Friday, June 26, 2015

"Jaws" Turns 40-- Part 5: "Here Lies the Body...."

17.  The naughty limerick Quint says before the Orca leaves to go after the shark: "Here lies the body of Mary Lee/died at the age of 107/For 15 years she kept her virginity/Not a bad record for this vicinity." was lifted from a tombstone Shaw had seen in Ireland.

18.  To pass time on the set, Spielberg and Dreyfus would sing songs by Stan Freberg.

19.  For the Orca, an old boat named the Warlock was secired.  Bit Spielberg felt it lacked character and replaced the entire wheelhouse.  Most crucially though, he added big windows on all sides so viewers would see ocean everywhere they looked-- a movie that highlighted just how isolated the three men were.

20.  The famous USS Indianapolis speech was filmed twice.  The first time Shaw was too drunk to tell it correctly.

21.  For Hooper's underwater cage scene Spielberg needed film of a real Great White.  The film he got was of one only 14-feet long, ten feet shorter than the movie one.  So he hired 4'9" stuntman Carl Rizzo and placed him a in a miniature cage.

The Ship the Navy Forgot.  --Cooter

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