In "Jaws," the Nightmare Is What You Don't See
Christina Humphrey revisits the making of Jaws, a film production so troubled that the story became more about what you don't see than what you do.
Roy Scheider as Martin Brody.
The production of Jaws was an absolute nightmare. So much so that 26 year old Steven Spielberg slept with celery in his pillowcase because the smell was so comforting.
When production officially started in May 1974, they were without a finished script, working shark, or complete cast. Once they had Bruce, the mechanical antagonist, he rarely worked. In fact, he sank to the bottom of Nantucket Sound the first time he was submerged. The weather at Martha’s Vineyard was unpredictable. Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss were in an ongoing feud. One of their ships sank as Spielberg yelled over a megaphone to get the actors off board. With water up to his knees and his Nagra held above his head, sound engineer John Carter notoriously yelled, “F--k the actors. Save the sound department!” Robert Shaw was so drunk the first time Spielberg tried to shoot Quint’s monologue about the USS Indianapolis, Shaw had to be carried off the boat.
Slated for only 55 days, the shooting lasted for a grueling 159. The original $3.5 million dollar budget steadily creeped to $9 million. Calls from Universal came in threatening to shut it down completely.
So the director, who had insisted on shooting in the Atlantic rather than a stage tank, started improvising his balls off. Spielberg participated in rewrites of the script every night in a log cabin with Carl Gottlieb and the cast. He described it as “the most collaborate efforts I’ve ever been involved with where actors were contributing to a screenplay.”
When Bruce failed, Spielberg asked, “What would Hitchcock do in a situation like this?” The answer was to put the monster in the audience’s mind, rather than on the screen:
And just like that, the terror was what you couldn’t see, only sense and hear. In fact, Bruce didn’t make a full appearance until 81 minutes into the 124 minute film. The audience’s imagination was more powerful than a faulty, mechanical shark.
Spielberg’s instincts, even for improvisation, proved to be powerful too, and the result was something completely new to American screens, but also character dynamics that are very true to Spielberg’s idiom. I could spend all day dissecting and comparing this scene:
to other Spielberg films involving themes of the family, fathers, etc. but I can’t because I’ve got a gazillion short films to watch. However, on principal, I never miss a chance to see a dolly zoom on a big screen and will be in the back row Thursday night at the Plaza Theatre.
Christina Humphrey is the Short Film Programmer for the Atlanta Film Festival.
Jaws plays on Thursday and Sunday at the Plaza Theatre.
How To Survive A Shark Attack
Because we're showing Jaws at the Plaza on Thursday (and again on Sunday), it's officially Shark Week here at the Atlanta Film Festival. In honor of that, we've collected some of the best (and worst) video advice we could find on the internet about surviving an attack by a shark.
Because we're showing Jaws at the Plaza on Thursday (and again on Sunday), it's officially Shark Week here at the Atlanta Film Festival. In the unlikely event that you're attacked by a shark at one of those screenings, we thought it best to collect some of the best (and worst) advice we could find on the internet about the subject.
Starting things off is this 1964 U.S. Air Force training video entitled "Shark Defense," in which our airmen are encouraged to remember that a shark's "front end is practically all mouth." Also recommended: tearing up paper to scatter about one's life raft, and screaming loudly into the water. Hmmm.... maybe not.
More practical advice comes to us in the form of Howcast's "How to Survive a Shark Attack," which reassures you that it's perfectly okay to swim out and rescue someone being attacked by a shark. "Sharks are less likely to attack a rescuer and more likely to continue attacking the original victim."
The ultimate guide to surviving a Jaws-like scenario, however, is this video documentary of the dearly-departed Jaws ride at Universal Studios Orlando. The ride was decommissioned in 2012 to make way for rides featuring Harry Potter. (Sorry, we have no clue how to defend against prepubescent teenagers.) Key factors to survival in this scenario include hiding behind a perky tour guide with a large shotgun, and taking recreational tours near incredibly dangerous beaches. That way the shark is more likely to accidentally kill himself before he has a chance to eat you.
Finally, we'd like to make you aware of a new shark threat, that of the "Sharknado." The sharknado involves sharks that are sucked into the vortex of a waterspout and then deposited on (occasionally flooded) land, where they devour everything in sight. To survive a sharknado, pack the following: firearms, chainsaws, and idiot boyfriends you may feed to the sharks while you make your escape.
Ready for even more amazing shark action? Catch Jaws on the big screen Thursday night and Sunday afternoon at the Plaza, part of our Fall Focus on Directors.