In the words of the movies, Jaws has “wrapped,” struck its sets and stolen away in mammoth trucks. Filming of Peter Benchley’s best-selling novel, Jaws, was started by Universal Studios on the Island May 2, and for the rest of the summer caravans of trucks moved about the Island like nomads, shooting here or there - mostly there - and out at sea where no one could really get a good look at what was happening.
Forty years after its release, Jaws remains a treasured part of Island history. A look back on the summer Hollywood filmmakers descended on the Island and struggled against all odds to make a realistic-looking movie about a giant shark with a taste for human flesh.
The sky was clear, and the waxing moon was in competition with the stars of the sky, the stars of the screen, and the stars of the Island, and into this perfect setting (or set) went Islanders in best bib and tucker to see the premiere of their very own movie, Jaws.
Jawsfest should not be limited to land — that’s for wimps. Better to get out on the water; after all that’s where the sharks live. On Sunday, August 12, starting at 9:30 a.m. Seastreak’s 141-foot catamaran will be heading out to sea to view scenes from the movie including East Chop, Harthaven, State Beach and Big Bridge, Cow Bay, Edgartown and Cape Pogue.
In the winter of 1973 Joe Alves, production director for Jaws, began his quest to find the perfect setting for Amity Island.
From Montauk to Marblehead, Martha’s Vineyard was the place that met Mr. Alves’s criteria.
“Edgartown was so pristine with the white picket fences and white buildings,” he said. “It was a wonderful place to be terrified by a shark. Then when I got to Menemsha it was a great fishing village with all the little shacks. It was absolutely perfect.”
As the small island of Amity - er, Martha's Vineyard
- found out this weekend, when it comes to the movie Jaws, there
are fanatics, and then there are fin-atics.
"There is no other movie I would fly hundreds of miles to go
celebrate," a giddy Yvette Pryor of Augusta, Ga., said on Sunday.
"It's the ultimate movie."
When Paul Garcia looks back at that hectic summer 31 years ago, he mostly remembers a lot of standing around, talking baseball with the lead actor and waiting to be called to the set. For Lynn Murphy, that summer meant time in the Valerie N. towing boats, barges and shark cages across Island waters. And for Hershel West it was the summer his dog Chipper won him a speaking role in one of the biggest films of all time.
The ominous, quickening strains that can mean only one thing -
the shark is near and getting nearer - are slated to fill Ocean
Park in Oak Bluffs at an August 5 open-air screening of Jaws.
Netflix, a company that operates a DVD mail rental service, has
applied to the Oak Bluffs Park Commission to show the movie at the park
off Seaview avenue. Admission would be free. The commission was
scheduled to vote on the application last night.
