Duke Hauser stood near the rusted metal railing of the primary camera, his hands wrapped around a ceramic mug of boiling black coffee.
The twenty-five-foot mechanical shark, affectionately named "Suzan" by Duke had actually functioned for three consecutive days during isolated lagoon trials in which they had record some smaller scenes.
A few yards away on the deck of the orca, Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss were huddled together near the steel frame of the underwater diving cage.
Scheider was wrapped tightly in an oversized wool blanket.
Dreyfuss, on the other hand, was filled with nervous adrenaline and anxiety, dressed in a black neoprene wetsuit.
He was pacing a tight, three-step circle on the deck, his hands gesturing wildly as he tossed out jokes to anyone around.
"Listen to me, Duke," Dreyfuss called out, his voice cracking slightly with nerves as his eyes locked onto him. "The machine looks great. But what happens if this metal bastard causes me an injury mid-take? Do I get a bonus upon death in my contract for machine Sharks?"
The surrounding camera and lighting crew burst into a brief chuckle. Duke simply offered a steady smile.
"If he eats you, Richard," Duke rumbled, his voice cutting through the sound of the diesel motors nearby, "I promise to dedicate the Academy Award to your memory. Now get in the cage."
The sound of a launch announced the arrival of Robert Shaw. As the smaller boat bumped against the side of the Orca, the British actor climbed up the short wooden ladder.
Duke's eyes registered the state of his lead performer. Shaw's eyes were bloodshot, with a deep, exhaustion and a alcohol smell.
He didn't offer agreeting to the crew, without a single word, Shaw marched straight onto the deck of the Orca.
"Alright, people, let's make some movie magic," Duke's voice boomed across the water, silencing the lingering chatter and snapping the crew into motion.
The cranes groaned under the strain as they slowly hoisted the reinforced steel diving cage over the side, lowering it into the Atlantic.
Dreyfuss took a deep breath, adjusting his dive mask and regulator before stepping into the cramped, claustrophobic metal structure.
The cameras were positioned on a specialized floating rig, their lenses tracking the cage as it submerged beneath the frothing surface.
"Roll sound! Speed! And... Action!" the first assistant director barked into his megaphone.
The scene began flawlessly. The Orca rocked realistically in the ocean swells, and Dreyfuss's muffled, panicked shouts from beneath the surface provided layer of tension.
But just as the mechanical snout of the shark was commanded to ram the steel bars, a sharp hiss echoed like a gunshot across the water.
A hydraulic line, buried within the shark's throat assembly, suddenly burst under the atmospheric pressure.
It sprayed a oily plume of red pneumatic fluid across the white foam of the sea, looking like real blood. The tail lost all power, freezing mid-sweep.
The shark started bobbing to the surface like a dead, bloated whale.
Everyone stayed quiet until a collective groan rippled through the crew.
Gary Kurtz, looked over at Duke, his face pale, bracing himself for a headache.
Duke didn't yell, he slowly lowered his viewfinder, took a sip of his coffee, and looked over at the mechanical team.
"Alright, boys, we knew she was temperamental," Duke said. "We have plenty of daylight, and we are not leaving these coordinates until we get the shot. Fix it while we wait."
The engineers filled the maintenance platform with wrenches and sealant.
During the unexpected two-hour downtime, Duke walked over to the wooden railing, staring back toward the shoreline of the island.
This was not supposed to be a difficult shoot, just Dreyfuss underwater with the shark.
The real scene was that they were going to hire a short body double to get inside the cage and have the shark sort of attack him.
In Hollywood, a simple scene can go through 3-4 days of takes.
They also had hired 2 documentary makers to record White Sharks swimming around from inside a cage, to use the footage in the movie.
Through his binoculars, he spotted a solitary figure on the beach, Margaux Hemingway. She was wearing a pale blue sundress that fluttered wildly in the breeze.
Her eyes were hidden behind a pair of sunglasses. She was huddled slightly into herself, her arms crossed over her chest in a futile attempt to pretend she wasn't freezing in the coastal air.
Seeing him look in her direction, she raised one long arm and gave a wave. Duke gave a nod in exchange.
Seventy minutes later, a young engineer climbed out of the shark's internal service hatch. His face was covered in grease, but he was smiling.
"We are sealed and pressurized, Mr. Hauser! She's ready!"
"Back into the cage, Richard! Let's reset the cameras before those storm clouds shift and kill our lighting!"
Dreyfuss, now freezing and shivering from his time out of the water, scrambled back into the steel cage without a single word of complaint.
The mechanical beast was submerged once more, its freshly repaired hydraulic lines humming.
"Quiet on the set! Roll cameras! And... Action!" Duke roared.
This time, there was no failure.
The mechanical shark tore through the water, Its jaws snapped open as it slammed its snout directly into the steel bars of the diving cage with a metallic crash that echoed across the sound.
Dreyfuss's reaction inside the cage was amazing, a raw terror performance, if anything Dreyfuss looked like a male Scream Queen.
He screamed, his hands scrambling against the steel bars as the rows of jagged fake teeth scraped against the metal.
It was a beautiful image captured perfectly on 35mm film.
"Cut! Print it!" Duke shouted. "That is a wrap on the cage attack! Excellent work, gentlemen. That's the one they'll remember. Let's pack it up and move on to the next setup. Dreyfuss can take the day off to recover."
Late that evening, Duke walked through the hotel. His entire body aching with muscular fatigue from fourteen straight hours on the open water.
He expected to find the hotel mostly empty, but as he stepped into the main lobby, he spotted Margaux.
She was sitting in a leather armchair near the brick fireplace. She had changed out of the sundress and was now dressed in a pair of wool trousers and a thick cashmere sweater.
"Are you planning on ignoring me for the whole day, Duke?" she asked.
Duke stopped at the edge of the rug, looking down at her. He was bone-tired.
"I never ignore people, Margaux," he said softly. "A film set is no place for a vacation, I'm busy most of the day. I'm heading down the road to a seafood shack for a quick bite, you're welcome to join me."
Margaux's face lit up with a unforced smile. She stood up smoothly, grabbing her wool peacoat from the back of the chair.
"Lead the way, Mr. Connor. I'm starving."
Ten minutes later, they were tucked away in a cozy, poorly lit booth at the back of a weathered local seafood shack.
The small room smelled of fried beer batter, and boiling malt vinegar.
A red plastic basket overflowing with steaming, butter-soaked lobster rolls sat between them, accompanied by two glass filled with cheap white wine.
Margaux proved to be an easy, unpretentious dining companion.
She discarded her New York high-fashion persona, diving into the messy seafood with bare hands.
Duke and her quickly got to talking.
"Everyone assumes I inherited his grand, sweeping romanticism," she said, leaning forward. "But I never actually met my grandfather. Ernest was gone before I could ever know him. I didn't get the fishing trips or the smoky bars in Havana. I just got the name, and the expectations."
She paused, looking down at the cheap paper plate, then looked back up at Duke. "The modeling career is a joke. I want to act, Duke. I want to express myself and after that i want to buy myself a piece of land in Idaho. A house with a fishing spot on the river, and fields filled with ornamental cows."
"Ornamental cows?"
"Yes," Margaux said, tossing her head back with a laugh. "I can see it. People will drive up the property, look over the fence, and ask me, 'Margot, are these cows for food or are they milk cows?' And I will look at them and say 'Ornamental cows.' That's it. Just there to look beautiful against the mountains."
Duke laughed softly, enjoying the honesty of her dream. It was definitely a contrast to the ambitions of everyone else in his orbit.
She tilted her head, studying his weathered face.
"What about you, Duke? You run a studio. You control millions of dollars and hundreds of careers. Yet you're out here freezing on a rusty boat every day, why?"
Duke let out a slow breath, running a finger around the rim of his glass.
"I always wanted to be in movies. From the time I was a kid sitting in theater, I thought it was the most magnificent thing a human being could do. But now that I'm involved at the highest level of the industry, the reality is a little different."
He leaned back against the creaking booth. "I have to manage a corporate studio. I have to read hundreds of scripts a week, yell at executives, play political games in Washington, and try to magically guess what the American audience wants to see next year. All while servicing the debt I took on to buy Paramount in the first place."
He paused, his voice dropping into a more reflective tone. "It takes the raw passion right out of watching movies. When I sit in a theater now, i see rough cuts, bad lighting choices, union disputes, and budgets."
Margaux watched him closely, her expression softening, she slowly reached across the wooden table. Her slender fingers gently rested over his larger hand.
"Then why do you keep doing it, Duke?" she asked softly, "Why not just walk away with your millions, buy a house, and let someone else carry the stress?"
Duke looked down at her hand, feeling the weight of it, then looked back up into his eyes.
"Because once in a while, everything aligns perfectly," Duke said, "Once in a while, you realize you've captured something legendary. Like Robert Shaw's monologue last week. You watch that on the screen... and you remember why you started this whole thing in the first place."
They left the small seafood shack an hour later, stepping out into the midnight air of the island. The walked back to the Harbor View Hotel slowly.
Their shoulders occasionally brushed against each other as they navigated the dark path.
But the fragile peace of the evening vanished the exact moment Duke stepped into his hotel room at 1 in the morning after taking Margaux to her room.
Kurtz was sitting at the hotel room desk asleep snoring, a stack of revised shooting schedules laid out under the light of a single desk lamp.
He woke up with the door closing and cleaned his mouth from any saliva.
"The shark is working, Duke, but it's moving slowly," Kurtz said.
"I needed to come tell you the local Coast Guard just handed me the June forecast. We have an unseasonal storm moving up the Atlantic coast. Our safe weather window on the open water is closing faster than we anticipated. It's going to hit us hard by early June."
Duke walked over to the desk, leaning his frame over Kurtz's shoulder to examine thecharts. "Give me the numbers, Gary,"
Kurtz let out a sigh. "Our original shooting schedule was projected at fifty days. We have already expended 20 of those days, and we're barely a quarter of the way through the primary water sequences."
"We need to accelerate our production pace across the board if we want to wrap the ocean shots before the weather stop our shooting schedule."
Duke didn't hesitate for a single second.
"Then we accelerate," Duke said, "Starting tomorrow morning, we initiate night shoots. And we double up on the second unit photography for all stunt sequences. We will finish this picture on time even if it absolutely kills every single one of us."
As Kurtz scrambled to note down the new directives, Duke turned away, staring out the dirty window of his room.
In his mind, he flashed back to memories of his past life, the disastrous stories of the original Jaws production.
In that timeline, the movie had famously spiraled out of control.
It ballooned to over a hundred fifty days over schedule, nearly tripling its original budget, almost destroying Universal Studios and the young Steven Spielberg career in the process.
At least Duke had keep his schedule under control for the most part.
___
Michael Eisner sat at his desk.
His primary focus these days was in the logistical nightmares of the Paramount theme park construction, he still kept an eye on the broader corporate landscape.
He hit the speakerphone button on his executive console, connecting directly to Duke's remote shed on Martha's Vineyardthrough the secure line.
"Duke, are you there? I have some news breaking out of the toy industry," Eisner announced.
In the dim light of the Vineyard office, Duke leaned forward over his desk. "Go ahead, Michael. I'm listening,"
Eisner took a quick breath. "Ruth Handler just formally stepped down as the active president of Mattel. The pressure from the shareholder class-action lawsuits and the SEC accounting investigation finally forced her from her position."
Duke's eyes narrowed. "Who did the board appoint to replace her?" Duke asked sharply.
"Arthur Spear," Eisner said.
Both men paused. They knew exactly who Arthur Spear was a ruthless numbers specialist who was focused on balance sheets rather than creative vision.
Duke had originally wanted to swallow Mattel whole, targeting their plastic injection molding facilities and their locked-in retail shelf space to build up their merchandising wing.
"We need to pivot, Michael," Duke said, "With this damn Watergate noise getting louder in Washington, a hostile takeover is the last thing we need. It's time to slow down. Instead of fighting Spear, let's find an ally inside Mattel until we can move freely."
"Smart," Eisner agreed. "I'll keep a eye on their stock and find a way to slip someone in. You focus on the shark."
Before Duke could even hang up the line with Eisner, the second, dedicated secure telephone line on his desk began to ring.
He clicked over to the new line, recognizing the strained voice of Barry Diller. Diller was calling from a secure, private phone inside a hotel in Washington D.C.
"Duke, the political landscape down here just turned radioactive," Diller whispered into the receiver. "The House Judiciary Committee just issued formal, legally binding subpoenas for Nixon's private White House tapes. We are heading into an unprecedented constitutional crisis."
Duke's face stayed neutral, not really caring about Nixon. "Give me the status on the American News Exchange, Barry. Did they trace any direct donations?"
"No," Diller said, taking a shaky breath. "We kept our hands clean of direct cash to the Nixon re-election campaign. We only used ANE to run programming to minimize the Watergate coverage, to make the whole thing look like a minor partisan burglary instead of a conspiracy."
"But here's the blowback, ever since you ordered ANE to go editorially neutral after the investigation, the Republican establishment feels abandoned. We lost our political protection wrapper. Because we aren't carrying their water anymore, federal investigators are suddenly digging into our old media."
Duke sat up straight, his muscles locking into tension. "Has my name come up in the depositions?"
"Not yet," Diller replied quickly. "Your name is clear so far. But they are sniffing around. I'm already arranging a series of bipartisan political donations to key congressmen on both sides of the aisle. We need to buy back some protection immediately."
Duke rubbed his temples, feeling the weight of the situation. "Should I just go full Republican, Barry? Let's look across the board. We are still taking public relations damage from that lingering Paramount Records heroin scandal to also be investigated for this."
"If we lean entirely into the conservative establishment, the Republicans can at least provide an ironclad cover for our media assets."
Diller paused, "I talked to Pat Buchanan yesterday, and Henry Kissinger, who, as you know, is close with Robert Evans and they both echoed the same sentiment. They both think you're playing too small, Duke."
"With your capital, media empire, and your growing press footprint, you shouldn't just be buying protection. They think you could become a Hollywood kingmaker for the Republican party, after all Lew Wasserman doesn't hide his Democrat support in Hollywood."
Duke remained silent, letting the words echo. Kingmaker.
"I'll think about it, Barry," Duke said softly, "But right now, survival comes first. Under absolutely no circumstances can my name come up in Washington for the rest of this year. I am going to avoid public appearances, industry galas, and press conferences after we wrap this recording of Jaws. I need to be invisible."
"Understood," Diller said. "But we still need to neutralize the threat of the ANE leak to Congress. We need a target."
"Who leaked it?" Duke asked.
"John Ehrlichman," Diller said venomously. "He's the one who slipped the details of our media role to the committee investigators when he fell out of favor."
Duke's eyes narrowed. "Then lets do it. Do an expose on the Washington Star. We own the paper, let's use it. Paint it as if he was the sole, rogue architect directing the entire operation."
"Will the press buy that he acted alone?" Diller asked.
"They'll buy it if we give them enough verifiable details about his other operations," Duke replied flatly.
"We never, under any circumstances, accept or admit that ANE followed orders from the Republican National Committee. Instead, we imply that other major national news networks were the ones secretly taking orders. We keep Paramount out of the news or articles."
Diller was silent for three full seconds.
"That sounds good, Duke," Diller whispered.
"Call me the absolute second the Washington Star piece goes to the printing presses."
Duke slammed the receiver back.
He sat still in the shed for at minute.
He reached into his coat pocket, pulled out his production walkie-talkie, and clicked the transmitter button.
"Kurtz, what is the status on the late-night Orca shoot?"
Gary Kurtz's voice crackled back instantly through the small, tinny speaker, "The crew is positioned, Duke. The lighting rigs are set. We are ready whenever you are."
___
Difficult chapter to write, but this is last Jaws chapter that i will write