JAWS 2 and the Mandela effect
Hello, Islanders!
As I look at the clock I realize that exactly 45 years ago today my friends and I were standing in line, intent on being the first to buy tickets for JAWS 2 at the Britton Cinema in Tampa, Florida. There was a young man already in line ahead of us so I offered to buy his ticket. He agreed and so, to paraphrase the newspaper advertising that featured Chrissie Watkins for JAWS, “we were the first!”
One urban legend of the film, which I comment on in the book “Jaws 2: the Making of the Hollywood Sequel,” is even more bizarre because if only effects the people of Ireland. For years, I had read many comments on message boards from viewers in Ireland that swore that the version of JAWS 2 that ran on RTE included a shot of Marge, the young woman that saves Sean Brody before she is taken by the shark, actually INSIDE the shark’s mouth! This always intrigued me, so I made sure to do some major research. Here is my finding: UNTRUE!
In order to investigate all possible scenarios, I spoke directly to the (4) people that would know the truth – director Jeannot Szwarc, Associate Producer and Production Designer Joe Alves and the two actors involved in the scene, Martha Swatek and Marc Gilpin. If anyone would know the truth it would be them. All of them denied that any such scene had ever been shot. In fact, thanks to the perspective, even though it looks like the shark is right on top of Marge when it comes out of the water, it was actually about 10-feet from her. You can imagine the comments I received after I debunked the rumor. Some examples:
1. Original director John Hancock shot the scene with stuntpeople, so neither Martha or Marc were aware of the scene. TRUTH: Mr. Hancock never directed a frame of film on the Florida location and the shark was not working well enough for him to have shot it while the crew was on Martha’s Vineyard. And, yes, I asked Mr. Hancock and he denied ever filming such a scene.
2. Joe Alves, who also served as Assistant Director, filmed the scene. TRUTH: Mr. Alves denies this suggestion, stating he was not involved with any scene dealing with this part of the film.
3. To make the film more exciting, Universal had someone film the scene in a tank at the studio, using stunt people. They then edited the footage into the television version sent to Ireland. I even had someone send me a “clip” from the film, obviously homemade. The clip featured a beautiful, clear shot of Marge and Sean climbing up onto the boat, with the shark rising. It then cut to a horribly made, and incredibly dark, scene featuring a shark eating something, then back to Sean screaming while on top of the overturned boat. It was obvious that this was not a true clip from the film, especially since the “shark” seen looked about as much like a great white shark as I do.
So what happened? To me the answer is simple. Young fans watching the movie let their imaginations take over, picturing in their heads Marge in the shark’s mouth. They then go and talk to their friends, who also watched it. “How cool was that seeing Marge in the shark’s mouth,” one would ask, and his friends would nod and agree. Soon Marge in the shark’s mouth was not an exception to fans in Ireland, but the norm and, even sooner, fans were convinced they had seen the shot. This is known as the Mandela Effect, a term that refers to a situation in which a large number of people believes that an event occurred when it did not. The term was originated in 2009 by Fiona Broome, after she discovered that she, along with masses others, believed that Nelson Mandela had died in the 1980s (Mr. Mandela passed away in 2013). And while this urban legend is easily debunked, the fact that this only happened in Ireland continues to puzzle me.
Words by Michael A Smith. Michael is co-author of Jaws 2: The Making Of The Hollywood Sequel. You can order the book by contacting Michael at OsFanMike@aol.com.
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