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Jaws (film)
Encyclopedia
Jaws is a 1975 American horror
-thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg
and based on Peter Benchley
's novel of the same name
. In the story, the police chief of Amity Island, a fictional summer resort town, tries to protect beachgoers from a giant man-eating great white shark
by closing the beach, only to be overruled by the town council, which wants the beach to remain open to draw a profit from tourists during the summer season. After several attacks, the police chief enlists the help of a marine biologist
and a professional shark hunter. Roy Scheider
stars as police chief Martin Brody, Richard Dreyfuss
as oceanographer Matt Hooper, Robert Shaw
as shark hunter Quint, Murray Hamilton
as the Mayor of Amity Island, and Lorraine Gary
as Brody's wife, Ellen.
The film was shot on location at Martha's Vineyard
, Massachusetts
, and had a troubled production, going over budget and schedule. As the mechanical sharks suffered many malfunctions, Spielberg decided to mostly suggest the animal's presence, by utilizing an ominous yet subdued theme noted film composer John Williams
had created to describe the shark's impending appearances. Jaws is regarded as a watershed film in motion picture history, the father of the summer blockbuster film
and one of the first "high concept
" films. Because of the film's success in advance screenings, studio executives decided to distribute it in a much wider release pattern than ever before employed. The Omen
followed suit in the summer of 1976, and then Star Wars
one year later in 1977, cementing the notion for movie studios to distribute their big-release action and adventure pictures (commonly referred to as tentpole pictures) during the summer months.
Widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time, Jaws appeared at number 48 on American Film Institute
's 100 Years... 100 Movies
, a list of the greatest American films of all time, dropping down to number 56 on the 10 Year Anniversary list. It ranked second on a similar list for thrillers, 100 Years... 100 Thrills and was number one on Bravo's list of The 100 Scariest Movie Moments. The film was followed by three sequels, none with the participation of Spielberg or Benchley.
, a 23-year-old woman named Christine "Chrissie" Watkins leaves a beach party to go skinny dipping
, only to be dragged back and forth violently and then under the water. Amity's police chief, Martin Brody, is notified that Christine is missing, and deputy Len Hendricks finds her remains on the beach. The medical examiner informs Brody that the death was due to a shark attack. Brody plans to close the beaches but is overruled by mayor Larry Vaughan, who fears that reports of a shark attack will ruin the summer tourist season, which is the town's primary source of income. The medical examiner consequently attributes the death to a boating accident. Brody reluctantly goes along with the explanation.
A short time later, a boy is killed by a shark at the beach. The boy's mother places a bounty
on the shark, sparking an amateur shark-hunting frenzy and attracting the attention of local professional shark hunter Quint. Brought in by Brody, marine biologist Matt Hooper examines Christine's remains and concludes she was killed by a shark, not a boat.
A large tiger shark
is caught by fishermen, leading the town to believe the problem is solved, but Hooper is unconvinced that the shark is the killer and asks to examine its stomach contents. Vaughan refuses to make the "half-assed autopsy" public, so Brody and Hooper return after dark and discover the dead shark does not contain human remains. Scouting aboard Hooper's boat, they come across the half-sunken wreckage of a boat belonging to local fisherman Ben Gardner. Hooper explores the vessel underwater and discovers a sizable shark's tooth protruding from the damaged side of the hull. While prying it loose Hooper is confronted by the remains of Gardner, which causes him to lose the tooth in a panic. Vaughan refuses to close the beaches, and on the Fourth of July numerous tourists arrive. A prank by two boys causes misguided panic and the real shark enters a nearby estuary
, killing a man and causing Brody's son to go into shock after witnessing the attack. Brody convinces Vaughan to hire Quint. Quint reluctantly allows Hooper to join the hunt along with Brody. The three set out to catch or kill the shark aboard Quint's vessel, the Orca.
Brody is given the task of laying a chum
line while Quint uses fishing tackle to try to hook the shark. As Brody continues chumming, an enormous great white shark
looms up behind the boat; the trio watch the great white circle the Orca and estimate it weighs 3 short tons (2.7 MT) and is 25 feet (7.6 m) long while Hooper takes pictures of the shark for research purposes. Quint harpoons the shark with a line attached to a flotation barrel, designed to prevent the shark from submerging and to track it on the surface, but the shark pulls the barrel under and disappears.
Night falls without another sighting, so the men retire to the boat's cabin, where Quint tells of his experience with sharks as a survivor of the sinking of the warship
during the War in the Pacific
in 1945. The shark reappears, damaging the boat's hull before slipping away. In the morning, the men make repairs to the engine. Attempting to call the Coast Guard
for help, Brody is stopped by Quint, who destroys the radio with a baseball bat. After a long chase Quint harpoons another barrel to the shark. The men tie the barrels to the stern, but the shark, after Quint harpoons it again adding a third barrel, drags the boat backwards, forcing water onto the deck and into the engine, flooding it. Quint is about to cut the ropes when the cleats are pulled off the stern. The shark continues attacking the boat and Quint heads toward shore with the shark in pursuit, hoping to draw the animal into shallow waters, where it will get beached and, once unable to swim, suffocate. In his obsession to kill the shark, Quint overtaxes Orcas engines, causing them to stall.
With the boat immobilized, the trio try a desperate approach: Hooper dons his SCUBA gear and enters the ocean inside a shark proof cage
in order to stab the shark in the mouth with a hypodermic spear filled with strychnine
. When the shark attacks and begins destroying the cage, Hooper drops his spear. The shark gets tangled in the cage's remains, allowing Hooper to escape and hide on the seabed. As Quint and Brody raise the remnants of the cage, the shark throws itself onto the boat, crushing the transom
. As the boat sinks, Quint slides down the slippery deck into the shark's mouth and is eaten alive. Brody retreats to the boat's partly submerged cabin. When the shark attacks him there, he shoves a pressurized scuba tank into the shark's mouth, then takes Quint's rifle and climbs the Orcas mast. Brody shoots at the tank wedged in the shark's mouth, causing it to explode and blow the shark to pieces.
Hooper and Brody make rafts out of the Orca's remains and paddle back to Amity Island.
and David Brown
, producers at Universal Pictures
, heard about Peter Benchley's novel
at the same time at different locations. Brown came across it in the fiction department of Cosmopolitan
, a lifestyle magazine then edited by his wife, Helen Gurley Brown
. A small card gave a detailed description of the plot, concluding with the comment "might make a good movie". The producers each read it overnight and agreed the next morning that it was "the most exciting thing that they had ever read" and that, although they were unsure how they would accomplish it, they wanted to produce the film. Brown claimed that had they read the book twice, they would never have made the film because of the difficulties in executing some of the sequences. They purchased the film rights to Benchley's novel in 1973 for approximately $175,000.
Zanuck and Brown had originally planned to hire John Sturges
to direct the film, before considering Dick Richards
. However, they grew irritated by Richards's habit of calling the shark "the whale", subsequently dropping him from the project. Zanuck and Brown signed Spielberg to direct in June 1973, before the release of his first theatrical film, The Sugarland Express
(also a Zanuck/Brown production). Spielberg wanted to stick with the novel's basic concept, while removing Benchley's many subplot
s. Zanuck, Brown and Spielberg removed the novel's adulterous affair between Ellen Brody and Matt Hooper fearing it might compromise the camaraderie between the men on the Orca.
When they purchased the rights to his novel, the producers guaranteed that Benchley would write the first draft of the screenplay
. Overall, he wrote three drafts before deciding to bow out of the project (he later had a cameo role as a news reporter in the final film of the series). Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Howard Sackler
happened to be in Los Angeles when the filmmakers began looking for another writer and offered to do an uncredited rewrite, and since the producers and Spielberg were unhappy with Benchley's drafts, they quickly accepted his offer. Spielberg sent the script to Carl Gottlieb
(who appears in a supporting acting
role in the film as Meadows, the politically connected editor of the local paper), asking for advice. Gottlieb rewrote most scenes during principal photography, and John Milius
contributed dialogue polishes. Spielberg has claimed that he prepared his own draft, although it is unclear if the other screenwriters drew on his material. The authorship of Quint's monologue about the fate of the cruiser has caused substantial controversy as to who deserves the most credit for the speech. Spielberg described it as a collaboration among John Milius, Howard Sackler, and actor Robert Shaw. Gottlieb gives primary credit to Shaw, downplaying Milius's contribution.
, but the actor was only interested in portraying Quint. According to Spielberg, Charlton Heston
expressed a desire for the role, but Spielberg felt that Heston was too large a personality, as Spielberg intended the film's primary "star" to be the shark. Roy Scheider became interested in the project after overhearing a screenwriter and Spielberg at a party talking about having the shark jump up onto a boat. Spielberg was initially apprehensive of hiring Scheider, fearing he would portray a "tough guy", similar to his role in The French Connection
.
The role of Quint was originally offered to actors Lee Marvin
and Sterling Hayden
, both of whom passed. Producers Zanuck and Brown had just finished working with Robert Shaw on The Sting
, and suggested him to Spielberg as a possible Quint. For the role of Hooper, Spielberg initially wanted Jon Voight
. Timothy Bottoms
and Jeff Bridges
were also considered for the part. Richard Dreyfuss initially passed on the role of Matt Hooper, but after being disappointed by his own performance in a pre-release screening of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, a film he had just completed, he immediately called Spielberg and accepted the role, fearing that no one would want to hire him once Kravitz was released. Because the film was so dissimilar to the novel, Spielberg asked Dreyfuss not to read the book before offering him the role. The first person actually cast for the film was Lorraine Gary, the wife of then-studio chief, Sid Sheinberg.
-powered prop sharks were made for the production: a "sea-sled shark", a full-body prop with its belly missing that was towed with a 300′ (roughly 100 m) line, and two "platform sharks", one that moved from camera-left to -right (with its hidden side completely exposing a wide array of pneumatic hoses), and an opposite model with its right flank uncovered. The sharks were designed by art director Joe Alves during the fall of 1973. Between November 1973 and April 1974, the sharks were fabricated at Rolly Harper's Motion Picture & Equipment Rental in Sun Valley, CA. Their construction was supervised by legendary mechanical effects supervisor Bob Mattey and up to 40 effects technicians including Conrad 'Whitey' Krumm, Roy Arbogast, Richie Helmer, and the Wood brothers, Michael and Gary. After the sharks were completed, they were trucked to the shooting location. In early July, the platform used to tow the two "side model" sharks capsized as it was being lowered to the ocean floor, forcing a team of divers to retrieve it. The model required 14 operators to control all of the moving parts.
Principal photography
began on May 2, 1974. Location shooting occurred on the island of Martha's Vineyard
, Massachusetts
, chosen because the ocean had a sandy bottom 12 miles (19 km) out to sea and never dropped below thirty-five feet (11 m). This helped the prop sharks to operate smoothly and still provide a realistic location. The film nonetheless had a troubled shoot and went considerably over budget. David Brown said that the budget "was $4 million and the picture wound up costing $9 million". Shooting at sea led to many delays: unwanted sailboats drifted into frame, cameras got soaked, and the Orca once began to sink with the actors on-board. The prop sharks frequently malfunctioned owing to a series of issues including bad weather, pneumatic hoses taking on salt water, broken shark frames due to water resistance, corroding skin, electrolysis
and "non-absorbent" neoprene foam that made up the skin absorbing water causing the shark to balloon, which it did on its original water test. More than a few times the sea-sled model would get caught in the seaweed forests prompting effects divers to search for the lost shark, scaring a few in the process. Contrary to popular Jaws production lore, the shark never sank during its initial water test.
To some degree, the delays in the production proved serendipitous
. The script was refined during production, and the unreliable mechanical sharks forced Spielberg to shoot most of the scenes with the shark only hinted at. For example, for much of the shark hunt, its location is represented by the floating yellow barrels. Spielberg also included multiple shots of just the dorsal fin. This forced restraint is widely thought to have increased the suspense of these scenes, giving them a Hitchcockian
tone.
The scene in which Hooper discovers fisherman Ben Gardner's body in the hull
of his wrecked boat was added after an initial screening of the film. After reactions to that screening, Spielberg said he was greedy for "one more scream" and, with $3,000 of his own money, financed the scene after he was denied funding from Universal Pictures. Actor Craig Kingsbury had to press his head into a latex
mold to make an exact copy, which was then attached to a fake body and placed in the wrecked boat's hull. The underwater scene was shot in film editor Verna Fields's swimming pool in Encino, CA.
Footage of real sharks was shot by Ron and Valerie Taylor
in the waters off Australia
, with a small actor in a miniature shark cage to create the illusion that the shark was enormous. Originally, the script, following the novel, had the shark killing Hooper in the shark cage, but during filming one of the sharks became trapped in the girdle of the cage and proceeded to tear the cage apart. The crew found the footage of this incident to be so visually stunning, they were eager to incorporate it into the final film. However, no one had been in the cage at the time, so the script was changed to have Matt Hooper escape, thus providing an explanation for the empty cage.
Although filming was scheduled to take 55 days, it eventually ended on October 6, 1974 after 159 days. Spielberg, reflecting on the extended delay, stated: "I thought my career as a filmmaker was over. I heard rumors … that I would never work again because no one had ever taken a film 100 days over schedule." Spielberg himself was not present for the shooting of the final scene in which the shark explodes. He believed that the crew were planning to throw him in the water when this scene was complete. It has since become a tradition for Spielberg to be absent when the final scene of a film he directs is being filmed.
A fourth, hard-fiberglass shark was built in 1976 and placed at Universal Studios in Studio City, CA until 1990. It has been on display at the Aadlen Bros. U-Pick Parts yard in Sun Valley, CA since 1992 where it is affectionately referred to as "Junkyard Bruce". It first gained notice in 2002 when featured in the E! True Hollywood Story: JAWS show. In June 2010, eight years after regaining attention, art director Joe Alves and plastics and rubber specialist, Roy Arbogast (who were both part of the team that fabricated the original sharks in 1974), confirmed its authenticity as a prop that was pulled from the original molds. This was revealed during a segment on NPR
.
composed the film's score
, which ranked sixth on the American Film Institute
's 100 Years of Film Scores
. The main "shark" theme, a simple alternating pattern of two note
s, E and F, became a classic piece of suspense music, synonymous with approaching danger (see leading-tone
). Williams described the theme as having the "effect of grinding away at you, just as a shark would do, instinctual, relentless, unstoppable." The soundtrack piece was performed by tuba player Tommy Johnson
. When asked by Johnson why the melody was written in such a high register and not played by the more appropriate French horn, Williams responded that he wanted it to sound "a little more threatening". When Williams first demonstrated his idea to Spielberg, playing just the two notes on a piano, Spielberg was said to have laughed, thinking that it was a joke. Spielberg later said that without Williams's score the film would have been only half as successful, and Williams acknowledges that the score jumpstarted his career. He had previously scored Spielberg's feature film debut The Sugarland Express
and went on to collaborate with him on almost all of his films.
The score contains echoes of Igor Stravinsky
's The Rite of Spring
, particularly the opening of "The Adoration of the Earth" and "Auguries of Spring". The music has drawn comparisons to Bernard Herrman's score for Alfred Hitchcock
's Psycho
and the ominous music for the off-screen hunter in Bambi
, in which the music enhances the presence of an unseen terror, in this case the shark.
There are various interpretations of the meaning and effectiveness of the theme. Some have thought the two-note expression is intended to mimic the shark's heartbeat, beginning slow and controlled as the killer hunts and rising to a frenzied, shrieking climax as it approaches its prey. Others have stated that the music at first sounds like the creaking and groaning of a boat, and therefore is inaudible when it begins so that it never seems to start, but simply rises out of the sounds of the film. One critic believes the true strength of the score is its ability to create a "harsh silence", abruptly cutting away from the music right before it climaxes. Furthermore, the audience is conditioned to associate the shark with its theme, since the score is never used as a red herring. It only plays when the real shark appears. This is later exploited when the shark suddenly appears with no musical introduction. Regardless of the meaning behind it, the theme is widely acknowledged as one of the most recognized scores of all time. In addition, industrial rock act Nine Inch Nails
frontman Trent Reznor
(who composed the soundtrack to David Fincher
's The Social Network
along with Atticus Ross
) declared the Jaws score his favorite movie soundtrack, remarking that he saw the film when he was a 10-year old and Williams' music was "added to the fear of the film."
The original soundtrack for Jaws
was released by MCA in 1975, and as a CD in 1992, including roughly a half hour of music that John Williams redid for the album. In 2000, two versions of the score were released: one in a re-recording of the entire Jaws score performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra
and conducted by Joel McNeely
; and another to coincide with the release of the 25th anniversary DVD by Decca/Universal, featuring the entire 51 minutes of the original score. Many fans prefer the Decca release over the Varèse Sarabande re-recording.
by Herman Melville
. The character of Quint strongly resembles Captain Ahab, the obsessed captain of the Pequod
who devotes his life to hunting a sperm whale
. Quint's monologue reveals a similar obsession with sharks; even his boat, the Orca, is named after the only natural enemy of the white shark
. In the novel and original screenplay, Quint dies after being dragged under the ocean by a harpoon tied to his leg, similar to Ahab's death in Melville's novel. A direct reference to these similarities may be found in the original screenplay, which introduced Quint by showing him watching the film version of Moby-Dick
, with his laughter throughout making people get up and leave the theater (Wesley Strick
's screenplay for Cape Fear
features a similar scene). However, the scene from Moby-Dick could not be licensed from Gregory Peck
, the copyright holder. In the novel and original screenplay, when the Orca, like the Pequod, is sunk by the creature, only the Brody character survives. There is, however, a scene in which the shark rapidly tows the Orca, which is obviously indebted to the "Nantucket sleigh ride" scene in Moby-Dick. Some have also noticed the influences of two 1950s horror films, The Creature from the Black Lagoon and The Monster That Challenged the World
.
Critics such as Neil Sinyard have noticed similarities to Henrik Ibsen
's play An Enemy of the People
. The Ibsen work features a doctor who discovers that a seaside town's medicinal hot springs, a major tourist attraction and form of revenue, are contaminated. When the doctor attempts to convince the townspeople of the danger, he loses his job and is shunned. This plotline is paralleled in Jaws by Brody's conflict with Mayor Vaughn, who refuses to acknowledge the presence of a shark that may dissuade summer beachgoers from coming to Amity. In the film, Brody is vindicated when more shark attacks occur at the crowded beach in broad daylight. Sinyard calls the film a "deft combination of Watergate and Ibsen's play".
, but even that blockbuster had originally debuted in just five theaters.
Jaws was the first film to successfully open nationwide on hundreds of screens simultaneously, coupled with a national marketing campaign—a then-unheard of practice. (A month earlier, Columbia had done the same with a Charles Bronson
thriller, Breakout, but the box office was middling at best.) The film became the first to use extensive television advertising. The media blitz "included approximately twenty-five thirty-second advertisements per night on prime-time network TV" between 18–20 June 1975. Universal executive Sidney Sheinberg
's rationale was that nationwide marketing costs would be amortized at a more favorable rate per print than if a slow, scaled release were carried out. Sheinberg's gamble paid off, with Jaws becoming a box office smash hit and the father of the summer blockbuster
.
After the release of Jaws, journalists and critics detailed its impact on how films were released in theaters. Peter Biskind
wrote, "[The film] diminish[ed] the importance of print reviews, making it virtually impossible for a film to build slowly, finding its audience by dint of mere quality. … In a sense, Spielberg was the Trojan horse through which the studios began to reassert their power." Author Thomas Schatz also wrote on the film's impact: "If any single film marked the arrival of the New Hollywood, it was Jaws, the Spielberg-directed thriller that recalibrated the profit potential of the Hollywood hit, and redefined its status as a marketable commodity and cultural phenomenon as well. The film brought an emphatic end to Hollywood's five-year recession, while ushering in an era of high-cost, high-tech, high-speed thrillers." Following the success of Jaws, major studio films have almost universally been distributed and marketed on a national scale. In addition, when summer was usually a season to dump films likely to be poor performers, the success of Jaws caused studios to shift their action and thriller films out of winter releases.
When Jaws was released on June 20, 1975, it opened at 464 theaters. The release was subsequently expanded on July 25 to a total of 675 theaters, the largest simultaneous distribution of a film in motion picture history at the time. During the first weekend of wide release, Jaws grossed more than $7 million, and was the top grosser for the following five weeks. During its run in theaters, it became the first film to reach more than $100 million in U.S. box office receipts.
Jaws eventually grossed more than $470 million worldwide, and was the highest grossing box office film until Star Wars
debuted two years later. It is currently the 94th highest grossing film of all time. Jaws and Star Wars are retrospectively considered to have marked the beginning of the new business model in American filmmaking
and the beginning of the end of the New Hollywood
period.
, with the critical consensus stating "Compelling, well-crafted storytelling and a judicious sense of terror ensure Steven Spielberg's Jaws has remained a benchmark in the art of delivering modern blockbuster thrills." In his original review, Roger Ebert
called it "a sensationally effective action picture, a scary thriller that works all the better because it's populated with characters that have been developed into human beings". Variety
s A.D. Murphy praised Spielberg's directorial skills, and called Robert Shaw's performance "absolutely magnificent". Pauline Kael
called it "the most cheerfully perverse scare movie ever made… [with] more zest than an early Woody Allen
picture, a lot more electricity, [and] it's funny in a Woody Allen sort of way". Frank Rich
of The New York Times
wrote "Spielberg is blessed with a talent that is absurdly absent from most American filmmakers these days: this man actually knows how to tell a story on screen. … It speaks well of this director's gifts that some of the most frightening sequences in Jaws are those where we don't even see the shark."
The film was not without its detractors. Vincent Canby
, of The New York Times, said "It's a measure of how the film operates that not once do we feel particular sympathy for any of the shark's victims…In the best films, characters are revealed in terms of the action. In movies like Jaws, characters are simply functions of the action. They're at its service. Characters are like stage hands who move props around and deliver information when it's necessary", but also noted that "It's the sort of nonsense that can be a good deal of fun". Los Angeles Times
critic Charles Champlin disagreed with the film's PG rating, saying that "Jaws is too gruesome for children, and likely to turn the stomach of the impressionable at any age." He goes on to say: "It is a coarse-grained and exploitative work which depends on excess for its impact. Ashore it is a bore, awkwardly staged and lumpily written." The most widespread criticism of the film is the artificiality of the mechanical shark.
In 2010, criticism surfaced from an unexpected quarter — conservationists. They credit the film with the so-called "Jaws effect", which allegedly inspired "legions of fishermen [who] piled into boats and killed thousands of the ocean predators in shark-fishing tournaments."
for Best Film Editing, Best Original Dramatic Score
and Best Sound (Robert Hoyt
, Roger Heman
, Earl Madery
and John Carter
). It was also nominated for Best Picture
, losing to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
. In 2008, Jaws was selected by Empire
magazine as the fifth greatest film ever made. Quint was also placed at #50 on Empire's list of The 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time. In 2003, The New York Times included the film on its list of the best 1000 movies ever made. In 2010, Total Film
selected the film as one of The 100 Greatest Movies of All Time. Jaws was number 48 on American Film Institute
's 100 Years... 100 Movies
, a list of the greatest American films of all time, dropping down to number 56 on the 10 Year Anniversary list. It was ranked second on a similar list for thrillers, 100 Years... 100 Thrills
. Jaws was number one in the Bravo network's five-hour miniseries The 100 Scariest Movie Moments
(2004). Similarly, the Chicago Film Critics Association
named it the 6th scariest film ever made. The shark was anointed number 18 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains
. In 2001, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry
. In 2005, the American Film Institute voted Roy Scheider's line "You're gonna need a bigger boat" as number 35 on its list of the top 100 movie quotes
. John Williams
's score was ranked at number six on AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores
. In 2006, the screenplay of Jaws was selected by the Writers Guild of America
as the 63rd best screenplay of all time.
American Film Institute
Similar to the fear of showers created by the pivotal scene in the 1960 film Psycho
, Jaws caused many viewers to be afraid to enter the ocean. The film was credited with reduced beach attendance in the summer of 1975.
Although it is considered a thriller-horror classic, the film is recognized as being responsible for perpetuating negative stereotypes about sharks and their behavior. Author Peter Benchley stated that he would not have written the original novel had he known what sharks are really like in the wild. Benchley later wrote Shark Trouble, a non-fiction book about shark behavior, and Shark Life, another non-fiction book describing his dives with sharks. Conservation groups have bemoaned the fact that the film has made it considerably harder to convince the public that sharks should be protected.
Jaws set the template for many future horror films, so much so that the script for Ridley Scott
's 1979 science fiction film Alien
was pitched to studio executives with the proposed tag line: "Jaws in space."
Universal "devised and co-ordinated a highly innovative plan" for the first film's distribution and exhibition. The studio and publisher Bantam designed a logo which would appear on both the paperback and on all film advertising. "Both publisher and distributor recognized the mutual benefits that a joint promotion strategy would bring." Producers Zanuck and Brown toured six cities to promote the paperback and the film. Once the film was released, more merchandising was created, including shark-illustrated swimming towels and T-shirts, plastic shark fins for swimmers to wear, and shark-shaped inflatables for them to float on. The Ideal Toy Company
produced a game
in which the player had to use a hook to fish out items from the shark's mouth before the jaws closed.
In the 2000s, an independent group of fans produced a feature-length documentary. The Shark is Still Working
features interviews with a range of cast and crew from the film, and some from the sequels. It is narrated by Roy Scheider and dedicated to Peter Benchley, who died in 2006.
title marketed in North America was the MCA DiscoVision
release of Jaws in 1978. A second Laserdisc was released in 1991, before a third and final release came under the MCA/Universal Home Video's "Signature Collection" imprint in 1995. This release was an elaborate boxset, which included the film, along with deleted scenes and outtakes, a new two-hour documentary on the making of the film, a copy of the novel Jaws, and a CD of John Williams's soundtrack. A year after its MCA DiscoVision release, it returned to theaters for a special 2-week limited engagement. It was also released on VHS by MCA Home Video in the mid 1980s and in 1995 by MCA Universal Home Video as a Collector's Edition featuring a making-of retrospective. MCA Universal Home Video released it on VHS again in 1997 as a THX-certified Special Widescreen Edition featuring a 10-minute special introduction at the beginning of the tape which was shown previously on the 1995 VHS.
Jaws was first released on DVD in 2000 for the film's 25th anniversary. It featured a 50-minute documentary on the making of the film (an edited version of the one featured on the 1995 laserdisc release), with interviews from Steven Spielberg, Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, Peter Benchley and other cast and crew members. Other extras included deleted scenes, outtakes, trailers, production photos, and storyboards. In June 2005, on the 30th anniversary of the film's release, a festival named JawsFest was held in Martha's Vineyard
. Jaws was then re-released on DVD, this time including the full two-hour documentary produced by Laurent Bouzereau for the LaserDisc. As well as containing most of the same bonus features the previous DVD contained, it included a previously unavailable interview with Spielberg conducted on the set of Jaws in 1974.
It has been confirmed by Spielberg that a Blu-ray release is in the works.
with Richard Dreyfuss. Jaws 2
was directed by Jeannot Szwarc
; Roy Scheider, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton, and Jeffrey Kramer reprised their roles from the original film. It is generally regarded as the best of the sequels. The next film, Jaws 3-D
, directed by Joe Alves, was released in the 3-D
format, although the effect did not transfer to television or home video, where it was renamed Jaws 3. Dennis Quaid
and Louis Gossett, Jr.
starred in the movie. Jaws: The Revenge
, directed by Joseph Sargent
, featured the return of Lorraine Gary and starred Michael Caine
, is considered one of the worst movies ever made. While all three sequels made a profit at the box office (Jaws 2 and Jaws 3-D are among the top 20 highest-grossing films of their respective years), critics and audiences were generally dissatisfied with the films.
In February 2010, film website Cinema Blend
reported that a source from Universal Pictures has indicated that Universal is "strongly considering" remaking Jaws in 3-D
, following the commercial success of Avatar. The source also reported that 30 Rock
star Tracy Morgan
was considered to portray Matt Hooper in the remake, which they say could be more comedic and make more use of special effects. The studio has not officially commented upon the rumor.
and Universal Studios Japan
, and two musicals: JAWS The Musical!, which premiered in the summer of 2004 at the Minnesota Fringe Festival; and Giant Killer Shark: The Musical
, which premiered in the summer of 2006 at the Toronto Fringe Festival
. Aristocrat made an officially licensed slot machine
based on the movie.
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
-thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
and based on Peter Benchley
Peter Benchley
Peter Bradford Benchley was an American author, best known for his novel Jaws and its subsequent film adaptation, the latter co-written by Benchley and directed by Steven Spielberg...
's novel of the same name
Jaws (novel)
Jaws is a 1974 novel by Peter Benchley. It tells the story of a great white shark that preys upon a small resort town, and the voyage of three men to kill it....
. In the story, the police chief of Amity Island, a fictional summer resort town, tries to protect beachgoers from a giant man-eating great white shark
Great white shark
The great white shark, scientific name Carcharodon carcharias, also known as the great white, white pointer, white shark, or white death, is a large lamniform shark found in coastal surface waters in all major oceans. It is known for its size, with the largest individuals known to have approached...
by closing the beach, only to be overruled by the town council, which wants the beach to remain open to draw a profit from tourists during the summer season. After several attacks, the police chief enlists the help of a marine biologist
Marine biology
Marine biology is the scientific study of organisms in the ocean or other marine or brackish bodies of water. Given that in biology many phyla, families and genera have some species that live in the sea and others that live on land, marine biology classifies species based on the environment rather...
and a professional shark hunter. Roy Scheider
Roy Scheider
Roy Richard Scheider was an American actor. He was best known for his leading role as police chief Martin C...
stars as police chief Martin Brody, Richard Dreyfuss
Richard Dreyfuss
Richard Stephen Dreyfuss is an American actor best known for starring in a number of film, television, and theater roles since the late 1960s, including the films American Graffiti, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Goodbye Girl, Whose Life Is It Anyway?, Stakeout, Always, What About...
as oceanographer Matt Hooper, Robert Shaw
Robert Shaw (actor)
Robert Archibald Shaw was an English actor and novelist, remembered for his performances in The Sting , From Russia with Love , A Man for All Seasons , the original The Taking of Pelham One Two Three , Black Sunday , The Deep and Jaws , where he played the shark hunter Quint.-Early life...
as shark hunter Quint, Murray Hamilton
Murray Hamilton
Murray Hamilton was an American stage, screen, and television actor who appeared in such memorable films as The Hustler, The Graduate and Jaws.-Early life:...
as the Mayor of Amity Island, and Lorraine Gary
Lorraine Gary
Lorraine Gary is an American actress best known for her role as Ellen Brody in Jaws, Jaws 2, and Jaws: The Revenge...
as Brody's wife, Ellen.
The film was shot on location at Martha's Vineyard
Martha's Vineyard
Martha's Vineyard is an island located south of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, known for being an affluent summer colony....
, Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
, and had a troubled production, going over budget and schedule. As the mechanical sharks suffered many malfunctions, Spielberg decided to mostly suggest the animal's presence, by utilizing an ominous yet subdued theme noted film composer John Williams
John Williams
John Towner Williams is an American composer, conductor, and pianist. In a career spanning almost six decades, he has composed some of the most recognizable film scores in the history of motion pictures, including the Star Wars saga, Jaws, Superman, the Indiana Jones films, E.T...
had created to describe the shark's impending appearances. Jaws is regarded as a watershed film in motion picture history, the father of the summer blockbuster film
Blockbuster (entertainment)
Blockbuster, as applied to film or theatre, denotes a very popular or successful production. The entertainment industry use was originally theatrical slang referring to a particularly successful play but is now used primarily by the film industry...
and one of the first "high concept
High concept
High concept is a term used to refer to an artistic work that can be easily described by a succinctly stated premise.-Terminology:High concept narratives are typically characterised by an over-arching "what if?" scenario that acts as a catalyst for the following events...
" films. Because of the film's success in advance screenings, studio executives decided to distribute it in a much wider release pattern than ever before employed. The Omen
The Omen
An original score for the film, including the movie's theme song Ave Satani, was composed by Jerry Goldsmith, for which he received the only Oscar of his long career. The score features a strong choral segment, with a foreboding Latin chant...
followed suit in the summer of 1976, and then Star Wars
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, originally released as Star Wars, is a 1977 American epic space opera film, written and directed by George Lucas. It is the first of six films released in the Star Wars saga: two subsequent films complete the original trilogy, while a prequel trilogy completes the...
one year later in 1977, cementing the notion for movie studios to distribute their big-release action and adventure pictures (commonly referred to as tentpole pictures) during the summer months.
Widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time, Jaws appeared at number 48 on American Film Institute
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
's 100 Years... 100 Movies
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies
The first of the AFI 100 Years… series of cinematic milestones, AFI's 100 Years…100 Movies is a list of the 100 best American movies, as determined by the American Film Institute from a poll of more than 1,500 artists and leaders in the film industry who chose from a list of 400 nominated movies...
, a list of the greatest American films of all time, dropping down to number 56 on the 10 Year Anniversary list. It ranked second on a similar list for thrillers, 100 Years... 100 Thrills and was number one on Bravo's list of The 100 Scariest Movie Moments. The film was followed by three sequels, none with the participation of Spielberg or Benchley.
Plot
During an evening beach party on the fictional Amity Island in New EnglandNew England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
, a 23-year-old woman named Christine "Chrissie" Watkins leaves a beach party to go skinny dipping
Skinny dipping
Nude swimming, colloquially called skinny dipping, is a term used to describe swimming naked.-Etymology:The term skinny dip, first recorded in English in the 1950s, includes the somewhat archaic word skinny, known since 1573, meaning "having to do with skin", as it exposed the naked...
, only to be dragged back and forth violently and then under the water. Amity's police chief, Martin Brody, is notified that Christine is missing, and deputy Len Hendricks finds her remains on the beach. The medical examiner informs Brody that the death was due to a shark attack. Brody plans to close the beaches but is overruled by mayor Larry Vaughan, who fears that reports of a shark attack will ruin the summer tourist season, which is the town's primary source of income. The medical examiner consequently attributes the death to a boating accident. Brody reluctantly goes along with the explanation.
A short time later, a boy is killed by a shark at the beach. The boy's mother places a bounty
Bounty (reward)
A bounty is a payment or reward often offered by a group as an incentive for the accomplishment of a task by someone usually not associated with the group. Bounties are most commonly issued for the capture or retrieval of a person or object. They are typically in the form of money...
on the shark, sparking an amateur shark-hunting frenzy and attracting the attention of local professional shark hunter Quint. Brought in by Brody, marine biologist Matt Hooper examines Christine's remains and concludes she was killed by a shark, not a boat.
A large tiger shark
Tiger shark
The tiger sharks, Galeocerdo cuvier, is a species of requiem shark and the only member of the genus Galeocerdo. Commonly known as sea tigers, tiger sharks are relatively large macropredators, capable of attaining a length of over . It is found in many tropical and temperate waters, and is...
is caught by fishermen, leading the town to believe the problem is solved, but Hooper is unconvinced that the shark is the killer and asks to examine its stomach contents. Vaughan refuses to make the "half-assed autopsy" public, so Brody and Hooper return after dark and discover the dead shark does not contain human remains. Scouting aboard Hooper's boat, they come across the half-sunken wreckage of a boat belonging to local fisherman Ben Gardner. Hooper explores the vessel underwater and discovers a sizable shark's tooth protruding from the damaged side of the hull. While prying it loose Hooper is confronted by the remains of Gardner, which causes him to lose the tooth in a panic. Vaughan refuses to close the beaches, and on the Fourth of July numerous tourists arrive. A prank by two boys causes misguided panic and the real shark enters a nearby estuary
Estuary
An estuary is a partly enclosed coastal body of water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea....
, killing a man and causing Brody's son to go into shock after witnessing the attack. Brody convinces Vaughan to hire Quint. Quint reluctantly allows Hooper to join the hunt along with Brody. The three set out to catch or kill the shark aboard Quint's vessel, the Orca.
Brody is given the task of laying a chum
Chumming
Chumming is the practice of luring animals, usually fish or sharks, by throwing "chum" into the water. Chum often consists of fish parts and blood, which attract fish, particularly sharks due to their keen sense of smell....
line while Quint uses fishing tackle to try to hook the shark. As Brody continues chumming, an enormous great white shark
Great white shark
The great white shark, scientific name Carcharodon carcharias, also known as the great white, white pointer, white shark, or white death, is a large lamniform shark found in coastal surface waters in all major oceans. It is known for its size, with the largest individuals known to have approached...
looms up behind the boat; the trio watch the great white circle the Orca and estimate it weighs 3 short tons (2.7 MT) and is 25 feet (7.6 m) long while Hooper takes pictures of the shark for research purposes. Quint harpoons the shark with a line attached to a flotation barrel, designed to prevent the shark from submerging and to track it on the surface, but the shark pulls the barrel under and disappears.
Night falls without another sighting, so the men retire to the boat's cabin, where Quint tells of his experience with sharks as a survivor of the sinking of the warship
Warship
A warship is a ship that is built and primarily intended for combat. Warships are usually built in a completely different way from merchant ships. As well as being armed, warships are designed to withstand damage and are usually faster and more maneuvrable than merchant ships...
during the War in the Pacific
War In The Pacific
War in the Pacific is a 2004 two-player turn-based computer war game published by Matrix games. It is a very large, complex, and detailed simulation of the Pacific Theatre of World War II, at both the operational and strategic level....
in 1945. The shark reappears, damaging the boat's hull before slipping away. In the morning, the men make repairs to the engine. Attempting to call the Coast Guard
United States Coast Guard
The United States Coast Guard is a branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven U.S. uniformed services. The Coast Guard is a maritime, military, multi-mission service unique among the military branches for having a maritime law enforcement mission and a federal regulatory agency...
for help, Brody is stopped by Quint, who destroys the radio with a baseball bat. After a long chase Quint harpoons another barrel to the shark. The men tie the barrels to the stern, but the shark, after Quint harpoons it again adding a third barrel, drags the boat backwards, forcing water onto the deck and into the engine, flooding it. Quint is about to cut the ropes when the cleats are pulled off the stern. The shark continues attacking the boat and Quint heads toward shore with the shark in pursuit, hoping to draw the animal into shallow waters, where it will get beached and, once unable to swim, suffocate. In his obsession to kill the shark, Quint overtaxes Orcas engines, causing them to stall.
With the boat immobilized, the trio try a desperate approach: Hooper dons his SCUBA gear and enters the ocean inside a shark proof cage
Shark proof cage
A shark proof cage is an extremely strong metal cage used by a SCUBA diver to safely examine dangerous types of sharks up close, such as the Great White shark or bull shark. Shark proof cages are built to withstand being rammed by large, powerful sharks. The cages provide a visual and tactile...
in order to stab the shark in the mouth with a hypodermic spear filled with strychnine
Strychnine
Strychnine is a highly toxic , colorless crystalline alkaloid used as a pesticide, particularly for killing small vertebrates such as birds and rodents. Strychnine causes muscular convulsions and eventually death through asphyxia or sheer exhaustion...
. When the shark attacks and begins destroying the cage, Hooper drops his spear. The shark gets tangled in the cage's remains, allowing Hooper to escape and hide on the seabed. As Quint and Brody raise the remnants of the cage, the shark throws itself onto the boat, crushing the transom
Transom (nautical)
In naval architecture, a transom is the surface that forms the stern of a vessel. Transoms may be flat or curved and they may be vertical, raked forward, also known as a retroussé or reverse transom, angling forward from the waterline to the deck, or raked aft, often simply called "raked", angling...
. As the boat sinks, Quint slides down the slippery deck into the shark's mouth and is eaten alive. Brody retreats to the boat's partly submerged cabin. When the shark attacks him there, he shoves a pressurized scuba tank into the shark's mouth, then takes Quint's rifle and climbs the Orcas mast. Brody shoots at the tank wedged in the shark's mouth, causing it to explode and blow the shark to pieces.
Hooper and Brody make rafts out of the Orca's remains and paddle back to Amity Island.
Cast
- Roy ScheiderRoy ScheiderRoy Richard Scheider was an American actor. He was best known for his leading role as police chief Martin C...
as Martin Brody - Robert ShawRobert Shaw (actor)Robert Archibald Shaw was an English actor and novelist, remembered for his performances in The Sting , From Russia with Love , A Man for All Seasons , the original The Taking of Pelham One Two Three , Black Sunday , The Deep and Jaws , where he played the shark hunter Quint.-Early life...
as Quint - Richard DreyfussRichard DreyfussRichard Stephen Dreyfuss is an American actor best known for starring in a number of film, television, and theater roles since the late 1960s, including the films American Graffiti, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Goodbye Girl, Whose Life Is It Anyway?, Stakeout, Always, What About...
as Matt Hooper - Lorraine GaryLorraine GaryLorraine Gary is an American actress best known for her role as Ellen Brody in Jaws, Jaws 2, and Jaws: The Revenge...
as Ellen Brody - Murray HamiltonMurray HamiltonMurray Hamilton was an American stage, screen, and television actor who appeared in such memorable films as The Hustler, The Graduate and Jaws.-Early life:...
as Lawrence" Larry" Vaughan - Carl GottliebCarl GottliebCarl Gottlieb is an American screenwriter, actor, comedian and executive. He is probably best known for co-writing the screenplay for Jaws, as well as directing the 1981 low-budget cult film Caveman.-Early life:...
as Harry Meadows - Jeffrey KramerJeffrey KramerJeffrey Kramer is an American film and television actor and film producer.-Life and career:Kramer was born in New York City and grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey, graduating from Teaneck High School with the Class of 1963. He made his first appearance on the TV series Barney Miller starring in the...
as Leonard "Len" Hendricks - Susan BacklinieSusan BacklinieSusan Backlinie is a former actress and stuntwoman. She is known for her role as Chrissie Watkins, the first victim in Steven Spielberg's 1975 blockbuster Jaws.-Personal life:...
as Christine "Chrissie" Watkins - Jonathan Filley as Tom Cassidy
- Ted Grossman as Estuary Victim
- Chris Rebello as Michael Brody
- Jay Mello as Sean Brody
- Lee Fierro as Mrs. Kintner
- Jeffrey Voorhees as Alexander "Alex" Kintner
- Craig Kingsbury as Benjamin "Ben" Gardener
- Dr. Robert Nevin as Medical Examiner
- Peter BenchleyPeter BenchleyPeter Bradford Benchley was an American author, best known for his novel Jaws and its subsequent film adaptation, the latter co-written by Benchley and directed by Steven Spielberg...
as Interviewer
Development
Richard D. ZanuckRichard D. Zanuck
Richard Darryl Zanuck is an American film producer. He iscredited for producing famous movies of the 1970's, 80's, 90's and the 21 century.-Life and career:...
and David Brown
David Brown (producer)
David Brown was an American film producer.-Early life and career:Brown was born in New York City, the son of Lillian and Edward Fisher Brown. He was best known as the producing partner of Richard D. Zanuck. They were jointly awarded the Irving G...
, producers at Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures
-1920:* White Youth* The Flaming Disc* Am I Dreaming?* The Dragon's Net* The Adorable Savage* Putting It Over* The Line Runners-1921:* The Fire Eater* A Battle of Wits* Dream Girl* The Millionaire...
, heard about Peter Benchley's novel
Jaws (novel)
Jaws is a 1974 novel by Peter Benchley. It tells the story of a great white shark that preys upon a small resort town, and the voyage of three men to kill it....
at the same time at different locations. Brown came across it in the fiction department of Cosmopolitan
Cosmopolitan (magazine)
Cosmopolitan is an international magazine for women. It was first published in 1886 in the United States as a family magazine, was later transformed into a literary magazine and eventually became a women's magazine in the late 1960s...
, a lifestyle magazine then edited by his wife, Helen Gurley Brown
Helen Gurley Brown
Helen Gurley Brown , is an author, publisher, and businesswoman. She was editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine for 32 years.-Personal life and career:...
. A small card gave a detailed description of the plot, concluding with the comment "might make a good movie". The producers each read it overnight and agreed the next morning that it was "the most exciting thing that they had ever read" and that, although they were unsure how they would accomplish it, they wanted to produce the film. Brown claimed that had they read the book twice, they would never have made the film because of the difficulties in executing some of the sequences. They purchased the film rights to Benchley's novel in 1973 for approximately $175,000.
Zanuck and Brown had originally planned to hire John Sturges
John Sturges
John Eliot Sturges was an American film director. His movies include Bad Day at Black Rock , Gunfight at the O.K. Corral , The Magnificent Seven , The Great Escape and Ice Station Zebra .-Career:He started his career in Hollywood as an editor in 1932...
to direct the film, before considering Dick Richards
Dick Richards
Dick Richards is an American film director, producer and writer.After working as a photographer, Richards went on to direct commercials. His career in film began by writing and directing a western, The Culpepper Cattle Co. , and continued with such films as Farewell, My Lovely , March or Die , and...
. However, they grew irritated by Richards's habit of calling the shark "the whale", subsequently dropping him from the project. Zanuck and Brown signed Spielberg to direct in June 1973, before the release of his first theatrical film, The Sugarland Express
The Sugarland Express
The Sugarland Express is a 1974 American drama film starring Goldie Hawn, Ben Johnson, William Atherton, and Michael Sacks. It was directed by Steven Spielberg, his first film to be intended as a theatrical release .It is about a husband and wife trying to outrun the law and was based on a...
(also a Zanuck/Brown production). Spielberg wanted to stick with the novel's basic concept, while removing Benchley's many subplot
Subplot
A subplot is a secondary plot strand that is a supporting side story for any story or the main plot. Subplots may connect to main plots, in either time and place or in thematic significance...
s. Zanuck, Brown and Spielberg removed the novel's adulterous affair between Ellen Brody and Matt Hooper fearing it might compromise the camaraderie between the men on the Orca.
When they purchased the rights to his novel, the producers guaranteed that Benchley would write the first draft of the screenplay
Screenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...
. Overall, he wrote three drafts before deciding to bow out of the project (he later had a cameo role as a news reporter in the final film of the series). Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Howard Sackler
Howard Sackler
Howard Oliver Sackler , was an American screenwriter and playwright who is best known for writing The Great White Hope . The Great White Hope enjoyed both a successful run on Broadway and, as a film adaptation, in movie theaters...
happened to be in Los Angeles when the filmmakers began looking for another writer and offered to do an uncredited rewrite, and since the producers and Spielberg were unhappy with Benchley's drafts, they quickly accepted his offer. Spielberg sent the script to Carl Gottlieb
Carl Gottlieb
Carl Gottlieb is an American screenwriter, actor, comedian and executive. He is probably best known for co-writing the screenplay for Jaws, as well as directing the 1981 low-budget cult film Caveman.-Early life:...
(who appears in a supporting acting
Supporting actor
A supporting actor is an actor who performs roles in a play or film other than that of the leads.These roles range from bit parts to secondary leads. They are sometimes but not necessarily character roles. A supporting actor must also use restraint not to upstage the main actor/actress in the...
role in the film as Meadows, the politically connected editor of the local paper), asking for advice. Gottlieb rewrote most scenes during principal photography, and John Milius
John Milius
John Frederick Milius is an American screenwriter, director, and producer of motion pictures.-Early life:Milius was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Elizabeth and William Styx Milius, who was a shoe manufacturer. Milius attempted to join the Marine Corps in the late 1960s, but was rejected...
contributed dialogue polishes. Spielberg has claimed that he prepared his own draft, although it is unclear if the other screenwriters drew on his material. The authorship of Quint's monologue about the fate of the cruiser has caused substantial controversy as to who deserves the most credit for the speech. Spielberg described it as a collaboration among John Milius, Howard Sackler, and actor Robert Shaw. Gottlieb gives primary credit to Shaw, downplaying Milius's contribution.
Casting
Spielberg offered the role of Brody to Robert DuvallRobert Duvall
Robert Selden Duvall is an American actor and director. He has won an Academy Award, two Emmy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards and a BAFTA over the course of his career....
, but the actor was only interested in portraying Quint. According to Spielberg, Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston was an American actor of film, theatre and television. Heston is known for heroic roles in films such as The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, El Cid, and Planet of the Apes...
expressed a desire for the role, but Spielberg felt that Heston was too large a personality, as Spielberg intended the film's primary "star" to be the shark. Roy Scheider became interested in the project after overhearing a screenwriter and Spielberg at a party talking about having the shark jump up onto a boat. Spielberg was initially apprehensive of hiring Scheider, fearing he would portray a "tough guy", similar to his role in The French Connection
The French Connection (film)
This article is about the 1971 film. For the British fashion label, see French Connection .The French Connection is a 1971 American crime film directed by William Friedkin. The film was adapted and fictionalized by Ernest Tidyman from the non-fiction book by Robin Moore...
.
The role of Quint was originally offered to actors Lee Marvin
Lee Marvin
Lee Marvin was an American film actor. Known for his gravelly voice, white hair and 6' 2" stature, Marvin at first did supporting roles, mostly villains, soldiers and other hardboiled characters, but after winning an Academy Award for Best Actor for his dual roles in Cat Ballou , he landed more...
and Sterling Hayden
Sterling Hayden
Sterling Hayden was an American actor and author. For most of his career as a leading man, he specialized in westerns and film noir, such as Johnny Guitar, The Asphalt Jungle and The Killing. Later on he became noted as a character actor for such roles as Gen. Jack D. Ripper in Dr...
, both of whom passed. Producers Zanuck and Brown had just finished working with Robert Shaw on The Sting
The Sting
The Sting is a 1973 American caper film set in September 1936 that involves a complicated plot by two professional grifters to con a mob boss . The film was directed by George Roy Hill, who previously directed Newman and Redford in the western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.Created by...
, and suggested him to Spielberg as a possible Quint. For the role of Hooper, Spielberg initially wanted Jon Voight
Jon Voight
Jonathan Vincent "Jon" Voight is an American actor. He has received an Academy Award, out of four nominations, and three Golden Globe Awards, out of nine nominations. Voight is the father of actress Angelina Jolie....
. Timothy Bottoms
Timothy Bottoms
-Early life:Bottoms was born in Santa Barbara, California, the eldest son of Betty and James "Bud" Bottoms, who is a sculptor and art teacher. He is the brother of actors Joseph Bottoms , Sam Bottoms and Ben Bottoms . In 1967, Bottoms toured Europe as part of the Santa Barbara Madrigal...
and Jeff Bridges
Jeff Bridges
Jeffrey Leon "Jeff" Bridges is an American actor and musician. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Otis "Bad" Blake in the 2009 film Crazy Heart....
were also considered for the part. Richard Dreyfuss initially passed on the role of Matt Hooper, but after being disappointed by his own performance in a pre-release screening of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, a film he had just completed, he immediately called Spielberg and accepted the role, fearing that no one would want to hire him once Kravitz was released. Because the film was so dissimilar to the novel, Spielberg asked Dreyfuss not to read the book before offering him the role. The first person actually cast for the film was Lorraine Gary, the wife of then-studio chief, Sid Sheinberg.
Filming
Three full-size pneumaticallyPneumatics
Pneumatics is a branch of technology, which deals with the study and application of use of pressurized gas to effect mechanical motion.Pneumatic systems are extensively used in industry, where factories are commonly plumbed with compressed air or compressed inert gases...
-powered prop sharks were made for the production: a "sea-sled shark", a full-body prop with its belly missing that was towed with a 300′ (roughly 100 m) line, and two "platform sharks", one that moved from camera-left to -right (with its hidden side completely exposing a wide array of pneumatic hoses), and an opposite model with its right flank uncovered. The sharks were designed by art director Joe Alves during the fall of 1973. Between November 1973 and April 1974, the sharks were fabricated at Rolly Harper's Motion Picture & Equipment Rental in Sun Valley, CA. Their construction was supervised by legendary mechanical effects supervisor Bob Mattey and up to 40 effects technicians including Conrad 'Whitey' Krumm, Roy Arbogast, Richie Helmer, and the Wood brothers, Michael and Gary. After the sharks were completed, they were trucked to the shooting location. In early July, the platform used to tow the two "side model" sharks capsized as it was being lowered to the ocean floor, forcing a team of divers to retrieve it. The model required 14 operators to control all of the moving parts.
Principal photography
Principal photography
thumb|300px|Film production on location in [[Newark, New Jersey]].Principal photography is the phase of film production in which the movie is filmed, with actors on set and cameras rolling, as distinct from pre-production and post-production....
began on May 2, 1974. Location shooting occurred on the island of Martha's Vineyard
Martha's Vineyard
Martha's Vineyard is an island located south of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, known for being an affluent summer colony....
, Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
, chosen because the ocean had a sandy bottom 12 miles (19 km) out to sea and never dropped below thirty-five feet (11 m). This helped the prop sharks to operate smoothly and still provide a realistic location. The film nonetheless had a troubled shoot and went considerably over budget. David Brown said that the budget "was $4 million and the picture wound up costing $9 million". Shooting at sea led to many delays: unwanted sailboats drifted into frame, cameras got soaked, and the Orca once began to sink with the actors on-board. The prop sharks frequently malfunctioned owing to a series of issues including bad weather, pneumatic hoses taking on salt water, broken shark frames due to water resistance, corroding skin, electrolysis
Electrolysis
In chemistry and manufacturing, electrolysis is a method of using a direct electric current to drive an otherwise non-spontaneous chemical reaction...
and "non-absorbent" neoprene foam that made up the skin absorbing water causing the shark to balloon, which it did on its original water test. More than a few times the sea-sled model would get caught in the seaweed forests prompting effects divers to search for the lost shark, scaring a few in the process. Contrary to popular Jaws production lore, the shark never sank during its initial water test.
Serendipity
Serendipity means a "happy accident" or "pleasant surprise"; specifically, the accident of finding something good or useful without looking for it. The word has been voted as one of the ten English words hardest to translate in June 2004 by a British translation company. However, due to its...
. The script was refined during production, and the unreliable mechanical sharks forced Spielberg to shoot most of the scenes with the shark only hinted at. For example, for much of the shark hunt, its location is represented by the floating yellow barrels. Spielberg also included multiple shots of just the dorsal fin. This forced restraint is widely thought to have increased the suspense of these scenes, giving them a Hitchcockian
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
tone.
The scene in which Hooper discovers fisherman Ben Gardner's body in the hull
Hull (watercraft)
A hull is the watertight body of a ship or boat. Above the hull is the superstructure and/or deckhouse, where present. The line where the hull meets the water surface is called the waterline.The structure of the hull varies depending on the vessel type...
of his wrecked boat was added after an initial screening of the film. After reactions to that screening, Spielberg said he was greedy for "one more scream" and, with $3,000 of his own money, financed the scene after he was denied funding from Universal Pictures. Actor Craig Kingsbury had to press his head into a latex
Latex
Latex is the stable dispersion of polymer microparticles in an aqueous medium. Latexes may be natural or synthetic.Latex as found in nature is a milky fluid found in 10% of all flowering plants . It is a complex emulsion consisting of proteins, alkaloids, starches, sugars, oils, tannins, resins,...
mold to make an exact copy, which was then attached to a fake body and placed in the wrecked boat's hull. The underwater scene was shot in film editor Verna Fields's swimming pool in Encino, CA.
Footage of real sharks was shot by Ron and Valerie Taylor
Ron & Valerie Taylor
Ron Taylor and Valerie Taylor are prominent Australian shark and underwater experts. Their expertise has been called upon for films such as Jaws, Orca and Sky Pirates....
in the waters off Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, with a small actor in a miniature shark cage to create the illusion that the shark was enormous. Originally, the script, following the novel, had the shark killing Hooper in the shark cage, but during filming one of the sharks became trapped in the girdle of the cage and proceeded to tear the cage apart. The crew found the footage of this incident to be so visually stunning, they were eager to incorporate it into the final film. However, no one had been in the cage at the time, so the script was changed to have Matt Hooper escape, thus providing an explanation for the empty cage.
Although filming was scheduled to take 55 days, it eventually ended on October 6, 1974 after 159 days. Spielberg, reflecting on the extended delay, stated: "I thought my career as a filmmaker was over. I heard rumors … that I would never work again because no one had ever taken a film 100 days over schedule." Spielberg himself was not present for the shooting of the final scene in which the shark explodes. He believed that the crew were planning to throw him in the water when this scene was complete. It has since become a tradition for Spielberg to be absent when the final scene of a film he directs is being filmed.
A fourth, hard-fiberglass shark was built in 1976 and placed at Universal Studios in Studio City, CA until 1990. It has been on display at the Aadlen Bros. U-Pick Parts yard in Sun Valley, CA since 1992 where it is affectionately referred to as "Junkyard Bruce". It first gained notice in 2002 when featured in the E! True Hollywood Story: JAWS show. In June 2010, eight years after regaining attention, art director Joe Alves and plastics and rubber specialist, Roy Arbogast (who were both part of the team that fabricated the original sharks in 1974), confirmed its authenticity as a prop that was pulled from the original molds. This was revealed during a segment on NPR
NPR
NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...
.
Music
John WilliamsJohn Williams
John Towner Williams is an American composer, conductor, and pianist. In a career spanning almost six decades, he has composed some of the most recognizable film scores in the history of motion pictures, including the Star Wars saga, Jaws, Superman, the Indiana Jones films, E.T...
composed the film's score
Film score
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...
, which ranked sixth on the American Film Institute
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
's 100 Years of Film Scores
AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores
Part of the AFI 100 Years… series, AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores is a list of the top 25 film scores in American cinema. The list was unveiled by the American Film Institute in 2005.-The List:-External links:**...
. The main "shark" theme, a simple alternating pattern of two note
Note
In music, the term note has two primary meanings:#A sign used in musical notation to represent the relative duration and pitch of a sound;#A pitched sound itself....
s, E and F, became a classic piece of suspense music, synonymous with approaching danger (see leading-tone
Leading-tone
In music theory, a leading-note is a note or pitch which resolves or "leads" to a note one semitone higher or lower, being a lower and upper leading-tone, respectively....
). Williams described the theme as having the "effect of grinding away at you, just as a shark would do, instinctual, relentless, unstoppable." The soundtrack piece was performed by tuba player Tommy Johnson
Tommy Johnson (tubist)
John Thomas Johnson was an American orchestral tuba player. He performed on more than 2,000 film soundtracks, most notably John Williams' Jaws score, in which he played a high-register tuba solo as the melodic theme for the shark.-Early life, career:He was born in Los Angeles, California to a...
. When asked by Johnson why the melody was written in such a high register and not played by the more appropriate French horn, Williams responded that he wanted it to sound "a little more threatening". When Williams first demonstrated his idea to Spielberg, playing just the two notes on a piano, Spielberg was said to have laughed, thinking that it was a joke. Spielberg later said that without Williams's score the film would have been only half as successful, and Williams acknowledges that the score jumpstarted his career. He had previously scored Spielberg's feature film debut The Sugarland Express
The Sugarland Express
The Sugarland Express is a 1974 American drama film starring Goldie Hawn, Ben Johnson, William Atherton, and Michael Sacks. It was directed by Steven Spielberg, his first film to be intended as a theatrical release .It is about a husband and wife trying to outrun the law and was based on a...
and went on to collaborate with him on almost all of his films.
The score contains echoes of Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
's The Rite of Spring
The Rite of Spring
The Rite of Spring, original French title Le sacre du printemps , is a ballet with music by Igor Stravinsky; choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky; and concept, set design and costumes by Nicholas Roerich...
, particularly the opening of "The Adoration of the Earth" and "Auguries of Spring". The music has drawn comparisons to Bernard Herrman's score for Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
's Psycho
Psycho (1960 film)
Psycho is a 1960 American suspense/psychological horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins. The film is based on the screenplay by Joseph Stefano, who adapted it from the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch...
and the ominous music for the off-screen hunter in Bambi
Bambi
Bambi is a 1942 American animated film directed by David Hand , produced by Walt Disney and based on the book Bambi, A Life in the Woods by Austrian author Felix Salten...
, in which the music enhances the presence of an unseen terror, in this case the shark.
There are various interpretations of the meaning and effectiveness of the theme. Some have thought the two-note expression is intended to mimic the shark's heartbeat, beginning slow and controlled as the killer hunts and rising to a frenzied, shrieking climax as it approaches its prey. Others have stated that the music at first sounds like the creaking and groaning of a boat, and therefore is inaudible when it begins so that it never seems to start, but simply rises out of the sounds of the film. One critic believes the true strength of the score is its ability to create a "harsh silence", abruptly cutting away from the music right before it climaxes. Furthermore, the audience is conditioned to associate the shark with its theme, since the score is never used as a red herring. It only plays when the real shark appears. This is later exploited when the shark suddenly appears with no musical introduction. Regardless of the meaning behind it, the theme is widely acknowledged as one of the most recognized scores of all time. In addition, industrial rock act Nine Inch Nails
Nine Inch Nails
Nine Inch Nails is an American industrial rock project, founded in 1988 by Trent Reznor in Cleveland, Ohio. As its main producer, singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist, Reznor is the only official member of Nine Inch Nails and remains solely responsible for its direction...
frontman Trent Reznor
Trent Reznor
Michael Trent Reznor is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, record producer, and leader of industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails. Reznor is also a member of How to Destroy Angels alongside his wife, Mariqueen Maandig, and Atticus Ross. He was previously associated with bands Option 30,...
(who composed the soundtrack to David Fincher
David Fincher
David Andrew Leo Fincher is an American film and music video director. Known for his dark and stylish thrillers, such as Seven , The Game , Fight Club , Panic Room , and Zodiac , Fincher received Academy Award nominations for Best Director for his 2008 film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and...
's The Social Network
The Social Network
The Social Network is a 2010 American drama film directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin. Adapted from Ben Mezrich's 2009 book The Accidental Billionaires, the film portrays the founding of social networking website Facebook and the resulting lawsuits...
along with Atticus Ross
Atticus Ross
Atticus Ross is an English musician, composer and producer. Ross, along with Trent Reznor, won the Academy Award for Best Original Score for The Social Network in 2011.-Early career:...
) declared the Jaws score his favorite movie soundtrack, remarking that he saw the film when he was a 10-year old and Williams' music was "added to the fear of the film."
The original soundtrack for Jaws
Jaws (soundtrack)
The original soundtrack for Jaws was released by MCA in 1975, and as a CD in 1992, including roughly a half hour of music that John Williams redid for the album...
was released by MCA in 1975, and as a CD in 1992, including roughly a half hour of music that John Williams redid for the album. In 2000, two versions of the score were released: one in a re-recording of the entire Jaws score performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Royal Scottish National Orchestra
The Royal Scottish National Orchestra is Scotland's national symphony orchestra. Based in Glasgow, the 89-member professional orchestra also regularly performs in Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee, and abroad. Formed in 1891 as the Scottish Orchestra, the company has performed full-time since 1950,...
and conducted by Joel McNeely
Joel McNeely
-Biography:Joel McNeely was born in Madison, Wisconsin. Both of his parents were involved in music and theater, and as a child he played the piano, saxophone, bass, and flute...
; and another to coincide with the release of the 25th anniversary DVD by Decca/Universal, featuring the entire 51 minutes of the original score. Many fans prefer the Decca release over the Varèse Sarabande re-recording.
Inspirations and themes
Jaws bears similarities to several literary and artistic works, most notably Moby-DickMoby-Dick
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, was written by American author Herman Melville and first published in 1851. It is considered by some to be a Great American Novel and a treasure of world literature. The story tells the adventures of wandering sailor Ishmael, and his voyage on the whaleship Pequod,...
by Herman Melville
Herman Melville
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd....
. The character of Quint strongly resembles Captain Ahab, the obsessed captain of the Pequod
Pequod (Moby-Dick)
The Pequod is a fictitious 19th century Nantucket whaleship that appears in the 1851 novel Moby-Dick by American author Herman Melville. The Pequod and her crew, commanded by Captain Ahab, are central to the story, which, after the initial chapters, takes place almost entirely aboard the ship...
who devotes his life to hunting a sperm whale
Sperm Whale
The sperm whale, Physeter macrocephalus, is a marine mammal species, order Cetacea, a toothed whale having the largest brain of any animal. The name comes from the milky-white waxy substance, spermaceti, found in the animal's head. The sperm whale is the only living member of genus Physeter...
. Quint's monologue reveals a similar obsession with sharks; even his boat, the Orca, is named after the only natural enemy of the white shark
Orca
The killer whale , commonly referred to as the orca, and less commonly as the blackfish, is a toothed whale belonging to the oceanic dolphin family. Killer whales are found in all oceans, from the frigid Arctic and Antarctic regions to tropical seas...
. In the novel and original screenplay, Quint dies after being dragged under the ocean by a harpoon tied to his leg, similar to Ahab's death in Melville's novel. A direct reference to these similarities may be found in the original screenplay, which introduced Quint by showing him watching the film version of Moby-Dick
Moby Dick (1956 film)
Moby Dick is a 1956 film adaptation of Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick. It was directed by John Huston with a screenplay by Ray Bradbury and the director. The film starred Gregory Peck, Richard Basehart, and Leo Genn...
, with his laughter throughout making people get up and leave the theater (Wesley Strick
Wesley Strick
Wesley Strick is an American screenwriter who has written such films as the comic-horror hit Arachnophobia, the Martin Scorsese remake of Cape Fear and the videogame adaptation Doom.-Life and career:...
's screenplay for Cape Fear
Cape Fear (1991 film)
Cape Fear is a 1991 thriller film directed by Martin Scorsese and a remake of the 1962 film of the same name. It stars Robert De Niro, Nick Nolte, Jessica Lange and Juliette Lewis and features cameos from Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum and Martin Balsam, who all appeared in the 1962 original film...
features a similar scene). However, the scene from Moby-Dick could not be licensed from Gregory Peck
Gregory Peck
Eldred Gregory Peck was an American actor.One of 20th Century Fox's most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1960s, Peck continued to play important roles well into the 1980s. His notable performances include that of Atticus Finch in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird, for which he won an...
, the copyright holder. In the novel and original screenplay, when the Orca, like the Pequod, is sunk by the creature, only the Brody character survives. There is, however, a scene in which the shark rapidly tows the Orca, which is obviously indebted to the "Nantucket sleigh ride" scene in Moby-Dick. Some have also noticed the influences of two 1950s horror films, The Creature from the Black Lagoon and The Monster That Challenged the World
The Monster That Challenged the World
The Monster That Challenged the World is a science-fiction monster movie, about an army of giant mollusks that emerge from the Salton Sea, California. Directed by Arnold Laven, the film starred Tim Holt and Audrey Dalton....
.
Critics such as Neil Sinyard have noticed similarities to Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...
's play An Enemy of the People
An Enemy of the People
An Enemy of the People is an 1882 play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Ibsen wrote it in response to the public outcry against his play Ghosts, which at that time was considered scandalous...
. The Ibsen work features a doctor who discovers that a seaside town's medicinal hot springs, a major tourist attraction and form of revenue, are contaminated. When the doctor attempts to convince the townspeople of the danger, he loses his job and is shunned. This plotline is paralleled in Jaws by Brody's conflict with Mayor Vaughn, who refuses to acknowledge the presence of a shark that may dissuade summer beachgoers from coming to Amity. In the film, Brody is vindicated when more shark attacks occur at the crowded beach in broad daylight. Sinyard calls the film a "deft combination of Watergate and Ibsen's play".
Box office performance
Jaws was the first film to successfully use "wide release" as a distribution pattern. As such, it is an important film in the history of film distribution and marketing. Until the release of Jaws, films typically opened slowly, usually in a few theaters in major cities, which allowed for a series of "premieres." As the success of a film increased, and word of mouth grew, distributors would forward the prints to additional cities across the country. Some films eventually achieved a wide release, such as The GodfatherThe Godfather
The Godfather is a 1972 American epic crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the 1969 novel by Mario Puzo. With a screenplay by Puzo, Coppola and an uncredited Robert Towne, the film stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard...
, but even that blockbuster had originally debuted in just five theaters.
Jaws was the first film to successfully open nationwide on hundreds of screens simultaneously, coupled with a national marketing campaign—a then-unheard of practice. (A month earlier, Columbia had done the same with a Charles Bronson
Charles Bronson
Charles Bronson , born Charles Dennis Buchinsky was an American actor, best-known for such films as Once Upon a Time in the West, The Magnificent Seven, The Dirty Dozen, The Great Escape, Rider on the Rain, The Mechanic, and the popular Death Wish series...
thriller, Breakout, but the box office was middling at best.) The film became the first to use extensive television advertising. The media blitz "included approximately twenty-five thirty-second advertisements per night on prime-time network TV" between 18–20 June 1975. Universal executive Sidney Sheinberg
Sidney Sheinberg
Sidney "Sid" Jay Sheinberg is a lawyer and American entertainment executive. He is married to actress Lorraine Gary.-Early life and education:...
's rationale was that nationwide marketing costs would be amortized at a more favorable rate per print than if a slow, scaled release were carried out. Sheinberg's gamble paid off, with Jaws becoming a box office smash hit and the father of the summer blockbuster
Blockbuster (entertainment)
Blockbuster, as applied to film or theatre, denotes a very popular or successful production. The entertainment industry use was originally theatrical slang referring to a particularly successful play but is now used primarily by the film industry...
.
After the release of Jaws, journalists and critics detailed its impact on how films were released in theaters. Peter Biskind
Peter Biskind
Peter Biskind is a journalist, former executive editor of Premiere magazine, and the author of numerous books depicting life in Hollywood, including Seeing Is Believing, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, Down and Dirty Pictures, and Gods and Monsters...
wrote, "[The film] diminish[ed] the importance of print reviews, making it virtually impossible for a film to build slowly, finding its audience by dint of mere quality. … In a sense, Spielberg was the Trojan horse through which the studios began to reassert their power." Author Thomas Schatz also wrote on the film's impact: "If any single film marked the arrival of the New Hollywood, it was Jaws, the Spielberg-directed thriller that recalibrated the profit potential of the Hollywood hit, and redefined its status as a marketable commodity and cultural phenomenon as well. The film brought an emphatic end to Hollywood's five-year recession, while ushering in an era of high-cost, high-tech, high-speed thrillers." Following the success of Jaws, major studio films have almost universally been distributed and marketed on a national scale. In addition, when summer was usually a season to dump films likely to be poor performers, the success of Jaws caused studios to shift their action and thriller films out of winter releases.
When Jaws was released on June 20, 1975, it opened at 464 theaters. The release was subsequently expanded on July 25 to a total of 675 theaters, the largest simultaneous distribution of a film in motion picture history at the time. During the first weekend of wide release, Jaws grossed more than $7 million, and was the top grosser for the following five weeks. During its run in theaters, it became the first film to reach more than $100 million in U.S. box office receipts.
Jaws eventually grossed more than $470 million worldwide, and was the highest grossing box office film until Star Wars
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, originally released as Star Wars, is a 1977 American epic space opera film, written and directed by George Lucas. It is the first of six films released in the Star Wars saga: two subsequent films complete the original trilogy, while a prequel trilogy completes the...
debuted two years later. It is currently the 94th highest grossing film of all time. Jaws and Star Wars are retrospectively considered to have marked the beginning of the new business model in American filmmaking
Cinema of the United States
The cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...
and the beginning of the end of the New Hollywood
New Hollywood
New Hollywood or post-classical Hollywood, sometimes referred to as the "American New Wave", refers to the time from roughly the late-1960s to the early 1980s when a new generation of young filmmakers came to prominence in America, influencing the types of films produced, their production and...
period.
Critical reception
The film received universal acclaim. It currently holds a 100% "Fresh" rating on the review aggregate website Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
, with the critical consensus stating "Compelling, well-crafted storytelling and a judicious sense of terror ensure Steven Spielberg's Jaws has remained a benchmark in the art of delivering modern blockbuster thrills." In his original review, Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
called it "a sensationally effective action picture, a scary thriller that works all the better because it's populated with characters that have been developed into human beings". Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
s A.D. Murphy praised Spielberg's directorial skills, and called Robert Shaw's performance "absolutely magnificent". Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in City Lights, McCall's and The New Republic....
called it "the most cheerfully perverse scare movie ever made… [with] more zest than an early Woody Allen
Woody Allen
Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...
picture, a lot more electricity, [and] it's funny in a Woody Allen sort of way". Frank Rich
Frank Rich
Frank Rich is an American essayist and op-ed columnist who wrote for The New York Times from 1980, when he was appointed its chief theatre critic, until 2011...
of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
wrote "Spielberg is blessed with a talent that is absurdly absent from most American filmmakers these days: this man actually knows how to tell a story on screen. … It speaks well of this director's gifts that some of the most frightening sequences in Jaws are those where we don't even see the shark."
The film was not without its detractors. Vincent Canby
Vincent Canby
Vincent Canby was an American film critic who became the chief film critic for The New York Times in 1969 and reviewed more than 1000 films during his tenure there.-Life and career:...
, of The New York Times, said "It's a measure of how the film operates that not once do we feel particular sympathy for any of the shark's victims…In the best films, characters are revealed in terms of the action. In movies like Jaws, characters are simply functions of the action. They're at its service. Characters are like stage hands who move props around and deliver information when it's necessary", but also noted that "It's the sort of nonsense that can be a good deal of fun". Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
critic Charles Champlin disagreed with the film's PG rating, saying that "Jaws is too gruesome for children, and likely to turn the stomach of the impressionable at any age." He goes on to say: "It is a coarse-grained and exploitative work which depends on excess for its impact. Ashore it is a bore, awkwardly staged and lumpily written." The most widespread criticism of the film is the artificiality of the mechanical shark.
In 2010, criticism surfaced from an unexpected quarter — conservationists. They credit the film with the so-called "Jaws effect", which allegedly inspired "legions of fishermen [who] piled into boats and killed thousands of the ocean predators in shark-fishing tournaments."
Accolades
Jaws won three Academy AwardsAcademy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
for Best Film Editing, Best Original Dramatic Score
Academy Award for Best Original Score
The Academy Award for Original Score is presented to the best substantial body of music in the form of dramatic underscoring written specifically for the film by the submitting composer.-Superlatives:...
and Best Sound (Robert Hoyt
Robert Hoyt (sound engineer)
Robert Hoyt is an American sound engineer. He won an Academy Award for Best Sound for the film Jaws.-External links:...
, Roger Heman
Roger Heman
Roger Heman was an American sound engineer. He won an Academy Award for Best Sound and was nominated for another one in the same category.-Selected filmography:Won* Jaws Nominated...
, Earl Madery
Earl Madery
Earl Madery is an American sound engineer. He won an Academy Award for Best Sound for the film Jaws.-External links:...
and John Carter
John Carter (sound engineer)
John Carter was an American sound engineer. He won an Academy Award for Best Sound for the film Jaws. He worked on over 110 films between 1944 and 1980.-External links:...
). It was also nominated for Best Picture
Academy Award for Best Picture
The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to artists working in the motion picture industry. The Best Picture category is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible not only...
, losing to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (film)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a 1975 American drama film directed by Miloš Forman and based on the 1962 novel of the same name by Ken Kesey....
. In 2008, Jaws was selected by Empire
Empire (magazine)
Empire is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media. From the first issue in July 1989, the magazine was edited by Barry McIlheney and published by Emap. Bauer purchased Emap Consumer Media in early 2008...
magazine as the fifth greatest film ever made. Quint was also placed at #50 on Empire's list of The 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time. In 2003, The New York Times included the film on its list of the best 1000 movies ever made. In 2010, Total Film
Total Film
Total Film is a British film magazine published 13 times a year by Future Publishing. The magazine was launched in 1997 and offers film, DVD and Blu-ray news, reviews and features...
selected the film as one of The 100 Greatest Movies of All Time. Jaws was number 48 on American Film Institute
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
's 100 Years... 100 Movies
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies
The first of the AFI 100 Years… series of cinematic milestones, AFI's 100 Years…100 Movies is a list of the 100 best American movies, as determined by the American Film Institute from a poll of more than 1,500 artists and leaders in the film industry who chose from a list of 400 nominated movies...
, a list of the greatest American films of all time, dropping down to number 56 on the 10 Year Anniversary list. It was ranked second on a similar list for thrillers, 100 Years... 100 Thrills
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills
Part of the AFI 100 Years… series, AFI's 100 Years…100 Thrills is a list of the top 100 heart-pounding movies in American cinema. The list was unveiled by the American Film Institute on June 12, 2001, during a CBS special hosted by Harrison Ford....
. Jaws was number one in the Bravo network's five-hour miniseries The 100 Scariest Movie Moments
100 Scariest Movie Moments
The 100 Scariest Movie Moments is a television documentary miniseries that first aired in late October 2004 on Bravo. Aired in five 60-minute segments, the miniseries counts down what producer Anthony Timpone, writer Patrick Moses, and director Kevin Kaufman have determined as the 100 most...
(2004). Similarly, the Chicago Film Critics Association
Chicago Film Critics Association
The Chicago Film Critics Association is an American film critic association.-Members:Current members include:*Sarah Knight Adamson*Zbigniew Banas*Shelley Cameron*Dave Canfield*Vittorio Carli*Erik Childress*Camerin Courtney*Bonnie DeShong...
named it the 6th scariest film ever made. The shark was anointed number 18 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains is a list of the 100 greatest screen characters chosen by American Film Institute in June 2003. It is part of the AFI 100 Years… series. The series was first presented in a CBS special hosted by Arnold Schwarzenegger...
. In 2001, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
. In 2005, the American Film Institute voted Roy Scheider's line "You're gonna need a bigger boat" as number 35 on its list of the top 100 movie quotes
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes
Part of the AFI 100 Years... series, AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes is a list of the top 100 movie quotations in American cinema. The American Film Institute revealed the list on June 21, 2005, in a three-hour television program on CBS...
. John Williams
John Williams
John Towner Williams is an American composer, conductor, and pianist. In a career spanning almost six decades, he has composed some of the most recognizable film scores in the history of motion pictures, including the Star Wars saga, Jaws, Superman, the Indiana Jones films, E.T...
's score was ranked at number six on AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores
AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores
Part of the AFI 100 Years… series, AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores is a list of the top 25 film scores in American cinema. The list was unveiled by the American Film Institute in 2005.-The List:-External links:**...
. In 2006, the screenplay of Jaws was selected by the Writers Guild of America
Writers Guild of America
The Writers Guild of America is a generic term referring to the joint efforts of two different US labor unions:* The Writers Guild of America, East , representing TV and film writers East of the Mississippi....
as the 63rd best screenplay of all time.
American Film InstituteAmerican Film InstituteThe American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
Lists
- AFI's 100 Years... 100 MoviesAFI's 100 Years... 100 MoviesThe first of the AFI 100 Years… series of cinematic milestones, AFI's 100 Years…100 Movies is a list of the 100 best American movies, as determined by the American Film Institute from a poll of more than 1,500 artists and leaders in the film industry who chose from a list of 400 nominated movies...
–#48 - AFI's 100 Years... 100 ThrillsAFI's 100 Years... 100 ThrillsPart of the AFI 100 Years… series, AFI's 100 Years…100 Thrills is a list of the top 100 heart-pounding movies in American cinema. The list was unveiled by the American Film Institute on June 12, 2001, during a CBS special hosted by Harrison Ford....
–#2 - AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and VillainsAFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and VillainsAFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains is a list of the 100 greatest screen characters chosen by American Film Institute in June 2003. It is part of the AFI 100 Years… series. The series was first presented in a CBS special hosted by Arnold Schwarzenegger...
:–#18 Villain (The Shark) - AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie QuotesAFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie QuotesPart of the AFI 100 Years... series, AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes is a list of the top 100 movie quotations in American cinema. The American Film Institute revealed the list on June 21, 2005, in a three-hour television program on CBS...
–#35 ("You're gonna need a bigger boat.") - AFI's 100 Years of Film ScoresAFI's 100 Years of Film ScoresPart of the AFI 100 Years… series, AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores is a list of the top 25 film scores in American cinema. The list was unveiled by the American Film Institute in 2005.-The List:-External links:**...
–#6 - AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition)–#56
Legacy
Jaws was a key film in establishing the benefits of a wide national release backed by heavy media advertising, rather than a progressive release that let a film slowly enter new markets and build support over a period of time. Rather than let the film gain notice by word-of-mouth, Hollywood launched a successful television marketing campaign for the film, which added another $700,000 to the cost.Similar to the fear of showers created by the pivotal scene in the 1960 film Psycho
Psycho (1960 film)
Psycho is a 1960 American suspense/psychological horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins. The film is based on the screenplay by Joseph Stefano, who adapted it from the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch...
, Jaws caused many viewers to be afraid to enter the ocean. The film was credited with reduced beach attendance in the summer of 1975.
Although it is considered a thriller-horror classic, the film is recognized as being responsible for perpetuating negative stereotypes about sharks and their behavior. Author Peter Benchley stated that he would not have written the original novel had he known what sharks are really like in the wild. Benchley later wrote Shark Trouble, a non-fiction book about shark behavior, and Shark Life, another non-fiction book describing his dives with sharks. Conservation groups have bemoaned the fact that the film has made it considerably harder to convince the public that sharks should be protected.
Jaws set the template for many future horror films, so much so that the script for Ridley Scott
Ridley Scott
Sir Ridley Scott is an English film director and producer. His most famous films include The Duellists , Alien , Blade Runner , Legend , Thelma & Louise , G. I...
's 1979 science fiction film Alien
Alien (film)
Alien is a 1979 science fiction horror film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm and Yaphet Kotto. The film's title refers to its primary antagonist: a highly aggressive extraterrestrial creature which...
was pitched to studio executives with the proposed tag line: "Jaws in space."
Universal "devised and co-ordinated a highly innovative plan" for the first film's distribution and exhibition. The studio and publisher Bantam designed a logo which would appear on both the paperback and on all film advertising. "Both publisher and distributor recognized the mutual benefits that a joint promotion strategy would bring." Producers Zanuck and Brown toured six cities to promote the paperback and the film. Once the film was released, more merchandising was created, including shark-illustrated swimming towels and T-shirts, plastic shark fins for swimmers to wear, and shark-shaped inflatables for them to float on. The Ideal Toy Company
Ideal Toy Company
Ideal Toy Company was founded as Ideal Novelty and Toy Company in New York in 1907 by Morris and Rose Michtom after they had invented the Teddy bear in 1903. The company changed its name to Ideal Toy Company in 1938...
produced a game
The Game of Jaws
The Game of Jaws is a 1975 board game by Ideal. The game is based on the blockbuster of the same name. Today, the game is very rare and is a valuable collector's item.-Game:...
in which the player had to use a hook to fish out items from the shark's mouth before the jaws closed.
In the 2000s, an independent group of fans produced a feature-length documentary. The Shark is Still Working
The Shark Is Still Working
The Shark is Still Working is a documentary film on the impact and legacy of the 1975 Steven Spielberg blockbuster Jaws. It features interviews with a range of cast and crew from the film. It is narrated by Roy Scheider and dedicated to Peter Benchley...
features interviews with a range of cast and crew from the film, and some from the sequels. It is narrated by Roy Scheider and dedicated to Peter Benchley, who died in 2006.
Home video releases
The first LaserdiscLaserdisc
LaserDisc was a home video format and the first commercial optical disc storage medium. Initially licensed, sold, and marketed as MCA DiscoVision in North America in 1978, the technology was previously referred to interally as Optical Videodisc System, Reflective Optical Videodisc, Laser Optical...
title marketed in North America was the MCA DiscoVision
DiscoVision
DiscoVision is the name of several things related to the video laserdisc format. It was the original name of the "Reflective Optical Videodisc System" format later known as LaserVision or LaserDisc....
release of Jaws in 1978. A second Laserdisc was released in 1991, before a third and final release came under the MCA/Universal Home Video's "Signature Collection" imprint in 1995. This release was an elaborate boxset, which included the film, along with deleted scenes and outtakes, a new two-hour documentary on the making of the film, a copy of the novel Jaws, and a CD of John Williams's soundtrack. A year after its MCA DiscoVision release, it returned to theaters for a special 2-week limited engagement. It was also released on VHS by MCA Home Video in the mid 1980s and in 1995 by MCA Universal Home Video as a Collector's Edition featuring a making-of retrospective. MCA Universal Home Video released it on VHS again in 1997 as a THX-certified Special Widescreen Edition featuring a 10-minute special introduction at the beginning of the tape which was shown previously on the 1995 VHS.
Jaws was first released on DVD in 2000 for the film's 25th anniversary. It featured a 50-minute documentary on the making of the film (an edited version of the one featured on the 1995 laserdisc release), with interviews from Steven Spielberg, Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, Peter Benchley and other cast and crew members. Other extras included deleted scenes, outtakes, trailers, production photos, and storyboards. In June 2005, on the 30th anniversary of the film's release, a festival named JawsFest was held in Martha's Vineyard
Martha's Vineyard
Martha's Vineyard is an island located south of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, known for being an affluent summer colony....
. Jaws was then re-released on DVD, this time including the full two-hour documentary produced by Laurent Bouzereau for the LaserDisc. As well as containing most of the same bonus features the previous DVD contained, it included a previously unavailable interview with Spielberg conducted on the set of Jaws in 1974.
It has been confirmed by Spielberg that a Blu-ray release is in the works.
Sequels
The film spawned three sequels, all of which failed to match the success of the original. Indeed, their combined domestic grosses barely cover half of the original's. Spielberg was unavailable to do a sequel, as he was working on Close Encounters of the Third KindClose Encounters of the Third Kind
Close Encounters of the Third Kind is a 1977 science fiction film written and directed by Steven Spielberg. The film stars Richard Dreyfuss, François Truffaut, Melinda Dillon, Teri Garr, Bob Balaban, and Cary Guffey...
with Richard Dreyfuss. Jaws 2
Jaws 2
Jaws 2 is a 1978 thriller film and the first sequel to Steven Spielberg's Jaws , which is based on Peter Benchley's novel of the same name...
was directed by Jeannot Szwarc
Jeannot Szwarc
Jeannot Szwarc is a French Film/TV Director.Szwarc was born in Paris. He began working as a director in American television during the 1960s, in particular on Ironside...
; Roy Scheider, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton, and Jeffrey Kramer reprised their roles from the original film. It is generally regarded as the best of the sequels. The next film, Jaws 3-D
Jaws 3-D
Jaws 3-D is a 1983 thriller film directed by Joe Alves and starring Dennis Quaid, Bess Armstrong, Lea Thompson and Louis Gossett, Jr...
, directed by Joe Alves, was released in the 3-D
3-D film
A 3-D film or S3D film is a motion picture that enhances the illusion of depth perception...
format, although the effect did not transfer to television or home video, where it was renamed Jaws 3. Dennis Quaid
Dennis Quaid
Dennis William Quaid is an American actor known for his comedic and dramatic roles. First gaining widespread attention in the 1980s, his career rebounded in the 1990s after he overcame an addiction to drugs and an eating disorder...
and Louis Gossett, Jr.
Louis Gossett, Jr.
Louis Cameron Gossett, Jr. is an American actor best known for his role as Gunnery Sergeant Emil Foley in the 1982 film An Officer and a Gentleman and Fiddler in the 1970s television miniseries Roots...
starred in the movie. Jaws: The Revenge
Jaws: The Revenge
Jaws: The Revenge, Also known as, 'Jaws 4: The Revenge', is a 1987 thriller film directed by Joseph Sargent. It is the third sequel to Steven Spielberg's Jaws and the final installment of the series....
, directed by Joseph Sargent
Joseph Sargent
Joseph Sargent is an American film director. He has directed many television movies, but his best known feature film works are probably White Lightning, MacArthur, Nightmares and Jaws: The Revenge, with his most popular film being The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. He has won four Emmy Awards...
, featured the return of Lorraine Gary and starred Michael Caine
Michael Caine
Sir Michael Caine, CBE is an English actor. He won Academy Awards for best supporting actor in both Hannah and Her Sisters and The Cider House Rules ....
, is considered one of the worst movies ever made. While all three sequels made a profit at the box office (Jaws 2 and Jaws 3-D are among the top 20 highest-grossing films of their respective years), critics and audiences were generally dissatisfied with the films.
In February 2010, film website Cinema Blend
Cinema Blend
Cinema Blend is a website founded and run by Josh Tyler dedicated to news and reviews of upcoming and currently playing films, movie projects, Television Shows, and a newly founded Music section which covers album reviews, band interviews and daily news from the industry. It combines gossip from...
reported that a source from Universal Pictures has indicated that Universal is "strongly considering" remaking Jaws in 3-D
3-D film
A 3-D film or S3D film is a motion picture that enhances the illusion of depth perception...
, following the commercial success of Avatar. The source also reported that 30 Rock
30 Rock
30 Rock is an American television comedy series created by Tina Fey that airs on NBC. The series is loosely based on Fey's experiences as head writer for Saturday Night Live...
star Tracy Morgan
Tracy Morgan
Tracy Morgan is an American comedian who is best known for his eight seasons as a cast member on Saturday Night Live and currently known for playing the role of Tracy Jordan on the NBC series 30 Rock.-Early life:...
was considered to portray Matt Hooper in the remake, which they say could be more comedic and make more use of special effects. The studio has not officially commented upon the rumor.
Adaptations and merchandise
The film has been adapted into two video games, two theme park rides at Universal Studios FloridaUniversal Studios Florida
Universal Studios Florida is an American theme park located in Orlando, Florida. Opened on June 7, 1990, the park's theme is the entertainment industry, in particular movies and television. Universal Studios Florida inspires its guests to "ride the movies," and it features numerous attractions and...
and Universal Studios Japan
Universal Studios Japan
, located in Osaka, is one of four Universal Studios theme parks, owned and operated by USJ Co., Ltd. . The park is similar to Universal Orlando Resort, since it contains many of the same rides. Most visitors are Japanese tourists or tourists from other Asian countries such as Taiwan, Hong Kong,...
, and two musicals: JAWS The Musical!, which premiered in the summer of 2004 at the Minnesota Fringe Festival; and Giant Killer Shark: The Musical
Giant Killer Shark: The Musical
Giant Killer Shark: The Musical is a meta-musical composed by Canadian musician Sam Sutherland. At both the Toronto and Winnipeg Fringe Festival, Giant Killer Shark was named the Best of the Fest, being awarded a five star rating....
, which premiered in the summer of 2006 at the Toronto Fringe Festival
Toronto Fringe Festival
The Toronto Fringe Festival is an annual theatre festival, featuring uncensored plays by unknown or well-known artists, taking place in the theatres of Toronto. Several productions originally mounted at the Fringe have later been remounted for larger audiences, including the Tony Award-winning...
. Aristocrat made an officially licensed slot machine
Slot machine
A slot machine , informally fruit machine , the slots , poker machine or "pokies" or simply slot is a casino gambling machine with three or more reels which spin when a button is pushed...
based on the movie.
External links
- Jaws at Filmsite.orgFilmsite.orgFilmSite.org is a website operated by Tim Dirks since 1996, and owned by AMC since 2008. It contains over 300 reviews of what Dirks judges to be the "greatest films" of all time. In some cases, the review is scene-by-scene. It also contains many other pages offering an introduction to cinema...
- JAWSmovie.com - The community for fans of Jaws, Steven Spielberg, sharks and movies
- Funchase: The Summer of Jaws
- Wildwood 365: Catching up with Joe Jaws
- Shark City: A look at Jaws' ongoing impact upon pop culture