Why Quint's 'Indianapolis Speech' in Jaws is the greatest movie monologue ever

Any actor should welcome a big juicy monologue with open arms. It means you’ve got more lines to learn and you’ll have to bring your A-Game every day, but you’ll be remembered. The same can’t be said for those who plumped for movies stuffed with CGI or tie-ins to theme park rides. Let’s look at some of the best:

Samuel L Jackson as Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction (1994)

Jules recites Ezekiel 25:17 from the Bible because he thinks it’s “…a cold-blooded thing to say…” before killing someone. Jules is smart, he understands the power of a great speech. Who expects this level of verbiage from a man holding a gun? It is theatre, a distraction before the bullet. It’s the sound of the words, how they flow and the meter that really sells the speech. And perhaps the reason Jules is quoting the ‘Old Testament’ is because that’s exactly what he’s about to unleash.

Morgan Freeman as Red in The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

Red is in his parole hearing and you can see the resignation on his face, he knows this is just a box ticking exercise. Why bother trying to please these men? So, he tells it like it is. “Rehabilitated? Well, now let me see. You know, I don’t have any idea what that means. I know what you think it means, sonny. To me, it’s just a made up word, a politician’s word, so that young fellas like yourself can wear a suit and a tie and have a job. What do you really wanna know? Am I sorry for what I did? There’s not a day goes by I don’t feel regret. Not because I’m in here. Or because you think I should. I look back on the way I was then, a young stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I wanna talk to him. I wanna try to talk some sense to him - tell him the way things are. But I can’t. That kid’s long gone and this old man is all that’s left. I gotta live with that. Rehabilitated? It’s just a bullshit word. So you go and stamp your form, sonny, and stop wasting my time. Because to tell you the truth, I don’t give a shit.” In Freeman’s mellifluous voice, the words say everything you need to know about the hopelessness he’s feeling.

Orson Welles as Harry Lime in The Third Man (1949)

Holly Martin, a writer, arrives in Vienna as a guest of Harry. But discovers his friend’s been killed. Holly suspects all is not as it seems when he hears about a ‘third man’ at the scene of Harry’s murder. He sets about trying to uncover the truth. Finally he catches up with a very much alive Harry who explain why he’s now operating outside the law. Being good is pointless - and in some ways its more productive for the world to be bad. “…we’ve always done everything together. When you make up your mind, send me a message - I’ll meet you any place, any time, and when we do meet old man, it’s you I want to see, not the police. remember that, won’t ya? Don’t be so gloomy. After all, it’s not that awful. You know what the fellow said - in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace - and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long Holly.”

Robert Shaw as Quint in Jaws (1975)

So now we step aboard the Orca, where strong liquor has brought on a competitively jovial game of ‘Look at my scar’ between Brody, Hooper and Quint. The mood darkens however, when Brody asks about one on Quint’s forearm.

And so begins the most perfectly written monologue in film history.

“Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into her side, Chief. We was comin’ back from the island of Tinian to Leyte. We’d just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes.

Didn’t see the first shark for about a half-hour. Tiger. 13 footer. You know how you know that in the water, Chief? You can te by looking from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn’t know, was that our bomb mission was so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn’t even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin’ by, so we formed ourselves into tight groups. It was sorta like you see in the calendars, you know the infantry squares in the old calendars like the Battle of Waterloo and the idea was the shark come to the nearest man, that man he starts poundin’ and hollerin’ and sometimes that shark he go away…but sometimes he wouldn’t go away.

Sometimes that shark looks right at ya. Right into your eyes. And the thing about a shark is he’s got lifeless eyes, black eyes. Like a doll’s eyes. When he comes at ya, he doesn’t even seem to be livin’…til he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then…ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin’. The ocean turns red, and despite all your poundin’ and your hollerin’ those sharks come in and…they rip you to pieces.

You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don’t know how many sharks there were, maybe a thousand. I do know how many men, they averaged six an hour. Thursday mornin’ Chief, I bumped into a fiend of mine. Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player, Boson’s mate. I thought he was asleep. I reached over to wake him up. He bobbed up, down in the water, he was like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he’d been bitten in half below the waist.

At noon on the fifth day, a Lockheed Ventura swung in low and he spotted us, a young pilot, lot younger than Mr. Hooper here, anyway he spotted us and a few hours later a big ol’ fat PBY come down and started to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened. Waitin’ for my turn. I’ll never put on a life jacket again. So eleven hundred men went into the water. 316 men come out, the sharks took the rest. June the 29th, 1945.

Anyway, we delivered the bomb.”

It’s incredible in both depth and scope. It’s the formation of a man, revealing why he’s like he is. In a lesser film, Quint would’ve just been a shark hunter and we might never be told why. Jaws is 124 minutes long, which was quite long for the 70s. Nowadays, we regularly see movies clocking in at 2.5 hours or even longer and they quite often really feel it, but not Jaws. The attacks weren’t drawn out affairs (and there’s only 5 of them), each piece of the story is there for a reason. Quint’s incredibly open as he talks, and for someone so emotionally unintelligent and closed off, it’s nothing short of miraculous. Instead of a psychiatrist’s couch, he’s on a grubby bench seat on the Orca, exposing himself to the sort of scrutiny you didn't think he’d ever seek out. Then again, this might just be Quint telling one last horror story. After all, the game of scars is over, he’s not the sort to let another man have the last word. He’s got to be top dog at all costs.

The speech doesn’t appear in the novel, but Spielberg knew he had to add something to his adventure story to give it meaning. All he had to do now was get someone to write the damn thing.

The final monologue was a combination of work by screenwriter Howard Sackler, Speilberg’s friend, John Milius and Robert Shaw. Spielberg maintains Shaw brought in 9 pages Milius had written, after having read Sackler’s 2 page treatment. In the end though, Shaw knew it couldn’t be that long, so asked to take a crack at it. He returned with a 5 page speech and that’s what was used. Shaw said that it was his “one chance I get to act in the entire drama” but having to actually speak the words made him sick. His remedy? To get so drunk he had to be carried onto set. To start with, everything went fine but then Shaw wandered off-script, rambling about his family, and finally ground to an inebriated halt. Spielberg, ever the mediator, told Shaw it had gone brilliantly, gave the actor a hug and sent him home. Shaw sobered up at 3am and rang Spielberg to ask for a reshoot. Take two was word perfect.

The monologue made Jaws a movie to listen to and to think about, not just watch for a couple of hours (and 4 minutes). It had its roots in Shakespeare, Poe and Melville. It’s eerie, violent and tragic recounted by a man who maybe knows his days are numbered, with death circling below.

Words by Tim Armitage

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