Gimorozo has the world-exclusive first ever interview with Bruce the Shark, best known for his role in 1975’s Jaws.

Gimorozo: Good morning, Bruce.  This is your first ever interview, if I’m not mistaken.

Bruce:  Um, yes, that is correct.  I’ve always been, uh, shy about my English.  I’ve been practicing for years, but have only now developed any sort of confidence–I’ve been using Rosetta Stone.  And, besides, I really need the money.

Gimorozo:  There isn’t any money.  We actually don’t make money here, so we can’t pay you anything for this interview.

Bruce:  Huh…that’s unfortunate.  Well, I probably should be going then.

Gimorozo:  No, wait!  I can pay for your lunch, how’s that?

Bruce:  Well…ok.

Gimorozo:  Great!  Ok, so you started off as the shark in Jaws, right?  What was the audition process for that?  How did you get that job?

Bruce:  I didn’t eat the director.

Gimorozo:  What do you mean?

Bruce:  Well, Spielberg was like the 3rd or 4th choice to direct that film, but every time a shark came in to interview for the part of Lenny [ed note: Lenny is the name of the character], they’d end up eating the director.  I mean, I can understand why.  You’re in a room there with easy prey, the temptation is almost irresistable.

So, after each time a director was eaten, the producers would have to find a new shark.  People just can’t work under the pressure of possibly getting eaten by one of your main actors, besides, it would have been some sort of liability I think.

Gimorozo:  So, were you ever tempted to eat the director or other actors you were working with?

Bruce:  Oh, yeah.  It was a daily struggle!  But Spielberg made a deal with me: as long as I didn’t eat any of the principle actors, I could have all the extras and grips that I wanted–they’re pretty cheap and easy to replace.  So, it worked out ok.

Gimorozo:  Wow, so did you get a whole lot of recognition after that film?

Bruce:  Nah, Hollywood has a very distinct bias against, well, animals in general.  I was actually nominated for an Oscar for best supporting actor, but it was ruled that those awards are only for humans.  I tried to sue the Academy, but what lawyer’s going to take the case of a shark that can’t even speak good English, y’know?  The only other films I did after that were Jaws 2 and Jaws 3-D.

Gimorozo:  What about Jaws: The Revenge?

Bruce:  No way, man!  Even I wasn’t about to be in that pile of crap!  That’s actually a chick they replaced me with, I think her name was Alice, maybe?  I don’t know, something like that.  It’s one of those things, you humans can’t even tell us apart.

Gimorozo:  I’m sorry…

Bruce:  It’s cool, man.  I can’t tell you guys apart either.  Like, during the first Jaws, I was always attacking the wrong actors–I couldn’t tell who was who!  Then Steven [Spielberg] got an idea.  One day I’m swimming around, doing my stretches, ok?  Big action scene coming up.  And I get a whiff of this, this just awful smell.  It’s Richard [Dreyfuss].  He had agreed to smear cat urine all over himself so that I could smell the difference–we sharks have an excellent sense of smell.  But, Richard, you know, he’s a real actor, so he just goes above and beyond the call, right?  So, he actually ate cat litter so that even his breath smelled!  He said the taste wasn’t so bad, it’s just the texture that kinda grossed him out.  So, what he would do is put it in with his Cap’n Crunch in the morning–he still does that to this day, the man just loves that stuff!  Like, my wife, she has a cat, right?  And every once in a while, I’ll catch a whiff of the cat litter and get flashbacks or whatever.  Good times, man, good times.

Gimorozo:  I did not know that…

Bruce:  I’ll bet not!  It’s not a really publicized part of the film.  But by the end, everyone was wearing these funky smells to help me differentiate between people!  I remember we actually got fined like a ton of money because Robert [Shaw] would bathe in baby seal blood to get that distinct aroma and I guess the local authorities realized that, hey, where are all the seals?  Right?  So, somehow they linked it back to production.  So after that, Steven would have the seal blood shipped in from Canada or something.  I don’t know, somewhere where they just don’t care about that kind of stuff.  It was a fun movie to shoot…

Gimorozo:  So, since getting out of acting, what have you been up to?

Bruce:  Um, not a whole lot, really.  I got married in the early 80’s.  My wife’s a lawyer, go figure.  While on set of Jaws 2, the guys would always make jokes about sharks being lawyers or something, and I never got it.  But, I guess they just knew that I was destined to marry a lawyer.  Weird.  Like, ok, this one they would always ask is “How is a lawyer like a shark?”

Gimorozo:  …I don’t know, how?

Bruce:  Um….I don’t remember.  I don’t know, I never really thought it was that funny, anyway.  But, yeah, I love my wife.  She’s a good lawyer too, I think.

Gimorozo:  I hear that you’re planning a come-back.

Bruce:  Yeah, my agent tells me that the kids are into this hip-hop thing.  So, I’ve got a record coming out soon and then I’ll try to do a cross-over movie about my life as a gangsta, y’know?

Gimorozo:  I didn’t know you grew up on the streets.

Bruce:  Well, I didn’t say it was a documentary or anything.  It’s like, um, fictional biography, or something.

Gimorozo:  Well, I hope you have success with that, thanks for taking the time with me today.

Bruce:  It was fun, man!  Oh, yeah: “to get to the other side,” that’s it!

So concludes our interview.  Incidentally, “To get to the other side” actually is not the punchline to the joke “How is a lawyer like a shark?”

Welcome to the conclusion of Gimorozo’s exclusive interview with former V.E.N.O.M. leader Miles Mayhem.  Click here if you missed Part 1 of this interview.

Gimorozo: What was it like, competing with other terrorist organizations for toy sales?

MM: Ah, man, it was tough.  I mean there were tons of us out there.  There were the obvious ones like uh the Decepticons; um, whatever Skeletor’s posse was called; there was…man it’s been so long [laughs]

Gimorozo: Cobra

MM: Yeah.  Man, I hate those guys.  Bunch of self-righteous jerks.  You wanna hear a story?  Ok, this is 100% true, man.  You know the AVRs?  [editor's note: Animated Villains Reunion]  Ok, well, they’ve been holding them every couple of years since, I don’t know ‘95, ‘96.  Somewhere around there.  Anyway, you wanna know how many times me, or anyone from V.E.N.O.M.’s been invited?  Guess.  Yeah, none times.

So, at first, I was like, you know, whatever, it’s just a get-together for losers to reminisce.  You know what?  My life’s good, I don’t need that anyway.  I mean, I realize V.E.N.O.M. wasn’t one of the most popular terrorist organizations of the times.  It wasn’t our fault.  I mean, we had to fight Matt Tracker and that bunch of wet blankets–man, what a bunch of punks.  Anyway, I wasn’t too bummed about it.  But then, one night in like ‘04, I was out drinking with Saw Boss and he mentions to me that he got invited to that year’s AVR.  And I’m like, “What?  Saw Boss got invited and I didn’t?”  I mean, seriously, Saw Boss is cool and all, but for him to get invited and not me?  Talk about a slap in the face!  So, I call up Mon*Star and am complaining to him and guess what: he had gotten invited too!  I called, I don’t know, 5 or 6 more bosses from the 80’s and, like, all of them were invited!  So, I’m thinking, ok, my invitation’s in the mail, I’ll get it any day.  Never comes.  I figure, whatever, I’ll show up anyway.  I mean, they all know me, right?  I get there, my name’s not on the list.  I can’t get in.  It took some digging, but after a while I found out why: the AVRs are planned by a standing committee.  Do you know what that means?  A standing committee is permanent, no elections, it’s always these guys.  There’s three people on the committee: Mumm-Ra, Destro, and Serpentor.  Yeah, Cobra’s got the deck stacked in representation.  Who knows how that happened.

Gimorozo: So why wouldn’t Cobra want you there?

MM: Aw, those guys were always mad that I used the name “V.E.N.O.M.”  Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize there was a, uh, a law or something that limits how many terrorist organizations can use poisonous snake based names.  Whatever.  Besides, I came up with that name in like, high school.  I just didn’t copyright it then–didn’t even think about it, y’know?  So then “Cobra”’s a famous name and they claim that “V.E.N.O.M.”’s like, derivative or some nonsense.  And besides that, I didn’t even think of calling it “V.E.N.O.M.”  I thought–I was in English class, ok?  Planning my future–I thought, hey, I’ll start a terrorist organization and call it “Vicious Evil Network of Mayhem,” ok?  It was Andy Tracker, actually, who started calling it “V.E.N.O.M.”  I never would’ve even thought of that!

So, yeah.  If freakin’ Cobra hadn’t spent so much time in litigation with us, they probably would’ve gotten rid of those Joes in no time.  I even offered to help them.  I was like–this was a phone call to Cobra Commander–I said, “Hey, let’s join forces, ok?  We can be ‘Cobra-V.E.N.O.M.’  I’ll help you guys take out the Joes, you help us take out the M.A.S.K. guys.”  And Cobra Commander’s all whiny like a girl and starts, like, yelling at me because I’m using the name V.E.N.O.M. and I just hung up on him.  That guy is such a tool.  We really could of helped too.  I mean, my freakin’ helicopter could turn into a jet!  What could Cobra’s weapons do?  Nothing, they sucked!  Ugh, that stuff still pisses me off.

And, hey, just so you know something about Destro: it’s a mask.  That’s not his real head.  I don’t even know why he wears that stupid thing; it’s not like it’s cool or anything.  I think it was just to try and one-up Cobra Commander–who is totally normal-looking, by the way.  No need for the mask.  My mask?  It shot freakin’ acid.  Man, I hate those guys!

So concludes our exclusive interview.  Good bye.

Welcome to the first half of our exclusive, two-part interview with Miles Mayhem, the notorious terrorist leader of V.E.N.O.M.  We caught up with Mister Mayhem at the office of his currenet project, CoiNebula.

Gimorozo: Good evening, Mister Mayhem.  It’s been 20 years since the dissolution of V.E.N.O.M., what have you been up to since then?

Miles Mayhem: Well, let’s see…I got back into real estate immediately following that; I did that for maybe ten or twelve years here in Lincoln, Nebraska.  I liked that alright, but you know what?  I always wanted to be my own boss.  I missed those days where I was the leader of a terrorist organization.  I made my own hours, took vacation days when I wanted, it was great.  So, after a couple of years of putting together a business plan and getting some investors, I quit my real estate job and started my own company.  It’s called CoiNebula.  You’ve probably seen our machines in your local grocery store or wherever.  Anyway, it’s–what you do is, you take all that loose change you acquire, right?  Well, you take all that and you dump it into one of our machines and it gives you back the money, but in different coins!  So, like for example: you have three quarters and a nickel, ok?  Right?  Well, you put that in and it’ll give you–I don’t know–five dimes, eight pennies and a different nickel.

Gimorozo: But that’s only 63 cents…and you put in 80 cents, right?

MM: Right, but, c’mon, we gotta make money.  So, that’s a, uh, a “service fee” or whatever.  Anyway, it’s not been doing that great lately.  The economy and all.  The pay was a lot better with V.E.N.O.M., but I have good dental now.  That was one thing I learned, man.  When I started V.E.N.O.M., we were all young and crazy, so we didn’t have health insurance, right?  Who needed it?  We didn’t have, uh, 401ks.  We didn’t have matching uniforms.  None of that stuff that a good company should, y’know?  So when I started CoiNebula I was like, “this time, I’m doing it right,” y’know?  “This time, I’m living the high life.”  So, I got all that stuff.  Life’s good.  It is.

Gimorozo: You bring up V.E.N.O.M.  What was it like to be in the middle of the 80’s 30-minute long animated toy commercial scene?  That must have been something.

MM: Yeah, I mean, it was really cool sometimes.  But other times, it was a pain.  For example, I had all these great plots to take out M.A.S.K. and all, but I always had to cut it down to 30 minutes.  Actually, not even, it’s only 22 minutes if you count commercials!  Which was something that always irritated the fire out me: we were nothing but a commercial to sell action figures, but we still had to take commercial breaks.  Seriously?

But, anyway, 22 minutes to somehow execute an evil plot.  You can’t work under those conditions but so long before it really starts to get to you.  And the other thing that really pissed me off was that I wasn’t allowed to kill any of the good guys.  Now, you tell me how I’m supposed to take over the world without killing the people opposing me?  Ain’t gonna happen.  It’s just not.  And besides that, I never really wanted to take over the world, I would have been totally content with being the despotic leader of some third-world country.  But no, the writers always insisted that I try to take over the world.  In 22 minutes.  Without killing anybody.  Morons.

Check back later in the week for the conclusion of this riveting interview with former V.E.N.O.M. boss, Miles Mayhem where he discusses other 80’s cartoon bad guys.