Year Of Release: 1975
Director: Steven Spielberg
Jaws made quite a splash <guffaw> back in '75, but it was for more than just stopping people swimming for a couple of weeks after they saw it. Everything from the box office mentality to the place it was filmed received a makeover the likes of which has never been seen again.
Behind every good movie, there appears to be a better book, and Jaws was no different. Peter Benchley wrote the number one best seller and released it back in February of 1974. The story must have been destined for greatness even back then, as the book had already earned over $1 Million before it had even finished its first run on the presses. By the way if you get the chance to read it, do it, its an amazing book, it leaves the movie for dead; there's no way a movie is going to get you inside the head of someone being attacked by a shark. That opening scene, I had to put the book down for a bit, totally blew me away...anyway where was I, oh yes...
Benchley's family fishing trips off Nantucket is where the idea of the story spawned, but moreover, his fascination for sharks really took off. Even as he made his way through a successful career in journalism, including free-lancing for Life magazine and doing articles for the Washington Post and the New Yorker, his fascination for sharks continued, and culminated in the late 60's when he ran a couple of feature pieces on a 4500-pound Great White that had been caught off Long Island. His interest was piqued and the rest is history. Ironically, after fishing for sharks as a young man, perhaps out of the thrill as much as the curiosity, if he was asked to write Jaws again today, he couldn't. His conservation and research work to help protect sharks is world renowned and continues to this day, and he has made mention in the past that had he understood the behaviour of sharks, he would never have penned Jaws in the first place.
Having said that, he doesn't regret the phenomenon that was Jaws [the book], selling over 20 million copies world-wide and making himself a comfortable career in writing, though was quite upset at the other reaction the book caused. While most of the population viewed swimming in the ocean would leave them as good as dead, a small group decided to go out and hunt down as many "man-eaters" as they could find, some kind've testosterone fuelled endeavour to win the hearts and minds of...well themselves I suppose.
So that was Jaws the book, in a nutshell at least. The movie, though, took on a whole new energy...
Producers' David Brown and Richard Zanuck could see this good thing coming for miles, however in hindsight, they have both admitted that had they read the book more than once, they would've foreseen filming problems and not gone ahead with the project. They offered Benchley $175,000 for the movie rights and a written screen play, and gave one-time director Steven Spielberg the opportunity of a life-time to bring this story to the big screen. Not to be taken too lightly, Spielberg purportedly responded "only on one condition will I direct: that the shark not be seen for the first hour." Spielberg's singular film offering to the world at that point was the 1974 little known "The Sugarland Express", a film loosely based on the true story of a woman who convinces her imprisoned husband to escape, and they then kidnap their child who has been placed with a foster family and attempt to elude the law. It starred Goldie Hawn, wow. I've not seen nor heard of this but it sounds like something Spielberg would run with. Anyway, so no one had heard of anyone at this point., lets be clear on that. Another thing to point out here is that the "summer blockbuster" did not exist in any way shape or form, but I'll get to that later.
So Spielberg picked up the ball and ran with it, however Jaws was going to be the beast that almost couldn't be tamed. The first signs of trouble began during casting for the film. Spielberg originally wanted Sterling Hayden for the role of Quint, however Hayden was in trouble with the IRS and any acting fee paid to him was to be levied by them. After a plan was thought up to get around this problem, they eventually gave up, figuring the IRS would see through anything they took to them, so Spielberg cut Hayden loose and cast Robert Shaw instead. Shaw however, wasn't quite the perfect fit for direction being an ignoramus on the whole, and basically he couldn't stand Richard Dreyfuss and they argued incessantly on set. Despite the tension this was causing, the tension between their respective characters in the movie was actually enhanced by it. Then quite coincidentally, Robert Shaw was to flee the country soon after shooting his scenes as he too was in trouble with the IRS. Lovely.
Other names that were bandied about for inclusion in the film included Charlton Heston, Jeff Bridges, Timothy Bottoms, Jan-Michael Vincent, Jon Voight and Lee Marvin.
A shooting location was the next thing sort after. Peter Benchley's fishing days off the coast of Massachusetts was an ideal locale as his book's setting, so they scouted locations in the same area. They settled on Martha's Vineyard, a seasonal island off the coast of Cape Cod, just inside Nantucket, and filming began. But where Amity Island was the name of the one-town-island, Martha's Vineyard consists of six separate towns, and locations in each were used to depict Amity.
A bit more on Martha's Vineyard, its history is steeped in the whaling industry, and but for the clement weather and holiday makers soaking up not only the summery conditions but the wealthy environment during whaling's hey day, the townships on the Vineyard would not have survived to this day. Testament to the history of the place are the old whaling captain's homes; stately manors that line the main streets of each of the six towns, over 100 whaling captains once resided on the island. But since the whaling industry collapsed and the workers moved away, they have since been rejuvenated into B'n'B's and trendy cafes and clubs, yet maintain their old-time charm. At that stage, around the early 70's, Martha's Vineyard had a permanent population of around 5,000 people, however after Jaws was released, the population grew to around 15,000 (currently a little over 16,000), and the summer time tourist population swells the island to over 100,000! One more slightly related thing, fans of "Stuck On You", the recent conjoined twins comedy starring Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear, was set in the real Martha's Vineyard, though I'm not sure which town exactly.
So with filming begun, it was time to bring the shark to life. A mechanical shark had been designed and built back on the mainland and was ferried over, however it had never been tested in water. "Bruce" - Spielberg affectionately nicknamed the mechanical Jaws Bruce, after his lawyer - promptly sank and had to be retrieved by divers. It was the beginning of a long running saga with Bruce, and despite its failings, it actually enhanced the end product by forcing Spielberg to work around it. Bruce spent most of the movie's filming broken down and by proxy was unavailable for certain shots, so Spielberg was forced to use other methods to portray the menacing shark. The biggest work-around was using the camera as the shark, and I'm sure we all agree that the final product reveals a great effect. As Hitchcock once said, "A bomb is under the table, and it explodes: That is surprise. A bomb is under the table and doesn't explode: That is suspense." Spielberg similarly uses the implied rather than the literal to get the message across, and its what made Jaws the thriller it became.
The real shark footage however was a great success, and although not all of it was used, it was to great effect. All of the real shark footage was shot off Seal Rocks off the coast of Sydney, and quite to my personal disgust, a real white pointer was cut up and modified for the close up footage. Other tricks used with the real footage included employing a miniature dive cage with a tiny mannequin or a dwarf to make the sharks look bigger. They used this effect In the movie in the scene where Jaws attacks Hooper's cage; in the footage, you see a shark with rope hanging from its mouth. During the shoot, one of the sharks they attracted got caught up in the cage rigging and literally tore it apart trying to escape. Spielberg was so impressed with it, it was used in the movie, with Hooper escaping to the ocean floor to get away.
By the way Bruce now tours the world's museums, and "Bruce II" (a second mechanical shark was built) attacks unsuspecting visitors at Universal Studios.
The special effects team, as well as the cast, had more than the (un)mechanical shark to deal with though. The opening scene had much drama about it; if you remember it had our first victim going for a midnight swim when she is attacked from beneath. The effects were done by having two crews of people back on the beach, each with a line attached to a frame that actress Susan Backlinie was strapped into. They then took turns in pulling the flailing actress back and forth, and the distress on the actresses face is allegedly one of real pain. She has denied this to any press questions about it, however the rumour did circulate that the pain and distress on her face was in fact the frame breaking her ribs. Great realism I'm sure you'll agree. That scene took three days to shoot. In another scene, where a boat is sinking mid-ocean, Roy Scheider was unconvinced that the special effects technicians standing by would be able to save him if something went wrong. So he hid axes and crow bars around the inside of the cabin just in case.
Back to the story for a moment, there are a couple cool events that are only touched on in the film, however were real life incidents that had influence. The first story eluded to, though not directly mentioned in the book, are the infamous shark attacks that occurred off the coast of Jersey back in 1916. There is a good book (allegedly) on these attacks called "Close To Shore", and depending on what you read, this is the first ever documented shark attack in the United States - not the book, just the fact there are documented accounts of the attacks...you know what I mean! Anyway, so the 1916 attacks went in the order depicted in the book/film: a swimmer in the surf, a dog; and a boy and the leg of a man. The second is far more fantastic than this. There's a poignant moment in the film where a few of the characters are sitting around talking about old wounds and comparing scars, the character Quint reveals he was in the WWII tragedy of the USS Indianapolis. The story goes that the Indy was sunk and of the 1100 sailors that survived the initial sinking, only 300 odd survived the ensuing shark infested waters. The actual story is a much bigger beast than that and leads into all sorts of political conspiracies that remain prevalent in today's US government, but essentially, yes, probably one of the biggest shark-on-human feeding frenzies ever to have occurred. There was talk of making a movie around that whole USS Indy story including a young Quint however nothing ever came of it.
Back to the filming and the 52 day shoot blew out to 155 and Spielberg was over it big time. On the final day of shooting, after months of putting up with the belligerent Robert Shaw, Universal's impossible deadlines and enduring chaotic conditions off Martha's Vineyard, Spielberg turned up in his best clothes so as to avoid being dunked by the then frustrated crew. He jumped into a speed boat at the end of the final shoot exclaiming "I shall not return", and then set about editing the film. But not before Benchley, who was in total disagreement over the unscripted ending to the film, was kicked off set. Benchley had done quite a bit of consultation during the shoot. The new ending, which depicted the shark's head exploding, was in contradiction to the real ending according to Benchley, where the shark tires and dies of its harpooning wounds during the climactic sinking boat scene. But Spielberg had road-tested two endings to audiences to see which got the better reaction, sure enough we all love seeing exploding villains, no matter what species, and we all know which one made it to the final cut.
Finally the film was released, but once again not without some controversy. Spielberg decided to release the film during the summer months, a curious time to release according to critics. The summer was normally monopolised by B movies and "exploitation films" (whatever they are?) according to Roger Ebert (reputable New York and Chicago Times' writer), so Spielberg was seen to be going out on a limb by releasing it then. But at release time, an unprecedented 67 million people attended its US release and it became the first film to ever gross over the $100 million mark, Jaws became the first ever Summer Blockbuster, and so began the tradition of Hollywood studios releasing their biggest movies over the summer period. It also launched Spielberg into superstardom as a director, and he followed with "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", "1941" (in which he takes a little poke at Jaws), "Raiders Of The Lost Ark" and then "E.T." in 1982, by which time his career was at an unprecedented high. And he didn't stop there, but we all know that I guess. Put it this way, its 20 years on and his last four directions are "Artificial Intelligence: A.I.", "Minority Report", "Catch Me If You Can", and "The Terminal". Yeah, I reckon he's doing ok.
And having just done the little bits of reading and research for this, I'm hanging out to see it all again. See I actually enjoyed Jaws 2 back in the day, I might get that as well...
SABH