‘Jaws' turns 50: How other classic movies bit off the shark's signature riff — from ‘Caddyshack' to ‘Clerks'
Like the killer great white shark, the 'Jaws' theme song took a big bite out of movie history.
The terrifying two-note theme of the 1975 summer blockbuster — which turns 50 on June 20 — has been riffed on in other classic films for its cultural impact that is still striking fang-crunching fear in the masses five decades later.
Composer John Williams' menacing motif has been referenced — and ripped on — in other big films that have taken it from horror to humor.
9 'Jaws' defined the summer blockbuster after its release on June 20, 1975.
Courtesy Everett Collection
'I think it's a compliment when anything becomes parodied that much, like, if you work your way into a popular comedy movie or something,' film music historian Tim Greiving — who wrote the upcoming biography 'John Williams: A Composer's Life' — exclusively told The Post.
''It's, like, acknowledging that this is something that is so culturally important, or that everybody recognizes it, that you can kind of play on it. If it was a little more obscure, the reference wouldn't work. I'll take it as a compliment.'
But while the theme has been spoofed, Williams — who won his first of four Oscars for Best Original Score for 'Jaws' — took it very seriously.
'I think that serious intention comes through in the music and keeps it from being campy,' said Greiving.
9 Richard Dreyfuss and Roy Scheider co-starred in 1975's 'Jaws.'
Courtesy Everett Collection
Still, the theme has been played for laughs in classic comedies such as 'Airplane!' and 'Caddyshack.'
'The funny thing is, John Williams has talked about [how] sometimes he plays it in concert, and people start laughing, and it's not supposed to make you laugh, although it made ['Jaws' director] Steven Spielberg laugh when he first heard it,' said Greiving. 'So it has this interesting psychological effect now.'
'But I think at its core, it still does what it was supposed to do — which is freak you out.'
Here, we dive into seven films that have sunk their teeth into the 'Jaws' theme.
'1941'
9 Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi co-starred in the 1979 war comedy '1941.'
Courtesy Everett Collection
The opening scene of Spielberg's 1979 war comedy pays homage to the 'Jaws' theme. with Susan Backlinie — who played Chrissie Watkins, the shark's first victim in 'Jaws.'
'Airplane!'
9 Julie Hagerty, Leslie Nielsen and Peter Graves took 1980's 'Airplane!' to comic heights.
©Paramount/Courtesy Everett Col
As what appears to be a fin — but turns out to be a 747 — cuts through the clouds, the sinister riff of 'Jaws' takes this 1980 disaster comedy off in its opening credits.
'Caddyshack'
9 Ted Knight and Chevy Chase were golfing goofballs in 1980's 'Caddyshack.'
©Orion Pictures Corp/Courtesy Everett Collection
When a candy bar is mistaken for a turd in a swimming pool, the 'Jaws' theme heightens the horror in the 1980 comedy starring Billy Murray and Chevy Chase.
'9 1/2 Weeks'
9 Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger steamed up the screen in 1986's '9 1/2 Weeks.'
©Orion Pictures Corp/Courtesy Everett Collection
When a kid claims that his friend can fart the 'Jaws' theme in this 1986 erotic drama, Mickey Rourke mimics it. How sexy.
'Spaceballs'
9 Bill Pullman and John Candy parodied 'Stars Wars' in 1987's 'Spaceballs.'
Mel Brooks' 1987 'Star Wars' parody plays off the menacing motif from 'Jaws' while chasing a rebel ship.
'Back to the Future II'
9 Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd reunited for 'Back to the Future II' in 1989.
The shark tale's theme plays as Michael J. Fox's Marty McFly encounters an advertisement for 'Jaws 19' — the 18th sequel to the original — when he travels to 2015.
'Clerks'
9 Brian O'Halloran and Jeff Anderson co-starred in Kevin Smith's directorial debut 'Clerks' in 1994.
Jeff Anderson's character in Kevin Smith's 1994 cult classic dips into the 'Jaws' theme as his triangular tortilla chip cuts through some 'thick & chunky' salsa.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Yahoo
I Can't Watch "Jaws" The Same Way After Reading These 13 Behind-The-Scenes Facts
Steven Spielberg got hold of an advanced copy of the 1974 novel Jaws by Peter Benchley before it was published and knew right away that he wanted to shoot it for the screen. But there was a problem. A pair of producers already owned the film rights and had a different director in mind. Then, one day, Spielberg got a call that Benchley wanted to meet with him. In an interview from the book Spielberg: The First Ten Years, the director explained, "They sat me down and announced, 'We want you to direct Jaws.' I said, 'Whatever happened to the director?' And they explained, 'We had the meeting with him, but he kept referring to the shark in front of Peter Benchley as "the white whale." And Peter became very disinterested in having his shark called a whale.' And that's how the project finally came to me." film version of Jaws cut out several subplots from the novel, including one where Ellen Brody has an affair with Matt Hooper. In the book, Ellen dated Matt's older brother when they were younger and, when they met again as adults, succumbed to the rugged marine biologist's charms. Martin Brody finds out about their liaison, but instead of wrapping up the plot with a confrontation or closure, he just stews in his bitterness, leading to a much less happy ending. The book also features a subplot about Mayor Larry Vaughn being under the mafia's thumb, as if his character could be any sleazier. Both subplots were cut because they took focus away from the real heart of the movie, the hunt for the deadly shark. author Peter Benchley appears briefly in the movie as a TV news reporter giving updates from the beach. Benchley had previously worked as an actual TV news reporter, so the role was a natural fit. After Jaws, Benchley became a shark expert and conservationist. He said, "Knowing what I know today, I couldn't write the same book. ... I couldn't possibly demonize an animal the way I did." Dreyfuss, who played Matt Hooper, wasn't Spielberg's first choice for the part. The director first went to Jon Voight, Timothy Bottoms, and Jeff Bridges before George Lucas suggested Dreyfuss, having just worked with him on American Graffiti. Dreyfuss wasn't initially interested in doing the movie, but after meeting with Spielberg a second time, he agreed to join the cast. Before his breakout role in American Graffiti, Dreyfuss had played small parts in various TV shows like Gunsmoke and That Girl. He would go on to work with Spielberg again in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Always. he started shooting Jaws, Spielberg hired the Australian filmmakers Ron and Valerie Taylor to shoot some underwater film with a real great white shark. The Taylors shot footage of a stuntman confronting the shark from within a cage, which was used in the tense scene in the movie where Hooper comes face to jaws with the shark. But despite the Taylors' experience working in the water, it didn't go as planned. The stuntman wasn't a trained diver, so he became overwhelmed with fear at the point of being submerged. During a take when he wasn't in the cage, the shark down below got caught in the wires attached to the cage. In its struggle to break free, the shark severed the wires and the cage sank into the sea. Spielberg had originally intended to have Dreyfuss's character killed by the shark during the cage scene, but he loved the happy accident of the Taylors' footage so much that he rewrote the script to have Hooper escape. Valerie Taylor went on to work as a conservationist and advocate for sharks, and the subject of the National Geographic documentary Playing with Sharks. She believes that sharks have distinct personalities and has said, "Some are shy, some are bullies, some are brave." Vineyard stood in for the town of Amity, but Spielberg chose the location for more than its quaint New England charm. To capture shots of the shark hunters out on the open ocean, Spielberg needed a location with shallow enough water to install and run the mechanical shark. He said, "It was the only place on the East Coast where I could go twelve miles out to sea and avoid any sighting of land but still have a sandy ocean bottom only thirty feet below the surface, where we could install our shark sled." Spielberg felt that shooting on the water without any land visible made these scenes more suspenseful. "I wanted the audience to think the boat couldn't just simply turn around and go back to shore. I literally needed a 360-degree stage at sea." mechanical sharks were built for the movie and were nicknamed Bruce, after Spielberg's lawyer. They were constructed by special effects wizard Bob Mattey, who also built the giant squid in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The sharks cost $250,000 to build and were even more expensive to use in the water. Working with Bruce in the open ocean turned out to be a filmmaker's nightmare. The water rusted its machinery, and it frequently malfunctioned or refused to work at all. The movie had been scheduled to shoot in 55 days, but the trouble with Bruce and the unpredictable nature of shooting in the ocean inflated the shoot to 159 days. Ultimately, Spielberg ended up finding creative ways to shoot around Bruce's limitations. The movie also shows the shark sparingly, with its first appearance coming an hour and 21 minutes into the film. designer Joe Alves worried that Bruce wouldn't be frightening enough for audiences. "I thought people would laugh at the shark because it would make all of these funny noises before the music was added and the crew would laugh." He went on to say, "But when I saw the first screening, nobody laughed. They started screaming. Then I realized, 'Oh, I think we've got a big success here.'" John Williams wrote the iconic "Jaws Theme" on the piano, using low, rhythmic notes to build a primal sense of dread. But when Spielberg first heard the composition, he thought it was "too simple." Williams would later recall that when he first played it for the director, Spielberg said, "You can't be serious." "At that time, I had no idea that it would have that kind of impact on people," Williams said. "Steven and I had a little laugh about it." Williams's score for Jaws won his second Academy Award. He has scored 26 films for Spielberg, including the Indiana Jones trilogy, E.T., and Jurassic Park. grizzled seaman Quint's mannerisms and lines were partly inspired by a Martha's Vineyard selectman named Craig Kingsbury, who showed up to an open audition. Spielberg ended up casting Kingsbury as Ben Gardner after nearly choosing him for the role of Quint, which went to Robert Shaw. Kingsbury ad-libbed lines like, "They'll wish their fathers had never met their mothers, when they start takin' their bottoms out and slammin' into them rocks, boy." Spielberg loved the local color Kingsbury brought to the movie so much that he kept making his part bigger. 11.A scene was cut from Jaws because of actor Gregory Peck. Originally, the movie introduced Quint disrupting a screening of Moby Dick in an Amity cinema. However, Peck owned the rights to the 1956 movie and didn't allow it to be shown in Jaws. Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss didn't get along on set. Shaw thought Dreyfuss was arrogant and inexperienced, and in turn, Dreyfuss was frustrated with the older actor's habit of drinking to excess. One day, Shaw reportedly asked Dreyfuss to help him out, and Dreyfuss responded by grabbing and throwing his costar's glass of bourbon out the window. Later that day, Dreyfuss said that Shaw sprayed him with a fire extinguisher mid-take. In later years, Dreyfuss would speak fondly of his costar, saying, "In private, he was the kindest, gentlest, funniest guy you ever met." the line, "You're gonna need a bigger boat," is probably the most famous bit of dialogue in Jaws, and it was ad-libbed by actor Roy Scheider. The line came from an inside joke among the crew who were often frustrated by the difficulties of loading all the equipment and amenities of a working film set onto a boat. Screenwriter Carl Gottlieb explained, "It became a catchphrase for any time anything went wrong—if lunch was late or the swells were rocking the camera, someone would say, 'You're gonna need a bigger boat.'" Scheider had a habit of slipping the line into his scenes, and the moment when he deadpans it after the movie's first shark sighting was just too good to cut.
Buzz Feed
9 hours ago
- Buzz Feed
13 Facts That Will Forever Change How You See 'Jaws'
Director Steven Spielberg got hold of an advanced copy of the 1974 novel Jaws by Peter Benchley before it was published and knew right away that he wanted to shoot it for the screen. But there was a problem. A pair of producers already owned the film rights and had a different director in mind. Then, one day, Spielberg got a call that Benchley wanted to meet with him. In an interview from the book Spielberg: The First Ten Years, the director explained, "They sat me down and announced, 'We want you to direct Jaws.' I said, 'Whatever happened to the director?' And they explained, 'We had the meeting with him, but he kept referring to the shark in front of Peter Benchley as "the white whale." And Peter became very disinterested in having his shark called a whale.' And that's how the project finally came to me." The film version of Jaws cut out several subplots from the novel, including one where Ellen Brody has an affair with Matt Hooper. In the book, Ellen dated Matt's older brother when they were younger and, when they met again as adults, succumbed to the rugged marine biologist's charms. Martin Brody finds out about their liaison, but instead of wrapping up the plot with a confrontation or closure, he just stews in his bitterness, leading to a much less happy ending. The book also features a subplot about Mayor Larry Vaughn being under the mafia's thumb, as if his character could be any sleazier. Both subplots were cut because they took focus away from the real heart of the movie, the hunt for the deadly shark. Jaws author Peter Benchley appears briefly in the movie as a TV news reporter giving updates from the beach. Benchley had previously worked as an actual TV news reporter, so the role was a natural fit. After Jaws, Benchley became a shark expert and conservationist. He said, "Knowing what I know today, I couldn't write the same book. ... I couldn't possibly demonize an animal the way I did." Richard Dreyfuss, who played Matt Hooper, wasn't Spielberg's first choice for the part. The director first went to Jon Voight, Timothy Bottoms, and Jeff Bridges before George Lucas suggested Dreyfuss, having just worked with him on American Graffiti. Dreyfuss wasn't initially interested in doing the movie, but after meeting with Spielberg a second time, he agreed to join the cast. Before his breakout role in American Graffiti, Dreyfuss had played small parts in various TV shows like Gunsmoke and That Girl. He would go on to work with Spielberg again in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Always. Before he started shooting Jaws, Spielberg hired the Australian filmmakers Ron and Valerie Taylor to shoot some underwater film with a real great white shark. The Taylors shot footage of a stuntman confronting the shark from within a cage, which was used in the tense scene in the movie where Hooper comes face to jaws with the shark. But despite the Taylors' experience working in the water, it didn't go as planned. The stuntman wasn't a trained diver, so he became overwhelmed with fear at the point of being submerged. During a take when he wasn't in the cage, the shark down below got caught in the wires attached to the cage. In its struggle to break free, the shark severed the wires and the cage sank into the sea. Spielberg had originally intended to have Dreyfuss's character killed by the shark during the cage scene, but he loved the happy accident of the Taylors' footage so much that he rewrote the script to have Hooper escape. Valerie Taylor went on to work as a conservationist and advocate for sharks, and the subject of the National Geographic documentary Playing with Sharks. She believes that sharks have distinct personalities and has said, "Some are shy, some are bullies, some are brave." Martha's Vineyard stood in for the town of Amity, but Spielberg chose the location for more than its quaint New England charm. To capture shots of the shark hunters out on the open ocean, Spielberg needed a location with shallow enough water to install and run the mechanical shark. He said, "It was the only place on the East Coast where I could go twelve miles out to sea and avoid any sighting of land but still have a sandy ocean bottom only thirty feet below the surface, where we could install our shark sled." Spielberg felt that shooting on the water without any land visible made these scenes more suspenseful. "I wanted the audience to think the boat couldn't just simply turn around and go back to shore. I literally needed a 360-degree stage at sea." Three mechanical sharks were built for the movie and were nicknamed Bruce, after Spielberg's lawyer. They were constructed by special effects wizard Bob Mattey, who also built the giant squid in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The sharks cost $250,000 to build and were even more expensive to use in the water. Working with Bruce in the open ocean turned out to be a filmmaker's nightmare. The water rusted its machinery, and it frequently malfunctioned or refused to work at all. The movie had been scheduled to shoot in 55 days, but the trouble with Bruce and the unpredictable nature of shooting in the ocean inflated the shoot to 159 days. Ultimately, Spielberg ended up finding creative ways to shoot around Bruce's limitations. The movie also shows the shark sparingly, with its first appearance coming an hour and 21 minutes into the film. Production designer Joe Alves worried that Bruce wouldn't be frightening enough for audiences. "I thought people would laugh at the shark because it would make all of these funny noises before the music was added and the crew would laugh." He went on to say, "But when I saw the first screening, nobody laughed. They started screaming. Then I realized, 'Oh, I think we've got a big success here.'" Composer John Williams wrote the iconic "Jaws Theme" on the piano, using low, rhythmic notes to build a primal sense of dread. But when Spielberg first heard the composition, he thought it was "too simple." Williams would later recall that when he first played it for the director, Spielberg said, "You can't be serious." "At that time, I had no idea that it would have that kind of impact on people," Williams said. "Steven and I had a little laugh about it." Williams's score for Jaws won his second Academy Award. He has scored 26 films for Spielberg, including the Indiana Jones trilogy, E.T., and Jurassic Park. The grizzled seaman Quint's mannerisms and lines were partly inspired by a Martha's Vineyard selectman named Craig Kingsbury, who showed up to an open audition. Spielberg ended up casting Kingsbury as Ben Gardner after nearly choosing him for the role of Quint, which went to Robert Shaw. Kingsbury ad-libbed lines like, "They'll wish their fathers had never met their mothers, when they start takin' their bottoms out and slammin' into them rocks, boy." Spielberg loved the local color Kingsbury brought to the movie so much that he kept making his part bigger. A scene was cut from Jaws because of actor Gregory Peck. Originally, the movie introduced Quint disrupting a screening of Moby Dick in an Amity cinema. However, Peck owned the rights to the 1956 movie and didn't allow it to be shown in Jaws. Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss didn't get along on set. Shaw thought Dreyfuss was arrogant and inexperienced, and in turn, Dreyfuss was frustrated with the older actor's habit of drinking to excess. One day, Shaw reportedly asked Dreyfuss to help him out, and Dreyfuss responded by grabbing and throwing his costar's glass of bourbon out the window. Later that day, Dreyfuss said that Shaw sprayed him with a fire extinguisher mid-take. In later years, Dreyfuss would speak fondly of his costar, saying, "In private, he was the kindest, gentlest, funniest guy you ever met." Finally, the line, "You're gonna need a bigger boat," is probably the most famous bit of dialogue in Jaws, and it was ad-libbed by actor Roy Scheider. The line came from an inside joke among the crew who were often frustrated by the difficulties of loading all the equipment and amenities of a working film set onto a boat. Screenwriter Carl Gottlieb explained, "It became a catchphrase for any time anything went wrong—if lunch was late or the swells were rocking the camera, someone would say, 'You're gonna need a bigger boat.'"Scheider had a habit of slipping the line into his scenes, and the moment when he deadpans it after the movie's first shark sighting was just too good to cut.
New York Post
14 hours ago
- New York Post
Brad Pitt-led Formula 1 drama ‘F1: The Movie' speeds into No. 1
Brad's in the pole position. 'F1: The Movie' sped to No. 1 on Friday, its opener, raking in $25 million, according to The Numbers. The Post praised the sports drama, starring Brad Pitt as a Formula One driver who comes out of retirement, as 'a high-octane driving movie that's actually fast and furious.' The flick, which is slated to bring in up to $60 million this weekend, already made Apple Studios history as its biggest opening weekend ever, dethroning 'Killers of the Flower Moon,' according to Variety. 'How to Train Your Dragon' remained in the second spot, with $5.74 million in sales. 3 In 'F1,' Brad Pitt plays a racecar driver who makes a comeback after a 30-year retirement. AP The live-action remake is projected to earn $19 million this weekend, its third in theaters. In third was 'M3GAN 2.0,' with earnings of $4.53 million on its first day at the box office. The Post called the sequel to the 2022 original, which centers around a creepy child-sized robot doll that runs on AI, 'an annoying, forgettable and hard-to-follow action-comedy.' 3 The live-action remake of 'How to Train Your Dragon' was in second place on its third Friday in theaters. AP 3 The Post called 'M3GAN 2.0″ 'an annoying, forgettable and hard-to-follow action-comedy.' AP Disney and Pixar's 'Elio' landed in fourth, with a $3.2 million take on its second Friday in theaters. In fifth was zombie thriller '28 Years Later' — a swift downfall from its No. 1 spot last Friday, its opener — which took in $3 million.
