The reason it took three and a half days to find the survivors is because the Indianapolis was never reported missing. This was primarily due to a series of gross acts of negligence on the part of various naval personnel. The person in charge of making sure she arrived at Leyte did not make any report that she did not actually arrive. The Indianapolis sent distress signals, but one was ignored by a drunk captain, one was never reported up the chain of command and one was thought to be a Japanese trap. They were only found by a random American patrol plane, whose pilot, with great risk to himself and his plane, rescued about 50 men himself (strapping some men to the wings) and then radioed for help.
Anyway, the sinking of the Indianapolis is central to a key scene in the film Jaws. In what for many is the most memorable scene in the entire film, a scene that features no action, Robert Shaw's Quint relates the mesmerizing tale of his survival on the Indianapolis to Roy Scheider's Brody and Richard Dreyfuss' Hooper. Here is the scene. Even if you've seen the film, it is worth watching the clip. Shaw gives an acting clinic on subtlety and storytelling.
Now, there are a few historical details that he gets wrong. Like the date. Notice he says "June the 29th," when the ship sank on July 30. Also, there were, in fact, distress signals sent. But the makers of Jaws can be forgiven for that oversight. Jaws was made in 1974 (released in '75), and the Indianapolis distress signals became known later after military files were declassified. Before that, the story was that no signals had been sent due to the top secret nature of the mission.
There is quite a bit of dispute over who wrote this crucial speech. It is crucial in that it explains Quint's obsession with killing sharks, it gives the Quint character much needed depth (before this, he is mostly a salty bully), and provides the calm before the final climactic battle.
One of the reason there is dispute is due to the way Jaws was made. This was only Steven Spielberg's second feature film. He wasn't yet STEVEN SPIELBERG, he was just a 27 year old, still largely untested director. Jaws was made collaboratively and filmed largely on location in Martha's Vineyard. Spielberg rented a house and it was almost like a frat house. He lived there along with various production members and actors coming and going. Shaw would often show up full of booze. Spielberg would host dinners with many of the production and actors, always tossing around ideas.
Peter Benchley, author of the book, wrote the first draft of the script. Screenwriter Howard Sackler wrote a draft. Then Carl Gottlieb came in and rewrote a lot of it. (By the way, Gottlieb's The Jaws Log is a must read for anyone interested in filmmaking, whether you are a fan of this particular film or not. It is generally regarded as the best "making of" book ever written.)
But many things in Jaws came from suggestions or improvisations. Roy Scheider's famous "we're gonna need a bigger boat" line, for instance, was improvised on the spot by Scheider himself. The very funny scene where Quint and Hooper try and one up each other by crushing the beer can and coffee cup was the joint idea of Spielberg, Gottlieb and Dreyfuss over drinks.
Gottlieb swears that the Indianapolis speech was written by Robert Shaw himself. Shaw was also a noted playwright and writer, so he certainly was capable of good writing (his assessment of the Jaws novel, by the way: "a piece of sh*t"). The scene is not in the novel at all, and Gottlieb states that writer Sackler first introduced the scene into the Jaws script. But then Gottlieb and Spielberg himself worked extensively on it, and still were not satisfied. Spielberg called in his friend, writer and directer John Milius (writer of Apocalypse Now) to help with some ideas. (Gottlieb admits that the scene where Quint and Hooper compare scars - that was Milius). But after all of these versions were tossed around, it was Shaw who took them all and then wrote the actual speech that was shot. Apparently when they rehearsed it, he was drunk and couldn't really get through it and went into some embarassing admissions about his personal life. But once the camera was rolling he nailed it, and that is what you see onscreen. Gottlieb says of Shaw: "Shaw's genius as an actor of the old school is evident; he could work drunk or sober, and still be brilliant."
John Milius has a different recollection about who wrote the crucial scene. Milius:
"I wrote that thing and they gave it to [Shaw] when he was drunk. Could barely walk, he was really drunk...I was writing that [scene] until nine in the morning, I called in, that was their time and I was writing it over the phone. They went out that afternoon and shot it...Robert Shaw had just been caught f*cking the nanny, and he's sitting there, he's really drunk. They're trying to get him on the boat. He falls half off, and they're really 'how are we going to do this?' He's sleeping, reading the script and sleeping. They finally got him to start rehearsing it, and he hated Richard Dreyfuss. He sort of takes a swat at him, and he starts saying 'you ever see a shark's eye? It rolls up, it's a dead eye. Like your wife, when she tells you about the nanny.' And he's talking like, 'what happens when you get put in the water all alone, after f*cking the nanny?'...He gets [Spielberg and crew] so strung out on his personal life...then, when they turned on the cameras, he was perfect."
Gottlieb, while not denying Shaw's personal troubles, still vehemently denies that Milius wrote the meat of the speech. Gottlieb: "Who do you believe - the guy who was there and tells you someone else wrote the speech, or a guy who wasn't there and claims he did?" The only thing they do seem to agree on was that Robert Shaw was drunk.
My guess is that it was a collaborative effort, but with Shaw indeed pulling it all together and putting it in his/Quint's vernacular. While it does have a Milius-like clipped quality and focuses on military history, a Milius specialty, it just seems so personal to Shaw. Gottlieb claims that the night before filming Shaw came to Spielberg's rented place and read it to Spielberg, Gottlieb, Dreyfuss and producer Richard Zanuck almost word for word what ended up onscreen.
Interesting tidbit. Spielberg turned down Universal's offer to direct the sequel, and said he would only do it if the sequel were a prequel, about Quint's time on the Indianapolis. Universal said no. Now that would have been interesting.
Finally, the speech is such a brilliant piece of film writing, it is worth reading on the printed page. Or the glowing computer screen.
"Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, Chief. We were comin' back from the island of Tinian to Leyte...just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about half an hour. Tiger. 13 footer. You know how you know that when you're in the water, Chief? You tell by looking from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn't know, was our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin', so we formed ourselves into tight groups.
You know, it was kinda like old squares in the battle like you see in the calendar named 'The Battle of Waterloo' and the idea was: shark comes to the nearest man, that man he starts poundin' and hollerin' and screamin' and sometimes the shark go away...sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that shark, he looks right into ya. Right into your eyes. And you know, the thing about a shark...he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes. 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 pitched screamin'. The ocean turns red, and despite all the poundin' and the hollerin', they all come in and they...rip you to pieces.
You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don't know how many sharks, maybe a thousand. I don't know how many men, they averaged six an hour. On Thursday morning, Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Boatswain's mate. I thought he was asleep. I reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up and down in the water just like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he'd been bitten in half below the waist.
Noon, the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us. He swung in low and he saw us...He was a young pilot, a lot younger than Mr. Hooper here. Anyway, he saw us and he come in low and three hours later a big fat PBY cruiser comes down and starts to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened...waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a life jacket again. So, eleven hundred men went into the water; 316 men come out and the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb."
Thanks to Carl Gottlieb's The Jaws Log and Patrick Jankiewicz's A Jaws Companion for the quotes and much of the info.
2 comments:
That is fascinating. Thanks, Dez. I'd never heard of any of that. But then, I barely remember Jaws.
Thanks. I was revisiting the Jaws series recently, and so was inspired to write a few Jaws-related posts.
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