Review: 'Jaws: Memories from Martha’s Vineyard (Updated and Revised Edition)'

While many have accused Jaws of wrecking the serious "New Cinema" of the seventies, many others have celebrated it as the movie that rescued the decade from relentless downbeat antihero drabness. They're both pretty right, though you can hardly say Jaws made cinema dumber, what with its superb script, directing, and acting. The film was so story, dialog, and character conscious that barely anyone noticed or cared that the shark looked like a giant rubber pool toy.

A film of Jaws' quality and historical significance always deserved a closer look, and Matt Taylor gave it an exhaustively close one in 2011. Part oral history, part coffee table photo book, Jaws: Memories from Martha’s Vineyard is all awesome. Taylor and memorabilia maven Jim Beller assembled a lush tribute to the sharky blockbuster busting with recollections from the Martha’s Vineyard locals who appeared before and behind the camera and a slew of amazing archival materials. 

There was a contemporary shot of the somewhat desiccated bust of Ben Gardener that made movie goers toss their popcorn and their cookies in 1975 and an even more incredible biography of Gardener-portrayer Craig Kingsbury, a guy once arrested for drunk driving an ox cart. His defense against the charges is both rational and hilarious. 

Indeed, Jaws: Memories from Martha’s Vineyard was a really funny book because the Martha’s Vineyard crowd is such a colorful bunch and the production was wrought with disasters that can only be portrayed comically in the hindsight of Jaws’ phenomenal success. 

Jaws: Memories from Martha’s Vineyard is now being republished in revised form for the film's fiftieth anniversary. Aside from an afterword from Peter Benchley's widow Wendy, who reiterates the fact that sharks should definitely not be viewed as monsters in need of obliteration, the revisions are all visual. The book has been laid out very differently with more intense color (a gory shot of Robert Shaw getting chomped looks especially gory in this edition) and a slew of recently discovered photos. Sadly, this means that a lot of the old photos got the shaft, including that great one of Gardener's bust. But the book remains a visual and informational feast for fans who should be very happy to see this one back in print.