There is a low angle shot of the group of children splashing into the sea with Alex Kintner further out, revolving on his raft. The next shot shows Brody from a slightly different angle, one which accentuates the diminishing perspective of the orange and white striped beach huts that stretch the width of the screen behind him and end at a green-roofed pagoda. Mrs Taft sits with her arm around her husband on the left of the screen and the two of them look smilingly on at the children at play out of shot. An elderly man in blue bathing trunks and black bathing cap (earlier mistaken for a shark fin) comes and sits in front of Brody and begins drying his drooping chest with a yellow towel. There is a cut to a reverse angle behind Brody that positions the back of the chief's head on the right of the frame with the elderly bather just right of centre and the splashing children in the water dominating the left.
The old man's single line of dialogue ('We know all about you, chief. You don't go in the water at all, do you?') is the first specific reference to Brody's aquaphobia, which his wife will later try to psychoanalyse ('I guess it's a childhood thing.'). The use of the first person plural pronoun suggests that the old man is speaking on behalf of the whole island (indeed, Amity's population up to this point does seem to be well represented by elderly white males), and also tells us that in such a small community no secrets can be kept for long. Brody's reaction to the old man's playful needling seems unnecessarily harsh: he uncrosses his leg, shifts his chair to the left and dismisses him with the line, 'That's some bad hat, Harry.' He will similarly dismiss his wife's later attempts to explain away his phobia ('There's a clinical name for it, isn't there?') with a curt put-down ('Drowning.), which suggests he remains sensitive about his weak spot.
It's a matter of record that some of the dialogue in Jaws was improvised in rehearsals and then worked into the script proper by Carl Gottleib, Brody's 'bigger boat' line being the most oft-quoted example. I can't help feeling that the 'bad hat, harry' remark was another piece of improv. The line has taken on a life of its own outside the film as the name of Jaws-fan Bryan Singer's production company, whose production credit logo - which appears at the end of every episode of House, M.D - reproduces the scene in a Beavis and Butthead style animation.
