All That Jaws: Behold Bruce, The Musical Making Of Jaws
The making of Jaws on stage is not uncharted territory, we’ve already had it this year, with the masterful and much-lauded The Shark Is Broken, which was co-written by and starred Ian Shaw, son of Quint himself, Robert Shaw.
READ: THE SHARK IS BROKEN REVIEW
And then we’ve had Steven Spielberg filming sharks of a very different kind in the remake of the musical West Side Story, the story of love amidst the rival gangs of the Sharks and the Jets. Save for the musical intro Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, it’s Spielberg’s first foray into film musical.
Mash those two together and you’ve sort of got Jaws the musical, and that is exactly what is possibly happening, a musical version of the making of Jaws.
It’s entitled Bruce, of course named after the Great White Shark model of the film that was designed by Joe Alves and named after Spielberg’s lawyer. I guess naming it the great white turd - which it was often referred to by cast and crew - wouldn’t have looked so great in lights.
Bruce has already held a workshop at Seattle Rep earlier this month. It is written by Rob Taylor, with composer Richard Oberacker, the team behind the Broadway musical Bandstand. The music supervisor/arranger/orchestrator is Greg Anthony Rassen. The workshop was directed by Donna Feore.
The write-up on the Seattle Rep website reads: IN 1974, A 26-YEAR-OLD VIRTUALLY UNKNOWN DIRECTOR SET OUT TO FILM THE NUMBER ONE BEST-SELLING NOVEL OF THE DAY.
Invading a sleepy fishing island off Cape Cod to shoot on the open ocean, he battled weather, water, hostile locals, an exploding budget, endless delays, and a mechanical star named Bruce that simply refused to work.
Out of all this chaos, the world was given its first ever summer blockbuster and the career of Steven Spielberg.
Like The Shark Is Broken before it, Bruce must surely doff its Quint cap to Carl Gottlieb’s The Jaws Log. And, so far, that’s as much as we know.
And Jaws isn’t the only Spielberg box office hit to be treading the musical boards. He was Executive Producer on Back To The Future, which receives its musical world premiere in Manchester in early 2020. Not to be outdone, Anne Spielberg, Steven’s younger sister, wrote the Tom Hanks hit, Big, a musical version is currently filling seats it London’s West End.
Of course, others affiliated with Jaws have tried their hand at musicals, perhaps most successfully is Chief Brody himself. Roy Scheider received a best actor Oscar nomination for his role in Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz in 1980.
Hooper should have stuck to driving boats and playing with himself though, as Richard Dreyfuss was ‘let go’ from the West End version of The Producers before it even opened. Nathan Lane was jetted in at the 11th hour.
Robert Shaw was no stranger to success on Broadway as an actor, or as a playwright. However, his only turn in a musical, Gantry, closed just after just one performance and 31 previews. It was directed and choreographed by Onna White.
Broadway and theatre is littered with the dead corpses of big screen films, starved of audiences and failing to translate to stage, Spider-Man and Superman being notable casualties. Question is, will this super shark tale sink or swim?
It’s too early to say how much seats would cost, but if it were $3,000, would those seats be payable by cash or check? Hopefully that would include any booking fee.
By Dean Newman
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THE JAWS LOG
Hired by Spielberg as a screenwriter to work with him on the set while the movie was being made, Carl Gottlieb, and actor and writer, was there throughout the production that starred Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, and Richard Dreyfuss. After filming was over, with Spielberg's cooperation, Gottlieb chronicled the extraordinary year-long adventure in "The Jaws Log", which was first published in 1975, generating 17 printings and selling more than 2 million copies.