Long before ‘Shark Tank,’ this creature helped shape life of Lee’s Summit man

Forty-six years ago, a certain shark thrilled and terrified audiences in movie theaters. Lee’s Summit resident Michael Smith was one of them, and “Jaws” has shaped a lot of his life since then.

Smith recently updated a book about the movie, “On Location… On Martha’s Vineyard: The Making of the Movie Jaws” for a re-release.

“(The movie) influenced so many people in the smallest ways. I always thought I was that crazy ‘Jaws’ fan, but you go online, and there’s thousands of us,” Smith said.

Smith’s involvement with the book goes back to the summer it came out, when he called information from a Tampa pay phone and was connected with the book’s author, Edith Blake.

At the time, a teenage Smith was helping run a Richard Dreyfus fan club.

“Edith was very pleasant and thanked me for the call, and she took down my address. About a week later, I got an envelope in the mail that had three photos of Richard from the set that weren’t in the book, that she just sent me out of the kindness of her heart,” he said.

Fast forward to 2005 and the first official JawsFest in Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., and the two finally met face to face.

“We got to talk, and she remembered me, you know, that crazy kid from Florida. Over the years, I’ve gone back to the Vineyard several times, and I’ve always met with her,” he said.

All of this came about because of one initial chance encounter. When Smith went to the movies and saw “Jaws,” he hadn’t even intended to be in that theater. He’d planned on seeing “Dog Day Afternoon” but was too young to be admitted to the R-rated movie.

The girl selling tickets asked him if he’d seen “Jaws” yet.

I’m sure I would have seen it eventually, but God bless that girl in the box office,” he said.

In the re-release, Smith has added a “Where are they now?” chapter about the cast and crew.

“I talk about a lot of the locals that worked on the film that have since passed. … Literally, as I was finishing up the final chapter, (actress Lee Fierro) passed away from COVID. I update what everybody’s doing. Some of them are still working in the film industry,” Smith said.

He also takes a look at the film’s legacy.

“I highlight the influence the film has had on Hollywood, on the way they market films. The James Bond films, which you would think are just great summer entertainment, in the past, they were all released in January,” Smith said. “ ‘Jaws’ was first summer blockbuster. ‘Jaws’ is the reason all the action films come out in the summer, to take advantage of kids being out of school.”

The book also contains all the original stories it had on its first release.

“Edith tells stories about how they would sit out on a boat for three hours, waiting for sailboats to go by. Spielberg didn’t want anything on the horizon. You get an inside look at how films are made,” Smith said. “It was one of the first books that took a behind-the-scenes look at the making of a film.”

When pandemic protocols aren’t in place, Smith goes to screenings of “Jaws” at the Alamo Drafthouse in the summertime, setting up tables with memorabilia for attendees to view. He enjoys seeing kids get their first introduction to it.

For years, Smith has been writing movie reviews, most recently on his website, mediamikes.com. The pandemic has significantly changed things for him, even though, as a critic, he can still watch films via copies studio send him.

“I like sitting in a dark theater surrounded by strangers and seeing their reactions,” he said “I miss the experience of being around other people.”