I was ten years old when I first saw Jaws. It had been re-released in the theaters and I begged my father to take me. When I walked out of the movie I was a different person, much the same way my seven-year-old self had been changed by Star Wars. Since then and for twenty-eight years I have been obsessed with Jaws. Not Jaws 2, 3 or 4 but the original masterpiece of man vs. fish. I have used any and all means at my disposal to learn all I could about how my favorite movie of all time was made.
When I first heard about The Shark Is Still Working: The Legacy And Impact Of Jaws I had my trepidations. There has been so much done over the more than three decades since the film’s release that I just didn’t see how anyone could add that much more meat to the stew. After seeing the film I was amazed at how wrong I was. Not just kind of off the mark but utterly and completely wrong.
The Shark Is Still Working masterminds James Gelet, Erik Hollander, Jake Gove and J. Michael Roddy have made the indispensable all consuming look at everything having to do with Jaws. Let me set your mind at ease, this isn’t some rinky dink fan film filled with boring stories and stock footage, this is the bible of how Jaws was made much the same way Heart Of Darkness was for Apocalypse Now.
Everybody is in this movie, and I mean everybody. It wasn’t enough for the filmmakers to get director Steve Spielberg or main players Richard Dreyfuss and Roy Scheider (who also narrates the movie). These guys weren’t even satisfied with the co-stars, the producers, the technical crew or even Jaws author Peter Benchley. Nope, this gaggle of Jaws-fans-cum-documentarians scoured the earth to find anybody who was even slightly in or involved with the film.
Want the grown up kids who played Michael and Sean Brody, they’re in there. The local Martha’s Vineyard fisherman who inspired Robert Shaw’s character Quint, he’s in there. Deputy Hendricks, Alex Kitner, the guys who caught the shark that wasn’t the great white, every single last one of them is in there. Alongside of the cast and crew are some of the biggest names in Hollywood talking about Jaws. Robert Rodriguez, Kevin Smith, M. Night Shyamalan, Tom Savini, Bryan Singer the list is endless, all talking about how Jaws basically inspired them to get into movies.
Outside of the revelry and stories what makes The Shark Is Still Working so different than anything else ever done on Jaws is that it isn’t a “Making Of”. Don’t get me wrong; the first part of the documentary delves deep into how the film was put together. It covers the shark not working, the creative direction Spielberg had to take due to his lack-of-shark issues. You hear the stories from Dreyfuss and Scheider, Production Designer Joe Alves, Cinematographer Bill Butler, and every one else who had anything to do with making Jaws. However that’s just a small part of the documentary.
From there we’re whisked into all the things that made Jaws important and have kept it important for thirty plus years. When I say everything, I mean everything. Percy Rodrigues, the baritone voice behind the first commercials from Jaws explains how his slow steady delivery won out over what the studio wanted. Studio heads explain how the movie’s theater release was carefully maneuvered to make sure people couldn’t get into the movie and had to wait in line. Any aspect of Jaws that you can think of somehow finds itself into The Shark Is Still Working.
One of my favorite parts of the film is a lengthy interview with Roger Kastel who designed the infamous movie poster. Listening to him tell the story of how he created the poster is amazing. From how he accidentally photographed a fake shark standing upright to asking a girl modeling for a commercial poster to stay a half an hour and pretend to swim, thus making her the most famous almost-victim in history. This is the stuff Jaws freaks like myself are hungry for.
The film even manages to talk to locals from who had bit parts in the movie as well as memorabilia collectors and super fans at the Jaws Day, 2005 event held at Martha’s Vineyard. The in depth look at the mass merchandising campaign is also amazing because it makes you both mad the studio sold so much junk and amped that you can try to go out there and find it. If I had 10,000 words I couldn’t give you a complete picture of everything involved in this three-hour plus documentary. Of course when I say three hours plus, I can hear warning bells going off in the minds of fans.
Usually when so much is thrown into a film it becomes bloated and hard to watch. When you’re talking for three hours plus on one subject boredom can set in easily and become nearly impossible to get rid of. That doesn’t happen with The Shark Is Still Working for three main reasons: structure, love and archival footage.
The structure of The Shark Is Still Working comes together beautifully thanks to director Erik Hollander and writer James Gelet who structure the documentary in a linear narrative, much like a standard movie. Starting with how the movie is made, The Shark Is Still Working then glides into the cool odds and ends used to market it, talks about the summer it opened and so on. You feel as if you’re right there through all of it, with each section building off of what you learned in the previous one.
With the film structured that way all the parts become interwoven so that no one part will work without the other and boredom never sets in. The filmmakers also use a clever trick to break up sections by using lines from the movie. For instance a section ends and the screen goes black. Over that black the words “This is a great white..a big one” appear which leads into the section on how huge Jaws became. Clever gadgets like that and the lean editing of content keeps you excited through the whole movie.
The second and probably biggest part is love. Now I’m not a new age Yanni kind of guy but when somebody is creating out of love it shows. The Shark Is Still Working is a labor of love and you can feel that in every second it plays. So much so that the filmmakers want you to see every side of the movie, not just the good.
It spends a decent amount of time involved in how Jaws is faulted for creating the “Blockbuster Summer Movie Craze”. From manipulating the public to how the merchandising cash flow and marketing of Jaws helped create the template of modern studios where tie-ins and mass marketing are more important than content. The Shark Is Still Working doesn’t blame Jaws but it doesn’t avoid these topics either.
Even the negative reactions that Jaws led to in the way of our treatment of Great White Sharks is shown in this movie. The Shark Is Still Working lends a great deal of time to Peter Benchley and his never-ending quest to try and save sharks and the ocean. They even have old footage of a pissed off member of a beach resort town pissing and moaning about how the movie Jaws took away all his business. This is not a fluff piece; this is a film that covers the bright side of Jaws and its underbelly.
What makes all of this pop is the unprecedented access The Shark Is Still Working got to archival footage. Home movies, interviews, news footage, talk show footage; private moments are all laid out for us to see. For instance, watching actual footage of the pissed off crew on the set of Jaws is a lot different than just hearing about it.
Seeing real footage of the shark failing to work or Dreyfuss clowning around adds to the enjoyment in endless ways. Even the painful stuff has accompanying footage. At one point you’re sitting there in 1979 when Steven Spielberg gets shut out from the Oscars. It’s not him recounting the story it’s actual home movie footage of the day he wasn’t nominated. That is powerful stuff and The Shark Is Still Working is packed with it.
A couple of personal things added to my enjoyment of the movie. First and foremost The Shark Is Still Working allows us to see some of the last interviews of those instrumental to the project. Since the movie finished principal photography author Peter Benchley and Roy Scheider have both passed away. It’s really quite wonderful to watch them in their final years reminiscing so fondly about this behemoth project they were involved in so long ago.
I was also very appreciative that The Shark Is Still Working spends very little time on the God-awful sequels to Jaws. Though there is some coverage this movie gives only a cursory glance at the sequels just so we all know how bad they were and how even the unwatchable Jaws The Revenge couldn’t hurt the genius of the original.
I also learned some things I didn’t know which is always fun. My favorite would be that Dick Warlock was the stunt double for Richard Dreyfuss in some of the diving scenes. I loved that because Dick Warlock played Michael Myers in Halloween II.
I was also fascinated to learn that the story of the USS Indianapolis was still a classified secret when Peter Benchley wrote his book. It was only after the story became declassified that it became fair game for Jaws. Try and imagine Jaws without Quint’s USS Indianapolis speech. Yeah, I can’t see it either.
The Shark Is Still Working is not just an exceptional documentary, it’s one that I’m sure will become a classic. This is the kind of film that becomes a companion piece to the movie it’s paying homage to as well as a constant reference to those of us who worship Jaws. It’s briskly paced, incredibly well executed with a depth and attention to detail you must see to believe. No stone is left unturned and no angle not entirely thought out. The Shark Is Still Working is the complete and total story of one of the most important movies in film history. I’ve been reading about, watching and studying Jaws for twenty-eight years and I still learned more here than I even knew was out there.
Whether you’re a passing fan or a total fanatic The Shark Is Still Working: The Legacy And Impact Of Jaws (the complete title) is something that you should watch at least once. The documentary is about to debut at the Los Angeles United Film Festival on May 2nd before making it’s way to other festivals and then hopefully soon a DVD release so I can watch it over and over.
You may need a bigger boat, but you will never need a bigger documentary.
For more on The Shark Is Still Working: The Impact And Legacy Of Jaws including the official trailer check out their website at:
