One of the most famous lines (and one that is often misquoted) in Jaws, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat,” actually came from an inside joke on the set of the legendary movie, which turns 50 this summer. The line was improvised on film by actor Roy Scheider, and has since become the stuff of legends. It’s hard to imagine one of the best monster movies of all time without it.
The Production Of Jaws Has Become Legendary
The production of Jaws is one of the most oft-told stories in Hollywood history, but somehow, this tidbit escaped me all these years. I’m a huge fan of the movie, and I do consider it not only one of the best horror movies of all time, but one of the best movies of all time. I love that, for example, audiences don’t see the shark for most of the movie, making it as ominous as a movie monster gets. That was, in large part, because the mechanical shark didn’t work very well, forcing director Steven Spielberg to work around the problematic prop.
I love the scene co-written by John Milius, Robert Shaw, and Carl Gottlieb, where Quint (Shaw) tells the story of the USS Indianapolis. Co-star Richard Dreyfuss has acknowledged that the movie’s production started without a full script, hence Milius being brought in to help on that famous monologue. Between the lack of a working shark and the script issues, the crew behind the scenes had an inside joke, calling the movie “Flaws” during production.
Another Inside Joke Made It Into The Movie And Became Iconic
One of the many problems during the shooting was the size of one of the support boats. The small boat was used to help supply the larger barge that held much of the production equipment during the scenes shot out on the ocean. According to Carl Gottlieb, who is the credited screenwriter, the crew thought the producers were “stingy” and told The Hollywood Reporter,
Everyone kept telling them, ‘You’re gonna need a bigger boat.’
Adding that the phrase became a regular saying around the set whenever anything went wrong,
It became a catchphrase for anytime anything went wrong — if lunch was late or the swells were rocking the camera, someone would say, ‘You’re gonna need a bigger boat.’
According to Gottlieb, Roy Scheider, who played Brody, worked the line into several scenes as a joke, but when he delivered it in the scene when he first lays eyes on the shark, it became one of the most famous quotes in Hollywood history; it was pure serendipity. The look on his face and Quint’s reaction are priceless, and moments like that in Jaws are what elevate the film to something so much more than a simple monster movie.
With the Fourth of July around the corner, now is a great time to relive one of the best summer horror movies ever, and the great line that accidentally became one of the best ever.