FAQ

Hooper is trying to prove his sailing experience to Quint, who clearly doesn't like Hooper and doesn't want him joining the hunt for the shark. "Transpac" is short for "trans-Pacific", meaning a competitive ocean voyage on a large yacht that took him across the Pacific Ocean, likely from San Diego to Honolulu. Though it's not obvious at first, Hooper is quite an experienced sailor and the fact that he joined the crews of at least 3 Tranpacs is proof of it.

Quint, however, seems unimpressed, and even mispronounces the word as "transplants". He also seems fairly unfazed when Hooper is able to tie the knot Quint ordered him too, a task that Hooper completes effortlessly.

He calls them that because of their girth. By comparison a great white is much wider than other sharks.

The non personal reasons were the following: while Hooper was a special government envoy, due to his expertise, Brody had to make sure Quint did the job for which he was paid

One has to think that Quint's attitude towards sharks was shaped entirely by his status as a survivor of the USS Indianapolis disaster near the end of WWII in the Pacific. As he recounts to Brody and Hooper on board the Orca, the Indianapolis had just delivered parts of the "Little Boy" atomic bomb that was eventually dropped on Hiroshima. She was torpedoed on her way from the Marianas to the Philippines and sank, leaving over 900 men in the water, exposed to multiple hazards, shark attacks among them. Long story short, Quint has no qualms about hunting and killing sharks based on this trauma. Quint views sharks as merciless killers and feels that by hunting them, he's getting revenge for his fallen comrades.

No, they weren't expecting him. Hooper arrived at the Brody's because he needed to speak with Martin. Hooper showed up with two bottles of wine because he was going over to someone's house during dinner time. It's often considered good manners or simply polite to bring drinks or food to someone's place if you're a guest.

Quint is his last name. He was never given a first name in either the novel or film.

Simply because the shark was massive. Brody felt that a bigger boat, with more supplies and engine power, etc. would help them against such a large fish. It may have also just been out of fear, because Brody, being afraid of water, wants as much space between the shark and him as possible.

When the remains of a woman's body wash ashore on the New England island of Amity, Police Chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) suspects a shark attack. When Brody's suspicion is confirmed by Oceanographic Institute shark expert Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), they request that the beaches be closed down until the shark is killed. Unfortunately, it is the weekend of July 4th, and Mayor Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) doesn't want to lose the tourist money that the community will gain, so he refuses to close the beaches. When another boy is killed, however, Brody, Hooper, and local fisherman Quint (Robert Shaw) set out to kill the shark ...but they're going to need a bigger boat.

Jaws is a 1974 novel by American author Peter Benchley [1940-2006]. The screenplay for Jaws was co-written by Benchley and American screenwriter Carl Gottlieb, with an uncredited assist by another American screenwriter, Howard Sackler. Benchley was inspired by several real-life incidents, such as the Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916 that resulted in four deaths over 12 days. The success of the movie inspired three movie sequels—Jaws 2 (1978) (1978), Jaws 3-D (1983) (1983) and Jaws: The Revenge (1987) (1987).

Not directly, but it was inspired by events from 1916 in which a Great White Shark killed four people in a series of attacks along the East Coast of America. It would later be caught and killed by a pair of amateur fishermen.

In the 1997 book "In the Slick of the Cricket" by Russell Drumm, the author makes a strong case that the character of Quint, in Peter Benchley's novel "Jaws," was based on Frank Mundus, a Point Montauk charter fisherman who was the first to systematically fish for great whites, and who began the shark-hunting craze. Mundus himself (who died in 2008) was furious with Benchley for never acknowledging his influence. When filming "Jaws," Robert Shaw did state that he based the character of Quint on Mundus. In addition, some of Mundus's recollections concern incidents in his career that closely resemble the Amity Island panic in "Jaws."

The only given clue to the location of Amity Island is that it is located in New England. In the book, Amity is located on Long Island, New York. The movie itself was filmed in Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts and the boats used in the film contain the state registration abbreviation of "MS" which also indicates Massachusetts. (State abbreviations for watercraft are not necessarily the same as the ones used by the US Postal Service.) During the scene on the beach when Alex Kintner is attacked, a radio report giving the times of ferry runs is heard. It is somewhat difficult to hear and it helps to have captioning turned on, but the announcer mentions Martha's Vineyard along with Amity and Nantucket Island. Therefore, Amity is apparently located off the coast of Massachusetts somewhere in the vicinity of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.

The film gives no reason other than that his greed outweighs his judgment. He tries to justify it by saying the town couldn't possibly survive financially if the summer tourist season were disrupted. As a beach community, the small businesses of Amity (restaurants, stores, boat chartering, etc.) would rely on tourist money to pay for their expenses (heating, water, food) during the off-season months (late fall, winter, early spring). If the beaches were closed until the shark was killed, none of the usual vacationers and their families would come to Amity. In the novel, the mayor owed money to some dangerous people and had to keep the beach open in order to stay alive. One could use this plot as his reasoning in the film, though it is never said.

The line "We're gonna need a bigger boat" is usually attributed to the moment after Chief Brody first see's the shark but in reality he says "You're gonna need a bigger boat."

Yes it is, though the screenwriters have dramatized some of the details. The ship was officially called USS Indianapolis CA-35, a U.S. Navy heavy cruiser. At 0015 on July 30, 1945, while sailing alone and without any escort in the Pacific Ocean, the ship was twice torpedoed by the Imperial Japanese Navy submarine I-58, and sank in only 12 minutes. Of 1,195 crewmen aboard, at least 300 went down with the ship. The remaining 890 faced exposure, dehydration, saltwater poisoning, and shark attacks while stranded in the open ocean with few lifeboats and almost no food or water. The U.S. Navy only learned of the sinking four days later, when survivors were spotted by the crew of a PV-1 Ventura on routine patrol. A U.S. Navy PBY seaplane crew landed to save those in the water, followed by several naval ships a few hours later. Only 316 crew survived.

(Quint incorrectly states the date of the sinking as June 29th rather than July 30th.)

The loss of over 800 men made it the second worst single ship-loss disaster for the U.S. Navy during the war, behind the battleship USS Arizona at the attack on Pearl Harbor (1,177 men) on December 7, 1941 and more than the heavy cruiser USS Juneau (696 men) at the naval battle of Guadalcanal on November 13, 1942. The story of the ship's crew struggling for five days in the waters of the Pacific Ocean before being rescued is all true. Also, the Indianapolis didn't deliver the entire atomic bomb to Tinian which was dropped on Hiroshima but rather the critical components for it, namely the uranium used. Quint's telling of the story makes it seem as though most of the sailors were eaten by sharks. In actuality, it is believed a few hundred men died in the initial attack. After the ship sank, most of the other deaths were caused by dehydration from spending five days floating in salt-water (and in many instances, from sailors being poisoned by drinking salt-water out of thirst and desperation). There were indeed numerous instances of sailors being killed by sharks, but it was nowhere near the number that Quint indicates in his story (specifically, when he says that over 1,100 men went into the water, 316 came out, and the sharks took the rest). However, a very large number of corpses were eventually eaten by sharks, and the Indianapolis incident, while often misleadingly dubbed as "the biggest shark attack in history" (based on the number of living sailors actually being killed by sharks) is still widely regarded as the biggest and most significant case of sharks eating human flesh.

It seems that it should be easy to find such a large predatory animal, but remember that the ocean is a very huge body of water and that the shark would have the entirety of it in which to hide. Quint knows that such a shark would be very difficult to hunt and find in the ocean.

What Quint said exactly was "I'll *find* him for three. But I'll catch him and kill him for ten.". What this means is that his price is $10,000. If they were to only pay him $3,000, they'd only be buying part of his service; finding the shark. The extra $7,000 would buy the catching and killing of the shark. It's more or less a negotiating tactic that worked out well for Quint because they eventually hire him. In the novel, when Benchley describes Alex Kintner being attacked, he goes into some pretty sharp detail about the shark's territory beyond the beach. There's a several hundred foot drop-off about 50 yards from the edge of the beach. This seems to be the main area where the shark lives until it attacks. That's a huge area where a shark, even as large as this one, can hide. In the film, right after his son witnesses the man being dragged under by the shark, Brody looks out at the wide open ocean, a shot that reinforces the idea that the shark will be hard to find.

The biggest Great White Shark ever confirmed caught was 21 feet long whilst the greatest ever claimed caught was 23 feet long. As of February 2025, there are at least two known 20ft great whites around Hawaii. Nicknamed Deep Blue and Houlie Girl. Various Great White Sharks have been claimed up to 36 feet long but these have never been substantiated. A 25-foot-long Great White Shark is therefore not implausible but would be an extremely rare outlier.

Jaws is considered to be the benchmark shark-attack movie but, following Jaws, there have been a number of similar movies. This is more of a list of titles rather than recommendations but you may wish to take a look at Tintorera: Killer Shark (1977), Cyclone (1978), The Last Shark (1981) (The Last Shark), and Deep Blue Sea (1999). There is the Shark Attack franchise featuring Shark Attack (1999), Shark Attack 2 (2000), and Shark Attack 3: Megalodon (2002). As well, there are Open Water (2003), The Reef (2010), Sharktopus (2010), Shark Night (2011), Sand Sharks (2012), 2-Headed Shark Attack (2012), Sharknado (2013), Ghost Shark (2013), The Shallows (2016), 47 Meters Down (2017), and 47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019).

'Sheet' is the nautical term for the ropes used to control a sailboat. Each sheet has its own name as well, e.g., the halyard is the sheet that raises the sail. Basically, he was telling them to hurry up with their knot.