Hollywood director Steven Spielberg had a panic attack after making Jaws

Daily Mirror

a day ago

From weather delays to a malfunctioning mechanical shark, a sinking boat and fear of being fired, director Steven Spielberg opens up about the stress of making Jaws as it hits its 50th anniversary
Fifty years on, you still only have to hear those two iconic low notes once to be filled with a sense of impending doom. Who doesn't think of those screaming holiday-makers swimming frantically away from a Great White whenever they go in the sea?
This is the legacy of Jaws, the first ever blockbuster film that redefined Hollywood, but left its director Steven Spielberg completely traumatised. From relentless weather delays and a malfunctioning mechanical shark to his own post-production PTSD and fears the film would end his career, Spielberg has revealed that he even had a frightening panic attack when the film wrapped.
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The legendary movie director, who went on to direct massive box office hits including E.T., Jurassic Park, Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan, says: 'I never once felt like I wanted to quit. I was terrified I was going to be fired. When the film wrapped Martha's Vineyard, I had a full-blown panic attack.
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"I was in it over my head for about seven or eight months on Martha's Vineyard. It was logistically the most difficult movie I think I'll ever make. I couldn't breathe. I thought I was having a heart attack. I couldn't get a full breath of air. I kept going to the bathroom and splashing water on my face. I was shaking. I was completely out of it.
"And I think it was everything that I had experienced on the island, at least trying to not only hold myself together but hold the crew together. I felt really responsible for keeping them there for as long as we had to stay. And I think I just lost it.'
Spielberg opens up in a new documentary, Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story, to air on Nat Geo and Disney+ next Friday. Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the 1975 summer hit that saw cinema-goers queuing round the block, the 90-minute special charts the extraordinary journey from Peter Benchley's spine-chilling bestselling novel to the cinematic phenomenon that continues to ripple through pop culture.
Starring Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw, the plot follows an epic battle of man vs nature after a young woman is killed by a shark, with everyone fighting to capture and kill the predator to save shutting down the beaches.
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Featuring rare archival footage and interviews with acclaimed Hollywood directors, top shark scientists, and conservationists, it uncovers the behind-the-scenes chaos, with insights into location-scouting, casting and graphics, and how the film inspired a new wave of filmmakers and even paved the way for modern shark conservation.
The documentary also examines the infamous 'Jaws Effect' - the wave of shark fear that was unleashed after the movie came out, reframing it as a legacy of respect for the ocean's top predator. Several filmmakers wax lyrical about Jaws, with Cameron Crowe saying: '50 years, we've come so far.
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"We're still talking about Jaws and the effect and the value of what that movie said and still says.' James Cameron says: 'There have been movies that have been made since using CG sharks that aren't nearly as good.' While JJ Abrams adds: 'It was sort of life-changing at nine years old. I don't remember having an experience that was that visceral and that thrilling.'
Original cast and crew are interviewed, including Lorraine Gary, who played Ellen Brody, Carl Gottlieb, who played Meadows, Jeffrey Kramer, who played Hendricks, as well as composer John Williams, who won Jaws an Oscar for Best Original Score.
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Williams reveals: 'This idea of characterising the shark musically was the result of a very simple idea that I had. I thought maybe some kind of bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, might indicate this mindless attack of the shark with this relentless drive that it has. And you don't know if it will work on an audience until you try it.'
Outtakes, filming footage and home video from Spielberg's archives are intercut with news reports from the time and clips from Jaws, along with new interviews that reveal the inside story.
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Explaining how the film first came about, Spielberg says: 'I didn't know what I wanted to do next. I had been wanting to do a UFO movie not yet called Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
"But that was sort of all I had in my mind. I had gone into producer Richard Zanuck and his partner, David Brown's office, many, many times, when I saw a stack of papers. I looked at the top sheet and it said Jaws, by Peter Benchley. And I had no idea what that meant, Jaws. I mean, was it the history of dentistry? I read it and I was enthralled.
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"It frightened me so much. I was so angry at being frightened that I wanted to frighten back. I'll make this movie and scare them all back.' There was already a director assigned to Jaws, but fortunately, Spielberg got it in the end. He says: 'I was as hungry as the shark was hungry to tell the story of Jaws.' However, the shoot was beset by problems from the beginning.
Spielberg says: 'For me, the story of Jaws is the fact that a movie that I thought would really end my career is the film that began it. The film wound up 100 days behind schedule.
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"The shark was not working. I wanted it to be real. I wanted to show what happens when a shark bites you. I was certainly aware I was going to make it as scary and as realistically brutal as I possibly could. We were on the ocean for like four and a half, five months and we all began going off the deep end, literally.
"There was nothing fun about making Jaws. It was a very, very hard thing to go out on the real ocean, be knocked around by the waves, by the currents. One more time. Shark comes up. And then we have to re-anchor, reposition the camera boat, suddenly the electrical barge with the generators running the arcs is too far away. And then on top of all that, 80% of the time the shark didn't work. The first mistake with the shark was they built it for freshwater.
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'They tested the shark for the first time in the water and we had at least 20 boats of tourists who had gathered around an area to watch the shark work. We had the shark on a huge 90-foot platform 30 feet underwater. At the press of a hydraulic button and pulling a lever back, supposedly, the shark comes shooting out of the water headfirst.
"The shark came up tail first. It was like a 25-foot moon.' On another occasion, Spielberg recalls that as they pulled a barrel away from the boat, the motorboat went too fast, pulled the planking from the hull, leaving water to rush in. 'The boat sank in about two minutes,' says Spielberg.
'We're not sailors. We were filmmakers, and we were a film company and we were way out of our element. There were times making that movie where I thought Jaws would probably be the last thing I ever made before people would stop hiring me. Scorsese used to come over to the set from New York. He'd fly down to Martha's Vineyard and he would just sit there feeling sorry for me. And we would commiserate. And I talked to my mom a lot. I mean, I was talking to my mom kind of like mommy, this is really impossible. Help.'
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Spielberg admits that he had a really tough time when the movie was finished. He says: 'The success was fantastic but it didn't stop the nightmares. It didn't stop me waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat where the sheets would be soaking wet. We didn't have the word PTSD in those days.
"And I had consistent nightmares about directing Jaws for years afterwards. I was still on the movie and the film was never ending. When they brought one of the boats all the way back from Martha's Vineyard and shipped the boat, the Orca, to the Universal back lot and put it in the water right next to the Jaws ride, I used to get in my electric cart without telling anybody, and I would sneak behind the trams, nobody could see me, and I'd just sneak on board the boat and I would sit in the cabin in that little leather red booth and I would just sit there and sometimes cry."
He adds: 'And I had nothing to cry about. The film was this phenomenon and I'm sitting here shedding tears, because I'm not able to divest myself of the experience. The boat helped me to begin to forget. That Orca was my therapeutic companion for several years after Jaws came out.' He adds: 'To me, Jaws was a life altering experience. On the one hand, it was a traumatising experience for me that was mostly about survival. Jaws, also, I owe everything to.'
*Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story premieres Friday 11th July at 8pm on National Geographic and streams the same day on Disney+