Polly's account of the karate school kids is interrupted by the telephone. She picks up on the first ring and barely gives the medical examiner time to speak before she passes the call to Brody, who, cradling the receiver on his shoulder, acknowledges it with a terse interrogative 'yeah'. He then aligns the report in the typewriter and types the words SHARK ATTACK as the Probable Cause of Death. The scene is lifted directly from the novel, but dispenses with a conversation between the coroner and the police chief that implies a cordial relationship between the two men. In the film the medical examiner is virtually silent - speaking only when directed by the Mayor and voicing opinions that have been foisted on him. Behind his thick-framed Henry Kissinger glasses, the expression on his face shifts as easily as his conscience.
The brief close up of the report in the typewriter tells us that the victim of the attack was a student and that the time of death was estimated at 11.50 p.m. The date is given as 7-1-74, which will prove to be a continuity error in the movie's time line when the second shark victim is attacked on the twenty ninth of June. More immediately noticeable, however, is a spelling mistake: the word coroner has been typed out twice as corner. Unlike the typos in Jack Torrance's manuscript, this is unlikely to be a subtle indication of character, but simply poor spelling from the movie's props department. The report is in any case destined to be thrown away - or amended, as the medical examiner puts it - and the document Hooper consults in the mortuary scene gives 'probable boating accident' as the cause of death.
Polly tries to reassert her position by setting the morning's agenda, but Brody, rising from his desk, interrupts her with a request for 'a list of all the water activities that the city fathers are planning today.' The reference suggests a government of benign patronage and benevolent wisdom and, when the authorities gather to announce the temporary beach closure, it's no surprise that they are made up exclusively of men. In Jaws women are relegated to supporting roles - the caring mother in Ellen Brody, or the grieving one in Mrs Kintner.
As Brody leaves his office, the camera tracks back and then pans with him as he heads for the exit, executing a reverse of the shot that opened the scene. With the exception of the cutaway to show the police report, the whole scene has in fact been filmed in a single take. Brody asks Hendricks about the beach closed signs. The deputy's bewildered response ('We never had any.') prefigures Meadows's comment ('We never had that kind of trouble in these waters.') on the ferry.
Brody pulls on his windcheater and, dodging an elderly resident who has come to complain about illegal parking, makes for the exit. There is a curious detail of wardrobe that is never explained: over his right shoulder Brody is wearing what looks like an orange towel, just as he had in the earlier scenes at home. He pulls his jacket on over it, but this time there is no wife to pull it teasingly from him. It has, at any rate, disappeared by the time he emerges onto the street in the next scene. If there is any reason for this piece of wardrobe, it is never given, and one can only speculate that his character is such a bundle of neuroses that he requires the comfort of a security blanket.
