Todd Garbarini: When did each of you see Jaws for the first time?

Jim Beller: I first heard about Jaws towards the end of the school year. I was nine years-old and it was the last day of school, and I was just hanging out with my friends. I walked by my teacher's desk and she had the new issue of Time Magazine on it. The cover featured a large shark on the cover with the words “Super Shark” in big letters. I remember thinking, What's this? Now, I was really into horror movies back then, like the Universal horror films, and I loved Christopher Lee as Dracula in the Hammer films. My teacher told me that this news film was about a monster shark coming into the community and eating people! I just remembered going home and begging my parents to take me to see it! They were going to see it that night to make sure that it was okay for me to see it, so the following weekend they took my friends and me to see it. People thought that my mother was crazy to take me to see this movie. Her response to that was, “Well, if he can sit through all of those Christopher Lee Dracula movies, then he should have no problem sitting through this movie!”

Matt Taylor: I saw the movie for the first time in 1979, at the Capawock Theater in Vineyard Haven, which was its final theatrical run before being aired on network television later that fall. I was absolutely mesmerized. For me, being just seven years-old, the movie played almost like a documentary because I recognized so many of the faces from around town, and of course, swam daily at all of the beaches you see in the movie. It was funny because the studio left the Orca II on the island when they finished shooting. It was just rotting on the beach with all of the effects barges and things. I saw it practically every day as a kid. Most people, when they’d come to Martha’s Vineyard, would say, “Look! There’s the Orca from Jaws!” For me, when I saw the movie for the first time, I thought, Wow! There’s the boat that’s on the beach! I also have this pretty vivid memory of my legs kicking involuntarily at the seat in front of me during the scene where Quint is sliding into the mouth of the shark. I haven’t been affected by a movie like that since then.

JB: Since I saw the film, I've just been collecting Jaws memorabilia. I run the Jawscollector.com website. My entire collection of Jaws memorabilia is up there. I haven't been able to update it lately because of my time spent working on the book. So, over the years, I've collected many magazine articles and books written about the film. At the time, I really thought I knew a lot about the making of the film. Several great documentaries have been made about it over the years, such as Laurent Bouzereau’s documentary from the laserdisc and DVD of Jaws. I got to thinking that it would be great to make a book illustrating the making of it from the standpoint of the people who lived on Martha’s Vineyard and who were involved in appearing in the film and those who took photos while on the set. I started doing my own research. I talked to friends of mine and I thought, There must be people still on the island who have photographs of when Jaws was filmed. Edith Blake, who wrote the book On Location.....on Martha's Vineyard: The Making of the Movie "Jaws", has a lot of material herself. She was one of the first people I approached about this project. I wanted to tell the story about the making of the film from a different perspective than that of the filmmakers, in particular the Islanders, the people on Martha's Vineyard who lived there and watched them filming and who actually appeared in the movie. Originally, I just wanted to tell the story of the making of the film through photographs only. When I met Matt (Taylor), he agreed and being that he was an Islander, he was very successful in getting people to open up and talk about their experiences. I live in Rhode Island, so I was not from the island. I mean, he was getting all these incredible stories from these people that I just couldn’t believe! There were all of these interesting anecdotes that I just never knew about. He made this book bigger than I could have ever imagined.

TG: Was it easy or difficult to for the Islanders to find the photos that they had?

JB: An interesting story that he told me was how he was going through boxes and boxes of photographs in one person's attic. This person knew that she had photos taken of the filming, but she didn't know where they were. He showed his love for this project that day when he spent hours in the attic during a hot summer month looking for that box. Naturally, it was the last box that he looked in that the photos resided in!

TG: This doesn't even sound like a job. It sounds more like you were two kids on a treasure hunt looking for something you both really wanted.

JB: Yes, that's exactly what it was like! And you know, this project started off with Matt talking to one person and getting photos and information from them, and then that person referred him to someone else, and so the whole process just snowballed.

MT: Jim approached me shortly after I had moved back to my home on Martha’s Vineyard to begin shooting my first documentary, Vineyard Roots, the story and history of agriculture on the island, and of the struggle, currently, to preserve the island’s traditional and bucolic way of life. Jim had begun collecting some locally-taken photos of the Jaws production, and was looking for someone to help him take his idea for creating a book with all of this material to the next level. I lived on the island, knew lots of people who had been involved with the Jaws production, and so once I signed on with Jim, I put my film on the back-burner, and we just began combing the island from one end to the other, acquiring each and every story and photo from the Jaws production we could find. Finding these great, old, locally-taken photos of the production was the most exciting part - cleaning all the mold, coffee stains and wrinkles out of them was the most tedious!

TG: What was the most challenging aspect of making the book? 

MT: Piecing together the production timeline and working out the design. Ours is the first book to follow the production schedule on a day-to-day basis, from May 2, 1974, through the last day of shooting, which was September 19, 1974. The majority of information was attained from local newspaper archives. The local papers on the island covered the land portions of the filming quite extensively. However, they kind of dropped back and forgot the whole thing once Spielberg and company went to sea to film the third act. So I needed to figure out a way to piece all of the photos and stories from that portion of the production together in their proper chronological order. Carl Gottlieb, who co-wrote the screenplay with Peter Benchley, provided me with the dates I needed in the form of an original, 1974 production log; the actual Jaws log. We have acquired the photos of numerous local participants of the Jaws production. Due to the island’s geographic isolation, there were hundreds of locals who were involved with the making of the movie, both in front of, and behind the camera. So, there was no shortage of locals who had behind-the-scenes-photos and all kinds of great stories. I also interviewed, quite extensively, Production Designer Joe Alves, Screenwriter Carl Gottlieb, Production Executive Bill Gilmore, and Location Casting Director Shari Rhodes, who were the Universal personnel most involved with the Islanders who were part of the production. We found literally hundreds of great, never-before-published photos of the Jaws production - tons of great stuff that most people have never seen or heard before.

TG: How long from start to finish did it take to put this book together?

JB: My involvement began in 2005. By the time I met Matt and he got involved full-time, it was about 2007/2008. Matt really worked on this fifteen hours a day, seven days a week and it shows.

MT: Yes, I began working on the book full-time on Thanksgiving morning of 2007, and finished just before Christmas of 2010, so a little over three years for me.

TG: What did you encounter in making this book that you didn't expect to see? Were there any surprises?

JB: Yes, one of my favorites is the finding of photographs which depict the Orca III, which is just a mockup of the cabin that the shark eats his way into at the end of the film. There were a number of shots that we uncovered of them shooting the sequence several times. I never expected to see that. Ted Grossman was the stuntman made up to look like Roy Scheider for that scene.

TG: Oh wow, I didn't know that. He played the ill-fated Boy Scout leader in the estuary. It looked like Roy Scheider in the movie the whole time!

MT: We had been working for the better part of a year when Lynn and Susan Murphy became involved. Lynn is a Vineyard marine mechanic who was hired to work on the sharks, particularly the sea sled shark - the one that was towed behind his boat. He and his wife, Susan, who was his first mate that summer, spent more time on the Jaws set than any other Islander involved with the making of the movie. Once they signed on, I found out Susan had taken something like four hundred photos on-set that summer with her Instamatic camera. I didn’t know that when we first began speaking with them. I thought we’d maybe get a few interesting stories out of them and maybe a few photos of the shark. She handed me their photo albums, which are unbelievable, and pretty much said, “Here you go. Have fun!” Without the Murphy’s involvement, I don’t think we would have had much of a book.

JB: Something else I didn't realize, and people will see this in the photographs in the book, is just how close the actors and crew really worked to the island of Martha's Vineyard while they were shooting. In the film they look like they're miles and miles away from the island, but in reality they were actually very close to land.

TG: Do you recall the theatre that you first saw Jaws in, Jim?

JB: On sure, it was at the Charles Theater on Cambridge Street in Boston. It was a huge theater, and they had curtains that would open when the movie began and would close when the film finished. I saw The Empire Strikes Back there later on, so many great films. Jaws was also very first movie where I saw lines and lines of people waiting to get into the theater. I had never seen before. It used to be an event going to see a movie like that. There was the anticipation of waiting to get in to see a movie. I think that the last truly great decade for American movies was the 1970s. It certainly was the most original decade. This was a time where directors were really taking a chance on new ideas. What really annoys me about films nowadays are remakes that they make of past hit films, and then they flop! I remember talking to Joe Alves about this and he said that they should really go back and remake the flops into better, successful movies. I don't see anything wrong with re-releasing older movies on the big screen. When I was a kid, and you can probably attest to this too, they used to re-issue older movies on the big screen.

TG: Yes, in fact that was how I saw a lot of the films that I ended up seeing. It was a fairly common practice. The Seven-Ups was featured on a double bill with The French Connection as the second feature. They even printed movie posters for this engagement. Of course, the Walt Disney films were always doubled up. In 1977 I saw Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo on a double bill with The Gnome Mobile at the Middlesex Mall Cinema. I remember A Bridge Too Far was playing next door. In 1978 my grandparents took my sister and I to the Manville Cinema to see Close Encounters of the Third Kind and it was playing right after Charlotte's Web of all things! We saw the films as a double feature. As far as Jaws is concerned, it's one of those films that should be re-released every couple of years.

JB: You've seen on the big screen, right?

TG: Not originally. I first saw it at my friend Dave’s house in Staten Island, NY in 1984. He had the RCA Capacitance Electronic Disc home video system. I remember that Jaws was the first MCA Discovision laserdisc title, and that was released in 1978. I did see Jaws at a screening in 1997 at Radio City Music Hall. Peter Benchley introduced the film.

JB: Oh, yes! I was there. And seeing it on the big screen is completely different than seeing it on television or on video.

TG: Absolutely. There's just no comparison. Movies should always be seen in a movie theater, especially Jaws because it just grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go. While it's great to see these movies letterboxed on large-screen televisions in the comfort of our own homes, you really need to see a movie like this projected on a screen that's 60 x 30 feet in dimension. I was ten years-old when I saw Superman: The Movie during its initial release. It had the most stunning impact on me seeing that in a movie theater. The opening title credits sequence alone which runs nearly five minutes was absolutely riveting. I remember they sold a movie program for it in the lobby for a dollar-fifty.

JB: Yes, those are definitely movies that need to be seen on the big screen. The sequence in Jurassic Park, where the two kids and the two adults are in the jeep and it's raining outside and T. Rex comes and attacks them in the car - that is one of the scariest sequences in all of film history.

TG: When the little boy is looking at the puddle and sees that impact tremor, followed by the stomping of the T. Rex, that's akin to seeing the fin or the approach of the shark from underwater in Jaws. Spielberg is brilliant in that way. He knows exactly how to pull the strings on the audience. I waited outside of the Ziegfeld Theater at the premiere of War of the Worlds in 2005 for eight hours and got Spielberg’s autograph. I wanted to get a photo with him, but they rushed him inside. When I was in Los Angeles in November 2008 I stopped for lunch at Milky Way, the restaurant owned and run by Spielberg's mother, Leah Adler. I sat and talked with her for about ten minutes, gushing like a little kid about the impact that her son's movies have had on my life. When I was done, she just looked at me and said, “I don't know where the hell he came from.” I couldn't help but laugh out loud. The hallway leading to the restroom is flanked with framed movie posters of his best-known films. It was great meeting her, and I was hoping with my fingers crossed that her son would walk in for lunch, but he didn’t. She was very gracious and I got a photo with her, too.

JB: Wow! That's great that you met them and it sounds like you had a great time.

TG: It was so much fun. There is a handful of movies that I can watch over and over and over again and never get tired of, and Jaws is one of those movies. What do you feel is the secret to this film’s success as a dramatically thrilling motion picture?

JB: That's easy. It's a movie that has everything: it’s has drama, it has suspense, it's a love story, it has elements of comedy, and despite the fact that they had so many problems while they were making it, it all came together perfectly at the end.

TG: I agree. I don't really even think of Jaws as a movie. I think of it more as a vicarious experience, an adventure that the audience goes on with the main characters.

JB: In addition to that, the film possesses top-notch direction. I mean, for a 26-year-old director who is making the very first movie to ever be shot completely out in the water to the extent that Jaws was, and to have to suffer through all of the stress and malfunctioning of the shark and problems that occurred on the set, it's really extraordinary. You cannot believe the amount of stress that Spielberg was under while he was making this movie. That really came into focus while we were talking to people on the island.

TG: What can readers find in the hardcover version that is not in the paperback version?

JB: The hardcover version comes with a piece of the actual Orca II boat prop (the sinkable boat at the end) that we got from Lynn & Susan Murphy who has owned the prop for years. Also, one of the Islanders, Carol Fligor, shot home movies of the filming and the hardcover version features a DVD with the nine minutes of silent footage that she shot. So, those were a real find!

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