Quint’s tale of the USS Indianapolis was conceived by playwright Howard Sackler, lengthened by screenwriter John Milius and rewritten by Robert Shaw following a disagreement between screenwriters Peter Benchley and Carl Gottlieb. Shaw presented his text, and Benchley and Gottlieb agreed that this was exactly what was needed. Whoever was responsible, Quint got the date of the sinking wrong, claiming it was June 29, 1945, when in reality it was 12:14 am on July 30th, 1945. Universal has toyed with the idea of making the “Indianapolis” incident into a film, using a young Quint as the lead, ever since. Note that June 29, however, is the date (in the film) that the young boy was eaten by the shark, as can be seen in the hand-written “reward” notice.
According to legend, “what makes this seen even better is they had already filmed it once and due to Shaw’s onset drinking it wasn’t any good. the next day on set he asked Spielberg for just one more take and fucking nailed it with this proformance. I sometimes watch Jaws for this scene alone, And I personally consider it the greatest monologue in film ever.”