HOW QUINT-ISSENTIAL LOVE FOR JAWS BONDED FATHER AND DAUGHTER FROM DAY SHE WAS BORN

Michael J Robinson shares his wonderful story of how he and his daughter Betty have bonded over Bruce and Jaws since the day of her birth. And judging by these brilliant photos, it continues to grow for the film and for father and daughter.

I was born a few weeks before Jaws opened in 1975. Don’t worry, this will skip ahead.

I never saw Jaws as a kid. Maybe bits of Jaws 3 on HBO and Revenge on VHS right when it came out. And I’ve still never seen the second one. But Jaws was always too scary. So it was avoided until college when I finally saw it all the way through.

I don’t know if it was the first time I saw it, but still the most memorable time was when my roommate and I watched it on VHS on our tiny TV. We started it a bit before sundown and the room darkened as it went on, so when the Orca sets out on her final voyage it was fully dark. I highly recommend watching it that way.

So skipping forward a decade or so. Now married and with a second child on the way. So when we go to the hospital I wear my Last Exit to Nowhere Quint’s Shark Fishing shirt. I don’t think there was any reasoning behind it. I wore (and still wear) a lot of their stuff. But there was no significance in wearing it. At least not that first day, when it ended up being what I was wearing when I first met Betty and our picture was taken.

A year later when it came time to celebrate her first birthday I remembered that picture and thought it would be fun to recreate it. So we did it again.

And again the next year…

And the year after that…

And it kept going. Every year on her birthday we’d take a picture and I’d wear my Last Exit shirt. Eventually she got her own. And we got a better camera.

It was sometime between the last two pictures that she came into the room when the rest of the family was watching Jaws and she asked what it was. We told her and said it might be too scary. She watched it anyway. And loved it. She became obsessed with sharks and Jaws was her favorite movie. So we did what I never would have done when I was a kid and took her to see Jaws in a theater when the local Alamo Drafthouse showed it for the Fourth of July. It was my first time seeing it a theater, too. We went back annually for the next two years and probably would have kept doing it if COVID hadn’t messed things up. Maybe this year. Jaws in a theater is a fantastic experience, but I probably don’t need to tell anyone reading The Daily Jaws that.

Like any good father with a Jaws-obsessed kid, I took her to meet Richard Dreyfuss.

He signed her Jaws poster and a few minutes later we met Jeffrey Kramer, who seemed surprised that she had seen the movie and even more surprised that she had seen it in a theater. He was very kind, signed her poster, and happily chatted with her for a bit about Jaws.

One thing my family enjoys is traveling and I hope to have hit all 50 states by the time I’m 50. We’ve been to a ton of filming locations and I’m fascinated by places that have turned their connection with a film into a tourist destination, like Mansfield Penitentiary from The Shawshank Redemption, or even Fargo, North Dakota, whose visitor center has the woodchipper from Fargo in it, even though none of the film was shot there and only the opening scene takes place there. Coincidentally, we live in Burkittsville, MD and I’m the town’s rep for all things Blair Witch.

Which brings us, or rather brought us to Amity.

A few years back Betty asked if we could go to where they made Jaws. So we did. We’ve been to Martha’s Vineyard twice now and still haven’t seen the whole island – we still need to see where the lighthouse is and where they built Quint’s shack (and also pay our respects to Wes Craven, who’s buried on the island with a headstone that reads “I’ll be right back.”)

But we have been to South Beach, and Edgartown, and got off the ferry where everyone disembarks for the fourth of July and hasn’t changed a bit since the 1970s.

We’ve also stopped for lunch at The Wharf Pub and Jeffrey Voorhees was kind enough to talk with us for a bit.

We’re hoping to get back. Maybe for the 50th Anniversary.

And through it all, we’ve kept taking the birthday pictures. And we will keep doing it as long as we can. Last year my Quint’s shirt finally gave out and had to be replaced. I also have to give my daughter full credit for taking Jaws from being a film that I simply really like to one of my favorite films. It’s nearly perfect (quibbles with the timeline of Chrissie’s death through July 4 aside) and I’m glad I get to share it with her.

Words by Michael J Robinson

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