The chill of the Martha's Vineyard evening had finally settled over the island, replacing the urgency of the daytime shoot.
Floating quietly in the center of an artificial pool was the meticulously crafted replica of the Orca's aft deck and cabin. The art department had spent weeks aging the wood, applying layers of fake sea salt and rust to make the vessel look like a working, weather-beaten boat.
Duke paused near a thick coil of electrical cables, allowing his eyes to adjust to the low lighting, searching for his lead actor.
He found Robert Shaw sitting alone on the edge of the replica boat, his legs dangling over the side, staring blankly into the dark water of the tank.
The rest of the crew had long since departed for the hotel bar or their rented island cottages, leaving the soundstage alone.
Shaw wore his character's stained jacket, his shoulders slightly hunched. There was no silver thermos in sight, no hidden bottles.
Shaw was completely sober, he was silently mouthing the words to the script.
Duke moving with a deliberate slowness so as not to startle the actor.
He climbed the short wooden staircase leading up and stepped carefully onto the deck of the Orca.
The fake boat bobbed slightly under his weight, the wood groaning in protest. Shaw stopped muttering his lines, his eyes moving to register Duke's arrival, but he did not speak.
Duke walked over to the edge of the boat and sat down right next to him, his long legs dangling over the water in a mirror image of the actor too. Duke simply sat there in the shared silence, staring into the water alongside Shaw.
Finally, Duke broke the silence. "Have you ever had any experience you can draw inspiration for tomorrow, Robert?"
"I was once a pilot, Duke," Shaw finally answered, "Back in the war. I flew for the Royal Air Force, but I spent a good deal of time attached to the U.S. Army Air Forces." He paused, "I saw a lot of good men go down at the English Channel, or the Pacific. You never forget the finality of it all."
Duke nodded slowly. This was the emotional experience he wanted for the upcoming scene, the tale of the USS Indianapolis.
"I need the take tomorrow night, Robert," Duke said, his voice firm but devoid of pressure. "Just one perfect take. We are going to strip away the lighting rigs, send the majority of the crew back to the hotel, and let you talk to the camera. You give me that one perfect take and you can go back to your drink."
Shaw simply nodded once, "Thank you for trusting me with this opportunity, Duke, this is a great role."
The following evening, the boathouse was transformed. True to his word, Duke had ruthlessly cleared the set.
There were no shouting assistant directors or anything like that.
The studio lights had been powered down, leaving the space cloaked in darkness.
The only illumination on the entire set came from a single, small maritime lamp bolted to the wooden table inside the Orca's cabin, exactly as it would appear in the final cut of the film.
A lone camera operator sat behind the Panavision rig, which was mounted onto a short metal dolly track.
Robert Shaw sat at the small wooden table, his face painted in dramatic shadows by the flickering light of the single lamp. Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss sat across from him, completely out of the camera's focus, their only job being to listen and provide human reactions.
Duke stood in the dark, behind the camera dolly, his arms crossed over his chest. "Roll the camera. And Robert... whenever you are completely ready."
Shaw took a slow breath, leaning forward slightly into the light. And then, began to speak.
For five minutes, Shaw delivered the tragic story of the USS Indianapolis.
No one dared to speak. The sound mixer sat completely frozen behind his audio console.
Scheider and Dreyfuss stared at Shaw with their mouths slightly open, swept away by the power of the performance.
The silence stretched out for a few seconds. Finally, Duke let out a long breath, shattering the scene.
"Cut," Duke said, "Print it. That is the take. We are done here. Wrap the camera." Duke stepped out of the darkness and walked directly over to the small table. He reached out, gripping Shaw's shoulder with a firm hand. "You just earned your entire paycheck for this picture, Robert,"
Shaw looked up at his director, his blue eyes shining with a thin layer of wetness and nodded.
An hour later, the boathouse was empty. Duke retreated to the solitude of his converted wooden production shed near the base camp. He sat alone in the the harsh blue light of a small editing monitor washing over his tired face.
He watched Shaw's mesmerizing performance play out on the tiny, scratched screen. He watched it once, and then he immediately rewound the reel and watched the entire five minutes a second time.
Duke knew, with certainty, that he had just captured something legendary on that strip of celluloid. He leaned back in his creaking folding chair, lacing his fingers together behind his head, and allowed himself a smile.
"This," Duke whispered out loud to the empty room, "is exactly why I do this."
The ringing of a black rotary telephone on his desk shattered the quiet of the shed. Duke glanced at his wristwatch, the dials indicating it was slightly past midnight.
He had not returned to his room at the island hotel in over two days, choosing instead to sleep in short bursts on the small bed in the corner of his office. He let the phone ring three times, before finally reaching out.
"Hauser," he answered simply. The line crackled with static, followed by the panic-stricken voice of Barry Diller calling from the Paramount lot in Los Angeles.
"Duke, we have a problem," Diller breathed into the phone, abandoning his usual polished calm. "The IRS audit just escalated. An hour ago, a dozen federal agents walked into the Paramount accounting department on the lot. They didn't ask for meetings. They seized filing cabinets, boxed up thousands of financial records, and walked them straight out the front doors."
Duke sat up straight in his chair, all traces of his previous cinematic joy evaporating into cold focus. A standard tax audit was a tedious headache. A raid by federal agents was an entirely different problem.
"Barry, slow down and breathe," Duke said, his voice remaining steady, "What exactly were they looking for? The Vanguard sale? Overseas distribution revenues?"
Diller let out a bitter laugh that sounded more like a choked sob. "No, Duke. It has nothing to do with corporate taxes. The special prosecutor's office is completely driving this. Someone from inside Nixon's crumbling inner circle is trying to save their own skin, and they are openly talking to the federal investigators. I do not know exactly who flipped, but they are feeding the feds names. They are specifically looking into the American News Exchange(ANE) connections."
"The agents had to get a federal judge to sign off on a "Nighttime Execution" clause because they claimed the company was actively running shredders."
The temperature in the wooden shed seemed to plummet.
The American News Exchange, the clandestine media apparatus Duke had constructed to manipulate headlines, was exposed.
Diller began to list the specific 3 corporate shell companies the federal agents had directly targeted in their raid. Two of the named entities were completely expected.
Duke had already scheduled them for legal "burning," a process of total financial dissolution designed to erase their existence.
"Listen to me carefully, Barry," Duke ordered, "You should make a little bonfire tonight."
Diller said ok several times. What Duke was implying was clear, destroy any remaining physical paper records that link ANE to Nixon's political operation.
"ANE should be entering a pause period. There will be no new syndicated content, no fresh political bylines. We lay completely low until this incident breaks and the nation moves on."
Duke did not stop there. He knew that a defensive retreat was never a winning strategy against the federal government.
"I want you to immediately hire a vicious crisis PR firm in Washington, retain a separate aggressive legal defense fund, and immediately fund a political advocacy group. If any grandstanding congressman attempts to damage Paramount's image, I want them tied up in legal fights for the next few years. Make it expensive for them to even look in our direction."
Duke leaned back, his confidence was strong still. He had never been directly involved in the Watergate break-in or the subsequent, sloppy cover-up. He had merely attempted to spread a more favorable, tame narrative through his media channels. Proving criminal intent would be impossible for any prosecutor but Paramount could get attacked either way.
After all, Paramount is a company that has to take care of its PR at all points, since allienating the population would damage their profits.
As Diller scrambled to write down the list of directives, Duke briefly considered the financial reality of the war he was about to wage.
The eighty-million-dollar windfall he had secured from the Vanguard sale would provide a shield, but a portion of that money would now have to be diverted into legal defense fees.
He rubbed his tired eyes, feeling the weight of his empire.
"Get it done, Barry," Duke said softly. "I need a break after this picture is finished." He hung up the phone, staring blankly at the dark wall.
The wooden door of the shed slammed open, making Duke jump a little in his seat.
Robert Evans burst into the small room without bothering to knock, "Pat Buchanan's office just called my private line, Duke," Evans shouted, completely ignoring the fact that it was past midnight.
"Well, it was his senior aide, actually. The Nixon loyalists are unhappy that you have suddenly stopped carrying their political water in the press. They feel entirely abandoned so they are not protecting us."
Duke simply stared at Evans, unfazed by the political update. He knew exactly what the desperate White House wanted. Evans waved the small piece of paper wildly in the air.
"Buchanan's message is to deny everything," Evans relayed, "He says the Watergate Special Prosecution Force has no interest in Paramount Pictures or Hollywood. They are focused on hunting down the President. Buchanan says we just need to stay quiet, weather the storm, and wait it out. He explicitly said, 'The party needs to be saved, even if it happens without Nixon at the helm.'"
Duke let out an exhausted sigh, dismissing the logic of a dying political administration.
But before Duke could offer a response, Evans pivoted, abandoning the national political crisis for a topic far more absurd. "Enough of this political topics, Duke," Evans declared, dramatically waving his hands in the air.
"You need to relax. Margaux Hemingway has been sitting here on this island for an entire week. She is currently staying in your hotel. You haven't even taken the poor girl out for a decent seafood dinner. You are wasting a magnificent opportunity to get with a beauty."
Duke pinched the bridge of his nose, a headache beginning to bloom behind his eyes.
"The work on this picture is far too much right now, Robert," Duke replied, "I do not have the time or the energy for your romantic games."
Evans completely ignored the blatant warning, leaning across the wooden desk with a look of medical concern on his face.
"Duke, I am speaking to you now as a deeply concerned friend, Im 17 years older than you, don't get high and mighty with me. Your brain is still wet behind the ears. Experience is the only currency that matters, and you're broke in that," Evans began, his tone entirely serious.
"If you are not regularly using your reproductive equipment, the entire system can shrink. It could permanently malfunction like a rusted pipe in an old building."
Duke stared at him, unable to process the absurdity of the conversation.
Evans misreading Duke's stunned silence for genuine interest, doubled down on his medical theory. "I had a very close friend back in the sixties. He got a terrible divorce, stopped seeing women, and developed a highly dangerous case of semen backup. It almost killed the poor bastard. Semen poisoning, Duke. It's a very real, documented medical condition."
Duke simply reached over to the black phone on his desk, picked up the receiver, and dialed a internal extension.
"Security," Duke said, his voice entirely deadpan, completely devoid of any emotion. "Please remove Mr. Evans from the production premises."
Within seconds, two broad-shouldered security guards appeared in the open doorway of the shed, their faces blank. They stepped forward, grabbing Evans firmly by his silk-covered arms.
"You are making a medical mistake, Duke! As your mentor, I worry about you" Evans shouted dramatically as the guards began to physically drag him backward into the parking lot. "You will thank me later! It can shrink Duke, you gotta believe me!"
Duke simply walked over to the door and pulled it firmly shut, silencing the producer's shouts into the night.
Alone once again, Duke picked up the phone and dialed Gary Kurtz's room at the Hotel. The producer answered on the fifth ring, his voice sleepy.
"I am heading back to town right now, Gary," Duke said, "Meet me in the main lobby in twenty minutes. We are going to check on the shark's progress tonight."
Kurtz groaned loudly into the receiver. "Duke, it is past midnight. Can't you wait?"
Duke shook his head, though Kurtz couldn't see it. "The engineering team has been working for a week and Roy said they finally managed to fix the buoyancy, I want to see it before the sun comes up."
An hour later, at roughly one in the morning, Duke and Kurtz pulled up to the dilapidated Edgartown boathouse where the mechanical Shark known as Susan was being repaired.
Roy, the exhausted lead engineer who had spent decades building practical effects for Hollywood, was wiping greasy hands on a stained shop rag. He looked up as Duke approached, his eyes bloodshot.
"We finally cracked it, Mr. Hauser," Roy announced. He led Duke over to the edge of the flooded testing tank in the back of the boathouse. "We gutted the faulty polyurethane foam. We redesigned the internal buoyancy chamber system, added three hundred pounds of solid lead weights to the underbelly, and replaced the main hydraulic line that was corroding from the salt water."
Slowly, the mechanical white shark was lowered from the ceiling rig down into the water of the tank.
As the prop hit the surface, it did not immediately roll over onto its side. It bobbed heavily, the lead weights pulling the bottom down, forcing the dorsal fin to stay upright through the surface of the water. The technician pushed a joystick forward, and the tail began to sweep back and forth in a jerky, mechanical, but recognizable swimming motion.
Roy turned to Duke, a tired grin breaking across his grease-stained face. "She is going to swim for you, Mr. Hauser," the engineer declared proudly. "She is certainly not pretty, and she might be a little rough on the turns, but she will swim straight. You are finally going to get your shots."
Duke stared at the machine gliding through the artificial tan, relief washing over him. He turned to Kurtz, "We are doing a full ocean test tomorrow," Duke commanded. "I want to be out there on the water myself to see it."
It was approaching two in the morning when Duke finally returned to the quiet hallways of the Harbor View Hotel. He walked slowly down the corridor, the exhaustion of the long day finally beginning to seep into his bones.
As he approached his suite, the two security guards stationed directly outside his door looked up. They didn't speak, but they both offered Duke a nod. Duke completely ignored them, sliding his key into the lock and pushing the door open into the room.
The interior of the suite was bathed in low amber light pouring from a single bedside lamp. The air was thick with the scent of a perfume.
Duke stopped just inside the doorway, his eyes adjusting to the dim light.
Margaux Hemingway was posed elegantly in the center of the king-sized bed. She was wearing a tight naughty nurse costume constructed entirely of shining white vinyl, complete with thigh-high white heels and a plastic toy stethoscope draped casually around her neck.
Margaux offered a smile, completely owning the absurdity of the situation. "I heard from some of the crew that you have been having some terrible trouble with the pain in your old leg wound, Mr. Hauser,"
She reached out, gently patting the mattress right beside her. "I am here in my official medical capacity to help you with your necessary recovery exercises." Duke stood frozen at the door.
The next morning brought a piercing dawn over the cold chill of the Atlantic Ocean.
Duke held a steaming paper cup of black coffee in his hand, his posture relaxed, the lines of stress had vanished from his face. He watched as a floating crane barge slowly lowered Bruce down into the open ocean water.
The mechanical beast hit the ocean with a splash. For one second, the shark sputtered on the side, the internal whining loudly. But then, the machine corrected itself, leveling out.
The tail engaged, sweeping back and forth. The movement was slightly jerky, but surrounded by the vast ocean, it looked unmistakably real.
A smile broke across Duke's relaxed face. He turned to Gary Kurtz, who was standing beside him, "We are officially back in business, Gary,"
"Cancel the morning schedule. We are putting this machine through a rehearsal today. If she holds together, we are shooting the cage attack scene first thing tomorrow morning."