Drink to your legs at Frank's 'Jaws Bar'

The first movie I ever watched was Jaws. At 5 years old I remember sitting in the theatre and being so frightened during the Chrissie Watkins attack, that my mother had to take me into the lobby. After about 5 minutes, I went right back in to the theater. What I didn’t realize at 5 years old was that the first movie I ever watched, would be the best movie ever made.

I have watched Jaws over 1000 times in my lifetime. It is engrained in the fibre of my being. I recently visited Martha’s Vineyard and strangely felt, at home…. Like I had been there before. So much so, that I actually corrected our guide on filming locations! I ended up taking photos of key filming locations and even recreating some scenes with my family!

The Bar: when my mom passed 3 years ago, we decided to tear down my childhood home and we built a new home that would accommodate my elderly father. My wife took care of most of the design decisions in the house, however, the basement was mine! I knew I wanted to create a movie themed basement.

I have a wall emulating the Death Star from Star Wars and I have over 40 “behind the scenes” photos of my favorite movies. I’ve always wanted to recreate the famous ORCA as a bar and felt this was a perfect opportunity to make that happen! It took me several drafts and over one month to come up with the final design.

I sourced old barn boards for the “transom” replica, i recreated the “ORCA” monicker by drawing each letter by hand on paper to make a stencil and then cut the letters out of plywood. For the red accent strip, I used the casing that surrounded the door from my old childhood bedroom. I worked with a local woodworker to bring the design to life and added all of the details and accents based on my obsession with the film.

I collected the various accents from various sites and some are from Martha’s Vineyard. My advice to anyone looking to build something similar is use movie photos for reference and inspiration. Finalize the design before doing any work. If you love the movie as much as I do, you will be very happy with the result.

The movie has become a favorite for my children and we make it a tradition to watch the movie every Christmas, 4th of July and Halloween.

Words, images and video by Frank Fortino

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