'Playing With Sharks' Celebrates Valerie Taylor The Woman Who Shot Jaws

The live action shark footage in Jaws (1975) was shot by husband and wife team, Ron and Valerie Taylor. Ron sadly passed away in 2012, but Valerie has just had a new documentary film made about her life and career, both above and below the water.

Playing With Sharks (2021), directed by Sally Aitken, recently received its virtual premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.

In the Steven Spielberg classic Ron and Valerie filmed the jaw(s) dropping actual great white shark footage of the shark attacking the cage that housed Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss). That footage was shot in Australia using the forced perspective of a smaller cage and a shorter stunt performer - Carl Rizzo - to give the impression that the 13 foot long great white was the 25 foot one from the film. The Australian husband and wife team also filmed live shark footage for both Orca (1977) and Jaws 2 (1978).

For some, such iconic, powerful footage, wrapped around a narrative around a killer shark, hasn't done the reputation of sharks any favours. Valerie counts herself amongst them, in fact according to the documentary she has been trying to make amends and make a difference ever since.

Even at the time of the release of Jaws, Universal paid Ron and Valerie to go on the press junket to try and educate people that sharks weren't evil killers waiting to stalk helpless swimmers.

It would seem that the powerful music by John Williams, the iconic trailer and Jaws poster, along with 67 million Americans who saw it during its initial release, was just too strong, and that message was lost and unheard above the thrashing waters and screams of Chrissie Watkins onwards.

Back in the water, more often than not, it was Valerie in front of the camera, with Ron filming, so it is a nice touch that the new documentary - featuring lots of original footage from the couple - Ron gets the first listed cinematography credit. All of which show that almost 50 years after the release of Jaws, that Ron and Valerie are still educating us and new generations about sharks and how playing with sharks, we must first respect them.

The documentary also features interviews explorer Jean-Michel Cousteau (son of Jacques), as well film-maker and former spearfishing champion Rodney Fox, who himself is a great white shark attack survivor.

Ron and Valerie were spearfishing champions themselves, however after killing five sharks in a single day on a spearfishing trip they vowed to switch shooting sharks with a speargun to shooting them with a film camera, helping bring the world of these amazing fish to the rest of the world.

That journey brought numerous documentaries, including 1971's Blue Water, White Death that even saw Valerie swimming outside the cage with oceanic white tips. It's imagery so great that it influenced both Peter Benchley and Steven Spielberg, when he knew who he needed when it came to filming live great white shark footage for Jaws.

My first memory of Valerie was as a child seeing her take to the water in a chainmail dive suit, attracting sharks to bite her arm, to prove that her suit could withstand the bite pressure, flying in the face of scientific understanding at the time, which it did. That story, from 1981, even made the front cover of the National Geographic. Quite literally, she loved to prove that and get her nmae in the National Geographic, beat that Matt Hooper!

Jaws was a double edged sword, both raising awareness of the couple, but also helping turn the shark into public enemy number one - although it's unfair to think that sharks weren't being demonised prior to Jaws, the film and the media certainly added chum to the water.

Valerie said: "You don't walk around New York worrying about King Kong," but then King Kong isn't real, so the lines aren't blurred. Kong isn't real, sharks are.

For how much longer though is unsure, and that is why that, even in her 85th year, Valerie is still pushing the plight of sharks. The archive footage shows Taylor swimming through coral reefs that no longer exist, sharing the water with sharks that wee once in abundance, but now teter on the edge of extinction.

Valerie said: "They have been around for millions of years, that's not a mistake."

They may once have been hunters of the deep themselves, spear fishing and Valerie still regrets killing a nurse shark on camera in the 1950s, but people change. And both her and her husband have more than paid their penance and given their lives to conservation, ten fold.

It was also a very clear path which Peter Benchley, author of Jaws, also followed. A legacy of conservation and conversation about securing the future of sharks which continues to this day, now taken forward by his wife. Wendy.

And this documentary is both a celebration of her past, but also a legacy for our future and the future of sharks.

Words Dean Newman