Jaws: the perfect summer movie (1 Viewer)

[Optimus Prime]

When I taught Film Studies, Jaws was always on the syllabus. It never failed to elicit strong reactions from my students, who were 16-18.

Had they seen it before your class?

 

[Boy_of_wonder75]

Had they seen it before your class?

Nope

 

[Madmarsha]

This is on SYFY right now.

 

[sfidc3]

Saddest part of the movie IMO.....actually saw it at a friends house last night.....still awesome....

 

[guidomerkinsrules]

While Scheider … basically play the same character they play in every other movie they're in;

I beg to differ

 

[sfidc3]

I beg to differ

I do also, he was a great actor, if you haven't already check out All That Jazz, he is outstanding in it....

 

[SoggyBottomBoy]

There’s a documentary on the making of it and it was a production and logistical nightmare. Went way over budget and almost scrapped. The mechanical shark kept failing and never looked believable. Because of this, they went with a shark POV and left the rest to the audience’s imagination. That and the great musical score made the movie much better than what they initially intended to achieve.

 

[tenordas]

I beg to differ

An excellent point. I don't mean to deride Scheider as an actor. He was excellent at what he did, but for the most part, he was typecast as the same character in every other movie I've seen with him (of course, Boris Karloff called being typed a blessing, so there you are). That's all I was saying, but Scheider was a great actor.

Meanwhile, Shaw, while he certainly had expressions and "tells" that he used in many of his films (like pretty much every actor), varied his characterizations more over his career. Compare his characters from Jaws to The Sting to Robin and Marion to From Russia with Love to Force 10 From Navarone (a film he didn't like at all). He made a choice early on not to play the leading man because he thought that was much too boring. Villains and character parts were far more interesting to him. Plus, he was a Shakespearean and even wrote a stage play that was a hit both on The West End and Broadway.

 

[Boy_of_wonder75]

I love that this is a thing.
This sparked quite an interesting discussion in class.

Jaws, Spielberg’s Visceral Masterpiece, Still Has the Power to Shock

In 1975, a man watched a movie. The movie was called <em>Jaws</em> and the man was one Mr Fidel Castro. The Cuban leader liked what he saw and would reportedly go on to proclaim it one of the greatest American films of all time.

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk

 

[Brennan77]

I watched it this week. It's a really good movie. I think this is the first time I've been attentive to it as an adult. The pace is slower than I remember and really allows space for tension to build. They didn't get into the boat to hunt the shark until well over an hour into the movie. I also appreciated some space in the dialogue to allow for audiences to pick up on small dynamics between characters. Not everything is plainly stated. It's ok for some people not to catch everything.

 

[Booker]

There’s a documentary on the making of it and it was a production and logistical nightmare. Went way over budget and almost scrapped. The mechanical shark kept failing and never looked believable. Because of this, they went with a shark POV and left the rest to the audience’s imagination. That and the great musical score made the movie much better than what they initially intended to achieve.

It’s always scarier when you can’t see the monster, only the reactions to it.

 

[Optimus Prime]

The “USS Indianapolis” speech, impeccably delivered by the legendary Robert Shaw in Jaws, is regarded as one of the finest monologues in motion picture history. However, the debate over just who wrote the monologue is mired in murky waters.

In the blockbuster film helmed by then-budding director Steven Spielberg, which swam into theaters 47 years ago today, Shaw’s Quint reveals to Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) and Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) that he is one of the 316 survivors of the actual World War II USS Indianapolis disaster. The Indianapolis sank in July 1945 after being torpedoed by an Imperial Japanese Navy submarine during the Indianapolis’ top-secret mission to deliver atomic bomb components.

There seems to be no debate that it was the late Howard Sackler who conceived (in an uncredited script rework) the “Indianapolis” moment, which when he penned it was only two paragraphs, Spielberg explained previously in a making-of featurette. The director recognized that the scene, if done right, could be an extraordinary character study of Quint and a pivotal scene in the film.

And thus begins the debate.

In the featurette, Spielberg says he asked John Milius, who contributed dialogue polishes, to take a crack at the speech as it needed to be beefed up in order for the director to capture the moment as he saw it in his mind’s eye.

Milius is said to have dictated the speech “over the phone,” which resulted in a 10-page monologue, “which basically is very close to what’s in the movie,” Spielberg said, adding that Shaw took the beast of a speech and cut it in half. “It’s Milius’ words, and it’s Shaw’s editing,” the director says in the featurette.

However, Jaws co-screenwriter Carl Gottlieb has taken issue with the Milius version of the production lore.

In a previous interview with The Writer’s Guild Foundation (watch below), Gottlieb contended that it was actually Shaw who wrote the “USS Indianapolis” speech and that Milius had been given undue credit over the years thanks to his friendship with Spielberg…….

‘Jaws’ and the Internal Debate Over Who Wrote the Iconic USS Indianapolis Speech

The blockbuster film helmed by then-budding director Steven Spielberg swam into theaters 47 years ago today.

www.hollywoodreporter.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

Off the shores of Joseph Sylvia State Beach in Oak Bluff, Mass., boats of tourists gathered along a stretch of the Atlantic Ocean to watch a legendary shark’s first swim. Submerged 30 feet underwater, Bruce prepared for his first attack. His sharp white teeth bared for a catch, a menacing gray fin signaled victims’ impending doom.

A crew member pulled the hydraulic lever set to launch the 6,000-pound fish to the surface, watching as its highly anticipated ascent quickly turned for the worst. Tail first, Bruce emerged from the water, big white belly topsy-turvying from left to right as production staffers groaned in disappointment.

With gnashing sharp teeth and a looming, undetectable presence, the 25-foot shark glided onto movie theater screens on June 20, 1975 — the star of the blockbuster “Jaws.”

The film franchise, inspired by Peter Benchley’s 1974 novel, sought to bring to life the horror and intrigue of a shark terrorizing a fictional New York town called Amity Island.

There were three Bruces, constructed with a steel skeleton and polyurethane skin. They looked as true to life as any 1970s viewer could imagine. But in the months of production leading to his debut, his flaws outweighed his utility. The sharks were notorious for falling to pieces.

“The first mistake with the shark was that they made a big mistake and they built it for freshwater,” “Jaws” director Steven Spielberg said in an interview on the “Dick Cavett Show” in 1981. “We never fixed the shark, and it was a total disaster.”

“Jaws” started shooting on Martha’s Vineyard in May 1974. The tranquil seaside beachscapes served as the perfect environment to reimagine the frightening 1916 shark attacks that inspired Benchley’s novel. The story — with gnawed limbs, unsuspecting families and local politicians prioritizing tourism revenue over safety — provided the blueprint for a riveting drama led by an all-star cast. The production’s challenges, however, posed several barriers to Spielberg’s plan.

The production dragged on for seven months, far exceeding the anticipated wrap day of June 28. Each day brought new challenges with rough sea conditions, a dysfunctional shark and a script that had to accommodate their struggles. The shark had a hole in its side, the waves were too rough to maintain a steady shot, the weather was scorching and crew members were overheating. Producers David Brown and Richard Zanuck, and co-screenwriter Carl Gottlieb were meeting at Spielberg’s home daily, rewriting scenes and chipping away at the starring creature’s screen time.

At one point, one of the three sharks sank to the bottom of the Nantucket Sound.

“We must have been complete idiots to have even expected to have an easy ride in the middle of the ocean making a movie,” Spielberg said in a documentary, “The Shark Is Still Working.”

The director had to pivot. Imagination could fill the gaps where the shark was absent. The film, driven by John Williams’s bewitching musical score, activated a new fear of the mysterious ocean deep for audiences around the globe. The scarcity of its starring shark’s appearances amplified its inherent suspense.

“Spielberg was a genius at revving it up into more of a sensationalized book,” Wendy Benchley, marine policy advocate and wife of the “Jaws” author told The Washington Post this month. “He knew how to, you know, increase the tension of the movie and to really make it into a great thriller.”..............

MSN

 

[Optimus Prime]

I’d be interested in seeing this
======================

NEW YORK (AP) — A rickety boat. Three guys with egos. And a massive, deadly shark. What could go wrong?

Not what you might be expecting with “The Shark Is Broken,” the lyrical play that opened Thursday about the trio of actors who enlivened the pioneering Steven Spielberg -directed movie “Jaws.”

Set on a boat off Martha’s Vineyard during filming in 1974, “The Shark Is Broken” is a moving comedy-drama, mirroring the way the movie segued from horror to playfulness so effortlessly.

It stars Colin Donnell as Roy Scheider, the police chief Brody; Alex Brightman as Richard Dreyfuss, the oceanographer Hooper; and Ian Shaw as Robert Shaw, the shark hunter Quint. The play instantly earns legitimacy because Ian Shaw is Robert’s lookalike son and a co-writer.

It’s about the backstage frustration of making the first summer blockbuster, of course — one audience member in line at a preview wearing a “Jaws” T-shirt will be pleased — but captures much more in its net.



The long idle hours due to the mechanical sharks’malfunctioning and the onboard anger between actors produce spiky discussions about responsibility, trauma, fatherhood, acting, commerce and alcohol, often lubricated by Scotch.

“It is the grit in the oyster that produces the pearl,” Shaw tells his companions, explaining how personal clashes can help fuel their art. He’s right — he’s often the play’s grit, and it has produced a little pearl of a play.

The script — and Guy Masterson’s unfussy direction — never lets interest lag over the play’s 90, intermission-less minutes, the tension, humor, depth, silliness and horror coming like waves lapping the boat.…….

Theater Review: A play about the making of the movie 'Jaws' makes a nice splash on Broadway

A rickety boat. Three guys. And a massive, deadly shark. What could go wrong? Not what you might be expecting with “The Shark Is Broken,” the play that opened Thursday about the trio of actors who enlivened the pioneering Steven Spielberg-directed movie “Jaws.”

apnews.com

 

[Optimus Prime]