No, but maybe San Francisco...
Posted on 09/18/2020 3:28:04 PM PDT by Capt. Tom
The blockbuster film Jaws has been a perennial favorite here on Martha’s Vineyard since its release 45 years ago.
The epic 1975 feature film, shot on the Vineyard in iconic places like the picturesque fishing village of Menemsha, pits a fictional seaside tourist town called Amity against a villainous great white shark whose fearsome triangular teeth—300 of them—bite and kill unsuspecting townspeople and summer visitors enjoying the local Atlantic Ocean waters.
Jaws played recently at a COVID-safe drive-in theater here, allowing viewers to scream in the privacy of their own cars.
The movie took a deep dive into the psyche of audiences—and ocean swimmers—creating a larger-than-life fictional movie monster that evoked perpetual fear of the great white shark.
“The book and film exaggerated the white shark’s behavior. The white shark in the film was far larger than normal—about 25 feet—while the largest animals in the wild are typically 15 to 18 feet,” says Greg Skomal, a fisheries biologist and well-known shark expert with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries.
When Jaws came out, “relatively little was known about the white shark. We know a lot more now about white shark ecology, distribution and natural history,” says Skomal. Studies of the white shark species, Carcharodon carcharias, show its critical role in keeping the marine ecosystem in balance, exerting top-down forces on the food web that help hold other ocean species in check.
Nonetheless, when attacks do occur, they draw incredible publicity. In July, a wetsuit-wearing 63-year-old woman swimming in the chilly Gulf of Maine waters was killed by a great white shark—the first such death in Maine’s history. In September 2018, a 26-year-old man boogie boarding off Massachusetts’ Cape Cod was killed by a shark, the first shark attack fatality in the state since 1936.
(Excerpt) Read more at scientificamerican.com ...
I have never understood scary movies that featured monsters or threats from creatures who live in the ocean. Um, just stay out of it. No giant octopus is going to crawl up to Iowa any time soon.
That might be technically correct but I distinctly remember a recommendation that children under 13 be accompanied by a parent.
Yes, the Richard Dreyfus character didn't survive in the book and also had an affair with Brody's wife. (Personally I feel that any movie that features Richard Dreyfus dying is a good movie) The novel is basically a reworking of Moby Dick with Quint as a discount Ahab.
Im sure he did not regret the money.
Oceans? Shark attacks have occurred up the Mississippi River to Minnesota and on the Great Lakes. Far up rivers on the Gulf & East Coast rivers.
“How lucky do you feel, or are you afraid of flying also?”
I did most of my sky diving at a company that had the highest injury and death rate anywhere in the US.
No, but maybe San Francisco...
It’s a good thing we have scientists around to explain to us that a fictional movie is ... well, fictional.
Benchley only exaggerated what happened in New Jersey in 1916. A White Shark started munching on swimmers along the shore and eventually ended up in Matawan creek where it took an 11 year old boy and killed an adult. It also injured another man before two men fishing killed it.
...“Crummy science is what Scientific American is all about these days...”
When I started reading Sci. Amer. it required graduate level understanding in the field to fully understand an article, it has been gradually dumbed down to high school level, and worse, politically polluted to unreadable.
I caught 30 flounder in a small dinghy in Boston Harbor out of Quincy (the Qunicy Flounder Fleet) many years ago...:)
We brought so much beer out with us that the guy watching us who rented the boats said “Are you guys going drinking or fishing?” to which we enthusiastically replied “Both!”
Hm...times were different then.
But I can’t imagine getting that many blue sharks in a day-that WOULD require some beer when you got back in to regain your strength!
It was PG rated, and there were complaints about that, but the studio had too much clout for it to be rated R.
Keep an eye out for the Van Meter flying monster in Iowa, that looks like a human with a horn on its head and has bat wings. That little town is just west of De Moines. -Tom
Red Dawn was the first PG-13 movie.
Wolverines!
Right off the bat, they piss me off by complaining that the shark in Jaws was too big. How could they write an entire article on Jaws without appreciating THE Jaws meme, “You’re going to need a bigger boat”
Oh well, not the first time I have been wrong. Not even the first time I have been wrong today.
You’re absolutely right.
What do they mean, crummy science? I saw the shark for myself. In the water. At Universal Studios.
Can't wait till they analyze Sharknado and try to convince us it can't happen..............Sheesh!
Yep - it’s one of the few books I’ve read where the movie was WAY better than the book. Hooper & Mrs. Brody having an “affair” was totally unnecessary.
(one other was “The Moonspinners” by Mary Stewart but I doubt anyone here, other than me, has ever read that book :P )
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