The Kid From ‘Jaws’ Is Now a Chief of Police on Martha’s Vineyard
From a thorn in Chief Brody’s side to a real life Chief Brody.
The immortal classic Jaws was set on the fictional New England island of Amity, but the movie was mostly filmed on the real New England island of Martha’s Vineyard. And this week, the real Martha’s Vineyard, selected a new chief of police: Jonathan Searle. And in a twist of fate so beautiful it feels like something out of a movie, Jonathan Searle appeared in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws as one of the kids making life miserable for Chief Brody, when they disguise themselves as a shark and cause havoc on the beaches of Amity.
If it’s been a while, here is the scene in question:
According to The Daily Jaws, Searle has lived on Martha’s Vineyard his whole life and has served in the local police Edgartown Police Department since 1986. Improbably, Searle also once had a hand in arresting a man who tried to pull a variation on the same prank he had fictionally pulled in Jaws, stopping someone who “who was going round falsely trying to cause panic on the beach by telling people that he had seen a pair of great white sharks from a boat he hadn't even been on.” Truly, it takes one to know one.
Searle told the local Vineyard Gazette “I’m clearly elated and and I’m humbled and honored to have been offered the position. It’s something I’ve been working toward my whole career.”
This is all very exciting. But if Haley Joel Osment announces he’s going to replace all his body parts with cybernetic enhancements and become a real-life artificial intelligence, that’s where I draw the line.