BRUCE ALMIGHTY
As a shark nerd, I’m surprised it’s taken me this long to mention here on Susology the death of Roy Scheider (above centre), the man best remembered for his role as Chief Brody in Jaws. It was very sad indeed. Growing up, the Chief played a big part in the formation of this peculiar fascination with marine predators. But this is no place for mourning. Instead, let’s celebrate his role in a project that no one believed would ever get finished, the extraordinary determination of its production team, and the unwavering vision of one man in particular: the young and eager to impress Steven Spielberg.
On May 2nd, 1974, filming for Jaws began. It would prove very, very hard. There were three mechanical sharks, all of them called Bruce: one full bodied, one to be shot from the left, and one from the right (see him thrashing about in the surf with his director above). But Bruce rarely worked. The production closed several times for repairs. Days went by without getting a single shot, and on top of that there were all the predictable problems of shooting on the open sea: wet cameras, wet team, the cold, low morale. The whole thing quickly went beyond the June 30th deadline. But Spielberg didn’t want to shoot it in a tank, something the producers were actively encouraging to keep costs down. He didn’t want some fake, half-arsed rehash of Moby Dick. He wanted reality:
“There are two categories, films and movies,” he told them. “I want to make films.”
Of course it would have been much easier to shoot Jaws in a tank. With the film quickly plunging into a director’s worst nightmare, Robert Shaw, who played the burly seafaring captain Quint, called the whole thing “a piece of shit”. Richard Dreyfuss, the nerdy oceanographer Hooper, predicted the “turkey of the year”. All in all, things were looking up for ‘Jaws The Movie’ in the summer of ’74....
But the fact that the shark never worked on the rough waters in and around Martha’s Vineyard proved a blessing in disguise. Finding themselves with so much time on their hands, the three lead actors, Shcieder recalls, would go to Spielberg’s house at night and improvise scenes that screenwriter Carl Gottlieb could then write down. It meant shifting the focus away from the shark and onto the people. And so the uncompromising fake lamnid - the family of sharks that great whites belongs to - that never worked was, in part, responsible for some of the film’s most memorable scenes - like Quint’s epic Indianapolis monologue aboard The Orca (see below).
Filming eventually did end on September 17th, 1974, after 159 days of Bruce refusing to cooperate. Fifty-five had been originally pencilled into the diary. On top of that, the budget had extended from $3 million to $10 million. The whole process had been a disaster. Spielberg, on his way back to LA, spent a night in a Boston hotel:
“That night I had a full-blown anxiety attack, something that I had staved off for eight or nine months. I thought I was going crazy... I was lying in bed alone in this hotel room, sweating, heart palpitations. I couldn’t get out of the room. If I got out of bed, I’d pass out. I was too afraid to reach for the phone. I was a complete wreck. In a way I could relate to when Francis (Ford Coppola) made Apocalypse Now. When Hollywood was calling Francis self-indulgent, I was just looking at Francis and saying, Well he’s just a human being going through what we went through on Jaws.”
Speilberg had extracted every last drop of imagination and creativity from his own plentiful supply to negotiate the never-ending collection of spanners in the works. One brooding John Williams soundtrack later and the film would seal his reputation forever. It also sealed people's fear of the ocean and what lurks beneath its waves. But Spielberg hasn’t forgotten the real horror of Jaws: the making of. Looking back on it, he paraphrased the French director Francois Truffaut:
“Making a movie is like getting on a stagecoach. At first you’re hoping for a pleasant journey. After a while you’re just praying you get there. That’s what Jaws was all about.”
Filming eventually did end on September 17th, 1974, after 159 days of Bruce refusing to cooperate. Fifty-five had been originally pencilled into the diary. On top of that, the budget had extended from $3 million to $10 million. The whole process had been a disaster. Spielberg, on his way back to LA, spent a night in a Boston hotel:
“That night I had a full-blown anxiety attack, something that I had staved off for eight or nine months. I thought I was going crazy... I was lying in bed alone in this hotel room, sweating, heart palpitations. I couldn’t get out of the room. If I got out of bed, I’d pass out. I was too afraid to reach for the phone. I was a complete wreck. In a way I could relate to when Francis (Ford Coppola) made Apocalypse Now. When Hollywood was calling Francis self-indulgent, I was just looking at Francis and saying, Well he’s just a human being going through what we went through on Jaws.”
Speilberg had extracted every last drop of imagination and creativity from his own plentiful supply to negotiate the never-ending collection of spanners in the works. One brooding John Williams soundtrack later and the film would seal his reputation forever. It also sealed people's fear of the ocean and what lurks beneath its waves. But Spielberg hasn’t forgotten the real horror of Jaws: the making of. Looking back on it, he paraphrased the French director Francois Truffaut:
“Making a movie is like getting on a stagecoach. At first you’re hoping for a pleasant journey. After a while you’re just praying you get there. That’s what Jaws was all about.”
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Gotta love jaws. Gotta love Spielberg
comfort, freedom, utility, audacity - can't wait till denim shorts are back in fashion.
Many times I tried to figure out, what are people talking about here and what they mean by saying stuff like that. And I realized that they just don’t have a clue about the topic themselves. It’s kinda strange. Anyway I have to say that you mast understand, what’s really doing on to comment things. Otherwise you will look and sound stupid.