Steven Spielberg can laugh now, but he has the proverbial bite marks to show for it after directing Jaws just over 50 years ago. Filming the classic was a disaster-plagued adventure for Spielberg, whose 1975 shark thriller created Hollywood’s playbook for the summer blockbuster.
“In most circumstances, summer in the Vineyard is a dream. But when you are over budget and over schedule and when I am over my head, that summer of 1974 was a bad dream before it ever became the dream of a lifetime,” Spielberg said in a video message to an audience in Martha’s Vineyard attending a National Geographic world premiere for the Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story making-of film on Friday. Watch the message, which is exclusive to The Hollywood Reporter, below.
Spielberg, then a 27 year-old, hot shot director, chose Martha’s Vineyard as a location for Jaws because he wanted his mechanized shark with terrifyingly sharp teeth to swim in real waters. The filmmaker saysa the new doc captures the tough environment surrounding the adaptation of Peter Benchley’s novel.
“It details how young and unprepared all of us were for the challenges of shooting in the Atlantic Ocean with a mechanical shark that was more temperamental than any movie star I have ever worked with since, and how in the wake of running over schedule and budget, I truly believed that Jaws would be the last movie I would ever be given to direct,” Spielberg revealed about Jaws @ 50, directed by Laurent Bouzereau, to the world premiere audience.
It also turns out, however, the disaster-plagued Jaws shoot (with a movie budget tripling to $9 million and a schedule stretching from 55 to 159 days) was nothing like the screams Spielberg and Universal ultimately scared up in theaters worldwide with the shark thriller’s theatrical release in 1975.
Spielberg added global theatrical audiences threw him a “life preserver” in 1975 to restore his Hollywood fortunes after they almost ran aground on the shores of Martha’s Vineyard. He was also helped by film composer John Williams’ memorable two-note motif in the Jaws soundtrack that fed into primal fears about unseen predators being afoot and approaching.
“Fifty years after its initial release, making Jaws remains a seminal experience for every single one of us, and five decades has done nothing to dim the memories of what remains one of the most overwhelming, exciting, terrifying and rewarding experiences of my entire career,” Spielberg insisted.
The legendary director’s Amblin Documentaries and Nedland Media are behind the doc Jaws @ 50 that will bow on National Geographic on July 10, before launching a day later on Disney+ and Hulu.
