Jaws was Steven Spielberg’s second feature film, his first full-scale blockbuster, and one of the most backbreaking projects he ever directed. At times the 1975 film’s shoot in the Atlantic Ocean made the then 27-year-old filmmaker fear his own career was sinking to the bottom of the sea alongside his perpetually malfunctioning shark.
In this extensive interview excerpted from the new book Spielberg: The First Ten Years, author and filmmaker Laurent Bouzereau goes long with the Oscar winner about all aspects of the now-classic movie, from alternate casting possibilities (Lee Marvin, Jon Voight, and Jeff Bridges among them) to the near-revolt he faced from the crew, and the apology he makes to the special effects team who built the mechanical Great White. Some of his tales are downright comical, like the director’s efforts to secure the rights to a dirty rhyme that Quint actor Robert Shaw stole from an Irish tombstone, and a discarded opening-credits concept he calls “one of my bad ideas.”
