"A Panic on Our Hands" - Filming "Jaws"
By Michael Lyons
Steven Spielberg had to film most of Jaws without the film's star. Oh, sure, Roy Scheider was there as Sheriff Brody, Richard Dreyfuss was there as Hooper, and Robert Shaw was there as Quint.
However, Bruce didn't show up very often.
Bruce?!?
As almost every red-blooded Jaws fan knows, Bruce is the name given to the mechanical shark used in the production of the film. The nickname was provided by Spielberg, who gave the shark the same name as his attorney.
Jaws was the first movie to be shot on the ocean, and salt water and other weather conditions meant trouble for Bruce, who was filled with hydraulics and tubes. The mechanical shark often malfunctioned or didn't work at all.
The phrase "The shark is broken" became so iconic that the crew issued it throughout the production of Jaws. Six years ago, Ian Shaw, the son of the late actor Robert Shaw, who played Quint, co-wrote the play The Shark is Broken about the production of the film. As a true look-a-like, he also portrayed his dad in the play.
In 1974, on Martha's Vineyard, while Spielberg and crew waited for Bruce to function, other methods were used to allow the shark to still be part of the film.
A fin appearing above the water, underwater point-of-view shots from the shark's perspective, the barrels that Quint shoots via a small harpoon gun and attaches to the shark, and John Williams composing the most memorable and terrifying score of all time - these became creative ways to keep the shark in the film, when the shark couldn't be in the movie, because, well, the shark was broken.
This creativity and finding a way to still make Jaws without a shark also wound up increasing the film's intensity - not seeing the shark for the majority of the film became the fear of the unknown.
Still, Bruce's constant malfunctioning and the filmmakers' ability to overcome it has become the stuff of moviemaking legend.
In author Laurent Bouzereau's book Spielberg: The First Ten Years, the director talked about his relationship with Bruce the Shark: “That's a much-maligned shark, and I am kind of responsible for creating a lot of bad-mouthing about it because the shark was frustrating. It didn't really work all the time - it didn't work hardly at all. I got mad at the shark and at the people who made it, when in fact, Bob Mattey [legendary special effects artist who created the shark for the film] was the best special effects man alive. Nobody else but Bob could have made the shark work as well as it did. So he did a great job. It was just that we were shooting out on the Atlantic Ocean and not in a lazy lake - the way Hollywood movies were usually doing it. We had tides to contend with. I would often set up a shot, and suddenly, the barge holding our electrical generators would start drifting that way, the camera would barge would drift in another direction, and the Orca would move around its two anchors. Before you knew it, we were completely out of position, and it would take another hour to reset. When we were finally ready, a bunch of tourists on sailboats would show up, cross the horizon, and ruin our shot. It was just frustrating and tough on all of us - I got very angry, and of course, I blamed the shark. It seldom worked, So it was an easy target. Yet it worked well enough that we, for a while, had the biggest hit of all time. So, in the end, I really owe the shark a lot more than I want to take away from it right now. And I owe Bob Mattey and his team an apology and all my gratitude.”
Yes, indeed, Jaws was the biggest hit of all time. After all these hours, days, and months of frustration for many during the production of Jaws, it turned out to be a once-in-a-generation blockbuster that changed the movie industry and how we experience going to the movies.
But...that's a story for part 4, next week.
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Sources: Bouzerou, Laurent, Spielberg: The First Ten Years, Insight Editions, 2023.