STEVEN SPIELBERG:
I'm in Wilshire Boulevard,
and I just came across a theater
that has a very apropos sign.
If you can read it,
the sign says
"Robert Shaw in Jaws."
Also, "Take the Money
and Run."
That's pretty funny,
wouldn't you say?
Well, there were
all sorts of reasons
for people going in,
but the people coming out,
they were ecstatic.
Smoking lounge is sold out,
seats downstairs in
the first seven rows only.
I was in New York at the time,
and I went with
two friends of mine,
Janet Maslin and Albert Brooks.
The three of us were in the car,
going over to the Rivoli
to see if there might be a line.
MAN 1:
The ticket holders' line
went on and on.
It became this spectacle.
I kept thinking,
"Who are the lucky people
that made this
movie?" (LAUGHS)
This shark, swallow you whole.
WOMAN 1: Was it good?
Very tasty.
Bloody as hell.
All these people
got eaten up, you know.
They just... Ah!
The best I've seen in my life,
the best movie.
MAN 2: Fifty years,
and we've come so far.
We're still talking about Jaws
and the effect and value
of what that movie
said and still says.
I'll never forget
walking into the theater,
and all the lobby cards
were on the wall.
And I thought, (GASPS)
"That shark is huge."
Part of the film's charm today
is almost the nostalgia factor
of remembering
what it was like
to see it then.
(SCREAMS)
It was sort of life-changing.
At nine years old,
I don't remember
having an experience
that was that visceral
and that thrilling.
The whole theater reacted
like a musical instrument.
Ahhh!
I read the book first,
so I sort of knew
what I was gonna see.
MAN 3: Peter Benchley
wrote a book called Jaws.
A film was made from the book.
It has already made more money
than any motion picture
in history.
(LAUGHS)
It was the first blockbuster.
(SCREAMING)
I've seen Jaws
in a theater 31 times.
I was 12, and this started me
thinking about
a career in movies.
MAN 4: ls this
your first time?
Ninth time.
Your how many?
Nine.
It's the film
I've seen the most,
and I could still watch it
if it's on any time.
Who are you?
Matt Hooper.
I'm from the
Oceanographic Institute.
I wanted to be Matt Hooper.
I wanted to be
a shark scientist.
That's a 20-footer.
Twenty-five.
Three tons of him.
WOMAN 2: Jaws has been
an inspiration,
and there is
a completely different
attitude now
about sharks and the ocean.
In 50 years, it's been used
in so many different ways.
It was a time when movies
were at the pinnacle
of a cultural conversation.
I loved Jaws. I really did.
Because it didn't
eat up no Black people.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
You said that there
are very few perfect movies.
I think Jaws fits into that.
MAN 5: ls that movie
gonna keep you
out of the water?
It'll keep me out
for a while. (LAUGHS)
I definitely won't
be going in now.
MAN 5: Ever again?
Never.
I was one of those people
who, in a bath,
would have a hard time
not picturing a shark
underneath me.
NARRATOR: it is as if God
created the devil
and gave him Jaws.
See it before you go swimming.
For me, the story of Jaws
is the fact that a movie
that I thought would
really end my career
is the film that began it.
INTERVIEWER: Steven,
50 years since Jaws.
When you hear that,
what do you think?
When I hear 50 years...
MAN 1: Roll sound.
SPIELBERG: I think of home.
Because the theme of home
is so consistent
with the story of Jaws.
It's about getting home.
(ALL SINGING)
Show me the way to go home
SPIELBERG:
About returning home...
(SIGHS) Can we go home now?
SPIELBERG:
And already being home.
MARTIN BRODY:
Want to take him home?
Like to New York?
No, home here.
SPIELBERG: So when
I look back at Jaws today,
at those moments
of difficulty...
Was there good movement
like that?
SPIELBERG: The film wound up
100 days behind schedule.
The shark was not working...
MAN 2: No, cut, cut!
SPIELBERG:
and I was terrified
I was gonna be fired.
All I thought about
was going home. (CHUCKLES)
INTERVIEWER:
ls there anything that you've
never said about Jaws?
(SPIELBERG LAUGHS)
Let's find out.
Steven, how old are you?
Quantos anos tienes?
Twenty-seven.
Veintisiete.
How long have you been
in the motion picture
industry?
(SPEAKS SPANISH)
professionally making movies
since I was 21.
MAN 3: I have always
had an incredible belief
in Steven's ability
to do material
that sometimes
others questioned.
There may have been occasions
when I had a belief
in Steven's ability
to make material that exceeded
Steven's conviction
about the material.
And I never had
any doubt in my mind
that Steven would
do a great job.
MAN 4:
Steve used to hang around
the film department at USC
and so that's where I met him.
He was always coming over
to see if he could
find a cameraman
or somebody who could help him
with the student films.
So when Steve did Duel
and it was like
a feature film for television,
I said,
"Wow, this is fantastic."
(TRUCK HONKING)
DEL TORO:
Duel opened in Mexico
as a feature.
And I remember
seeing it in the drive-in,
and people clapped
with their horns.
(CHUCKLES)
I met Steven for the first time
when he brought
Sugarland Express
to the USC Film School.
WOMAN 1: I want my baby back.
Now, are you gonna
help me or not?
ZEMECKIS: I couldn't believe
that this really young filmmaker
made a movie on that scale.
He became instantly my hero.
CROWE: I held filmmakers
and directors off
as people that existed
in another world.
And I remember feeling
like Spielberg was a guy
who was kind of from
my side of the world.
And that was the beginning
of me feeling like,
"Maybe I could do
something like this, too."
He had made his bones
as a director
long before he did Jaws.
I think we all felt
that this was somebody
who was going places.
But not until Jaws
was there any idea
of how big this could get.
I didn't know what
I wanted to do next.
I had been wanting
to do a UFO movie,
not yet called
Close Encounters
of the Third Kind,
but that was sort of
all I had in my mind.
And I was also
in post-production
on Sugarland Express.
I had gone into Richard Zanuck
at his partner
David Brown's office
many, many times.
When I saw a stack of papers
in the outer office,
and it was galleys.
I looked at the top sheet
and it said
Jaws by Peter Benchley.
And I had no idea
what that meant, Jaws.
I mean, was it
the history of dentistry?
I read it and I was enthralled.
And if I read
Peter Benchley's Jaws
for the first time right now,
I would have the same
rush of excitement
that I had when
I first read the galleys.
Because, in a way,
Jaws was a sequel to Duel.
Duel was this murderous
leviathan on the highway
trying to k*ll this
traveling salesman
in a little car.
And Jaws is the story
of this leviathan of the sea
that is rending this seaside
resort into bankruptcy
unless they hire somebody
to k*ll the threat.
When I wrote
a novel called Jaws,
I was faced with
a fascinating challenge.
How to describe the instincts
of an ancient animal
that threatens modern man
with the most horrible
of deaths.
Most people, when they hear
about Jaws and they realize
what a culture-changing event
that was,
they want to know,
how did my dad come up
with the idea?
What I've always
heard from him was,
growing up as
a New York City boy,
born and raised in New York...
He also spent
the summers in Nantucket
fishing with his dad.
I grew up on
a neighboring island,
Nantucket,
where I first
encountered sharks.
We used to fish for swordfish,
but they were rare,
and we caught sharks instead.
Not only did he see
a lot of sharks
when he was
fishing with his dad,
but he also
knew what it was like
to live on an island.
Our father explained
what it means to grow up
in a community
like Amity or Nantucket,
and he talked about islanders.
And by islander,
I don't mean a year-rounder.
To be an Islander,
you have to have
been born here,
and nothing short
of reincarnation
can change your status.
When do I get to
become an Islander?
Ellen, never. Never!
Before writing Jaws,
I had had
very little experience
in the water with sharks.
I knew a lot
about them academically.
I'd studied them
since I was a child,
but I really had no experience
with sharks at all underwater.
And then
Blue Water, White Death
came out.
MAN 1: Oh, he's gotta be 12.
MAN 2: Yeah, at least 12.
Look at his back.
BOTH: Oh!
I first started diving
in the early '50s,
and then a little bit later on,
I got a 16-millimeter
movie camera
and was sh**ting film
for television,
and people wanted to see sharks.
WOMAN 2: it was
in about 1965 or '67
where we first started to work
with great white sharks.
Nobody else in the world
had ever done it before.
There, look at him.
Sitting on top of the cage.
Eventually, Peter Gimbel
wanted to make a film,
and he employed us
to work on it.
You couldn't believe.
It's fantastic.
Peter Benchley saw
Blue Water, White Death
and that was one of the reasons
that he got the idea
for writing Jaws.
Peter also had seen
Frank Mundus,
who caught a huge
4,500-pound, 18-foot shark
off of Long Island.
So Peter, with his imagination,
put all of that together
and thought,
"What would it be like
if one of those sharks
"just randomly decided
to stay in one place?"
SKERRY: Peter eventually
researched the science.
He knew these animals,
he understood their behavior.
But if you read the book,
the animal is not a villain.
It is doing what it does.
And he created characters
who could represent
both a hardened
shark fisherman like Quint...
I wrote the character
of Quint as a man who begins
with great contempt for sharks,
and is finally obsessed with
and driven to k*ll
this particular one.
SKERRY:
And he created a PhD
scientist like Hooper
who understands
this is just an animal.
That doesn't make it
good or bad, it just is.
It's part of nature.
Peter filled in
all these other stories
about Brody and his wife
and the affair with Hooper
and all the stuff with the Mafia
because that added texture
and depth to the story.
WENDY:
Really, one of the most
humorous things, though,
about the book,
was finding the title.
There are several pages
of suggested titles,
and Peter and Wendy
and our parents
were struggling over
what to call it.
Oh, we had pretentious ones
like "Leviathan Rising,"
and then we had ones...
"The Terror of the Deep."
And Peter's father said,
"I know what
we should call it."
"What's That Noshin'
On My Leg?"
(LAUGHS)
And this went on for months.
None of them quite worked.
NAT: The day the book
was to go to press,
Tom Congdon from Doubleday said,
"I hate to bother
you about this,
"but we kind of need a title."
Peter said. "Yeah, we've been
worrying about that,
"and the only thing
that comes to mind
"that has pleased everybody
is the word 'jaws."'
Congdon said,
"Okay, what's it mean?"
He said, "I don't know,
but it's short."
The cover of Jaws
was really difficult.
The dust jackets
for the books evolved.
The first one was Amity,
like an idyllic island
in between the shark jaws.
And they scrapped that one.
And then they did a version
of the shark underneath her.
And the shark wasn't very scary.
It was a little
too phallic-looking.
You know, what you wanna say
is a p*nis with teeth, right?
That's exactly
what it looked like.
(CHUCKLES)
NICOTERO: And that's when
Roger Kastel came in
and created that painting
for the paperback.
And then Universal
used the same painting,
which is probably one
of the perfect movie posters.
Jaws was rocketing up
the bestseller list in 1974.
And then when
the paperback came out,
it was a multi-million
bestseller.
Peter just wanted
to get a novel written,
and when his agent came and said
the movie people were
interested in optioning it,
he said, "I don't care.
Sell them the option."
WENDY: it was
Helen Gurley Brown
who was the editor
of Cosmopolitan magazine,
who gave it to her husband,
David Brown, a producer.
And he and
Richard Zanuck bought it,
and the rest is history
Just by reading
the book, the last...
I think it was
110 pages of the novel,
the hunt for the shark.
It was so enthralling
and so suspenseful.
MAN: Yeah.
You know, it's
frightened me so much.
And I was so angry
at being frightened,
that I wanted to frighten back.
"I'll make this movie
and scare them all back."
SPIELBERG: When I read it,
I went to d*ck and David's
office on Monday
and I said,
"Do you have a director?
"Because I would
love to direct this."
And they said, "Oh, my goodness,
"there's already
a director assigned."
Peter was part of the process
of interviewing various people
to be the director,
and remember that
there was one director
who called the shark
a whale all the time.
So he was out.
(PHONE RINGING)
SPIELBERG: A week or so later,
d*ck and David called me
and they said,
"It's available.
Do you still want to do it?
I was as hungry,
as the shark was hungry,
to tell the story of Jaws.
And I didn't know how
it was going to be done,
how it could be done.
But my instincts told me
that it needed authenticity
so the shark wouldn't
get laughed at.
When I made Duel,
the studio tried to get me
to do the whole thing
on process stage
with screens out
the windows of the car.
And I basically said
I'd rather not make Duel
if I have to go
and do it all fake
on a soundstage,
using rear projection.
And I felt the same way
about Jaws.
I wanted to go
to the natural environment,
so there was some
kind of verisimilitude,
so it needed to be
in the ocean, out to sea.
And so I knew somehow
it had to be done on location.
You know as an audience member,
when something is real
and when something is not.
And that choice
to sh**t in open water,
the audience wins.
Because when you
see these characters
surrounded in
complete isolation,
the loneliness of them,
we feel that, we're scared.
If you really think about Jaws,
it really is an exercise
in pushing the boundaries.
Like, they could have made
that movie on the backlot
or in a tank,
and it would have been
a very, very different movie.
But they were
pushing the art form.
At the same time
as Jaws was made,
you saw this new crop
of unbelievable talent
coming in to Hollywood
in the '70s
that challenged every assumption
of what was possible,
and challenged everything.
(PEOPLE LAUGHING)
In 1974, when I started
making Jaws,
my focus was
trying to figure out
how to adapt the novel.
I had never experienced
adapting a novel before.
And Peter Benchley
wrote the first three drafts
of the screenplay,
admitted that
a screenplay and a novel
are two different
kettles of fish.
That was
a completely different
kind of writing for him.
So he put a lot of effort
into the screenplay
and did it a couple of
different times.
And then various
other writers came in.
David Brown said,
"Why not Howard Sackler?
"He's a great writer.
"He won a Pulitzer
for The Great White Hope."
I was thinking
Great White Hope,
great white shark.
That makes sense.
He created the structure.
And then after that,
for a comedy punch up,
I wanted to bring
my friend Carl Gottlieb along
to just try to find some
lightness and some humor
between these three
disparate characters.
The mate. Where's the mate?
The mate is dead.
We'll have to...
Where's the body?
Why is the boat
torn to pieces?
Because it's
a great white shark.
GOTTLIEB: Nice thing was,
I was able to write
a nice part for myself.
I play Meadows,
the editor of the newspaper.
I want to get on
the state wire services,
see if Boston will
pick it up and go national.
Call Dave Axelrod in New York,
tell him he owes me
a favor, all right?
And Steven sent me a script
with a note on the cover
saying, "Eviscerate it."
We decided to lose
the love interest
because it was in a movie
that was a straight-line
adventure film
about the shark and the town
and the, uh...
the, uh... the hunt.
The film became much more
a story of Chief Brody,
a kind of reluctant hero,
in this case,
tested by the elements,
by nature itself.
This is a great white,
Larry, a big one.
And any shark expert
in the world will tell you
it's a k*ller.
It's a man eater.
CAMERON: The great white shark
was not well-understood
by the public at large
when the film first came out.
And it became this
kind of mythical beast.
What we are dealing with here
is a perfect engine,
uh, an eating machine.
MAN: I've never seen
anything as perfect
as a great white shark.
What really strikes you
when you see a great white
shark in person
is not just how long
they can be,
but how big around they are.
Great whites
are one of the most
epic predators
that you'll ever
find in the wild.
They're essentially governors
in the way that they control
the sizes of all the
populations beneath them.
VAUGHN: And what did you say
the name of the shark is?
It's a carcharodon carcharias.
It's a great white.
The great white shark
is a species
that has been described
all over the world
in many different ways.
From man eater to white pointer
to great white shark.
I remember seeing the shark
in Jaws for the first time
and being completely blown away
at how realistic it looked,
how large it was,
how impressive
and truly authentic
to what white sharks
actually look like.
This animal still looks
just as good as anything
that's coming out today
if not better,
relying almost exclusively
on practical effects.
INTERVIEWER: So, Joe,
tell me, where are we?
ALVES:
Well, this is what I call
the art department.
This is sort of my home base.
These are the concept sketches
that I did early on
before we had a finished script.
What happened was
David Brown called me
and he said, "Joe, we think Jaws
"might make a damn good movie
"if we could sort of illustrate
"the activity of the shark."
So he said, "Just give me
a couple dozen illustrations
"of the shark activity."
I pretty well did these
as it's described
in the galley sheets.
Joe Alves designed
drawings of a shark
that he could
put up against the wall
in a production office.
He did an 18-foot long shark.
He did a 26-foot long shark.
He did a 32-foot long shark.
These are full-size drawings.
And we had to evaluate,
"Which one do we commit to,
which one do we build?"
And for me, the 18-foot shark
was not that intimidating.
But the 32-foot long shark
was not realistic,
and it would've turned
the genre of the film
into science fantasy.
The 26-foot-long shark
was just right,
I thought, for Jaws.
ALVES: October 1st, 1973.
Marshall Green had a meeting.
He was the head of production
at Universal.
And he said, "Okay, Joe,
can you make the shark?"
I says, "Yeah,
I certainly could try."
He says, "Okay, find somebody
and make it off the lot.
And somebody
recommended Bob Mattey,
and I found Bob
and put a crew together.
To the ingenious shark
building team.
Cheers.
Bob and Whitey.
Yeah.
Whitey doesn't like to turn
around and look at the camera,
he's camera shy.
( INDISTINCT)
Right. Okay, just for Steve.
Final pose here.
(LAUGHS)
One in a million.
ALVES: We got seven
in the crew.
I called them
the Magnificent Seven.
MAN: Joe Alves?
(GROANS) Yes.
And we started
building the shark.
Bob Mattey was
taken out of retirement
to create the creature,
the great white shark
and its many incarnations.
ALVES: What we needed was
a shark to go left to right,
and one to go right to left.
And then one on a big crane.
So we had three sharks to build.
BROWN: A shed was set up
in the San Fernando Valley.
It was like making Apollo.
It was like a new invention.
NICOTERO: Bob Mattey,
he had the chops.
And the fact that he had built
all this other great stuff,
like the 20,000 Leagues
Under the Sea giant squid.
He knew how to build it.
So, yeah, in theory, it'll work.
SPIELBERG:
I thought it'd be fun
to nickname the shark
after my attorney, Bruce Ramer.
So I started calling
the shark Bruce.
And then in the shark shed,
where Whitey and Bob Mattey
everybody else was working,
they started calling
the shark Bruce.
And then everybody forgot
why it was being called Bruce.
It just was named Bruce.
CAMERON: The film
happened to come out at a time
when I was really
teaching myself
how visual effects
and mechanical effects
and makeup effects were done.
Like Bruce,
like the shark in Jaws.
Because I wanted a career
in that business.
And I just loved all that stuff.
As a constructor of
animatronics and puppets,
to operate in that scale
with basically hydraulic
and incredibly
powerful machinery,
that is remarkable.
Basically, I was doing
a lot of research with sharks,
and talked to Ron
and Valerie Taylor.
SPIELBERG:
Ron and Valerie Taylor,
I knew well
from the documentary,
Blue Water, White Death.
And I wanted them
to bless our production.
I also wanted them to be able
to work on the film.
And I said to them,
"Was there any way
"we can get actual
great white footage
"that I could intercut
with a mechanical shark?"
And they said, "Absolutely.
"We'll go to
the Great Barrier Reef
off of Australia,
"and we'll get the footage
that you need."
He simply left it up
to Valerie and I
to get what we could
according to the script.
He basically realized
at that time
that there would be
the possibility
that he would have
to sh**t around what we got
because it's a wild animal,
and they just don't do
what you want them to.
ALVES: Back on the lot,
the studio said,
"We're going to start
sh**ting this movie
"in the next month."
And I'm saying, "Wait a minute.
"I have a year and a half
to build the shark."
"No, you don't.
"We're going to start sh**ting
because the book's
so popular."
That's all they care about,
is the money.
They don't have any idea
what we're doing,
how complicated it was. No.
So Steven got them
to postpone it until May.
SPIELBERG: I remember
going out there
with John Milius
and George Lucas,
and John stuck his head
in the shark and said,
"Okay, close the jaws!"
And I was screaming
"Don't close the jaws!
"John, get out of the shark!"
A bunch of us went
and visited Steven,
and he wanted to show us
the construction of the shark,
which was impressive.
So I thought,
"Great, this'll
be a good movie."
And it was obvious
it was going to be a big hit.
SPIELBERG: George looked
at the shark and said,
"Wow, this is gonna be
the most successful movie
ever made."
And I, of course,
looked at George like,
"Well, from your
lips to..." You know.
But I didn't believe that.
We never, until the last minute,
had a script that was
to everybody's liking,
and the studio wanted us to
go ahead before some strike.
And so we were forced
to go on the location,
forced to start sh**ting.
And he had some
serious reservations
whether we were
doing the right thing.
We did not go into
this picture fully prepared.
CAMERON: In the first
frames of the movie,
you are a shark
and you're just hunting.
It really shows you
what's possible in cinema.
And so my favorite scene
in the film is the opening.
LUCAS: The opening
is sensational.
Really sets you up...
like that.
Where are we going?
Swimming!
PEELE: The opening of a film
is everything.
If you don't get
that part right,
the rest of it doesn't matter.
The opening of Jaws,
it's simple,
and it may be the most
violent scene in the film,
and at the same time,
it is one that
obscures the monster.
(PANTING)
SPIELBERG:
In the original script
that Peter Benchley did,
we did show the shark.
But the shark was down,
getting repaired.
And it was dawning on me
that things were scarier
without the shark
than with the shark.
(SCREAMS)
I always kind of relate
my scene in Jaws
to the scene in Psycho.
The lady in the shower,
because it's that kind
of horrifying thing
that comes out of nowhere.
And I think a lot
of what made the scene
very, very scary
was the fact that you knew
what was down there
and you knew what was happening,
but you couldn't see it.
SPIELBERG: The one filmmaker
that influenced me the most
in the making of Jaws
was Alfred Hitchcock.
What Alfred Hitchcock could do
with the power of suggestion,
I thought, "if just
a little bit of that
"could be sprinkled on my mojo,
"then maybe I could make Jaws
"with a real tip of my cap
toward Hitch."
PEELE: The whole question
of Jaws is "How big is it?
"What does this fish
really look like underneath?"
And throughout the film,
he gives us a little bit
more of a taste as we go.
When we were sh**ting the scene,
she had a harness on,
and so we had
a line that would go
to five people on one rope,
and five people on another rope.
I wanted this effect.
Back and forth.
And I thought
it would be a lot scarier
if we see the force
of how the shark is
carrying her across the water.
I will never forget
the opening sequence,
where she is dragged
ruthlessly through the ocean,
and the different
camera perspectives
and how she's being
pulled away from us,
powerless to this threat
beneath the surface.
If they're willing to do that
three minutes into the movie,
what else are they
willing to do?
(SCREAMING) Oh, God, help me!
God, please help!
Martha's Vineyard,
Massachusetts,
an island off
the Eastern Seaboard.
Beautiful, picturesque,
and about to be disguised
as the fictional town of Amity.
MAN: ls it true
that the art director
is the one that chose
Martha's Vineyard?
The art director came down
and looked at the
entire Eastern Seaboard.
I don't know why,
but I had heard a lot about
Martha's Vineyard
as a small summer community
that might suit this picture,
and I suggested he go to see it.
ALVES: I needed a bay
with a 25-foot depth
and a low tide.
I had a whole map
of New England,
and I went through all these
various little villages,
and I see there's a boat
to Martha's Vineyard.
So I went there, January 17th,
and I found out
the depth was only 25 feet,
two-foot tide,
and I thought, "Oh my God,
this is gonna be a success."
KRAMER: Martha's Vineyard
is an island.
It's a little spit of land
off the coast of Massachusetts.
It is a stunning piece of land
and a summer resort.
I've spent a lot of time
in Martha's Vineyard,
and all of the non-actors
that he used,
they really represent the spirit
of this idyllic,
peaceful, safe place
that's sort of bohemian,
and I think even if you go now,
it feels like a '70s
time capsule still.
And I think all of that helped
because it gives the world
such authenticity.
Listen, Chief.
Be careful, will you?
In this town?
Hey.
Hi, Dad.
Martha's Vineyard was
a delightful place to sh**t.
I really enjoyed it.
It was thrilling.
I'd never been
on a location before,
other than for
television shoots.
But never for a movie,
and I was feeling
so full of myself.
MAN: Martha's Vineyard means
so much to this movie, Jaws.
If you think of it,
there are only eight people
that came from Hollywood
to be in this movie.
You have Roy Scheider,
Richard Dreyfuss,
Robert Shaw, Lorraine Gary,
Murray Hamilton, Teddy Grossman,
Susan Backlinie
and Carl Gottlieb.
Everyone else
you see in the movie
are locals from
Martha's Vineyard.
We had a shark attack
at South Beach
this morning, Mayor! Fatal!
I've got to batten down
the beach!
KRAMER: I read about
the sh**ting of Jaws
in the Vineyard newspapers.
So I called my agent
and he set up a meeting,
and I flew to Boston
and met Steven.
He knew I was from the island,
and I think he wanted
some real island feel.
And listen, I was lucky
to be in this.
You folks were
born here, right?
Yeah. I'm an islander.
When we did Jaws, I turned 19
in January of that year.
They tried to put me
in a pair of sort of
bell bottom blue jeans,
and what almost
would have been the top
of a union suit
that was sort of
tie-dyed and pink.
And I was like, "it's not
really what I'd wear."
So they said,
"Okay, well, bring
your own wardrobe."
So a pair of khakis,
an Oxford cloth shirt,
and I still have
the sweater that I wore.
INTERVIEWER:
Wow, put it on like this.
There we go.
INTERVIEWER:
Wow. You know what
the best news is?
It still fits.
Yes! Amazing, huh?
SPIELBERG:
Well, I had very good success
casting Sugarland Express
with a casting director
named Shari Rhodes.
And we had tremendous
success with real people.
Did you ever do some
time in prison, son?
So I asked Shari
if she would cast Jaws,
and I said, "Let's get locals
from Martha's Vineyard
to perform in this movie,
or even from Boston.
SODERBERGH: Shari Rhodes
did an amazing job
of casting people
who looked and acted
like they just walked in
off the street.
What kind of shark?
A tiger shark.
A what?
She spent time there
and got to know people.
I just put some
sun tan lotion on
and, uh, I'm trying
to absorb some of this sun.
Nobody's going in.
Please. Get in the water.
I mean, all those people
in that board meeting
in the town hall, they're real.
Is that $3,000
bounty on the shark
in cash or check?
(ALL LAUGHING)
I don't think that's funny.
I don't think
that's funny at all.
It gives the whole movie
more of a documentary
impromptu feel.
Hello.
Hello back,
young feller.
How are you?
MAN 1:
This is Craig Kingsbury,
known by some folks
on the island
as the island character.
KINGSBURY:
it's like one big family.
And you hear what's
going on in Edgartown?
A lot of it's laughable
and joking and fun
and family fights and all that,
but they all get out.
MAN 2: What's the serious
business, though?
We don't have
anything too serious.
SPIELBERG: Kingsbury made
all his dialogue up.
Every time he opens his mouth,
that's Craig talking.
We didn't write lines for him.
Why don't we get
them silly b*stards
down in that rock pile?
There'll be some fun.
They'll wish their fathers
had never met their mothers
when they start
taking their bottoms out
and slamming
into them rocks, boy.
Every character
has a little bit of an arc,
a little bit of a story,
so that when they
enter the picture,
you're interested in them,
and when they
exit the picture,
you miss them.
SPIELBERG: I feel that Jaws
is more of a people picture
than a shark movie.
Without those people,
you wouldn't give a hang
about the shark.
We're in one of our locations
here on Martha's Vineyard
in the town of Oak Bluffs,
and this is one of our
four retail stores in town,
and it's one of the places
where we keep
the Jaws memory alive.
I'm Todd Rebello,
my brother played
Michael Brody.
His name was Chris Rebello.
Mom. I got cut.
I got bit by a vampire.
I have one great memory
of the day when he says,
"I got bit by a vampire."
We were out on the front lawn,
and it was my brother
and I and Steven,
and he was just asking us
question after question.
He really did relate
to somebody young.
You know, it could have been
your older brother in a sense.
The pond's for old ladies.
I know it's for the old ladies,
but just do it for
the old man, huh?
TODD: My brother
passed away at 37.
It was fairly tragic.
Three kids.
So anything I could do
to keep that memory alive
and the memory of him,
I try to help.
After a couple of days
of being on the set
with my children,
I was asked to be in charge
of taking care of the kids.
Most of the time,
I was in the background
and I had my
movie camera with me.
That was back
in the Super 8 days.
I was very happy to see
all the local people
being a part of this,
and we would talk about it
even years later.
We still do,
as a matter of fact,
with Jeff Voorhees,
the little boy that
gets eaten by the shark.
I'm gonna go and get my raft
and go back out in the water.
Let me see your fingers.
Oh. Alex Kintner,
they're beginning
to prune.
Just let me go out
a little longer.
Just ten more minutes.
Thanks.
VOORHEES: They filmed
that here in May,
that's when that scene I was in.
And if you know
the water up here
in New England,
Martha's Vineyard,
you know, I won't swim
here now until July.
This water's
freezing cold in May.
So people were like,
"Were you afraid
of the shark?"
No, I was afraid of freezing
my 12-year-old a*s off
in that water.
SODERBERGH: I think
the Kintner scene
is a beautiful example
of Spielberg's gift.
J.J. ABRAMS: Every single
choice he makes,
it's about the tension
and the paranoia
and that sense of,
you don't know
quite where to look.
JORDAN PEELE: The tension
that's built with the
cinematic devices
in this scene are so immersive,
so seamless and flawless.
It's got the wipes,
it's got the split diopter.
And then when it hits
the push-pull zoom
that Hitchcock pioneered...
It just brings
the audience along
in the perfect pacing,
and then it's delivered.
SODERBERGH:
All of this is in the aid
of putting you inside
of Brody's experience
of being on the beach that day
when this terrible
thing happens.
Get everybody out! Come on.
Everybody, get out!
In those days,
I wasn't thinking
about cinema.
I was thinking about shots.
When to go close
and when to be wide,
when to give the audience
a sense of geography
so they're not lost.
VOORHEES:
At first, sh**ting the scene,
they had a mannequin.
They put it on a raft,
and the mechanical shark
bites this little mannequin.
And there was this big barrel
right near the top of the water,
and it's full of blood.
He goes,
"You're gonna take your
raft out to that barrel,"
and all of a sudden,
all the blood
starts sh**ting up
like a rocket.
When you see me go up and down,
that's two guys lifting me
in and out of the water,
then pull you under
and give you air.
(GASPING)
FLIGOR: Poor Jeff.
He came up out of the water,
you know, he got all that
stuff out of his eyes.
Alex?
FLIGOR:
And then he did it again
and it worked fine.
Alex?
These are rare events,
but the reality is
it does happen.
A shark is attracted to
the exact kind of splashing
and activity that occurs
whenever human beings
go in swimming.
You cannot avoid it.
The sharks are not
infesting the waters,
the sharks live
in the water, right?
And we put ourselves
into their environment,
and so we are taking
an inherent risk
any time we choose
to go into the water.
The only way that a shark
can taste something
or can know what something is,
is literally by biting it.
And they make a decision
about whether
that's going to be what
they're going to eat or not.
And in a lot of cases,
they'll just say
"No, that's not right,"
and they'll swim away.
There was a deadly
shark attack on Cape Cod.
It is the first
fatal shark attack
in Massachusetts since 1936.
When boogie boarder
Arthur Medici was k*lled
by a great white shark
off Cape Cod,
where we do all of our research,
it had a profound
effect personally
and subsequently,
professionally.
It was the first fatality
in over 80 years on the Cape,
and it impacted
the whole community.
Are you going
to close the beaches?
Yes, we are.
(ALL CLAMORING)
SKOMAL:
Unlike the film, we weren't
trying to hide anything.
And I will admit there was
one or two beach managers
that didn't want
to talk about sharks.
It's all psychological.
You yell, "Barracuda,"
everybody says, "Huh? What?"
You yell, "Shark,"
we've got a panic on our hands
on the Fourth of July.
SKERRY: Jaws came out
at a moment in history,
certainly in the United States,
but worldwide as well,
where we were just
emerging from civil unrest.
That era in the early '70s
spoke to these
emotional elements
within humans
about fear, about danger,
about things that
don't have easy answers.
What was happening in America
was the Vietnam w*r
and Watergate.
I shall resign the presidency
effective at noon tomorrow.
SPIELBERG:
These were the turbulent times
while we were making the film.
The idea of a corrupt politician
trying to hide something
from the citizens
was very powerful.
Murray Hamilton,
in a kind of local government,
represented power and commerce
over human safety,
so he represented a lot.
(SOBBING)
You knew it was dangerous,
but you let people
go swimming anyway.
PEELE: The shark isn't even
the greatest monster
in the film.
The fact that the money
in the bottom line
is working under the surface
as being more valuable
than the lives at stake
is something that is always
true to a certain extent
in this capitalist society.
We will be open for business.
It's gonna be
one of the best summers
we've ever had.
The book got a lot
of curious reviews.
Some people
really liked it a lot,
some people hated it.
Those beaches will be open
for this weekend.
My favorite review of all,
I never even read
because it wasn't written.
Frank Mankiewicz
was interviewing Fidel Castro
and asking,
"What do you read?"
And Castro said,
"Well, most recently,
I've read a book
called Tiburon."
And Mankiewicz said
"Why are you reading
commercial American
thrillers?"
And Castro said,
"Ah, no, you're wrong.
"This is not a commercial
American thriller.
"This is a marvelous metaphor
about the corruption
of capitalism."
And I tried to get Doubleday
to use it in an ad.
Can you imagine
the ad that says,
"Marvelous metaphor about
the corruption of capitalism
"- Fidel Castro"?
Who else could have a quote
from Fidel Castro. Please?
But they wouldn't do it.
REPORTER: In recent days,
a cloud has appeared
on the horizon of this
beautiful resort community.
A cloud in the shape
of a k*ller shark.
MAN: I was in my apartment,
and Jaws was on the TV.
My dad has almost
been dead for 20 years now,
and suddenly I heard
my dad talking to me.
And I kind of stopped
and turned around.
It was because it was
the scene in Jaws,
where he was interviewing
the mayor on the beach.
MAN 1: Background action.
With me here today
is the mayor of Amity,
Lawrence Vaughn.
Now, Mr. Vaughn,
how about those rumors?
MAN 2: All right, Murray,
that'll do it.
MAN 3: Cut!
CLAYTON: I love when
we're able to go back
and see him
and remember
everything about him.
And it's really a gift.
The beaches are open,
and people are having
a wonderful time.
Amity, as you know,
means friendship.
MAN: David, you and I
have talked about this.
We were both around
during the sh**ting
of a big beach panic scene,
and we wondered,
"God, what would happen
if something really
did come in
"during a scene like this,
and begin to eat people?"
The Cape Cod radio,
only last night,
recorded the spotting
of a great white.
So close to the shore
that it was observed
by a lifeguard,
which adds further
credence to the notion
that our beach panic
might indeed have been
invaded by a great white,
in which case,
we would have had
a double beach panic,
or, more horrifyingly,
our actors would have thought
it was part of the movie.
We would have had to use
the old Pearl Harbor line,
"This is no drill."
(MEN LAUGHING)
The bridge is
the number one spot,
and it's also the
number one fun spot
because while
you're not supposed
to jump off the bridge,
150,200 people
jump off that bridge an hour.
I have yet to jump off
the Jaws Bridge.
I have not plucked up
the courage to do that.
Sha... Shark!
It's a shark!
Jaws Bridge is where
it all happened for me.
I was one of the three boys
on the sailfish
inside the estuary.
I can't do a damn thing
until we get this undone.
Get that rope undone.
You gotta untangle
that up there!
( INDISTINCT)
I'm doing it!
BEN DAVID:
My biggest highlight in life
was having my children.
This was probably number two.
You guys okay over there?
I was gonna be a victim
in the estuary.
When I dropped into the mouth,
the shark head would open,
and there's a lot of
mechanism under there.
And so that particular shot
was worked by the guys
in the barge with air rams.
You know, everybody's
working the mouth,
one guy works the head,
moving back and forth.
You think, "Jeez, am I gonna
get in this shark's mouth?
"Thing's gonna clamp on me."
(PANTING)
But Bob Mattey did
all the shark special effects.
He was fabulous.
(MAN SCREAMING)
There are a couple of scenes
that were shot
where he really does look
like a great white shark
that I would see
in my work right now.
When the shark
turns on its side,
that to me is an
incredibly realistic view
of a white shark.
SPIELBERG:
I wanted it to be real.
I wanted to show what happens
when a shark bites you.
I was certainly aware
I was going to make it
as scary and as realistically
brutal as I possibly could.
MAN: Marking.
And then later on
in the editing room,
I was able to come to my senses
in a couple of sequences,
and cut things out
long before the MPAA
ever saw the movie.
I think a great horror
or great thriller
is the perfect
tailor-made nightmare
for its protagonist.
And, you know,
when you talk about
the mysticism of Jaws,
this shark getting
closer and closer
to this person who
doesn't like the water.
It's this mystical
connection between
hero and monster,
and you feel that.
MAN 1: Guys, we can't sh**t
right now. Hold on.
MAN 2: Hold on.
MAN 3: Pull the anchor up
and reset it out there, okay?
YOUNG SPIELBERG:
This is my second day at sea,
and I have 54 more days to go.
And if I survive this,
I'll have learned a lot,
because right now,
all I can tell you
is it's twice as slow
sh**ting at sea
as it is sh**ting on land.
MAN 4: When they finally
went on the water,
they needed local
support boats and operators.
I did my acting part
and then I was fortunate enough
to be able to be part
of the Marine department.
And that's where I really saw
the bit of behind the scenes
of what went into the show.
They started filming
at the beginning of May,
and thought they were gonna
be gone by the Fourth of July.
And the schedule wasn't
really holding that well
just because of what
they were dealing with.
The month of August 1974
is a death march on the water.
We were on the ocean
for, like, four and a half,
five months,
and we all began going
off the deep end, literally.
It's not the time it takes
to take the take
that takes the time,
it's the time it takes
between the takes
that takes the time
it takes to take.
CAMERON: Anytime
you're dealing with water,
it doesn't get twice as hard,
it instantly gets
five times as hard.
He always laughs
whenever I do a water film.
He says, "Don't you know
how hard this stuff is?
I said, "Yeah, I know!"
(CHUCKLES)
SPIELBERG:
There was nothing fun
about making Jaws.
It was a very, very hard thing
to go out on the real ocean,
be knocked around by the waves,
by the currents.
One more time.
Shark comes up.
And then we have to re-anchor,
reposition the camera boat.
Suddenly, the electrical barge
with the generators
running the arcs
is too far away.
And then on top of all that,
80% of the time,
the shark didn't work.
The first mistake
with the shark was,
they built it for freshwater.
INTERVIEWER:
What's the difference?
Well, electrolysis.
They built the shark in a hurry,
and then they realized that
saltwater eats everything.
They tested the shark
for the first time
in the water,
and we had at least
20 boats of tourists
who had gathered around an area
to watch the shark work.
And we had the shark
on a huge 90-foot platform,
30 feet underwater.
At the press
of a hydraulic button
and pulling the lever
back, supposedly,
the shark comes sh**ting
out of the water headfirst,
and this has
absolutely happened,
the shark came up tail first.
(PEOPLE LAUGHING)
Tail first,
and it was like
a 25-foot moon.
(BOTH LAUGH)
Some nights,
we'd go to the warehouse,
and you'd see the sharks
lined up there,
and they were
always working on it.
And sometimes
you'd get in the water,
and you'd see the shark go,
"Whoa... womp!"
You thought,
"Oh, my God, are they
gonna finish this movie?"
There were
all these radio mics
all over the island,
and they were always saying,
(MIMICS RADIO BUZZ)
"The shark is not working.
"The shark is not working."
And then one day,
you heard this,
"The shark is working.
Repeat, the shark is working.
"The boat is sinking.
The boat is sinking."
(LAUGHS)
And I was on that boat.
Time!
SPIELBERG:
What happened was
we were pulling
one of the barrels
away from the boat.
The problem was
the motorboat went so fast,
it pulled the planking out
from the hull of the Orca,
and, of course,
the water rushed in,
and the boat sank
in about two minutes.
DREYFUSS: "Get the actors
off the boat!
"Get the actors off the boat!"
John Carter, who won an
Academy Award for best
sound for Jaws,
picked up the Nagra.
He was on the boat.
And held it over his head,
and said, "(BLEEP) the actors,
save the sound department!"
And I had this image
to this day of John sinking,
holding the Nagra over his head,
and he came up months later
with an Academy Award
in his hand instead.
Sea conditions
have been so impossible
that it's really
hurt our schedule,
and we've been here
105 sh**ting days,
and we were only scheduled
for something like 65 or 70.
MAN: What's this done
to the budget?
Well, it's kicked it up about
a million and a half dollars,
unfortunately.
We're not sailors.
We were filmmakers
and we were a film company,
and we were way
out of our element.
There were times
making that movie
where I thought Jaws
would probably be
the last thing I ever made
before people
would stop hiring me.
I mean, it was
reported everywhere.
And when I did talk
to him once in a while,
I knew he was
having a hard time.
SODERBERGH: You're a story.
I mean, people in
the entertainment industry
are talking about
what a troubled
production this is.
The director said he faced
the head of the studio
and he said,
"I can't do it in time!"
SPIELBERG: About 60 days
into the schedule,
and we were already, like,
20 days behind schedule.
And somebody from Hollywood,
an actor,
came over to me and said,
"Everybody's talking about
you're never gonna get a job
after this movie
"because you're
irresponsible with budget."
This actor was so sure
I would never work again,
they didn't care
if they told me that.
It was a very mean thing,
by the way, to do.
I totally forgot about it
when I got back to studio,
the movie that next week.
But that was
really demoralizing.
And halfway through Jaws,
I couldn't guarantee
control over anything.
There's a very real point
in the production of this film,
where conversations
are being had
about whether or not it's
actually physically possible
to make this film.
We were so far over budget
on both sh**ting days and money,
there was a strong undercurrent
that the studio
would close us down,
they'd say, "Enough."
I never once felt
like I wanted to quit.
I was terrified
I was gonna be fired.
At one point, Sid Sheinberg,
who ran the studio,
flew to Martha's Vineyard
just to assess the damage.
And he was staying
at the Kelley House,
a hotel there in Edgartown,
and he just pulled me
behind the house.
We sat on these steps,
these gray steps, together.
And we sat on the same step.
And he said, "I'm not sure
this is possible,
"finishing the film this way.
"What do you think
we should do?"
And I just said,
"No, I want to go.
I want to finish it.
"I can finish this movie."
When you're
by yourself at night,
it weighs more heavily
than during the working day
when your mind is
on getting good film.
SPIELBERG: Scorsese used to
come over to the set.
From New York, he'd fly down
to Martha's Vineyard.
And he would just sit there
feeling sorry for me,
(LAUGHS) and we
would commiserate.
I noticed you bite
your fingernails a lot.
Is that why, because you're
juggling all the cash?
Yeah. No, because
I don't smoke, I don't drink.
I asked Steven,
"What did you do to unwind
on those days where,
"if the shark wasn't breaking,
your spirit was breaking?"
(LAUGHS) Like,
"What did you do to relax
and blow off steam?"
And he said, "I used
to go to the arcade."
SPIELBERG:
I talked to my mom a lot.
I mean, I was talking
to my mom, kind of like,
"Mommy, this is
really impossible! Help!"
It's really hard to read
how slow things were going,
but also fascinating to see
how he's recalibrating,
rebuilding it, reshooting,
coming up with ideas on set
to keep bringing the movie
to life as he saw it.
"Slow ahead."
I can go slow ahead.
Come on down
and chum some of this.
When the shark comes out
and Brody backs into the cabin,
I say, "Roy, when you back in,
don't even look at him.
"Just keep looking
at where the shark breached.
"Just back into the cabin."
"And just say, 'You're gonna
need a bigger boat."'
You're gonna need a bigger boat.
Chief Brody was, like,
my first on-screen crush,
with that tan.
It's actually the expression
on his face,
where he's chumming,
and then he comes up
and his head comes
into frame like that,
and the cigarette's,
like, wet, you know? (LAUGHS)
I will never forget that shot.
I was like, "Oh, God,
he's like my dream guy."
You're gonna need a bigger boat.
(LAUGHS)
"You're gonna
need a bigger boat",
is a flag that you can fly
after you leave that movie.
CAMERON:
I think it's impossible
to write a timeless line.
You know what I mean?
I don't think you're
sitting there going,
"Oh, that...
"What I just wrote,
that's gonna be timeless."
You know, because
it's all the context.
Where is the audience
in the film?
How tense are they?
And what kind of release
will it trigger?
Even a line that's
not that funny.
When Arnold said...
I'll be back.
CAMERON: You know,
I didn't think that was
going to be any big deal.
But the value of it is,
the audience is already
in on the joke by that point,
so they read into it.
You put your gloves on,
both of you!
Where the Hooper and Brody
and Quint characters
came together and had to deal
with each other's backgrounds,
it involved a lot
of improvisation.
Hey, Quint. Let it go.
Hey, Hooper!
You may be a big
yahoo in the lab,
but out here,
you're just supercargo!
If you don't want
to backstroke home,
you get down here!
YOUNG SPIELBERG: And we had
tape recorders running.
And taking that improvisation,
finding a good line
from Dreyfuss here
and a good line
from Robert Shaw here,
writing it down,
that became the day's work
for the next day.
Hey, Chief.
Best drop another
chum marker.
SPIELBERG:
And a lot of the movie
was done that way.
The whole scene between
Dreyfuss and Shaw,
sort of challenging each other,
where Quint drinks
an entire can of beer,
and he crushes the can.
And Dreyfuss has a little
Dixie Styrofoam cup of coffee,
and he crushes the Styrofoam.
That was made up on the day.
But we kept throwing
ideas into the pot.
SHAW: Well, you know,
we'll go out there.
There's just the three of us,
Scheider, Dreyfuss,
me and the shark.
I think I know every detail
of those two men's lives,
and it has been,
to some extent, very boring.
They were three
very different men
at three very different
stages of their careers.
But I think
part of the chemistry
is that there was
a bit of themselves
that bled into those roles.
You've got city hands,
Mr. Hooper.
You've been
counting money all your life.
All right, all right.
Hey, I don't need this!
I don't need this
working-class hero crap!
SCHEIDER:
We were very competitive.
And the desire
for all three to excel
pushed most of the scenes
right to their limits.
And I think it was
a challenge every day out,
to do as good or better
as the other guy.
It also is exactly
what's happening in the story.
And that, of course,
helps the film.
What you got here?
A portable shower
or a monkey cage?
Anti-shark cage.
Robert's off-screen
skirmishes with Richard
helped the chemistry
of the piece.
SHAW: We all have
different methods.
I do tend to drink
when totally bored,
and Roy does exercises
and sunbathes,
Scheider does that,
and Dreyfuss talks.
Dreyfuss just talks.
DREYFUSS: The character,
as explained to me
before we began sh**ting,
interested me.
INTERVIEWER:
And after you had started
sh**ting, what happened?
I had made a mistake.
SPIELBERG: There was a lot
of Richard challenging Robert,
and Robert challenging Richard.
Stop playing
with yourself, Hooper!
They were kind of
sparring partners.
Hooper! Full throttle!
I don't have to take
this abuse much longer.
But it really turned out,
in hindsight,
to be a kind of playful banter
that was unique to their
personal relationships.
DREYFUSS:
Robert was one of the most
powerful people I've ever met.
Incredibly intense.
I mean, there was something
that radiated out of him.
He was a remarkably gifted
actor and writer.
He was also, unfortunately,
the most extraordinarily
competitive person.
Unnecessarily competitive.
LAN: There was
a love-hate relationship
between the two of them.
Robert was very frustrated
with Richard's attitude.
As an actor, it's been
an exercise in futility.
And Robert gave him
a really hard time,
at least publicly.
But also, Robert could see
the talent that was there,
and wanted him to succeed.
You want a drink?
Drink to your leg?
I'll drink to your leg.
Okay, so we drink to our legs.
(LAUGHS)
SPIELBERG:
The scene that I'm proudest
of in Jaws
was everything that takes place
in that one night in that cabin.
From the scar comparing
right through
the Indianapolis speech,
is something that
I actually and objectively,
can watch over and over again.
(LAUGHS)
So, Hooper, that's
the USS Indianapolis.
Not only is it
the 50th anniversary of Jaws,
but it's also
the 80th anniversary
of the sinking of
the USS Indianapolis.
You were on the Indianapolis?
One of the greatest things
Howard Sackler left me with was,
he said, "I'd like to give
Quint a motivation
for his hatred of sharks.
"Have you ever heard
of the USS Indianapolis?"
And I got to tell you, I hadn't.
He told me the story
of the Indianapolis
and its duty in World w*r ll,
bringing b*mb parts
for the atomic b*mb.
What happened?
Japanese submarine
slammed two torpedoes
into her side, Chief.
1,100 men went into the water.
Vessel went down in 12 minutes.
And all hands in the water,
ravaged by sharks.
Didn't see the first shark
for about half an hour.
GOTTLIEB: Sackler knew
about the Indianapolis.
Well, he was in the Navy.
And he brought that incident
into the screenplay.
He said, "This is
the motivation we need."
Very first light, Chief,
sharks come cruising.
SPIELBERG:
And down the road a bit,
I went to my friend,
John Milius.
He wrote Apocalypse Now
and was a wonderful director.
And I said,
"John, read the script
"and focus on this speech."
So John went away
and he came back
and he sent me
a seven and a half,
eight page monologue.
Shaw said, "This is
gonna bore the audience.
"I can't sit there
and talk for eight minutes.
"Will you let me
tonight, go home
and do a little
rewrite of the speech?"
I said, "Please, have at it."
And Robert Shaw
was a wonderful writer.
He had written
The Man in the Glass Booth,
the play.
And that's what is in the movie.
The shark comes
to the nearest man
and then he starts poundin',
hollerin' and screamin'.
Sometimes the shark
would go away...
sometimes he wouldn't go away.
It's a fascinating thing
to watch Robert Shaw
make the choice to play it
with a smile, with relish,
and for you to then
understand his obsession.
Like, he's haunted
by the screams of those men
who all died around him,
and you feel it.
The whole scene
pulses with trauma.
Ah, then you hear that terrible
high-pitch screamin'.
The ocean turns red.
In spite
of all the poundin'
and the hollerin',
they all come in, they...
rip you to pieces.
How do you psych yourself up
for this kind of...
Well, scotch, vodka,
gin, whatever.
With every week
we were sh**ting,
he was becoming more
and more like Quint.
He said to me,
"I just want to have
a little buzz when
I'm doing the speech,
"because I don't
want to play drunk
or act inebriated.
"Just one small drink,
and that's all
I'm gonna need."
INTERVIEWER: Have you pulled
any benders, you, yourself,
while you're here?
No.
The only time
I'm ever drunk ever
is on television.
I'm never drunk
in private life
or at work, or...
You all know that.
Stupidly, I said,
"Sure! Go ahead."
I would never do that today.
The next day, two crew members
had to help Robert
onto the Orca.
And he wasn't able to really
get through the speech.
That night, I'm sleeping,
sound asleep, my phone rings.
And it's Robert on the phone.
He says, "What happened?
Did I embarrass you?
"I am so sorry if I did,
I won't have a drink.
"Please give me a chance
to do this tomorrow."
And he knocked it out
of the ballpark the next day.
That was it.
Anyway...
we delivered the b*mb.
Quint chose to be
a shark hunter,
and he's put himself
in direct line
with the thing that's caused
all this trauma from the past.
Part of him is thinking,
"If I can overcome this,
I can let go
of the past finally."
You see fear in his eyes,
and he thinks,
"This is the shark
that's come to get me."
There's something really
powerful about that kind of
inevitable tragic end.
This was always
this character's fate.
Great whites have
one of the most impressive
hunting behaviors,
called a breach.
Oh, my gosh!
And you see this
in the movie Jaws
when it breaches on the Orca.
I've never seen a great white
do this on a boat.
Most of the time, you see
great whites breaching,
it is a sure-fire k*ll
on a seal.
But the suspense,
as a piece of cinema,
it was great.
(PANTING)
Horror is about things
that shouldn't be but are.
If the shark is on the boat,
the laws of physics
and the universe
are upside down.
My death, you know,
going into the shark's jaws,
quite an unpleasant thing,
it weighs about several tons.
And the jaws absolutely
come down on me
with hydraulic pressure,
you know.
(SCREAMING)
When you do it 14 or 15 times
in this kind of weather,
in the cold,
slide right into it,
and then the teeth
come and bite you.
Not very nice.
Now my character's
left aboard the boat,
and he's trapped
inside the cabin,
and the boat is sinking.
INTERVIEWER:
ls this your big scene?
SCHEIDER: it's the big scene.
And I'm not gonna
tell you anymore.
One of the things that,
for me as a kid,
made me say, "it's real,"
is the piece of meat.
When the shark is thrashing,
and you see this piece of meat
stuck between
the teeth, dangling.
That is the genius.
MAN: Okay, start it.
Okay, Roy, action.
SPIELBERG:
Blowing up the shark
was not my idea.
Some of my
earliest collaborators,
Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins,
they wrote Sugarland Express.
I gave him Jaws to read,
and they gave me a lot of notes.
And one of the notes was,
"The shark's got to
blow up at the end."
"What do you mean,
'Blow up at the end"'?
"It's got to blow up in the end,
"and you know how you do it?
"You throw into his mouth,
into his jaws, a scuba tank.
"And then he chomps down
on the scuba tank,
"and the pressure
from the bite force
blows it up."
I said, "That's not credible.
"A shark cannot bite
through a scuba tank."
And then either
Hal or Matt said,
"Okay, well, how about
one of the characters
takes a r*fle
"and he shoots a b*llet
into the tank
while the shark is approaching
"and blows it up that way?"
BRODY: Show me the tank.
Show me the tank.
Blow up!
CAMERON:
I think it's been debunked
that you can actually blow up
a charged scuba cylinder
with a high-powered r*fle.
But I was a diver
and I understood
the power of compressed air,
so I bought it.
You screw around
with these tanks
and they're gonna blow up!
CAMERON: And it was just
a perfect moment of character.
The fact that he hates water,
the boat's sinking out
from underneath him,
the shark's coming back for him.
All the pieces fell into place
instantly in the moment.
And you just wind the tension
tighter and tighter
and tighter,
and, man, I'll tell you,
that is an art form.
BRODY: Blow up!
When you think about it,
it is a bit like
the Death Star moment.
Smile, you son of a...
SODERBERGH: There is
an undeniable satisfaction
in finally destroying this thing
that you've seen
cause such carnage.
(LAUGHING)
For a movie in which
you've invested two hours,
you need that kind of release.
I think the reason it works
is that they really...
They earn it.
When the film wrapped
in Martha's Vineyard,
I had a full-blown
panic attack.
I was in it, shall I say,
over my head
for about seven
or eight months
on Martha's Vineyard.
It was, logistically,
the most difficult movie
I think I'll ever make.
I couldn't breathe,
I thought I was having
a heart attack.
I couldn't get
a full breath of air.
I kept going to the bathroom
and splashing water on my face.
I was shaking.
And I was... I was out of it.
I was completely out of it.
And I think it was everything
that I had experienced
on the island,
at least trying to not only
hold myself together,
but hold the crew together.
And I had
great people helping me
hold the crew together.
I had Tom Joyner, the AD,
I had Bill Butler, the DP,
Mike Chapman,
the camera operator.
I had just a great crew,
and yet I felt responsible
for everybody there,
and I felt really responsible
for keeping them there
for as long as we had to stay.
And I think I just lost it.
WOMAN: Well, we're looking
for a nice place
to show that Quint refuses
to slow down the boat.
And we'll splice it.
Verna Fields, she was
a force of stability for me.
Am in trouble
with Jaws? (LAUGHS)
In Jaws trouble?
Verna was working
at Martha's Vineyard.
I mean, I'm looking
for our mark, our good place.
That's the spot, Steve.
But once they wrapped
in Martha's Vineyard,
they came back to LA
and they shot in the MGM tank.
MAN 1: You want to
walk the plank here, Steven?
This is it.
We are ready.
MAN 2:
Roll B camera, please.
The whole attack in the cage
of the mechanical shark
attacking Richard Dreyfuss,
was done in the tank at MGM.
MAN 2: Okay, attack!
And also the close-ups
of the shark on the surface,
with the tank in its mouth.
And even the shots of, like,
the marbles that
they were slingshotting
through the water
to resemble the b*ll*ts.
Even though we wrapped
in Martha's Vineyard,
the film kept sh**ting
for another two months.
Cut, cut, cut, cut,
cut, cut, cut, cut.
Once again, right away.
In a couple of cases,
he had to go rogue
and pick up some of these
inserts on his own
without really
letting anybody know.
Because they told him,
like, "The spigot is off."
I actually went into my editor
Verna Field's swimming pool
in the Valley.
I think Sherman Oaks.
When Hooper goes underwater
and finds Ben Gardner's head.
We went into the pool,
we shot it.
Keeps going back
and making changes
and redoing things
and making them better.
Hey! I got it!
(LINE ZIPPING)
What?
Get behind me.
Watching Jaws for the first time
was a wonderful experience,
I would say, also very typical
of Steven Spielberg
and his filmmaking technique
and the fun that
he has making films.
And I remember thinking
and telling him that
it was a great opportunity
for me to create music
with a very young man
that I worked with once,
Sugarland Express,
who I liked enormously.
Show me the bass.
It should be big
on the A, D.
MAN: Yeah.
You have two notes there.
(NOTES PLAYING ON INSTRUMENT)
I don't know that
you can talk about Jaws
without talking about
those two iconic notes
that John Williams created.
SPIELBERG: All human beings
come equipped...
Hey, take, please.
to be able to
suspend our disbelief,
to be transported more by music
than any other
single art stimulus.
Music, with our eyes closed,
will take us places
that no other medium
or art form can take us.
John Williams told us
when to react
and when to start
getting ready for an attack.
One, two, three, one.
John Williams
showed you the power
of just music and image,
and you see the victim
from the predator's
point of view.
That relentless score
with those low cellos,
you become that shark.
This idea of characterizing
the shark musically...
He's taking it.
He's taking it. Hey!
WILLIAMS:
was the result of a
very simple idea that I had.
I thought maybe
some kind of bom, bom,
bom, bom, bom,
might indicate this
mindless attack of the shark,
this relentless
drive that it has.
And you don't know if
it will work on an audience
until you try it.
REBELLO: Next door
is The Island Theater.
It's closed down at the moment.
But back in 1975,
when the movie came out,
it had the premiere there.
It was the biggest thing
to really hit the island
in my lifetime, at that point.
When they had the debut in June,
it was very crowded, very hot.
And a bunch of us got
to go in and sit upstairs,
which is like the VIP area.
We didn't know what to expect.
Within ten minutes,
I'm jumping out of my seat
and I'm saying,
"I never saw that when I was
on the beach all summer."
We started to realize that,
while we experienced
this whole summer on the beach,
we never really knew
how a movie's made.
My whole first time I saw it,
was just seeing
who was in it
that I didn't know.
MAN 1: You know, it was
almost embarrassing.
It was the first time
I'd seen myself on the screen,
but to see the finished product
be as spectacular as it was,
was very rewarding.
WENDY: David Brown
and Richard Zanuck
asked Peter and I
to go to a private
screening of Jaws
along with many
of our dive friends,
Ron and Valerie Taylor,
Stan Waterman.
And we had no idea
whether this movie
was going to really
work with people
who knew the ocean
and knew sharks.
And at the end, they all
got up and applauded
and thought it was
absolutely fabulous.
MAN 2: it was the first movie
to break $100 million.
It annihilated the competition
that had come before it.
The Exorcist, The Godfather,
those big massive hits.
Jaws eclipsed them
by a long, long way.
And by the end of it,
it actually finished
its domestic run,
it had made a quarter
of a billion dollars,
which is over
a billion dollars today.
GOTTLIEB: There were
mixed reviews.
The reviews at first
were what we were expecting,
which was, "Okay, here's
the popcorn summer picture."
And it wasn't until, like,
the third month of release
when it kept grossing.
A lot of the reviewers said,
"You know, there's
something here we missed,"
and that turned out to be true.
The summer and fall of '75
had two major events
in terms of our culture.
Jaws became a part
of the culture.
And they had
the first live telecast
of Saturday Night Live.
Live from New York,
it's Saturday night!
I was in the audience
when the land shark showed up.
What is it?
Land shark.
Remember Candygram?
MAN 1: Candygram.
That was hysterical!
(SCREAMS)
Not only was it summer,
and suddenly you were afraid
of going to the beach,
but it was also
just something that
was on everyone's lips.
Jaws! (LAUGHS)
Jaws wasn't just a movie,
it was a pop culture
phenomenon.
People wanted to put things on
that were about Jaws.
And I desperately
wanted a T-shirt.
The first two records I bought
as a kid with my own money
were The Godfather and Jaws.
MAN 2: Shark business
has been terrific.
Everything's gone
that even looks like a shark.
And I just wanted to get
every little thing
I could find,
toys, magazines, books.
SPIELBERG: Jaws made
the cover of Time,
and we also made
the cover of Mad Magazine.
I got to tell you, I was prouder
of being on the cover
of Mad Magazine.
(LAUGHS)
They had towels and T-shirts.
There's that great picture
of d*ck Zanuck sitting there
with all the merch around him.
So it became this monster
in its own right.
When a film is on the cusp
of being considered for awards,
it's not so much
what you want for yourself,
it's what everybody else says
is going to happen for you.
Steve, if you're not number one,
then I know there's a fix in.
SPIELBERG:
So I just understood
that I guess
I'm getting nominated.
So when I wasn't,
I was surprised,
and I was disappointed.
I wasn't nominated
for best director for Jaws.
Because I was
believing the noise,
and you have to not
believe that stuff.
But the film won for music.
John Williams for Jaws.
SPIELBERG: And sound.
Robert L. Hoyt,
Roger Heman, Earl Madery
and John Carter for Jaws!
SPIELBERG: And editing.
Verna Fields for Jaws.
SPIELBERG: And Jaws was up
for best picture against
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,
which, of course, won the Oscar.
Oh, yeah, I would have voted for
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
over Jaws for best picture.
I would have done that.
REPORTER: You have
to ask the question,
would people have gotten
this excited over a shark
two or three years ago,
before the book
and the movie of Jaws?
Well, one of the crewmen
on the boat that caught it
said, "Two or three years ago,
"we wouldn't have even
taken the time to catch it."
When Jaws came out,
we were truly horrified
to see that some people
took it as a license
to go k*ll sharks.
One of the bad things
that came out of the film
was shark hunting spiked.
MAN 3: Teeth fall out
and you put them
on a gold chain
and you go to the movie
and see Jaws,
and you have it made.
Everybody thinks
you're the best.
Trophy hunting was very popular,
and the numbers of white sharks
had gone down as much as 80%.
People wanted to be like Quint,
people wanted
to have that trophy
that they could show off.
$10,000 for me, by myself.
For that, you get
the head, the tail,
the whole damn thing.
There's definitely that
kind of negative connotation
that came from Jaws
about sharks,
which is very unfortunate
because I think
there's other takeaways as well.
The impact of the movie,
you know,
was horrendous at first,
but now people
are really interested
in the shark itself,
you know, not just
something scary.
Because of this film,
we've had so much energy
that has come into the field
of learning
and understanding sharks
and also safeguarding them.
SKERRY: There's hundreds
of species of sharks.
They all do vital things,
keeping the ocean healthy,
and therefore,
the scariest thing
would be an ocean
without sharks.
Now we're much more enlightened,
but there's still horrific
slaughter of sharks
going on out there.
There's a lot
of the fishing industry
where they fin them
and they put them back
in the water still alive,
so they just sink
to the bottom and die.
And those of us
that are in ocean conservation
are trying to prevent that.
That is the really
big issue in the oceans
for the devastation
of the shark population.
With conservation efforts
and protection of the species,
we're seeing the population
start to rebound.
Today, if a shark
washes up on a beach,
which has actually happened,
now we see people
trying to get this animal
back into the water
and resuscitate it.
That would have never
happened 50 years ago.
The negative reaction
hurt us and horrified us,
and we became passionate
defenders of sharks.
We went with
the National Geographic
on expeditions,
and we were so fortunate
to learn
with these scientists
and other experts.
After all of this time
of being aware of
and fishing for
and somehow
encouraging the animal,
now the time has
come to protect it.
Peter died in '06,
and I wish he were here now
to be able to see
all of these changes,
and to see that
Jaws is still relevant
after 50 years.
I think he'd be
very, very pleased.
We've also got people outside
of the immediate Jaws family
picking up the gauntlet
and driving
the legacy forward.
Like Robert Shaw's son,
who has co-written a play
called The Shark ls Broken,
about the making of Jaws,
which is set on the Orca,
in which he plays his dad.
(LAUGHING)
Who gets top billing?
There's such a generosity
of feeling towards Jaws,
and there's such a desire
to revisit and go back.
My father would
have been shocked.
The idea that 50 years later,
people would still
be quite so interested.
He would think it would be like
some sort of
weird religious cult.
I honest to God thought
I was really the only
Jaws fan out there.
And then came the Internet.
Now, on Facebook,
there's Jaws groups.
Instagram, there's Jaws groups.
The Daily Jaws is out there.
The goal was to post something
about Jaws on social media
every day to celebrate
the 40th anniversary.
People were really resonating
with what we were posting,
and people said,
"You got to keep going."
So 10 years later, here we are.
Just last week,
I was at the grocery store,
and on the inside
of the grocery cart,
it said, "You're gonna
need a bigger cart."
MAN: Jaws has become
one of these movies
that's kind of taken on
a life of its own.
In terms of
the main community,
there's quite a few.
When you look on your phone
and you're looking at the map,
you see Jaws Bridge as one of
the locations on Google Maps.
They have names of drinks
at bars named after Jaws.
For the beach scene in Us,
I remember begging Steven
to allow me to use
the Jaws shirt in my scene
because what he was
doing with Hitchcock,
I was piggybacking
and sort of doing with him.
There's still Jaws
merchandise being created.
There's a LEGO coming out.
There's people doing
T-shirts, posters.
And people are still buying it
because they're still drawn
to everything
associated with Jaws.
My theme of my birthday party
when I was, like,
two years old was Jaws..
What?
Mmm-hmm.
You know
what's very interesting
about this, Laurent.
You know that
shower scene in...
INTERVIEWER: Psycho.
(PLAYS PSYCHO STING)
Which has terrified us
when we saw the movie,
and now if I say it
to an audience
and demonstrate something,
they all laugh.
It becomes funny.
What also is funny...
(PLAYS JAWS THEME)
They will laugh.
So there's been a change
of response over the years
to something that actually,
when we first...
in the context for which
it was written,
has become now a cultural thing.
Where it's going to be
50 years from now,
I don't know.
MAN: All right,
it's January 12.
So we have successfully stripped
all of the textured paint off.
NICOTERO: In 1991, the shark
ended up in a junkyard.
The junkyard was closing.
It got donated to the
Motion Picture Academy Museum,
and I reached out
to them and I said,
"I would love to do
the restoration."
I'm friends with Joe Alves.
We can consult.
I have access to all the
original teeth,
because the inside
of the mouth
needed to be sculpted,
the gills needed to be sculpted,
some of the fins were gone.
As you can see,
it's really in fantastic
condition underneath.
And we had a crew
of about nine people,
and it took us about six months.
So I donated a lot of the labor
because I really
wanted to do it.
And lo and behold,
now it exists again.
YOUNG SPIELBERG:
When you make a film,
at least when I make a film,
I have to be passionate
about the subject matter.
I have to know that
that's all I want to do
for the next couple of years.
And I have to know
that's where my lifestyle
will be two years from now.
I just think it's
very important to...
You know, to spend
the time and, you know,
consider each film kind of
the beginning, middle
and end of your life.
SPIELBERG:
I had a real tough time
when I finished the movie,
and the success was fantastic,
but it didn't stop
the nightmares.
It didn't stop me waking up
in the middle of the night
in a cold sweat,
where the sheets
would be soaking wet.
We didn't have the words
"PTSD" in those days,
and I had consistent nightmares
about directing Jaws
for years afterwards.
I was still on the movie,
and the film was never ending.
When they brought
one of the boats
all the way back
from Martha's Vineyard
and shipped the boat, the Orca,
to the Universal back lot
and put it in the water
right next to the Jaws ride.
(PEOPLE SCREAMING)
I used to get on
my electric cart
without telling anybody,
and I would sneak
behind the trams,
nobody could see me.
And I'd just sneak
onboard the boat,
and I would sit in the cabin
in that little
leather red booth,
and I would just sit there
and sometimes cry.
I had nothing to cry about.
The film was this phenomenon.
And I'm sitting here
shedding tears
because I am not able
to divest myself
of the experience.
The boat helped me
to begin to forget.
That Orca was
my therapeutic companion
for several years
after Jaws came out.
NICOTERO: Jaws
has transcended time
because it's built
this mythology.
And aside from the fact
that it's a great movie,
it's also a unique
cautionary tale
about filmmaking.
People are still enthralled
with how man slayed the beast.
MAN: Break it up,
will ya, Chief?
Daylight's wastin'!
This was a movie
that taught me that horror
didn't have to be something
that left me feeling icky.
You okay?
MASLIN:
it hasn't lost a minute
in terms of timeliness.
If anything, it seems fresher
to me now than it did then.
We're more afraid
of the natural world
than we were.
And we're more acclimated
to the same kind of corruption
where politicians
will do anything
to hide what they
don't want you to know.
ZEMECKIS: I think
it's fair to say that
cinema wouldn't be
where it is without Jaws.
It just supercharged
the language of cinema.
Hurry it up. He's coming
straight for us.
Don't screw it up now.
Don't wait for me.
Jaws moved the bar in terms of
audiences and what kind
of thrill they might get.
GOTTLIEB:
it's only the audience
that makes a hit.
And after 50 years,
they've been telling us,
"Okay, Jaws is a hit."
We like this movie.
It's an endless conversation
you can have about Jaws,
and all the details forever seem
to reveal themselves to me.
You kind of noticed
something new every time.
I love that film
can morph into being
one thing for one generation
and then another thing
to the next generation.
One of my favorite lines is...
Michael! Did you
hear your father?
Out of the water!
Now!
Now!
I love that scene.
(WHISTLE BLOWS)
The lesson in cinema for me,
with Steven in particular,
is the ability
to make things work
when nothing is working.
I want the safety boat out
because they can't see
what I'm doing.
The whole thing
is a complete mess,
but it ends up being
this symphony
where everything
just comes together.
The editing, the music,
the acting,
the wonderful direction.
A wise director understands that
directing is his
hostage negotiation
with reality,
and the movie is
as flawless today
as it will be
100 years from now.
It's one of those
rare occurrences where
a generational phenomenon
turns out to also
be a masterpiece.
CAMERON: I think certain films
just get a status.
Quint!
There have been movies
made since, using CG sharks,
that aren't nearly as good.
It was those actors,
in that moment in history,
with that director,
and no one ever having seen
anything like that before.
Some films just
hit that perfection.
They've become sharks,
they're perfect machines.
To me, Jaws was
a life-altering experience.
On the one hand,
it was a traumatizing
experience for me
that was mostly about survival.
(SIGHS)
And I think all of us
feel we survived something.
(LAUGHS)
Jaws also, I owe everything to.
Because of Jaws,
I got final cut,
and I've had it
for the past 50 years.
And I just hope
that all the people
that worked on Jaws...
wore that experience proudly
like a badge of honor.
And was able to go through life
in the glory of the success
that Jaws became.
To be able to say,
each individually,
"Hey, I helped make that movie.
"I helped tell that story.
"I share in its success."
BRODY: I used to
hate the water.
I can't imagine why.
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Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story (2025)
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