Inside "Jaws": Making the film classic

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At a dock on Martha's Vineyard is the Orca, the boat from "Jaws." It's a replica, of course; the original one sank, weighed down by a five-ton man-eating shark. The guy next to the Orca, however, is the real thing. Of this Orca, Richard Dreyfuss said, "It's too neat, by far."
Actor Richard Dreyfuss, with Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz, dockside in Martha's Vineyard with a replica of the Orca from "Jaws."
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It's been a while since Dreyfuss was on Martha's Vineyard. He says his memories of making "Jaws" are great. But back then, he did everything he could not to be in the movie. "I turned the film down a couple of times because I was thinking that it was gonna be a bitch to shoot. And I was not wrong!" he laughed. "But it was such an adventure. And if you had to pick one word to describe the shoot, it was waiting."
Now 77, Dreyfuss remembers the standing around, but he also knows "Jaws," made here on the island in the summer of 1974, turned him into a Hollywood star.
I asked, "Was there ever a moment where you think, 'We're making one of the greatest outdoor films of all time'?"
"No," Dreyfuss replied. He was convinced that what they were making was obviously a turkey, "and this thing was gonna crash and burn."
The production was a legendary slog. This was the first Hollywood movie to shoot on the unpredictable open seas of the Atlantic. The mechanical shark rarely worked in salt water, and the budget more than doubled.
But Steven Spielberg, a 27-year-old director making his first big studio picture, turned misfortune into opportunity.
"Jaws" became one of the most influential American films of the 20th century, and ushered in the summer blockbuster. Set 50 years ago over the July 4th weekend, the plot, says Dreyfuss, is simple: "This was the story of three guys against this shark. It was this human thing. And we were really good and we knew it. Wow, a kid getting bitten? And if you remember the beginning of the film, you are terrified before you see the shark."
Before the shark brought terror to the big screen, it arrived at the bookstore. In 1974, Peter Benchley's novel became a bestseller. Spielberg read it and immediately wanted to direct the movie version – though he was unhappy with early drafts. So, he asked a friend, screenwriter Carl Gottlieb, to rip it to shreds.
"Steven sent it to me with a note on the cover that said, 'Eviscerate it!!'" Gottlieb said.
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Gottlieb wrote a lengthy memo, noting, "If we do our jobs right, people will feel about going in the water the way they felt about taking a shower after 'Psycho.'"
They did their jobs, all right, led by those three guys: Irish actor Robert Shaw as Quint, the hunter with a shark-infested backstory; Roy Scheider, the police chief afraid of the water; and Dreyfuss, who changed his mind about making "Jaws" after seeing (and hating) his own performance in the film he'd just made, "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz."
"I said, 'If I'm not working when this film comes out, I'll never work again,'" Dreyfuss said. "And so, I went back to Steven and begged him for the part, and he gave it to me. They had started shooting on April 2; I was cast on the 3rd; my first day of shooting was the 4th; that was the way it all went."
Getting the mechanical shark to work in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean was just one of the production headaches facing the filmmakers behind "Jaws."
Universal Pictures
Lorraine Gary played Ellen Brody, the police chief's wife. "I had nothing to lose," she said. "I was getting older. I was 32. That's almost ancient! And it sounded like fun."
I asked, "What about being cast in this sounded like fun to you?"
"Going on location to Martha's Vineyard," Gary replied. "I had never been there. Robert Shaw sounded like fun!"
"Well, I think I know what that means. But what does that mean?"
"You know what it means. And so do you in the audience!" Gary laughed.
Her experience with Roy Scheider? That was less fun. "I feel closer to you than I did to the man who played my husband," Gary said. "I think Roy was very protective of his career. I think he was at that point in his career where he hadn't quite made it to being a big-time star. And, perhaps, he thought that I wasn't top drawer enough to be his wife. I never felt a closeness with him. I felt older, and larger. A big head."
"Literally big head?" I asked.
"Literally. I mean, he told me, 'Your head is bigger than mine' in the two-shot!" she laughed.
In addition to writing the script, Gottlieb played newspaperman Harry Meadows. He earned roughly $13,000 for writing and acting in "Jaws." Though he says much of the dark humor was not on the page.
"We were blessed with a cast that could kind of ad lib in character," he said. "With most actors if you say, 'Ad lib,' it makes their part bigger. But these people were ad libbing relatively selflessly. When I spotted something potentially funny, or if there was humor in something, I would say to Steven, 'I think we got a laugh here if we change the line.'" And, he said, Spielberg was always responsive to that.
Steven Spielberg filming a scene from "Jaws" in the Nantucket Sound off of Martha's Vineyard, Mass., July 25, 1974.
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Then there were the delays. As the shooting schedule tripled from 55 days to 159, the actors started to get under each other's skin. Dreyfuss said, "The thing about Robert Shaw, he knew that he had me psychologically, like, with a little pin through my stomach. And if he said that I couldn't do 25 sit-ups, I couldn't. But I could. And he would say, 'You can't jump off the top of the Orca into the water.' And I couldn't. But I could. He had me!"
I spoke to Dreyfuss at the Harbor View Hotel, where some of the cast and crew stayed … and where Oscar-winning editor Verna Fields cut much of the movie. It was also the scene of a "Jaws" food fight. Dreyfuss doesn't quite remember who threw the first lobster roll: "Well, it was either Roy or me."
"Jaws" surfaced on June 20, 1975. For the first time ever, a movie opened nationwide, and for the first time ever, a movie made more than $100 million.
Asked why it did so well, Gottlieb replied, "You know, why is the Mona Lisa still a hit? It had that combination of things, any three of which or five of which would've made it a hit. But ['Jaws'] had, like, ten of those."
"Jaws" changed Hollywood, as well as the lives of everyone associated with it. Steven Spielberg has become the defining director of his generation, and the legacies of Robert Shaw, Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss are forever linked to this film, a movie that millions of us still think about every single time we stroll toward the ocean.
Dreyfuss said, "I will never walk from the beach into the water so that the water comes up to my chest. If and when that ever happens, I'll either be dead or in a mental institution. The fact that I can't see what's happening underneath is so real to me, I can't do it."
I asked, "Before 'Jaws' and after 'Jaws'?"
"Before 'Jaws," I didn't care!" Dreyfuss replied.
WEB EXCLUSIVE: Extended Interview – Richard Dreyfuss on the making of "Jaws" (Video)
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Story produced by Gabriel Falcon. Editor: Steven Tyler.
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