Intensity: 🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Directed by Laurent Bouzereau
When a film becomes so firmly ensconced in our nation’s, nay the world’s, cultural zeitgeist there’s often nothing left to say about it. The film score, the triad of perfectly perfect actors, one of the best villains of all time, and more metaphorical subtext than you can shake a stick at.
Many directors, including Quentin Tarantino, have called Jaws a perfect film. Not near perfect, but PERFECT. They, and the hundreds of millions of people that have seen it over the last 50 years aren’t wrong.
While Jaws doesn’t have the weirdly obsessive fan base as Star Wars, Jaws does hold a special place in many people’s hearts. What makes this somewhat peculiar is the fact that Jaws is a horror film and it’s a mighty gory one at that.
Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story, directed by Laurent Bouzereau, is a fairly straight forward chronological look at the making of Jaws and its broader cultural explosion. Bouzdereau neatly tucks in interviews with conservationists and scientists who speak to the appetite of sharks and the unfortunate wake of terror that Jaws had on the harvesting of sharks.
While the star of the show is Steven Speilberg, the film also contains an incredible cast of interviewees , including: critic Janet Maslin, Cameron Crowe, J.J. Abrams, Guillermo del Toro, Steven Soderbergh, Emily Blunt, Robert Zemeckis, Jordan Peele, and George Lucas. In addition to these Hollyweird luminaries, there’s also interviews with Peter Benchley’s family, Robert Shaw’s son, and Deputy Hendricks from Jaws I and II, Jeffrey Kramer.
If you haven’t guessed it already Bouzdereau has FULL access to the Jaws archives and he leaves no stone unturned. This is simultaneously a great thing and a not so great thing.
Again, while the focus is almost entirely on Steven Spielberg, Jaws is positively littered with fascinating tales of Jaws collectors, the shark’s mechanical problems, the brilliance of casting director Shari Rhodes, and the real reason the shark is named Bruce. Bouzdereau offers so much content that points of the film really feel like the audience is drowning in Jaws trivia.
This film could have easily been three separate hour and half long films, or at the very least a longer film that gives ample and equal treatment to all this great content. There’s no question that Jaws is one of the most fascinating films ever made, but the undertow of interviews and anecdotes felt like not everything was given its due.
Where Bouzdereau excels is finding the little nuggets that even the most hardened Jaws fans may not have ever been aware of, or likely forgot. In fact, early on in the film Spielberg is even asked if there’s any element of Jaws that he’s never spoken about. Some of the more compelling tidbits of Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story, include:
-Regular visits from Martin Scorsese who helped Spielberg mentally process this massive undertaking.
-The construction of the Bruce the shark going from a year+ production schedule to a month and a half because of the popularity of the book.
-Jonathan Filley, the drunken teen “Cassidy” at the beginning of the film, who still has the sweater he wore in the film.
-Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss’ mutual hate/admiration for each other.
-The fact that Robert Shaw rewrote the U.S.S. Indianapolis speech and initially and unsuccessfully tried to drunkenly deliver it.
-Director Steven Soderberg has seen the film 31 times in the theater.
It’s a rare thing to have film goers dig so deeply into any film, let alone a horror film, but Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story is positively brimming with facts, figures, and fear.
Should you see Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story?
Whether you’re a fan of Jaws, a hardened horror hound, or someone who has just stumbled upon the film as a part of the film education, you absolutely need to see Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story. While the amount of content and interviews that shift back/forth between ecologists and A-list directors can be a little dizzying, each piece and part that the interviewees offer is deeply engrossing.
It would have been fascinating to listen to Spielberg one-on-one in the same singular way as the film Leap of Faith William Friedkin on the Exorcist, but Bouzdereau does a great job assembling a loving dedication to a horror film that has meant so much to so many.
Spending an evening with Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story will have you brimming with glee, pinning to re-watch Jaws, and most importantly, it’ll provide a glimpse into the mind of Steven Spielberg and the things that make him tick. It won’t, however have you running out to find a copy of Jaws IV.
Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story is streaming on Hulu.