Quint's Original Intro In Jaws Was Very Different
Jaws is a cinematic masterpiece, that's a given, but the introduction of one of its most loved characters was nearly very different. And was set to take place in a movie theatre.
Scripts often change and flux, and Jaws was certainly no different in that respect - new pages were often written daily by co-screenwriter Carl Gottlieb, who was scribing away on Martha's Vineyard day and night. Some scenes made the cut, others didn't, one of that didn't was the original introduction of Quint.
Now, any scene or moment with Quint (played wonderfully by Robert Shaw) is a stand out moment in a film of stand out moments and the scratching down the blackboard in the town hall, followed by the y'all know me speech is certainly one of those.
In early drafts of the film we had a very different introduction. In an early version of the Jaws script Quint was originally introduced sitting on a cinema, disrupting the audience and hollering at the screen whilst John Huston's Moby Dick plays. Laughing at how ridiculous it is.
You can almost imagine it being very similar in stke to the way we see Max Cady (Robert DeNiro) laughing at the cinema screen in the Martin Scorsese remake of Cape Fear (1991), which also featured a cameo from the original's Gregory Peck. More on him in a minute.
Originally, Spielberg was set to helm the Cape Fear remake, but he found it too violent and he and Scorsese 'swapped projects', allowing him to develop and helm Schindler's List.
If that cinema scene had been shot in Jaws, it would have been the more ironic as Quint is pretty Ahab-esque in his dogged pursuit of the shark. Also Quint's death in the original Peter Benchley is very similar to that of Ahab.
One of the early contenders for director of Jaws, Dick Richards, but he was fired after constantly referring to the shark as the whale.
It's said the cinema scene was planned but remained unshot and shelved because of Ahab himself, well the actor who played him, Gregory Peck.
The To Kill A Mocking Bird and The Omen star owned the rights to the film version of Moby Dick, but wouldn't allow Spielberg to use the footage, meaning that the introduction scene was never filmed.
It was however nothing to do with the context or the young Hollywood director, but more than Peck hates his performance in it.
Three years after Jaws, Shaw would go onto star in Force 10 From Navarone (1978) , playing Mallory, the role originally played by Peck in The Guns of Navarone.
A cinema viewing scene did make it into another Spielberg directed film later that decade, 1941 (1979), which has General Stillwell (Robert Stack) watching Dumbo on the big screen. It's also a notable film for seeing the return of several Jaws alumni, including Susan Backlinie (in a riff on her Chrissie Watkins scene) and both Murray Hamilton and Lorraine Gary.
In fact it would be Gary's last appearance on the big screen until Jaws the Revenge in 1987. Now, Quint, really would have found that one funny.
By Dean Newman
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