50 YEARS OF JAWS
THE SEA DOG
ROBERT SHAW’S SON IAN ON ADMIRING — AND BECOMING — QUINT
WORDS NICK DE SEMLYEN
Robert Shaw as Quint;
“THERE IS A bit of the showman in him,” lays out the preliminary description in Carl Gottlieb’s Jaws screenplay, “as well as a bit of killer-whale.” It’s well said. Because if there’s a character in Jaws to rival the raw screen presence of its Carcharodon carcharias villain, it’s Robert Shaw’s Quint. A grizzled sea dog with a dark past and a flair for interrupting town-hall meetings in the most uncomfortable way possible, he steals scene after scene —hook, line and sinker. If Brody is the strait-laced hero, and Hooper is the plucky academic, then Quint is the wild card, a briny bastard with a death wish and a single obsession: catching and killing Amity’s bane.