Special Report: A JAWS Companion

a little bit. Had a great time talking with Pat, and I hope you have a great time listening to this interview. Enjoy. Obviously, I want to talk to you about your Jaws book, but I would love to talk to you a little bit more about your career and some of your other books as well.

Everybody is like, your dad is a football player. Everybody's wearing the car company their dad works for. On that you remember. I remember all the Shelby Cobra kids with that great snake with the wheels. Oh yeah, why were Chrysler kids? So horn jackets were Chrysler and everybody else. Everybody wanted whatever their father was working for. And if you liked movies, it was down to Scream Theater and

Sir Graves Ghastly and maybe built Kennedy. It's one thing when movies are made three thousand miles away, but when we moved to California, movies were like thirty minutes away. So my brother, my younger brother, Donald, and I started crashing movie sets, you know what I mean. When when we were in high school, you would go and it was mostly like horror and action, and it was We

learned a lot of the ropes there. And when I was in college, I wrote a commercial with my late brother Tom, and we wrote a commercial and David Lynch liked it and wanted me to read it to him when I yeah, which is cool. I mean again, I was too dumb to be a frame basically, so I read it for him. He laughed and he booked me in the commercial, and after that I got an agent, and so it became beside thing. I'll be a viking and a commercial and you keep on the copywriting and

the subbing and all the other stuff. But I found what the commercial and then that led the movies six nine. So if you can carry the girl, you're automatically a bad guy. So I did a lot of thugs, henchmen, and of course monsters. When you're a monster, you're picking up stunt people and throwing them around. It's a monster. Was always as a child watching Sir Graves, I was always running for the monster anyway, So it was really cool.

They're paying you to be a monster, you know what I mean to me, there's nothing more joyous to be a world, to be a big foot or a henchman. If it's a good enough henchmen, you just have a lot of fun. Bad guys are always a lot of fun. And commercials you come in as a viking or a barbarian for Geico or something. You're always construction They played a time, so you're always either construction worker barbarian dog. There's a shock, but to me. Seattle and Detroit. We're

always big movie towns, you know what I mean. You have the Fox Theater and the America is the Marathon it's still around.

have the fish swimming right by your hat. You're right, so you have to touch the fish when we went. I remember there was a girl from U of M or MSU and her boyfriend next to us, and I jumped and flinched a creature because I only see on TV. So when you're seeing the creature in three and DS is a completely different movie. Oh yeah, And it became the greatest film watching experience in my life. This college girl grabs me and pulls me to and goes, don't

be afraid, little boy. She goes, I will let the monster hunt you. And we laughed. And after the movie, my big brother goes, I hope you enjoined yourself because her boyfriend wanted to kill you. But it was like to me that that was the joy of movies. And then when we came to California and I started to see movies being made and really excited me. You know what I mean. It's one thing to be three thousand miles away and everything's in theory, and it's another to

actually be on the set. One of the things I do is the same thing I've done ever since they were shooting some Albert. The first one I ever crashed was this craptacular Albert Pew and blade Runner knocked off of him. Yeah, well he was What was amazing is it was the first set I was ever on. I met future Child Award winners like the Kyoto brothers were there, and the Kyoto brothers remembered me from being a set crasher. When I started to work on legitimate sets. They would

come up to me. One of them hasn't encyclopedic memory and could remember every conversation because he was I want to say it was Charlie. And one of them came up to me and it's three o'clock in the morning and I'm my high school book bag on. I was just so excited to be there, and I think it was Charlie Kyoto and he walked up to me and he goes, you don't belong here. Yeah, well you know what I've been teenager And I go, oh my god,

how did you know? And he goes, it's three o'clock in the morning, we're all being paid shit, and you're the only one smiling.

wound up spending a week at Loan Pine. I had to carry a chest in an episode. But what they liked a lot of guys, the Doug Jones and the Kevin Peter Halls, they're few and far between. Most guys when the creature gigs, they do nothing but bitch and mode in the chair. And I was never a bitcher and a motor. I again, because I was in the horror, I was in the monsters, I was in the movies, and because I usually knew a thumb nerd so I know if I hear your name, I can name all

your credits. These guys loved having me in the chair. Because I would ask them. There wasn't an interview or anything. Somebody think Bart Mixon would be doing your makeup for four hours and you're asking Barn about RoboCop. And I met and made friends with Bart when it was a teenage set crasher on some terrible zombie movie. And he was cool. And so when I was doing Voyager or something, I knew almost the entire effects. Guys, wow and to me, and they put me up in loan Pine. In fact,

just a great story. So they put me up in loan Pine and it was some crazy two part Voyager. This is where they shot Dunat, Did they shot Stage Coach, iron Man? All these movies were shot there. So what happens is I'm in loan Pine and the stunt tornader likes me, and when we start talking and he's telling funny stories and he knows I know all the stuff he worked on. And so that night when you're in

loan pine's a tiny little town. And what happens is the best hotel rooms are named after the biggest stars. You'll have the John Wayne Sweet all this yell that I think at whatever hotel, Donald and I had Lash LaRue, the lash he's like a b movie star. So at the smaller rooms, I had Lash LaRue and Donald was next door on Jebby Hayes. But the stunt coinator on

Voyager was a guy named Dennis Madelone. And Dennis had been the stunt double for William cant on The Greatest American Hero, and he was telling me stories about that. And every time I'd run into Dennis, he kept going, you need to do a book on the Greatest American Hero. And I thought, he's right, but you engage interest with your publishers, and like did they wanted to Buck Rogers book first, and then I did one of the Hunk and Dennis Dennis. Every time the Hunk threw somebody in

every third episode, it's Dennis, you know. And they have Dennis as well, like kind of a biker I all but long hair, so then you usually have Dennis's hair canned up to play a soldier or whateverwhere else. So I kept seen like Dunnet and je Lebelle over and over, and I thought when I started doing these books, I thought, we got to hear their stories. I did two pages on Donnis for the whole Companion, and then when I

did Greatest American Hero with donnis Man. He's like one of the best connected stunt men you'll ever meet, Can you everybody.

just thought, hold with that. I'm not going to write a book for someone who's trying to screw me, and I just threw it in a drawer. And then Martha's Vineyard was doing something called Jaws first, and my brother Donald, Donald's kind of my Jiminy Cricket. So my brother Donald comes to me and says, hey, you ought to think about doing this thing on Martha's Vineyard and the Jaws will get broken my heart because this guy had violated

everything he was. He was just a bad guy, and his publishing companies out of business, and rightfully, I left a bad taste in my mouth. And I told Donald I'm not going to go to Martha's Vineyard less they advertised, and when they added Benchley in somebody else, I thought, oh my god, I'd better go. This is the last round up for a lot of these guys. And I'd waited too long. What I did is I screwed up.

I went it too long, and the Plaine ticket was like a thousand bucks, you know, And I thought, I guess I'm not going, and my brother Donald goes, I'll get a series of driveaways, and so like the Hitcher, but you to drive someone's car halfway across country, then you pick up someone else's car from there. I think we drove the last step from Chicago to New York.

I drove with Chicago Wolves. I was a sportsman, the one that used to sell football games, because that was the only place where I could lay in the back for all the camera clip it. It was the only van I had one couldn't actually sleep on my back and send it hunched over like's. It was a satellite trunks. So I got there, I grabbed a Lucky I hit in New York, I hit Times Square. It's radclock in the morning. I got out a Lucky Town. There was a Gambler's bus, Chinatown Gambler's bus, and I took in

at the woods Hole and jumped the ferry over. And then what I didn't realize is that the place was all booked up and it's prohibitally expensively bring a car. And what happened is all that was left. Everybody booked them, all the Joss fanatics from across the country, including a

family from Michigan. I remember running into the painted the Jaws, shoe water Skier and Shark on the side of their van for the job all the way on and because everything was booked up, I was staying at the Kent Crowd, which is probably the cheapest thing on the island and I'd been trying my brother packed at the intent and

he forgot the ten stakes. So when we get there, I'm trying to assemble the tent in the pouring rain, and I didn't have the thing in it, and he jumped like, we need to move in front there in case so nobody rides us over. I didn't realize our heads were lying right in the tread of the next area campground where he picked up spots. And it gets better, Mike. It was skunk season, so they're had a great shower.

But I remember using my cell phone and show you'd see what looked like black and white cats walking towards you, and they were all skunks, like an army of skunks. And the great thing is what happened is two guys from Boston who were Giant Jaws fanatics. Their names are in the book mark I think Scott Rummel and somebody else. They were like, when we saw that I was getting interviews, they saw the Universal took care of me on the island to make sure I get all my interviews. They're like,

can we drive you? And it's s John because otherwise on the tram or whateverlse because they'd been there many times. They showed me the Jaws tour. There's a reason that's not in the book. I mentioned it, but I don't showed because it was three o'clock in the morning and I didn't want the to think it was a serial killer. But the house next to the house from the original film had this brass plaque on the side of the house you can see in the original Jaws and it

says Jaws shot here. And I mean, it was just so exciting because I'd never been to Martha's Vineyard before, but I knew my way around because of the movie. And it's one of those Touchstowe movies for me that I've seen it and loved it, and it was just

I could recognize. And for the Jaws Fest, which is the event Universal sponsored, MCA had all the stores put up all the signs from the first two movies and everywhere you're going, and we watched the movie at the movie theater where they used to screen the dailies, and it was next to see guys I interviewed every when I could down on the West Coast, Roy Arbogast, Joe Alves, who busted out the original storyboards. Roy Albert Gast busted out the tabletop shot that they shopped the original movie.

That sold them on the original movie. And when I got Golli, it was Elves God leaving the arbagaster my first three interviews, and the three of them were so great and so knowledgeable and so kind. It paved the way, and thank God. The weird thing is I don't get starstruck about and they signed me Natalie Portman or Christine Vale or something like that, who chairs their next people the

interesting stories. But when Chrissy from Jaws agreed to an interview, it was like many royalty from me, you know what I mean. God rest her soul. We just lost a few months ago. But it was so exciting to hear her stories. And it's just to me Bill Butler giving me a long afternoon and marrying a delay, and he just Bill Butler talking to you about Jaws and Godfather and Rocky and Greece. My god, he lived to a hundred What really made me happy? He lived to one

hundred and two. And when he passed, Variety quoted book and his obituary. That to me, because I'm thinking I asked him every question, every conceivable question of Jaws that could be asked. I asked, but he's been in documentaries and stuff. But when you got him talking and he really dug deep, great great stories.

like the interesting. I want to know what Missus Kittener is thinking. I want to know what Alex Kittener is thinking. I want to hear from Teddy Grossman, everybody in Jaws has a store, and it's such a big franchise. What shocked me is there's Jaws two and Jaws the Revenge books, out Bound Chunks and all the stories that I uncovered in my book. They went there and I thought, wow, John Hancock talked to me, the original Jaws two director.

And the great thing about that is when I got John and his wonderful wife who's now gone now and she got completely cheated. She's the one who came over the water scale. And if you look at the original nineteen eight Jaws two paperbacks by Hank Cyles, they mentioned her by name. And the great thing about her is when John and Hancock called me, I got her in

there as well. And because the second poud for the incredible Hunk, I doubled because when am I going to talk to her again, I got her telling the amazing Josh Hues store during her amazing Joss two stories. She told me the incredible stories about the Hullck where they basically blackballed the couple after he got replaced on Joss two. Universal MCA was actively trying to blackball them and cancel them. And what happened is Kenneth Johnson the creator of the

Hog TV series. He's a champion of the underdogs and he hired her immediately for the incredible haulk Returns the second pilot and Dorothy Tristan's her name, by the way, I just realized they haven't been saying her name. Yeah, So Northy was an actress and a runner and the water Skier, which they made the whole campaign for Josh two. That was the whole campaign and she got no krintin on the She gets credited on the gip her back, but they denied her all credit on the movie and

that was that's not right. And her draft of Josh two and the one Handhot was doing. It's more interesting. When they fired the Hancocks, they just sit. Shinberg just had them do a beat for beating Jaws two. Yeah it's Jaws. I mean if you look at jos Hugh next to Jaws. They keep all in the scare. And I'm not gonna blame Dolly be HEA's run in the

last minute. Instead of the kids karate chopping the fences, you have this the kid with the CB radio, all this all this stuff without and he finds the burned woman. Jean Culture's burned body at the exact moment Ben Gardner's had in the original film, and it just it's beneath Jaws two to I like the stories, but it was beneath and I was annoyed by the Joss wo and four books because they literally took every story from my book and I don't think one of them got Hancock

or the other guy. And it's okay. I like my book standing alone. Covering all four. There's good stories to be found. But to me, Jaws two is amazing how it came together. So Spielberg basically told them, if you wait for me, I'll do it after post Encounters, and they didn't want to wait.

He goes, he always throws insults, and sure enough Spielberg said when somebody said, why are you doing the Lost World because you've never done a sequel outside indeed, and he literally Spielberg literally told them I didn't want another Joss to in my own that just personal.

didn't less scared of Jessica to death. He wanted to make the scariest Jaws too possible and bowing the town going into bankruptcy, which was the big fear in the first movie. In the first book. He was literally trying to give you a Joss to remember, and you got it. I hate that they got smashed so hard. Just they were really trying to give you a good movie. But I hate when Joss three D grows on me. The Richard Matheson original draft. It was so much better. It was.

His original draft was more along the lines of the nineteen sixteen Metagline Creek Shark attacks before they put it in the Sea World, and when they put it in the Sea World, it basically became Gorgol Meat's Revenge of the Creature. And if you see Jaws three D, see jaw Us three D in a theater in three D, and it's like the greatest movie you've never seen from nineteen fifty five. It's it's almost a period piece except for the modern haircuts of her modern eighties haircuts and

the giant dollars, of course, being the eighties. It's literally a fifties horror movie and it's very stolid, and I actually dig it in three D. The version they run on AMC and the Cybi channel looks like it's covered in milk. They didn't fix the print, they didn't adjust the three D for TV and it looks like crap, But if you see it in a theater in three D like I did the studio, the Egyptian dug out a mint front of it to run with the meg and it was just fantastic just to see it again.

away from the death holes and all that. On a Saturday morning, he put on a channel called Heroes and Icons H and I and they were shling the best best scenario and I started watching it and literally it was a first season episode. Nothing big on the mythos happens in the episode is the last episode of the first season. But you know what, it's nge show. And I was watching it, drinking this coffee, trying not to think about COVID and the shutdown, what's going to mean?

And it was perfect Escape us Fair and it was really charming. It was well written, it was character driven. William Katt, Connie Silica, and Robert Culp were utterly fantastic, and I just thought, and I'm picture great.

It was two pounds. But I was so beaten down and I said, I'm never going to do another show that went five seasons and just keeped the hell out of me. I was just and I interviewed over one hundred people at a certain point it's not even for the gig. I'm a completist. And if I'm gonna chump down that tree, I'm not gonna knock off a branch. I'm chomping everything. I need to know everything. And with

that book, I couldn't stop writing it. I remember feeling like I was having a nervous breakdown because I was halfway to the third season and there was like a hundred things ahead of me, and a hundred things. It was too big to quit, and it was too big to it felt too big to continue. Who the hell is this book for? And my brother is my brother Thomas.

You can't do the TV movies And I thought, yeah, but somebody out there is gonna buy this book for one god knows how much it's gonna cost, and they're gonna want the TV movies. And literally, if you look, I think I do like a hundred pages on the TV movies alone and the botch She hugged piet So when Hero came along, when I saw him that morning, I pitched it and they passed on Hero for buck

Rong for whatever reason, it had a future film. You know, I've done Hero, but it really shocked me how quickly forgotten it was, you know what I mean? It was one of those shows when they re run it. Everybody loves it, everybody watches it, but people forget that it exists. I remember Robert Coup's obituar are they use a publicity still f in the show? But they never mentioned greatest

American Hero in its little bit? I thought that stinks when Canel's a bit, they never mentioned greatest American Hero? And if the show really deserve respect? And what I didn't cone on because again after I did Let's see Honk was five seasons, buck Rogers with two seasons, but that was a lot of work too because there was a feature film and I had to cover all that. So when I got and with the Hunk, I couldn't

stop writing. I think when I did the book, I covered the Angling movie because I interviewed Angling for Starlog and a couple other magazines and for Hank Choo. I'd interviewed the Fetch Guy and a few and notes to Hamily and all that, and then they announced the Avengers

movie and I was stuck. It was literally stuck because I thought, if I don't get this book out and no, I'm gonna have to cover Avengers and that the book's gonna be I literally had to peel the book from my own fingers and get out of my own way and an assent never going to write a two pound book again. So when I did hear it, yeah, I see no more. And the Hero was three seasons, but it's an abbreviated It was a mid season replacement, so it's a half season in the beginning and a half

season at the end. The third season was canceled hel way through, so it's roughly two seasons. And oh my god, piece of cake. And you sent me of the book. You can look. It's twenty eight pages longer than Hunk and it's the shortest show I've ever covered. And what happened is it was a rabbit hole. Every time I got in, things led to other things led that, and I was I'm lucky that I got everybody before they died.

Frank Lupo died when the book was just about to come out, and I thought, thank god, I went to this event and got Loopo and I grabbed canal here on. So everybody who died I had. And I think that is the most complete book where you have everybody. When I started Hulk. Colvin had died like three years earlier, and I'd found I knew people who older actors I interviewed for Starleam the bird Woman Barbara Luna, the Beautiful bird Woman from Buck Rogers. Turns out she was dear

friends with Jack Colvin and I interviewed. When I interviewed the girlfriend the Last Extorcism, Ashley Bell. Her mom had done two episodes of The Incredible Hulk and was the first Victoria Carroll Bell. She was the first girl to play. She hulkeed, she voiced, she hulked on the cartoon, and she married the cartoons Bruce Banner, which is Michael Bell,

who was like the King voiceovers. I knew Mike because I did a ginormous if you look at the old starlog, I had a ten page thing where I tracked down every living member of the Superfrince. It was an insane amount of work, especially for an auticle. You interview one guy, you get paid. When you stupidly masochistically do an article like this, You're interating fifteen people for the same price you would get for one. I have an auditle on the New Dark Side. If you got you go to

Bonds and Noble. I cover a horror movie called Bad Moon, and I mean I got Michael. I did a table read for a great forty style film nor where I'm murdering people and Mike is a Mike Perey is a detective trying to get me. And really I play a sewikiller called the bed Bug, and he's trying to catch me. And I remember I met Mike there and then I

interviewed him for a Bad Mood uticle. And when I interview him for Bad Moon, I thought I might as well get all my greatest America and Yard questions on him. And so I did another movie called It's On to Me, I Think, and it's on Amazon. It's called Out of the Shadows. And I'm a serial killer with a value over I had in a small town and he, Robert Romantis from Fast Times at Ridgemond High are trying to catch me. And I'm thinking, the hilarious thing is I'm

working out with these guys. I saw not to mention to Michael. I'm working on this book because I don't distract from the work. And the hilarious thing is the picture of Michael in the book is a picture I took of him on when we're shooting this serial killer movie in Ohio. I knew like this, and the director and everybody were giving me cramp I'd been out of Michigan in the Midwest so long. I didn't have any

down coats. I didn't have any furry coats to work, so I threw in my Michigan hooty and the director, God bless him, great guy picked me up at the airport and he goes, mister, that shirt is not going to fly around here. And I forgot about the Michigan Ohio rivalry. See, my sister Diane is married to my brother in law Jim. My brother in law Jim went to Ohio State and my parents went to the U of M. So when Diane brought Jim home, Mom jokes,

I guess it's gonna be a mixed marriage. Everybody Ohio made sure to cramp up in my Michigan hoodie every time they saw.

They have no professionals with them, and they're being set up by the captain of the ship to be by a shock on camera. What do you want? So it's an action comedy. Sean Spaky Piela does the amazing artwork and I would show it to you. Unfortunately, the only artwork I can show you is on my phone since we're talking on it. I promise you, Mike, it'll be worth seeing. It'll be in comic shops across the country

next year. The amazing thing about it is it was one of those things that I was so happy to put it together with one of those COVID projects I was thinking about. I was doing it. I had a script that had been optioned like three times, and it was going to turn into the comic book. My artist injured his hand, and so I grabbed another artist and I had this weird idea, and you know what idea is good when you keep coming up with ancillary. I came up with a great tagline for it, which I

won't reveal. It'll be on the comic book. You'll dig it. The comera will be very from if you know what I'm saying. It's an homage or something. But Mike, that will be out next year and I think it'll be well worth checking out.

really cool. He wrote a great script called Eyes Behind the Trees, but update on Doctor Moreau that Anthony Hopkins loved and agreed to do, so that's coming. Yeah, And Harrison's somebody to watch more. He's just he's an interesting tat. It was fun to do. Gosh, what else am I work on? It's the comic book really sites man, because it's after Greatest America Hero. I'm like, when you get a good story, to hear the rest of the story, you'd have to find someone else from the oh knew

what was going on. And I remember thinking when I was finishing Hero, which was like two and a half pounds, it was my biggest book, and I remond thinking, I just want to make up all the facts next time. And if you write it, it's yours, it's Mike. I look forward to hearing what you think about it. I think you'll dig it. Your artwork is fantastic, and I just I'm really happy with it. I think you will be too.