Firings, Fights and Genius: The directors who almost and actually brought you Jaws and its sequels
Hello, Islanders!
Today I thought I’d take a look at the directors that shaped the “Jaws” series. I will be commenting on their careers both before and after they battled with the great fish. As a bonus, I thought I’d throw in a couple of filmmakers who, ever so briefly, were in the director’s chair.
JAWS
Dick Richards Academy Award nominations: 1 Oscars: 0
Have you heard the story of the potential director of a movie featuring a shark, yet for some reason kept referring to “the whale” in early meetings? That was Dick Richards. With a couple films under his belt, he sat down with Peter Benchley, Richard Zanuck and David Brown to discuss his ideas about the film. However, for reasons only known to Mr. Richards himself, every time he described a scene including the shark, he would say whale. Example: Instead of saying “Here’s where the shark jumps onto the boat,” he would say “Here’s where the WHALE jumps on the boat.” Author Benchley and the two producers felt that a shark posed a much greater danger to the characters than a whale, but Richards could not fathom the differences. Needless to say, the search went on.
Mr. Richards’ Academy Award nomination was for producing Best Picture nominee “Tootsie” in 1983.
Dick Richards was the original choice to direct Jaws (1975) before Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg Academy Award nominations: 19 Oscars: 3
A veteran of 70’s television, including the Emmy award winning film “Duel,” Spielberg had recently completed his first feature film, “The Sugarland Express,” for producers Zanuck and Brown. Intrigued by the film’s title, he read the script and envisioned “Jaws” as his next feature. He got the gig and had a pretty good career afterwards. OK, maybe I understated Steven Spielberg’s influence on Hollywood and the world.
He is the most successful film director in the history of motion pictures. His name alone brings crowds to the theatres. Films like “Young Sherlock Holmes” and “The Goonies” were advertised with “Steven Spielberg Presents” above the titles. Of course, this success caused backlash among his peers. He was overlooked for an Academy Award nomination for his direction of “Jaws” (though his work was recognized by both the Director’s Guild of America and the BAFTAs) and was also ignored for his work on 1985’s “The Color Purple,” a film that earned 10 nominations, including Best Picture! Oddly, Spielberg WON the DGA award that year, which means that, while a group of directors thought he was the best, another group of directors felt he wasn’t even worthy of a nomination. Sydney Pollock – who actually won the 1985 Oscar for directing for “Out of Africa,” once remarked in an interview that he felt Spielberg would never be taken seriously until he did something serious. He made those comments in 1983 and, later that year, I had the chance to ask him about his comment before a screening of Pollock’s “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They.” He explained to me that he felt the industry saw Spielberg’s films as mindless entertainment. No substance. How wrong could they have been?
Mr. Spielberg has two Academy Awards for directing (“Schindler’s List” and “Saving Private Ryan” and a third Oscar as one of the producers of “Saving Private Ryan.”
JAWS 2
John D. Hancock Academy Award nominations: 1 Oscars: 0
John Hancock was an acclaimed theater director with two feature films under his belt – “Let’s Scare Jessica to Death” and “Bang the Drum Slowly” – when his friend, playwright Howard Sackler, suggested him to producers Zanuck and Brown while working on the script for “Jaws 2.” Hancock was hired and, with his wife, Dorothy Tristan, who would also co-author the script, set out for Martha’s Vineyard. Unfortunately, issues with the shark (it STILL wasn’t working) and internal problems both on and off the set, made for a fractured relationship and, shortly after filming began, Mr. Hancock was released and the production temporarily halted. When I interviewed Mr. Hancock for the book, “Jaws 2: The Making of the Hollywood Sequel,” he told me that, had he known that Steven Spielberg would go on to be STEVEN SPIELBERG he never would have taken the job.
Since then, Mr. Hancock has continued to write and direct such popular films as “Weeds” and “Prancer.” His most recent film, 2020’s “The Girls of Summer” was well received. Earlier this year, Mr. Hancock’s original screenplay, “A Love Story,” was named Best Thriller Screenplay at the Los Angeles Film Awards.
Mr. Hancock’s Academy Award nomination came for the Short Film “Sticky My Fingers…Fleet My Feet.”
John D. Hancock worked on Jaws 2 as director, but he was fired and Jeannot Szwarc took over.
Jeannot Szwarc Academy Award nominations: 0 Oscars: 0
Like Steven Spielberg, Jeannot Szwarc was a veteran of television. In fact, he, Spielberg and John Badham used to share an office on the Universal lot. Wow! That is a lot of talent in one room! When production was put on hold after John Hancock had been released, the studio furiously hunted for another director to take over the film. Both Verna Fields – the Oscar winning film editor of “Jaws” and now a Vice President and the studio – and production designer Joe Alves, who had directed some second unit footage on “Jaws”, were considered. However, due to the newly established “Eastwood Rule,” neither were able to do so. The Eastwood Rule came about a few years earlier when director Phillip Kaufman was fired from “The Outlaw Josey Wales” and star Clint Eastwood stepped into the director’s role. The rule states that, should a director be released from a film, no one currently working on the production can take over.
Alves recommended Szwarc, a director he had worked with often on such television programs as “Night Gallery.” At the time, his only feature film was “Bug,” a film that dealt with cockroaches that would burst into flames. Once on board, Szwarc huddled up with newly hired screenwriter Carl Gottlieb – most of the Sackler/Tristan script was scrapped. It you want a better idea of how the Hancock version of “Jaws 2” may have looked, I recommend reading the novelization by Hank Searls – and concentrated on one of the film’s set pieces – the water skier attack – while Gottlieb shaped the story. Some directors are in pre-production on a film for up to a year. That’s one year to work on your vision and coordinate everything it takes to make a major motion picture. Szwarc had less then three months. That he was able to create a film that is still enjoyed almost 45-years later is almost unheard of in this day and age. Sure, three months may be fine to plan a small, independent film, but to create a major motion picture – that also happens to be the sequel to the most successful film of all time? Whatever they paid him, it wasn’t enough!
Following “Jaws 2,” Szwarc went on to direct such popular films as “Somewhere in Time,” “Supergirl,” “Santa Claus: the Movie,” and extensive work on such television shows as “Ally McBeal,” “The Practice,” “Smallville” and “Gray’s Anatomy.”
Some random trivia: if you watch a lot of his early television work, you will see that the shows are credited as having been directed by “Jean” Szwarc. One day he received a phone call from an L.A. based woman’s organization, who wanted “Jean” to come speak to their group as there were not very many female directors in Hollywood. After explaining that he was not, in fact, a female director, he began using his full first name on his credit line.
Jaws 2 director Jeannot Szwarc (right) with star Roy Scheider
JAWS 3-D
Joe Alves Academy Award nominations: 1 Oscars: 0
If there is anyone that knows all there is about the “Jaws” universe, it is Joe Alves. From production manager to 2nd unit director to associate producer, his work on the first two films was more than enough to earn him the right to director the third chapter in the “Jaws” series.
Having worked with Steven Spielberg on “Sugarland Express,” Alves was a natural choice for the director’s production designer on “Jaws.” It was Alves who visited Martha’s Vineyard in the dead of winter and imagined Amity in the summer. Oh, and he also designed the shark!
Mr. Alves suggested that, if there was a “Jaws 3,” that it be done in 3-D, which had recently made a return to theatres after nearly two decades. With Carl Gottlieb and Richard Matheson on board as screenwriters, the continuing adventures of the Brody boys was moved from Amity to Sea World in Orlando Florida. Featuring the largest shark in the series – this one was, as Quint would say, “a 30-footer” – “Jaws 3-D” became, and remains, the highest grossing 3-D film of the 20th Century.
After “Jaws,” Mr. Alves went on to design the looks of such popular films as “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Escape From New York” and “Freejack.”
Mr. Alves Academy Award nomination came for his Production Design of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Though he did not win the Oscar, he did receive the BAFTA award that year.
Jaws 3-D director Joe Alves
JAWS THE REVENGE
Joseph Sargent Academy Award nominations: 0 Oscars: 0
Mr. Sargent was a 1/3 of a way through his almost 5 decade career when he signed on to helm “Jaws the Revenge.” After a long career that included both television classics (“Lassie,” “Gunsmoke” and “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” among others) and well-received films like “The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three” and “MacArthur,” Sargent decided to give the big fish a try. Not sure why he was picked for the gig, though he did direct Lorraine Gary in the television film “The Marcus-Nelson Murders,” which was the basis for the popular television show “Kojak.” Oddly, he never directed an episode of that popular series.
However he got there, Mr. Sargent did a good job on a film that takes a lot of grief from fans all over the world. And yes, while there are some unintentionally funny moments – think Michael Caine climbing from the ocean totally dry or a shark that roars – there are a couple of definite thrills and chills in the film, most notably Sean Brody’s death and what I like to call “The Banana Boat Massacre.”
After “Jaws the Revenge,” Mr. Sargent continued to work behind the camera for the next 20-years, turning out 21 made for television movies and three mini-series. Mr. Sargent passed away on December 22, 2014. He was 89 years old.
Though never nominated for an Academy Award, Mr. Sargent earned 9 Emmy Award nominations for his direction, winning 4.
Jaws The Revenge director Joseph Sargent
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.
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