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1. Who directed Jaws?
Steven Spielberg
Spielberg was twenty-seven and had made one feature, The Sugarland Express. The shoot ran so far over schedule that he feared he would never work again, and instead it made him.
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2. The film is based on a 1974 novel by...
Peter Benchley
Benchley wrote the first drafts of the screenplay and appears in the film as the television reporter on the beach. He later regretted the fear of sharks the book stoked and spent years campaigning for their protection.
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3. What's the island called?
Amity
'Amity, as you know, means friendship,' the mayor tells a television crew. It's fictional, though the town looks very much like the place where it was filmed.
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4. Where was it filmed?
Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts
Chosen because the sea floor stays shallow a long way from shore, so the shark rigs could sit on the bottom. The island still celebrates the film every summer.
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5. Who plays Chief Brody?
Roy Scheider
Scheider overheard Spielberg describing the story at a party and asked to be in it. Charlton Heston wanted the part, and Spielberg thought him too heroic for a man afraid of the water.
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6. What's the name of the shark hunter?
Quint
He scrapes his nails down a blackboard to get the town meeting's attention and offers to catch the shark for ten thousand dollars. Robert Shaw played him, and didn't get on with Richard Dreyfuss, which suited the film.
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7. What did the crew nickname the mechanical shark?
Bruce
After Spielberg's lawyer, Bruce Ramer. There were three of them, and they sank, corroded in salt water and refused to work most days, which is why the shark is mostly a point of view and two notes of music.
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8. Who composed the two-note theme?
John Williams
Spielberg thought Williams was joking when he first played it on the piano. It won the Oscar for Best Original Score, and the shark's absence from much of the film left the music to do the frightening.
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9. Who says "You're gonna need a bigger boat"?
Brody
Scheider improvised it, from a running joke on the set about the support barge, which everyone thought was too small. The line is often misquoted as 'we're gonna need'.
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10. What's the name of Quint's boat?
The Orca
A killer whale, the one animal a great white has reason to fear. Two Orcas were built, one seaworthy and one made to sink, and the seaworthy one started sinking anyway with the actors aboard.
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11. In Quint's long speech below deck, which sinking does he describe surviving?
The USS Indianapolis
The cruiser that delivered the Hiroshima bomb and was torpedoed on the way home in July 1945, leaving its crew in the water for days with the sharks. The speech was rewritten by several hands, and Shaw did the final polish himself.
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12. Who plays the mayor, who refuses to close the beaches?
Murray Hamilton
Larry Vaughn, in an anchor-print jacket, worried about the summer dollars. Carl Gottlieb, who plays the newspaper editor, also rewrote the script during the shoot.
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13. What does Hooper find when he dives on Ben Gardner's wrecked boat?
Ben Gardner's head, floating in the hull
He pulls a great white's tooth from the hull first, then the head floats into view, the biggest jump in the film. Spielberg shot the moment again after previews, in his editor's swimming pool, to make it scarier.
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14. How many Academy Awards did it win?
Three
Editing, Sound and the score, from four nominations. It was up for Best Picture too, which went to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Spielberg wasn't nominated for directing.
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15. How long was the shoot meant to take, and how long did it take?
Fifty-five days planned, more than a hundred and fifty taken
The sea, the weather and the sharks saw to that, and the budget roughly doubled. Spielberg skipped the last day of filming, convinced the crew meant to throw him in the water.
