Part one covered Chief Brody. Part two was Matt Hooper. So in this final chapter, I'm going to take a look at the changes that were made to the script that involved everyone's favorite shark hunter, Quint.
Quint has some really excellent, show-stopping scenes in Jaws. Two of my favorites are his initial intro scene, and the famous Indianapolis scene.
Meet Quint
First off, his intro scene. Which was not originally intended to be his intro scene. In fact, Quint's original intro scene was cut from the final film, but here it is, thanks to the magic of the intertubes:
Yup. In both versions of the script, Quint heads into a music store to buy some #12 piano wire and decides to take a little time out of his busy day to torment a small child. There's a little tweaking between drafts, but it's pretty much the same scene.
It's not a bad scene; short, effective, funny, and a pretty good primer for Quint's general crustiness. But it feels a little extraneous to the plot, and the movie is certainly tighter without it. Had it been left in, this scene would have taken place shortly before the attack on Alex Kintner.
Now, let's take a look at Quint's introduction in the final film, which takes place after the shark eats Alex. The town council is in a panic; half the townspeople are afraid of the shark, but the other half is afraid of the business they'll lose if the mayor closes the beaches. Meanwhile, Alex Kintner's mother has offered a $3000 reward to whoever can catch the shark that ate her kid:
Jesus Christ, what a scene. The world grinds to a screeching halt while Quint makes his offer to the townspeople. It's a fantastic speech, peppered with some great bits of foreshadowing (emphasis mine):
QUINT
(after taking
a deep breath)
You all know me. You know what I
do for a living. I'll go out and
get this bird for you. He's a bad
one and it's not like goin' down
the pond chasing blue-gills and
tommy-cods. This is a fish that
can swallow a man whole. A little
shakin', a little tenderizing and
down ya' go.
Quint is, of course, describing his own death in the jaws (ahem) of the shark:
A little shakin', a little tenderizing...
So, this scene works great on a couple levels. It's a very memorable introduction to the character of Quint, it nicely outlines the dilemma facing the town, and it foreshadows some of the action ahead. Most notably, Quint describes his own death in his very first scene. Trippy.
The speech is mostly there in the later (Gottlieb) version of the script, with a few things missing:
56 ANGLE ON QUINT, THE MAN IN THE BACK OF THE ROOM 56
He has just run his large, coarse fingernails over the black-
board. He is a large, rough man, a professional fisherman
marked by daily physical toil, About 45 or 50, it's hard to
tell where the scars leave off and the wrinkles begin. There
is a bit of the showman in him, as well as a bit of killer-
whale.
QUINT
(after taking
a deep breath)
You all know me. You know what I
do for a living. I'll go out and
get this bird for you. He's a bad
one and it's not like goin' down
the pond chasing blue-gills and
tommy-cods. This is a fish that
can swallow a man whole. A little
shakin', a little tenderizing and
down ya' go.
(a look to Vaughn)
You gotta get this fellow and get
him quick. If you do, it'll bring
a lot of tourist business just to
see him and you've got your busi-
ness back on a paying basis.
(beat)
A shark of that size is no pleasure
and I value my neck at a hell of a
lot more'n 3,000 bucks.
(a deadly look)
I'll find him for three. But I'll
kill him for ten.
Crowd reaction.
(he rises up)
The bastard is costing you more'n
that every day. Do you wanna stay
alive and annee up the ten or play
it cheap and be on welfare next
winter.
(a final moment)
I'm gonna kill this thing...just a
matter of whether I do it now -- or
at the end of summer.
VAUGHN
Thank you very much, Mr. Quint,
the Selectmen will take your offer
under advisement.
The lines about Quint not wanting any mates must have been added later, as was "For that you get the head, the tail, the whole damn thing." Which really just caps the whole thing off nicely, doesn't it? In the film, Quint then gets up and walks about, followed by his... friend? Associate? Assistant? Gimp? The weird guy with the dog, whoever he is.
Now let's take a look at this speech in the original version of the script, to see how much it changed.
Oh, wait, we can't do that, because in the original version of this scene, Quint isn't even there.
Seriously. Imagine that scene again, but instead of Quint, it's the weird little gimp guy, whose name is apparently Salvatore (in this version, anyway. Looks like it's Herschel in the other version). Salvatore shows up at the meeting and delivers the offer from Quint.
Honest. It's right here:
Vaughn opens the door to the Bureau of Records. About two
dozen children sit around, twisting multi-colored Kleenex
into artificial flowers for the big parade. Vaughn turns
his face into a condescending grin.
VAUGHN
Could the big people have a grownup
meeting in here, please, children.
CHILD SPOKESMAN
Get lost.
A voice from behind Vaughn draws him away. It is a small
but muscular black man named Salvatore.
SALVATORE'S VOICE
Mr. Vaughn?
He steps out of the shadows, hat in hand.
SALVATORE
Mister Quint sent me down from
Jacobstown.
VAUGHN
What for?
SALVATORE
Well...he out catchin' them things
every day practily. Price's right,
he come catch yours here.
VAUGHN
What's he get?
SALVATORE
Ten thousand and a color TV.
VAUGHN
(outraged)
How much?
SALVATORE
Twenty-seven inch. Japanese one.
Vaughn studies the little blinking man, ready to laugh.
VAUGHN
Mister Quint's services are not
required, thanks.
(stopping a secretary)
Is there an empty office anywhere
in this goddam building?
SECRETARY
Weights and Measures nobody ever
uses.
Vaughn starts away and the crowd follows.
DENHERDER
I'd haul it in myself before I'd
pay anything to that maniac...you
wanna hear what he did to three
friends of mine on a Saint Valentine's
Day sporting charter?
Well. That was a little different huh? Assuming they'd kept the music store scene, I wonder if you'd even remember who Quint was while Salvatore was talking about him?
The Indianapolis
Of course, the intro scene isn't the only amazing Quint speech in the film.
As the sun sets on their first full day of shark-chasing, Quint, Brody, and Hooper sit in the galley, comparing tattoos and then... aw hell, who am I kidding? Here's the scene:
Again, a show-stopper. This scene was about as true a group effort as you can get in screenwriting, with Benchley, Gottlieb, John Milius, and Robert Shaw all taking a crack at the famous monologue. In the end, it was Shaw's version that resonated, and the result is what you see in the film.
Let's go back to the early script, Benchley's version, to see how this scene started out:
Hooper shrugs. Quint hands him the bottle. Hooper cocks
his head, noticing a scar patch on Quint's right forearm.
HOOPER
How'd you get that one?
Quint, staring out to sea, doesn't seem to hear Hooper.
The signal light disappears.
QUINT
Down again.
HOOPER
(persisting)
The scar on your arm.
QUINT
(detached)
Had a tattoo there.
HOOPER
(jocular)
Changed your mind about somebody?
QUINT
(shaking his head)
It said 'U.S.S. Indianapolis.'
191 CLOSE - HOOPER 191
His face falls as he hears this. Quint looks at him ironi-
cally.
QUINT
Guess you experts know about that.
Once again Quint turns his eyes to the sea.
HOOPER
(gravely)
You were on her? June '45?
QUINT
(flat and quiet)
On her and torpedoed right off her.
Into the drink with 900 other clowns
...Started with 900 anyway...floating
in that big warm Pacific.
(the light surfaces again)
Must have been like a dinner bell
in there...Explosions, and half
the guys bleeding. Soon as the
sharks came homing in on us, we
went by the Manual, of course...
Kept trying to float in groups...
doin' what if said, splash at 'em,
yell at 'em, hit 'em on the nose,
they won't bother you...all that.
They tore apart about a hundred
men, the first night. And pretty
soon, when they stepped it up, and
you'd feel 'em bump you, and guys'd
get pulled down a couple of yards
away, and it got to two days...and
three...Well, some fellas couldn't
take it no more, just peeled off
their life-jackets, got it over with
...We were in the water 110 hours.
Sharks averaged six men an hour.
(nails Hooper
a hard look)
They're all experts.
(spits in the ocean)
HOOPER
(weakened by the story)
Jesus, Quint! You can't blame ---
Hooper is interrupted by the boom and banshee cries of
a distant whale.
A short little speech, with just the seeds of the monologue we'll see later. Quint seems the most angry at Hooper, of all people, for being a shark expert when the "experts" who wrote his old Navy survival manual clearly had no idea what they were talking about.
Spielberg knew that this needed to be a big scene, and Gottlieb certainly expanded on Benchley's version. Here's what we see in Gottlieb's version of the speech:
189 CLOSE ON QUINT 189
QUINT
Yeah. The U.S.S. Indianapolis.
June 29th, 1945, three and a half
minutes past midnight, two torpedoes
from a Japanese submarine slammed
into our side. Two or three. We
was still under sealed orders after
deliverin' the bomb...the Hiroshima
bomb...we was goin' back across the
Pacific from Tinian to Leyte. Damn
near eleven hundred men went over
the side. The life boats was lashed
down so tight to make the bomb run
we couldn't cut a single one adrift.
Not one. And there was no rafts.
None.
That vessel sank in twelve minutes.
Yes, that's all she took.
We didn't see the first shark till
we'd been in the water about an hour.
A thirteen-footer near enough. A
blue. You measure that by judgin'
the dorsal to the tail. What we
didn't know...of course the Captain
knew...I guess some officers knew
...was the bomb mission had been so
secret, no distress signals was sent.
What the men didn't know was that
they wouldn't even list us as over-
due for a week. Well, I didn't know
that -- I wasn't an officer -- just
as well perhaps.
So some of us were dead already --
in the water -- just hangin' limp
in our lifejackets. And several
already bleedin'. And the three
hundred or so laying on the bottom
of the ocean.
As the light went, the sharks came
crusin'. We formed tight groups --
somewhat like squares in an old
battle -- You know what I mean --
so that when one come close, the man
nearest would yell and shout and
pound the water and sometimes it
worked and the fish turned away, but
other times that shark would seem to
look right at a man -- right into
his eyes -- and in spite of all
shoutin' and poundin' you'd hear
that terrible high screamin' and
the ocean would go red, then churn
up as they ripped him. Then we'd
reform our little squares.
By the first dawn the sharks had
taken more than a hundred. Hard
for me to count but more than a
hundred. I don't know how many
sharks. Maybe a thousand. I do
know they averaged six men an hour.
All kinds -- blues, makos, tigers.
All kinds.
In the middle of the second day, some
of us started to go crazy from the
thirst. One fella cried out he
saw a river, another claimed he saw
a waterfall, some started to drink
the ocean and choked on it, and
some left our little groups --
our little squares -- and swam off
alone lookin' for islands and the
sharks always took them right away.
It was mainly the young fellas that
did that -- the older ones stayed
where they was.
That second day -- my life jacket
rubbed me raw and that was more
blood in the water. Oh my.
On Thursday morning I bumped up
against a friend of mine -- Herbie
Robinson from Cleveland -- a bosun's
mate -- it seemed he was asleep but
when I reached over to waken him,
he bobbed in the water and I saw
his body upend because he'd been
bitten in half beneath the waist.
Well Chief, so it went on -- bombers
high overhead but nobody noticin'
us. Yes -- suicides, sharks, and
all this goin' crazy and dyin' of
thirst.
Noon the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a
Lockheed Ventura swung around and
came in low. Yes. He did that.
Yes, that pilot saw us.
And early evenin', a big fat PBY
come down out of the sky and began
the pickup. That was when I was
most frightened of all -- while I
was waitin' for my turn. Just two
and a half hours short of five days
and five nights when they got to
me and took me up.
Eleven hundred of us went into that
ocean -- three hundred and sixteen
got out. Yeah. Nineteen hundred
and forty five. June the 29th.
(pause)
Anyway, we delivered the bomb.
There's a lot of stuff here that we'll see in the final version. But the spirit of the speech still isn't quite there yet. Part of that is the way Shaw delivers it: he grins through almost the entire speech, like he was telling some big lark of a story. "A funny thing happened on the way back from delivering the bomb..."
But the speech itself is much more intense in the final version. The description of the shark itself is chilling, and it doesn't find its way into the speech until Shaw's version: And the idea was, the shark nearest man and then he'd start poundin' and hollerin' and screamin' and sometimes the shark would go away. Sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that shark, he looks right into you. Right into your eyes. You know the thing about a shark, he's got... lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eye. When he comes at ya, doesn't seem to be livin'. Until he bites ya and those black eyes roll over white. And then, ah then you hear that terrible high pitch screamin' and the ocean turns red and spite of all the poundin' and the hollerin' they all come in and rip you to pieces.
Another detail that doesn't come up until Shaw's version is this: You know that was the time I was most frightened? Waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a lifejacket again.
A single line, almost thrown away at the end of the speech, but it sums up Quint's entire philosophy, and hangs a bright red light on the fact that Quint is on a suicide mission, and he knows it. He's going to kill this shark or die trying. No rescue. No lifejacket. (Which probably explains why his first mate refuses to go out on this hunt with him, earlier in the movie. He knows that Quint has a deathwish.)
Quint was always intended to be an Ahab-like character. Early drafts of the film even have him watching the film version of Moby Dick, just to drive the point home:
136 INT. MOVIE HOUSE 136 137 FULL SCREEN 137 Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab in an outpouring of classic Melville. The white whale explodes through the waves and crushes sixteen harpooners. A single sandpapery laugh accompanies each special effect. 138 ANGLE - MOVIE HOUSE 138 Quint sits in the center aisle, popcorn and ju-ju-bees stuffing his face. The splayed projection beams dance around his head as he roars with amusement. People are getting up and moving away from him. He is watching with delight, slapping his thigh, thumping the seat-back with his feet. 139 FULL MOVIE SCREEN 139 We watch as Ahab gets tangled in the line and dragged under by the whale. Quint can be heard OVER.
What is this, Cape Fear?
Anyway, despite the intention of making Quint a modern-day Ahab, the movie never really pulls this off until the Indianapolis scene was perfected. Watching that scene, you really get the feeling that Quint is not exactly... y'know... sane. Which makes it mush more plausible when he goes nuts and smashes the radio to pieces with a bat when Brody tries to call for help.
In the earlier drafts, Quint seems motivated by money and a dislike of sharks. By the time Shaw gets done with him, we can see that Quint is obsessed with killing this shark as a form of revenge against all sharks, everywhere.
Character Spectrum
Okay, I'm almost done, and if you're still with me, you deserve a medal. I just wanted to say one more thing about the characters of Jaws.
It's interesting to line these characters up and see how they represent the different forces at work on Brody, who is action-oriented, but almost neutral.
Mayor Vaughn: Denial, Inaction, Blindness.
Matt Hooper: Curiosity, Clarity, Vision
Brody: Action, but held back by self-doubt.
Quint: Madness, Obsession.
At the start of the movie, Brody leaps into action to close the beaches, but it easily sucked back into inaction by Mayor Vaughn. It's not until Matt Hooper arrives that Brody is able to see through the blindness affecting the town and start taking more proactive steps; cutting open the tiger shark, getting a beach patrol set up.
But it's not until Brody teams up with Quint that he gains a killer instinct. Remember, Brody left NYC because of the violence:
I'm telling ya, the crime rate in New York will kill ya. There's so many problems, you never feel like your accomplishing anything. Violence, rip-offs, muggings, kids can't leave the house, you gotta walk `em to school. But in Amity, one man can make a difference. In twenty five years, there's never been a shooting or murder in this town.
Brody is passive, both in his willingness to go along with Mayor Vaughn's blindness, and in his distaste for violence.
Just as Hooper is essential to making Brody see, Quint is essential to waking up Brody's violent side. But Quint is too far in this direction; and Brody and Hooper both almost pay the price for teaming up with him. In the end, Quint's obsessive, violent hatred destroys his own ship and gets him killed.
But Brody uses symbolic tools from both Quint (the rifle, or violence) and Hooper (the scuba tank, or exploration/knowledge) to destroy the shark. He internalizes Hooper's drive to see more with Quint's bloodthirsty nature, and with those aspects of himself back in balance, is able to kill the shark.
The first time, anyway. Let's not get into the sequels.
(Quint image from Empire Online.)
