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2025 Jaws 50th: "Does the Legend of Jaws Contain as Big a Lie as the Legend of Psycho?"

posted 2 months ago by roger1 (4046)
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Seeing as 2025 is the 50th anniversary of Jaws. It is gonna be big, I think. Spielberg will get to bask in memories. And didn't QT say that Jaws is not only Spielberg's greatest movie but THE greatest movie? ("Not the greatest film," sayeth QT..."the greatest MOVIE.")

Here's my contribution to the Anniversary splash. The following question:

"Does the Jaws legend contain the second greatest lie in the history of movies after the Psycho legend?"

I've posited the Psycho lie before: EVERY article, EVERY book about Psycho says that "Hitchocck surpised his audiences by kililng off the star in the shower before the movie was half over" BUT..the original 1960 trailer SHOWS the shower murder starting and DESCRIBES it.

So..a lie. "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

Now here's the possible lie about Jaws:

EVERY article, EVERY book about Jaws says "because the mechanical shark didn't work, they had to change a blatant William Castle horror movie into a suggestive Alfred Hitchcock suggestive movie.' In short, don't show the shark in full for a long, long, time and sometimes barely at all.

I think, from time to time, that THAT story might just be a lie, too. Here's why:

When I first saw Jaws (opening day, first matinee, June 1975) I came out of it with a strong regard for HOW THE SHARK WAS SLOWLY REVEALED across the entire movie:

The naked female swimmer victim: we never see the shark at all.
The two guys trying to lure the shark with beef on a hook: we only see the dock dragged by the shark move.
The little boy on the raft victim: We see a circling up-and-down flash of fin as the shark attacks the boy.
The guy on the rowboat: Overhead shot of the shark's head and jaws biting down on the screaming victim(and oh how the AUDIENCE screamed at that shot.) But the shark head is underwater, hard to see.
Non-victim: Chief Brody: The shark head rises out of the water.
Various shots of the shark's head popping out at sea.
FINALLY: we watch, graphically, start to finish...the shark emerge onto the sinking boat to bite down on Quint, chew him up and swallow him down. Every detail, the shark in full view.

See...I can't believe ALL of that wasn't SCRIPTED from the beginning: show none of the shark(like when those two guys try to lure him with beef on a hook) then a little bit, then a little bit more, then ALL OF HIM. And show more of him "out at sea with the three guys" than near shore with the tourists.

I'd love the see the original screenplay FIRST DRAFT. That movie seems to me like "not showing the shark" was PRE-PLANNED, not an accident of a malfunctioning shark.

I wonder if we will ever know. Anybody seen that first script?

[–] swanstep (2769) 2 months ago

I don't have anything to add about the 'Jaws Lie' you identify ecarle, but I too would like to know which specific additional shark shots were scripted/storyboarded/planned but (i) cancelled/not shot at all or (ii) shot but abandoned because 'too fake looking'/shark didn't work well enough'. My guess is that the general 'slow reveal' of the shark before the third act with our three protagonists together out on in Quint's boat was always intended (I remember the released script having a fin visible in the 'two guys fishing with a pot-roast off the dock sequence' whereas the shark is left completely invisible in the released cut - but a fin at night is still keeping most of the shark hidden), so the category (i) & (ii) shots will almost all be from that third act.

Relatedly, I had access to Disney+ for a few weeks and watched their doc. 'Music by John Williams'. It was excellent and full of reminders of his craft, how even his most well-known scores have their subtleties and are always somehow even better than you probably remember. Jaws ends very classily and Williams was a big part of that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BCX1SbOvvk

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

I don't have anything to add about the 'Jaws Lie' you identify ecarle, but I too would like to know which specific additional shark shots were scripted/storyboarded/planned but (i) cancelled/not shot at all

---

On the subject of "cancelled/not shot at all" I'm reminded of the unsolvable mystery of one main scene in Psycho and several others in it as well:

The one scene: Sam and Lila driving out to the Bates Motel for the climax. In the movie, it feels like less than a minute of screen time, expository and suspsense-inducing:

Sam: We better decide what we're going to do and say when we get out there.
Lila: We're going to register as man and wife. And then we're going to search the whole place -- inside and out.

In Joe Stefano's published screenplay, those two lines come at the end of about a four minute scene as Sam and Lila discuss Marion(trying not to confront that she's likely dead) and Lila reveals that she and Marion became adult orphans and that Marion supported Lila for a long time.

Clearly Hitchcock felt that all that emotion and backstory got in the way of the suspense -- and he didn't much like Miles(anymore) or Gavin(at all) so why give them a long scene?

But here's the mystery: the one-minute "Sam and Lila driving" scene on screen LOOKS like maybe it came at the end of a LONGER scene -- maybe Hitchcock SHOT the entire "adult orphan" story and then discarded the footage and "came in at th end."

On the other hand, Hitchcock might have been tough and simply decided "I am not going to shoot that scene except the two plot dialogue lines at the end." Which means that Gavin and Miles had to suit up and get in the process screen car to talk...for a minute. DONE.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

A few other scenes are in the script that aren't in the movie:

Marion coming out of the "tryst hotel" to get in a taxi
Marion coming out of the HOUSE she lives in with Lila, to drive away with the money(aha! a HOUSE, not an apartment.)

A "tense scene on the road" with a gas station attendant (Hitch likely decided that only the cop and the car salesman scenes were needed and that got Marion to the Bates Motel precisely at the 30 minute mark.)

An "elongated" scene after Marion's car goes into the swamp: Norman hoses down the tire tracks by the motel;

Norman goes upstairs to Mother's room and picks up her bloody clothes(same overhead shot as for the Arbogast kill), goes down to the cellar to burn the clothes -- GREAT shot of smoke coming out of the Bates House chimney to close the sequence. But evidently Hitch felt it better to "stop at the swamp," save the first overhead shot for Arbogast, and give up the smoke shot.

And, as with the "Sam and Lila drive" scene -- no one who worked on Psycho and was asked about it could confirm if those scenes were even SHOT. I'm guessing no. Hitch would have needed exteriors for a hotel, a house, a gas station and to have spent more time in the Bates House.

But...ya never know...and that applies to "Jaws" too:

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

l or (ii) shot but abandoned because 'too fake looking'/shark didn't work well enough'.

---

There may have been a lot of that. He DOES start popping his head out of the sea around the Orca quite intermittantly throughout the second half of Jaws. After the first "big shock" with Roy Scheider("We're gonna need a bigger boat"), we get more used to the shark's head just popping up at random and chewing on the rope and things like that.

A famous editor of the time named Verna Fields ("Mother Cutter") supposedly was the TRUE "director/savior" of Jaws because she assembled all the mismatched takes (from different days with different weather at sea) into coherence. She probably cut down those glimpses of the shark at sea to avoid him looking too fake too long. (Fields won the Best Film Editing Oscar for Jaws...Hitchcock's favorite editor George Tomasini WASN'T EVEN NOMINATED for Psycho and the shower scene. I take comfort believing that Tomasini WOULD have won in the "hipper" Hollywood of 1975 where Jaws competed.)

Of course, we are also told that on some days, the shark simply didn't work -- or sank to the shallow bottom.

Must have been hell.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

My guess is that the general 'slow reveal' of the shark before the third act with our three protagonists together out on in Quint's boat was always intended

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Yes..that's why I would like to see a script -- maybe our friends on the internet can find and publish one?

And the funny thing is this: if those "slow reveal" scenes with the shark in Part One WERE intended, Spielberg and his screenwriters(a bunch of them, Peter Benchley and Carl Gottlieb at least) SHOULD HAVE BEEN TAKING A BOW for their cinematic narrative and style, rather than saying "well, the shark didn't work so we had to keep from showing him much."

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

(I remember the released script having a fin visible in the 'two guys fishing with a pot-roast off the dock sequence' whereas the shark is left completely invisible in the released cut -

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Hey, wait a second there, swanstep -- you have SEEN a/the script?

No pressure on reveals.

There could be this risk with a "late version" script -- sometimes such scripts are "RE-WRITTEN"(for publication) to match up more to the movie as we know it, but if there was a fin with those two guys well...hmm. I remember thinking that i was a GREAT concept(funny AND scary, man did the audience scream) to have the DOCK turn around in the water and chase the swimming man - you had to "mentally measure how far in FRONT of the dock the shark was and how CLOSE he was to his intended victim.

---but a fin at night is still keeping most of the shark hidden),

---

I have read of a number of movies -- Jurassic Park and the 1998 Godzilla come to mind -- where the monster scenes were mainly at night so as to disguise the flaws. It occurs to me that a few scenes in Jaws are "day for night."

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

so the category (i) & (ii) shots will almost all be from that third act.

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An amusing debate. "Third Act" is the proper structure of drama -- on stage AND on screen -- but I'm among those who feels that Jaws divides into Part One("The Hitchcock Movie -- attacks on innocents at the beach) and Part Two(The Hawks Movie -- a group of men against the shark mano-y-mano at sea.)

So for analysis:

What's Act One of Jaws?
What's Act Two of Jaws?
What's Act Three of Jaws (The three men at sea versus the shark?)

And the same debate has plauged Psycho for years:

I say

Act One of Psycho: Marion's story...ends with her car in the swamp.
Act Two of Psycho: Arbogast's story...ends with him dying at the foot of the stairs.
Act Three of Psycho: Sam and Lila's story...ends with Norman in the cell.

But there are those out there who don't think Arbogast matters enough or gets enough screen time to MERIT being a second act. So they go for the Part One/Part Two analysis

Part One: Marion's story...ends with her car in the swamp.
Part Two: "The investigators' story": Arbogast, Sam and Lila. Ends with Norman in the cell.

Nope. Three Acts. Hell...Arbogast's second act(with a classic "crisis to end the second act and set up the climax") is MY favorite act.

But back at Jaws: How do the First and Second Acts break out? And I'm not being argumentative.

I still guess I'm more comfortable with Jaws in two parts:

Part One: The attacks on innocents near the beach.
Part Two: Men at sea.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

(i) & (ii) shots will almost all be from that third act.

---

Leaving the semanatics of "Third Act" aside, I would tend to agree that probably the script called for the "slow reveal" in the killings by the beach and then if bigger "shark action" was intended for the "men at sea" part...that's when they lost the shark. Because the movie WANTS to make that shark move more in front of us in Part Two. And here, in Part Two...the shark is largely represented by those iconic yellow barrells popping up and his unseen ramming of the boat.

Carl Gottlieb -- a co-writer of Jaws the movie AND an actor in it(he plays the rather portly councilman with a moustache who trails Murray Hamilton) wrote a 1975 "making of" book called The Jaws Log. I bought it. I think ALL young film fans bought it. It was like Hitchcock/Truffaut for a new generation.

Anyway, Gottlieb described the horrors of trying to film on the sea -- daily weather changes, waves picking up and slapping down the camera, mismatched shots - but he also pointed out something obvious:

Spielberg spent days and weeks on end shooting all the scenes WiTHOUT ths shark(just people saying lines; meeting Brody, Quint, and Hooper) until he simply ran out of non-shark scenes to shoot. THEN he had to contend with the non-working shark.

Oh, well, it paid off.

But still..and as 1975 and the Jaws 50th approaches -- it will be interesting to hear Spielberg tell the same old stories about the shark not working so they changed the script. Really?

PS. It occurs to me that Alfred Hitchcock died in 1980...20 years after Psycho. But back then, then didn't have "10 year anniversary" or "15 year anniversary" or "20 year anniversary" showings of Psycho. That trend seems to have emerged much later. Hence Hitchcock never really got to "celebrate" his most famous movie while he was alive..beyond always talking about it in interviews. Ha.

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

Relatedly, I had access to Disney+ for a few weeks and watched their doc. 'Music by John Williams'. It was excellent and full of reminders of his craft, how even his most well-known scores have their subtleties and are always somehow even better than you probably remember. Jaws ends very classily and Williams was a big part of that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BCX1SbOvvk

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Man, THAT's one I'd love to see. I'm sure I'll get my chance.

People forget that, in the 70s especially, most American studio movies only had a FEW composers to choose from, and there were mainly ONLY TWO: John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith. Both men could be counted on to provide what I would call "muscular" scores ...soaring, thunderous, "big" and smooth.

I remember in 1978, seeing a double feature of two thrillers: Brian DePalma's The Fury(score by John Williams) and Peter Hyams' "Capricorn One" (score by Jerry Goldsmith). And man, the scores(particularly over the opening credits) MADE those two movies. Play them back to back on Youtube and you'll hear what I mean.

But ALSO in 1978, John Williams gave his his Superman score(a bit "North by Northwest" over the credits...slow build to soaring explosion of action) and John Williams gave us a "crazed waltz score" over The Boys From Brazil and , again, its like it was "Williams or Goldsmith Or NOBODY" if you wanted a "big score." (Elmer "Mag 7" Bernstein was still working, but on the comedy Animal House, because he knew the director John Landis's son.)

---

Still, as I post this, Jerry Goldsmith is many years dead, and John Williams has joined the "active 90 year old brigade" and...Williams will end up being a legend of the movies of the 20th and 21st centuries.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

You can find John Williams -- as "Johnny Williams" -- provide the muscular and scary mystery music for a TV show called "Checkmate" -- the credit music over "liquid visuals" is a big memory of my childhood(I loved mystery shows from the start) and that started in "Psycho year 1960.

I guess Johnny Williams did the score for "Lost in Space" too...there are traces of the big work to come but...he needed a bigger orchestra.

TCM demonstrated to me that "Johnny Williams" also delivered a hip, rock-based but ALSO muscular score to the tepid Natalie Wood caper movie "Penelope" in 1966. Its a very sexy, danceable score.

I'm not sure exactly when Johnny became John, but came the 70's, it all happened for him.

Well, 1969. That's when Williams delivered one of those "rich emotional nostalgia in the old south" scores for Steve McQueen in The Reivers. It was ALMOST like Western music, but in 1972 Williams DID deliver a great, Aaron Copeland like score for John Wayne in The Cowboys. So Williams had THAT line of score-making to do.

In preparation for his Spielberg/Lucas era (a little Lucas, a LOT of Spielberg), John Williams was the go-to-guy for disaster movies: The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake and The Towering Inferno . Its funny: disaster movies had a "clunky" reputation, but Williams "made his bones" there. The Towering Inferno in particular has a great opening credit sequence (a helicopter flies from the forests and oceans of Northern California on down to San Francisco) with a great John Williams score to match.

The Towering Inferno was in 1974. So was Spielberg's first movie, the downer crime story The Sugarland Express, to which Williams gave one of his "Reivers" Southern scores(it was set in Texas.)

And then came 1975 and Jaws -- and John Williams was launched forever.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

"Jaws" won the Best Score Oscar that Psycho should have one(and yeah, Psycho wasn't even nominated) and "locked in" Williams and Spielberg as collaborators as surely Hitchocck and Herrmann were in their heyday(before Hitchcock fired Herrmann in his worst action as a movie director -- nope, Tippi doesn't come close.)

Jaws for Spielberg in 1975. Family Plot for HITCHCOCK in 1976(Hitchcock's final film had that "connection to New Hollywood." Star Wars for Lucas in 1977 (along with the exciting score for my favorite movie of 1977, Black Sunday). Superman in 1978(WILLIAMS set the pace for the DC/Marvel era.)

It was pretty damn incredible. Spielberg became Williams meal ticket of sorts -- except Williams(rather like Herrman for Hitchocck) just MAY have been the bigger auteur. Vertigo isn't Vertigo without Herrmann. Psycho isn't Psycho without Herrmann. Jaws isn't Jaws without Williams. ET DEFINITELY isn't ET without Williams.

And so forth and so on. And for decades since.

Bonus John Williams score favorite: Spielberg's misfired mega-comedy "1941" has a bad reputation, but the "rousing military march" for that movie (especially over the END credits) is, to me, a LOT more rousing and exciting than the march Williams did for Raiders of the Lost Ark. They should have switched scores! Then the "1941" music would hsve gone on for decades.
(Spielberge himself called "1941" Williams' greatest march. HE knew.)

swanstep made an important point around here -- years ago I guess -- about how the instantly recognizable and strongly melodic scores of yesteryear -- Vertigo, Psycho, The Magnificent Seven, Jaws, ET and more -- have largely disappeared today. Possibly on purpose: directors don't want to be upstaged by their composers(QT put it more diplomatically: its HIS movie, if he lets a composer in, it becomes the COMPOSERS movie equally. Well, Hitchcock and Spielberg prospeered from that, yes?)

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

Its hard to say when John Williams stopped being able to give us the kind of super-iconic score he used to do all the time(hey, Elton John and James Taylor haven't written any hits recently, either) but Williams dominance of 70s/80s/90s movies -- maybe climaxing in the 2000s with Harry Potter...will be unbeatable.

Note in passing:

I LOVE that John Williams scored Family Plot IN BETWEEN Jaws for Spielberg and Star Wars for Lucas. It put Hitchcock in "a trifecta of Old and New Hollywood." The Family Plot score is harpsichord-driven, rather whimsical and a little bit funny.

I got to PERSONALLY ask John Willliams about the Family Plot score at a seminar in 1976.
He gave an example(that he would give again and again later) of Hitchocck's direction:
when villain William Devane walks into his office looking for his henchman Ed Lauter, there is music on the soundtrack UNTIL a POV shot of an open window and a curtain rustling in the wind. Williams said Hitchcock told him: "Music until the cut to the window -- then shut off the music."

The music went out the window with Ed Lauter.

Also: a match in the music from Jaws to Family Plot.

Jaws: as the rowboat victim floats off the boat into the jaws of the shark.
Family Plot: As Barbara Harris collapses to the floor after William Devane has administered his knock out shot.

In both cases, Williams uses the same motif: A "woozy" slide of violin strings to suggest sliding to one's doom.

[–] swanstep (2769) 2 months ago

I still guess I'm more comfortable with Jaws in two parts:
Part One: The attacks on innocents near the beach.
Part Two: Men at sea.

I agree that that is a very natural way to break down the film: there are, after all these significant shots and their associated musical cues *telling* us that we're going out to sea now and in a sense that a whole new movie is about to begin.

The first big significant shot is at the end of 'The pond' sequence - the camera just points out to sea (we have Brody's POV in this as it's his realization as much ours) through the breakwater (where the shark has just gone) as the music rises - that's where we're going. A bunch of short scenes follow at the hospital with the mayor, down on the docks joshing with Hooper and Quint, saying goodbye to the wife and then we get the second big significant shot, through the window framed by cleaned shark jaws we see the Orca steam out of the port and into open water. Here. We. Go. [This was all so satisfying in the 1975 theater as a kid - I remember thinking out loud "Wow" and internally "that's just masterful".]

All that said, the three act structure I find useful builds on Jaws' ingenious character structuring that Brody Hooper and Quint form this triangle where each pair has something in common (expertise [QH], class [BQ], age [HB]) that sets them against the other member of the triangle. Screenwriting perfection that streamlines the book considerably. Hooper has an affair with Brody's wife in the book!, whereas the the film's momentum between the male protagonists is always positive/building towards the team that'll solve the big problem they face.

Building on all that, we get the following character-driven structure:
Act 1: Brody [alone against the shark (and the town)]
Act 2: Brody and Hooper [work together (from after the Kitteridge Boy death to 4th July/The Pond)]
Act 3: Brody and Hooper and Quint [work together (Men at sea)]

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

I still guess I'm more comfortable with Jaws in two parts:
Part One: The attacks on innocents near the beach.
Part Two: Men at sea.

I agree that that is a very natural way to break down the film: there are, after all these significant shots and their associated musical cues *telling* us that we're going out to sea now and in a sense that a whole new movie is about to begin.

The first big significant shot is at the end of 'The pond' sequence - the camera just points out to sea (we have Brody's POV in this as it's his realization as much ours) through the breakwater (where the shark has just gone) as the music rises - that's where we're going. A bunch of short scenes follow at the hospital with the mayor, down on the docks joshing with Hooper and Quint, saying goodbye to the wife

---

It is great how Lorraine Gary gets her last scene with Scheider -- so worried for her husband, so worried about Quint, and pretty damn sure she may never see her husband again -- she RUNS fast screen left to get away from the reality of it and - she never is seen again in the movie. Powerful stuff.

--

and then we get the second big significant shot, through the window framed by cleaned shark jaws we see the Orca steam out of the port and into open water. Here. We. Go. [This was all so satisfying in the 1975 theater as a kid - I remember thinking out loud "Wow" and internally "that's just masterful".]

---

Yes. I just watched Jaws all the way through seeing as it is going to leave Netflix tonight on New Year's Eve. I had VAGUELY remembered the shots "looking out to sea" that you just mentioned, but this viewing and your remarks bring it all back:

SHOT ONE: Brody looks out to sea after the rowboat man killing and he/we know: he's got to go out there to kill the shark. Not alone.

SHOT TWO: Through the window as the Orca head out to THAT sea. (Its not just THE sea in Jaws -- its THAT sea: where the shark comes from.)

---

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

[This was all so satisfying in the 1975 theater as a kid - I remember thinking out loud "Wow" and internally "that's just masterful".]

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Yes! I suppose seeing movies when you are "young" means you see them from a new, more excited , almost emotional viewpoint. I LOVED how Jaws structured itself and gave us those shots -- with John Williams great music each time -- there was excitement in the STORY but there was also excitement in the STYLE.

Just like with Hitchcock.

A lot of us were looking for "the person to replace Hitchcock," and for a few films Spielberg was it (more than DePalma actually.)

I recall some film critic some years ago postulating what happened to him -- and he stands in for a lot of Hitchcock fans.

He had come of age on Hitchcock and went to Frenzy(based on the good reviews) hoping for another Psycho. Which it wasn't and of course it was quite creepy and sexual in a bad way.

So Jaws was the deliverance that Frenzy had not been. To that critic. Somewhat to me.

And indeed, given how exciting STRUCTURE had always been in Hitchcock movies -- in Vertigo, in NXNW, in Psycho, in Frenzy -- and very much in his final film Family Plot(ALL structure: two plots converge)...Jaws FELT expertly structured in exactly the same way.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

All that said, the three act structure I find useful builds on Jaws' ingenious character structuring that Brody Hooper and Quint form this triangle where each pair has something in common (expertise [QH], class [BQ], age [HB]) that sets them against the other member of the triangle.

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Yes, that "triangle structure" (Two against one) works in great criss cross:

Two ocean experts(Quint and Hooper) against the landlubber who hates the sea(Brody)
Two working class men(Quint and Brody) versus the rich kid("My wealth or my family's?)
Two sane men(Brody and Hooper) versus an insane man(as Quint proves near the end when his actions bring all three of them to death's door.)

Meanwhile, that Zone of Danger (borrowed from Psycho.) In Jaws: the ocean(at the beach and open sea.) In Psycho: the Bates Property (motel AND house, both prove deadlly.)

---

Screenwriting perfection that streamlines the book considerably. Hooper has an affair with Brody's wife in the book!, whereas the the film's momentum between the male protagonists is always positive/building towards the team that'll solve the big problem they face.

---

All true. The removal of the highly sexual affair(which rendered both Hooper and Mrs. Brody as awful people) allowed them to restructure Jaws for a bonding adventure.

PS. I tried talking a bit about Jaws for 2025 at the Jaws Board and ran into...the usual thing. Safer here.

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

Building on all that, we get the following character-driven structure:
Act 1: Brody [alone against the shark (and the town)]
Act 2: Brody and Hooper [work together (from after the Kitteridge Boy death to 4th July/The Pond)]
Act 3: Brody and Hooper and Quint [work together (Men at sea)]

---

I can certainly see those as the three acts. Come to think of it Brody has to "carry" a lot of the film before the other two men arrive.

I noticed on my recent viewing that after he makes his first, spectacular appearance at the town meeting("I'll find him for 3, but I'll catch him , and kill him, for 10"), Quint disappears for a long time. Hooper makes HIS entrance(very funny dealing with the angry and stupid amateur shark hunters) , pairs up with Brody, and Quint doesn't turn up again until AFTER the pond -- EXCEPT for one rather aimless shot of Quint on the Orca sailing out of the harbor -- I'll bet Spielberg and Verna Fields put that in there to say -- "Don't worry, Quint's still around -- he's coming back soon!"

[–] swanstep (2769) 2 months ago

Hey, wait a second there, swanstep -- you have SEEN a/the script?

Two scripts are floating around online if you do the obvious google-search. One is called a Final Draft and is credited to just Peter Benchley and, for example, doesn't have the Indianapolis speech as we know it (which Milius provided IIRC) and lacks a lot of the dialogue refinement that we know and love. One is credited to Benchley and Carl Gottlieb and has the Indianapolis speech scene as we know it, and much more (but not all) of the final dialogue generally. The Fin-showing in the pot-roast fishermen scene is in both scripts and it's very extensively described - the fin's black and enormous and even 'seems to reach up to the sky' as the guy in the water looks back from his desperate efforts to climb out of the water.

The Benchley final draft is in a couple of places:
https://screencraft.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Jaws.pdf
and, a little tidied up,
https://indiegroundfilms.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/jaws-final-numbered.pdf

The Benchley&Gottlieb script is also in a couple of places:
https://thescriptlab.com/wp-content/uploads/scripts/jaws-1975.pdf
and
http://bythelens.org/screenplays/Jaws.pdf (where it sports an additional title 'Stillness in the Water')

Enjoy!

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

Two scripts are floating around online if you do the obvious google-search

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Ha. I suppose I should have done that before asking if you had seen it, swanstep. Comparatively, "The Greatest Lie in Motion Picture History"(about Hitchcock wanted to SURPRISE people with the shower scene when the trailer is pretty much leading up to -- and ABOUT -- the shower scene) can be proved by seeing the 1960 Psycho trailer.

With my Jaws theory (the "slow reveal" of the shark had to have been scripted, not improvised)...I'll have to go to the script(s.) I suppose it will be simple enough -- check out each killing scene, and its "easy up front": did ANY version of the script SHOW the shark attacking the naked gal in the opening scene? Or show the shark more clearly attacking the Kintner boy? The shark's head is pretty clearly shown(under water) as the jaws clamp down on the rowboat victim...though I must admit, that view of the shark eating his victim always looked a little fake and a little forced to me -- the shark head barely moved -- the audience IMAGINATION filled in the blanks of the shark being alive and actively attacking the male victim.

'CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

One is called a Final Draft and is credited to just Peter Benchley and, for example, doesn't have the Indianapolis speech as we know it (which Milius provided IIRC) and lacks a lot of the dialogue refinement that we know and love.

--

Well, so often Hollywood would give a novel's author the "first crack" at writing the screenplay -- particularly if the author had that as a requirement of the sale to movies. For instance, Leon Uris got to write the first script of his novel Topaz for Hitchcock. Uris, who had written "Exodus," didn't much like Hitchcock(he just found Hitchcock to be his intellectual inferior, which was possible, I guess, on the realities of espionage), so Hitchcock didn't like Uris and Hitchcock was able to dump Uris's script having given him first shot.

So neophye author Peter Benchley(who family roots stretched backwards to humorist Robert Benchley -- who is in Foreign Corresponondent for Hitchcock and helped write it)...."needed some help" but they didn't dump his script and he gets a cameo as a TV reporter at the beach for the day the rowboat man dies.

Note in passing on Peter Benchley. He was a good looking fellow, WASP handsome, East Coast(his father was a novelist too), and with eyeglasses to give him a slightly intellectual look -- he was a good "movie star looking author" with which to promote the book AND the movie.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

Note in passing on the writers of the three superthrillers. The three superthrillers are Psycho, The Exorcist and Jaws. Individual men are credited with the scripts of Psycho and The Exorcist. Joseph Stefano(from a novel by Robert Bloch) for Psycho. William Peter Blatty (from his own novel) for The Exorcist.

But Peter Benchley(like Blatty, the author of the novel Jaws) had to share his screen credit with Carl Gottlieb(the afore-mentioned overweight Island councilman on screen in the movie) and, evidently, with a LOT of uncredited writers (That USS Indianpolis speech has been traced to Milius AND actor Robert Shaw AND some other guys -- but the speech is NOT credited to Peter Benchley or Carl Gottlieb.)

A bit more on Carl Gottlieb. He is in ANOTHER classic movie of the 70's in a small, around the edges role: MASH the movie. I can't remember if he has a line in MASH, but he is distinctive for his moustache(also in Jaws) and for wearing an "Australian hat"(one flap up, one flap down) to stand out. Since MASH the movie is my favorite of 1970 and Jaws is my favorite of 1975, I guess I'm a Carl Gottlieb fan of sorts.

Gottlieb also made some big bucks as the "I was there" author of "The Jaws Log" in 1975. I always noted that in his foreword, Gottlieb noted his home was in St. Helena, which is in the Napa Wine Country of Northern California, not too far from where George Lucas set up shop in Marin County. I thought it was cool that Gottlieb got to live in Napa Valley while appearing in a movie shot in Martha's Vineyard, a continent away.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

It does seem that "Jaws" staked its claim to greatness with that "USS Indianapolis" speech by Robert Shaw. Its like the entire risk of Jaws being a "schlock horror movie" was dissipated by that one literate, gripping speech and its emphasis on Quint's memories of being in the water surrounded by men being eaten, one by one, by sharks.

We had/have a great poster around here named Telegonus who opined that he could never understand why Robert Shaw didn't get an Oscar nomination for Jaws. Me neither. And it should have been for Best Actor, not Supporting Actor(I'll assume that confusion on that point, plus competition from Scheider and Shaw, kept him out of the finals.) Anyway, Shaw's reading of the USS Indianpolis speech should have been enough to get an Oscar nod, and the in the REST of the movie -- he's the guy everybody did impressions of in 1975 and beyond. Like Brando's whispery Godfather voice, everybody did Quint's seafaring growl (Time critic Jay Cocks wrote: "Shaw employs an accent of indeterminate origin." Ha.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

One is credited to Benchley and Carl Gottlieb and has the Indianapolis speech scene as we know it,

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Above I noted that Benchley and Gottlieb were NOT credited with the Indianapolis speech, but of course, they are the ONLY ones with screen credit for it. But what I meant is that it seems neither of them REALLY wrote any of it.

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and much more (but not all) of the final dialogue generally.

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Aside from my looking for evidence of "more shark in the script"(or not), I will be interested to read the dialogue -- when it differs from the film, when it does not (the movie seems to have a fair amount of improvisation in it.)

Jaws is my favorite movie of 1975 and I often give it a tie with The Godfather for favorite OF the 70s, but I'll never forget opening up the Los Angeles Times to read Charles Champliins' review of Jaws not four hours before I saw it at a matinee.

Champlin did not like Jaws and wrote: "Its lumpily written and a bore ashore." I don't think it was ever boring but it IS a lumpy script, the dialogue lacks the precision and macabre resonance of the Psycho script and -- as Champlin pointed out -- you've got both Quint and Hooper doing sudden switch-ups in their logical thinking.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

No matter. There are plenty of GOOD lines in the movie -- most of them given to Quint and the "unsung antihero" of Jaws is that mayor -- good ol' Murray Hamilton who gets GREAT lines ("We need summer dollars.") I remember, in 1975 , being stunned at how old Murray Hamilton suddenly got. I saw him on TV in 50s movies like "No Time for Sergeants," "Anatomy of a Murder" and "THE FBI Story" and he was much younger in look. (He was also famously MR. Robinson in The Graduate, taking over a role from which Gene Hackman -- too young for the part -- had been fired.)

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The Fin-showing in the pot-roast fishermen scene is in both scripts and it's very extensively described - the fin's black and enormous and even 'seems to reach up to the sky' as the guy in the water looks back from his desperate efforts to climb out of the water.

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Interesting...in the finished movie, there is some "amusing delight" in seeing ONLY the dock make that U-turn in the water to come after the guy, plus OUR mental work in trying to guess how far in front of the moving dock the shark IS.

Slight downside to that scene. By necessity, I suppose, the men talking during the scene don't really match the men on screen. Clearly dubbed in later at the studio.

As for that black fin reaching up to the sky. Well, they didn't get that and -- my one real DISAPPOINTMENT in Jaws came at the climax. In the book, when the shark leaps onto the sinking boat -- Benchley creates a "cinematic shot" on paper -- the shark FLIES straight UPWARDS vertically and "blocks out the sun" before crashing on the deck. In the movie, the somewhat obvious fake shark just heaves iteself onto the deck. In our CGI ere, the shot of the shark sailing UPWARDS would have been easy. Back then -- they couldn't get it.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

And about that "fake shark." I've always equated the fake shark at the end of Jaws to Anthony Perkins in his final "reveal" inthe fruit cellar in Mother Bates wig and dress. BOTH entities are "just a little bit funny" but we do NOT laugh, because we know that both that "fake" shark and that "funny" Perkins in a dress have killed innocent people in as horrible and vicious a manner as possible --- they come "equipped with terror."

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

A quick "comparative" count of Oscar nominations(top level) of the Three Superthrillers at the Oscars:

Psycho:

Nominations
Best Director (Hitchcock)
Best Supporting Actress(Janet Leigh)
Best Cinematography(black and white)
Best Art Direction(black and white)

No wins

The Exorcist:

Nominations
Best Picture
Best Director (Friedkin)
Best Actress (Ellen Burstyn)
Best Supporting Actor(Jason Miller)
Best Adapted Screenplay(William Peter Blatty)

Win: Best Adapted Screenplay

Jaws

Nominations

Best Picture
Best Adapted Screenplay
Best Score
Best Film Editing

Wins:

Best Score
Best Film Editing(Verna Fields)

DISCUSSION:

Psycho -- a victim of Hays Code Old Hollywood 1960 -- got the most snubs: Nothing for Picture, Actor(Perkins), Actress(Leigh -- even though she got a Best Supporting Actress nom), Supporting Actor(Balsam), Adapted screenplay(!!), Score(!!!), Film Editing(!!!!)

The Exorcist -- no snubs for Best Picture or Director. Blatty won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for the LEAST GOOD screenplay of the three superthrillers and -- AT the Oscar ceremony after the show was over, said that The Exorcist was robbed of Best Picture by ...The Sting. Not in my book.

Jaws -- The big snub: No Best Director for Spielberg even as the movie got a Best Picture nod (Spielberg was watching the nominations announced and evidently blurted out "Fellini got my slot!") Ha. The snub was reversed two years later for Close Enconters: Spielberg got a Best Director nom, but the movie didn't get a Best Picture nom(evidently over a "crook at the studio" scandal that year.)

Jaws won the Best Score Oscar for John Williams(deserved) that Psycho ALSO should have gotten for Herrmann(snubbed.)

Film Editing -- Psycho should have gotten that one in 1960 but Jaws and Verna Fields sure deserved it in 1975.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

And yes, Robert Shaw was robbed of a nomination. Had it been for Best Actor, Nicholson in Cuckoo's Nest still would have won, had it been Best Supporting Actor, maybe Shaw could have beaten the winner, George Burns(The Sunshine Boys) but I doubt it.

[–] swanstep (2769) a month ago

Spielberg was watching the nominations announced and evidently blurted out "Fellini got my slot!") Ha.

This is awful in two respects. First, the camera crew (from 60 minutes?) was there with Spielberg as the nominations were announced precisely because they and Spielberg both fully expected him to be nominated. Second, although Fellini's movie Amarcord is very good indeed, it was also a 1973 movie, and had in fact, after being officially released in the US on Sept 19, 1974, already been nominated for and won the Best Foreign Film Oscar for 1974! It is therefore ultra-weird that it was separately eligible to be nom'd for screenplay and directing Oscars in 1975. It's almost like the cinema gods decided to invent an arcane exceptional case specifically to block Spielberg from early elite peer-group success.

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

Spielberg was watching the nominations announced and evidently blurted out "Fellini got my slot!") Ha.
This is awful in two respects. First, the camera crew (from 60 minutes?) was there with Spielberg as the nominations were announced precisely because they and Spielberg both fully expected him to be nominated.

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I never saw that happen, but I READ about it(in either a book about Spielberg or about the Oscars) and it "took." The embarrasment was weirdly reversed in 1977 with Close Encounters. THIS time, Spielberg got a Best Director nom, but the movie didn't get a Best Picture nom. In those days, you sort of had to have BOTH nominations to win one or both of them.

This repeated for Spielberg on a couple of other occasions: The Color Purple(1985) got a bunch of Oscar noms, including Picture -- but no Best Director nod for Spielberg.

Spielberg WON Best Director for Saving Private Ryan(1998) but the movie LOST Best Picture(you could see a second of disappointment in presenter Harrison Ford's eyes as he announced Harvey Weinstein's Shakespeare in Love, clearly he wsa hoping to hand the award to Spielberg.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

Second, although Fellini's movie Amarcord is very good indeed, it was also a 1973 movie, and had in fact, after being officially released in the US on Sept 19, 1974, already been nominated for and won the Best Foreign Film Oscar for 1974! It is therefore ultra-weird that it was separately eligible to be nom'd for screenplay and directing Oscars in 1975.

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This happened a few times in the 70's with foreign films yes. Valentia Cortese was nominated at the 1974 Oscars for Day for Night from 1974(winner Ingrid Bergman cried "you should have had this, Valentina"...oops to the other gals.)

And I keep seeing Last Tango in Paris listed as a 1972 film, but Brando got an Oscar nomination for it in 1973 (which fits, that's when it came out in the US, I think.)

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It's almost like the cinema gods decided to invent an arcane exceptional case specifically to block Spielberg from early elite peer-group success

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Ha. Maybe. Remember that there were PLENTY of angry attacks on Spielberg almost from the get-go. Someone called him " a great directorof trucks and sharks, but not people.") (Duel/Jaws -- but Jaws had some GREAT performances for what it was.

I think we've discussed Spielberg recently and its clear that he's the richest filmmaker in history, but something seems to be missing in his overall career.

In recent years, it does seem like Scorsese has been "moved to the front of his class" among the fillmakers launched in the 70s. Spielberg is in second position. Coppola, DePalma behind that. Altman and Ashby et al seem to be in a separate group.

Pauline Kael didn't like Spielberg's Oscar bait movies like The Color Purple and Empire of the Sun, writing "would somebody give him an Oscar so he can go back to making what he does best?" Well, he's sort of veered between things for decades now -- genre and serious (often historical)

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

A very odd director to pin one's love upon. My beef is that all his public remarks seemed like 5 screenwriters wrote them. Not spontaneous.

Steve gets my "total love for these":

Jaws (over and above all. Tied with The Godfather for my favorite of the entire 70s.")

Duel(for starting it all from the otherwise minimal format of the made-for -TV movie. Its the NXNW crop duster scene done to movie length.

Raiders of the Lost Ark and ET: the second-best one-two back-to-back year movies since North by Northwest and Psycho.

Jurassic Park(for the set-pieces and I like Jurassic Park II better.)

Saving Private Ryan: The ultra-violent version of D-Day was unforgettable. The man-to-man personal savagery of the final deaths was horrific. A great movie. "Earn this."

War of the Worlds. Too lazy and perfunctory overall but -- about three of the greatest action sequences Spielberg ever did AND a great sense of a world under siege unto extinction. Maybe.

Catch Me If You Can. Leo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks and Chris Walken: what an odd mix. But it worked. Felt like 1969. Great Saul Bass-like credit sequence with a slinky John Williams score.

Lincoln. I loved its emphasis on all the same corruption, bribery, lobbying, and noble horse trading we see today. DDL seems to have gotten the man down.

I may be forgetting others, but that's about it.

[–] swanstep (2769) a month ago

I never saw that happen

There are a couple of copies of it on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mgrxvTdl-Q

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

I never saw that happen
There are a couple of copies of it on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mgrxvTdl-Q

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Wow! Well now I've seen it (and others have as well.)

It funny how the director of the highest grossing movie of all time is videoed receiving the information in a no frills room with just a couple of guys nearby.

And nice: Spielberg DID used to talk just like a regular guy at one time.

But also: The fully justifiable ego comes through when Spielberg says to the camera: "People like a winner, but they don't like a WINNER"(ie the man who has made the top grossing film of all time.)

I'm reminded how Anthony Perkins gave that "oops" interview before the Oscar nominations were announced in 1961 for 1960, about his Oscar chances for Psycho:

"I think I'm going to be nominated. Janet too."

Janet was, Tony wasn't and I'll bet HIS living room was like Spielberg's here.

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AND: How the heck did JOE SPINELL get to be in that room practically alone with Spielberg and expressing the anger at the snub: "Did the SHARK direct it?"

Joe Spinell was a rather pock-marked and thus "realistic' character guy in the 70's. He's in Rocky and The Godfather and Taxi Driver and some horrible slasher called Maniac.

My favorite Joe Spinell moment on screen comes near the end of the Godfather, when he and his men surround THEIR OWN BOSS, Abe Vigoda's Tessio, to take him away for "traitor's execution." Before Tessio can make a move, his trusted lieutenant Spinell politely reaches under Tessio's jacket, removes Tessio's handgun and says something like "Excuse me, Sal, I'm sorry" -- sorry he will have to kill his own boss.

Whereupon this classic exchange between Tessio and Duvall's Tom Hagen:

Tessio: Can you get me off the hook, Tom? For old time's sake?
Tom: "No can do" (or something like that.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

I love just remembering that great scene and there's the guy from THAT movie(The Godfather -- one of my tied two favorite movies of the 70s) , Joe Spinell, sitting next to the man who made Jaws(my other one of my tied two movies of the 70s) to defend him.

Who woulda thunk?

[–] swanstep (2769) a month ago

some horrible slasher called Maniac.

It's a very tough slasher for sure with a couple of the nastiest and most memorable kill scenes of all time (the one in the car and the one in the public bathroom). It's funny how in the Spielberg video Spinnel looks like an ordinary-size guy whereas Maniac makes him seem huge and terrifying. I do believe that Maniac must have cost Spinnell quite a lot of future employment because you absolutely cannot forget him in that role. I was in a bit of a state of shock watching it, so I have trouble remembering the ending, but ultimately Spinnell's character is a pitiful figure who see himself as his mother's victim and her as ultimately killing him whereas it's his own suicide at the end. I remember thinking that Maniac (1980) felt to me as though it should have been the logical end of the road for Psycho-style mother-centric-explanatory slashers.