Jaws is a 1975 American thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg and based on Peter Benchley's novel of the same name. The prototypical summer blockbuster, its release is regarded as a watershed moment in motion picture history. In the story, a giant man-eating great white shark attacks beachgoers on Amity Island, a fictional summer resort town, prompting the local police chief to hunt the shark with the help of a marine biologist and a professional shark hunter. Roy Scheider stars as police chief Martin Brody, Richard Dreyfuss as oceanographer Matt Hooper, Robert Shaw as shark hunter Quint, Murray Hamilton as the mayor of Amity Island, and Lorraine Gary as Brody's wife, Ellen. The screenplay is credited to both Benchley, who wrote the first drafts, and actor-writer Carl Gottlieb, who rewrote the script during principal photography.

Shot mostly on location on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, the film had a troubled production, going over budget and past schedule. As the art department's mechanical sharks suffered many malfunctions, Spielberg decided to mostly suggest the animal's presence, using representative props and an ominous, minimalistic theme created by composer John Williams to indicate the shark's impending appearances. Spielberg and others have compared this suggestive approach to that of classic thriller director Alfred Hitchcock. Universal Pictures gave the film what was then an exceptionally wide release for a major studio picture, over 450 screens, accompanied by an extensive marketing campaign with a heavy emphasis on television spots and tie-in merchandise.

Generally well received by critics, Jaws became the highest-grossing film in history at the time. It won several awards for its soundtrack and editing, and it is often cited as one of the greatest films of all time. Along with 1977's Star Wars, Jaws was pivotal in establishing the modern Hollywood business model, which revolves around blockbuster action and adventure pictures with simple "high-concept" premises that are released in the summer at thousands of theaters and supported by heavy advertising. It was followed by three sequels, none with the participation of Spielberg or Benchley, and many imitative thrillers.

Plot[link]

A young woman named Chrissie Watkins leaves an evening beach party on New England's Amity Island to go skinny dipping in the Atlantic Ocean, only to be dragged back and forth and then pulled under the water. Amity's police chief, Martin Brody, is notified that Chrissie is missing, and Deputy Hendricks finds her remains on the beach. The medical examiner informs Brody that she was killed by a shark. Brody plans to close the beaches but is overruled by Mayor Larry Vaughan, who fears that reports of a shark attack will ruin the summer tourist season, the town's primary source of income. The medical examiner consequently attributes the death to a boating accident. Brody reluctantly goes along with the explanation.

A short time later, a boy is killed by a shark at the beach. The boy's mother places a bounty on the shark, sparking an amateur shark-hunting frenzy and attracting the attention of local professional shark hunter Quint. Marine biologist Matt Hooper examines Chrissie's remains and determines that she was unquestionably killed by a shark, not a boat.

A large tiger shark is caught by fishermen, leading the townspeople to believe the problem is solved, but Hooper is unconvinced and asks to examine its stomach contents. Vaughan refuses to make the autopsy public, so Brody and Hooper return after dark and discover the dead shark does not contain human remains. They come across the half-sunken wreckage of a boat belonging to local fisherman Ben Gardner. Hooper explores the vessel underwater and discovers a sizable shark's tooth protruding from the damaged hull before he is startled by Gardner's remains. Vaughan refuses to close the beaches, and on the Fourth of July many tourists arrive. A children's prank causes panic at the main beach while the shark enters a nearby estuary, killing a man; Brody's son, who witnesses the attack, goes into shock. Brody persuades Vaughan to hire Quint, who reluctantly allows Hooper to join the hunt along with Brody. The three set out to catch and kill the shark aboard Quint's vessel, the Orca.

Brody is given the task of laying a chum line while Quint uses fishing tackle to try to hook the shark. An enormous great white shark looms up behind the boat, and the trio watch it circle the Orca while Hooper takes pictures for research. Quint harpoons it with a line attached to a flotation barrel, but the shark pulls the barrel under and disappears.

The men retire to the boat's cabin, where Quint relates his experience with sharks as a survivor of the sinking of the warship USS Indianapolis during the War in the Pacific in 1945. The shark reappears, damaging the boat's hull before slipping away. In the morning, Brody attempts to call the Coast Guard, but Quint destroys the radio. After a long chase, Quint harpoons another barrel to the shark. The men tie it to the stern, but the shark drags the boat backward, forcing water onto the deck and flooding the engine. Quint heads toward shore, hoping to draw it into shallow waters and suffocate it. In his obsession to kill the shark, Quint overtaxes and stalls the Orca's engines.

With the boat immobilized, the trio attempt a desperate approach: Hooper dons scuba gear and enters the ocean inside a shark proof cage, aiming to stab the shark with a hypodermic spear filled with strychnine. When the shark attacks the cage, Hooper drops his spear but manages to escape to the seabed. As Quint and Brody raise the mangled cage, the shark leaps onto the boat, crushing the transom. Quint slips down the deck into the shark's mouth and is eaten alive. When the shark attacks Brody, he shoves a pressurized scuba tank into its mouth, then takes Quint's rifle and climbs the sinking Orca's mast. Brody shoots at the scuba tank, blowing it and the shark to pieces. Hooper emerges, and the two make rafts out of the Orca's remains to paddle back to Amity Island.

Production[link]

Development[link]

Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown, producers at Universal Pictures, independently heard about Peter Benchley's novel Jaws. Brown came across it in the fiction department of the Cosmopolitan lifestyle magazine, then edited by his wife, Helen Gurley Brown. A small card written by the magazine's book editor gave a detailed description of the plot, concluding with the comment "might make a good movie".^[1][2] The producers each read the book over the course of a single night and agreed the next morning that it was "the most exciting thing that they had ever read" and that they wanted to produce a film version, although they were unsure how it would be accomplished.^[3] They purchased the movie rights in 1973, before the book's publication, for approximately $175,000.^[4] Brown claimed that had they read the book twice, they would never have made the film because they would have realized how difficult it would be to execute certain sequences.^[5]

To direct, Zanuck and Brown first considered veteran filmmaker John Sturges—whose résumé included another maritime adventure, The Old Man and the Sea—before offering the job to Dick Richards, whose directorial debut, The Culpepper Cattle Co. had come out the previous year.^[6] However, they grew irritated by Richards' habit of describing the shark as a whale and soon dropped him from the project.^[6] Meanwhile, Steven Spielberg very much wanted the job. The 26-year-old had just directed his first theatrical film, The Sugarland Express, for Zanuck and Brown. At the end of a meeting in their office, Spielberg noticed their copy of the still-unpublished Benchley novel, and after reading it was immediately captivated.^[4] He later observed that it was similar to his 1971 television film Duel in that both deal with "these leviathans targeting everymen."^[3] After Richards' departure, the producers signed Spielberg to direct in June 1973, before the release of The Sugarland Express.^[6]

Before production began, however, Spielberg grew reluctant to continue with Jaws, in fear of becoming typecast as the "truck and shark director".^[7] He wanted to move over to 20th Century Fox's Lucky Lady instead, but Universal exercised its right under its contract with the director to veto his departure.^[8] Brown helped convince Spielberg to stick with the project, saying that "after [Jaws], you can make all the films you want".^[7] The film was given an estimated budget of $3.5 million and a shooting schedule of 55 days. Principal photography was set to begin in May 1974. Universal wanted the shoot to finish by the end of June, when the major studios' contract with the Screen Actors Guild was due to expire, to avoid any disruptions due to a potential strike.^[9]

Writing[link]

For the adaptation, Spielberg wanted to stick with the novel's basic concept, while removing Benchley's many subplots.^[4] He declared that his favorite part of the book was the shark hunt on the last 120 pages, and told Zanuck when he accepted the job, "I'd like to do the picture if I could change the first two acts and base the first two acts on original screenplay material, and then be very true to the book for the last third."^[10] When the producers purchased the rights to his novel, they promised Benchley that he could write the first draft of the screenplay. Overall, he wrote three drafts before the script was turned over to other writers,^[4] claiming to Spielberg that "I'm written out on this, and that's the best I can do" as he delivered his final script.^[11] During the film's production, Benchley agreed to return and play a small onscreen role as a reporter.^[12] One of his changes was to remove the novel's adulterous affair between Ellen Brody and Matt Hooper, at the suggestion of Spielberg, who feared it would compromise the camaraderie between the men on the Orca.^[13]

Spielberg, who felt that the characters in Benchley's script were still unlikable, invited the young screenwriter John Byrum to do a rewrite, but he turned down the offer.^[7] Columbo creators William Link and Richard Levinson also declined Spielberg's invitation.^[14] Tony and Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Howard Sackler was in Los Angeles when the filmmakers began looking for another writer and offered to do an uncredited rewrite; since the producers and Spielberg were unhappy with Benchley's drafts, they quickly agreed.^[3]

As Spielberg wanted "some levity" in Jaws, considering some jokes would avoid making it "a dark sea hunt", he turned to his friend Carl Gottlieb, a comedy writer-actor who at the time worked on the sitcom The Odd Couple.^[11] Spielberg sent Gottlieb a script, asking what the writer would change and the role he would be interested in performing.^[15] Gottlieb sent Spielberg three pages of notes, and picked the part of Meadows, the politically connected editor of the local paper. He passed the audition one week before Spielberg took him to meet the producers regarding a writing job.^[16]

While the deal was initially for a "one-week dialogue polish", Gottlieb eventually became the primary screenwriter, rewriting the entire script during a nine-week period of principal photography.^[16] The script for each scene was typically finished the night before it was shot, after Gottlieb had dinner with Spielberg and members of the cast and crew to decide what would go into the film. Many pieces of dialogue originated from the actors' improvisations during these meals; a few were created on set, the most notable case being Roy Scheider ad-libbing the line "You're gonna need a bigger boat".^[17] John Milius contributed dialogue polishes,^[18] and Sugarland Express writers Matthew Robbins and Hal Barwood also made uncredited contributions.^[19] Spielberg has claimed that he prepared his own draft, although it is unclear to what degree the other screenwriters drew on his material.^[18] One specific alteration he called for in the story was to change the cause of the shark's death from extensive wounds to a scuba tank explosion, as he felt audiences would respond better to a "big rousing ending".^[20] The director estimated the final script had a total of 27 scenes that were not in the book.^[13]

Benchley had written Jaws after reading about sport fisherman Frank Mundus's capture of an enormous shark in 1964. According to Gottlieb, Quint was loosely based on Mundus, whose book Sportfishing for Sharks he read for research.^[21] Sackler came up with the backstory of Quint as a survivor of the World War II USS Indianapolis disaster.^[22] The question of who deserves the most credit for writing Quint's celebrated monologue about the Indianapolis has caused substantial controversy. Spielberg described it as a collaboration between Sackler, Milius, and actor Robert Shaw, who was also a playwright.^[18] According to the director, Milius turned Sackler's "three-quarters of a page" speech into a monologue, and that was then rewritten by Shaw.^[22] Gottlieb gives primary credit to Shaw, downplaying Milius's contribution.^[23]

Casting[link]

Despite complying with Zanuck and Brown's request to cast known actors,^[12] Spielberg wished to avoid hiring any big stars. He felt that "somewhat anonymous" performers would help the audience "believe this was happening to people like you and me", whereas "stars bring a lot of memories along with them, and those memories can sometimes ... corrupt the story."^[19] The director added that in his plans "the superstar was gonna be the shark".^[11] The first actors cast were Lorraine Gary, the wife of then-president of Universal Sid Sheinberg, as Ellen Brody,^[12] and Murray Hamilton as the mayor of Amity Island.^[24] Stuntwoman-turned-actress Susan Backlinie was cast as Chrissie as she knew how to swim and was willing to perform nude.^[11] Most minor roles were played by residents of Martha's Vineyard, where the film was shot. One example was Deputy Hendricks, played by future television producer Jeffrey Kramer.^[25]

The role of Brody was offered to Robert Duvall, but the actor was interested only in portraying Quint.^[26] Charlton Heston expressed a desire for the role, but Spielberg felt that Heston would bring a screen persona too grand for the part of a police chief of a modest community.^[27] Roy Scheider became interested in the project after overhearing Spielberg at a party talk with a screenwriter about having the shark jump up onto a boat.^[12] Spielberg was initially apprehensive about hiring Scheider, fearing he would portray a "tough guy", similar to his role in The French Connection.^[26]

Nine days before the start of production, neither Quint nor Hooper had been cast.^[28] The role of Quint was originally offered to actors Lee Marvin and Sterling Hayden, both of whom passed.^[12][26] Zanuck and Brown had just finished working with Robert Shaw on The Sting, and suggested him to Spielberg.^[29] Shaw was reluctant to take the role since he did not like the book, but decided to accept at the urging of both his wife, actress Mary Ure, and his secretary—"The last time they were that enthusiastic was From Russia with Love. And they were right."^[30] Shaw based his performance on fellow cast member Craig Kingsbury, a local fisherman, farmer, and legendary eccentric, who was playing fisherman Ben Gardner.^[31] Spielberg described Kingsbury as "the purest version of who, in my mind, Quint was", and some of his offscreen utterances were incorporated into the script as lines of Gardner's and Quint's.^[32]

For the role of Hooper, Spielberg initially wanted Jon Voight.^[29] Timothy Bottoms, Joel Grey, and Jeff Bridges were also considered for the part.^[33] Spielberg's friend George Lucas suggested Richard Dreyfuss, whom he had directed in American Graffiti.^[12] The actor initially passed, but changed his mind after he attended a pre-release screening of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, which he had just completed. Disappointed in his performance and fearing that no one would want to hire him once Kravitz was released, he immediately called Spielberg and accepted the role in Jaws. Because the film the director envisioned was so dissimilar to Benchley's novel, Spielberg asked Dreyfuss not to read it.^[34] As a result of the casting, Hooper was rewritten to better suit the actor,^[28] as well as to be more representative of Spielberg, who came to view Dreyfuss as "my alter ego".^[33]

Filming[link]

Principal photography began May 2, 1974,^[36] on the island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, selected after consideration was given to eastern Long Island. Brown later explained that the production "needed a vacation area that was lower middle class enough so that an appearance of a shark would destroy the tourist business."^[37] Martha's Vineyard was also chosen because the surrounding ocean had a sandy bottom that never dropped below 35 feet (11 m) for 12 miles (19 km) out from shore, helping the prop sharks to operate smoothly.^[38] As Spielberg wanted to film the aquatic sequences relatively close-up to resemble what people see while swimming, cinematographer Bill Butler devised new equipment to facilitate marine and underwater shooting, including a rig to keep the camera stable regardless of tide and a sealed submersible camera box.^[39] Spielberg asked the art department to avoid red in both scenery and wardrobe, so that the blood from the attacks would be the only red element and cause a bigger shock.^[32]