Our third and final day of shooting started out with Craig Kingsbury, who played the infamous and unfortunate fisherman Ben Gardner.

Here is the first scene that Mr. Kingsbury was in, as he greets Hooper to Amity Island. He was a pleasure to interview, one of the most colorful Vineyard inhabitants, by far.

Here we are interviewing Mr. Kingsbury, in the backyard of his
beautiful home.

 

This is the scene that scarred the living daylights out of me. How bizarre it was to meet the man himself! We spent a long time with Craig, and showed him the deleted scene he was in, which he'd never seen before.

 

Here is the full Craig Kingsbury interview:

 
 

Mr. Kingsbury confirmed that much of Quint's dialect and colorful phrases were all influenced by him.

He still has his hard back edition of Peter Benchley's novel.

Here's a movie still featuring Dr. Robert Nevin, who played the doctor paid off by Mayor Vaughn to proclaim that Chrissy's remains were from a boating accident. He had since passed away, but we interviewed his lovely wife, Barbara Nevin, in her real estate office.

 

Here is the full Barbara Nevin interview:

 

 

 

 

In this scene, the man sitting next to Mayor Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) is Robert Carroll , who played a town selectman. He agreed to meet us at the Edgartown Town Hall and show us around.

Mr. Carroll had lots of great stories to tell, and praise for the actors.

Mayor Vaughn leads everyone down the hallway in the Amity Town Hall.

The hallway today has been redone, painted, etc.





Here is the full Robert Carroll interview

 

 

  

 

The 3 windows have become one tall window. Pretty serious renovation.

The half-oval desk, has been moved to the opposite side of the room. Even the same 70's brown metal chairs are still there!

Our second to last interview was lengthy. This is the other Assistant Casting Director Janice Hull. She was also an extra in the Town Hall scene, the dock scene, and the deleted shark hunting scene.

Sadly, she was almost completely blind when we interviewed her. The great part about visiting her, was that she had a ton of paperwork (scripts, notes, casting calls, etc.) from Jaws and Jaws 2. Lots of interesting artifacts. This is a long one, but she has vast knowledge of the fim and casting. Definitely worth your time.


Here is the full Janice Hull interview:

 

Our last interview was a personal favorite among the crew, the lovely Lee Fierro , who played the angry, devastated mother of the unfortunate Alex Kintner. Here she is, reacting to the chaos from the attack. This is the first and only take of Lee running out into the Water to look for Alex. She told us that Spielberg was thrilled with it, but she wanted to do more takes.

Another still from her panic on the beach. Great actress, hands down. The actor who played her father in this scene passed away several years ago. We asked her if she still had this dreadful black outfit: no

Here's a still of her final, moving scene with Roy Scheider.

A comical moment Lee shared with the classic Jaws Game during her interview.


Here is the full Lee Fierro interview:

The exhausted Jaws 25th Anniversary crew. What a week!

My producing partner Rich had Mrs. Fierro slap him, to recreate the infamous slap. But for me, she just gave me a more gentle one.

Lee Fierro was at the end of our interviews. What a great ending to them all. She was a most gracious host, and seemed to thoroughly enjoy our company during the interview. She had never seen the laser disc Jaws documentary, so I made her a tape and mailed it to her. She wrote back with many thanks. It was the least we could do.

 

Our last excursion on the island was a long trek to the remains of
'Orca 2'. They built a replica of Quint's boat out of fiberglass so they could sink it repeatedly. So at the end of the movie, when you see the boat, its the Orca 2. Sadly, there was not a whole lot left of the boat. And we could only go see it at night, as seen in these sub par photographs

A shot from our night video was featured on The Shark Is Still Working, where I called us "three complete idiots".

What I love about this middle movie still is that you can clearly see the drainage hole, made to look like its been draining for years.

Today, the prop dressing is gone, along with the gold plating material around it. That's our Production Assistant and Map Specialist Katrina posing in the decrepit boat. And it was indeed fiberglass. I'll admit, I was totally against this excursion to find Orca 2, which was on private property, and it was quite creepy out there in the middle of nowhere. But I'm glad I got to see it.

More stills from the exciting conclusion.

 

Here is the full Orca 2 excursion, and trip finale:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The inside of the boat in 2000 was completely gutted out, as you can see. Plus, people over the years have come by to take a piece of it for a souvenir. Rumor has it that Scheider did not trust the effects crew when he was inside the sinking boat.

I suppose I was standing not too far from where Roy Scheider was fighting for his life in the still above.

We left the next morning, exhausted. My only regret is running out of time to see several other people who were involved in Jaws, like Edith Blake, Chris Rebello, the fin hoax boys and many others. For now…farewell and adieu to you fare...
you know the drill.

 

 

 
DAY 2