Is Quint A Murderer?
Is Quint from Jaws a murderer?
That's the fanciful theory being put forward by Ben Dreyfuss, the son of Jaws star Richard Dreyfuss who played Matt Hooper in the Spielberg classic.
He put forward his theory on Twitter, claiming that it could have been Quint that killed rival fisherman, Ben Gardner, rather than the shark.
It was of course Matt Hooper who was greeted by Ben Gardner's lifeless head when he went to investigate the wreckage of his boat late at night.
We know that Quint, played by the mighty Robert Shaw, was obsessed with reeking revenge on sharks - who wouldn't be after surviving in shark-infested waters after the sinking of the USS Indianapolis and seeing all your friends devoured - but murder? C'mon!
Sure, he'd asked for €10,000 in front of the whole down to deliver the head, the tail, the whole damn thing, so that is a lot of money but by the end of the film we all admire and understand Quint. He may be "colourful" as Chief Brody calls him, but he is certainly no killer of people.
Did Quint kill Ben Gardner?
Not that he couldn't, he's former Navy, but we'd suspect boat propellor, coral reef or Jack The Ripper over Quint. Not that there is any need to. It was the shark. Hooper himself admitting that the stretch of water where they had found Gardner is where the shark had been feeding.
Craig Kingsbury, who played Ben Gardner joked about how the shark spat the head back in the boat.
Ben Dreyfuss has even sent a 900 word email examining his theory to Jaws co-screenwriter, Carl Gottlieb, and has asked for a response. Ben had previously written to his dad, who called his claims "idiotic". So what do you think?
