Steven Spielberg's shark thriller Jaws, released in 1975, remains an iconic film in the history of cinema. However, given the financial constraints and production issues the film faced, the acclaimed filmmaker thought his career would be "virtually over" at 26 years old.
Attending a preview for the Jaws: The Exhibition at The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, Spielberg candidly spoke about the beloved film, as well as its early doubters as it turned 50.
"I thought my career was virtually over halfway through production on Jaws because everybody was saying to me, 'You are never going to get hired again. This film is way over budget and way over schedule, and you are a real liability as a director and you are not going to get hired again,' " he recalled, adding, "So I really thought that I'd better give this my all because I'm not working in the Industry again after they see the movie. And fortunately, fortune smiled on us."
Based on the 1974 novel by Peter Benchley, Jaws grossed nearly $500 million worldwide, according to multiple box office estimates, and has become a cult-classic over the years.
Spielberg recalled the massive responsibility that lied on their shoulders to create the ambitious project and opened up about how unprepared the team was deal with a multitude of challenges that lay ahead of them. He chose Martha’s Vineyard as a location for the film as he wanted to show sharks swimming in real waters. I really thought my hubris was that we could take a Hollywood crew, go out 12 miles out into the Atlantic Ocean and shoot an entire movie with a mechanical shark. I thought that was going to go swimmingly," he said and added, "I had really no idea that the second you tempt Mother Nature and tempt fate, everything starts to conspire against you and us." A documentary on the making of the film titled Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story by National Geographic details the scale and issues that went in creating the film.
The film had over $9 million in budget with a schedule running up to over 150 days. But the team stayed united in the journey despite the hardships. "Because all of us never wanted to quit, and that was the whole reason we finished the movie," he noted, underlining that he never intended for it to be a "shark movie".
"I didn't know when we were going to wrap until two weeks before we wrapped on Martha's Vineyard. That's how little control we had over the shark, the weather, the currents - the regattas!" he said.
Despite Spielberg being shown the door several times, and most of the crew members asking him when filming would finish, as they grew weary of the lengthy shoot, the director did not leave from the set. "In the six months out to sea, I have never seen so many people getting sick. For some reason, I never got seasick, and I think that is only because I had the weight of this production on my shoulders and I didn't have time to get sick," the Jurassic Park Director said and added that it was the team staying in each others' company that got through tough filming schedules. "The camaraderie that happens when you're just trying to survive something ... it brought all of us closer together," he said.
Jaws stars Roy Scheider as police chief Martin Brody, who, with the help of a marine biologist (Richard Dreyfuss) and a professional shark hunter (Robert Shaw), hunts a man-eating great white shark that attacks beachgoers at a New England summer resort town. Murray Hamilton plays the mayor, and Lorraine Gary portrays Brody's wife.
Jaws was nominated for four Oscars in 1976 and won three, only missing out in the Best Picture category. Spielberg did not get a Best Director nomination at the time.