The Making of Jaws (1995)
**** (out of 4)
This mammoth documentary on the making of JAWS features interviews with many of the main people behind the film including Steven Spielberg, producers David Brown and Richard Zanuck, stars Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and Lorraine Gary, composer John Williams, stunt woman Susan Backlinie, co-writer Carl Gottlieb, writer Peter Benchley and several others.
With a running time just north of two hours, this documentary really gives you a terrific idea of how one of the greatest movies ever made almost fell apart countless times throughout the troubled production. I really think the greatest stuff here deals with Spielberg who wonderfully details the chaos that was constantly happening as they tried to deal with various troubles from the shark not working properly to the ocean just not helping the situation.
We learn about the original screenplay, the various changes made to it and then we get into the hiring of the cast as well as a few actors who turned down various roles. From here we get to the actual shooting of the movie and everything that went wrong including fears that Spielberg would walk, the studio would just cancel the picture or the entire thing could have been taken away. The cast and crew really do a marvelous job at explaining everything that went wrong but, in the end, we also get to hear what a pleasure the end result turned out to be.
If you're a fan of JAWS then obviously this here is going to be a must see. Not only do we get the terrific stories but we also get several outtakes including a more graphic death scene that was cut by Spielberg because he felt it was just too much.
