The shark was called Bruce
The mechanical SHARK built for Jaws was nicknamed Bruce by the crew, after Steven Spielberg's lawyer. Three sharks were made, each built to be filmed from a different side, and they were designed to work in a freshwater tank. Out in real salt water, they kept going wrong, and the problems changed how the film was made — covered on our horror page.
The shark is meant to be a GREAT WHITE, a real species that can grow to around six metres. The yellow barrels harpooned into it show where it is swimming even when it is under water, which builds the fear without showing the monster at all.
Filmed on the real ocean
Spielberg insisted on filming at sea rather than in a studio tank, off the island of Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, which played the town of AMITY. It made the film look real and made filming a nightmare: boats drifted into shot, the weather changed, and the sea kept moving. The shoot was planned for 55 days and took around 159.
Spielberg was only 27 when filming began, and he feared the film would end his career. The crew nicknamed it Flaws. Instead it became the most successful film ever made up to that time.
A line that was never in the script
The most quoted line in the film, you are going to need a BIGGER BOAT, was not in the script. Roy Scheider, playing police chief BRODY, is thought to have said it on the spot when he first sees the size of the shark, and it had become a joke among the crew about their own undersized support boat.
QUINT, the tough shark hunter, has a quiet scene in which he tells the story of the USS Indianapolis, a real American warship sunk in 1945; many of the sailors who survived the sinking were killed by sharks while they waited days in the water for rescue. HOOPER is the young scientist who brings a shark CAGE, and Quint's boat is called the ORCA, after the killer whale, a real hunter of sharks.
The first summer blockbuster
Before Jaws, big films usually opened slowly in a few cinemas and spread around the country over months. Jaws opened across hundreds of American cinemas at once in June 1975, backed by a huge television advertising campaign, and people queued round the block all SUMMER. Film studios copied the idea, and the summer blockbuster was born.
The film also made many people afraid to swim in the OCEAN, and it fed a fear of sharks that did real harm to shark populations. Peter Benchley, who wrote the novel, later campaigned to protect them — our sharks page has the real story.
The rest of the grid
The town's MAYOR refuses to close the BEACH, because the ISLAND depends on summer visitors, and the three men set out on a BOAT to HUNT the shark. A BUOY clangs in the dark water, a FIN appears, and every BITE and ATTACK is held back until the last moment.
A great white loses and replaces its TEETH throughout its life, and a single TOOTH is one of the most common fossils found on beaches around the world.