“So, eleven hundred men went in the water; 316 men come out and the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945.”
Perhaps one of the most celebrated monologues in film history, Quint’s speech in Jaws about the sinking of the USS Indianapolis and was actually written by filmmaker John Milius and reworked by the man who portrayed Quint, the late Robert Shaw.
It’s an unbelievable story, and true: the Indianapolis, which delivered essential components for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine and subsequently sank. The men on board mostly drowned or were eaten by sharks, leaving only 316 of the original 1196 men surviving. For decades, the damage that lead to the sinking was blamed on Captain Charles McVay III, who was controversially court-martialed, and the grief and shame that he received over the tragedy led him to commit suicide in 1968. McVay was blamed for his steering although many of the survivors claimed that he was not at fault.
Nonetheless, decades later eleven year old Hunter Scott was researching the USS Indianapolis sinking (because of the scene in Jaws) and was able to start a movement to exonerate McVay, which was finally done so by Congressional order in 2000 — all before Scott was out of his teens!
According to The Hollywood Reporter the intriguing true-life story of Scott’s quest to removel the blame from McVay is set to become a film by Team Downey, the production company of Robert Downey, Jr. and his wife Susan Downey, with Robert Schenkkan, who wrote The Quiet American and was a writer on The Pacific. It’s expected that the film will cover both the sinking and Scott’s attempts to clear McVay’s name.
Team Downey better hurry though — Variety reports that smaller outfit Hannibal Classics already has a script for a more straightforward take of the tragedy, titled U.S.S Indianapolis: Men of Courage, which it is now seeking to cast. The chairman and CEO of Hannibal (and co-writer of the script) Richard Rionda Del Castro calls his version “an action-oriented homage to the brave crew of the U.S.S. Indianapolis, It is a testament to their will to survive in the face of certain death.”
You can watch Robert Shaw’s speech below. If either movie is half as good as this, we’re in for something awesome:
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