Posted on 07/03/2005 10:40:30 AM PDT by nickcarraway
MONTAUK, N.Y. - (KRT) - In the cold mist, the stoop-shouldered old man with the crushing grip looked out from the dock over the ocean and chuckled deeply.
"First time I saw that movie, I was laughing so hard I had tears in my eyes," said Frank Mundus. "It's stupid; there's no fish strong enough could pull a boat like mine forward or backward or any fishing boat."
Thirty years ago this month, that movie, "Jaws," opened, scaring Americans off the beaches with its menace and music.
Mundus, 79, is widely believed to be the model for Quint, the mean-spirited captain hired to catch the killer shark and save the summer tourist season for the fictional resort of Amity Village.
"Thirty years anniversary, yup, well, it's fiction. I hate fiction, but it was a good movie. It'll last, and a lot of what they did, the way they hunted the shark is true, just the way I did it, the barrels and all," said Mundus.
This summer, Mundus is offering what may be his last shark-fishing charters: five people, all day for $1,800.
Without question, he is a legend in this town and beyond, a master angler who's been out hunting sharks since 1951.
His belt buckle is fashioned from a harpoon dart. He's got a shark's tooth necklace, and a gold earring. He always went barefoot on his boat, and he used to paint his big toenails green and red, respectively for port and starboard.
Sometimes he's just as nasty as Quint, who was played by Robert Shaw.
His powerful grip comes from decades of pulling fishing line and hurling harpoons.
In June of `61, on his 42-foot boat Cricket II - which looks exactly like Quint's Orca - Mundus harpooned a 3,000-pound great white in 75 feet of water off the bathing beaches of Amagansett, N.Y. Later, he brought the fish to shore, and hundreds came to stare at the giant and its teeth.
"Reporters came. Photographers came, and they took pictures of my garage, same as Quint's garage, with sharks' jaws hanging in the rafters," said Mundus.
"There was another big one I caught off Amagansett later that summer, but the chamber of commerce kept it hush, hush, quiet, you know, because they didn't want to scare away the tourists, just like the movie," he said.
A few years later, there was another big catch, and Mundus got the nickname, "Monster Man."
In the mid-`60s, author Peter Benchley went fishing several times with Mundus and later wrote the best-selling novel, "Jaws," and the screenplay for the Steven Spielberg-directed movie.
At the time, Benchley said he was inspired by Mundus and his exploits, but the author maintained he researched and created his work independently.
"As I've said many times, the character of Quint in `Jaws' was not based on Frank Mundus or any other individual," Benchley said recently through his agent. "Like the other characters in the book, Quint was a composite."
"I was never consulted on the movie, never made a penny off it, never met Robert Shaw or any of the other actors," said Mundus, with no trace of bitterness. "All I ever wanted was a `thank you' from Benchley and I never got it, not in more than 30 years.
"They didn't make Quint ugly enough," Mundus said, and laughed again. "But you know that part where Quint says, `You want to see something permanent' and shows them shark bites on his body? Well take a look at this."
He rolls up his left sleeve to reveal a massively scarred and disfigured forearm. "Broken when I was a kid, and they didn't know much then and it healed badly. I used to show customers that when they complained about pulling line."
Mundus, who was born in New Jersey, moved to Brooklyn, N.Y., with his family as a toddler. He said he caught his first fish at 8 and began working as a mate on a charter boat in his teens.
"We really created the sport of shark fishing almost by accident in the early `50s because before then, sharks were thought of as `garbage' fish," said Mundus.
"You couldn't eat the big ones, anything over 150 or 200 pounds - too tough and gritty - but when we caught some of those giants, suddenly all the customers wanted to go out for shark, and I was the one who knew how to get `em."
Mundus' shark-fishing techniques were highly controversial. For bait, he would often harpoon whales, shoot them, drag them back to shore and chop up their blubber.
Back at sea, Mundus would ladle the blubber into the water until the sharks came. Then he would harpoon them with lines attached to barrels, letting the sharks run to exhaustion before pulling them in.
"All true," Mundus conceded readily. "I'd shoot `em with my .30-caliber carbine, but I never used a harpoon gun; too unreliable. I threw them myself.
"Of course, you can't do any of that now, hunt whales, or hunt great whites. They're an endangered species," he said.
Mundus also set a rod-and-reel record for a great white during the summer of 1986: a 3,427-pound giant caught 30 miles off Montauk with a 130-pound-test line. By then he was a celebrity, and the Quint comparisons multiplied.
Unlike Quint, Mundus was a family man. He married, had three children, and then grandchildren.
"Quint was an irresponsible fisherman. Frank never was," said Joe Di Bello, who worked with Mundus as a mate and bought the Cricket II when Mundus retired to a farm in Hawaii in 1991.
As he reminisced over two evenings at the Star Island Yacht Club dock, Mundus sat at a table and signed autographs for fishermen and their children. He also sold copies of his paperback book, "Monster Man," and postcards featuring him with one of his great catches.
An acquaintance who collects "Jaws" memorabilia produced several barrels from the movie along with Quint's jacket, and Mundus posed obligingly.
The occasion was the 19th annual shark-hunting tournament, sponsored by the Star Island Yacht Club. It featured $668,000 in prizes, with 222 boats going out each day.
Many of the boats are much bigger than Mundus' 42-footer, docked at the marina.
Mundus' craft is a heavy boat, hand-built in 1946, with 2-inch-thick wood planks on the deck and sides.
"Seaworthy" said Mundus, adding that neither he nor his customers ever suffered a shark bite, although he had several close calls.
"It's all different now," said Mundus. "The sharks are all getting fished out, they're killing the small ones, and we never did that even before conservation and (shark) tagging began."
He looked over at the station where the tournament catches were being weighed. The eventual winners in different species were a 260-pound mako, a 284-pound blue and a 467-pound thresher.
"Things aren't what they used to be," he muttered.
Good one Nick - thanks!
I've got his book, pretty awesome.
I'm watching Jaws on TMC as I type. I'm kinda surprised they're playing it considering what's happened lately. But then again, maybe that's why.
I've seen this movie many times, but I guess because of the shark attacks, I paid close attention to Quint's description of the fate of the survivors of the Indianapolis during WWII. Truly frightening and heartbreaking.
The 3,427 lb White Shark: The Largest Fish On Rod and Reel
Angler Donnie Braddick and I with the 3,427 lb white
shark at Montauk Marine BasinThis shark was a little
over 17 feet long and took us an hour and forty minutes
to put the first gaff into it and then, after struggling
for another hour, we finally got the fish secured with a
tail rope, and dragged it home behind the boat.
Back at the dock at midnight, it took us another three or
four hours to weigh in the fish, take photos and put him
on a bed of ice for the night at Montauk Marine Basin.
This picture shows where we brought him out in the
morning to be examined by National Marine Fisheries
Service scientists Jack Casey, Wes Pratt and their crew
from the lab at Narragansett, Rhode Island.
"Here's to swimmin' with bow-legged women!"
Thirty years ago today.... Damn I am getting old.
read the book about the sinking and aftermath. it's amazing
and depressing.
It was the 4th of July weekend in the movie.
Ah! Makes sense, especially in light of playing it after the recent shark attacks.
Life imitating art or vice versa?
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