Production designer Joe Alves had planned to scout Nantucket for the movie Jaws when his ferry was turned around. He ended up on Martha's Vineyard instead, forever changing the Island.
Titled Creating Amity Island, the new exhibit at the Martha's Vineyard Museum brings together behind-the-scenes photos and collectibles from the now-historic 1974 production that made the Vineyard famous to millions of viewers around the world.
Ms. Blake cut a colorful figure in Edgartown society for decades and famously documented the filming of the movie Jaws on Martha’s Vineyard in the summer of 1974.
In 1974, Universal Studios sent a new young director to the Island to make a movie about a big shark terrorizing a little town. The plan was to spend five weeks and 3.5 million dollars. The reality was a film shoot that stretched to over five months and a cost overrun to more than 8 million dollars.
The director was Steven Spielberg, the movie was Jaws, and the bottom line was history. Three Academy Awards. The first movie to earn $100 million from American audiences. The first to be released on more than 450 screens at once.
Boats since the beginning of time have been built to float, or at least that’s the object, but Universal Studios (which of late does the unusual) has built a boat to sink. It sounds a bit odd, and frankly it looks a bit odd.
