JAWS director Steven Spielberg confirmed as having COVID

It's a case of COVID encounter of the first time kind as Steven Spielberg has had to pull out of an awards event for The Fabelmans’ actress Michelle Williams and interview with good friend Martin Scorsese, after testing positive with coronavirus

It's somewhat ironic as his latest film, The Fabelmans, was born out of the world of lockdown and COVID, as Variety said that the legendary award winning director had been prompted to make this very personal film as a result of the uncertainty of the pandemic.

During a press conference at the Toronto International Film Festival, where The Fabelmans received its premiere,  Spielberg said: “I remember, as the death toll mounted, we kept watching the reports of what was happening throughout the country and the world and I kept thinking, ‘What is this going to mean for humanity?...And I thought, ‘This is something I’ve got to get out of me now.’”

That something would be his most personal project to date, with the director of JAWS and Schindler's List utilising Zoom sessions to help form and write the script.

It makes you wonder how very different the making of JAWS might have been with such technology? Perhaps Carl Gottlieb and Spielberg would have had Zoom sessions rather than the JAWS co-screenwriter and the director living on the same cabin and travelling to set each and every day, helping build the shark classic we all know and love.

And in many ways JAWS became the poster boy for pandemic allegory, it made the cover of The New York Times, was the subject of numerous political cartoons and memes, even ending up in a piece of art work by Jim Carey, making a comment about the then President Trump.

It was hard not to see the parallels between Mayor Vaughn leaving beaches open and claiming everything was fine and some of the (in)actions of those running the country.

And then we have the shark itself, for the most part an unseen terror that can seemingly strike anyone, young or old, sound familiar?

Even the second part of Jaws is about isolation, three men in a boat at sea against the shark. They may not have to be two metres apart, but the fractions and camaraderie aboard must seem all the more real for those all having to stay at home to stay safe. 

The shark in JAWS appears for around four minutes in total, but its presence is felt throughout. The longevity of JAWS has been that it is about people and politics, and that doesn't age. JAWS isn't about a shark; JAWS is about people. 

So, what was once about post-Watergate paranoia or Vietnam can just as easily be attributed to the ignorance and spread of AIDS, the BSE crisis or the COVID-19 pandemic. 

And because of that, "Are you going to close the beaches?" will always have a far greater meaning for the audience viewing it in the present. We are all residents of Martha's Vineyard, islanders or not. JAWS is timeless and shall always be about our time, and that is what will always make it relevant. 

And sadly COVID impacted JAWS in a very real way as it given as the cause of death of Mrs Kintner actress, Lee Fierro.

Other JAWS-related impacts included an exhibition at the Martha's Vineyard Museum, and more was to come, including the West End debut of The Shark Is Broken, about the behind the scenes making of JAWS co-written by and starring Ian Shaw, the son of Quint actor, Robert Shaw.

Even the unveiling of Bruce at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures was postponed several times in LA.

But, the subsequent lockdown did create one good thing to come out of COVID, the JAWS WeMake, which featured the work of over 100 people from around the world recreating JAWS with limited resources and a lot of imagination.

Words by Dean Newman

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