Jaws

Dir: Steven Spielberg

1975

*****

Steven Spielberg's troubled feature ended up being one of the greatest films ever made. Some disagree, as Jaws undoubtedly was the birth of the Blockbuster and the death, some would say, of independent and intellectual cinema. I disagree. However, thanks to films like Jaws and Apocalypse Now - both masterpieces in their own right - studios are now so cautious and money oriented that I wonder just how many great films were never made as a result. The blockbuster films dominate the cinema now, with some studios only making two or three films a year, expected them to make no less than five times the amount they cost to make. I'm not sure cinema was meant to be this way but I don't think Jaws is to blame on its own. Studios have to make money, I get that, no studios means no film and love or hate them, they all make great film. I digress. Lessons were learned, but essentially, Jaws has been so influential in film, to directors, actors, special effects, stunt men etc, that without Jaws, modern cinema wouldn't be as rich of diverse as it is. For me, Jaw's greatest trick was to cross genres without anyone realizing. It's everything you want from a horror or a good thriller, and is also something of a family film. I saw it for the first time when I was seven years old and it took me a long time to recover. I wouldn't even shut my eyes in the bath and even now as a sensible(ish) adult, I get a bit funny when I go in the sea and I know I'm not alone. Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown, producers at Universal Pictures, both read Peter Benchley's novel at the same time independently and agreed that it should be their next project. They considered John Sturges as director initially, not a bad choice but they offered it to Dick Richards, whose directorial debut, The Culpepper Cattle Co. had come out the previous year. However, they grew irritated by Richards's habit of describing the shark as a whale and soon dropped him from the project. Meanwhile, Steven Spielberg very much wanted the job. The 26-year-old had just directed his first theatrical film, The Sugarland Express, for Zanuck and Brown. At the end of a meeting in their office, Spielberg noticed their copy of the still-unpublished Benchley novel, and after reading it was immediately captivated. He later observed that it was similar to his 1971 television film Duel in that both deal with "these leviathans targeting everymen" and the similarities between Jaws and Duel are quite obvious. If you watch both films side by side, almost all of the action happens at the same time and the sound the shark makes when killed at the end is in fact the same sound effect used for when the truck in Duel goes over the cliff, just slowed down a little. The dead shark sinking and the truck going off the cliff are almost exact copies of each other frame for frame. Spielberg got the job just before the release of The Sugerland Express but he tried to get out of the film as he wanted to direct Lucky Lady starring Gene Hackman, Liza Minnelli, and Burt Reynolds for 20th Century Fox. Brown took him to one side, reminded him of his contract obligations and that he could make any film he wanted after Jaws, and he was bang on the money. The script went through many changes and many writers worked on it and many refused. Although twenty-seven scenes in the film didn't happen in the book, it's fairly faithful, apart from how the shark is killed, who is killed, how they are killed, the secret love affair between Ellen Brody and Hooper, as well as various sub-plots that were dropped. Hooper should have died like he does in the book but after footage was taken of an actual shark attacking a shark cage, but without Richard Dreyfuss's stunt double in it, they re-wrote the script as the footage was just too good not to use. I like the books final scene and I like the film's final scene, I really can't pick which I like the most, although the film probably went with the best option. The script was written in part by award winning playwright Howard Sackler, comedy writer Carl Gottlieb and Hollywood hellraiser John Milius. Sackler came up with the backstory of Quint as a survivor of the World War II USS Indianapolis disaster but the question of who deserves the most credit for writing Quint's infamous monologue about the Indianapolis has caused substantial controversy. Spielberg described it as a collaboration between Sackler, Milius, and actor Robert Shaw, who was also a playwright. According to the director, Milius turned Sackler's "three-quarters of a page" speech into a monologue, and that was then rewritten by Shaw. Gottlieb gives primary credit to Shaw, downplaying Milius's contribution. We may never know but it is glorious all the same. The director was in place and they had a location, the only things they didn't have - on day 1 of filming - was a script, the main actors and the shark. Robert Duvall didn't want to know and Charlton Heston was seen as too big a character to play Police Chief Brody but Roy Scheider managed to talk his way into the role at a party Spielberg was at. Lee Marvin and Sterling Hayden both passed on the role of Quint, which still surprises me today. Zanuck and Brown had just finished working with Robert Shaw on The Sting, and suggested him to Spielberg. George Lucas suggested Richard Dreyfuss, whom he had directed in American Graffiti, to Spielberg who was at the time considering Jon Voight, Timothy Bottoms, Joel Grey, and Jeff Bridges. Bullets were dodged and it is now impossible to see anyone else in those now classic performances. The last problem the film faced was going over budget and not having a shark. Spielberg has attributed these problems to his perfectionism and his inexperience. It was clearly down to his inexperience but to give him credit, and in his own words; "I could have shot the movie in the tank or even in a protected lake somewhere, but it would not have looked the same," he said. As for his lack of experience: "I was naive about the ocean, basically. I was pretty naive about mother nature and the hubris of a filmmaker who thinks he can conquer the elements was foolhardy, but I was too young to know I was being foolhardy when I demanded that we shoot the film in the Atlantic Ocean and not in a North Hollywood tank." Gottlieb said that "there was nothing to do except make the movie", so everyone kept overworking, and while as a writer he did not have to attend the ocean set every day, once the crewmen returned they arrived "ravaged and sunburnt, windblown and covered with salt water". To be honest, the issues with the production actually ended up being beneficial, as more time was spent on the script and because the mechanical shark they had (nicknamed Bruce) was so temperamental, they ended up shooting less of it, so "The film went from a Japanese Saturday matinee horror flick to more of a Hitchcock, the less-you-see-the-more-you-get thriller. The shark not working was a godsend. It made me become more like Alfred Hitchcock than like Ray Harryhausen." I'm sure no offense was meant by that, Ray Harryhausen was a genius, but I agree with what he said. Having the shark unseen for most of the movie had a great effect, adding John Williams's infamous theme tune to it made it even more iconic. The use of point of view, from the shark’s perspective, was also cleverly done. It is fair to say the film worked down to fluke. There was nothing wrong with the book or the script, the actors did a great job, as did the producers and John Williams is a pro. It was Steven Spielberg who fluked it, pure and simple. I'll give him credit, but most of his great films follow the winning formula of Jaws and his later films aren't as great as his older ones. Credit due though, Jaws changed everything and some of the greatest pieces of art, whether written, painted or filmed are often born from trial and error. It's unfortunate that sharks are largely hated (and hunted) due to Jaws, something that Peter Benchley later regretted, but what a thriller, what a horror and what an adventure.