A close look at Nick Marra’s uncanny sculpture of ‘Quint’ played by actor Robert Shaw in ‘Jaws.’
 
While you may not know sculptor Nick Marra’s name, you have definitely seen his work in films like The Hateful Eight, Jurrasic Park and the television series American Horror Story. Marra has been involved in the business of making things appear to be real for over two decades. While I’d be foolish to say that the artist’s life-sized sculpture of actor Robert Shaw as “Quint” from Steven Spielberg’s 1975 film Jaws is the best thing he’s ever done, I would challenge you to disagree that the likeness is so uncanny it is virtually impossible to tell the difference between the real, (late) Mr. Shaw, and Marra’s sculpture of Shaw in character for his role.

Marra’s sculpture made its debut at this year’s Monsterpalooza and it almost puts his previous eerily lifelike sculpture of Yul Brynner’s animatronic character of the “Gunslinger” from the 1973 film Westworld (which was recently, and quite wonderfully reprised by actor Ed Harris in the television adaptation of the film) to shame. Sculpture is an art form I have a deep reverence for and I have many, many favorites in the field such a Mike Hill and Jordu Schell. Marra’s mirror image of Quint is so desperately spot-on that it’s rendered me at a near loss for words. I mean, Marra’s faux Quint is crushing a beer can in his right hand and it’s so authentic that you can hear the tin cracking from the force of Quint’s shark-hating hands just looking at it. In other words, the fake Quint looks so much like the real Quint that I’m not even sure if I’m the real me anymore. Though I only have two photos to show you, I have also posted a short video of the remarkably talented Marra talking about his latest work in which you can see the sculpture in all its glory after the jump…
 

 
More after the jump…

The cover of a Japanese comic book based on the film ‘Jaws’ published in 1975.
 
The “gekiga” illustration style was created in 1957 by Japanese cartoonist Yoshihiro Tatsumi who coined the word to help differentiate the more serious tone of gekiga comics from the wildly popular manga comics and their “humorous pictures.” Gekiga comics or books were marketed to adults and the illustrated stories were reality-based—unlike the dreamlike realms of manga. In 1975, Herald Books published a gekiga-style comic based on the film Jaws that had just convinced everyone that the beach was no longer safe. The film was an adaptation of the 1974 novel of the same name by author Peter Benchley.

The vintage comic captures pretty much every memorable scene in the movie with the notable exception of the drunken sing-along sea-shanty sung by Brody (Roy Scheider), Matt (Richard Dreyfuss) and real-life drunk Quint memorably played by actor Robert Shaw. According to blogger Patrick Macias over at An Eternal Thought In The Mind Of Godzilla, he sold his copy of the rare comic for an undisclosed three-figure sum to a European collector. After a quick search of auction sites such as eBay, I wasn’t able to find even one copy of this fantastic comic so you’ll have to enjoy it virtually just like I did. I’ve posted all the panels from the gekiga Jaws in sequence below. Many of the illustrations are slightly NSFW.
 

 

 
More after the jump…

 
UC San Diego researchers studying the effects of ominous background music on the public’s perception of shark footage have recently published their findings.

Not surprisingly, when the researchers played music that was “modal with only fragments of melody accompanied by sporadic and sparse atmospheric percussion and a repetitive flute motif [creating] an unsettling sound” over the top of shark footage, the test subjects reacted more negatively to that footage than to footage accompanied by “uplifting background music.”

Though the findings may seem like a no-brainer, this study is the first, according to the researchers, “to demonstrate empirically that the connotative attributes of background music accompanying shark footage affect viewers’ attitudes toward sharks.”

In the article’s abstract the researchers assert that ominous music used in films and documentaries affects the public’s perception of sharks, leading to marginalization of the creatures:

“Despite the ongoing need for shark conservation and management, prevailing negative sentiments marginalize these animals and legitimize permissive exploitation. These negative attitudes arise from an instinctive, yet exaggerated fear, which is validated and reinforced by disproportionate and sensationalistic news coverage of shark ‘attacks’ and by highlighting shark-on-human violence in popular movies and documentaries. In this study, we investigate another subtler, yet powerful factor that contributes to this fear: the ominous background music that often accompanies shark footage in documentaries. Using three experiments, we show that participants rated sharks more negatively and less positively after viewing a 60-second video clip of swimming sharks set to ominous background music, compared to participants who watched the same video clip set to uplifting background music, or silence.

[cut]

Given that nature documentaries are often regarded as objective and authoritative sources of information, it is critical that documentary filmmakers and viewers are aware of how the soundtrack can affect the interpretation of the educational content.”

The abstract curiously puts the word “attacks” in quotes, as if to indicate that shark attacks aren’t a real thing—perhaps one could make that argument depending on one’s definition of the word “attack,” but these shark “accident” victims might be hard to convince.

Keep reading after the jump…

 
Robert Shaw liked to drink. Indeed, the actor, author and playwright liked to drink a lot. And it often led to some disastrous consequences.

During the making of Jaws, Robert Shaw had an alcohol-induced blackout during the filming of that famous S.S. Indianapolis speech. Shaw had convinced director Steven Spielberg that as the three characters in the scene (played by Shaw, Roy Scheider, and Richard Dreyfuss) had been drinking, it might be an idea to have a wee chaser before filming, just to get him in the mood. Spielberg agreed. It was an unwise decision as Shaw drank so much he had to be carried back onto the set. Hardly any filming took place that day, and Spielberg wrapped the crew at eleven in the morning.

Later that night, in the wee small hours, a panicked Shaw ‘phoned Spielberg to ask if he had done anything embarrassing as he could not remember what had happened. And would the director let him film the scene again?

The next day, a sober and contrite Shaw turned up early for work and delivered one of cinema’s most memorable speeches.

“Drink?” Shaw once famously said in 1977, “Can you imagine being a movie star and having to take it seriously without a drink?”

“I agree with Richard Burton that drink gives poetry to life. Drink for actors is an occupational hazard born largely out of fear.”

The stories of Shaw’s alcoholic excesses, often abusive behavior, and on-set pranks can sometimes overshadow his quality as an actor and his talent as a writer. The academic John Sutherland has pointed out Shaw was a far better writer than many of the best-selling authors whose books inspired the films he starred in, particularly Pete Benchley (Jaws, The Deep) and Alistair MacLean (Force 10 From Navarone), though sadly none of Shaw’s five novels or his three plays are currently in print.

As we all (probably) know, Shaw himself was involved in the writing of the famous Indianapolis speech, as Spielberg has explained in 2011:

I owe three people a lot for this speech. You’ve heard all this, but you’ve probably never heard it from me. There’s a lot of apocryphal reporting about who did what on Jaws and I’ve heard it for the last three decades, but the fact is the speech was conceived by Howard Sackler, who was an uncredited writer, didn’t want a credit and didn’t arbitrate for one, but he’s the guy that broke the back of the script before we ever got to Martha’s Vineyard to shoot the movie.

I hired later Carl Gottlieb to come onto the island, who was a friend of mine, to punch up the script, but Howard conceived of the Indianapolis speech. I had never heard of the Indianapolis before Howard, who wrote the script at the Bel Air Hotel and I was with him a couple times a week reading pages and discussing them.

Howard one day said, “Quint needs some motivation to show all of us what made him the way he is and I think it’s this Indianapolis incident.” I said, “Howard, what’s that?” And he explained the whole incident of the Indianapolis and the Atomic Bomb being delivered and on its way back it was sunk by a submarine and sharks surrounded the helpless sailors who had been cast adrift and it was just a horrendous piece of World War II history. Howard didn’t write a long speech, he probably wrote about three-quarters of a page.

But then, when I showed the script to my friend John Milius, John said “Can I take a crack at this speech?” and John wrote a 10-page monologue, that was absolutely brilliant but out-sized for the Jaws I was making! (laughs) But it was brilliant and then Robert Shaw took the speech and Robert did the cut-down.

Robert himself was a fine writer, who had written the play The Man in the Glass Booth. Robert took a crack at the speech and he brought it down to five pages. So, that was sort of the evolution just of that speech.

 
More on Robert Shaw, after the jump…

 
“We’re gonna need a bigger budget.”

I believe every film should end this way.
 

 
Via Neatorama

 
I’d imagine this Shark vs Mermaid Swimsuit by Black Milk Clothing would bring a lot of young Ariel fans to tears.

Mermaids and sharks ... they both live in the ocean. It was only a matter of time before their worlds collided - with tragic consequences. Yeah, try singing your way out of that one, darling.

 
Via Who Killed Bambi

 
Lalo Schifrin puts the funk into the theme from Jaws as Legs & Co. are terrorized by cardboard sharks.

Schifrin’s discofied version of John Williams’ “Jaws Theme” appeared on the 1976 album Black Widow. The in-your-face bass groove and insistent wah wah guitar made this a big hit on the dancefloors.

The tacky glitz of Legs & Co. gets toned down in this extremely low rent homage to Spielberg’s shark shocker.
 

 
Previously on DM: The Liquidator.