The LA Times has run a first-person piece from Fred Fox Jr, the man who wrote the infamous episode of Happy Days when Arthur “The Fonz” Fonzarelli jumped a shark. It’s become an expression to mark when a TV show tipped into disrepute, but Fox thinks it’s one of the biggest misnomers in TV history.
Fox points out that far from being a death knell for the show, when the Fonz (played by Henry Winkler) water skied over a shark the show was at its peak. The episode itself was “was a huge hit… [with] an audience of more than 30 million viewers”. Fox said that if the episode represented a creative nadir then “why did the show stay on the air for six more seasons?”
Subsequently the rise of the expression to jump the shark, left Fox “embarrassed… but this feeling passed quickly, and I likened the popularity to a new fad, where someone jumps on the proverbial bandwagon and soon everyone is doing it.”
Fox insists the real motivation for the jump was not about scoring ratings. Part of the reason someone (Fox doesn’t remember who came up with the idea exactly) suggested the shark jump was because “Henry [Winkler] water skied in real life”.
Blogger, designer and visual artist, Culture Mulcher has been keeping a scrapbook of his visits to the Wheeler Centre and this week of Critical Failure he’s been particularly busy with sketches capturing both quotes and characters from the sessions.
Here’s a selection:
Adrian Martin debates the point at Critical Failure: Film
Fenella Kernebone offered her view on Critical Failure: Film
Peter Craven talked about what makes a good review at Critical Failure: Books
Hilary McPhee said she was “not as despondent as Gideon”
(Haigh countered that he was “not despondent, I’m quite cheerful!” at Critical Failure: Books
We’re looking forward to what Master Mulcher comes up with for tonight’s session on the visual arts.
Forget teleconferencing. The new way to attend a meeting is telepresencing – sending a robot version of yourself along to a meeting. This New York Times video shows how a motorised monitor could be just like being there, or is it just “a screen on a stick”?
