JAWS By The Numbers - Directors Cut
No doubt you’ve been through JAWS scene with a fine toothy comb – but just how well do you know your Spielberg shark film-based stats?
We’ve done the movie maths and put together a list by numbers of the facts behind the the original summer blockbuster that started it all..
Bitesize
3 – The number of animatronic sharks designed and built for the first JAWS movie. The sharks arrived on set two months after filming began. When the movie wrapped, the sharks were destroyed and a fourth, smaller scaled model was cast out of fibreglass and displayed in Universal Studios, California. Ironically, just like silver screen life imitating art, the JAWS theme park ride had its mechanical mishaps too and there were faults, suspensions, and closures throughout it’s on / off lifespan. *The attraction sailed its last tour of Amity with 48 guests onboard in January 2012. The entire Amity area was destroyed and before you could say “Quidditch” Bruce was bumped to make way for Harry Potter. The fibreglass shark still hangs on display today in homage as a photo opportunity in the Fisherman's Wharf section of the San Francisco part of the park.
Bruce the animatronic shark from JAWS (1975)
4 – The initial production budget for the first JAWS movie was $4 million.
It’s also the number of Oscars that JAWS was nominated for at the 1976 Academy Awards. It won three in the categories of best music, sound and editing. It didn’t win for Best Picture, and neither Spielberg, Scheider, Shaw or Dreyfuss were even nominated.
And four is also the total number of minutes that the great white shark in JAWS is seen on screen.
Production Designer Joe Alvles inspects Bruce the animatronic shark under the watchful eye of JAWS director Steven Spielberg
5 – ‘The Golden Raspberry Awards’, also known as the ‘The Razzies’ or ‘The Razzles’, is a spoof awards ceremony honouring the best of the worst in the movie business, where no star, from Madonna to Tom Hanks, is safe from being seeded with a gong. In 1983 ‘Jaws 3-D’ was nominated for five Razzies including Worst picture, Screenplay and meanest of all, Newcomer going to Cindy and Sandy for their performance as “The Shrieking Dolphins”. This turned out to be fruitless with the movie scooping no awards on the night.
9 - That budget jumped to a then mega $9 million by the end of production. The issues with the sharks not working, the (not so) minor problem of Quint’s boat, the Orca sinking during filming and trouble at sea between feuding crew and cast members were all contributing factors towards the ramped up final budget.
Brucetta the shark about the smash her way through the control room window in JAWS 3-D (1983)
9 – the number of fatal shark attacks worldwide in 2022. In comparison the odds of being struck by lightning are 1 in 500,000 compared to 1 in 3.75 million of having a close encounter of the finned kind on a cold dank night. Believe it or not, there are a host of other ways to meet your maker ranging from the ordinary to the extraordinary** :
Cows (worldwide, cows cause more deaths than sharks per year)
Eating undercooked meat
Falling out of your bed
Getting stung by a jellyfish
Falling Coconuts
12 –cast and crew averaged filming a 12-hour day on set. This is standard throughout the film industry and would be ok in general … if you weren’t running JAWS over schedule… (see Bigger Bites)
17 – The number of times that Mrs Kintner actress Lee Fierro slapped Roy Scheider (Chief Brody) when she confronts him on the dock after the funeral of her son, Alex Kintner.
Midrange Mouthfuls
24 – Number of hours in the day, but can feel like three weeks.
25 – the approximate length in feet of the three animatronic sharks built by a team of over 40 technicians under the supervision of special effects artist, Robert A Mattey. Each model racked up a pretty snappy production cost of approximately $150,000 each.
27– The age Spielberg was when he directed JAWS. The movie went into production with no sharks, no script and barely any cast. It was just nine days before shooting began that Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw were cast as Hooper and Quint.
38 – The number of days it took JAWS to swim past the magic $100 million barrier, making it the then highest grossing film.
41 – TV rating US film and TV review site, ‘Rotten Tomatoes gives ‘Jaws – The Revenge’. Not bad for a movie which grossed $18.8m at the US box office. How d’ya like them… err… tomatoes!
55 - JAWS was nicknamed “Flaws” by the crew after Principal photography, which was scheduled to take 55 days, almost tripled to 159.
As in the number of days JAWS was originally scheduled to film at sea and on location Martha’s Vineyard, which doubled as Amity Island.
64 – The number of (summer) dollars that extras in Martha’s Vineyard were paid for running in and out of the water for the beach shark attack scene.
67 – It is estimated that an astonishing 67 million Americans saw the film upon release in 1975.
Steven Spielberg gives direction from the snout of his star in JAWS
Bigger Bites
73 – The size of the orchestra used by John Williams to score the film in March 1975.
81 – 81 – The number of minutes into the first film before we get to see any actual shark . Spielberg said: “The film went from a Japanese Saturday matinee horror flick to more of a Hitchcock, the less-you-see-the-more-you-get thriller.”
The animatronic sharks created a real-life nightmare of their own by constantly breaking down.
So, in order to ham up the horror and suspense, Spielberg relied on other fearsome factors such as someone or something in shallow water being dragged dramatically below the surface, using the score by John Williams to indicate when the presence of the shark was imminent or the yellow barrels attached to the shark.
100 – The first film to ever earn $100 million at the US box office
159 – JAWS was nicknamed “Flaws” by the crew after Principal photography, which was scheduled to take 55 days, almost tripled to 159. Quite a bad record for this vicinity.
Extra fin fun fact: Alfred Hitchcock alongside ‘The Great Escape’ and ‘The Magnificent Seven’ director John Sturges, were also considered as directors for JAWS.
100 – Filming on the first ‘JAWS’ movie ran over by around 100 days. Spielberg being a young and inexperienced director at that time, had never known a movie to run over by that much before and thought this could spell the end of his career.
200 – Before deciding on the snappy title for his book (originally called ‘Silence in the Deep’), author Peter Benchley turned to his father Nathaniel Benchley, children’s author, for “finspiration”. Benchley Snr dully submitted a list of 200 suggestions. In the end ‘Jaws’ was the only one that both Benchley and his editors could agree on.
175,000 – How much in dollars producers David Brown and Richard Zanuck paid JAWS novelist Peter Benchley for the movie rights to bis book before it had even been published.
JAWS alternative titles considered by Peter Benchley
Bonus Bites
The sharks were collectively referred to as Bruce after Spielberg’s lawyer, Bruce Ramer.*** Spielberg remains a loyal client of the “other” Bruce in his life since his longstanding dedication. Ramer’s extensive client list features the likes of US filmmakers and Directors Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, Forrest Gump, Castaway) and Cameron Crowe (Say Anything, Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous) and he handled Clint Eastwood for over fifty years.
When Spielberg first read the script for JAWS after coming across the book on top of his office desk, he originally thought that it was about a Dentist!
Spielberg was actually second choice as director for JAWS. First choice was Dick Richards****, who was fired for repeatedly referring to the shark as a whale during a production meeting.
Roy Scheider landed the part of Chief Brody by chance after overhearing Spielberg talking at a party about a scene where the shark jumps onto the boat. He asked for a role in the movie. Initially, Charlton Heston was being considered for the part of Chief Brody but Spielberg was keen to cast a lesser-known actor so that the viewers wouldn’t instantly identify the character as the hero type. (Based on Heston and his previous roles.)
The idea behind Jaws 2 was originally set to be a prequel based on Quint’s retelling in the first movie of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis. Spielberg had already stated that he didn’t want to be a part of the second movie, having suffered with exhaustion and PTSD from making the first one. However, on hearing the premise and after some teething problems had occurred during initial stages of production, Spielberg considered taking on the project. He even drafted a screenplay based on Quint’s Indianapolis speech from the first movie. However, at the time he was contracted to work on the ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ movie for another year and the producers of ‘Jaws 2’ could not hold off until he was next available.
And just for fin (gettit?)
***** The surname Hooper comes from the old term for a person who helped to make barrels (yes, really) by creating the hoops to go on them. So you could say that Matt “Hooper” was destined for his role. Either that or Peter Benchley is a thorough researcher who jumped through hoops while writing the book. OK, let’s leave it there.
Was your favourite fact left out? Add it in the comments below!
Words by Emma Pearson
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Other Sources:
*Jaws (ride) - Wikipedia
**More Facts All About Sharks & How Harmless They Are - Shark Sider
*** Bruce Ramer - Variety500 - Top 500 Entertainment Business Leaders | Variety.com
**** https://parade.com/1390306/walterscott/jaws-trivia/
***** Hooper (surname) - Wikipedia