The Perfect Storm

[jjwr]

Well I finally saw this movie, went out and rented the DVD last night. It was definetly good, and the storm was incredible. Anyone know offhand how much of what was shown in the movie was true?

[CMJ]

The storm stuff is mostly conjecture. Sebastion Junger theorized several scenario's of what might have happened out on the sea...Peterson picked the ones he liked the best. The Coast Guard stuff is all true except that they went down looking for another ship...not THE ANDREA GAIL. I could go into more specifics...if you have any direct questions, ask and I'll answet them for ya :)

[mez7]

pretty much the stuff on land was true, but then thier wasnt much of that now was there :p the rest was just what may have possibly happened,

apparently the characterization was very well done, and those were what those guys were really like

[jjwr]

So I'm assuming outside of the few radio conversations from whats her name they have no idea what really happened out there on the ocean. Interesting, but makes you wonder what really happened and if the movie was even close.

[CMJ]

I think you were talking Pre-storm, right jjwr? Actually we have a real good idea what happened on the ship before the storm hit...Captain Tyne radioed more than just one captain out there. There was no shark attack(it happened on an earlier voyage of the ANDREA GAIL) and Murph didn't get a hook through his hand(earlier trip once again). They were put there to show how dangerous commercial fiching can be regardless of weather. Sebastion Junger had a whole section of the book where he went into potential problems at sea like those.

[jjwr]

Yeah thats what I meant, I had meant to ask about the Shark and hook incident but didn't think of it. I'm assuming the location the ship went down isn't known either?

One thing I did notice(and not that its a bad thing) but it seemed like the only reason they kept cutting out to the Coast Guard is to lengthen the movie so you didn't see the Andrea Gail get knocked out right off the bat.

I think if nothing else it was pretty wicked to get a look at the sea during a storm like that, I'm not much of a sea-farer so I've never seen it when it gets ugly.

[CMJ]

I think the reason they had the Coast Guard stuff intercut(which was true by the way) was to give the false hope that the ANDREA GAIL might be saved to those people that didn't know the story.

[jjwr]

That could be too, it just seemed like they were lengthening the story, you can only have a ship battered by waves/wind for so long before it gets boring.

I did some searching on the web for this and found a few sites, though one thing I was looking for(out of sheer curiosity) was pictures of the actual crew but no luck there, did find one of the boat though.