Why Tashtego Films?

Why Tashtego? It has everything to do with the mystery and romance of the small island off the coast of Massachusetts called Martha’s Vineyard. When I first encountered the island I was a quite young but something about the wild beauty of the island hooked me. Seriously enchanted, I always knew I would return some day. When I finally returned, too many years later, I rented a small house from a local family named Smalley in the town that was then still called Gay Head (now renamed Aquinnah). I discovered that local lore had it that Amos Smalley, a relative, had harpooned a white whale. Which of course sent me to Melville’s great story of the sea, Moby Dick. Because Melville wrote so convincingly about the great anguish of the whale, I’ve always read Moby Dick not only as a tale of obsession, but also, at least partially, a tale of the whale’s retribution.

Tashtego, a Wampanoag Indian, is described beautifully as “a son of the Prince of the Powers of the Air.” He is the first to name the whale that obsesses Ahab.... “that white whale must be the same that some call Moby Dick.” And in this, my favorite passage, he is the first to spot a whale:

Thus we were weaving and weaving away when I started at a sound so strange, long drawn, and musically wild and unearthly, that the ball of free will dropped from my hand, and I stood gazing up at the clouds whence that voice dropped like a wing. High aloft in the cross-trees was that mad Gay-Header, Tashtego. His body was reaching eagerly forward, his hand stretched out like a wand, and at brief sudden intervals he continued his cries. To be sure the same sound was that very moment perhaps being heard all over the seas, from hundreds of whalemen's look-outs perched as high in the air; but from few of those lungs could that accustomed old cry have derived such a marvellous cadence as from Tashtego the Indian's.

As he stood hovering over you half suspended in air, so wildly and eagerly peering towards the horizon, you would have thought him some prophet or seer beholding the shadows of Fate, and by those wild cries announcing their coming.

"There she blows! there! there! there! she blows! she blows!"

So, for a film company that hopes to identify and develop stories that will obsess, stretch out like a wand and drop like wing, it seems right. To say nothing of our hopes to have your ball of free will drop for a while. And I like the taste of the the name in my mouth Tash TEE go. Kind of dashing and fearless and tasty all at the same time doncha think? And besides ... Squibnocket was already taken.

Here is a link to a wonderful group that keeps the sea creatures (not just whales) away from the modern day harpooneers seashepherd.org They don’t just conserve, they police -- Ahab wouldn’t stand a chance against them and I like to think Tashtego would have been on their side now.

Margaret