A Watershed Moment in Film History: The 50th Anniversary of Jaws - Part 5 (Conclusion)

 “Shark City” – “Jaws” and Memories of the Summer of ‘75

A Jaws newspaper ad from summer of

1975, featuring testimonial from

moviegoers.

By Michael Lyons

 

Growing up in the small town of Kings Park, on Long Island, New York, one of the destinations every summer was to the town pool at the Smithtown Landing Country Club.

Oh sure, Long Island was chock full of a lot of wonderful beaches, the two that I remember going to quite a bit were Callahans Beach, on the Long Island Sound, and Robert Moses State Park Beach, on the ocean.

However, During the summer of 1975, we spent a lot of time at the Smithtown Landing Country Club Pool, and so did a lot of other people. The pool was jam-packed, shoulder to shoulder that whole summer, and for one reason…

…” Jaws.”

A Jaws ad from 1975 declaring what all fans

of the film already know.

Steven Spielberg's iconic film had a profound impact in our small area of the world, Long Island, New York, and it had a significant impact on the entire world that summer of 1975. People ran from beaches and into movies theaters. And even though it's now 50 summers ago, I have vivid memories of that “Summer of Jaws.”

I was eight going on nine that summer, and I remember one night early in the season, my parents went out, and my cousin Patty came and babysat for me. A commercial came on TV. The first image was someone pounding a “Beach Closed” sign into the sand. My cousin Patty excitedly said, “I want to see this movie!”

Then, after Jaws came out, and my cousin Patty and other friends and family went to see it, it became the talk of the entire summer. However, for my cousins and friends of a similar age to me, it became a mythological thing. You see, our parents didn't think we were old enough yet to see Jaws. After all, the poster read, down at the bottom, under the credits: “…May Be Too Intense For Younger Children.”

So, we weren't allowed to go to see it, which just made us want to see it all the more! “Why not go to see That Darn Cat and Robin Hood? It's playing at the Disney Summer Film Festival?,” our parents asked.

We all settled for the magic of Disney, but Jaws was out there like this forbidden fruit of a movie.

Soon, some kids in the neighborhood did go to see it, and they came back with stories. Oh, the stories! “There's this scene where this kid gets eaten on the raft, and blood spurts up in the air like a geyser!”  “This guy's head, that's been bitten off by the shark, pops out of the inside of a boat!”

Then there were the stories that started to circulate, the rumors - people passing out in the movie theater while watching it, people having heart attacks while watching it because it was so scary. One kid in my neighborhood, who was lucky enough to go to see it, went so far as to tell me that his older sister threw up into her popcorn bucket while watching Jaws!

There were also stories in the newspaper and on TV about how local beaches were empty as  Jaws had generated a collective fear of sharks.

 This made me, and the other kids who were shut out of Jaws by their parents, beg our parents all the more. As these stories circulated, it made our parents shut us down all the more.

Then, the merchandise started to appear in stories - T-shirts, posters, beach towels. Oh yeah, I sported my Jaws "tank top" that whole summer.

Producer Richard Zanuck in 1975, with

Jaws merchandise.

Then, the summer of 75 ended, and it was back to school, and Jaws-mania continued.

Some of my classmates were lucky enough to have seen Jaws over the summer, and their stories and tales continued, recounting the entire plot of the movie. That Christmas, the Jaws game by Ideal was under my Christmas tree. And an obsession with sharks, reading up on them, learning about them, writing reports for school about them, continued.

Then, finally, several summers later, Jaws was reissued to theaters. At this point, my parents could hold back no longer; feeling I was old enough to see it, they took me. Going to the theater, sitting in the theater, waiting for the movie to start, and even when the movie started, was like going on a roller coaster that everyone had told you about. Just as I eagerly awaited the twists and turns of a roller coaster, my heart was pounding before certain scenes in the movie, anticipating what was to come.

It more than exceeded the excitement that came with it that summer of 1975, and my obsession with the movie continued. A year later, it came on cable TV. And in our pre-Betamax, pre-VHS age, I audio-taped the movie. That's right, I put my audio tape recorder up next to the speaker of our furniture-sized TV in our living room, and taped the movie, audio only. I would listen to it the way some kids listen to the latest Top 40 hits from the radio, memorizing every line.

Of course, sequels followed. But, the excitement of Jaws 2 gave way to the new excitement of the musical Grease that summer of 78. And Jaws 3D in '83 didn't hold the same excitement. I felt bad for Jaws: The Revenge the summer it came out in '87, as many ridiculed it before it even hit theaters. However, in full disclosure, all have become incredible, guilty pleasures. It's always nice just to be back in the Jaws world.

I've owned Jaws in every form of physical and digital media. I've devoured any book, article, and podcast, and interview about the movie. My bookshelf is jam-packed with publications about the making of the film, including a prized possession, the book The Jaws Log, signed by Carl Gottlieb, who co-wrote the screenplay. That book is courtesy of my good friend Andy, another fellow Jaws fan. Best friends for over 20 years, we refer to each other simply as Quint and Brody (I'm Quint!)

The author in Martha's Vineyard, summer of 2015,

at the dock from the movie where the

tiger shark ("A Whaaaat?!) was strung up.

In 2015, my wife, Michelle, and I made a pilgrimage to Martha's Vineyard to tour the area where Jaws was filmed in 1974 and also take one of the area's lovely Jaws tours. Two years later, we went to a local movie convention, where we were thrilled to meet Susan Backline, the actress who played Chrissy, the first victim in Jaws, as well as Hooper himself, Richard Dreyfus!

 In our home, we have three shelves filled with action figures, coffee mugs, mini posters, figurines, lunchboxes, and even sneakers, all themed after Jaws. It's my shrine to the movie.

The author and his wife Michelle

in 2017 with actress Susan Backline

(center) who played Chrissie Watkins,

the first victim in Jaws.

Jaws has always been a part of my life and always will be. It's that rare, once-in-a-lifetime movie that's gone beyond the screen and impacted our pop culture and our lives as well.

Fifty years later, as I reflect on the movie, it's also filled with memories. Each of those memories is a mirror of a specific point in my life and where I was at that time. And Jaws was always there. 

Many talk about how Jaws is an always relevant, relatable story about how evil can lurk anywhere, but can be overcome when people (like Brody, Hooper and Quint from different sections of society) come together. 

For me, like many, Jaws is the excitement of what the movies are all about – a grand, scary, funny, fulfilling adventure – told by master director Steven Spielberg who, crafts with film the way artists craft with clay. And, whether watching it in a theater or at home, it’s still a communal experience with other moviegoers. 

This summer, as I think of Jaws, I'll remember that summer of 1975, when all of us from our small town of Kings Park took safety at the Smithtown Landing Country Club Pool. Here, we knew the only sharks were those in our imaginations, filled with dreams of going to see Jaws at the theater.

Happy 50th Anniversary, Jaws!

The author and his wife, Michelle,

with Hooper himself, Richard Dreyfus,

in 2017.

For more of my articles, podcasts and books, swim over to Words From Lyons

 

 

 

 

 

A Watershed Moment in Film History: The 50th Anniversary of Jaws - Part 4

 

"We Need Summer Dollars" - "Jaws" Debuts in Theaters

Moviegoers in 1975 wait in line to see Jaws.

By Michael Lyons 

With the release of director Steven Spielberg’s Jaws in movie theaters on June 20, 1975, the Summer Movie Season was born.

Film critic Peter Biskind said of Jaws that it “diminished the importance of print reviews, making it virtually impossible for a film to build slowly finding its audience by dint of mere quality. Moreover, Jaws wet corporate appetite for big profits quickly, which is to say studios wanted every film to be Jaws.”

It's hard to believe but in the decades preceding that summer of 1975, the movie industry didn't view the summer season as a prime time to release movies. After all, if so many people were spending their time outdoors - at beaches, bar-b-ques, and vacations - who in their right mind wanted to sit inside in a movie theater?

Drive-ins during the summer were a significant source of revenue for the studios and theaters. However, most of the movies released to drive-ins were "B" movies (low-budget Westerns, sci-fi, and horror). Disney re-issued classic animated features during the summer. Before air conditioning was prevalent in most homes, movie theaters would advertise air conditioning as a draw of coming to see a movie ("It's Cool Inside!").

Movie studios saved their big movie releases for spring, fall, and the Christmas seasons, as they believed moviegoers looked to those times of year to go to the movies.

Jaws changed all of that.

It was an eagerly awaited movie because it was based on a best-selling novel by Peter Benchley, which had just been published the year before in 1974. However, the film's producers, Richard Zanuck and David Brown, along with Universal, were brilliant and savvy. 

Here was a movie set during the summer, about summer, about swimming at the beach. And they positioned it to come out just as summer was starting.

The marketing team at Universal also wisely used television to promote Jaws, flooding the airwaves with commercials. This included about two dozen 30-second advertisements airing each night in prime time.

Additionally, Jaws wasn't released to theaters like other films of the time that would open slowly in cities and then spread out to neighborhood theaters. Jaws opened everywhere on June 20, 1975, so that anyone and everyone who wanted to see it could.

Jaws made $7 million during its opening weekend (a record at the time) and grossed a record $21,116,354 in its first 10 days (recouping production costs of the troubled shoot on Martha's Vineyard). 

It grossed $100 million in its first 59 days and surpassed The Godfather as the highest-grossing film at the North American box office in just 78 days. Jaws also became the first film to earn $100 million in the U.S.

Moviegoers waited in line to see the film, then told their friends and neighbors, who also waited in line to see it. Jaws became the conversation.

And, the Summer Movie Season was born. 

Suddenly, movie studios realized that people would go to the movies during the warm weather months. They will take a break from vacations and bar-b-ques (and especially beaches, which were noticeably empty thanks to Jaws) to see a movie that everyone is talking about.

Other studios scrambled to get their Jaws, their big blockbuster. Scheduled releases of some of their biggest pictures began to shuffle to get them out in summer, and the search was on for the next big crowd-pleasing blockbuster.

That would come two summers later in 1977 with Star Wars, which sent the Summer Movie Season into hyperspace. And the fifty summers since have seen such blockbusters ranging from Spielberg’s own E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial to Batman and from The Lion King to Independence Day and from The Avengers to Barbie.

And just as Disney always says, "It all started with a Mouse," when it comes to the Summer Movie Season, "It all started with a shark."

That summer of '75, that summer of Jaws, is filled with memories that have echoed through every summer after. And memories of that summer will be shared in Part 5, the conclusion, next week.

For more of my articles, podcasts and books, head over to: Words From Lyons

Sources: Wikipedia

 

 

 

A Watershed Moment in Film History: The 50th Anniversary of Jaws - Part 3

 "A Panic on Our Hands" - Filming "Jaws"

Left to Right: Robert Shaw, Roy Scheider,

Steven Spielberg and Richard Dreyfuss

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.

Steven Spielberg and Bruce the shark.

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.

For more of my articles, podcasts and books, head over to: Words From Lyons

Sources: Bouzerou, Laurent, Spielberg: The First Ten Years, Insight Editions, 2023.