Welcome to Litsy!

Peter Benchley, the author of Jaws.

Stories from the making of Jaws are the stuff of film legend. Angry locals on Martha‘s Vineyard stole from the production and impeded the building of sets. The mechanical shark (named Bruce) rarely worked. Disastrous weather. Doubling its projected budget. A film crew and actors on the edge as the shooting schedule went out the window. All that and sailboats gliding into the frame during filming.

The end product is, of course, a masterpiece.

Spielberg didn‘t leave Martha‘s Vineyard for the 5 1/2 months it took to film Jaws. He was there every day as it grew further and further over-budget and over-schedule. After returning to the mainland he was plagued with nightmares that he was still on the island, still shooting Jaws.

#SummerOfShort

“In another minute, the boat capsizes and sinks, and the sea is full of swimming men, small boats maneuvering to effect rescues, and a lot of debris and parts of tripods, slates, scripts, coffee cups, lights, cameras, and action.”

Two ships were made to play the shark-hunting Orca in Jaws, Orca 1 to do most of filming on and Orca 2 to intentionally sink at the end... only Orca 1 ended up going down as well.

#SummerOfShort

While I‘m still working on Lian Hearn‘s first Tale of Shikanoko, my brother @shareyourghost was kind enough to lend me this at the beach when he finished. It is fantastic so far!

Hey Litsy! I was at the North Carolina coast for a week and got zero beach reading done (a natural consequence of taking a 4 year old and a 1 year old along). But now I‘m back and plan on using my last 3(!) weeks of summer to tear through some #SummerOfShort books.

It‘s good to be back!

This cinematic nightmare was an actual filmmaking nightmare. Everything that could go wrong, went completely wrong and then got worse. It‘s amazing that this movie even exists, and reading about how it very nearly didn‘t makes me appreciate one of my favorite movies even more.

Hilarious

"Steven says it's building the bridge in front of you before they burn the ones behind you."