Steven Spielberg Shares His Original "Bad Idea" For The Opening Scene of JAWS
When Steven Spielberg started developing Jaws, as he was developing the storyboards he originally envisioned a very different opening for the film. During an interview with Vanity Fair, the filmmaker shared his original vision for the opening scene of Jaws, calling it a bad idea, and saying it’s the kind of thing that belonged in a B-movie. He said:
“One of my bad ideas was to start the movie with the camera inside the gullet of the shark, shooting out toward the teeth with the mouth open. And I shot a sample of that and decided that this was a terrible and gimmicky idea that belonged in a B-movie. I did think it could work for the trailer—I tried it out, and again, it just seemed cheap, and I threw it out.”
It’s funny, because I recently watched The Meg 2: The Trench, and this was a scene in that movie! We were looking from inside the giant shark’s mouth as it ate a bunch of people, and it was a lot of fun to watch! Sure, it may not have worked with Jaws, but it worked The Meg 2!
The opening scene that was used in Jaws was a perfect setup to build the fear up. When talking about that opening scene, Spielberg said:
“I thought it would be very scary not to show it at all. If the shark had come out of the water, it would have been spectacular but there would have been nothing primal about it—it would have just been another monster moment that all of us had already seen in other films. I wanted the jerking motion of the first victim to trigger our imagination about what was going on below. I felt that was stronger than showing the snout or even a glimpse of fin.”
It certainly was effective! As a kid, that scene scared the living shit out of me. As for how that was achieved, actress Susan Backlinie, who played the first attack victim, Chrissie, was attached to a harness so she could be pulled back and forth to simulate the attack. Spielberg said:
She had a harness on. There were two eye rings in it, and wires that led to two stakes in the beach. Five crew were on one side, and five crew on the other, and they basically pulled Susan. There was a ribbon hanging from the wire, and when it got to one of the stakes, they had to stop pulling and the other team took over and pulled the other way. What you didn’t want to have happen was for both teams to pull at the same time.
“For extra safety, she had the ability to quick release the wire if something went wrong. It had to be perfectly choreographed to give the impression the shark was pulling her violently to the right and then immediately violently to the left.”
Spielberg was the one who actually pulled her when the shark first attacked. I included the opening scenes for you to watch below. I would love to see the original test footage that Spielberg shot for his first opening or even the storyboard art, but I couldn’t find it. Maybe one day.