Blood "N" Bubbles

The History of Diving In the Movies.

It is tough some days to find a really big great white shark that isn't camera shy. Take for instance the movie featured in this month's Blood 'N' Bubble quiz. Director Steven Spielberg gave up trying to get a huge great white close to his cameras and shark cage and settled for a smaller shark instead. To make the shark look bigger on camera he hired a very small stunt diver to climb into the cage in modified scuba gear. The process worked well and the 1975 blockbuster movie, starring Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss went on to make box-office history. Name that film.

Answer

Jaws, of course. The 1975 release, written by Peter Benchley and Carl Gottlieb chased swimmers out of the water and had divers carrying bang stickseven when in fresh water. The movie tells the story of a small town cop who goes up against the world's biggest shark. It is also the story of a community that wants to cover-up a growing number of great white shark attacks so as not to harm the summer tourism season.

The Universal Studios movie spawned sequels and competitors rushed out copy-cat films in killer whales (Orca), piranha (Piranha) and killer toads (Frogs) filling in for the sharks. The movie lives on among hardcore blood 'n' bubble fans who collect and trade Jaws Trivia (which is where we learned about the stand-in cage diver.

Our favourite sources for Jaws trivia are the Jaws Home Page and The Internet Movie Database. Recently spotted items include:

·The live shark footage in Jaws was shot at Seal Rocks, Australia. A real white pointer was cut up and "extended" for the close-up shots.

·Susan Backlinie (Chrissie) was experiencing real pain during her attack scene at the beginning of the film. There were two 300 lb. weights attached to her which were being tugged by two divers and crew members on shore. One set would pull right, and the other set would pull left. It took three days to film that sequence and she hurt her back when divers underneath pulled too hard.

·Author Peter Benchley was thrown off the set after objecting to the film's climax scenes.

·The first shark killed on the docks which is supposed to be the "maneater" in the movie is actually a real shark killed in Florida because there wasn't a big enough one in Martha's Vineyard.

·When the shark was built, it was never water tested therefore when it was put in the water at Martha's Vineyard, it sunk straight to the ocean floor. It took a team of divers to retrieve it from the floor.

·Brody's dog in the movie was actually Spielberg's real dog.

·If you look hard enough when Quint is being eaten, you can notice the rubber teeth bending at Quint's waist.

·When Roy Scheider was trapped in the sinking Orca, it took 75 takes to get the shot right. Roy did not trust the special effects team to rescue him in case of an emergency so he hid axes and hatches around the cabin just in case.