After vacationing on Cape Cod and swimming in the ocean there last week, I am reminded how scared I was as a kid, along with everyone else, probably still scared, of great white sharks because of this movie. So I let the kids watch it. They jumped off the couch when the head of fisherman Ben Gardner appears in the hull gash ripped open by Jaws, and also when the shark suddenly surfaces behind Chief Brody aboard the
Orca. The orca, or killer whale, is the only predator of the great white besides man. Now my kids are like the rest of us in New England after watching the movie, afraid to go in the water. Duh nuh, duh nuh, duh nuh...
Jaws:
Peter Benchley wrote the best selling 1974 novel Jaws adapted by Spielberg for the 1975 movie of the same name, and the author makes a cameo in the film as a reporter.
The novel's concept, and Quint's character in it, come from shark hunter Frank Mundus of Montauk, New York, who caught leviathan great whites with harpoons tied to barrels.
Benchley also researched, and mentioned in his book, the 1916 shark attacks in New Jersey that killed four, and injured one, over a twelve day period to get a sense of the resulting panic.
It wasn't until minutes before book production that the name Jaws was decided on.
Amity, a fictional town on Long Island, New York, is the novel's setting. The movie setting is Amity Island in New England, filmed on the island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.
The movie's twenty five foot great white shark is really a full scale mechanical model that was towed into action.
The crew named the mechanical shark Bruce, after Spielberg's lawyer Bruce Ramer.
One of the three model sharks built for the film sank to the bottom immediately after being placed in the water.
During shooting Quint's boat, the Orca, sank along with the cameras and film footage. Technicians were able to save the footage.
So many things went wrong with the making of the movie people on set started calling it 'Flaws'.
With local fishermen unable to catch a large enough shark off the New England coast, film producers arranged delivery of a thirteen foot tiger shark from Florida for the scene in which a massive shark is hung up on the docks, and the town believes they have caught the man eater and can safely go back in the water.
When Spielberg first saw the title on the cover of the manuscript in his office he wondered if the story was about a dentist.
Initially Spielberg wasn't sure about John Williams' two note shark theme that used just the notes E and F, but would later admit, 'it was responsible for half of the success of the movie.'
After the movie release Spielberg snuck into theaters, standing in the back, to watch the horrified reaction of movie goers.
Jaws made the cover of Time magazine in the summer of '75.
The success of Jaws led to three sequels, Jaws 2 in 1978, Jaws 3D in 1983, and Jaws The Revenge in 1987.
