Jaws (film): Difference between revisions

This article is about the 1975 film. For other uses of the term, see Jaws (disambiguation).

Jaws (1975) is an American film, based on a best-selling novel by Peter Benchley which itself was based loosely on the true story of the Jersey Shore Shark Attacks of 1916.

In the story, a resort town's police chief tries to protect beachgoers from the predations of a huge great white shark by closing the beach, only to be overruled by the money-grubbing town council. The film was directed by Steven Spielberg and stars Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss and Lorraine Gary.

Taglines:

• The terrifying motion picture from the terrifying No. 1 best seller.
• When beaches open this summer, you will be taken by Jaws.
• She was the first.
• Do you like fish? Well, he likes you too...
• Don't go in the water.
• See it before you go swimming.
• You'll never go in the water again!

Template:Spoiler-about The film opens with a young woman leaving a beach party to go night-swimming just off Amity Island, a summer resort akin to Martha's Vineyard. Suddenly, she is jerked around by some unseen force and then pulled under. The next morning, Martin Brody (Scheider), the newly-hired Chief of Police, is notified that the woman is missing. Searching the beach, he and his deputy find some of her remains and Brody concludes that she was killed in a shark attack. He recommends the beaches be closed, but the town's mayor, Vaughn, ignores his warnings and orders the beaches kept open. The mayor is most concerned about Amity's dependence on summer tourism and the fact that a Fourth of July celebration is near. He tells Brody the girl was killed by a boat propeller and is backed up by the town medical examiner. Brody reluctantly goes along with this. A few days later, a little boy is killed by the shark while playing on an inflatable raft, and his mother places a USD$3,000 bounty on the animal.

The bounty starts an amateur shark hunting frenzy, but it also attracts marine biologist Matt Hooper (Dreyfuss) and local professional shark hunter Quint (Shaw). After scraping his fingernails on a chalkboard to get attention at a raucous town hall meeting, Quint says of the bounty, "I'll find 'im for three, but I'll catch 'im—and kill 'im—for ten". When Hooper arrives on the island and examines the remains of the first victim, he becomes convinced that a Great White Shark, a voracious predator known to be dangerous to humans, is responsible for the attacks. His angry retort to the coroner, "This is not a boat accident," is one of the movie's most memorable lines, though often misquoted as "This was no boating accident!"

A large tiger shark is caught by some of the amateur fishermen and strung up on a local dock, and for a moment everyone is pleased that the terror seems to be over. Hooper asks to cut open the fish "to be sure," but Vaughn puts off his request. Waiting until after dark to "operate", Hooper and Brody find no human remains inside the dead shark and Hooper concludes that they are looking for a much larger fish. Hooper and the aquaphobic Brody venture out in Hooper's state-of-the-art boat and come across the half-sunken wreckage of a local fishing vessel. Hooper puts on scuba gear to check the hull for damage and discovers another victim. Brody wants the beaches closed, but the mayor still refuses.

On the Fourth of July, the beaches are mobbed, and surrounded by cordon of police boats. While a false alarm triggered by a prank draws off the authorities' attention, the shark cruises into the "pond," an estuary where Brody told his son Michael to stay; another man is killed and Michael is hospitalized after going into shock. The stunned mayor relents, closes the beaches, and agrees to pay Quint's price. Brody, Hooper, and Quint set out in Quint's boat, the Orca, to face and destroy the man-eater.

Up until now, only parts of the shark have been seen, the monster being more like a presence. This builds up to one of the film's biggest moments when Brody, while tossing chum into the sea to lure the shark, is shocked and horrified when it surfaces right in front of him. He realizes the fish is massive, with a size that is at least half of the Orca. In one of the film's most enduring lines, the stunned Brody tells Quint, "You're gonna need a bigger boat" . Watching the shark circle the boat, Hooper and Quint estimate the animal to be 20-25 feet long. After the men harpoon it with a line attached to a yellow flotation barrel, the shark swims away and disappears. When night falls without another sighting, the men retire below for dinner and drinking, where they compare scars. Quint tells of his terrifying experience with sharks as a survivor of the World War II sinking of the USS Indianapolis. While they sing a drinking song, the shark suddenly attacks and damages the boat. Quint fires at it in vain with his M1 Garand rifle, but it disappears again.

In the morning, the men make repairs to the boat, and Quint destroys the radio to keep Brody from calling the Coast Guard for help. The shark attacks again and, in a protracted battle that further damages the boat, is harpooned twice more with lines attached to yellow flotation barrels to mark its movements and drain its strength. But the huge shark pulls the barrels under nevertheless. The strange, unpredictable movement and appearances of the barrels give the shark a menacing presence.

With the Orca dead in the water, the trio tries a desperate new approach: Hooper enters the ocean with scuba gear inside a supposedly shark-proof cage: he intends to stab the shark inside the mouth with a hypodermic needle filled with a powerful poison. The monster shark instead destroys the cage, and Hooper flees to the seabed. As Quint and Brody raise the empty cage, the shark throws itself onto the boat, crushing the stern. Quint slides into its mouth, kicking and screaming. As he is thrashed about from side to side, Quint attempts to fend it off but is finally pulled in and devoured by the beast he has hunted for so long. Brody flees to the boat's cabin, now partly submerged, and throws a pressurized air tank into the shark's mouth when it rams its way inside.

Brody takes Quint's rifle and climbs the mast of the rapidly-listing boat, where he temporarily fends off the attacker with a harpoon. On the shark's next charge, Brody fires repeatedly, angrily sneering the infamous line "Smile, you son-of-a-bitch!" The chief, now level with the surface of the water as the Orca sinks beneath him, hits the scuba tank jammed in the shark's mouth with the last of his 8 shots. The shark's head explodes and the body sinks to the bottom of the sea, enveloped in a cloud of its own blood.

With the boat submerging, Hooper bobs to the surface alive. The two survivors swim to shore using flotation barrels for a raft as seagulls begin consuming the shark’s remains.

The film was produced by Richard Zanuck and David Brown, who had purchased the film rights to Peter Benchley's novel in 1973. His novel was loosely based on a real-life event in the summer of 1916 when a series of shark attacks killed four people along the New Jersey coast and triggered a media frenzy. They signed Spielberg to direct in the same year, prior to release of his first theatrical film, The Sugarland Express (also a Zanuck/Brown production). Despite his lack of feature film experience, Spielberg had proved adept at suspense material with the 1971 telemovie Duel.

Peter Benchley wrote the first draft of the screenplay, with a subsequent draft prepared by Howard Sackler. Carl Gottlieb (who also appears in a supporting acting role in the film as a reporter) was brought in to add humour and more depth to the characters. Gottlieb rewrote many scenes during principal photography, and John Milius contributed some dialogue polishes. Spielberg has claimed that he prepared his own draft, although it is unclear if any of the other screenwriters drew on his material.

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The authorship of Quint's monologue about the fate of the cruiser USS Indianapolis has caused substantial controversy, as to who deserves the most credit for the speech. Spielberg tactfully describes it as a collaboration among John Milius, Howard Sackler and Robert Shaw. Gottlieb gives primary credit to Shaw, downplaying Milius' contribution.

Location shooting occurred at Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. Many local actors were used to play uncredited characters in the movie. The film had a troubled shoot and went considerably over budget. The logistical problems of shooting at sea led to many delays, and the mechanical shark frequently malfunctioned, due to the hydraulics of the innards being brutalized by salt water. The three mechanical sharks were collectively nicknamed "Bruce" by the production team after Spielberg's lawyer, a piece of trivia that has been cited in a number of shark-related stories (such as the appearance of the shark in 2003's Finding Nemo). Spielberg referred to the mechanical shark as "the turd" on a British program about famous horror scenes and confessed that they had even less flattering names for it throughout filming.

To some degree, the delays in the production proved serendipitous. The script was refined during production, and the unreliable mechanical sharks forced Spielberg to shoot many of the scenes with the shark only hinted at. For example, for much of the shark hunt its location is represented by floating yellow barrels that have been tied to it during the hunt. This enforced restraint is widely thought to have increased the suspense of many scenes, giving it a Hitchcockian tone. The film was given the nickname "Flaws" by many of the dispassionate crew members. Verna Fields won an Oscar for her editing.

John Williams contributed the acclaimed film score. The main theme became a classic piece of suspense music, synonymous with approaching danger, evoking the start of Allegro con fuoco, the fourth movement from Dvořák's Symphony No. 9. Echoes of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, particularly the opening of "The Adoration of the Earth", are heard as well [1]. Another influence may have been Ed Plumb's score for Walt Disney's Bambi, which used a low, repeating musical motif to suggest approaching danger from the off-screen threat of Man. When the piece was first played for Spielberg, he was said to have laughed at John Williams, thinking that it was a joke. Spielberg was later quoted as saying that without Williams' score, the movie would have been only half as successful.

The scene where Hooper discovers Ben Gardner's body in the hull of the wrecked boat was added after an initial screening of the film. Spielberg mentions in the special features of the DVD release that after he saw everyone's reaction, he got so greedy for "one more scream" that he financed this addition with $3,000 of his own money after he was denied funding from Universal Studios. Their thought was that there was nothing wrong with the film the way it was and that it should be left alone. Ironically, this added scene could be considered a continuity error; Brody later tries to convince the mayor to close the beaches but never thinks of mentioning a confirmed kill to bolster his argument.

At the time of the film's release, it was reported that Spielberg liked to drop into theaters and sit in the back, watching the audience's reaction. One of his favorite scenes was a tight shot of Brody tossing chum over the stern, his back to the water, commenting on "shoveling this shit", immediately after which the open-mouthed shark breaks the surface. Spielberg enjoyed the audience's reaction switching from laughter to screams in a split-second.

Footage of real sharks was shot by Ron and Valerie Taylor in waters off the Commonwealth of Australia, although only a handful of these shots were used in the finished film.

Upon its release, the film beat the then-$85 million gross of the reigning box-office champion, The Godfather, becoming the first movie to reach more than $100 million in box-office receipts. Eventually, Jaws would go on to gross over $470 million worldwide and become the highest grossing box-office hit for many years, securing Steven Spielberg's spot in cinema history. This feat was not matched until Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, which debuted two years later, in 1977.

Jaws was a key film in establishing the benefits of a wide national release backed by heavy media advertising, rather than a progressive release that let a film slowly enter new markets and build support over a period of time. The wide national release pattern would become standard practice for high-profile movies in the late 1970s and after.

Jaws is also often cited as indicating a shift in the type of movies made by Hollywood studios. Along with The Exorcist and Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, it is an example of a high-budget movie in what had previously been considered a disreputable or low-budget genre (in this case, suspense/horror). The runaway success of these films led to increased genre-film production by studios.

Though a horror classic (voted to have the scariest scenes ever by a Bravo Halloween TV special), the film is widely recognized to be responsible for many fearsome and inaccurate stereotypes about sharks and their behavior. Benchley has said that he never would have written the original novel had he known what sharks are really like in the wild [2] He has since written Shark Trouble, a non-fiction book about shark behavior.

Conservation groups have bemoaned the fact that the movie has made it considerably harder to convince the public that sharks (who, as macro-predators, constitute an important part of the ocean's ecosystem) should be protected.

Jaws was followed by three sequels, generally regarded as increasingly poor in quality as compared to the original: Jaws 2 (1978), Jaws 3-D (1983) and Jaws: The Revenge (1987). The original movie has a presitigiously rare 100% rating (no bad reviews found) at Rotten Tomatoes, a website that accumulates numerous reviews for movies, while Jaws: The Revenge has a decidedly unprestigious 0% rating (no good reviews found).

Jaws has been spoofed and referred to in other movies, most notably in the opening sequence of "1941," directed by Spielberg himself. Other references are to be found in Airplane! (1980), Clerks. (1994), Mallrats (1995), Chasing Amy (1997), Caddyshack (1980) and Red Water (2003). In Back to the Future Part II (executive produced by Steven Spielberg), a movie theater sports an animated holographic shark over a marquee that reads "Jaws 19" and "This time it's really really personal" and "Directed by Max Spielberg".

The film has even been turned into a musical, titled "Giant Killer Shark: The Musical", which will premiere in the summer of 2006 at the Toronto Fringe Festival.

On July 17, 2005, a two-hour episode of MythBusters was aired, where the Mythbusters tested myths based on the Jaws film. These myths included:

• Shooting a pressurized SCUBA tank will blow it up. (Busted; a punctured air cylinder will rocket around as the air exits but will not explode).
• A shark can be fended off by punching it in various parts of its body. (Plausible; punching it in the nose can disrupt its primary sense, smell and confuse it long enough to make escape possible.)
• A great white shark can rip a hole in a boat (Plausible).
• A great white shark can pull a boat backwards with great enough speed that waves break over the rear end. (Busted; however, since the boat's engine was starting to lose power, the scenario is plausible).
• A great white shark can damage and/or destroy a shark cage by ramming it (Confirmed).
• A great white shark can pull flotation barrels underwater and keep them there (Busted; the barrels will not stay under for long).

In June 2005, on the 30th anniversary of the film's release, a festival, JawsFest, was held in Martha's Vineyard. Jaws was also then re-released on DVD, this time including the full two-hour documentary produced by Laurent Bouzereau for the LaserDisc, and which had appeared as a one-hour version on the original 2000 DVD release.

Jaws won Academy Awards for Film Editing, Music (Original Score) and Sound. It was also nominated for Best Picture.

The film is consistently on the Internet Movie Database's list of top 250 films. Jaws was #48 on American Film Institute's 100 Years... 100 Movies, #2 on its 100 Years... 100 Thrills, and #1 in the Bravo cable network's five-hour miniseries The 100 Scariest Movie Moments (2004) [3]. The shark was also anointed #18 on AFI's 100 Years, 100 Heroes and Villains, opposite Robin Hood. In 2001 the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.

In 2005, the American Film Institute voted Roy Scheider's line "You're gonna need a bigger boat" as number 35 on its list of the top 100 movie quotes.

The film differed in some notable aspects from Benchley's original novel:

• The setting for the novel is the fictional Long Island resort town of Amity, whereas the film is set on the fictional Amity Island.
• In the novel, Brody is a native of Amity while his wife, Ellen, was previously a member of the wealthy New York summer holiday set before she married Brody. A major theme of the novel is Ellen's sense of displacement and despair with her life in Amity. In the film Brody moved to Amity Island from New York with his family in order to take up the position of the chief of police.
• In the novel, Hooper is killed by the shark during the dive to examine it, with the intention of killing it with a shot of Strichnine Nitrate.
• The novel also describes a short sexual encounter between Hooper and Brody's wife. They are portrayed as having been acquainted with each other during their youth.
• The novel portrays Quint as being bald, clean-shaven and 6'4" in height. Robert Shaw's Quint was considerably shorter with plenty of head and facial hair.
• In the novel, the mayor has Mafia ties and wants the beaches kept open for the season.
• The events in the final reel of the film (boating, drinking, and singing with Quint), take place in a series of boat trips in the novel.
• Quint drowns after he gets his foot caught in his harpoon rope and is dragged under by the shark.
• Quint's monologue about the USS Indianapolis is absent from the novel. In the novel, Quint mentions that he had been working in the business for thirty years, or since 1944; the USS Indianapolis was not sunk until 1945.
• Quint used a dead baby dolphin as bait.
• In the film, the shark is 25 feet in length, slightly above average for the Great White; in the novel, Hooper claims the shark is "bordering on Megalodon size".
• In the novel, the shark dies as a result of injuries from the harpoons embedded in it. For the film, something with more visual impact was deemed necessary.

The film was written (and re-written) in three different screenplays (by Steven Spielberg, Howard Sackler and Carl Gottlieb respectively). There are scenes that differed from screenplay to screen: -

• The harbormaster is killed by the shark while cleaning out his coffeepot in the ocean.
• Quint is introduced to the film by watching the film version of Moby Dick. His laughter throughout makes people get up and leave the theater; this is thought to be an influence on Wesley Strick's screenplay for Cape Fear which features a similar scene. 'Moby Dick' could not be licensed from Gregory Peck (the rights' owner).
• When the shark is blown-up, it is not after a charge attack but popping up out of the water below the crow's nest of the sinking vessel.

There were several scenes deleted from the movie. They can be viewed at http://www.jawsmovie.com/1/lostsn.asp.

• Benchley, Peter (1973) "Jaws". Doubleday.
• Blake, E. (1975) On Location...On Martha's Vineyard: The Making of the Movie Jaws. New York, NY: Ballantine Books.
• Brode, D. (2000) The Films of Steven Spielberg. (Revised ed.) New York, NY: Kensington. ISBN 0806519517
• Gottlieb, C. (1975) The Jaws Log. New York, NY: Dell Publishing.
• Sinyard, N. (1987) The Films of Steven Spielberg. Middlesex: Hamlyn/Bison Books. ISBN 0600552268

• JawsMovie.com
• Jaws at IMDb
• Reviews of all the Jaws films
• Giant Killer Shark: The Musical
• JAWS Amity Island - JAWS Theme Park Attractions