Steven Spielberg opened up about his disastrous experience filming Jaws as the movie turns 50 on Friday, June 20.
“When the film wrapped Martha’s Vineyard, I had a full-blown panic attack,” Spielberg, 78, recalls in National Geographic’s new documentary Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story. “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.”
The three-time Oscar-winning filmmaker achieved his commercial breakthrough with his harrowing 1975 thriller about a man-eating shark terrorizing Amity Island’s quiet beach community. Jaws ultimately made more than $470 million at the box office, but its success was far from a lock given Spielberg went significantly over budget and ran “100 days behind schedule,” according to Entertainment Weekly.
Spielberg looks back on “the real tough time” he experienced while filming Jaws for a new National Geographic documentary. An early roadblock was that Jaws’ three fiberglass mechanical sharks weren’t functioning at the start of filming, so Spielberg bought more time by deciding not to show the shark on screen until later in the movie.
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Technical and personal problems mounted throughout the five-month shoot, including cast member Robert Shaw’s heavy drinking occasionally rendering him unable to shoot certain scenes on schedule. Spielberg had to deal with constant technical delays because he was actually filming in the ocean off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, rather than in a Hollywood studio.
“We were on the real ocean and we were out of our element for five months,” Spielberg recalls in Jaws @ 50. “We all began going off the deep end, literally.”
He goes on, “I was terrified I was going to be fired but I never felt like I wanted to quit.”
Spielberg reveals in Jaws @ 50 that, in particularly stressful moments, he would call his mother, Leah Adler, to talk him down over the phone. (Adler died at age 97 in February 2017.)
“‘Mommy, this is really impossible. Help,’” he remembers confessing in one emotional call.
Steven Spielberg filming ‘Jaws’ in 1975. Everett CollectionBy the time Spielberg finished shooting Jaws, he says he was experiencing physical and emotional symptoms that would now be associated with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
“[I’d wake up with] the sheets soaking wet,” he points out in the documentary. “We didn’t have the words ‘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.”
For years after making Jaws, Spielberg would visit his boat from the movie – called the Orca – at Universal Studios’ backlot and, after making sure no one was watching, he would sob uncontrollably.
“I had nothing to cry about,” he admitted. “The film was a 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 [ship] was my therapeutic companion for several years after Jaws came out.”
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Spielberg certainly remains haunted by some aspects of the pressure-filled Jaws shoot, though he says he’s now able to appreciate the “fantastic” success of his movie on its 50th anniversary.
“The film that I thought would end my career is the film that began it,” he acknowledges in Jaws @ 50.
Jaws is one of the defining blockbusters of the 1970s. It was briefly the highest-grossing movie of all time before being dethroned by Star Wars in 1977, in addition to ranking 56th on the American Film Institute’s AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movies countdown in 2007. The Library of Congress selected Jaws for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2001, while acclaimed director Quentin Tarantino has called Jaws “the greatest movie ever made.”
Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story debuts Thursday, July 10 on National Geographic at 9 p.m. ET, before premiering on Hulu and Disney+ the following day.
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