Quint in JAWS Was Inspired By a Martha’s Vineyard Local Who Gave Steven Spielberg Some Great Dialogue To Work With

While Steven Spielberg was casting for his film Jaws, he held an open casting call in Martha’s Vineyard where he was going to shoot the movie. It’s during this part of the development process that the filmmaker met Craig Kingsbury, who Spielberg said was the “purest version of who in my mind that character really was.” Spielberg even thought about casting him in the role because he liked him so much!

While Kingsbury, wasn’t cast in that role, he did appear in the film as Ben Gardner, and he also gave Spielberg some great dialogue to work with- dialogue that he actually put in the script for Quint in the movie. The guy ended up being a valuable asset for Spielberg and Kingsbury’s involvement helped make the film as good as it is!

Ben Gardner was a local fisherman on Amity Island and became a well-known figure following the infamous "Amity Incident" in 1974. He was the shark's third victim. His floating head jump-scare is heralded as an iconic moment in horror movie history.

During an interview with Vanity Fair, Spielberg was asked about the local that inspired Quint, and he said:

“Yes, and he plays Ben Gardner in the film. He was a selectman on Martha’s Vineyard. I met him in an open casting call—I might even have come close to flirting with the idea of using him to play Quint because he was the purest version of who in my mind that character really was. When I met him, he came up with some great dialogue, and I kept increasing his part. I said to him, ‘I want you to be in my movie, and you can create your own dialogue.’ He made up all that stuff when he’s on the boat with other islanders, trying to capture the shark, saying, ‘They’ll wish their fathers had never met their mothers, when they start takin’ their bottoms out and slammin’ into them rocks, boy.’ It was great!”

Yeah, that guy was awesome! I loved that bit of dialogue and it’s like “who comes up with that!?” Well, it was Gardner. Spielberg went on to share more about how Kingsbury helped with the movie:

“And when Richard Dreyfuss says to him, ‘Hello,’ and he replies, ‘Hello back!’ that was also his idea. Very intuitive, colorful, and primal person who just never pursued acting. And what happened is that I sat with Craig with a tape recorder. I was honest and I said to him, ‘I want you to talk to me because I want to use some of your local color for Quint.’ Craig gave me some great lines—one of them was in Robert Shaw’s speech when he first enters the selectmen town meeting and says, ‘Bad fish. Not like going down the pond chasin’ bluegills and tommycods.’ That’s Craig’s line. Carl Gottlieb wrote a lot of that speech based on lines that Craig had given me in one of our conversations.”

That’s an awesome bit of trivia that I didn’t know before. Some of those lines of dialogue are incredible and without Kingsbury, the movie wouldn’t have had that kind of stuff! Spielberg has a lot to thank that guy for! seems like the kind of guy I would have loved to have a conversation with!