"That's why the decided to make the giant mechanical shark, which so terrified people. "Steven realized that you can't direct a shark, especially a great white," Taylor explains. The neophyte director had seen the couples' underwater footage, and enlisted them to shoot footage featuring actual great white sharks that could be used in his adaptation of Peter Benchley's bestselling novel. Valerie Taylor photographed underneath the famous mechanical shark from Jaws (Photo: Ron & Valerie Taylor)Īt the same time, though, the Taylors played a key role in making the movie that most effectively preyed on peoples' fear of sharks: Steven Spielberg's 1975 classic Jaws. Nature put them there for a reason, and it wasn't to feed us." "They all have a role to play in the ocean. "You shouldn't be allowed to fish any sharks," Taylor says. As Playing With Sharks illustrates, she rose to prominence as Australia's leading female spearfisher, and she and her husband participated together in competitions after their 1963 marriage.īut following one expedition where they watched multiple sharks being hunted and killed, they experienced a radical change of heart and became vocal conservationists. So there's definitely some take home information here - whether or not you can actually enact it is another story!"įunnily enough, when Taylor started her diving career in the 1950s, she more commonly speared sea creatures instead of photographing them. "If you have a scenario where a shark has come to investigate you, no predator expects its potential prey to turn around and stare it back down. "When Valerie speaks about how curious sharks are, I think the critical thing is whether or not we're curious back," the director observes. "Īitken suggests another takeway from Taylor's too-close encounter with a shark. "There's always one that's more curious than the rest. "Sharks are curious - they're like a pack of dogs," she explains. Taylor is quick to note that the bull shark that bit her wasn't hungry, but merely interested in the two-legged creature swimming in her territory.
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