The Making of Steven Spielberg's 'Jaws'

I am a huge Jaws fan and this is the best documentary. The only thing that is wrong with this is that there is no Robert Shaw interview, there also isn't a Murray Hamilton interview either. But in all this is a great documentary. If you are a Jaws fan at all then you must check this out.

The thing that I loved about The Making of Jaws was not the fact that the Special Edition DVD featured a shorter version of the documentary than the Special Edition VHS (both of which I own because I'm just a geek like that) but the fact that it covers every aspect of production from Peter Benchley's original conception of the story of Jaws all the way to the public reception of the completed film at the test viewings. Even the interviews are edited together smoothly, which is something that these making-of documentaries are notoriously bad at. It also goes into great detail about a wide variety of different topics, bringing back a surprising number of the original cast members. Even the girl who got eaten at the beginning of the film shows up here for an interview.

I tend to find it tiring when these supplemental features on DVDs spend a lot of time playing clips of the movie that you just finished watching, so it was nice that this documentary showed so much behind the scenes footage and outtakes, as well as explanations for why certain scenes were not put into the movie. Steven Spielberg gives some great insights into his methods of directing, and everyone has some great stories to tell about the problems that were encountered during production, particularly with the shark hardly ever working.

There's a part in this documentary where Spielberg talks about a time when he was genuinely concerned that the studio was going to send someone in to take over the project because he was taking so long during production, which really gives a lot of insight into how difficult film-making can be sometimes. Oh and you get to hear him cuss, too. I'd never seen that before. One of the most popular things that this movie spawned was not only the endless repetition of phrases like "Don't go in the water" and "You're going to need a bigger boat" is a tendency for people to make fun of the movie because the shark looked fake. But when you watch this documentary and see how much work went into making the shark look as real or fake as it did, it really makes you appreciate the movie more. Save your criticisms for the horrendous sequels.

One of the other things that I really liked about this documentary was that it showed footage of some of Steven Spielberg's home movies, evidently shot with a home video camera on the sets during production. It was pretty interesting to see footage that he shot that looks like it could have been shot by anyone. Strange to see that one of the greatest filmmakers alive shoots video just like anyone else. A few days ago I watched a supplemental documentary for The Day the Earth Stood Still called Making the Earth Stand Still and I was disappointed not only that it had nothing to do with making the Earth stand still but that it was such a poorly made documentary to accompany one of the best science fiction films ever made, so it was nice to see that the re-release of Jaws was fitted with a fitting documentary.

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.

A documentary chronicling the making of the film Jaws from the scripting stage through to problems on shooting. With interviews from the majority of the cast, producers and the director himself.

I watched this as a DVD extra and was easily interested. Taking the viewer from the conception stage of the book right through to the final film this is a very interesting subject. The director and the majority of the cast make for interesting tales, however much of it is known due to the legend over the few years. As a result there's not a whole lot more to say and it fails to have more than one or two bits where I went `ohh' because I didn't know that.

However this is still of interest even if you know the story behind the film already. It's good to see Speilberg and several of the main cast brought in to make comments. Even where you know the story it's still nice to hear it from them themselves.

Overall this is of interest to anyone interesting in Jaws as a creation – however from many it'll be old news told in a different way.

. . . "Making of" from the 1900's is still around to do the same function for a feature about a more historic and successful picture in 2023. Because it takes months, years or decades for these elaborate, high-cost, widely seen films to appear on this site--compared to a few instants for an extremely brief, no value obscure so-called "Pod Person Cast" seen only by a couple relatives of the prattler--this is the best place to comment upon Marian M.'s current release of several months ago: LEVELING UP: MAKING THE SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE. This more recent 27-minute, 46.11-second DVD bonus feature includes commentary from 27 key cast and crew members, such as Chris Pratt (Mario), Jack Black (Bow-Sir), Seth Row-Gin (Donkey Kong), Ann-Yeah Taylor-Joy (Princess Peach), Key-Gin Michael Key (Toad) and Charlie Day (Luigi).