WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN... JOHN HANCOCK'S 'JAWS 2'

Friday, June 16, 1978 was a big day for my friends and I in sunny Tampa, Florida.  It promised us our choice of two brand new films, both of which we were dying to see.  One was “Grease,” which was opening at the Austin Cinema.  The other was “Jaws 2,” opening at our favorite theatre, General Cinema’s Britton Plaza, a theatre I had once worked at (before switching to the AMC theatre in the next shopping center because they paid ten-cents more an hour).  The Britton was a triplex with a 300 seat theatre on either side of the building.  In the middle was a beautiful 1,000 seat auditorium with a huge screen and beautiful red curtains that would open up before each show.

Needless to say, because I’m writing this on “The Daily Jaws” site, we went to see “Jaws 2,” though in our defense we did go see “Grease” on Saturday, watching all five shows at the Austin.   We arrived at the Britton about 2 hours before the first show and were surprised to find a young man standing in front of the box office.  We had hoped to buy the first tickets of the day and offered to buy the young man’s ticket for him, which we did.  I can still see us, our little group that always went to the movies opening day and sat together, sitting in the plush velvet seats, the lights dimming and the curtains parting.  As soon as Roy Scheider’s name hit the screen, the place erupted in applause, which was only more deafening when JAWS 2 appeared.  I can also still hear the laughter that filled the auditorium when, after the helicopter pilot implored the kids to “throw me a line,” my friend Scott yelled out “two guys are walking down the street!”

12 hours later (we stayed and watched all five shows) we left the theatre, each of commenting on how much we loved it.  “Wouldn’t change a thing,” one of us remarked.  Little did we know that what we had scene was not the film that was originally planned.  So sit back and let me tell you about the John Hancock version of “Jaws 2.”

Kansas City born and Harvard educated, John Hancock earned an Academy Award nomination for his short film “Sticky My Fingers…Fleet My Feet” in 1971.  This led to his first feature film, the still scary horror film “Let’s Scare Jessica to Death.”  He followed that up by directing Michael Moriarty and a then unknown Robert DeNiro in the baseball themed drama “Bang the Drum Slowly.” It was a friend of his that recommended him for Jaws 2.  That friend was playwright Howard Sackler, who had done un-credited work on the script for “Jaws” – he is the one who suggested Quint’s hatred of sharks stemmed from the sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis – and had been charged to write the sequel.  

Much has been written about what happened to John Hancock during his short time working on the film, but not much is known about the film he had in mind.  Allow me to fill you in.

After the trouble with the shark, as seen in “Jaws,” Amity is practically a ghost town.  Summer has arrived but the streets are empty and many of the shops on Main Street are boarded up.  We are introduced to three new characters;  Sideburns, Quint’s son, who comes to Amity to collect his father’s reward (though, of course, it was Brody who killed the shark, I would assume he was ineligible for the reward because he was a public servant) and Boyle, a businessman who thinks the way back to prosperity is to embrace what happened.  He hopes to buy Quint’s shack and turn it into a tourist attraction called “Sharkorama;” and Len Petersen, a real estate developer hoping to make a killing by buying cheap. 

John Hancock (in blue) on the Martha's Vineyard set of "Jaws 2". (credit Edith Blake)

Of course, another shark appears, this one a female close to giving birth.  It does what nature intended it to do, which is eat anything it comes across in the water, be it a seal or a person.  Meanwhile, on dry land, Mike Brody and his best friend, Andy, are being bullied by Reeves Vaughn, the Mayor’s son and basically what we would call today “a D-bag!”  Reeves has no respect for authority, going so far as to tear up a ticket Brody gives him for riding his bicycle where it shouldn’t be ridden.  He’s also not above throwing Sean Brody in the water at every chance, referring to him as “shark bait.”

While his kids are being tormented, Chief Brody is slowly going crazy.  He is haunted by what he experienced and suffers terrible dreams where he is swimming and then attacked.  One “attack” comes while he is in a pool, the dream ending abruptly when Brody sees his own mangled body on the water’s surface.

Brody writing Larry Vaughn Jr a ticket.

The film is mostly character driven, which worked for Hancock because he came from the theater.    In fact, while working on the film on Martha’s Vineyard he was also directing a Tennessee Williams play in Boston.  

As Mike, Andy and a few friends go sailing, they are attacked.  Brody finally convinces the town fathers of the shark and he, Boyle and Petersen head to sea in Petersen’s big twin-engine cruiser, where the confrontation with the shark takes place.  Boyle and Brody are knocked overboard and Boyle is eaten.  As Brody attempts to scramble back onto the boat, Petersen drops the two big engines on the approaching shark, the spinning propellers turning the beast into chum.  

Though some aspects of Sackler and Dorothy Tristan’s script survive the final film (the water skier attack, the way the shark is killed) the studio felt the film was much too dark and, after Hancock was discharged hired “Jaws” co-script writer Carl Gottlieb to lighten things up.  For a better feel for how the Hancock version would have played, check out the novelization by Hank Searles, which was adapted from Sackler and Tristan’s script.   

When our book was released we were bombarded by fans asking if Universal would ever consider doing what Warner Bros. did with Richard Donner’s footage for “Superman II” and put together John Hancock’s footage for “Jaws 2.”  Unfortunately, there is no footage remaining from the Hancock period.  Actress Lenora May, one of the original Amity Kids, remembers requesting, and being shown, some of her footage after she was let go.  I contacted Universal while researching the book and was given a list of all of the “Jaws 2” footage in the vaults.  Sadly, it consisted mostly of test footage of the shark.  In the past year or so, some of the footage has made its way to the Internet so if you want to see a lot of fins going left and right, feel free to search for it.  

Unfortunately home video was just beginning to become popular.  Today they would have saved every foot of film shot for a DVD release.  However, as was custom back then, the studio only kept a few scenes, which could be edited into the film for television broadcast to fit a certain time period.  

Only two scenes supervised by John Hancock are in the finished print.  The first, is the fin slipping through the harbor at the beginning of the film, a shot suggested to him by Steven Spielberg, who had called him when he got the job.   The second is the scene of the kids parasailing.  

I love “Jaws 2” just as it is, but man I would have liked to have seen what John Hancock had planned for us!  

Words by Michael A Smith. Michael is co-author of Jaws 2: The Making Of The Hollywood Sequel. You can order the book by contacting Michael at OsFanMike@aol.com.