Jaws - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of Jaws or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to Jaws

[brent]

Richard Dreyfuss initially passed on the part of Hooper, saying that Jaws (1975) was a film he would love to watch but not to make.

[darrell]

The gray and cloudy sky in water scenes is artificial. It is an image on a giant wall placed in the Universal studios. In front of the wall is a huge artificial lake, the "Falls Lake," which, together with the wall, was a backdrop for more than twenty movies already, including Jaws (1975).

[cassandra]

Over 67 million people in the U.S. went to see this film when it was initially released in 1975, making it the first summer "blockbuster."

[addison]

The first day the model shark was used, it sank to the bottom of the ocean. It needed a great deal of maintenance and didn't appear very terrifying. Spielberg recalled, "I had no choice but to figure out how to tell the story without the shark" and he reasoned that, "It's what we don't see which is truly frightening."

[nicholas]

The film is the second most watched film to be broadcast on British television when it was shown on ITV on October 8, 1981. It attracted 23.25 million viewers.

[dustin]

Gene Hackman was considered for the role of Martin Brody.

[frederick]

A real shark became entangled in a line that had been laid down over the underwater cage. This footage was subsequently used in the film.

[mathew]

According to Carl Gottlieb's "The Jaws Log", Steven Spielberg was never happy with the moment when Ben Gardner's head appears in the hole in the bottom of his boat. Preview audiences jumped at this scene, but Spielberg wanted more than an ordinary shock moment. However, the studio was unwilling to budget a re-shoot. So Spielberg declared that he'd pay for it himself, assembling a crew in editor Verna Fields' back-yard swimming pool, which would serve as the underwater location. A gallon of milk gave the water enough of the look of Nantucket Sound. The boat bottom was placed in the pool and Richard Dreyfuss' stunt double went through the action. The studio eventually ate the cost of the re-shoot, and the scene was taken to a much higher level, just by changing the composition and timing of a few feet of footage.

[toni]

Some scenes that have been declared "missing" from the video were not in the original theatrical release. When the movie was first televised, the network needed fillers after editing it for TV, so they used extra footage from the film's production.

[chad]

The line, "That's some bad hat, Harry," at 16:35, is the slogan for Bad Hat Harry Production Company. Their ad page features a cartoon rendition of Martin and Harry sitting by the beach, with a shark fin in the water in the background.

[kenneth]

Robert Shaw also ran into trouble with the IRS and had to flee the country once his scenes were completed. If he spent more than a certain amount of time in the U.S., he would face a tax liability. To circumvent that, Shaw was flown to Canada on his days off.

[sylvia]

Three mechanical "Bruces" were made, each with specialized functions. One shark was open on the right side, one was open on the left side, and the third was fully skinned. Each shark cost approximately $250,000.

[sophie]

There are many similarities to the 1954 Universal horror classic Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954). An old sea captain joins the crew in their quest. The monster is not shown until the middle of the movie. Both films have a beautiful woman who goes swimming and is stalked by the monster, however in the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the girl escapes from the gill man and in this one the girl is not so lucky.

[liam]

The "Jump the Shark" phrase actually comes from this movie; not Happy Days. This show came out right about the same time Jaws hit the theaters and became the highest grossing box office film of all time. Gary Marshall; the Happy Days creator, then planned a Jaws-themed episode in homage to this cinematic phenomenon by having his hero Fonzie jump a shark on water-skis; after actor Henry Winkler told him he was a champion water skier. Later critics would latch on to that episode as an example of when a show loses it's magic and a decline in quality and ratings follows; and "jumping the shark"; a new catch phrase, was born. But this was really Happy Days copying and appropriating Jaws; not the culture at large copying and appropriating Happy Days.

[claude]

Multiple shots are very similar to ones found in Creature from the Black Lagoon, such as the underwater monster viewpoint of a woman swimming on the surface of the water, as well as the fact that early on in both films we barely glimpse the monster at all.

[gabriel]

Lee Fierro, a local non-professional who played the role of Mrs. Kintner, the mother of Alex Kintner, the young boy who was the second victim of the shark, who later confronts and slaps Chief Brody, has stated in a recent documentary on the film that she was often asked by fans of the movie, particularly young men, to slap them to recreate the moment. Fierro said she obliged them for some time, but eventually decided to stop doing it.

[carla]

Jaws (1975) opened on only four hundred and nine screens. Within seventy-eight days, it had become the highest-grossing film of all time. Even then, however, it was still showing in fewer than a thousand screens.

[victoria]

Director Steven Spielberg said that when he first read the novel, he found himself rooting for the shark because the human characters were so unlikeable.

[bryan]

A scene filmed but not included in the final release was during the second beach attack. Brody's son, swimming in the "shallow area", is frozen in terror as the shark approaches him; the man saves his life by pushing the boy out of the way at the last minute and putting himself in the path of the shark. There is a shot of the bloody, dying man's upper body being dragged briefly along in the shark's jaws before being pulled underwater. Steven Spielberg shot the scene, but decided it was far too gruesome and didn't include it. The DVD release shows the scene being shot, blood and all, during the The Making of 'Jaws' (1995) documentary, but it is not included in the "Deleted Footage" or "Outtakes" sections of the DVD.