Original subtitles

I’m at 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 are all sorts of reasons for

people going in but the people coming out,

they were ecstatic.

Smoking loge 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.

The ticket holders line went on and on.

It became this spectacle.

I kept thinking,

who are the lucky people that made this movie?

This shark will swallow you whole.

- Was it good? - Very tasty.

Bloody as hell.

All these people got eaten up, you know, they just...

The best I’ve seen in my life. Best movie.

50 years, we’ve come so far.

We’re still talking about Jaws and the effect and the 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, ah, that shark is huge.

Part of the film’s charm today is almost a nostalgia

factor of remembering what it was like to see it then.

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.

I read the book first so I sort of knew

what I was going to see.

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.

It was the first blockbuster.

I’ve seen Jaws in a theater 31 times.

I was 12 and this started me thinking about

a career in movies.

- Is this your first time? - Ninth time.

- Your how any? - Ninth.

It’s the film I’ve seen the most and I could still

watch it if it’s on anytime.

- 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 twenty-footer.

Twenty-five. Three tons of him.

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

the cultural conversation.

I love Jaws.

I really did because he didn’t eat up no black people.

You said that there are very few perfect movies.

I think Jaws fits into that.

Is that movie going to keep you out of the water?

It’ll keep me out for a while.

I definitely won’t be going in now.

Ever again?

Never

I was one of those people who, in a bath,

would have a hard time not picturing a shark underneath me.

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.

Steven, 50 years since Jaws.

When you hear that, what do you think?

- When I hear 50 years? - Roll sound.

I think of home because the theme of home

is so consistent with the story of Jaws.

It’s about getting home.

About returning home.

Can we go home now?

And already being home.

You want to take him home?

- Back to New York? - No, home here.

So, when I look back at Jaws today at

those moments of difficulty.

Should we give you a movement like that?

The film wound up 100 days

behind schedule... The shark was not working.

Whoa, cut, cut.

And I was terrified I was going to be fired.

All I thought about was going home.

Is there anything that you’ve never said about Jaws?

Let’s find out.

Steven, how old are you?

Twenty-seven.

Twenty-seven.

How long have you been in the motion picture industry?

Oh, I’ve been professionally making movies since I was 21.

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.

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

his student films.

So, when Steve did Duel and it was like a

feature film for television, I said, this is fantastic.

Duel opened in Mexico as a feature.

Then I remember seeing it in a drive-in.

And people clapped with their horns.

I met Steven for the first time when he brought

Sugarland Express to USC film school.

I want my baby back.

Now are you going to help me or not?

I couldn’t believe that this really

young filmmaker made a movie on that scale.

He became instantly my hero.

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 can 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 postproduction

on Sugarland Express.

I had gone into Richard Zanuck and 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 kill 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 kill 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’d 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.

- Oh, he’s got to be 12. - Oh, yeah, at least 12.

Look at him now.

I first started diving in the early 50s and then a little bit

later on, I got a 16 millimeter movie camera and

was shooting film for television and people

wanted to see sharks.

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.

Hey, 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 was 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.

Peter Benchley 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 them,

driven to kill this particular one.

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 this

stuff with the Mafia because that added texture and

depth to the story.

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 about the terror of the deep.

And Peter’s father said I know what we should call it,

what’s that noshing on my leg?

- And this went on for months. - None of them quite work.

The day the book was to go to press,

Tom Congdon from Doubleday said,

you know 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.

Then 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 want to say, a penis with teeth, right.

That’s exactly what it looked like.

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 are

interested in optioning it, he said, I don't care.

Sell them the option.

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,

was so enthralling and so suspenseful,

you know it frightened me so much.

I was so angry at being frightened that I wanted to

frighten back.

I’ll make this movie and scare them all back.

When I read it,

I went to Dick 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 I remember that there was one director who called

the shark a whale all the time.

So, he was out.

A week or so later,

Dick 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 a 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 shoot 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 back lot or

in a tank and it would’ve been a very,

very different movie.

But they were pushing the art form.

At the same time as Jaws was made,

you saw all this new crop of unbelievable talent coming in

to Hollywood in the ‘70s that challenged every assumption of

what was possible and challenged everything.

1974.

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 finally, 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 this screenplay and did it a

couple 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 tow the body.

Where’s the body? Why is the boat torn to pieces?

Because it’s a great white shark.

The 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 service,

to 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 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 killer, it’s a man-eater.

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,

an eating machine.

I’ve never seen is 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.

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.

So, Joe, tell me, where are we?

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,

it 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.

And 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 have turned the genre of the film

into science fantasy.

The 26-foot-long shark was just right,

I thought, for Jaws.

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 can try.

He says okay, find somebody and make it off the lot.

And somebody recommended Bob Mattey.

And I found Bob and I put a crew together.

Give me a genius shark-building team.

- Cheers. - Bob and Whitey.

Yeah.

Whitey doesn’t like to turn around and

look in the camera.

He’s a little camera-shy.

Right. Okay. Just for Steve, final pose here.

One, one in a million.

We got seven in the crew.

I called them the "Magnificent Seven."

Joe Alves, the...

Ah, 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.

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.

A shed was set up in the San Fernando Valley.

It was like making Apollo.

It was like a new invention.

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.

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.

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.

And 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 on 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.

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 could get actual great white footage

that I could intercut with the 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 shoot around what we got

because it’s a wild animal and they just don’t do

what you want them to.

Back on the lot, the studio said we’re going to

start shooting 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 shooting 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.

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 is going to be a good movie.

And it was obvious it was going to be a big hit.

George looked at the shark and said,

this is going to 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 shooting.

And he had some serious reservations whether we were

doing the right thing.

We did not go into this picture fully prepared.

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.

The opening is sensational.

Really sets you up like that.

- Where we going? - Swimming.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 shooting 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 that 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?

Oh, God help me! God, please help!

Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts,

an island off the island seaboard, beautiful,

picturesque and about to be disguised as the

fictional town of Amity.

Is it true that the art director is the one who

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.

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 going to be a success.

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 use,

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 helps 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 shoot.

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.

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.

I read about the shooting 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 in Islander.

When we did Jaws,

I’d turned 19 in January that year.

They tried to put me in a pair of sort of bell-bottom

blue jeans and what almost would’ve been the

top of a union suit that was sort of

tie-dyed and pink.

And I was like, that’s not really what I’d wear.

So, they said, okay, well, bring your own wardrobe.

So, pair of khakis and, oxford cloth shirt,

and I still have the sweater that I wore.

- Wow, put it on like this. - There we go.

You know what the best news is, it still fits.

Yes, amazing, huh?

Well, I had very good success casting

Sugarland Express with a casting director

named Shari Rhodes.

And we had tremendous success with real people.

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.

Shari Rhodes did an amazing

job of casting people who looked and acted like they

just walked in off the street.

And what kind of shark?

- It’s a tiger shark. - A what?

She spent time there and got to know people.

I just put some suntan lotion on and I’m trying to

absorb some of this sun.

Nobody’s going in. Please, get 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?

I don’t think it’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?

This is Craig Kingsbury,

known by some folks on the island as the island character.

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.

What’s the serious business, though?

We don’t have anything too serious.

Kingsbury made all his dialogue up.

Every time he opens his mouth, that’s Craig talking.

We didn’t write lines for him.

Wait till we get them surly bastards 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.

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,

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 as somebody young.

You know, he could’ve been your older brother in a sense.

Ponds are for old ladies.

I know it’s for the old ladies but just do it for the

old man, huh?

My brother passed away at 37.

It was fairly tragic, three kids.

So, anything I can 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 going to get my raft and go back out on the water.

Let me see your fingers.

Alex Kintner, they’re beginning to prune.

Just let me go out a little longer.

Just 10 more minutes.

- Thanks. - 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 is freezing cold in May.

So, people were like, were you afraid of the shark?

No, I was afraid of freezing my 12-year-old

ass off in that water.

I think the Kintner scene is

a beautiful example of Spielberg’s gift.

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.

The tension that’s built with the cinematic

devices in the 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.

He just brings the audience along in the perfect pacing,

and then it's delivered.

All of this is in aid of putting

you inside of Brody’s experience of being on the

beach that day when this terrible thing happens.

- Get out of the water. - Get everybody out.

Get out.

Well, 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.

At first, shooting the scene,

they had a mannequin.

They put it on a raft and a 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 going to take your raft out to that barrel,

and all of a sudden, all the blood starts shooting

up like a rocket.

And 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.

Poor Jeff.

He came up out of the water, you know,

he got all that stuff out of his eyes.

Alex?

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 sort of 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 killed 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.

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 4th of July.

Jaws came out at a moment in history,

certainly in the US 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 War.

And Watergate.

I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow.

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.

You knew it was dangerous but you let people

go swimming anyway.

The shark isn’t even the greatest monster

in the film.

The fact that the money and 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 going to 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

slash Fidel Castro.

Who else could have a quote from Fidel Castro, please?

But they wouldn’t do it.

In recent days, a cloud has appeared on the horizon of this

beautiful resort community, a cloud in the shape

of a killer shark.

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 and it was

because it was the scene in Jaws where he’s interviewing

the mayor on the beach.

Background action.

With me here today is the mayor of Amity, Lawrence Vaughn.

Now Mr. Vaughn, how about those rumors?

All right, Murray, that’ll do it.

Okay, cut.

I love when we’re able to go back and see

and then remember everything about him.

And it’s, it’s really a gift.

The beaches are opened and the people are having

a wonderful time.

Amity, as you know means friendship.

David, you and I have talked about this.

We were both around during the shooting 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 began to eat people.

The Cape Cod radio only last night reported the spotting of

a great white that went 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’ve had a double beach

panic or more horrifyingly,

our actors would’ve thought it was

part of the movie.

We would’ve had to use the old Pearl Harbor line,

"This is no drill."

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.

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.

You can’t do a damn thing to it.

- Get that rope. - Get this undone. Come on.

- You got it tangled up there. - Melvin.

I’m doing it!

My biggest highlight in life was

having my children.

This was probably number two.

You guys okay over there?

I was going to 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, geez, am I going to get in the shark’s mouth and

he’s going to clamp on me.

But Bob Mattey did all the shark special-effects

and he’s fabulous.

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.

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.

Marker.

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.

Guys, we can’t shoot right now. Hold on. Hold on.

Have that boat go out and pull the anchor up and reset

it out there, okay?

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 shooting

at sea as it is shooting on land.

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 the

behind-the-scenes of what went into the show.

They started filming at the beginning of May and thought

they were going to be gone by the 4th 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 the take,

the take that takes the time.

It’s the time it takes between the takes that takes the time

it takes to take.

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.

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.

- What’s the difference? - Well, electrolysis.

They had 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.

We had the shark on a huge 90-foot platform

30 feet underwater.

At the press of a hydraulic button and pulling a lever back,

supposedly, the shark comes shooting out of the

water head first.

And this is, actually happened.

The shark came up tail first.

It came up tail first and it was like,

it was like a 25-foot moon.

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 ahh, womp.

You thought, oh, my God, are they going to finish this movie?

There were all these radio mics all over the island and

they were always saying...

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.

And I was on that boat.

Time.

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.

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,

"*** the actors. Save the sound department!"

And I have 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.

These conditions have been so impossible that it’s really

hurt our schedule and we’ve been here 105 shooting days.

And we were only scheduled for something like 65 or 70.

What’s this done to the budget of the picture?

Oh, 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.

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."

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 going to get a job

after this movie because you were 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 shooting 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 shooting days and money.

There was a strong undercurrent that the studio

would close us down.

They say enough.

I never once felt like I wanted to quit.

I was terrified I was going to 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 the 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.

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.

And we would, we would commiserate.

I notice you bite your fingernails a lot.

Is that why because you’re juggling all the cash or?

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, like what did you do to relax

and blow off steam?

And he said I used to go to the arcade.

And 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, re-shooting, 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 going to

need a bigger boat.

You’re going to need a bigger boat.

Chief Brody was like my first onscreen crush

with that tan and it’s actually the expression on his face

where he’s chumming and then he comes up and

his head comes into frame, woo, like that.

And the cigarette’s like wet, you know.

I will never forget that shot.

I was like, oh, God, he’s like my dream guy.

You’re going to need a bigger boat.

You’re going to need a bigger boat is a flag

that you can fly after you leave that movie.

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 going to 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.

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.

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, maybe you’re a big yahoo in the lab

but out here, you’re just a super cog.

If you don’t want to backstroke home you get down here.

And we had tape recorders running.

And then taking that improvisation and finding a

good line from Dreyfuss here and a

good line from Robert Shaw here, writing it down,

actually became the day’s work for the next day.

Hey chief, let’s drop another chum marker.

And a lot of the movie was done that way.

The whole scene between Dreyfuss and Shaw is 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.

Well, you know, we 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 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.

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 do you got here, a portable char or a monkey cage?

Anti-shark cage.

Robert’s offscreen skirmishes with Richard helped

the chemistry of the piece.

We all have different methods.

I do tend to drink when totally bored.

Roy does exercises and sunbathes.

Scheider does that.

And Dreyfuss talks. Dreyfuss just talks.

The character,

as explained to me before we began shooting, interested me.

And after you started shooting, what happened?

I have made a mistake.

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 won’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.

Robert was one of the most powerful people

I’ve ever met.

Incredibly intense.

I mean, it 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.

It 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.

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 beach

is something that I actually and objectively can watch over

and over again.

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 War II,

bringing bomb parts for the atomic bomb.

What happened?

Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes

into our side, chief.

1100 men went into the water.

The vessel went down in 12 minutes.

And all hands in the water, ravaged by sharks.

Didn’t see the first shark for about a half an hour.

Sackler knew about the Indianapolis.

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.

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 this 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 going to 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.

A shark comes to the nearest man there and he starts

pounding and hollering and screaming.

Sometimes the shark 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, and then you hear that terrible high-pitched screaming.

The ocean turns red in spite of all the pounding and the

hollering, they all come in and they rip you to pieces.

How do you psych yourself up for this

kind of regiment every day?

Well, Scotch, vodka, gin, whatever.

With every week we were shooting,

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 going to need.

Have you pulled any benders,

you yourself while you’re here?

No, the only time I’m ever drunk is ever,

is on television.

I’m never drunk in private life or work or we 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 and 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 bomb.

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 coming 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 God!

And you see this in the movie, Jaws,

when it breaches onto the Orca.

I have never seen a great white do this on a boat.

Most of the time you see great whites breaching,

it is a surefire kill on a seal.

But the suspense, as a piece of cinema, it was great.

Horror is about things that shouldn't be but are.

If the shark is on the boat the laws of physics

in 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 the hydraulic pressure, you know.

And 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.

It’s not very nice.

Now, my character’s left aboard the boat and he’s trapped

inside the cabin and the boat is sinking.

Is this your big scene?

This is the big scene.

And I’m not going to 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.

Okay, start it.

Okay, Roy. Action.

Blowing up the shark was not my idea.

Some of my earliest collaborators,

Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins, they wrote

The Sugarland Express.

I gave them 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 at 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 rifle and he

shoots a bullet into the tank while the shark is approaching

and blows it up that way.

Show me the tank. Show me the tank.

Blow up.

I think it’s been debunked that

you can actually blow up a charged scuba cylinder

with a high-powered rifle.

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 going

to blow up.

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 going 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.

Blow up!

When you think about it, it is a bit like the

Death Star moment.

Smile you son of a...

There is an undeniable satisfaction in

finally destroying this thing that you’ve seen

cause such carnage.

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.

And when the film wrapped 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 Phil 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.

What we’re looking for a nice place

to show that Quint refuses to slow down the boat.

Now the splicer.

Verna Field, she was a force of,

of stability for me.

Am I in trouble? Jaws. Am I in Jaws trouble?

Verna was working on Martha’s Vineyard.

I mean, I’m looking for our mark as a 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.

Want to walk the plank here Steven with the rest

of the guys?

We are ready.

Roll B camera, please.

The whole attack in the cage,

of the mechanical shark attacking Richard Dreyfuss was

done in the tank at MGM.

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 bullets.

Even though we wrapped

in Martha’s Vineyard,

the film kept shooting for another two months.

Okay, 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 Fields’ swimming pool in the Valley,

I think Sherman Oaks,

when Hooper goes underwater and finds

Ben Gardner’s head,

we went into the pool and we shot it.

He keeps going back and making changes and

redoing things and making them better.

Hey, I got it!

What?

Get behind me.

Watching Jaws for the first time it 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 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.

It’s only the bass that should be big on the A-D.

Yeah.

You have two ominous notes there.

I don’t know that you can talk about Jaws without

talking about those two iconic notes that

John Williams created.

All human beings come equipped...

Okay, 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, four.

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 the low cellos,

you become that shark.

This idea of characterizing the shark musically.

He’s taking it. He’s taking it..

Was the result of a very simple idea

that I had.

I thought maybe some kind of bum, bum.

might indicate this mindless attack of the shark with this

relentless drive that it has.

And you don’t know if it will work on an audience

until you try it.

Next door is the Island Theater.

It’s closed down at the moment.

But back in 1975, when the movie came out,

they had the premier 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 10 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 is made.

My whole first time I saw it was just

seeing who was in it that I didn’t know.

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.

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.

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 then by the end of it, it actually finished its

domestic run and it made a quarter of a billion dollars...

which is over $1 billion today.

There were mixed reviews.

The reviews at first were what we were expecting which

was okay, here’s a 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 it 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? "Candy gram."

- Candy gram. - I thought it was hysterical.

Not only was it summer and suddenly

you were like afraid of going to the beach,

but it was also just something that was on everyone’s lips.

Jaws!

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.

Shark’s business has been terrific.

Everything’s going that even looks like a shark.

And I just wanted to get every little thing I could.

A find, toys, magazines, books.

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.

They had towels and T-shirts.

There’s that great picture of Dick Zanuck sitting there with

all the merch around him.

So, it became this monster in its own right.

Good ‘ole Hollywood finds out who is the

nominee so far for this year’s Academy Award nominations.

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.

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.

And sound.

Robert L. Hoyt, Roger Heman,

Earl Madery and John Carter for Jaws.

And editing.

Verna Fields for Jaws.

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’ve voted for

One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest

over Jaws for best picture, I would’ve done that.

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 kill sharks.

One of the bad things that came out

of the film was shark hunting spiked.

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 number 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.

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 was a lot of 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’ve 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 is Broken about the making of Jaws which is

set on the Orca in which he plays his dad.

Who gets top billing?

There’s such a generosity of feeling towards Jaws and

there is such a desire to revisit and go back.

My father would’ve 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 has 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’ve got to keep going.

So, 10 years later, here we are.

Just last week I was at a grocery store and on the inside

of the grocery cart it said,

"You’re going to need a bigger cart."

Jaws has become one of these movies

that’s kind of taken on a life of its own in

terms of the meme 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 and 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?

You know it’s very interesting about this, Laurent, you know,

the shower scene in Psycho.

That, which 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...

...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.

All right, it’s January 12th,

so we have successfully stripped all of the

textured paint off.

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 low and behold, now it exists again.

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.

So, 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.

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,

I used to get in my electric cart without

telling anybody, and I would sneak behind the trams,

nobody could see me, and I’d just sneak on board the boat

and I would sit in the cabin in that little leather red booth

and I would just sit there and sometimes cry.

And I had nothing to cry about.

The film was this phenomenon and I’m sitting

here shedding tears.

Because I’m 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.

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.

Break it up, will you chief?

Daylight’s wasting.

This was a movie that taught me that horror

didn’t have to be something that left me feeling icky.

You okay?

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.

I think it’s fair to say the cinema wouldn’t

be where it is without Jaws.

It just supercharged the language of cinema.

Hurry 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.

It’s only the audience that makes it 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 notice 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.

The lesson in cinema for me with Steven

in particular is the ability to make things work when

nothing is working.

You have to...

I want to get this boat out because we can't be out there...

The whole thing’s 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 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.

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 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.

And I think all of us feel we

survived something.

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.

I used to hate the water.

I can’t imagine why.