On a May day in 1974, off the coast of Martha's Vineyard, the mechanical star of Universal's new shark picture was lowered into the Atlantic for its first proper outing — and promptly sank to the bottom. Divers hauled it back up. Over the following weeks the salt water corroded its innards, its pneumatic hoses clogged, its skin became waterlogged and bloated, and its crossed eyes and gnashing rubber jaws refused, day after day, to do anything on cue. The film was Jaws. The shark — three sharks, in fact — was collectively nicknamed Bruce, after Steven Spielberg's lawyer, Bruce Ramer. And Bruce's stubborn refusal to work is one of the most productive failures in cinema history.
The project had begun promisingly enough. Producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown bought the rights to Peter Benchley's novel before it was even published in 1974, whereupon it became a runaway bestseller. To direct, they hired a 26-year-old with a single theatrical feature to his name, Steven Spielberg. To build the shark, Universal coaxed Bob Mattey out of retirement — the effects veteran who had made the giant squid for Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea two decades earlier. Mattey's team built three full-scale pneumatic sharks: one complete model and two cutaway versions for left and right profiles. Crucially, they were tested in a freshwater tank in California. Nobody had put them in the sea.
The shoot itself was a rolling catastrophe. Spielberg had insisted on filming on the real ocean rather than a studio tank — the first major studio production to attempt it — and the ocean fought back. Sailboats drifted into shot, cameras took on water, actors turned green, and at one point the Orca, the fishing boat at the heart of the film, began to sink with equipment aboard. Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss feuded openly between takes. A 55-day schedule stretched to 159 days; the budget roughly doubled, from about $4 million to around $9 million. The crew took to calling the picture "Flaws", and Spielberg later admitted he feared he would never work again.
The monster you don't see
With Bruce inoperative for much of the schedule, Spielberg was forced into suggestion. He shot from the shark's point of view, gliding low through the water towards kicking legs. He used yellow barrels, harpooned into the unseen fish, to mark its movements on the surface. And he leaned on John Williams, whose score reduced the monster to two alternating notes — E and F — thumping like a heartbeat. Spielberg initially thought the theme was a joke when Williams played it to him on the piano; it went on to win the Oscar. The result of all this improvisation is that the shark is not fully seen until well past the film's halfway point, a restraint straight out of Hitchcock that critics have praised ever since. The famous line "You're gonna need a bigger boat" was an ad-lib by Roy Scheider, and Robert Shaw — a published playwright as well as an actor — reworked the chilling USS Indianapolis monologue himself, after drafts by Howard Sackler and John Milius.
Inventing the blockbuster
Just as important as what was on screen was how Universal sold it. Wide simultaneous openings were then the mark of a film a studio wanted to dump before word of mouth killed it; prestige pictures opened slowly, city by city. Universal did the opposite with confidence: a heavy national television advertising campaign — then unusual for a film — and a release on hundreds of screens across North America on 20 June 1975. Queues wrapped around blocks all summer. Jaws became the first film to earn more than $100 million in North American theatrical rentals (the distributor's share of box-office takings) and overtook The Godfather as the highest-grossing film of all time, a title it held until Star Wars arrived two years later. Newspapers reported swimmers thinking twice about the water that summer; "summer blockbuster" entered the language as a deliberate business model rather than a happy accident.
The Academy gave Jaws three Oscars — for Verna Fields's editing, for sound, and for Williams's score — though it lost Best Picture to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Spielberg was conspicuously not nominated for Best Director. Three sequels followed without him, culminating in the widely derided Jaws: The Revenge. The lesson the industry took, for better and worse, was the release pattern; the lesson Spielberg took was subtler. A working shark would have been shown early and often, and audiences would have laughed at the rubber. The broken one taught Hollywood its most profitable secret — that the monster in your head swims faster than any machine.
Quiz nuggets
- The three mechanical sharks in Jaws were nicknamed Bruce, after Steven Spielberg's lawyer, Bruce Ramer.
- Effects veteran Bob Mattey, who built the sharks, had earlier made the giant squid for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
- The planned 55-day shoot stretched to 159 days, and the budget roughly doubled to around $9 million.
- John Williams's two-note shark theme — alternating E and F — won one of the film's three Oscars, and "You're gonna need a bigger boat" was ad-libbed by Roy Scheider.
- Released on 20 June 1975, Jaws became the first film to pass $100 million in North American theatrical rentals.