3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Condé Nast Traveler
The Jaws Guide to Martha's Vineyard, 50 Years Later
I've been a movie fan all my life, and Jaws was, for me, the right film at the right moment in my life: It was fantastically suspenseful, and the sea story that makes up the last third of the film was incredibly exciting. But I think that even 12-year-old me recognized that there was more to it than just 'who's the monster going to eat next?' Or 'how are we going to kill the monster?' As an adult, when I lived far from the Vineyard, watching Jaws was an easy way to 'go home' without having to drive a thousand miles or buy a plane ticket.
What's your greatest memory on set?
I was on the set for one day in late June, when they shot the 'cardboard fin' scene on State Beach. When the assistant director announced through his bullhorn that 'we need 100 brave people to get in the water and play the crowd,' a friend and I volunteered. My overwhelming memory of it was that the water was incredibly cold and—even far from the beach—extremely shallow, only waist deep. We had to pretend that we were splashing and having fun in water over our heads. When we got the signal to 'panic' and swim for the beach, we acted like we were swimming in deep water; we couldn't stand up until the last possible moment. It took 5 or 6 takes—which felt like 10 or 12—until the director—not Spielberg, probably first assistant director Tom Joyner—was satisfied.
Over the last 50 years, so much and so little has changed since Jaws was filmed here at Martha's Vineyard.
Pamela Schall/Getty
Steven Spielberg, at 27 years old, faced a failing mechanical shark and an unpredictable ocean at Martha's Vineyard.
Edith Blake/Martha's Vineyard Museum
Why do you think Martha's Vineyard was such a great location for the film?
Martha's Vineyard is bigger and more diverse (culturally, geographically, economically) than Amity Island, but it has many of the same qualities: a mixture of working-class locals and wealthy summer people, dependence on tourist dollars, arguments about whether or not to do something that might benefit the community in the long run, but might also hurt tourism in the short term. Filming on the Vineyard made Amity feel like a real place and its residents feel like real people.
What special locations around the Vineyard can people still visit to commemorate the film?
Downtown Edgartown, which 'played' the village of Amity, still looks very much like it did in the movie. You can walk the same route that Chief Brody takes along Davis Lane, South Water Street, and Main Street as he strides from the police department to the hardware store, and stand on the same docks where the fishermen of Amity showed off their tiger shark.
Menemsha, where they temporarily built Quint's shack, and filmed the scenes of the Orca loading and departing, still looks very much like it did. The ferry terminal in Vineyard Haven has two slips instead of one now, but Jaws fans disembarking there last weekend were overheard saying excitedly, 'Oh my God! I feel like I'm walking through that scene in the film where people are arriving for the Fourth of July!'
State Beach between Oak Bluffs and Edgartown, where the two panic scenes—as well as Chrissie's run into the water on her ill-fated nighttime swim—were filmed, still looks just like it did in 1974. There are no striped cabanas and hot dog stands in the dunes; those were built by the production crew for the film. You can stand on the bridge that the shark swam under to eat the man in the red rowboat (and almost eat Mike Brody). Hundreds of people jump off it every day, despite signs warning you not to. It's now known especially to tourists as 'Jaws bridge,' though some old-timers grumble about that not being the real name.
