Development in 2018
Richard D. Zanuck and
David Brown, producers at
Universal Pictures, independently heard about Peter Benchley's novel
Jaws. Brown came across it in the literature section of lifestyle magazine
Cosmopolitan, which at that time was edited by his wife,
Helen Gurley Brown. A small card written by the magazine's book editor gave a detailed description of the plot, concluding with the comment "might make a good movie". The producers each read the book over the course of a single night and agreed the next morning that it was "the most exciting thing that they had ever read" and that they wanted to produce a film version, although they were unsure how it would be accomplished. They purchased the film rights in 1973, before the book's publication, for approximately $175,000 (). Brown claimed that had they read the book twice, they would never have made the film because they would have realized how difficult it would be to execute certain sequences. To direct, Zanuck and Brown first considered veteran filmmaker
John Sturges—whose résumé included another maritime adventure,
The Old Man and the Sea—before offering the job to
Dick Richards, whose directorial debut,
The Culpepper Cattle Co., had come out the previous year. They soon grew irritated by Richards's habit of describing the shark as a whale and dropped him from the project. Brown helped convince Spielberg to stick with the project, saying that "after [
Jaws], you can make all the films you want".
Writing (pictured in 1974), the author of the
original novel. For the screen adaptation, Spielberg wanted to stay with the novel's basic plot, but discarded Benchley's
subplots. Benchley wrote three drafts before the script was turned over to other writers;
Columbo creators
William Link and
Richard Levinson also declined Spielberg's invitation.
Tony and
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright
Howard Sackler was in Los Angeles when the filmmakers began looking for another writer and offered to do an uncredited rewrite; since the producers and Spielberg were unhappy with Benchley's drafts, they quickly agreed. Gottlieb sent Spielberg three pages of notes, and picked the part of Harry Meadows, the politically connected editor of Amity's newspaper. He passed the audition one week before Spielberg took him to meet the producers regarding a writing job. The script for each scene was typically finished the night before it was shot, after Gottlieb had dinner with Spielberg and members of the cast and crew to decide what would go into the film. Many pieces of dialogue originated from the actors' improvisations during these meals; a few were created on set just prior to filming.
John Milius contributed other dialogue polishes, Spielberg has claimed that he prepared his own draft, although it is unclear to what degree the other screenwriters drew on his material. The director estimated the final script had a total of 27 scenes that were not in the book. Benchley had written
Jaws after reading about sport fisherman
Frank Mundus's capture of an enormous shark in 1964. According to Gottlieb, Quint was loosely based on Mundus, whose book
Sportfishing for Sharks he read for research. According to the director, Milius turned Sackler's "three-quarters of a page" speech into a monologue, and that was then partially rewritten by Shaw.
Casting Though Spielberg complied with a request from Zanuck and Brown to cast known actors and Benchley suggesting
Robert Redford,
Paul Newman and
Steve McQueen for the leads, he wanted to avoid hiring any big stars. He felt that "somewhat anonymous" performers would help the audience "believe this was happening to people like you and me", whereas "stars bring a lot of memories along with them, and those memories can sometimes ... corrupt the story." The first actors cast were
Lorraine Gary, the wife of Universal president,
Sidney Sheinberg, as Ellen Brody, and
Murray Hamilton as the mayor of Amity Island. Stuntwoman-turned-actress
Susan Backlinie was cast as Chrissie Watkins (the first victim) as she knew how to swim and was willing to perform nude. The role of Brody was offered to
Robert Duvall, but the actor was interested only in portraying Quint.
Charlton Heston expressed a desire for the role but Spielberg felt that Heston would bring a screen persona too grand for the part of a police chief of a modest community.
Roy Scheider became interested in the project after overhearing Spielberg at a party talk with a screenwriter about having the shark jump up onto a boat. The role of Quint was originally offered to actors
Lee Marvin and
Sterling Hayden, both of whom passed. Shaw based his performance on fellow cast member Craig Kingsbury, a local fisherman, farmer and legendary eccentric, who was cast in the small role of fisherman Ben Gardner. Spielberg described Kingsbury as "the purest version of who, in my mind, Quint was" and some of his offscreen utterances were incorporated into the script as lines of both Gardner and Quint. For the role of Hooper, Spielberg initially wanted
Jon Voight.
Timothy Bottoms,
Jan-Michael Vincent,
Joel Grey, and
Jeff Bridges were also considered for the part. Spielberg's friend
George Lucas suggested
Richard Dreyfuss, whom he had directed in
American Graffiti. Because the film the director envisioned was so dissimilar to Benchley's novel, Spielberg asked Dreyfuss not to read it. As a result of the casting, Hooper was rewritten to better suit the actor, on the island of
Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, selected after consideration was given to eastern
Long Island. Brown explained later that the production "needed a vacation area that was lower middle class enough so that an appearance of a shark would destroy the tourist business." Martha's Vineyard was also chosen because the surrounding ocean had a sandy bottom that never dropped below for out from shore, which allowed the mechanical sharks to operate while also beyond sight of land. As Spielberg wanted to film the aquatic sequences relatively close-up to resemble what people see while swimming, cinematographer
Bill Butler devised new equipment to facilitate marine and underwater shooting, including a rig to keep the camera stable, regardless of tide, and a sealed submersible camera box. Spielberg asked the art department to avoid red in both scenery and wardrobe, so that the blood from the attacks would be the only red element and cause a bigger shock.|alt=Fishing cottages and boats on Menemsha's harbor. Initially the film's producers wanted to train a great white shark but quickly realized this was not possible, so three full-size
pneumatically powered prop sharks—which the film crew nicknamed "Bruce" after Spielberg's lawyer, Bruce Ramer—were made for the production: a "sea-sled shark", a full-body prop with its belly missing that was towed with a line, and two "platform sharks", one that moved from camera-left to right (with its hidden left side exposing an array of pneumatic hoses), and an opposite model with its right flank uncovered. In early July, the platform used to tow the two side-view 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.
Jaws was the first major motion picture to be shot on the ocean, resulting in a troubled shoot, and went far over budget. David Brown said that the budget "was $4 million and the picture wound up costing $9 million"; the effects outlays alone grew to $3 million due to the problems with the mechanical sharks. Gottlieb said that "there was nothing to do except make the movie", so everyone kept overworking, and while as a writer he did not have to attend the ocean set every day, once the crewmen returned they arrived "ravaged and sunburnt, windblown and covered with salt water". The prop sharks frequently malfunctioned owing to a series of problems including bad weather, pneumatic hoses taking on salt water, frames fracturing due to water resistance, corroding skin, and
electrolysis. From the first water test onward, the "non-absorbent" neoprene foam that made up the sharks' skin soaked up liquid, causing the sharks to balloon, and the sea-sled model frequently got entangled among forests of seaweed. Gottlieb was nearly decapitated by the boat's propellers, and Dreyfuss was almost imprisoned in the steel cage. Editor
Verna Fields rarely had material to work with during principal photography, as according to Spielberg "we would shoot five scenes in a good day, three in an average day, and none in a bad day." The delays proved beneficial in some regards. The script was refined during production, and the unreliable mechanical sharks forced Spielberg to shoot many scenes so that the shark was only hinted at. For example, for much of the shark hunt, its location is indicated by the floating yellow barrels. Spielberg also included multiple shots of just the dorsal fin. This forced restraint is widely thought to have added to the film's suspense. As Spielberg put it years later, "The film went from a Japanese Saturday matinee horror flick to more of a
Hitchcock, the less-you-see-the-more-you-get thriller." During the Taylors' shoot, a great white attacked the boat and cage. The footage of the cage attack was so stunning that Spielberg was eager to incorporate it in the film. No one had been in the cage at the time and the script, following the novel, originally had the shark killing Hooper in it. The storyline was consequently altered to have Hooper escape from the cage, which allowed the footage to be used. As production executive Bill Gilmore put it, "The shark down in Australia rewrote the script and saved Dreyfuss's character." Although principal photography was scheduled to take 55 days, it did not wrap until October 6, 1974, after 159 days. Spielberg himself was not present for the shooting of the final scene in which the shark explodes, as he believed that the crew were planning to throw him in the water when the scene was done. Afterward, underwater scenes were shot at the
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios water tank in
Culver City, with stuntmen
Dick Warlock and Frank James Sparks as stand-ins for Dreyfuss in the scene where the shark attacks the cage, as well as near
Santa Catalina Island, California. Fields, who had completed a rough cut of the first two-thirds of the film, up until the shark hunt, finished the editing and reworked some of the material. According to Zanuck, "She actually came in and reconstructed some scenes that Steven had constructed for comedy and made them terrifying, and some scenes he shot to be terrifying and made them comedy scenes." The boat used for the
Orca was brought to Los Angeles so the sound effects team could record sounds for both the ship and the underwater scenes. Two scenes were altered following test screenings. As the audience's screams had covered up Scheider's "bigger boat" one-liner, Brody's reaction after the shark jumps behind him was extended, and the volume of the line was raised. Spielberg also decided that he was greedy for "one more scream", and reshot the scene in which Hooper discovers Ben Gardner's body, using $3,000 of his own money after Universal refused to pay for the reshoot. The underwater scene was shot in Fields's swimming pool in
Encino, California, using a
lifecast latex model of Craig Kingsbury's head attached to a fake body, which was placed in the wrecked boat's hull. To simulate the murky waters of Martha's Vineyard, powdered milk was poured into the pool, which was then covered with a
tarpaulin. ==Music==