Jaws has been called the first summer blockbuster. It’s a movie that arguably changed cinema forever. It’s the movie that made Steven Spielberg’s career, but it’s also the movie that could have just as easily destroyed it. The difficulties in making Jaws happen have been discussed before, but the director recently spoke about the movie again, making it clear just how terrible the experience was.
The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures recently opened Jaws: The Exhibition in commemoration of Jaws’ 50th anniversary, and during a special preview last week, Steven Spielberg spoke (via People) about his experience making Jaws. He admitted that his inexperience at the time resulted in him not fully understanding what he was getting himself into. Spielberg said…
I just really was not ready to endure the amount of obstacles that were thrown in our path, starting with Mother Nature. I really thought my hubris was [that] we could take a Hollywood crew, go out 12 miles out into the Atlantic Ocean and shoot an entire movie with a mechanical shark. I thought that was going to go swimmingly. I had really no idea that the second you tempt Mother Nature and tempt fate, everything starts to conspire against you and us.
The difficulties in making Jaws have been discussed at length. The mechanical shark frequently didn’t work, and filming out on open water meant that weather routinely caused problems that made filming difficult. A fact which would cause Spielberg to urge Kevin Costner not to shoot on water for Waterworld decades later. Jaws ended up going massively over budget due to the problems.
Jaws was only Spielberg’s third feature film, and the fact that the movie was taking so much longer, and costing so much more, was the sort of thing that Spielberg knew could damage his career. In fact, he said people told him Jaws would destroy it. In the end, Jaws would become a massive hit, which was good, because anything less might have truly ended the director’s young career. He continued…
I thought my career was virtually over halfway through production on Jaws because everybody was saying to me, ‘You are never going to get hired again. This film is way over budget and way over schedule, and you are a real liability as a director and you are not going to get hired again.’ So I really thought that I’d better give this my all because I’m not working in the Industry again after they see the movie. And fortunately, fortune smiled on us.
It wasn’t just the difficulty with filming caused by the weather that wreaked havoc with the budget and the schedule. Spielberg indicates that a large portion of the cast and crew got sick throughout the shoot, with the director himself being one of the few that was spared that fate. He said…
In the six months out to sea, I have never seen so many people getting sick. For some reason, I never got seasick, and I think that is only because I had the weight of this production on my shoulders and I didn’t have time to get sick. But we finally got through this thing, and what got all of us through it was being in the company of each other. That was the key that got us through it. The camaraderie that happens when you’re just trying to survive something … it brought all of us closer together.
In the end, it all worked out, but Spielberg has said he had a panic attack on set and nightmares and for years after as a result of the traumatic experience. He apparently used to climb into the boat on the Universal Studios Tour and cry as a way of dealing with the experience.
While one would have to say now that making Jaws was worth it, considering what the movie means to fans, the industry, and Spielberg himself, the movie certainly made everybody earn its success.