In the 1949 thriller The Third Man, Orson Welles plays Harry Lime, one of the all-time great screen villains. Welles is barely in the movie. For most of the running time, he’s simply a whispered name—first a dead body, the center of a mystery, and then the mastermind of a criminal conspiracy that’s leaving Austrian children dead. Welles simply appears out of the mist, gives one chillingly callous monologue on a ferris wheel, and then dies. That’s it.
Welles doesn’t have to carry the movie. Harry Lime isn’t a big part. But he’s still the center of attention in The Third Man. Before he arrives, the other characters spend the entire film talking about Harry Lime—who he is, what happened to him, what he’s done. All Welles has to do is drop by, supply a few minutes of perfect malevolence, and then disappear. It’s perfect. Now everyone remembers The Third Man as an Orson Welles movie.
In 1975’s Jaws, the shark is Harry Lime. The shark wasn’t supposed to be Harry Lime. Three giant mechanical great whites had been constructed at, great expense, for Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of the Peter Benchley book about a seaside community terrorized by a killer shark. Bob Mattey, who had built the amazing giant squid from the 1954 Disney flick 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, had designed these pneumatic models—intricate machines that took 14 people at once to operate. But Spielberg, just 28 and working with a real budget for the first time, insisted on shooting the underwater scenes in the ocean, something that had never been done before. He could’ve just used a water tank. It would’ve been fine. But Spielberg felt like he needed the ocean. He would regret it.
The set of Jaws, even more than the set of The Godfather a few years before it, was a notorious disaster. Spielberg spent more than twice his allotted budget. Production went months past deadline. (Universal had wanted to release Jaws in time for Christmas 1974, even though it’s such an obvious summer movie.) Robert Shaw, the great English actor who played the wild-eyed fisherman Quint, was in the process of drinking himself to death, and he’d get so hammered that he couldn’t remember his lines. Shaw and his co-star Richard Dreyfuss butted heads. The Orca, the boat where all the action of the movie’s final third takes place, once started to sink with the cast and crew on board. The salt water of the ocean destroyed the inner workings of those mechanical sharks. Members of the crew reportedly started referring to the movie as Flaws, which is just a good pun.
These days, Jaws is notorious for being the film that kicked off the summer-blockbuster era. It came out in June, during what was supposedly a dead period for the box office. It opened on more than 400 screens nationwide, back when the usual strategy was to open a big picture in a few big-city theaters and slowly roll it out to the rest of the country. Universal spent more than $700,000 on TV ads in a time when most movie studios generally regarded TV as the enemy. Within three months of that opening, Jaws was the highest-grossing movie of all time.
Jaws really did change the way movies are conceived, shot, marketed, and released. If you want to find a scapegoat for the rise of slick, spectacle-based cinema and for the end of the brief early-’70s “American new wave,” Jaws will do just fine. After Jaws, studios had different expectations for how much money a film might possibly make and different ideas about which kind of films might conceivably do it. We’ve been living with the after-effects of that for the last 44 years. But there was nothing slick about the way Jaws itself was made. It was a series of happy accidents.
Spielberg himself has said that Jaws wouldn’t be anywhere near as good, or as successful, if the mechanical sharks had worked. He and editor Verna Fields had to work around their absence, only showing the creature itself in the film’s final act. In keeping the shark hidden, they turned what might’ve been a monster movie into a work of Hitchcockian suspense. We see brief glimpses—a fin, a shadow, a quick flash of movement. We see potential victims from the shark’s point of view, a slasher-flick trick. And more importantly, we see the effect that the shark attacks have on the town of Amity.
The shark itself isn’t the villain of Jaws. The shark is an act of god, a manifestation of nature’s bloodlust. The villain is Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton), the mayor who wants to keep Amity’s beaches open even when he knows there’s a killer shark out there. Vaughn, harried but friendly, isn’t a criminal mastermind. He wears tacky, Craig Sager-ass sport jackets, and he thinks he’s just protecting his town’s economic interests. But he’s driven by the same capitalistic indifference to life that had made Harry Lime so chilling. (Vaughn never gets his comeuppance, even after his inaction causes multiple deaths. As people on Twitter love to point out during election season, Vaughn is still the mayor in Jaws 2.)
In its way, then, Jaws builds on, rather than dismantles, the American new wave of the ’70s—at least as far as inherent distrust of authority is concerned. This wasn’t just a Hollywood thing. Jaws arrived less than a year after President Richard Nixon resigned from office in disgrace, and less than two months after the last American helicopters left Saigon. Jaws was filmed in Martha’s Vineyard, the same island where presumptive presidential frontrunner Ted Kennedy had swam to safety while the woman in the passenger seat of his car, Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned. (The Jaws crew even reportedly filmed the shark moving through the same Chappaquiddick canal where Kopechne died.) Robert Benchley, the author of the airplane-bookstore novel on which Jaws was based, had worked as a speechwriter for Lyndon Johnson. But Spielberg himself wasn’t even remotely political. He cared much more about movies than he did about politics.
The shark can represent just about anything you want it to. It’s a blank slate, and its absence gives it power. In the film, moments of jarring violence, like the opening-scene killing on the beach, give way to total calm. The shark is an existential threat. In refusing to close the beaches, the mayor tells Chief Brody that he needs to “appreciate the gut reaction that people have to these things.” Jaws is all about that gut reaction. Spielberg has said that he felt like he was “directing the audience with a cattle prod.”
[pm_embed_youtube id=’PLE495EC5350813544′ type=’playlist’]Ultimately, I think the overwhelming success of Jaws owes less to what was happening in the world in 1975 and more to Steven Spielberg’s incredible instincts as a filmmaker. The set itself might’ve been a total nightmare, but Spielberg and his collaborators took those slapdash raw materials and turned them into miracles. A scene like the one where the kid gets eaten while swimming at the beach — the tension, the glimpses of carnage, the mass panic—are about as good as filmmaking gets.
Spielberg knew what he was doing. He didn’t care about politics, but he knew that the audiences of 1975 loved watching men fighting against corrupt systems. (That year, the No. 2 highest-grossing movie at the box office, and the one that defeated Jaws for the Best Picture Oscar, was the definitive man-versus-system statement One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.) Spielberg also knew how to put together an effective scene: When the movie was otherwise finished, he spent a few thousand dollars of his own money on the scene where Dreyfuss pokes around Ben Gardner’s sunken boat, staging the discovery of the fisherman’s severed head in a friend’s swimming pool. And Spielberg understood when to turn his horror movie into a seafaring adventure.
His timing is just masterful. Think about the scene of the two bumbling fishermen on the dock, using a frozen turkey to lure the shark so that they can collect some reward money. Suddenly, the shark grabs the chain and pulls the dock into the water, sending one of the fishermen, thrashing, into the water. Then the shark turns around and swims back towards them. (Again, we don’t see the shark. We know where it’s going because it drags the dock with it.) The two schlubs somehow survive, and they end up in a panting heap on the dock. Then there’s a beat, and one of them whines, “Can we go home now?” Spielberg created this incredible tension, and then he defused it with a joke at the exact right moment.
The casting is perfect, too. Dreyfuss, young and shaggy and convincingly neurotic as the shark expert Hooper, delivers all of his exposition with a sense of passion and excitement. Shaw, grizzled and lightly terrifying, glowers and snarls and puts on a great show. And Roy Scheider, playing the put-upon everyman hero Brody, reacts with the same fear and disbelief that any of us would have. He’s a big-city cop who’s come to the peaceful island to give his family a better life; it’s almost as if he’s playing his French Connection character, attempting to recuperate from the time he had to deal with crazy Popeye Doyle as a partner. I love the moment where Hooper and Shaw gleefully compare scars and Brody pulls up his shirt, feels his own scar, and says nothing.
As he’s about to set sail to find the fish, Brody, in a moment of frustration, rants about all the awful things he’d seen in New York. And he pauses for a moment of idealism that probably sounded naïve to 1975 audiences and definitely sounds naïve now: “In Amity, one man can make a difference!” Later on, he proves it. With Quint dead and Hooper incapacitated, Brody is the one who kills the shark, getting off an ’80s action-hero-style one-liner in the process.
Jaws was not the perfect engine that some of its detractors made it out to be. Instead, it was a series of problems that Steven Spielberg needed to solve. He figured them out. There’s nothing cynical or assembly-line about the finished product. Spielberg proved himself to be a hell of a storyteller, something he’d continue to prove again and again in the decades ahead. (No director will appear in this column as often as Steven Spielberg.) Jaws is a great movie. Great movies have a way of changing things.
The contender: Jaws notwithstanding, 1975 was still near the peak of the Hollywood new wave, and plenty of shaggy, fascinating movies, like Shampoo and Three Days Of The Condor, were big hits. My favorite of them is, like Jaws, a beautifully constructed piece of mass genre entertainment that pits a beleaguered New Yorker against an uncaring system.
Dog Day Afternoon, the No. 4 film at the 1975 box office, is the movie where Al Pacino really stops being icy, controlled Michael Corleone and becomes something like the wild, over-the-top figure that we know and love today. He gets to be volcanic and euphoric and freaked-out and scared and deeply, ferociously charismatic. The story of the hopeless, in-over-his-head bank robber comes from real life, but it seems far-fetched. This guy manages to keep his trigger-happy accomplice from killing anyone and to get his hostages and a good chunk of the New York populace rooting for him. It’s absurd. Because it’s Pacino, we buy it.
Director Sidney Lumet makes the bank and its neighborhood seem real, and he dials up the tension between Pacino and the police expertly. I love just about every actor in the movie—John Cazale as the sweaty gunman, Chris Sarandon as the bewildered partner, Penelope Allen as the tough and empathetic bank teller, James Broderick and Lance Henriksen as the ice-blooded FBI agents. But the film belongs to Pacino, and it’s probably my favorite of his performances.
Next time: Rocky starts out as a grimy ’70s character study and ends as an underdog triumph, making a star out of Sylvester Stallone and helping usher in a new era of cinematic uplift.
341 Comments
Those shots from the shark POV underwater is what’s made me scared of deep water. That something would rise from beneath to take you.
Peter Benchley wrote Jaws
Jaws terrified me as a kid. I remember seeing it at the drive in on a re-issue and as someone who lived on Long Island near Amityville, that was it for beaches for me. Dog Day Afternoon is such a great movie. Isn’t Pacino trying to get money to get his boyfriend a sex change if memory serves? Think of how different that must have seemed to folks in the 70’s. I was explaining to my older daughters when we were watching some 70’s block of hellish TV programming just how different a time it was. edited to add: we were watching this monstrosity…
I missed a lot of the formative blockbusters of that era (this, ROTL, TOD, and Poltergeist) because they sounded way to scary for me as a kid. One time, way after it had come out, I was trapped at a birthday party where they were showing it. After the Gardner scene Miller talks about above, I just went into the next room and waited for my parents to come get me for the rest of the movie.
Before PG-13 kids were able to walk in to all kinds of movies without a parent. Plus PG could have partial nudity. Poltergeist as a PG film is flat-out hilarious.
It’s incredible how poorly most TV from that era has aged compared to both music and cinema from around the same time, especially now that the 21st century has become such a golden age for television.
A notable exception is made for TV movies, which could rival what you saw on the screen. It’s interesting that networks would give airtime to both The Star Wars Holiday Special and The Execution of Private Eddie Slovik.
I love 70’s era TV movies, although usually for the wrong reasons IE stuff like The Terror at 37 thousand feet and Devil Dog: the hound from Hell. But you’re right in that there were legit, exceptionally well done TV films and mini-series as well.
One of them, Duel, was the movie that launched Steven Spielberg’s directorial career!
And including Spielberg’s debut with Duel, of course…
I was recently debating this with some folks on FB who were extolling the virtues of TV back then. I mean, sure there’s some good nostalgia and a few gems obviously but the sheer amount of terrible is far larger. TV definitely became much better starting in the late 90’s/early 00’s.
“Barney Miller” is great ‘70s TV that plays very well today.Well, except for the episode where the whole squad room debates whether marital rape is a thing. In an episode called “Rape”.But other than that, “Barney Miller” is a funny goddamn show and it should be better remembered. Back when Jump The Shark was around it was on the “Never Jumped” list.People think highly of the original “Bob Newhart Show” but I’ve never actually watched it. Ditto “The Rockford Files”. “Columbo”, which I have watched extensively, is fantastic.
There’s definitely a few, but I stand by majority being terrible. Columbo is only as good as the guest star. Rockford has one of the best themes but my secret 70’s PI love is Cannon, for all the wrong reasons…
Oh, I wasn’t arguing that the majority isn’t terrible. Most ‘70s TV was shit. All the variety shows! I was just providing a few examples of wheat among the chaff.
Isn’t Pacino trying to get money to get his boyfriend a sex change if
memory serves? Think of how different that must have seemed to folks in
the 70’s.That’s true. One of the best moments in the film is when his partner in crime, played by the great John Cazale, gets all bent out of shape because the press mistakenly reports that he’s the boyfriend wanting a sex change.And yes, the idea is sort of introduced as part and parcel of the “decaying social values” trope running through so many 70’s movies: Pacino’s Sonny has left his family to take up with a fairy, and is now robbing a bank so his boyfriend can get a sex change. Because after all, New Yorkers are all a bunch of freaks and perverts… However, the movie undercuts this trope by portraying all of the characters realistically and sympathetically.
We watched Angie. I recognized that theme the moment it started. I think it was one of my sisters who liked it, but who knows.
It makes the moments that actually did age well stick out all the more. Just two examples:
– There’s an episode of The Jeffersons where an old army buddy of George’s came out as a transwoman. It’s a cis-actress playing her unfortunately, but what’s stunning is that it’s completely respectful otherwise. George is uncomfortable, of course, but when she goes on about how much happier she is, you’ll be stunned this aired in the 70’s.
– There’s also an episode of Taxi where Elaine starts dating a bisexual guy and he doesn’t know how to tell her he was trying to ask Tony out when they originally met. Not only is the guy explicitly bisexual as opposed to gay (how many shows even today do that?), but there’s no gay panic amongst Tony or the rest of the male cast. The conflict isn’t, “Oh shit, he’s bi.” It’s, “Oh shit, how do we tell Elaine?” The best joke is in the end, the guy just comes clean and tells Elaine the truth, so all of this could’ve been avoided.
I don’t disagree with that. There was so much terrible TV (albeit in the Ed Wood way that I enjoy watching it…and nostalgia) that quality stuff still stands out.
Just curious how many here saw JAWS during its original release during the Summer of 1975? Stood in a line that snaked down a block and turned the corner a line formed an entire showing prior to yours? Then immediately went to the mall and bought a JAWS t-shirt like millions of others?Okay, never mind…….
I actually saw it on a re-release in 77 at the drive in in the summer. As noted above ruined me wanting to go to the beach for a LONG time. My memory like that is 1977 Star Wars however…
This movie almost single-handedly changed the way people think about sharks and we still haven’t fully recovered.
My brother and I and our two best friends wanted to see it in 1975, when we ranged in age from 9 through 12 (I was 11). We finally wrung permission out of our parents, only to have one of our friends, who was 10, say it was going to be too scary for her, at which point our parents said none of us could go as it wouldn’t be fair to our friend if three of us saw it and she didn’t.The logic escaped me then and still does (she didn’t WANT to see it!), but my mother clearly felt bad, because when it was re-released in 1977 she took me to see it in the theatre. I loved it.
I was way too young to see a PG movie in 1975, but I vividly remember my parents talking about it after they saw it. I was also a shark-OBSESSED 4-year-old who instantly became fascinated with seeing this scary-ass shark attack movie that made my mom, as my dad put it, “jump out of her skin” at the movie theater I actually saw Jaws 2 before I saw Jaws, which probably made Jaws 2 seem better that it actually is, since it effectively recycled the tension-building techniques of the first, but lacks so much of Spielberg’s story-telling style. Needless to say, when I finally watched Jaws, I was blown away.
Me at 6 years old with my family and at drive in movie. scared the crap out of me I would not swim in our pool the next day. I remember seeing the milk men delivering milk when we got home from the drive in. yes I am old. that world is GONE.
There’s something about swimming at night/ in the dark that feels dangerous to me, and it is 100% because of this movie. Quint’s death, where he spits up blood, messed me up for years as a kid.
yes totally agree!
I’m just impressed your folks allowed you to see it at 6! I was 7, and totally was NOT allowed. (I didn’t see it until catching it on TV in the early 80s.)
My dad took me to see all kinds of movies when I was a little kid, including, Psycho when I was FOUR, Experiment in Terror when I was SIX, and a whole lot of other totally inappropriate movies for a little kid to see. I remember going to school and telling my teacher I had seen “Experiment in Terror” the night before and she had seen my dad and I going into it as her husband and her were coming out. As we talked, I could tell she was upset about my dad taking me to see it. When I told her I had seen “Psycho”, she shook her head. I don’t remember much about her, except that little conversation. When my aunt squawked about my parents letting me see those great movies, my dad just laughed at her. The stuff I was scared of as a little kid, and as an adult have nothing to do with the movies I saw. Almost 60 years after I saw “Psycho”, my fears in life are pretty much heights and I have a ton of food issues. But I had both of those before I saw any movies in a theater.
First time I saw it was at a water park wave pool. Which, by the way, is a terrifying way to see it. I’d rather be standing in line in the 70s, for that bit at least.
Same. Chlorinated fresh water 500 miles from a beach? Doesn’t matter, I kept my eyes peeled.
I can’t believe my parents took me to see Jaws. I was probably 8 at the time. I still remember how I shook from fright when the head popped out of the boat. It’s the only moment in cinema that truly scared me.
me too. Didn’t stand in line, but sat in a packed theatre that freaked the eff out at the fishermans head. Yeah, thats all i remember – gimme a break, i was 10…
I wasn’t born yet, but I’ve always been envious of my mom’s experience seeing it for the first time: she was actually on Martha’s Vineyard with friends when it came out, and that’s where she saw it. I’ve been to the Vineyard a few times over the last few years and love going around to the spots where the movie was filmed.
I was 8 when JAWS came out and I don’t remember if I saw it on the original release or the re-release two years later. One thing that has stuck in my mind all these years is my mother telling me, “It’s bloodier than The Godfather,” as a reason why I shouldn’t go see it. It was her frame of reference at the time which, oddly enough, I did see the fall before, when I was 7, on TV (and they didn’t edit out Sonny’s death or most of the other violent scenes).
I saw it June ‘75 in a full to capacity theater; forced to sit in the front row with the screen hanging over my head like a tombstone. It was the most terrifying movie experience of my life and for years afterward I always sat in the back row of the theater.
yep, saw it just after it opened. I remember the long lines – all my friends and I had the Jaws T-shirts. When it finally reached the second-run theatre in our neighborhood my best friend and I saw it 10 more times that summer.
My parents went to see it with friends. My mom, who has no stomach for gore, was shocked when her friend ordered a tomato juice after seeing the bloodiest movie she’d ever seen…
Though I didn’t see “Jaws”, I did see the rip-off “Orca” with Richard Harris a few years later at the drive-in…
Must have been fun. Did he spring for popcorn?
I actually read the book first… someone had given it to my dad, and I pulled it off the shelf out of curiosity. But I was waaaaay too much of a terrified mama’s boy to dare to see the actual film. I didn’t get into horror movies, or scary movies in general, until I was halfway through college. But printed adaptations or source material were a great way to ease my wussified self into seeing the films. I flipped through the Goodwin/Simonson “Alien” graphic novel for months on end at my local Waldenbooks years before I screwed up my courage to watch the movie. But knowing the beats helped ease me into the terror.
I wasn’t going to be born for another 17 years but I remember doing this for movies in the 90’s-2000’s.
I was born late ‘75, and my mom went to see Jaws during her second trimester, so I almost saw its original release. To her (almost literal) dying day, every time I did something weird or crazy or just bafflingly dumb, she’d lament, “I never should have gone to see Jaws while I was pregnant! This is what happens!” (that didn’t stop her from letting me have a Jaws cake for my fifth birthday)
I never should have gone to see Jaws while I was pregnant! This is what happens!” Your mom is as awesome as I remember
Also an in-utero viewer; my great-grandma warned my mom not to go see that scary movie or she’d “mark the baby.” Which, given my name, she did.
I saw it in a hotel room in 1979 on a (I think) now long gone service called OnTV when I was 14. No way my parents would have taken me when I was 10 to anything that wasn’t either Disney or educational. I think that the first first run movies I ever saw was a Convoy/Close Encounters of the Third Kind double bill, and that was because the next door neighbor lady took me with her son. TBH, I rarely catch movies at the theater to this day, maybe 3 or 4 a year, and for many years not even that. My extensive pop culture knowledge comes from reading about it and catching it later on TV
I remember On TV! There was also SelecTV which was On’s competition I believe. And Z Channel. I had none of them but my friends did. Saw my first boobs on OnTV.
Saw my first boobs on PBS around 1980(in black and white) watching I, Claudius. Quite a surprise to my mom.
I’m so glad I had an older, not so goody two shoes dad who took me to all kinds of “inappropriate” movies, let me read his racy and gory paperback books, and would give me his old copies of “The National Enquirer” which back than was a gore laden thing with decapitated heads and car wreck pics, and pics of people with horrible cancers, etc. I remember reading about the notorious Albert Fish in one issue. I hated Disney movies and I think my dad was just happy that he didn’t have to sit through them. I saw a lot of horror movies instead. None of them scared me in the slightest. A friend and I went to “The Exorcist” in ‘73 and laughed so much people were staring at us.
I remember seeing it in the theater, but that must have been a re-release. I just turned 5 that summer, and I have to believe that Mom and Dad YYZ were not taking a five-year-old to see that movie.(Whether my being 2-3 years older at the time of the re-release actually makes it any better is left as an exercise for the reader.)
My dad didn’t take us to see Disney movies or kids’ movies of any sort. We just saw what he wanted to see. I didn’t see Jaws in its original theatrical release (too young), but I distinctly remember seeing it in a theater when I was about four or five years old. That and all the other movies we saw that honestly were meant for adults had a huge effect on what I appreciate now. My dad was kind of a dick overall, but I’ll always appreciate the fact that he had zero patience for kids’ entertainment and decided it was a good idea to subject me to killer sharks at such a young and tender age. I didn’t see most of the Disney classics until I was well into my twenties, but if you were looking for a seven-year-old in 1980 who could recite the USS Indianapolis speech, you found him.Lifeless eyes, black eyes… like a doll’s eyes. When he comes at ya, he doesn’t seem to be livin’, until he bites ya.
Is Dad still alive? I would like to buy him a beer.
Nope. For better and/or worse, he kicked about ten years ago. But yeah, so would I sometimes.
My hometown FB page just had a pic of the old movie theater marquee with JAWS on it. Folks are commenting about the lines. Evidently, somehow, our small town got the exclusive run of Jaws on the St. Paul side of the Twin Cities for the first eight months! Can you even imagine such a thing?!I was too young for Jaws, but remember the line around the corner for Star Wars.
I was too young. I don’t think anyone in my family want to court the shark nightmares of an 8 year old. I remember my siblings talking about it, though.
Was definitely too young to see it, but looking through old family photos reveals that we did receive the goofy Jaws board game for Christmas around that time, despite completely lacking the appropriate context for it!
I missed seeing it in the theatre, was just the right age to see Star Wars when that came out though, but I sure as balls remember seeing the commercials for Jaws on TV. I was TERRIFIED of the water for a long time based off those ads alone.
I did. I was wrapped up in bandages due to poison ivy and kept trying to convince people it was shark bites.
I did. I was wrapped up in bandages due to poison ivy and kept trying to convince people it was shark bites.
I did. I was wrapped up in bandages due to poison ivy and kept trying to convince people it was shark bites.
I saw it in the mid 90s, the night before I was going to the beach for the first time. Yeah, I did not enjoy that trip.
Northern Cali coastal girl here. When it opened in our rural single plex movie theater town, I remember going as a kid with family and everyone was there: school teachers, commercial fishermen, cousins, various and sundry…. The place was packed and that wonderful group response made it quite an event. As a little kid I screamed with everyone else when Ben Gardner’s head popped out of the hull underwater, laughed when the tourist yahoos didn’t know one end of the boat from another, and sat in solemn respect hearing Quint tell his tale of the U.S.S. Indianapolis. We knew these people, we recognized these people.. We even had an old guy who lived down on his boat at the docks who was a Quint Doppleganger. The whole place erupting after “Smile, you.. sonovabitch!” Cheering, clapping, standing up, everyone going nuts! I have been lucky, raised by two movie loving parents who gave me the drive to become a full-fledged Cinephile, and have enjoyed lots of amazing film experiences in my life but only rarely have I been through one with such sense memory as the night we saw the movie Jaws.
What a great story, thanks for sharing that.
No worries, it is a great memory to share… I think as a family the cost for the five of us to see it was about $10 bucks or so total.
I was too young to be allowed to see the film in the theater, but because JAWS was omnipresent that summer, I still had the t-shirt. 🙂
(Every kid I knew had a JAWS t-shirt. Do you remember the t-shirt shops in beach towns in the 70s? How you’d go in and all of the iron-transfer designs would be up on the wall, and you’d pick a design and separately pick which shirt you wanted it on? And then you stood there and watched the guy behind the counter assemble it in the giant shirt-sized iron-press. God, I can almost still SMELL it, the hot fabric and hot plastic-y smell of the designs. And then they’d hand you the shirt.)(I spent summers on the Jersey shore. So no mall, but beach-town type shops. And the beach and the ocean right there. But having been too young to go see the actual movie, I wasn’t afraid to go in the water. 😉
A little late to the party here but I live in NJ and hit Wildwood at least once a year with my kids and I can tell you the whole “pick a design/pick a shirt” thing is still very much a thing.
My very first PG movie. Oh hell. When that mutilated head rolled out of that hole in the boat hull…On the way back from the theater, I snagged a copy of the book from the spinner rack at the convenience store. Read it late into the night.The next day, I told Mom I was going to see something else (Escape From Witch Mountain, I think?). I lied, of course. Over the next several weeks, I watched Jaws seven or eight times, but the only merch I ever bought was the soundtrack album.
My parents took my 8 year old self and my ten year old sister to the drive in to see it. Great time. Terrifying of course.
I saw it twice in a week. Read the book after the first viewing. Good times.
I saw Jaws about 3 days after it opened. I remember standing in line for what seemed like forever in the Las Vegas heat. I saw it a second time in LA about 2 weeks later, on a much larger screen.
My parents wanted to see it, but couldn’t get a sitter. So they brought 8 year-old me to the theatre with them.And thus, my fascination with sharks was born (as well as most of my childhood trauma).
I…and this might come off as crazy…walked to the local neighborhood movie theater with my brother from our house. With no parents! At night! And the movie theater had just one screen! I also remember it was the night of the MLB All-Star game because I remember thinking that the reason the movie theater wasn’t that crowded because the game was on and that I was hoping I wouldn’t miss part of the game.
It was between my junior and senior years in high school. I crushed super hard on Richard Dreyfuss.
I saw it much later, as a youngster (6? 7?) on this new thing my dad’s friend told him about called HBO. “They leave the blood and swears in and everything!” We all went over to their house to watch JAWS on TV. It was an event. Scare me? Maybe. But I was too thrilled to notice all that much.
Spielberg is absolutely right about the shark only glimpsed thanks to the mech problems made the resulting flick totally click. 100%.Along the same lines, the mentioned giant squid from 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea had something similar happen. They were staging the big fight of Douglas and gang versus the squid and it looked absolutely terrible—men “fighting” off a big rubber dummy with lots of tentacles–whoopee. Then someone on the set got the idea of restaging the fight taking place during a storm—cut down on seeing the rubber squid. And voila! it worked like a charm.
Amused at how words change – by the original meaning, Jaws is the exact *opposite* of the “ultimate” summer blockbuster.
I cannot recommend The Jaws Log enough. Great book that details exactly how fucked this production was.
“When the movie was otherwise finished, he spent a few thousand dollars of his own money on the scene where Dreyfuss pokes around Ben Gardner’s sunken boat, staging the discovery of the fisherman’s severed head in a friend’s swimming pool.”I had no idea this was added in at the last minute, off the clock. It’s on the short list of the best jump scares in movies, I’ve never not seen it totally freak people out.
Spielberg infamously dumped milk into a pool to recreate the murky Martha’s Vineyard water.
I can never tell exactly when it’s coming. Gets me every time.
Man, you really had me excited for a second when I thought you were referring to a Jaws-shaped gas fire log.
I dunno. Spielberg made a conscious choice not to reveal Jaws’ log in the film, and I think that was the right way to go.
Yeah, if he’d shown it he’d just wind up editing a fucking walkie-talkie over it anyway.
Was that the making of book by Carl Gottlieb? I remember reading that, a couple of years after seeing the movie.
Yep!
“By the size of that turd it has to be a Great White!”
Remains my favourite film of all time. Not a single frame is wasted or out of place. A work of absolute perfection.Also: it’s Peter Benchley, not Robert.
On the issue of Spielberg having to work around the limitations of the mechanical shark and by many counts (his own included) having greater success in generating suspense, it’s interesting to contrast that with Jurassic Park (a movie we’ll be talking about several columns hence). Ebert complained in his review of the latter that he wished Spielberg had taken more of a Jaws approach with the dinosaurs, an opinion that I don’t think is widely shared.
I think it’s hard for people to remember just how *amazing* the Jurassic Park dinosaurs were in 1995. We’re so used to realistic CGI now, but when the movie came out most viewers associated CGI with the look of Tron or Lawnmower Man – the realistic Raptors and T Rex were just unprecedented. The movie where they *really* went whole hog with overusing the beasts was in the sequel…and there’s a reason that movie will *not* be appearing in this column.
At the time they were astonishing and imho they hold up pretty well.
That’s the thing – the mere fact that they’re adequate in 2019 means they were mind-blowing in 1995.I wonder if my two examples of 1950s effects movies that hold up (“The Day The Earth Stood Still” and “Godzilla”) have a similar place in my parent’s generation’s minds.
Jurassic Park was a masterclass in how to use CGI only when practical effects aren’t an option. The fact that its CGI (and that of other 90s movies like Starship Troopers) looks better than a lot of what we get today tells you how lazy a lot of directors are with its use.
I have noticed that movies with practical effects manage to look better later than CGI. The early CGI of Terminator 2 while it was amazing for it’s time hasn’t held up well and really looks kind of creaky now. The sparing use of CGI in the original Jurassic Park and the use of anamatronics for much of the close up work has made it hold up pretty well.
T2’s CGI only works as well as it does because the script gave them “the T-1000’s made of mercury!” as an out. Jurassic Park pulled off making the CGI and practical effects indistinguishable.
This is part of why James Cameron is a genius – he wanted the T-1000 to look slightly unreal, it can blend in perfectly but there are times when the disguise slips and you’re reminded that it’s actually this impossible creature from an alien future who doesn’t look or move the way you would expect it to. The limitations of the technology – the CGI not being completely believable – are working to his advantage. He did something similar in the first Terminator movie with the lighting; Arnie is often lit with this weird blue light that makes his skin tone seem kind of unnatural so you get the sense that there’s something not quite right about him. He doesn’t do this in the sequel where Arnie is a good-guy.
While the T2 CGI hasn’t held up as well, I think it holds up better than it should because it’s being used for something completely alien like the T-1000, and is in of itself relatively simplistic. We really don’t have a reference for what a liquid metal cyborg should look like, so it gets a lot of benefit of the doubt.
The CGI for T2 isn’t terrible but in comparison to the original Jurassic Park, Jurassic Park holds up better because the CGI used for Jurassic Park was for more of the distance/running animals not the close up stuff. T2 there were more shots of the actor and the CGI modeling to look like his robot appearance that hasn’t really aged as well as original Jurassic Park.
I’ll never forget seeing the T-Rex standing up and roaring for the first time in the theater. Seeing it was one thing…hearing that bellow on a new sound system was a whole other thing. Completely unique experience at that time.
I did the full IMAX 3D thing a few years ago when it was touring around. Talk about an experience. You could feel that roar in your spine.
I was really impressed how good it was in 3D since it hadn’t been shot that way.
At the time they were astonishing and imho they hold up pretty well.
The dinosaurs were even more amazing in 1993.
The practical effects that were used to make the first Jurassic Park movie served it well. It still looks great in the close up shots with the actors interacting with the anamatronic dinosaurs.
Jurassic Park is a much, much better movie than Lost World. But purely as a carnage-delivery service, Lost World is superior. Plus its mercenary nature (anyone who thinks the movie is bad should read the book, now there’s a crappy cash-in) lets Spielberg indulge his sadistic side to great effect.
Most people are surprised when they learn how often the dinos in JP were actually practical effects. They assume almost everything was CGI, which is wrong quite often.
It’s also crazy how well that CGI has aged compared to some films that came out a decade-plus after it (cough Hobbit cough).
I saw Jurassic part when I was 9, and I didn’t notice the special effects because there were dinosaurs on the screen. As an adult, I appreciate the framing and the clever tricks to hide the limitations of that era’s CGI, but at the time they did what they needed to do, which was show me dinosaurs.When Twister came out, people made a big fuss over its CGI. I remember being maybe 10 or 11 and thinking “who gives a shit about a tornado? It’s not a dinosaur.” It’s true that we’re used to CGI, but movies that use effects well are still impressive. There are just lots of movies that use their effects to show us a lame tornado.
I’d argue that “Jurassic Park” does follow the “Jaws” template somewhat in that we only see harmless dinosaurs in the first half. The T-rex doesn’t make an appearance until the middle of the film and even that is done with a lot of build-up: They drive by the area earlier during the day and see nothing, then later during the evening, they hear (and feel) the footsteps but don’t actually see the creature until after its munched on the goat (You see the goat tethered to a pool, then you don’t see it there anymore, then the goat’s severed leg lands on the windshield, then you finally see the T-rex gulping i down).
Also, the raptors aren’t really seen until about the last half hour., and again with a lot of build-up: It kills the worker at the beginning, but we don’t actually see it. Later, we see one being hatched and later we hear, but don’t actually see one being fed.
The Dilophosaurus was also great, maybe the coolest looking dinosaur and the funny/brutal Nedry sequence
And Malcolm lampshades the T-Rex’s absence, “Ah, now eventually you do plan to have dinosaurs on your dinosaur tour, right?”
I was thinking throughout the article that if Jaws had been made today the shark would have been completely CGI, probably would have been overused – because CGI doesn’t break in saltwater – and the movie wouldn’t have been anywhere near as good.
It does bear remembering that a number of the great dino effects in the first Jurassic Park were practical, not CGI. The entire animatronic T-rex, for example; the guys in the raptor suits.
(But your point stands, because for the portions that WERE CGI, it was mind-blowing. Because there wasn’t that much visual difference between the props and the CGI; in fact, when watching it in the theater, I was never aware of the difference. It was only during making-of stuff later that I became more aware. Just amazing stuff.)
But, raptor gymnastics!
Ebert’s Jurassic Park review is up there with his Die Hard review as one of his great misses, IMHO. He just didn’t account for what a massive risk it was to let CGI do so much of the heavy lifting: in a way, that was the Jaws-like obstacle in filming this movie. He was carving out completely new ground, and had to trust that it would deliver.
Spielberg acknowledges he lucked out with his mechanical sharks malfunctioning. The CGI may have been a risk, but it also meant he didn’t have to be so coy with his shots of the dinosaurs.
Part of the reason for Jurassic Park’s success is that the CGI is so good that the audience can share the character’s sense of awe in seeing living dinosaurs. It connects the viewer to the characters immediately and in a really unique way. Interestingly, Spielberg did apply a Jaws approach to the T-Rex and that works masterfully.
Funny that. I saw JP when it came out in theatres. I was a young teen at the time, and I was all sorts of impressed by how scary and tense it was. That same summer, I saw Jaws for the first time. It came on a basic cable channel late at night, so I decided to stay up watching it. I remember remarking to my parents the next day how Jaws was SO MUCH BETTER than JP, and they just sort of amusedly nodded in agreement.
If Jurassic Park had been about a single predatory dinosaur, he might have had a point. Given that it was supposed to be as much about spectacle and wonder as about fear, I think Spielberg made the right call.Though a version of Jurassic Park where you hardly saw any dinosaurs would fairly accurately track my early experiences of mid-’70s drive-through safari parks… “Are there any animals in this place? Where the hell are the lions? Oh, wait, I think I might see some over there in the shade…”.
In Ebert’s defense, Spielberg definitely would find a way to make that an interesting movie.
And only a few scenes had CG dinosaurs. The others had animatronic puppets.
Honestly, though, that’s what he did. The tyrannosaurus doesn’t appear at all until almost midway through the movie. And despite all of the fear shown by the park staff, the first time you see a velociraptor* is in flashes in the opening scene, but not again until the shadow on the wall, then the following scene in the kitchen, 4/5 of the way through the movie.*Utahraptor *adjusts glasses*You see a lot of dinosaurs throughout, but the really scary ones are held back.
Also because Jurassic Park came out in a different era, there wasn’t that kind of slow buildup and character building that there was in Jaws. I cared about everyone in Jaws while I couldn’t care less about anyone in Jurassic Park to the point of rooting for TRex to eat the children
The Special Edition version was an interesting direction…
“I say we let him go!”
“Ah! My tibia!”
Fun fact: Shaw’s monologue about the sinking of the USS Indianapolis is actually surprisingly accurate. Though the dates were off IIRC.It’s also interesting to note that the book Jaws is based on has this subplot involving the Mayor’s ties to the Mafia which explains his hesitation to close the beach.
In the book doesn’t Dreyfus’ character have an affair with Mrs. Brody?
Yep, in fact Brody kills him IIRC.
No, in the book, the shark gets Hooper as well as Quint. To paraphrase the movie—Hooper goes in the cage, cage goes in the water, Hooper goes in the water. Shark’s in the water, shark gets in the cage, shark gets Hooper.
And she’s so despondent over Dreyfus’ death she has to get radical reconstructive vaginal surgery because only his cock was big enough to satisfy her.
The hell!
It’s a reference to a subplot in the novel version of The Godfather about a woman being miserable because of her loose vagina.
Yup. The movie is a massive improvement over the book.
They did a really nice comparrison in the “Page to Screen” column a while back. I’ve never read Benchley’s book, but it sounds very much the sort of thing that you’d see adorning wire racks in supermarkets and airport news stores in the day: A cheap way to pass the time on a boring flight or visit to a relative’s house. So yes, Virginia, sometimes the movie really is better than the book it’s based on:https://www.avclub.com/spielberg-s-jaws-adaptation-cut-the-mafia-and-sex-subpl-1827288877
If you purchase a rental home at the Jersey Shore, you receive a copy of the novel at closing. At least, that’s the only explanation I can come up with.
It’s an awful lot pulpier than the movie, and a somewhat grimmer tone. T made that book seem like even more of a downer.
I think John Milius wrote that monologue. Given his passion/fetish for military history and lore I’d be shocked if his account wasn’t thoroughly researched.
Except it’s not. The Indianapolis had not only completed the bomb delivery, it had made port afterward and rotated crew. The operations officer at the ship’s destination port failed to report it as late. Distress signals were sent, and three different stations received them but failed to act on them.I do actually like the inaccuracy though; psychologically altering the story to put the blame on a perfect storm of systemic blind spots rather than a series of individual failings seems to me like the kind of thing a survivor of such an event might actually do.
Peter Benchley not robert???
Also, the guys on the pier used a holiday roast, not a turkey.
If this is Corrections Corner, also Ben Gardner’s head is not severed. But he is missing an eye.
Ha, I knew something looked off. In the holiday spirit, here’s Robert Benchley’s “Christmas Afternoon.”
https://newenglanddiary.com/home/psrwu4mrr2ngg52h8oq1g2he5injq1/12/22/2017
“Here’s to swimmin’ with bowlegged wimmin.”
thats some bad hat, Harry…
After that scene of Quint crushing the can I spent a number of years after crushing them myself. Because I was a dumb kid, y’know.
Hooper crushing his cup as a sarcastic response is golden.
Jaws was right at the cusp when aluminum cans were taking over from steel. Crushing a steel can actually made sense as a form of macho display. Aluminum, not so much…
Look at that fucking legend. Performance of a lifetime.
this was my first summer blockbuster. We, as a family saw it in the drive in theater. I was a 6 year old. There was no force on earth that could have gotten me into our back yard swimming pool the next day.
I have not yet gone to one of the Jaws screenings on the Cape where you watch the movie in an inner tube, floating in (a roped-off area of) the ocean. Nooooooope. But for the past two years I have seen this in big outdoor environments — one a drive-in and the other with an orchestra performing the score live — and it not only looks great as big as possible, but it feels right to see it with the largest possible crowd. For a movie that has a lot of quieter moments and a fairly low-key hero, it’s incredible mass entertainment.
I was able to see this at the Hollywood Bowl with the LA Phil. Amazing. Hopefully there were some first timers there.We also saw Raiders of the Lost Ark there, and the little boy behind us had NEVER seen that movie. I was SO excited for him.
Hollywood Bowl was where I saw this! July last year. Big fan of the Bowl and its BYOB policy. And that rules about the young kid and Raiders, which is another movie that kicks all kinds of ass on the big screen. I saw it at a midnight screening nearly two decades ago, in a print that was barely good enough to make it through the projector, but that didn’t matter — everyone was having the time of their life.
I love seeing movies at the Bowl with the LA Phil. We’ve gotten to see Raiders, Star Wars, Empire, and Jurassic Park. The John Williams spectacular is pretty spectacular too. We do the buy 5 get one free package every year. I love bringing a picnic and a couple bottles of wine.
I saw the IMAX re-release a couple years back. The scenes at the dig site with Belloq and Indy running around feel HUGE. You really get a sense of how truly massive that shoot was when you see it that big.
Wasn’t this the first real summer blockbuster, period? I mean, I think that prior to Jaws it was more typical to release your big blockbuster movie at Christmas than near Memorial Day or July 4.
ROBERT Benchley? Jesus Fucking Christ.
Yes, after droll bon mots at the Algonquin, Robert would slink away home to work on his real passion project, a potboiler about a scary fish.
Have you read Dorothy Parker’s ‘The Betsy’? *chef’s kiss*
Oh yes, where the bon mots come as frequently as the characters.
Hate to be pedantic but it was Peter Benchley, not Robert. Also the two oafs threw in a sunday roast, not a turkey.
Can you imagine a movie like this selling out theaters now? Long, long scenes of dialogue, long, long, slow buildup of tension? Character development? A sense of place? Watching a movie from the ‘70s feels like time travel.
Long, long scenes of dialogue, long, long, slow buildup of tension? Character development? A sense of place?Yeah, I just saw that movie. It’s called The Lighthouse.
Does anybody get eaten?
(spoiler alert)
Do you want spoilers, because I can tell you if someone gets eaten.
My husband and I did a project where we watched every best picture from the first until present, in order. I was VERY surprised at how much I enjoyed the 70’s. As a child of the 70’s I had missed so many of them. In fact, my memories of Rocky turned out to be Rocky III. It’s a great decade to revisit!
‘76 in particular was a great year for the Oscars; Rocky, Network, All the President’s Men, and freaking Taxi Driver. Shame after The Deer Hunter we got the age of Oscar lobbying and we got more contentious choices.
Any chance of you guys digging into some Burt Reynolds movies?
Like Sharky’s Machine?
Feel free to correct me but Smokey and the Bandit was the second-highest grossing movie of ‘77 (no points for guessing #1), so it will certainly get an honorable mention.
This movie may tie with The Godfather for “most improved movie from source material.” I remember being a nine-year-old on a road trip and grabbing Jaws from a hotel’s take-a-book-leave-a-book pile (I did not leave a book) and thinking: this book is dumb.
The Shining would like a word.
Nah, The Shining is a good book in its own right, and King’s best 80s novel outside of The Stand.
Besides, the movie was awful, just Nicholsen playing McMurphy (murderous variant) for about the 5th or 6th time. I found 70’s era Nicholson to be tremendously annoying outside of Chinatown.
Both 70’s, and The uncut Stand was 1990, fyi.
“The Shining” is a fascinating example. Both book and movie are brilliant (despite Stephen King’s whining) and they are very very different.“Jaws” and “The Godfather” are the best examples of minor potboiler novels turned into classics. Probably also “Psycho” and whatever book Orson Welles made “Touch of Evil” from.
It’s remarkable how much of the Psycho novel made it to screen. There’s aesthetic differences, but the plot and reasons why everything happens is there. Stuff I thought Hitchcock contributed was all originally by Robert Bloch.
Marion is referred to as Mary, Norman is a middle-aged alcoholic, and Arbogast is a bit more antagonistic before he finally confirms Sam and Lila had nothing to do with Marion taking the money. Other than that? It’s almost one-to-one.
Yup, I read it once. The only thing I remember being different is that the sheriff, not Sam Loomis, is the one who comes to Lila’s rescue in the basement. Otherwise, as you say, pretty much straight-down-the-line.
My Mormon parents decided I was too young to see Jaws when it came out (I was 10) even though all my friends were seeing it. But they compromised by letting me read the novel. Little did they realize that there was a chapter long explicit sex scene in the middle involving Hooper and Mrs Brody.
See also: The Commitments
In Spielberg’s immortal words: “By the end, I was rooting for the shark.”
“He’s a big-city cop who’s come to the peaceful island to give his family a better life; it’s almost as if he’s playing his French Connection character, attempting to recuperate from the time he had to deal with crazy Popeye Doyle as a partner. I love the moment where Hooper and Shaw gleefully compare scars and Brody pulls up his shirt, feels his own scar, and says nothing.”Heh, the MAD parody explicitly makes the connection you do here — in their version of the scar scene, Brody says “You see this scar? I got it from Gene Hackman in The French Connection.”
I’m curious why Scheider feels like a second tier 70s star today, compared to someone like Hackman or Caan. He had a bunch of memorable spots in big box office movies and more dramatic roles.
Notable example:
I saw that movie an insane number of times. The HBO programmers loved that film.
Yes, that and Looker, which I probably watched several dozen times.Didn’t hurt that I was a pubescent boy and it had boobies in it.
His getting typecast as cops and military guys after 1979 I think dragged down peoples memories of him. He did maybe one or 2 memorable parts the last 30 years of his career. If he hadn’t got typecast, maybe he has Tom Hanks’ middle and late career.
But it’s not just that their memories of him got dragged down. Like you said, he didn’t get any memorable parts after the 70s; the other two had some of their biggest, most famous roles well after their initial 70s burst. We talk about Hackman and Caan more because there’s more to talk about.
I’m curious why Scheider feels like a second tier 70s star today, compared to someone like Hackman or Caan.This reminds me of story I read a while back that consisted of the reactions of Richard Dreyfuss’ adult kids to watching Jaws. They were genuinely surprised that their dad didn’t kill the shark at the end of the film.
Hackman and Caan had pretty high profile careers lasting well beyond the 70s until they retired (especially Hackman). I don’t see that Scheider ever really matched, let alone topped, his 70s work.
I think it’s because Scheider was in Sorcerer, and once you’ve starred in one of the greatest movies ever made what point is there in going on? The more likely explanation is Sorcerer flopping didn’t do him any favors but I prefer my reason.
You know, it’s a good question. I’ve always super liked Scheider. And it’s one of those things where, the few roles he had really stick out to me.(I feel like one of the only people who saw “2010: Odyssey 2″, and still has very fond memories of Scheider’s part in it.)
He’ll always have my heart as Captain Nathan Bridger.
Three letters: DSV.Actually, you make a great point. Just watched “All That Jazz” again the other week and am never not massively impressed by Scheider’s performance.
Isn’t his an appendectomy scar? That’s always been my take, which makes the whole thing even funnier.
Pretty sure it is. I think that’s why he doesn’t mention it; there’s not a cool story behind it.
Yep, that’s what I always assumed!
Brody’s? He was shot while still working in the NYPD.
In Mayor Vaughn’s defense, he’s in way over his head here. How much violent crime would a small tourist town like Amity see in a decade? His biggest problems are on the order of making sure there’s enough parking for the summer guests and the school kids aren’t being too loud with their parties. He probably got elected by being the best at schmoozing the Main Street shop owners – and that assumes someone ran against him.That Vaughn doesn’t want to close the beaches isn’t because he’s a stone-cold villain; it’s that he cannot even *conceive* of the threat. Brody, Hooper, and Quint all know about violent killers; Vaughn’s only seen them on TV….
Also to be fair to the mayor, shark attacks on beach swimmers are really rare. There has been a bit of shark panic on Cape Cod in recent years, with some people wanting hunts of sharks and the seals that they usually feed on. Of course, more people drown or die in traffic accidents on Cape Cod, or probably get toxic food poisoning from fried clams and lobster rolls, but Jaws is still on the minds of a lot of people.
And, of course, Benchley was kind of horrified for the rest of his life with what he’d wrought in terms of public hostility toward sharks.
Not just horrified, he became a big voice in shark (and ocean) conservation.
It’s actually kind of heartening that they’ve come to realize, on Cape Cod, that shark tourism can actually be a plus.
No Jaws article is complete without mentioning how it contributed to pushing the Great White Shark closer to extinction…
It’s very much the sort of “head-in-the-sand” response appropriate to a smarmy local politician who wants everything to get back to normal so he can get back to doing all the fun mayor stuff. I suspect he may have come across that much more contemptible in the book, where he’s dealing with the mafia and might actually believe in the threat, but fears ending up at the bottom of the bay himself that much more.
I think you also can’t dismiss the fact that for a lot of beach towns, June-August is when people make their money. It’s a short period of time in which you’re making a huge share of your yearly earnings. Especially in the 70s. So there would have been huge pressure on the mayor not to scare away business. And if people don’t come to town to go to the beach, they aren’t coming to spend their money in the shops or the restaurants or what have you. Or they’re cancelling rentals at beach houses.
Like, I don’t want to appear to defend the mayor too much, lol. But having grown up partly in a beach town, and seen it in the winter versus the summer, I understand the economic pressures on the community.
The author of Jaws is PETER Benchley.
We could talk all day about genius moments in “Jaws”. I vote for the moment when Brody is flinging chum and the shark leaps out of the water. “You’re gonna need a bigger boat” is one of the all-time great movie lines, but right before that–Brody is pissed off and muttering, then the shark surges into the screen, Brody bolts upright in shock. Goddamn that is good filmmaking.
And the “bigger boat” line is an ad-lib, IIRC.
It was a scripted line, but that wasn’t where it was originally intended for. They kept trying it in different spots and that was the one that stuck.
It wasn’t scripted, it was a running joke on set. The producers could only spring for this tiny boat that was way too small for the film crew and equiopment, and so everyone was super cramped. Every day, during notes, someone would say, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” Schneider just decided to work it into the movie. He tried it in a few different spots, and I think some of the others might have tried it too.
Him stepping back, and coming out with that line, must have actually been pretty funny on set.
I had heard that it was an inside joke among the crew, referring to the floating camera rig. Then Scheider said it in the scene as a joke, but it worked so it stayed in.
Wait I thought the line was “this boat’s gonna need to be waaaaaaaaaay bigger, m’man!”
Close. It was “This craft has insufficient capacity to be useful in our current situation”.
Totally agree, the movie holds up amazingly well for something that’s now 45 years old.
Hey it’s 44 years old darn it, just like me 🙂
People forget how great an actor Roy Scheider was (or are too young to remember). His peak was kind of short (1971-79) because even though he had leading man talent, he had character actor looks, and after 1979 (All That Jazz) he kinda dissappeared into doing character parts (Cops, Military, Presidents…basically a Terry O’Quinn career without a “Lost” in the middle to put him back on the A list)in forgettable B movies.
Post-Jaws, I remember him in Blue Thunder (not great, but it has gratuitous nudity and a helicopter dog fight), 52 Pick-Up (an Elmore Leonard adaptation, so not terrible), and 2010 (underrated, but certainly not on par with Kubrick).And then the TV series Seaquest DSV. Holy shit, did that show suck.
I love this entire damn movie, but this moment kills me.
I goddamn love this line delivery and and use it anytime someone says something I might have remotely misheard or misunderstood.
there’s a moment in the scar scene. It’s actually the point where it transitions to the Indianapolis monologue. Dreyfus is laughing about Shaw’s scar, and Shaw is smiling but he reaches over and holds Dreyfus’ arm, and that – wordlessly – tells him he’s going to regret laughing as soon as he says where he got it. Dreyfus slowly sobers up when he hears, and says “you… you where on the Indianapolis?”Lovely moment. And “Spielberg isn’t an actors director” my ass.
Oh lord, we could start a separate thread for amazing actor moments in Spielberg movies. Here’s a random one: Tom Cruise choking back his tears as he reads the Miranda rights to the man he thinks murdered his son in Minority Report. His character goes through the wringer in that movie.
I have a lot of problems with War of the Worlds (and with Cruise in general) but Tommy is brilliant in it. The level of barely-contained panic in his eyes is terrifying.
It’s actually a series of small moments, but it was something that I thought that the horror genre was terribly lessened by not noticing.Most horror films focus on fear. Spielberg focuses on pain.There’s a reason why I can pretty much put most horror films on in the background and then not pay attention, while I find Chrissy Watkins’ or Quint’s death to be as close as it gets to stomach-churningly unwatchable: they’re both dying slowly, and are both clearly in agonizing pain as they go out. That’s . . . not actually usual for horror films. Most focus purely on the suspense and fear, right before *boom*, the stalker or monster or whatever gets you. At most, the actor will get a wordless display of shock before they drop dead.That’s not how people die in Jaws. Which, not coincidentally, is why Bruce the shark is basically up there with Mr. Potter for movie villains I’d like to see die twice.
>while I find Chrissy Watkins’ or Quint’s death to be as close as it gets to stomach-churningly unwatchable: they’re both dying slowly, and are both clearly in agonizing pain.Oh yes, quite right.Some time ago I watched a “Friday the 13th” marathon on cable. There was cheesy acting, and there were topless ladies, and those are good things. But it had been a long long time since I watched those films and I was struck by how cartoony and how SHORT the deaths are. Like, Jason grabs you, crushes your head in a vise, you’re dead, boom. Jason grabs you, hangs you on a meat hook or something, you’re dead, boom. There was no sense of suffering. But when Chrissy is getting yanked around the ocean and moaning “Oh god it hurts it hurts it hurts”, or that moment when the shark lets her go for a second and she’s hanging onto the buoy gasping, and then the shark grabs her again–that is true horror of a sort that most slasher flicks of the era couldn’t have dreamed of equaling.
I really like this observation — I went on elsewhere about Spielberg’s sadism and I think that is there, but maybe it’s part of this larger attention to pain. Quint’s death is horrifying but Spielberg’s cruelest, most painful scene in this regard is a killing toward the end of Saving Private Ryan, which I can barely watch.
Oh, man… Mellish’s death in Saving Private Ryan is one of the coldest distillations of war I’ve ever seen on screen. I remember being absolutely shaken seeing it the first time in the theater.And it’s followed immediately by another incredible directorial decision when the Nazi soldier comes back down the stairs and ignores Upham, determining that he poses no threat and killing him isn’t worth the effort.
Is it Adam Goldberg’s character’s death?
I knew a guy who did White Shark research in northern California. They used a 18 foot rescue boat with marks painted on the side to measure sharks when they’d find one chilling on the surface. Everybody spent the whole field season hoping for the opportunity to use the quote (white sharks bigger than that are very very rare).
He wasn’t wrong…
It’s also one of the all-time great moments of cigarette acting. His smoke is just lazily dangling off his lip as he throws the chum overboard, then goes straight to clenched between his teeth after he sees the shark.
Good call. This reminds me of when Ebert called “Out of the Past” the greatest cigarette-smoking movie of all time.
Brody’s muttering right before that is great “Why don’t you come here and chum this shit…”
The best part: he says “You’re gonna need a bigger boat,” Not “We’re.” Meaning he wants out right damn now.
A favorite scene for me was the “Kitner slap” when the dead kid’s mother walked up to Brody and whacked him across the face. You can see everyone on the dock flinch and hear the audible hush. Quite a polarizing moment in the movie.
Everything from when they get on the boat to ‘Smile, you sonofa…!’ is absolutely immaculate filmmaking. Forty-five years later, and it still all plays like a house on fire. Every second of it.‘That’s a twenty-footer.’‘Twenty-five. Three tons of ‘em.’
“I can go slow ahead. Why don’t you come down here and chum some of this shit.”
so reading the comments here it sounds like a bunch of us had crap 70s parents that didn’t care if the movie traumatized us.
“Well, it’ll keep those shits from wanting to go to the hot fuckin beach at least.”
. . . I mean, I had a crap late-80s church group that didn’t care about trauma of taking us to see it at a watr park wave pool, so let’s spread the blame. (They were overtly homophobic, too–not like my parents, so let’s give bonus points.)
Absolutely. To this day I still hold my Mother responsible for having me watch “The Mouse and His Child” at age five. Kid’s film my ass…The positive side was being allowed to see pretty much anything we wanted.
yep I watched the first season of saurday night live at 1130 on a sat night as a 6 year old.
I remember the third season on: my parents would let me stay up and watch it. Also Star Trek re-runs that would come on WPIX now that I think about it…
Me too! I distinctly remember seeing bits of the Lily Tomlin episode.
Star for “The Mouse and His Child”.I remember when my mom taped “Fantastic Planet” off of Night Flight to show me as a kid because it was a “cool cartoon”. Which, I mean, it WAS, but also weird as hell.
Fantastic Planet was huge to me when I caught it off Night Flight as a kid, but I was also admittedly around 11, 12. Whereas that damn “Mouse and His Child” I saw at five and it horrified me.
Well, look at all those Disney movies that were supposedly made for us as kids: chock full of youngsters being orphaned.
and those DIsney movies with non consensual forced marriage threats.
By the time Jaws came out in 1975 (when I was 11) I had been reading Poe and classic ghost/horror stories for several years, and my mom had let me watch several classic horror films, including The Haunting, so I guess she figured I was past being traumatized by a movie about a shark.
My sister used to read me the Tell-Tale Heart as a bedtime story when I was five. We were always a weird family.
I was born a few years too late to see Jaws on its first release but I do recall my parents letting me watch Jaws 3D right before taking me to Sea World.
Mine were crap 90s parents. I had watched this, Freddy Krueger, Child’s Play and Tim Curry’s Pennywise before I was even 10 years old.
Uh, yeah, my parents took me to see Psycho when I was a wee lad at the drive in.
My dad took me to “Psycho” when I was four. He got some shit over it from relatives and neighbors. I thought it was kind of a boring movie. Didn’t scare me at all, even then.
My uncle took his two pre-teen daughters to see the Exorcist at the theatre. They were traumatized. They remain hardcore Catholics to this day. I guess his plan worked.
(As I said above, I’m astonished to be one of the few who had parents who DID prevent me from seeing it!)
my mother loved horror movies but was too afraid to watch them alone so she made my sister and I watch them with her. Watching Halloween in the dark was scary as hell for an eight year old.
My dad used to let me watch all the “creature feature” horror movies on Saturday nights. I never slept a wink as a kid, but I learned a lot about horror films.
I remember going to the Jaws tour at Universal Studios as a kid. After the tour, I checked every single puddle & fountain in the place to make sure Jaws wasn’t lurking. I fucking adore that movie. Like Goodfellas, I watch it every time I see it on TV.
Susan Backlinie, a stunt woman who specialized in swimming scenes, certainly made an impression in the first scene. She was also in 1941, where her swimming character is accidentally picked up by the periscope of the Japanese submarine
“Hollywood! Hollywood!”Best scene in that film.
“We see brief glimpses—a fin, a shadow, a quick flash of movement. We see potential victims from the shark’s point of view, a slasher-flick trick.”The thing is Jaws introduced that trick. to a mass audience, Slasher-Flicks didn’t really exist in ‘75. Sure, Argento’s giallos like “Bird with the Crystal Plummage” was released 6 years earlier but the entire genre wasn’t that well known in the US yet and was critically dismissed. Black Christmas was an obscure Canadian horror movie that had barely been released to US theaters. Psycho’s infamous shower scene used an omniscient camera eye that looked over the shoulder of the killer not through his eyes.
IIRC, 76’s The Town That Dreaded Sundown used some of these slasher tricks as well.
Dude – PETER Benchley wrote Jaws, not Robert Benchley. Peter is his son.
Watched this on TV with my parents as a kid (don’t remember if we rented the VHS or it was on cable). I loved it, but what sticks in my mind is that when Shaw gets eaten, my parents were stunned that I didn’t flinch. They’d seen the movie in theaters when they were 19 or 20 and been horrified at that bit, and now their sweet little boy watches it and doesn’t blink? We really were getting desensitized to violence! (I think I might’ve actually compared it to the level of gore in other movies I’ve seen to make a point, but I’m not sure how old I was … I think I referenced Braveheart, but that would’ve made me already close to 13 when I saw Jaws. Maybe that’s right.)
TV in the VHS era really dulled the effect of what you saw on the screen, though. I remember in the 90s struggling to explain how much better Star Wars looked compared to other special effects movies from the same era. The problem was the guy I was talking to had only seen them on TV, and it was too hard to tell.
Being able to rent a movie entirely based upon its gore content, and rewind through those scenes over and over, was a pillar of my upbringing. A personal favorite:
The camerawork is fantastic and Jaws looks as good as as any movie today. But what is interesting to me is how much sound in movies has improved. The crowd scenes in Jaws and other movies from this period can drive me to distraction, with what I assume are dubbed voices and noises.
The classic effect of the murmur of a crowd with someone suddenly yelling out in alarm never sounds right to me, regardless of the movie from that time— the volume doesn’t match up with the distance, the mix with the ambient noise sounds off. I think Spielberg was fortunate to have John Williams providing a classic soundtrack, which helps distract ears from the artificial sounding voices.
The camerawork is fantastic and Jaws looks as good as as any movie today.This may be an unpopular opinion, but I think the shark looks incredible to this day. Give me clunky, animatronic Bruce over the CGI monstrosities of Deep Blue Sea any day.
I don’t think people started to get a great handle on crowd noise until Hill Street Blues where IIRC, they had a troupe of people in the squad room scenes to provide background convo and murmur.
“even though it’s such an obvious summer movie”In retrospect, sure, but at the time was there any such thing as a “summer movie”? You say immediately after this that Jaws basically invented the summer movie concept, so it’s unclear how it could have been obvious to anyone at the time that it should come out in the summer instead of at Christmas.
Tom says this in the article. ‘These days, Jaws is notorious for being the film that kicked off the summer-blockbuster era. It came out in June, during what was supposedly a dead period for the box office.’
Yes, that’s exactly what I was referring to. Earlier in the article he says “Universal had wanted to release Jaws in time for Christmas 1974, even though it’s such an obvious summer movie.” My problem is with the implicit assertion that it should have been obvious to Universal in 1974 that the movie was “a summer movie,” except that Jaws was the very first “summer movie”! They would have had no basis for comparison.
I think Tom meant “summer movie” as in “a movie about summer.”
I don’t, because… that’s not really a thing, and the term “summer movie” has meant “big brainless blockbuster-type movies that typically open in the spring but are referred to as ‘summer movies’ anyway”.
The author probably didn’t forget what he wrote in the next lines, more likely, in this case, ‘summer movie’ is meant to be read in the non-proper noun sense: a movie for, about, and best enjoyed during summer.
But… was that a concept in 1974? It’s not even a concept now.
I took it as Tom saying that it was the perfect summer movie, but until then nobody had thought that summer movies could be big box office. In other words, Jaws created the template for the summer blockbuster.
“Ultimate?” Jaws was the first summer blockbuster, not the last.
Nobody likes tiresome pedants…noun: ultimate; noun: the ultimate; plural noun: ultimatesthe best achievable or imaginable of its kind.“the ultimate in decorative luxury”
We go over 70s cinema again and again and again, and I get that it feels redundant and OK Boomer-centric and indicative of our present day dearth of originality but, man, that decade was just such an embarrassment of riches. Also, can we appreciate for a second just how much of a cultural loss John Cazale’s early death was?
I believe John Cazale gets mentioned here everytime there’s a discussion of 70s cinema.
And then comes the observation that he was only in 5 movies, but they were all classics.
Six movies, IIRC, and all of them got Best Picture nominations.
6, but the sixth was Godfather III using archival footage.
Ever see Henry Rollins talk about The Ruts? Part of the reason they’re so legendary to him is that they broke up without every having made a bad record. Cazale is the same way. His career was short, but they’re all classics. He died batting a thousand.
“dearth of originality” — people keep saying that and I have to admit to being baffled. First, the “originality” of the fabled 70’s cinema was what, Easy Rider, The Godfather, The Exorcist and Apocalypse Now? Biker flicks littered the landscape from the mid-60s on, the next two were novels and the third was a take on another. Then there were a bunch of conspiracy movies, Ashby and Altman. I love so many of those! But the narratives being laid out now are vastly more original — women-centric, black, latino, LBGT, or they have longer, deeper stories — they just exist on TV and not necessarily the cinema (although the death of cinema Is greatly exaggerated too).
I examined cinema in the 70s a few years back. Give it a look:https://sidespin.kinja.com/the-last-decade-that-mattered-cinema-in-the-1970s-1789133983
I said it in another comment, but my husband and I watched every best picture from the first to present, in order. The 70’s was a GREAT decade (and surprising to me). I will check out your post!
It was a (beef) roast, not a frozen turkey.Also, I think the joke was that Brody’s scar was from an appendectomy.
Film snobs like me, who weep for the days of early 70’s New Hollywood or the mid to late 90’s indie movement, should probably detest Jaws as the harbinger of the “four quad” balance sheet driven mentality of modern Hollywood. But I really can’t. Spielberg just wanted to make the best damn thriller he could, something in the mold of Hitchcock’s “The Birds,” and he succeeded wildly. Bless him for that.
Besides, unlike Star Wars, it isn’t a dumb but fun kids movie that’s become freighted with insipid mythologizing by a poisonous fanbase and then shoved back into our faces on an annual basis by a monolithic mega-corp. Universal’s attempts to turn Jaws into a franchise phenomenon are notoriously bad, starting with the mediocre Jaws II and getting exponentially worse with each subsequent installment.And kudos for picking Dog Day Afternoon as the runner-up. Along with The Taking of Pelham 123, that’s probably my favorite in the “basket case NYC” sub-genre: Films from the 1970’s that make the Big Apple look simultaneously like a civilization on the brink of total collapse and anarchy, and yet also like a place that would be really (perversely) fun to hang out in.
What would be some of the other top films in that NYC subgenre? Certainly, The French Connection, Mean Streets, Taxi Driver and that weird movie with the costumed gang fights. Any others?Also, was it a happy accident that they coincidentally filmed Dog Day Afternoon in sweltering weather, or was it scripted that way? That fact that everybody looks sweaty and agitated really helps build the tension.
The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3.
The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3.
Now there’s a movie.
I’m pretty sure they meant for it to take place in summer – isn’t cutting off the power (and thus the AC) a plot point?Other 70’s NYC in decay movies: Serpico, The Seven Ups, The Warriors, probably a few DePalma films.
Marathon ManSoylent Green, but that was a documentary
And then Escape from New York ties a bow around the genre in the 80s.
This is outside the classic NYC In Decay period, but Abel Ferarra’s King Of New York is essential.
Though it came a decade-and-half later, Quick Change. God how I love that movie.
Panic in Needle Park, Midnight Cowboy, and Klute are all grimy NYC classics.
You could argue that this movie is still a piece of 70’s filmdom. The movie has a slow, leisurely pace at the beginning and establishes the characters and the setting. The movie only really gets moving until they get on the boat but it’s the first half of the movie that really makes the movie. without the first half, it’s just a better than average chase movie. With the first half, you get a movie in which you really care about the characters and understand the stakes.You can say the same things about Rocky- which is very-much a 70’s style character except with an uplifting ending that made it a real audience pleasure. And it’s not even really an uplifting ending- he loses but does so in a way that it comes off as uplifting. I also feel like you could say the same about the Godfather. It’s a basic movie about the mob but it’s leisurely pace and artistic pretenses makes it so much more than a movie about the movie
I always felt the same way about Jaws as I do Halloween, tough I prefer the latter. The idea that evil was hitting home, it was unfathomable and unstoppable and those in charge were incapable of stopping it was relatively new until post-Nixon. And killers were rarely in Everytown, U.S.A., they were outlaws and bandits on the run or they were in the seediest of bars.
How in God’s name can you write an article about Jaws and never once even mention John Williams’ score?
Got to see John at the Hollywood Bowl a year or two ago, and they did the same thing with the first scenes of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Steven Spielberg was there to introduce the scenes much like Richard Dreyfus was in that clip, and man, what a difference it all makes.I have that night on video, but YouTube won’t let me upload stuff like that anymore. Bummer.
I first saw Jaws well into the 1980s, when all the tropes had long since diffused into pop culture by osmosis, and I even knew most of the plot from the Mad Magazine parody… and yet, it still immediately struck me as one of the most perfect movies ever made after finally seeing it. Dog Day Afternoon is another perfect film, but there seems to be this weird disconnect in its popularity. Most people who love 70s cinema would probably place it in the top 5 of the decade, but I find an astonishingly large number of general movie fans today have never even heard of it.
I love the movie and am also surprised how frequently it’s forgotten as a great film from that era. I think, in a way, it’s just that it hasn’t aged well in certain ways. The movie is anti-establishment and even anti-cop in ways that wouldn’t fly now. Remember, Pacino’s character starts getting sympathy from people when he screams “Attica! Attica!” Not only is that a barely known footnote of history but the main character heroically shouting off a major incident of police abuse directed against African-Americans, convicts at that, would not fly today.
I’m a cinema manager and managed to convince our head office to do monthly staff picks of classic films. I chose Dog Day Afternoon. Only did 22 admits but well worth using up my slot on it to see it on the big screen.
Peter Benchley, not Robert Benchley.
Huh. You just made me realize that the shark and Harry Lime also both have an iconic theme on the soundtrack that does a lot of the heavy lifting.
Pretty sure it was in response to Welles’ behind the scenes not that, whenever he’s not on screen, all the other characters should be asking, “Where’s Harry Lime?”
Spielberg himself has said that Jaws wouldn’t be anywhere near as good, or as successful, if the mechanical sharks had worked. He and editor Verna Fields had to work around their absence, only showing the creature itself in the film’s final act. In keeping the shark hidden, they turned what might’ve been a monster movie into a work of Hitchcockian suspense.Jaws is easily in my top three all-time favorite films to watch, and much like whenever it’s on TV (wherein I will likely drop everything to watch it, five minutes in or five minutes left), I will ready pretty much any article on the subject as well.
While this article did not shed any new light on the subject, (to be fair – – I’ve read a LOT on the subject already) I’m always happy to revisit the good folk of Amity Island, thanks!
I have felt for a very long time that the making of Jaws would make an outstanding movie.
‘We’re gonna need a bigger budget.’
Craig Sager-ass?????Assuming you mean Craig Sager-esque?
It now seems hard to believe that it took until 1975 for Hollywood to realize that the summer months, rather than being a dead zone, were prime territory on the calendar for generating revenue. TV was in reruns, the weather presented no barrier to people going out, and you had a large pool of teenagers who were out of school and had plenty time on their hands. The biggest competition they had for entertainment dollars were major and minor league baseball and that was only in cities that had teams. I’m surprised no one thought of it earlier.
JAWS will always be a favorite of mine precisely because the failure of special effects technology led to a better story. I’m not sure if the barrel sequence was in the original script, but by merely dragging them around on the surface, they are able to suggest that the shark is there without showing it.Less was more.This is not a lesson that has not been learned by the vast majority of blockbusters since. I’m reminded of a line of commentary from Joss Whedon talking about Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Operator character in “Serenity.” Chiwetel’s performance is, of course, bone-chilling, and the scenes in which he appears establish an indomitable evil that is terrifying.
However, the Operator had additional and/or longer scenes in the first cut, but Whedon’s editor wisely convinced him to remove or trim them because “the less the Operator was seen, the more his presence was felt.”Again, less was more.
An incredible movie. I avoided it when I was younger but after getting over my phobias (deep water, sharks, scary movies – a perfect trio of angst and avoidance) in my older years I couldn’t believe what I was watching.The ‘tell don’t show’ was amazing. Once I saw the shark it was a total let down from a technical point of view, but it didn’t detract. Arguably the best part of the shark being visible is when it’s still in the water but you catch enough glimpse of the colours and form to complete the (terrifying) expectation and closure. Once the shark comes out of the water, the hinges on the jaw, the lack of fluidity like a real organism, make it out to be nothing more than classic, 70’s, Hollywood magic. It’s part of the nostalgic charm.Love this movie. Too bad about the sequels. I think the movie needs to be made – like Meg, only less showy, more tell. But would audiences and the box office accept that strategy in this day and age? I’m of a mind to say, unfortunately, no.
The shark is such an abstract concept for most of the movie, it sends a jolt up your spine when you finally see it at the beginning of the third act. Brody’s grousing about shoveling chum into the water, the shark just pops up for a second in the background (out of focus to boot) but it makes you sit up and pay attention. First time I was it I was like fourteen, and leapt back in my seat exclaiming “JESUS!” at the suddenness of it.
One of my earliest memories is about Jaws. It was one of my first favorite movies, I must have been three or so, and I got in trouble cuz I said “smile you son of a bitch” while playing.
It’d be a neat thing to spend a Time Travel ticket on, to go see a blockbuster when it first came out. All in all, I think I’d use it on a Kurosawa movie….ha! That’s be a hell of a start-up. You’d pay to pretend to be a time traveler, seeing a movie when it first came out, in a theater full of actors. Or! You get your group together, and go see a re-release like it just came out.
W/r/t to the runner-up, it would sure be something to use that time machine to go back and see, in the span of a year Cazale and Pacino together on stage twice, and Cazale with Streep in Shakespeare.
Funny you should mention the whole FRENCH CONNECTION connection for the
Brody character. That was a major component to the notorious prequel:
What actually is the meaning of the word “blockbuster?” Because nothing about Jaws strikes me as a movie that was designed to make boatloads of money…it just happened to do so. None of the actors, as far as I know, was super-marketable at the time and it’s a very character-driven story that’s not much spectacle. I think of a “blockbuster” as like: “here’s tom cruise in a movie with lots of explosions and a sexy lady to sell a love story angle so EVERYONE will want to see it.” Jaws isn’t that.
Richard Dreyfuss was a rising star after “American Graffiti”. Robert Shaw had been in a lot of stuff.
Not necessarily in the film’s DNA, but in the way it was released, as detailed in the article: opening on a huge number of screens and with a large ad campaign behind it.
“Ted Kennedy had swam to safety”SWUM.He swims, he swam, he has/had swum.
As I mentioned in a comment elsewhere: I was too young for my parents to allow me to see JAWS in the theater (age 7; am amazed at those saying their parents allowed them to see it at 6!). But that didn’t keep me and all of my friends from knowing about it, buying the t-shirts, and the toys. I spent summers in a town on the Jersey shore, right on the ocean. We had boogie boards, an older kind with a foam core covered with a tight plastic-weave fabric that you could draw on with a permanent marker. Those boards looked like blunt, mini surfboards, and we used markers to put shark eyes on the top and that distinctive JAWS-poster open shark mouth on the white bottoms. (Since we hadn’t seen the film, we weren’t actually afraid of going in the ocean.)That summer also had one thrilling moment where all of the adults on the beach reacted exactly as you see them reacting in the clip above, rushing into the water to drag the kids out in a panic — because a baby whale of some kind happened to come within 20 or 30 yards of the beach, and for a few panicked moments, everyone thought that huge shape and tail belonged to a shark. I remember being in the water with friends, when our parents started screaming at us. (To this day I have no idea what kind of whale it was; whatever kind you’d sort of expect to find off NJ in August, I guess. Some lifeguards went out in a row-boat and kind of herded it back into deeper water, where hopefully its mother was waiting for it.)I didn’t actually get to see the movie until a few years later, in the early 80s, when it was on TV. I was at the shore, and it was summer, and all the windows were open, so I watched it (alone) with the sound of the surf coming in from outside. Even cut up by commercials, damn, seeing it was an electric experience. Like, you think you know a movie because of cultural osmosis, because you’ve seen it talked about and parodied all over the place, so what’s left about it to feel new? But it did. I knew so much about it, but watching it was still a revelation. The parodies, of course, didn’t spoil anything about the sense of suspense and horror you got from watching the movie itself.(Final aside: the part of the Jersey shore I went to was Long Beach Island. I didn’t learn until many years later that the concept of a killer shark terrorizing resort towns started on LBI, in Beach Haven in July 1916, with multiple deaths throughout the month as the shark made its way northward up the NJ coast. Or was it a single shark? After the panic and a huge hunt for the killer shark, a great white with human remains in its stomach was killed in Raritan Bay, but there’s still some question about whether it was the same shark that killed the swimmers in Beach Haven and Spring Lake and Matawan earlier in the month; or whether it was just a cluster of unrelated attacks. There’s some really good books on the subject, such as “Close to Shore” and “Twelve Days of Terror”, that I really enjoyed after I found out about it. I think it’s unclear how much that historical event influenced Benchley, but the similarities are definitely notable.)
Obligatory Every Movie In These Articles Ranked By Me From Best To Worst Post:The Godfather (1972)2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)The Exorcist (1973)Jaws (1975)Blazing Saddles (1974)Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1969)The Graduate (1967)West Side Story (1961)Spartacus (1960)The Longest Day (1962)Billy Jack (1971)My Fair Lady (1964)Cleopatra (1963)The Sound Of Music (1965)The Bible: In The Beginning… (1966)Love Story (1970)
Don’t overlook the effect of the film’s score, either.My favorite recording of music from Jaws isn’t actually from the soundtrack proper, but it’s John Williams conducting the Boston Pops, so close enough:
Also, Obligatory Top 10 Highest Grossing Movies Of 1975 Post: 1 Jaws, Universal, $260,000,0002 One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, MGM, $108,981,275 3 Shampoo, Columbia, $49,407,734 4 Dog Day Afternoon, Warner Bros., $46,665,856 5 The Return Of The Pink Panther, MGM, $41,833,347 6 Three Days Of The Condor, Paramount Pictures, $41,509,7977 Funny Lady, Columbia, $40,055,8978 The Other Side Of The Mountain, Universal, $34,673,1009 Tommy, Columbia, $34,251,52510 The Apple Dumpling Gang, Disney, $31,916,500
Peter Benchley wrote the novel. Your article incorrectly states that Robert Benchley wrote it.
It’s remiss to talk about the success of Jaws without mentioning the shark’s theme by John Williams.
I mean, those two notes are literally part of my vocabulary when talking about sharks.
Peter Benchley wrote Jaws, not “Robert” Benchley.
You missed the second “Robert,” Breihan.
That opening scene horrifies me to my core for a bout a half dozen reasons. This is one of my favorite movies (Dog Day is great too). But for as much as has been made about how effective it was to not see the shark, the movie still wouldn’t have worked if the shark didn’t look like the embodiment of death. The effects guys did a hell of a job designing that thing, because when people finally saw it, it haunted their nightmares. Not so much ‘realistic’ as it was a heightened monstrosity, Jaws doesn’t work if there was all that build up, and the shark turned out to be lame. I thought it looked awesome.
If you would have only linked the The Third Man’s catchy Anton Karas zither music with the iconic John Williams theme, you would have earned my utmost respect. Still hats off for linking two of my favorite movies together.
The rare movie that is way better than the book (see also, The Godfather).
What a year for movies that was! Can you imagine a movie like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest being #2 at the box office and Dog Day Afternoon being #4 now? I suppose that is partially the fault of Jaws, but Jaws is such an outstanding film, I can’t really get mad at it.
How do you name six actors in “Dog Day Afternoon” and not mention Durning?