JAWS shark not working made it a scarier film says Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg has said that the shark animatronic not working as it should during the making of JAWS (1975) on Martha’s Vineyard helped improve the film for audiences.

There is no denying that Spielberg is a brilliant filmmaker, but he is the first to admit that the journey from JAWS the book by Peter Benchley to JAWS the box office monster hit took talent and an awful lot of luck, and fortunate mishaps that – at the time – made the filming become almost impossible, but in the end would shape and create the classic shark film.  

Thanks to the malfunctioning shark – it worked just fine in fresh water but didn’t take a liking to the salt water of the sea – the great white in JAWS is on seen on screen for a total of four minutes.

For the rest of the film, he is hinted at through point of view shots, THAT John Williams theme, towing everything from yellow barrels to the end of piers and some expert Oscar-winning editing from Verna Fields.

The problem was that the salt water was absorbed by the rubber skin, ruining the carefully sculpted shape, which also played havoc with the then state-of-the art mechanisms that brought the shark to life.

The result was a scheduled 55-day shoot ballooning to an incredible 159 days, but despite that – and its young director living in constant fear of being drowned by the crew or fired by Universal Studios – and with the benefit of almost 50 years of cinematic success, Spielberg can see it made the film a perfect beast of a movie.

Speaking to Lauren Laverne on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, Spielberg said of JAWS: "It's a much better movie that the shark kept breaking down because  I had to be resourceful and figuring out how to create suspense and terror without seeing the shark itself.

“And Hitchcock did that, and I think Hitchcock was a tremendous guide for me, in the way he was able to scare you without really seeing anything.

“It was just good fortune that the shark kept breaking, it was my good luck and I think it's the audience’s good luck too because it is a scarier movie without seeing so much of the shark."

Perhaps part of that good luck is also down to the stick of celery that Spielberg slept with under his pillow? No, really, the young director found it calming. And who could blame him, as he had enough nightmares in the day, what with an ever changing script, tide, uncooperative islanders and an often malfunctioning shark.

And that shark swam into his dreams, attacking a swimming Spielberg from the depths, only for it then to stop working and float to the surface.

So, in an effort to stop the recurring nightmares that Spielberg had during his sleep whilst making the shark classic, the famed director took to sleeping with a stick of celery under his pillow, which is said to have a calming aroma.

Spielberg gave us some scares in JAWS that still stand strong to this day, in fact he has long been effective at delivering tense and scary moments through his films, we looked at his ten scariest cinematic moments here.

Words by Dean Newman

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