I love the moment where the guys are packing up to go out to sea—I read that Robert Shaw improvised some of the dialogue in that scene.
I asked Robert to give Lorraine’s character, Ellen Brody, a bit of a hard time by teasing her husband— he is wearing rubber boots and a rubber outfit, so Quint says, “See ya got ya rubbers!” and laughs. Quint is doing this to both Brody and Hooper— and at some point, Robert Shaw recited this little poem, “This is the story of Mary McGee, lived to the age of a hundred and three. For fifteen years she kept her virginity, not a bad record for this vicinity.” I said to him, “You got to help me clear this—if that’s from a song, we can’t use it without paying for the rights.” And he reassured me, “No, I don’t think we’ll get sued. I got it from a tombstone in Ireland!”
Once we’re out to sea, we never leave the Orca— Quint’s boat.
The Orca was originally called the Warlock before it was purchased by our production designer Joe Alves. He chose the boat and I liked it a lot, but I felt it didn’t have enough character—and Joe agreed. So, he replaced the entire wheelhouse with one of his own design with larger windows, so we could see out. Everywhere you were on the boat, the ocean was breathing down your neck. Joe built a second Orca that was essentially designed to sink, with pumps so it could come back up for another take.
A problem we had was when a speedboat pulling the Orca went too fast and pulled out the planking from the haul—water rushed in, and the boat sank in about two minutes. I remember vividly the moment where the actors were yelling, “Send boats, get us out, send boats!” Our sound mixer John Carter—who shared an Oscar with his team for Jaws—picked up the Nagra recorder, held it over his head, and said, “Fuck the actors, save the sound department!” I have this image to this day of John sinking holding his recorder with water up to his ankles, and then to his knees, while crews on boats were scrambling to pull everybody off the sinking Orca. Months later, he was holding an Oscar in those hands!
What happened to the camera equipment?
The camera was on the boat, too, and it went underwater. Our director of photography Bill Butler said: “You know, in a sense, the developing solution we use is saline, and I think the film will be okay if we can rush it to the lab, and as long as we keep it in saltwater.” We had big buckets of saltwater and kept the magazines of film in there—they were sent to our lab in New York, and they successfully saved the negative.