Recently released by Peter Benchley’s widow Wendy on the new PeterBenchley.com website, this RARE video features Peter interviewing JAWS producers David Brown and Richard Zanuck, Steven Spielberg, and Robert Shaw. Shaw is wearing a yellow JAWS t-shirt for his interview, backed by 70s porn music.
Quint has been recreated for JAWSFest: The Tribute! Nick Marra created this silicon likeness for Greg Nicotero’s JAWS display at the upcoming JAWS event. For the first JAWSFest, Nicotero created a life-size bust of the shark. The creation and unveiling of the shark was documented in The Shark is Still Working, out August 14th on the JAWS Blu-ray.
Nicotero, of
KNB EFX, is a life-long JAWS fan. Be sure to check out AMC’s The Walking Dead to see Nicotero’s zombies in action.
Check it out, “Quint’s Fish Paste” by JimmyC. Jimmy says, “I’m a big fan of the movie Jaws and the captain of the Orca, Quint, who is one of my heroes and an icon of film history. The movie was released in the year I was born so it holds a special place in my life.”
Vote it up on Threadless here: http://www.threadless.com/submission/308387/Quint_s_Paste
I found a nice caricature of Quint as he sat in front of the Amity town council. Evidently it was published in the April 2008 issue of Paracinema magazine. The artist of the sketch is Dan Springer.
More info here:
It’s been a couple weeks since Frank Mundus (an inspiration for Quint) has passed away, but I found an interesting retrospective article about him and his book, Captain Frank Mundus, Shark Man: Master Hunter of the Deep. Here’s what the post author had to say about the book:
“That book was full of tales of Mundus as a youth, learning to fish off Long Island, getting in scrapes with the sea and its sometimes dangerous denizens. Deep dark, cold waters is where Mundus explored his limits and that of the beasts he sought. Shark Man was a book I read over and over again. I think the last time I picked it up was when I was 15 or 16. This was tales of danger and excitement, this book excited my imagination and got me wishing I was out there, hard living and hard playing (I know I was just 7, but you have to appreciate I had a vivid imagination.)”.
You can read the full article here.
Check out Frank Mundus’ autobiograpy:
Fifty Years A Hooker (great title!)
Jaws. The defining film in my life. The first film I remember seeing as a child remains my favorite film of all time. Steven Spielberg was a Wellesian 26 years old when he directed this masterpiece and it forever changed the landscape of the Worldwide Box Office, the film formula and Hollywood’s marketing machines.
Based on the novel by Peter Benchley, Jaws tells the simple story of a small New England town terrorized by a great white shark but it’s in the 2nd act with what starts as a simple horror story turns into a Moby Dick tale at sea fueled by the 3 archetypes of Chief Brody, Matt Hooper, and Quint, our salty Ahab.
As much as it’s been compared to Melville’s Moby Dick, I don’t recall Dick giving people true fear. What Hitch did with Psycho and shower curtains, Spielberg to this day makes me think of what’s underneath me whenever I step foot into the ocean.
The film is perfect and I chose a very simple sequence too look at. A sequence which on the page was 3 sentences long. Keep this is mind all of you ‘page a minute’ sticklers. How would you have shot this? How many cuts? You know the drill. Read the quick passage from the script and then let’s have a look at it, shot by shot:
See the shot by shot analysis at Cineobscure …
Lost Interviews from the 70s
by Dan Ward/Jake Gove
‘New England Our Way’ TV show (1974)
Thanks to Dan Ward for providing a copy of the 1974 TV program New England Our Way. The program is a fascinating look some at the key people involved with JAWS before it was released. It contains interviews with the “big three” of Scheider, Dreyfuss and Shaw, Steven Spielberg, and Martha’s Vineyard local Craig Kingsbury, who played Ben Gardner. Check out the video clips below:
Robert Shaw (Quint) discusses filming his death scene.
Shaw on Death Scene
Robert Shaw on what he does between shots to alleviate boredom.
Shaw on Boredom
Roy Scheider (Brody) on the “time it takes for takes”.
Scheider on Takes
Richard Dreyfuss (Hooper), talks about his performance in JAWS.
Dreyfuss on Acting
More editing fun from YouTube, this clip features and extended, gorier, version of Quint’s death:
Frank Mundus
From the NY Daily News:
Frank Mundus, the legendary Long Island shark hunter widely credited as the inspiration for the crotchety skipper in “Jaws,” has died in Hawaii. He was 82.
Known as Monster Man, Mundus caught an untold number of sharks in the waters off Montauk since he began fishing there on his boat, the Cricket, in the early 1950s.
“It’s definitely the end of an era,” Mundus’ boat mate for the past four years, Capt. Rick Freda, told the News. “Frank was definitely a legend and he’ll really be missed among all the fishermen.”
The colorful skipper caught a 3,427-pound great white in 1986, breaking the record for the heaviest fish ever caught with a rod and reel.
Mundus also claims to have harpooned a 4,500-pound great white in 1964.
It was that fish, Mundus claimed, that led his friend Peter Benchley to pen the novel “Jaws,” in which a salty shark hunter named Quint is hired to kill a colossal great white. The book was turned into an Oscar-winning movie in 1975.
Among the oddest things Mundus has said he found inside a shark’s stomach were a rabbit and one of his own business cards, which had been tossed in a can of chum.
Mundus, who always wore a shark tooth on a gold chain around his neck, retired to Hawaii in the 1990s but often returned to Montauk to fish.
He was there over the summer and caught 20 sharks in 20 days, Freda said. “He had a smile on his face as he caught the last sharks of his life,” he said.
Mundus died in a Honolulu hospital from complications of a heart attack he suffered at Kona International Airport on Sept. 6, the day he returned from New York, relatives said.
He is survived by his wife, Jenny, and his three daughters; Barbara, Patricia and Tammy.
Robert Shaw (1927-1978) played Amity’s most colorful character, the Ahab-like Quint, who offers to kill the shark. Quint has a reason to hate sharks; he was a survivor of a harrowing incident during World War II, which he reveals in a chilling scene. The town is initially unwilling to pay Quint’s bounty of $10,000, and instead offers up $3,000, which prompts amateur shark hunters for miles around to take to the seas. The townspeople finally give in to Quint’s demands, and he heads out in his old boat, the Orca to do battle with the shark.
Robert Shaw was an accomplished actor, author, and playwright when Steven Spielberg cast him in JAWS. A Best Supporting Actor nominee for A Man For All Seasons (1966), Mr. Shaw had several memorable roles, including the James Bond film From Russia With Love (1963), The Sting (1973) and Black Sunday (1977).
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