The massive 1975 hit Jaws will get a pair of documentaries to mark the 50th anniversary of the Steven Spielberg film. One of them, Jaws: Making a Splash in Hollywood, tossed chum in the water at Sunny Side of the Doc last week – looking for a bite from potential buyers at the documentary marketplace event in France.
A Capa production for Arte France — will feature vintage interviews with Spielberg and actor Richard Dreyfuss (“Matt Hooper”).
“We could not interview Steven Spielberg because he was doing his own documentary, but we have wonderful archives,” says producer Maud Gangler. “So, we have him in another way.”
Jaws: Making a Splash in Hollywood will feature fresh interviews with Wendy Benchley, marine conservationist and widow of Jaws author Peter Benchley, Jaws screenplay co-writer and actor Carl Gottlieb, actress Lorraine Gary, who played Ellen Brody, and Ian Shaw, son of Robert Shaw, aka “Quint.” Ian Shaw wrote the Broadway play The Shark Is Broken about the relationship of his dad, Dreyfuss, and Roy Scheider (“Brody”) on set.
Directors Bonnard and Coursat also interviewed Joe Alves, production designer of Jaws (he also directed the third Jaws film).
They also spoke with writer Matthew Robbins, who contributed to the Jaws screenplay. He wrote Spielberg’s first big-screen film, The Sugarland Express (1974), and he contributed to the screenplay of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), the Spielberg films that came before and after Jaws.
The thrust of Jaws: Making a Splash in Hollywood – what it sinks its teeth into – is the way Jaws dramatically changed Hollywood, spurring the studios to focus virtually their entire attention and business model on creating gigantic hits.
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Rival 'Jaws' documentaries are in production ahead of the 50th anniversary of Steven Spielberg's blockbuster next year.
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