Classi 70s Move: “Jaws”

September is Classic 70s Movie month. Today’s guest post comes from Markham Cook.

Title: Jaws

Year: 1975

Writers: Carl Gottlieb and Peter Benchley, based on the book by Peter Benchley.

The first screenwriter was Benchley, followed by Howard Sackler then Gottlieb. John Milius also contributed some material, and, according to Gottlieb, Robert Shaw co-wrote a key speech.

A credit that doesn’t get mentioned enough for Jaws is the editor: Verna Fields. I won’t go into why here because it’s already running long, but see if you can find the AFI interview with her at your library.

Lead actors: Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfus.

IMDB plot summary: When a gigantic great white shark begins to menace the small island community of Amity, a police chief, a marine scientist and grizzled fisherman set out to stop it.

Why I think This Is A Classic 70’s Movie: Simply put, Jaws shaped the way movies are made, marketed and consumed.

Before Jaws, national marketing campaigns for movies were unusual. Before Jaws wide release was rare. Before Jaws, summertime was generally a quiet period for movie releases. Movies were released in stages, with largely local advertising campaigns, first in the big cities, then spreading outward. Often in a city even as large as New York, a prestige release might play on only one screen. The prevailing idea of marketing was to build word of mouth.

There were a few precedents for the wide release strategy — William Goldman gives a hilarious account of Joseph Levine’s wide release of Hercules in 1959 — but this was probably the first time that a movie was given wide release in the summer with a full national campaign, and the movie in question was really, really good.

The studios learned that people would go to the movies in droves in the summer (it didn’t hurt that more and more theatres had air conditioning), and that the economics of a national campaign made sense. It had the added benefit of having your word of mouth cake and eating it too: if word of mouth was good, the audience would keep building. If it was bad, well, you jammed as many people into the seats as possible before word got out, then close the picture down.

And as the years went by, it almost inevitably led to the studios concentrating larger amounts of money on a smaller slate which is even more heavily advertised and released in a prodigious number of theaters. Jaws was in 465 theatres in its first weekend. Guardians of the Galaxy was in over four thousand.

Sometimes I think the studios learned the business lessons of Jaws too well, and the movie making lessons not well enough. Because Jaws was special.

Jaws followed on the heels of some of the biggest Irwin Allen extravaganzas like the Poseidon Adventure and Towering Inferno, and movies of that ilk — Earthquake comes to mind. These were sheer razzle dazzle entertainments, disaster movies, big-budget genre pictures, mostly high concept. And Jaws took all of that, threw in a generous dollop of Hitchcock, and an incredible dose of talent on all fronts and showed audiences what a MOVIE could really be. It’s instructive, I think, that the generic disaster movie with a cast of thousands sputtered out after Jaws. Audiences found out how terrific a high concept genre picture could be and there was no turning back.

The screenplay is terrific — Gottlieb (according to his own account) took out most of the subplots and focused the script on the main story. He doesn’t say this, but the effect was (with apologies to Peter Benchley) that all the lurid bits, and the corny bits came out (anyone remember the sexual fire between the chief’s wife and Matt Hooper?) The first half of the story focusses on the brand new police chief struggling against a town dependent on fourth of July tourism. The script does a wonderful job of making us feel for the townspeople — while at the same time knowing their greed will bring them down. And we feel for Chief Brody too, a man clearly out of his depth, despite his experience in the NYPD.

The part of Mayor Vaughan is wonderfully written as well. Just when you think you’ve got the guy pegged as a slick politician, he’s sensitive. Just when you think he’s an ass, you find yourself agreeing with him. My favorite scene with him culminates in his line “and if you think I’m going to stand here and watch that little Kintner boy spill out all over the dock…” I love it because it would have been easy to write one of those greasy politician moments instead. But what we get is the mayor being absolutely, incontrovertibly right. The Chief and Hooper have lost sight of the human aspect of the situation. Mayor Vaughan has not.

Finally, once the three principals get out on the boat, it’s a lovely contest of wills, characters who have been well delineated before this show more dimension, and more capacity to bump up against one another.

The characters are sharply defined, but not over defined. The backstories that we do get aren’t meant to add any real psychological dimension to the characters (with the possible exception of the Indianapolis speech — more on that later), none of them go through anything but the most basic arc. They don’t have to overcome some psychological wound to defeat the shark. Chief Brody himself dismisses the idea — Ellen: ‘Martin’s afraid of the water. There’s a clinical name for it’ Brody: ‘Drowning’ — the character himself is saying it’s irrelevant, just another thing to deal with. More than well written conflict and character, to me the characters feel well observed. These people feel real.

The craftsmanship is so fine, the movie so alive and entertaining that I can’t help but love it. And so it seems to me that it’s a great movie for that reason. It’s craftsmanship raised to the level of art.

My Favorite Moment in the Movie: Sometimes it seems that this movie is made up of one wonderful moment after another. For me the scene I marvel at every time is a little moment, but beautifully executed. Chief Brody is learning to tie a knot, Hooper plays solitaire, and Quint, while instructing the Chief, chews on crackers. In the midst of this the reel on Quint’s rod goes ‘click’. Quint’s eyes flick over to the reel and he stops chewing — no one else notices. Then, the reel goes ‘click, click’. Quint puts the cracker in his pocket and begins to strap himself into his seat — all the while the Chief is tying his knot and Hooper plays solitaire. The scene is so full of suspense and pitched perfectly. In the end you never see the shark, it isn’t even perfectly clear that it was the shark, but the craftsmanship and attention to detail in the scene is amazing. It’s a kind of pure movie making: there’s no equivalent to it in any other art form.

My Favourite Dialogue in the Movie: Again, lots of wonderful bits of dialogue, but my favourite has to be the U.S.S. Indianapolis speech. It follows Quint and Hooper’s comparison of scars — the funniest scene in the movie. And I cannot do it justice, so here it is —

In isolation like this, it seems like a kind of macho speech, but in the movie — after all the gut wrenching suspense — it’s absolutely riveting and chilling.

The speech was shot over two days. Carl Gotlieb says Shaw had been drinking and had trouble delivering the lines accurately the first day. The second day he was stone sober, and it’s a testament to his craft that pieces from both days are cut together in the final film

There is a great deal of argument over credit for the speech — nothing like it appears in the novel. Carl Gotlieb has never, to my knowledge, claimed credit for it. In his book, ‘The Jaws Log’ he says that John Milius is often given credit (even Spielberg has said so), but that he didn’t write it. He says that the version that was shot was written by Robert Shaw (who was also a novelist and playwright). In a recent podcast, Gotlieb elaborated to say that the idea for the speech, and indeed the first draft was written by Howard Sackler, the second writer on the movie. But in his account there’s no doubt: what appears on screen was written by Shaw.

Key Things You Should Look For When Watching: For me, number one, the editing. Watch the rhythm. Watch how it changes subtly — in the beach scene before Alex Kintner is killed watch how Verna Fields cuts the shots to a particular rhythm, then she subtly begins to lengthen the shots. You’re expecting a cut… and it doesn’t come. Then, pop, it does, but the rhythm is off. It’s incredibly unsettling. When the shark finally does attack, you’re disoriented. Wonderful work. And watch for scenes done ‘in one’. Brody, the mayor, the coroner and Meadows the newspaper editor (played by Gotlieb himself) on the car ferry. No cuts, just a terrific scene.

From a writing standpoint I’ve alluded to what I would watch for. Characters who are real, who don’t necessarily do what you would expect. And economy of backstory — Chief Brody didn’t lose a sibling in a boating accident. Matt Hooper didn’t watch his wife get eaten by a shark. Okay, Quint has the Indianapolis, but it isn’t an obstacle he has to overcome in order to vanquish anything. It’s just that he’s Captain Ahab. When you have a great story with great characters, don’t gild the lily.

Thanks, Markham! To show our gratitude for your guest post, here’s a dash of creative juju for you. Whoosh!

We already have a set of 80s Movies and 90s Movies. This month, we’re working on 70s Movies.

Thanks to all of you for your participation in this project, creating a resource for writers, movies we should all watch to help learn the craft of screenwriting!