Latest news with #CarlGottlieb
Forbes
7 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
‘Jaws @ 50' Gives Longtime Spielberg Historian Laurent Bouzereau Final Word On The Original Summer Blockbuster
Steven Spielberg, Director of Jaws and Director Laurent Bouzereau are pictured during an interview ... More for National Geographic's Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story. What can be said about Jaws that hasn't been said over the last 50 years? That was the big question for longtime Steven Spielberg documentarian Laurent Bouzereau (Faye, Music By John Williams) once he teamed up with Amblin and National Geographic to make Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story, a star-studded look back at the original summer blockbuster, featuring brand-new interviews with Spielberg, screenwriter Carl Gottlieb, production designer Joe Alves, and many more. 'When we set it up at NatGeo I was like, 'Oh my God, there are so many documentaries on Jaws!' [There are so many] books. [Even] I've done a book! What is left to say about Jaws?'' Bouzereau remembers over Zoom. A valid fear. As one of the most iconic and influential movies of all time, the big screen adaptation of Peter Benchley's bestselling novel has endlessly been picked over and analyzed since it first took a bite out of the big screen on June 20, 1975. But if anyone could pull off a new angle, it was Bouzereau, who is not only chummy with Spielberg (no pun intended), but also brings a uniquely international perspective to the topic. 'I grew up in France, and we didn't have summer blockbusters,' he explains. 'It's changed now, but essentially, big movies came out in the fall or the early fall. So I didn't really grow up with that concept of the summer blockbuster.' He wouldn't become familiar with the idea until arriving in the United States for the first time in 1977, the year of a certain game-changing space opera. One of the first things Bouzereau saw upon entering the airport in Athens, Georgia was an issue of People with R2-D2 and C-3PO on the front cover. 'I said, 'What's that? I want to see that!' So that's summer blockbuster [for me], it's People magazine. I think it established a certain type of expectation of big films … [Jaws] certainly gave birth to a much bigger recognition of the impact that a film can have on an audience and how the audience wants to live it [with] merchandising, books, and knowing the secrets behind them. Building a whole mythology around a cinematic experience, down to having a [theme] park ride. Jaws is beginning of that movement, which, of course, explodes even bigger with Star Wars." Nevertheless, Jaws (or Les Dents de la Mer — aka The Teeth of the Sea — as it was titled in French) sparked a major cinematic 'awakening' in the future filmmaker, who was around 13-years-old in the summer of '75. 'It was such a phenomenon, that it immediately [drove home] the importance of the director for me,' Bouzereau says. 'From that day on, I wanted to see everything Steven Spielberg ever made, and that name became symbolic of a dream for me, much more than the film itself. It was the realization of the power of images in the hands of an incredible artist … I was mesmerized by the shots and, of course, the economy of the first scene where you never see the shark and [hear] the music by John Williams. So everything was sort of summarized in that one movie, not to mention that I collected all the lobby cards and poster. My bedroom was wall-to-wall Jaws. But it was not a fanatical thing. It was really an awakening for me as an appreciator and it never left me. Sometimes, I go back to that initiation I got from Jaws as a young kid and remember those feelings of the very first time [I saw it]. It's like a first of anything." Half a century later, and Bouzereau found himself sitting across from Spielberg, free to ask any and all questions about the movie that changed both their lives. Rather than focus on the making of Jaws, a topic that had been covered so extensively over the years, the former angled for a thematic exploration of the classic picture, viewing its turbulent production as a reflection of the plot itself. Like Brody (Roy Scheider), Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), and Quint (Robert Shaw) searching for and battling the man-eating shark, principal photography 'became a story of survival," Bouzereau notes, later adding, 'I think it's about not giving up. It's the human experience, right?' He continues: "The first time I sat down with Steven, I felt the humanity that we know from anything he's done — before Jaws and after. He was so young then, that it was still forming in a sense. But it was so mature and so much of it was there, that you can look at Jaws and say, 'That's the man who did Schindler's List years later,' and not blink at that association because his humanity is just so obvious. Not only in the story and the way that he put it together, but in his own journey as an artist making it, what he's learned from it, and how it affected him. I felt that story had not been told.' Director Steven Spielberg on the set of Jaws with the mechanical shark in the background. (Courtesy ... More of Universal Studios Licensing LLC) While the film's runaway success skyrocketed the 26-year-old wunderkind to the top of Hollywood's A-list pretty much overnight, Spielberg understandably did not recover from the trauma of a production marked by one setback after another (the most notable obstacle being an animatronic shark that refused to cooperate in salty water) for years after. Such commitment to realism, a fierce desire to shoot on the Atlantic and work the local Martha's Vineyard populace into the frame, proved to be a double-edged sword. 'A few years before, Jaws would have been made on a soundstage with local background artists who were just coming off the set of another movie,' Bouzereau says. 'There would have been no sort of colorful characters like Craig Kingsbury [who played the ill-fated Ben Gardner] from Martha's Vineyard. Going there and realizing that Jaws is something that is passed on generation after generation on that particular island —that's a microcosm of what the impact of Jaws is.' But as Spielberg reveals in the documentary, he'd often sneak aboard the screen-used Orca on the Universal Studios Hollywood backlot tour and cry. 'Everybody knows it was a nightmare, but they all say it with laugh, because we can laugh at the fact that here is one of the best movies of all time,' Bouzereau adds. 'It could have been a disaster, but I think [Steven] said it with heart and humility in a truly inspiring way that I think feels relatable for anyone, especially young people who are starting a career in anything, and feel like, 'Wow, I just learned that from my own craft.'' Speaking of which, Jaws @ 50 devotes a good amount of attention to the acclaimed storytellers who, like Bouzereau, grew up to be directors after seeing Jaws: Guillermo del Toro, J.J. Abrams, Cameron Crowe, Jordan Peele, Steven Soderbergh, Robert Zemeckis, and James Cameron. 'To really see the impact it had on some of the most important filmmakers of our times, to see the the lessons that they got from Jaws, was was eye-opening to me," admits Bouzereau. 'Because it wasn't just, 'Oh, I love the movie. It scared me.' You know, the usual sound bites. It was a very profound and big discovery for me. I also think the other aspect of the film that I had not really known about, even though it was in plain sight, was how it affected the ocean and [led to] sharks being massacred … The fascination with this novel and this movie have changed the dialogue about the ocean. I don't know if there are many movies that have had that kind of social impact. "Very few works of art turn 50 and are relevant today. I don't have any children, but I have nieces and nephews, and I have forced them to watch Jaws, and now they're forcing their kids to watch it. So it's something that's passed on, and it's pretty extraordinary to see that 50 years later. Listen, I asked myself a lot of questions if I was still relevant when I turned 50. Jaws doesn't have that problem.' 'Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story' Jaws @ 50 premieres exclusively on Disney+ and Hulu Thursday, July 10
Yahoo
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Jaws at 50: the Jewish sensibility that shaped Spielberg's blockbuster and transformed cinema
It's hard to believe Steven Spielberg was just 27 when he directed Jaws. Before that he'd mostly worked in television, helming episodes of detective show Columbo and the acclaimed TV movie Duel. He'd made just one theatrical feature, The Sugarland Express. Then came Jaws, a technically ambitious shoot set on open water with a mechanical shark that barely worked. But the result was a record-breaking blockbuster that redefined what Hollywood could be. Adapted from Peter Benchley's 1974 novel, the film almost didn't happen. When Spielberg first read it he said he found himself rooting for the shark because the human characters were so unlikable. What followed was a series of creative rewrites and re-castings that gave Jaws its distinctive personality and enduring power. Spielberg brought in Howard Sackler, a writer and scuba diver, to work on the script. Sackler left early without a screen credit. The director then turned to actor Carl Gottlieb, originally hired to play a toadying local newspaper editor, to redraft the script. Screenwriter and director John Milius, a second world war expert, also contributed. John Williams added what became an iconic musical score. Its simple two-note motif created suspense and became one of the most recognisable cinematic themes of all time. As a researcher of Jewishness in popular culture, I argue that many of these creatives brought a Jewish sensibility that lurked beneath the surface of the film. Spielberg took Benchley's bitter, cynical and pessimistic novel and gave it a more hopeful vibe. He even humanised the shark, giving it the name Bruce after his lawyer, Bruce Ramer, a powerful and influential Los Angeles attorney specialising in entertainment law, also Jewish. That choice layers in unexpected meanings, from the 'loan shark' stereotype to echoes of Shakespeare's Shylock from The Merchant of Venice. Spielberg cast Jewish actor Richard Dreyfuss as Matt Hooper, the young ichthyologist and oceanographer. Against him stood Robert Shaw as Quint, the grizzled boat captain, who is a sexist, misogynistic, racist macho drunk. Hooper is everything Quint is not. Making up the triumvirate is Roy Scheider as police captain Martin Brody. Together, the three seek to capture and kill the shark that is menacing the town of Amity. The casting of Dreyfuss as Hooper, whom Spielberg called 'my alter ego', significantly changed the character and the tone of the film. Together, Dreyfuss, Gottlieb and Spielberg fleshed out Hooper's part, making him much more sympathetic than in the novel. He became a 'nebbishy novice on a swift learning curve'. For Spielberg, Hooper 'represents the underdog in all of us'. Benchley, however, was less than impressed, describing him as 'an insufferable, pedantic little schmuck'. It's telling that Benchley used a Yiddish epithet to describe Hooper as if recognising his underlying Jewishness. Together, Spielberg and Gottlieb used Hooper as a mouthpiece to voice a social perspective. Brody wishes to close the beaches but is prevented from doing so by the mayor and the town council because Amity needs the business. The mayor puts commerce before human life. In a shift from Benchley's novel where the pressure to keep the beaches open comes from shadowy pseudo-Mafia figures in the background, Spielberg placed the blame firmly on Amity's merchants and civic representatives. Throughout, Spielberg undermines the dominant masculinity of the screen action hero of the 1970s. This was an era dominated by men like Burt Reynolds, Clint Eastwood and Gene Hackman. Nerdy Hooper outlives Quint, who becomes the shark's fifth victim (hence his name, which is Latin for five or fifth). To show his contempt for Quint, Spielberg gives him a particularly gruesome death. And because Spielberg identified with the shark, we see things from its subjective perspective. This was also dictated by pragmatic concerns as the mechanical shark kept breaking down. Shooting the killings from the shark's point of view was a cinematic device borrowed from A Study in Terror (1965), a British thriller about Jack the Ripper. Jaws was a box office smash, breaking records previously set by The Godfather and The Exorcist and becoming the first film to reach the US$100 million (£74.5 million) mark at the American box office. Read more: Before Jaws, studios typically released major films in the autumn and winter, leaving the summer for lower-quality movies. Jaws proved that it could be a prime time for big-budget, high-profile releases, leading to the current dominance of tentpole films during the summer season. It pioneered the strategy of opening a film in a wide release, rather than a gradual rollout. This helped it break box office records and redefine Hollywood's practices. It was something that people got excited about, planned for and lined up for tickets in advance. Half a century on, Jaws still has the power to shock. When I took my kids to see the 3D re-release, we all jumped during the scene when the decapitated head bobbed out of the sunken boat – even though I knew it was coming. Another reason why the film has lasted is the shark itself. It's a primal, prehistoric creature that taps into our deepest fears. Quint calls it a thing with 'lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eyes'. It's a chilling line. Read more: But the film also works as allegory. The shark is a floating (or swimming) signifier, open to interpretation. Amity, the town it terrorises, is all white picket fences and small-town harmony. The shark's arrival punctures that illusion. There's also a political undercurrent. Hooper becomes the conscience of the film, voicing the dangers of civic denial and inaction. And in the end, Jaws isn't just about a shark. It's about masculinity, morality and capitalism. It's about the stories we tell ourselves to feel safe. That's why it endures. That, and one of the most iconic scores in cinema history – John Williams' two-note motif that still makes swimmers glance nervously at the waterline to this day. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Nathan Abrams receives and has previously received external funding from charities and government-funded, foundation or research council grants.
