JAWS: Similarities and differences between the book and movie
You can catch The Shark Is Broken from 25th July 2023 at the Golden Theater, New York, NYC.
Hi, fellow fans of "Jaws." I am a professional writer and a big fan of the "Jaws" legacy. Well, my being a writer by no means qualifies me to know anything about the subject, but like you I have taken on many lasting impressions of both the novel and the movie. I would like to share my angle on some of this from time to time. See what you think.
In this installment, I want to compare and contrast novel and movie. First of all, a novel needs to be literary, a movie indeed cinema. I am convinced that Peter Benchley achieved a classical literary texture and fabric in the novel. Let's say for example that you or I would have been assigned to write some book called "Jaws." We are assigned the general plot -- that a rogue great white shark terrorizes some oceanside community -- and from there we must envision the story on our own. Many, many, many of us would have chosen the San Francisco Bay. I know that I would have. I'd have jumped all over that instantly, the reason being that the San Fran Bay already had come to be known as a thriving ground for some big great whites that even could be aggressive toward man. A few writers would have chosen the waters off of Australia, but that's awkward because you're going to have to spend a bunch of the story with young swashbucklers flirting with shallow waters and dodging teams of vaulting 17-foot great whites that probably are grabbing at horrified seals. As for Benchley, he came from a different world than all of this. He was an east coaster to begin with and familiar enough, apparently, with the waters off New England that he was already in position to picture the very setting, the very fabric, that would lend the marvelously palpable flavor of old stock New England to his novel. This "fabric" also opened the door for some flavorful characters such as Amity local Ben Gardner and his ilk and eventually open the door wide open for salty hero Captain Quint.
Let's talk about Benchley's efforts and from this point on I would like to prefer to teams as opposed to individuals. We hear all of this hocus pocus about how the movie "Jaws" is Steven Spielberg's move (although, funny thing, we've never heard Steven say that.) We have to call the novel Pete Benchley's novel, and yet there is pretty good reason to talk in terms of any novel being a team effort. None of this commentary is meant to detract from the paramount contribution of Spielberg or that of Benchley, of course. It is for another reason I want to use the team-oriented phrasing: simply to show what insiders are telling us really happened with both ventures. Therefore, I would like to refer to Benchley/Bantam for the book quest and Zanuck/Brown/Spielberg for the movie project.
"Jaws" was NOT Pete Benchley's first book. Nope. His first book -- and I sure would love to get a copy -- is "Time And A Ticket," a non-fiction "diary" of sorts of a season in the life of a mobilized journalist, that journalist being a precocious Pete Benchley. This book hit the stands in 1964. Peter's lucid, deliberate writing style would prove fertile ground for any kind of written piece (remember Hemingway's prose,) and come the late 1960s . . . here it came. The story goes that Benchley would stand at oceanside, maybe even ankle deep in the Atlantic, and stare out at sea and gradually incubate a story that was resonating with him. WHAT IF (fiction writers use these two words a lot) a rogue shark cruised into some seaside acreage and decided to take up at least temporary residence there? Hmmm. Seems the game would be on right then and there? Benchley couldn't get away from this powerful plot. He began writing the story in the early 1970s.
Benchley sent three sample chapters and an outline to Bantam Publishing, and Bantam was very encouraged. The publishing company's chief concern early on -- we are being told -- is that Peter's prose was too erudite, too academic in tones, at times reading almost like documentary script as opposed to a rip-snorting modern novel. What happened next impresses me a great deal. Benchley obviously was able to make the adjustment and give us an excellent story-telling voice and technique package. In later installments, I hope to go deeper talking about the season in which Benchley wrote and rewrote the manuscript. For now, however, I want to move on to my impressions regarding the transition of this fabulous story from the book world to the movie world.
Steven Spielberg is what I call a Wiz Kid, and when he took on "Jaws" he was not much more than a kid. By Hollywood director standards, he was pretty young: mid-20s. It has been commented by older actors and movie hands working for him, however, that he seemed at times beyond THEIR years. He was provenly just that gifted, and he was gaining skill year-by-year. Although he struggled often in the making of the movie (who wouldn't have in making such an exacting and physically challenging film?,) it is clear that the persistent visionary came through for the movie-going public with a show that was able to take on the amplification needed to be a hit movie.
This leads us to my final thought in this installment. The keen-eyed producers at Universal Pictures and the young prodigy Spielberg made two great decisions, and these two decisions seem to contradict each other. They chose to keep the story exactly the same as Benchley had written. And, in a way, they had to create a fundamental contrast from the book, in the sense that they needed to extend the reach and range of several core facets of the experience and even, dare we say, change the skies . . . at least a little bit. I hope to go into more detail on what I'm discussing with this. And, I will want to share a theory -- only a theory, mind you -- on why the shark grew five feet in length from book to movie. Bet you've thought about that, too.
Words by By Jefferson Ford Paul
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