Bruce the Shark Designer Joe Alves Talks JAWS 45 Years Later

There were a lot of factors that went into making Jaws one of the greatest films ever. The acting, the direction, the score, and of course, the fact that the movie was filmed in the ocean using practical effects and a life size, terrifying shark tormenting beachgoers and boaters alike. The film has now hit its 45th anniversary, and Syfy sat down with Joe Alves, who designed the production, including Bruce, the mechanical shark.

Alves said he joined the film even before Steven Spielberg was on board to direct, though he had worked with the director before as art director on his first theatrical feature, The Sugarland Express. Producer on the film David Brown asked Alves to create some illustrations of Peter Benchley's soon-to-be bestseller, Jaws.

"He just asked if I could go through the galleys and make a lot of illustrations to sell the idea to the studio of doing a shark movie. And Steven wasn't aboard yet, so that was probably August, September of '73. And that's how that started."

Once Spielberg was on board and Alves showed him the art, the ideas took off. He said:

"[Spielberg] said, 'God, if we do this, we should do a big full-sized shark, 25 feet, in the real ocean. Not in the backlot tank or something."

So everyone was on board, but this was a pretty daunting task. It was completely unprecedented technology, so they were pioneering the way themselves.

"We had looked at some other movies that used big marlins and stuff like that, and they looked phony, you know, they didn't look real. A tank with a painted background doesn't look like the real ocean," Alves says. "Nobody had really done it. Disney made, I think, orcas and stuff, but they were shot in tanks. So when we decided if we're going to do this, this is the way we want to do it, the studio effects department said they couldn't do it, it'd take a year and a half to make the thing, it's never been done."

Bruce was famously a pain to work with, from malfunctioning to sinking and everything in between. Alves explains the process:

"We were into it like four, five months at the most, and we're testing it and it wiggles. And we built it in Sunland here in the Valley, and we shipped the three sharks — there are three sharks, left to right, right to left that was towed, and then one on a big crane — and so we got to Martha's Vineyard and we started testing it. And the first problem we found was salt water doesn't like electrical stuff.

"As soon as we got in the water and we start moving it around, all the old electronic stuff started getting invaded by the salt water. So we have to pull that out and redo that and then the various mechanics," he continues. "I have a book that came out this year called Joe Alves: Designing Jaws, it's on Amazon, and there are shots you could see the opening side of the shark and all the various rams and all the mechanics and how difficult it was to make this thing, because it wiggles, it swings, it comes up and bites... it was like nothing that's ever been done before in the real ocean."

He went on to say that they finally worked out many of the kinks, but boat trouble also plagued the production. Some people were under the misconception that the shark wasn’t used as much as it should have been in the film, all because of the reported trouble they faced. But Alves shoots that claim down, saying:

“You could overuse a shark, and some of these other shark [movies], they just overuse it. And I think Steven was very smart in being very selective. We have a shot, it was the first shot where the shark works, where it's a high shot and the shark goes by the boat. It just swims gently, and you say, 'Oh my God, it's almost as big as the boat.' So you want those shots, but you don't want to keep repeating them.”

I recently watched Jaws, and I totally don’t think the shark was underused. You definitely get good looks at him, and its definitely tension-building. Alves is pretty happy with the film, and the legacy it has endured. He talked about his favorite scene, saying:

"That first shot when the boat went by, I was so pleased with that. And then when it comes up and Scheider says, 'We're gonna need a bigger boat. And I think one of the best shots was coming into the cabin, you know, and then he puts the tank in his mouth and he goes away. I thought that worked really quite well."

We would have to agree! Jaws is a classic, and I think it holds up over time as well as any other Spielberg classic. Are you a fan of the film?