The REAL reason Hooper lives in Spielberg's JAWS

Hello Islanders,

If you’ve read the novel “Jaws” you know that Matt Hooper meets a grisly fate after he goes down in the shark cage.  To add insult to injury, as the shark breaches the water with Hooper in its jaws, Brody takes aim with a rifle and fires, only to hit Hooper in the neck.   However, in the film – SPOILER ALERT - Hooper lives.  Ever wonder why? 

Several people worked on the script for JAWS, most notably the novel’s author, Peter Benchley, playwright Howard Sackler and Carl Gottlieb.  For the curious, in the novel, Quint is killed when his foot is caught in a harpoon rope and he is pulled under and drowns.  In Benchley’s original script, Quint dies by falling onto a harpoon.  In the final script, credited to Benchley and Gottlieb, he is eaten by the shark.  And since we’re talking about the shark, in the novel, the shark just…dies, presumably from exhaustion.  Benchley’s script has the shark biting down on an air tank, causing it to explode.  We all know how the movie ends.  But I digress.  In both Benchley’s draft, and the final script, Hooper lives.  

And the reason, in my mind, is due to the amazing work of filmmakers Ron and Valerie Taylor.  Ron had been a cameraman on the acclaimed 1971 shark documentary Blue Water, White Death.  Knowing that the Hooper in the cage scene would be a part of the film, the producers hired the Taylors to shot some footage of real sharks interacting with a diver in a cage.  As 25-foot sharks are not easily found, to make the local sharks appear larger, the Taylors decided to use a smaller cage, which could hold a much smaller diver.   Enter 4’9” Carl Rizzo, who jumped at the offer of a free trip to Australia.  Rizzo stood a full 8” shorter then the eventually cast Richard Dreyfuss, and his smaller stature made even the normal sized sharks loom larger.

Lowered into the water in a cage that was 5/8th the size of the cage used in the film.  As the cameras rolled, curious great white sharks would swim by, curious as to what was floating just below the surface.  One shark got too curious and attacked the cage.  Rizzo narrowly escaped by the amazing footage of the shark thrashing about and trashing the cage was too good not to use.  But in order to use the footage of a shark destroying an empty cage, the filmmakers had to show Hooper getting away and hiding.  

Also, a more simple reason that Hooper lives could be because while he, like pretty much every character in the novel is unlikable and you really don’t care that he dies, as played by the cute and cuddly Dreyfuss, Hooper is a character the audience cares about and to kill him off would have devastated the audience. 

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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