With the exception of this crazy ‘shelter in place/quarantine’ time that we now live in, every year there’s speculation over which films are going to be the summer blockbusters. However, the motion pictures that were specifically released to draw in big crowds in the warm weather months never started until forty five years ago. Before there was “ Star Wars,”“Jurassic Park,” “Guardians of the Galaxy” or even “Toy Story 3” there was one movie that woke up Hollywood executives to the box office money that was to be made between Memorial Day and mid-September. That movie was the Stephen Spielberg directed “Jaws” which was based on the bestselling book written by Peter Benchley.
“Jaws” plunged into theaters on June 20th 1975 and for the next three months it spawned nonstop lines of moviegoers wrapped around the outside of cinemas waiting to get the crap scared out of them. Kids were off for summer break and their parents also wanted to see what all the fuss was about.
In the spring of 1974 Stephen Spielberg was no big deal in show business and there are stories of how during the making of “Jaws” his job was on the line many times. At the time Spielberg had no clue about how technically difficult it was to film this movie in the ocean off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. Nowadays filming like that is made in a giant manmade pool or tank with plenty of CGI effects.
Fast forward a year later, I remember being at the local Dominick’s with my parents after church one Sunday. Browsing the rack of paperback books, I picked up “Jaws” because the cover picture of an attacking shark looked cool. My parents bought it for me and in a matter of two days I gobbled through every page! My mom saw how into this book I was and agreed to let me stay home from school on that Monday so I could finish the tale about a man eating Great White Shark .
A month later it’s mid-June of ’75 and I’d just graduated from 8th grade. “Jaws” was coming to local theaters on Friday June 20th and my parents took me and my sister Marianne to see it that Sunday June 22nd. Like most new movies at the time, the early buzz on “Jaws” was minimal. This was decades before social media and the way one tweet or one online report could light up the entire world. Despite this lack of instant enlightenment, I still thought the theater would be crowded and told my folks we needed to get to the Yorktown Cinema an hour before the first show began. They thought I was nuts but went along with my idea. We got our tickets (top price was $2.50) and sat on padded benches in the lobby with no other customers in sight. My mom kept saying coming early was a waste of time. Then almost on cue, the place quickly filled up with ticket buyers and we were in the front of the line of a sold-out theater. See? Maybe every once in awhile young son knows something!
Once the usher opened the velvet rope, we staked out seats about halfway between the front and back of the auditorium. For the next 124 minutes my family along with the sold-out house were thrilled by this now classic drama. The shark attacks and the chases for the beast were like nothing I’d ever seen before. Still, the most captivating scene was when craggy Captain Quint shared with Brody and Hooper his terrifying survival of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis during World War 2. When Quint wraps up his sharks encounter story by saying, “I’ll never put on a life jacket again,” we understand why.
“Jaws” was the first time I read a book before watching the story unfold on the big screen. After seeing the film I saw the differences between what was written on the paperback’s pages and what was in the motion picture. This happens often and I enjoyed both the book and film equally, despite those differences.
“Jaws” had a filming budget of seven million dollars. The total earnings for that opening weekend totaled seven million and sixty thousand dollars. In the U.S. it would end up grossing over 260 million dollars and worldwide it cleared 471 million. Keep in mind that’s not including all the sales of videocassette, DVDs, sequels, side products and merchandising. The decades long influence of “Jaws” cannot be underestimated. Heck without “Jaws,” the Discovery channel probably wouldn’t even have their annual ‘Shark Week.’
Years later, author Peter Benchley said he regretted writing the book because it inspired many people to hunt and kill Great Whites and other sharks. Still, without the book you don’t have the thrilling movie and all the interest and entertainment it’s brought us for almost half a century.
And we wouldn’t have carefully planned out summer blockbuster movies either.
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