[The following article first appeared on Mavervorl Media. Today is June 29, 64 years after Quint said the U.S.S. Indianapolis delivered the atomic bomb to the island of Tinian. He got the date wrong, but The Shark Is Still Working clears up and illuminates a lot of conversation pieces precious to "Jaws" fans.)

"Jaws" was never a small movie; Peter Benchley's novel of the same name was already a swimaway bestseller by the time the movie version was being filmed off and on the island of Martha's Vineyard in 1974. Despite producer David Brown's assertion that Universal's 1975 shark tale was "just a big indie film," however, its unprecedented success originated the era of the summer popcorn blockbuster.

In the exhaustive two-hour documentary "The Shark Is Still Working" (a reference to the frustrating non-operation of "Bruce," "Jaws"' centerpiece prop), filmmakers James Gelet, Jake Gove, Erik Hollander, and James Michael Roddy explore the effect this pre-CGI monster movie had on the people who made it as well as its cultural impact and enduring popularity.

"This movie...crashed into people like a speeding truck," said Richard Dreyfuss, whose role as icthyologist Matt Hooper (a movie starring an icthyologist?) was made more heroic in the screen version than its homewrecking paperback counterpart.

Dreyfuss said the cast and crew were so wrapped up in the famously troubled production - even then the talk of Hollywood - that it wasn't until the movie premiered that he realized how much of a hit it could be.

Dreyfuss, now white-haired and looking unsettlingly like Chris Elliot's character in "There's Something About Mary," provides animated, often manic interviews.

Among other tidbits for fans to relish, Dreyfuss says that the late Robert Shaw, who played salty Captain Quint, delighted in winding up the brash young actor, then in his 20s.

"He acted like he had my number," Dreyfuss says. "And he did. He made me doubt things I already knew."

Shaw would dare the young actor to dive from the mast of the Orca, the cast's floating set, into frigid Vineyard Sound. "I bet you can't do that," Shaw would say.

Director Steven Spielberg, who in past interviews seemed reluctant to talk about the movie - the then 27-year-old had directed numerous television episodes and the low-budget features "Sugarland Express" and the truck-as-shark thriller "Duel" - here opens up with numerous anecdotes about the grueling five-month shoot (completed with underwater shots in editor Verna Fields' tiny San Fernando Valley swimming pool) and seems to concede that, three decades later, it is foolish to continue to distance himself from the movie that made him famous.

"It gave me a career," he says.

Composer John Williams details the crafting of his iconic score ("The theme was very simple," he says), the late voiceover actor Percy Rodrigues says that he went for "deep" rather than "high" in his "Jaws" promos, and poster artist Roger Kastel finds his original shark research photos.

Spielberg, Dreyfuss, and Scheider were all interviewed for Laurent Bouzereau's excellent "The Making of Steven Spielberg's 'Jaws'," which has appeared on "Jaws" reissues since its laserdisc debut. But "The Shark Is Still Working" fleshes out these interviews and goes back to Martha's Vineyard, where many of Amity's supporting players are still living.

These interviews are a treat. Lee Fierro, who played Mrs. Kintner, the bereaved mother of shark-gobbled Alex, recalls that for years she was asked to replicate the slap she delivered to Roy Scheider when her character learned that Chief Brody knew a shark was out there, but didn't close the beaches in time to prevent her son's death.

"It was mostly young men who would ask me (to slap them)," she says. "I finally had to stop doing it."

Fierro, now a children's theatre instructor on Martha's Vineyard, refrains from using her upstage hand.

In a quick sequence, we watch as Fierro wallops several male fans over the years. Oddly enough, she uses her left hand each time, though with Scheider she used her right.

We also meet Henry Carreiro and Dick Young, who played Felix and Pratt, two wisecracking Amity fishermen.

"They called us 'Costello and Costello,'" says Young, whose famous line to Dreyfuss, "A wha?" is one of "Jaws"' most quotable.

Robert Shaw received coaching on what it was like to be a working class resort town fisherman from the late Craig Kingsbury, a Vineyard local who played the doomed Ben Gardner.

Kingsbury's daughter says that her father mostly lied to Shaw, who would then repeat the stories in TV interviews.

Shaw does appear in archival footage in the documentary, but these are teasingly short clips, and this is where the doc can't be all things to all fans. As a fan film, albeit a very professional one, "Shark" can still never be as comprehensive as the die-hard fan would like; in the same way Matt Hooper can't produce the shark tooth from the wrecked hull of Ben Gardner's boat for Mayor Vaughn, we don't get to see Robert Shaw repeating Kingsbury's whoppers on color TV.

And for this fan, there was simply not enough coverage of the iconic "Indianapolis Speech," in which Quint reveals to Hooper and Brody both his hatred and respect for sharks. Quint tells them he was on the U.S.S. Indianapolis, which in the summer of 1945 delivered "the Hiroshima bomb." On the way back from the Pacific atoll Tinian, the Indianapolis was sunk by a Japanese submarine and two-thirds of her crew were devoured by sharks.

"June 29, 1945," Quint says.

That speech, not included in Benchley's novel but introduced for the movie by uncredited scribe Howard Sackler (and revised by everyone from chief "Jaws" screenwriter Carl Gottlieb to "Apocalypse Now" screenwriter John Milius to Spielberg to Robert Shaw himself), gives a date that was more than a month premature; the atomic bomb was loaded onto the Enola Gay and dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, within days of its delivery by the Indianapolis. Why did Quint get the date wrong?

"Robert was a little drunk," said Carl Gottlieb. As part of the United Film Festival debut of "The Shark Is Still Working," Gottlieb attended a screening of "Jaws" at Hollywood's beautiful Vista Theatre to meet with fans and sign copies of his own book, "The Jaws Log." I cornered him at the popcorn counter.

"Sackler actually had the date right," Gottlieb said, "and Robert did, too, at first, but that scene was shot many times over two days and I remember he got the date right in one version. But he had some drinks in him and the different versions got spliced together."

So "The Shark Is Still Working," which delivers the most comprehensive dose yet of the type of trivia and behind the scenes footage that unites Trekkies, "Buffy" geeks, "Star Wars" LARPers, and (lately) "Big Lebowski" fans in hand-fluttering information overload ecstasy, can't possibly capture (as Quint says) "the head, the tail, the whole damn thing" of "Jaws" meta lore.

But maybe Hooper would say that "The Shark Is Still Working" gets close enough to the cage so you "can get him in the mouth."

Narrated by Scheider, who also gave his final "Jaws"-related interview prior to his death in 2008, "The Shark Is Still Working" features more than 40 interviews with cast members and professional fans, including Kevin Smith, Bryan Singer, Eli Roth, Robert Rodriguez, and M. Night Shyamalan.

Principal interviews were conducted throughout 2005 and include footage from Martha's Vineyard's "JawsFest" of that year.

The filmmakers have not secured distribution, despite enthusiastic fan support and sold out festival screenings. At a recent Sunday morning encore showing in Los Angeles, producers marveled at the turnout.

"You don't expect packed houses for documentaries at 10 a.m. in Hollywood," one said.

With "Jaws" reaching its 35th anniversary next year, producers say this series of performances, for the United Film Festivals, is "strategic." They wish, among other things, that their documentary be purchased for inclusion on future "Jaws" anniversary editions.

"We don't understand why Universal doesn't get how popular the movie still is," one said. "We made this movie because we're fans of 'Jaws' and we wanted to know everything about it."

See also: The Shark Is Still Working: The Impact & Legacy of "Jaws", The Jaws blog

Labels: carl gottlieb, documentary, jaws, premiers, richard dreyfuss, robert shaw, roy scheider, screenings, steven spielberg

After nearly two years at sea, we've recorded a series of demos in advance of a theatrical run of All That Jaws in Los Angeles. We're indebted to Erik "Great Whitis" Petraitis for his engineering services and the Bellflower Music Center for a fortuitous Baritone Horn rental.

The following songs are representative of the dozen or so pieces that make up the rock opera. We handled the vocals this time around, but the stage show will feature actual actors playing these roles.

(Click on the title to hear the song. Play it loud.)

• Show Me the Way to Indianapolis - Quint's dubious retelling of the sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis and why he won't put on a life jacket again
• Don't Close the Beaches! - The town doesn't want the beaches closed, and Quint wants a lot of money to kill the shark
  
• Brody Knew/Bigger Fish Than Most - As Alex Kintner is laid to rest, Amity's fishermen celebrate the capture of a Bigger Fish Than Most despite Hooper's and Brody's misgivings, and Mrs. Kintner confronts Brody
• I Use My Throat - Bruce tells us the only way he can love
• Unfriendly Waters - An earnest Phil Ochs-like troubador warns listeners of the Great White Finny Danger

All songs copyright 2005: Fogelfoot/Marty Barrett/Brian Descheneaux

Labels: erik petraitis, los angeles, music, sample

Some time during this next administration, you will see All That Jaws at a theatre near you.

If you are a fan of Jaws the book, you know that Hooper was indeed audacious.

Labels: hooper

Shark fisherman Frank Mundus, who said that his exploits inspired Peter Benchley's Quint character, died of a heart attack last week in Honolulu.

Benchley called Quint a "composite" character, but Mundus maintained that it was his long career in shark hunting, particularly his 1964 capture of a 2-ton great white, that was the basis for Quint, .

While Mundus didn't exit this world the way Quint did, Robert Shaw predicted Mundus' "demise" when Jaws the movie was released in 1975:

"Back home we got a taxidermy man - he's gonna have a heart attack when he sees what I brung him!"

Mundus was 82.

See also: Shark hunting maverick and 'Jaws' inspiration dies

Labels: inspiration, passages, peter benchley, quint

Two Jaws-related books any fan would find entertaining and compelling are Carl Gottlieb's "The Jaws Log" and Nigel Andrews' "jaws."

Gottlieb, primary author of the movie's screenplay as well as the film's newspaper editor, Meadows ("I put it in the back with the grocery ads"), has been able to update his newsy first-hand account of the events leading up to and through shooting Jaws every decade, as the movie's popularity continues to grow and its place in cinematic history is solidified.

"The Jaws Log" provides sketches of the journey of Peter Benchley's book from outline to publishing, detailing how little he got paid for the brunt of the work and the fortune he made as the book climbed the bestseller list and was optioned by Universal. Then Gottlieb describes the acquisition process, the selection of a young and promising Steven Spielberg as the film's director, and the grueling five-month shoot on Martha's Vineyard, including the shots Benchley and Spielberg took at each other as the movie began a life of its own apart from the pulp literary smash of 1974.

Gottlieb watches as residents of Martha's Vineyard become savvier and savvier, squeezing the harried film crew for everything from rental boats to "zoning crap." He also validates my feeling that the guys who do the scene with the "holiday roast" were bad actors.

Film critic Nigel Andrews' "jaws" is a brainy outsider's view, though it does provide insight about each of the main characters, including a deeper understanding of Robert Shaw. Andrews' book also delves into Spielberg's filmic choices, including the Hitchcockian push/pull on Brody's face on the beach, the symbolism of fences and the color yellow in the movie, and what Bruce the shark shares with killer trucks and the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Andrews is also in the camp that Brody is looking at his appendix scar.

Both books are not only indispensable for Jaws fans and the people who love them, but also cheap. They are linked to the right.

Labels: books, carl gottlieb, nigel andrews, scholarship

A shark may have been spotted off South Beach in Edgartown, Martha's Vineyard ("That's where he's been feeding," - Matt Hooper), according to a story in the Boston Globe, reprinted below.

What is especially encouraging is the persistence of the use of the word "waters" as a collective term for bodies of water, which is a central theme in "All That Jaws." Unfortunately, the article also reveals that residents of Martha's Vineyard don't remember Robert Ellsworth's costumes from the film.

Shark is reported off Martha's Vineyard
By Milton J. Valencia
Globe Staff / July 11, 2008

Lifeguards spotted what they believed was a great white shark off Martha's Vineyard yesterday, forcing the closing of beaches and prompting the inevitable references to "Jaws," the movie thriller that was filmed on the island.

The dorsal fin of the shark, sticking some 2 1/2 feet out of the water, was spotted 75 yards offshore at South Beach in Edgartown. Authorities received reports of other sightings along State Beach, on the island's northeast and the site of the opening scene of "Jaws."

"It definitely creates some excitement in town," said Trish Lyman, a resident who works at The Boneyard surf shop. "People are tentative but still excited."

Lisa Capone, spokeswoman for the state Executive Office of Environmental Affairs, said the Coast Guard received several reports of the shark sighting. The state sent a plane to scan the waters, she said, but the pilot could not confirm the sighting.

HOOPER
Didn't you notify the Coast Guard about this?

BRODY
No. It was only local jurisdiction

Though unconfirmed, the sightings left residents wondering whether they would be able to see the massive creature. Arthur Smadbeck, chairman of the Board of Selectmen, said the police chief joked to him that he ought to head to the shores with a red plaid jacket, an allusion to a character in "Jaws."

A great white shark sighting is rare, but not unheard of in Massachusetts waters, said Greg Skomal, a shark specialist with the Division of Marine Fisheries. He said the species has a range spreading from the Gulf of Mexico into Canadian waters.

In 2004, a great white was entrapped for two weeks in a salt pond not far from the island, giving Skomal and other researchers a rare opportunity to study the animal. "That was a telling sign for us that the animals are here," Skomal said.

Last year, great white sharks were believed to be feeding on the local seals. Other local sightings have been reported over the years, which Skomal attributed to a greater awareness, perhaps a fascination, with the animal. But he stressed that the greater number of reports does not necessarily translate into an influx of sharks.

Yesterday, the state took the threat seriously enough to close beaches in South Beach State Park, along the southern coastline, where lifeguards reported spotting the great white. Edgartown Police Chief Paul Condlin said local officials were acting in the best interest of public safety.

The last believed great white attack in the Massachusetts area was in 1936, Skomal said, and there are believed to be only three in history.

Smadbeck said he did not think the sighting will have a negative impact on tourism, now in the island's busiest season.

"People will be so darn curious we'll probably be inundated with people wanting to see it," he said.

Lyman pointed out that the popular Monster Shark Tournament is planned for next weekend, giving participants a benchmark as they head into the waters.

"You can just surf cast and get a winning shark," she said.

As for going down to the beach in a red plaid jacket, I have no clue who they're referring to. Neither Brody, Quint, Hooper, Harbormaster Frank Silva, nor Ben Gardner wore a red plaid jacket.

See also: Shark is reported off Martha's Vineyard

Labels: martha's vineyard, real world, robert ellsworth