Its antagonist was a flop. The set was chaotic. And the tension between the main cast members became one of Hollywood's greatest feuds. Today, however, no one would suspect Jaws, the “greatest movie ever made,” according to Empire, almost sunk under pressure.
Setting out to answer the question, "What are the 100 best movies of all time?” the film magazine recently published its list of “The 100 Greatest Movies Ever Made,” ranking the films that “stand the test of time, connecting with us personally while speaking to the universal.”
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View this post on InstagramIf you ask us, the only choice for No. 1 is Tim Burton’s 1988 bio-exorcist classic, Beetlejuice. Not only is it the perfect gateway film into the horror genre, which is experiencing a golden age right now, but it has a distinctly feminist undercurrent and agency that endures through its sequel. But, hey, we digress. Back to Jaws.
Released in 1975, Steven Spielberg’s thriller about a great white terrorizing a New England resort town over the Fourth of July is no doubt a brilliant masterpiece, albeit with a backstory so messy the crew nicknamed the film “Flaws.”
From the big-fish contraption riddled with breakdowns and scenes being written the night before they were shot, to Spielberg initially laughing at John Williams’ now-iconic foreboding score and nearly quitting the film before it even started, getting Jaws into theaters was anything but smooth sailing. Turmoil spilled over into the cast, too.
Richard Dreyfuss, who plays Hooper, described Robert Shaw, the film's shark-obsessed fisherman Quint, as "an enormous personality" in the 2010 documentary Jaws: The Inside Story, BBC shares. "In private, he was the kindest, gentlest, funniest guy you ever met. Then we'd walk to the set, and on our way to the set he was possessed by some evil troll, who would then make me his victim."
"[Shaw] really thought Dreyfuss needed a slapping down, [that he was a] young punk with no stage experience," Roy Scheider, who plays main man Brody, shares via Looper. "It got ugly," Spielberg confirmed. "But it was also Quint and Hooper living out that relationship as Shaw and Dreyfuss."
Big Teeth, Bigger Problems
According to Collider, there were a handful of issues that kept Jaws in a delay pattern, but the biggest problem was the actual star of the show: the shark. The prop team built three mechanical sharks, all named Bruce after Spielberg’s pal and lawyer, Bruce Ramer. And all three turned out to be duds.
“Salt water, fractures, an absorbent-proof skin that was absorbed, and corrosion led to the sharks consistently breaking down,” Collider writes. “It was happening on such a frequent basis that Spielberg realized he, somehow, had to make a shark film with no shark. So Spielberg, as did many other directors, looked to the acronym WWHD (What Would Hitchcock Do), and decided to change the approach from the horror of seeing the shark to, instead, the shark being the unseen, unknown sense of dread and horror.”
Inventing the Blockbuster
Well, it worked. Jaws did for sharks and the ocean what Psycho did for bathtub showers in rundown motels. But more than creating phobias, the film changed the way Hollywood did business. When it was released in April 1975, the film became what Variety coined a “super-blockbuster.” History writes that it became the first film to break $100 million at the box office, forever changing the biz and “introducing a culture of big summer releases, wall-to-wall marketing, feverish merchandising and as many spin-offs as the market will bear.”
The film stars Richard Dreyfuss, Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, and Lorraine Gary. Spielberg directed with Carl Gottlieb and author Peter Benchley adapted the screenplay from Benchley's bestselling novel. The success of the original launched a franchise spanning four total films.
Jaws (1975) is available to rent or buy on Prime Video.
Related: 1976 Classic Was a No. 1 Hit 49 Years Ago Today
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