STEVEN SPIELBERG’S cinematic masterpiece, shot 50-years-ago this year, almost didn’t happen after a series of production blunders nearly sent the film to a watery grave.
One the eve of Jaws’ half-century anniversary the director revealed a number of issues including a near-fatal accident which really (and nearly) did sink the boat, problems with the four prop sharks (nicknamed Bruce) and damage to the expensive camera kit from the salty water.
Filming for the first first major motion picture ever to be shot on the ocean began in May 1974 in and around Martha’s Vineyard island, Massachusetts – a location that Spielberg never left for the duration of the shoot for fear of the film folding.
“The reason I never left the island in all those seven months of shooting on Martha’s Vineyard was because if I left the island I was certain I would never come back,” Spielberg said in a Washington Post article.
The production ran well beyond the originally expected wrap date of 28 June 1974. Each day presented fresh challenges, including rough sea conditions, malfunctioning sharks, and a script that needed constant adjustments to account for these hurdles.
Two of the sharks had holes in their sides, choppy waves were ruining steady shots, scorching weather had the crew members overheating – the difficulties were relentless.
Producers David Brown and Richard Zanuck, along with co-screenwriter Carl Gottlieb, met daily at Spielberg’s residence, tirelessly rewriting scenes and trimming the on-screen presence of the shark.
At one point, one of the sharks even sank to the bottom of the Nantucket Sound.
Incredibly and almost unbelievably the film’s producers initially wanted to train a great white shark for the role, but fortunately they quickly realised this wasn’t possible.
Instead full-size pneumatically powered prop sharks were made which the film crew jokingly nicknamed ‘Bruce’ after Spielberg’s lawyer, Bruce Ramer.
“We must have been complete idiots to have even expected to have an easy ride in the middle of the ocean making a movie,” Spielberg said in a documentary, The Shark Is Still Working.
Unfortunately Bruce didn’t look great in action so the production team had to adapt and relied heavily on imagination to fill the void left by the absent shark that they were forced to cut from countless shots.
Fortunately an incredible and captivating musical score by John Williams instilled a fresh fear of the depths of the ocean in audiences worldwide. The infrequent appearances of the shark actually heightened the suspense and gave more impact when the prosthetic Bruce did grace the screen.
“Spielberg was a genius at revving it up into more of a sensationalized book,” Wendy Benchley, wife of the Jaws author Peter and marine policy advocate told The Washington Post “He knew how to, you know, increase the tension of the movie and to really make it into a great thriller.”
And a thriller it was, just as much for the crew as it was for the audience, Spielberg recalled another story to Vanity Fair where the speedboat towing the film boat (The Orca) nearly got dragged under the waves.
“A problem we had was when a speedboat pulling the Orca went too fast and pulled out the planking from the haul—water rushed in, and the boat sank in about two minutes. I remember vividly the moment where the actors were yelling, ‘Send boats, get us out, send boats!’ Our sound mixer John Carter—who shared an Oscar with his team for Jaws—picked up the Nagra recorder, held it over his head, and said, ‘Fuck the actors, save the sound department!’ I have this image to this day of John sinking holding his recorder with water up to his ankles, and then to his knees, while crews on boats were scrambling to pull everybody off the sinking Orca. Months later, he was holding an Oscar in those hands!”
Jaws eventually ran over budget by £5m, around £45m in today’s money, the majority of the costs were attributed to post-production effects after the repeated failure of the mechanical sharks. Upset crew members even nicknamed the film ‘Flaws’.
Spielberg admitted that a lot of the problems arose from his insistence to shoot at sea.
“I could have shot the movie in the tank or even in a protected lake somewhere, but it would not have looked the same.
“I was naive about the ocean, basically. I was pretty naive about mother nature and the hubris of a filmmaker who thinks he can conquer the elements was foolhardy, but I was too young to know I was being foolhardy when I demanded that we shoot the film in the Atlantic Ocean and not in a North Hollywood tank.”
Despite the incredible setbacks, the catalogue of errors, and even other boats drifting into shot – the film was eventually released to huge critical acclaim racking up a colossal £380m at the international box office as well as ruining sharks’ lives the world over.