bigger Fridge"
Oct. 22nd, 2025 09:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerThere's a classic line from the 1975 movie Jaws. After the titular great white shark appears on the screen for the first time, actor Roy Schneider turns to the sailors hunting the monster and dead-pans, "You're going to need a bigger boat."
I'm not sure that line was all that big when the movie was first released in 1975, or even a few years later when it was making the rounds through theaters again and became popular among my childhood friends, but in recent years it has become a meme.
And, OMG, this movie is now 50 years old, and a throwaway, ad-libbed line from it is an Internet meme?
Yes, the line was unscripted. Behind-the-scenes stories tell us that the actors and crew were frustrated about the small boat used for filming scenes at sea. They felt the producers were being excessively cheap because the small size made it hard to work with given all the things involved in filming— the cameras, lights, microphones, and all the crew to operate them. "You're/We're going to need a bigger boat" became a running joke among the film crew, who repeated it every time the small watercraft made their work difficult to do.
Then actor Roy Schneider, playing the police chief in the story, ad-libbed the line during filming the scene where the great white shark, Jaws, appeared on camera for the first time. The cast and crew LOLed. Director Steven Spielberg thought it was funny, too— though without the guffaws from behind the camera. He worked it into the movie with some extra footage to set up the (now classic) line properly.
So, here we are 50 years later now, and this line just became relevant to me, personally. We're going to need a bigger fridge!
That's what I said to Hawk the other night after we'd ordered in pizza. Mine had come in an oversized box (hers was smaller). When I went to put the leftovers in the fridge, using the original boxes for simplicity sake, mine was a few inches too wide to fit into our generously sized side-by-side refrigerator!
Of course we didn't buy a new fridge. 🤣 I mean, the characters in the movie were facing a killer shark, and they didn't buy a new boat. All I'm facing here is half a leftover pizza. 🤣 I stacked the slices on a small baking pan and wrapped it in foil to keep for a day or two.
I'm not sure that line was all that big when the movie was first released in 1975, or even a few years later when it was making the rounds through theaters again and became popular among my childhood friends, but in recent years it has become a meme.
And, OMG, this movie is now 50 years old, and a throwaway, ad-libbed line from it is an Internet meme?
Yes, the line was unscripted. Behind-the-scenes stories tell us that the actors and crew were frustrated about the small boat used for filming scenes at sea. They felt the producers were being excessively cheap because the small size made it hard to work with given all the things involved in filming— the cameras, lights, microphones, and all the crew to operate them. "You're/We're going to need a bigger boat" became a running joke among the film crew, who repeated it every time the small watercraft made their work difficult to do.
Then actor Roy Schneider, playing the police chief in the story, ad-libbed the line during filming the scene where the great white shark, Jaws, appeared on camera for the first time. The cast and crew LOLed. Director Steven Spielberg thought it was funny, too— though without the guffaws from behind the camera. He worked it into the movie with some extra footage to set up the (now classic) line properly.
So, here we are 50 years later now, and this line just became relevant to me, personally. We're going to need a bigger fridge!
That's what I said to Hawk the other night after we'd ordered in pizza. Mine had come in an oversized box (hers was smaller). When I went to put the leftovers in the fridge, using the original boxes for simplicity sake, mine was a few inches too wide to fit into our generously sized side-by-side refrigerator!
Of course we didn't buy a new fridge. 🤣 I mean, the characters in the movie were facing a killer shark, and they didn't buy a new boat. All I'm facing here is half a leftover pizza. 🤣 I stacked the slices on a small baking pan and wrapped it in foil to keep for a day or two.
