Looks Like I Picked The Wrong Week To Quit Smoking

As Larry Vaughn leads the way down the corridor to the council chambers he places a cigarette in his mouth. In the later scene when he argues with Brody and Hooper in front of the defaced billboard, he toys nervously with another cigarette, holding it cagily in his cupped right hand, sucking on the filter tip, but never lighting up. These are the only two oblique references to the fact that he is trying to quit smoking, and it's the kind of business that an actor might come up with in rehearsal. When the mayor appears in the hospital in the aftermath of the Fourth of July panic in a rumpled jacket with his tie askew, he has clearly lost his battle against the nicotine habit and is seen openly taking a drag.

Brody too is a smoker: he puffs nervously on a cigarette while waiting for the car ferry; he's admonished sharply by Hooper for attempting to light up in the morgue; and, famously, he has a freshly-lit Marlboro between his lips when the shark rears up behind him at the Orca's stern. In the movie's sequel Ellen Brody complains when her husband smokes at the breakfast table, suggesting he eat a doughnut with his coffee instead.

In the Seventies smoking in movies was pretty common (although not as common as, say, in the Forties when it was casually assumed that everybody did it), and it was still a long way from being demonised. Nevertheless, it was - and always will be - a nightmare for movie continuity, as evidenced by the fact that Brody's cigarette disappears and reappears from shot to shot in the 'you're going to need a bigger boat' scene.