Jaws: Some of the biggest potential changes were on his first big hit – 1974's Jaws. “Well, my first choice for Quint was Lee Marvin. We went to Lee Marvin first, he turned it down. And then my second choice was Sterling Hayden [pictured], and he was a fisherman.
Why did Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw not get along?
Dreyfuss and Shaw disagreed about plenty of things
Roy Scheider believed it was Dreyfuss's arrogance that sparked the so-called feud: "He [Shaw] really thought Dreyfuss needed a slapping down... young punk with no stage experience..." Dreyfuss himself later downplayed any talk of a feud between them (via Daily Record):
Dreyfuss was not saddled to this sequel as Scheider was, and he certainly didn't need to reprise his role; he had become an in-demand star and was busy leading other films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The Goodbye Girl, in which he won a Best Actor Oscar.
The original script actually had Hooper in the story. Once Dreyfuss passed the producers toyed with the idea of having another actor play the part. Eventually smarter heads prevailed, and it was decided that Matt Hooper would always be sailing.
Jaws (1975) - The Head, the Tail, the Whole Damn Thing Scene (3/10) | Movieclips
Why did Roy Scheider not do Jaws 3?
Roy Scheider, who played Police Chief Brody in the first two had no interest in a third Jaws, saying “Mephistopheles … couldn't talk me into doing [it].” Instead, Jaws 3 stars Dennis Quaid as Brody's grown-up son.
It transpires that Roy Scheider also voiced doubts about Jaws 2. Like Spielberg, he argued that a sequel could add nothing to the story, and the scary shark premise would tire rapidly.
In footage used in Jaws: The Inside Story, the late actor recalled, "[Shaw] really thought Dreyfuss needed a slapping down, [that he was a] young punk with no stage experience." He continued, "Shaw would say, 'Look at you, Dreyfuss. You eat and you drink and you're fat and you're sloppy. At your age, that's criminal.
The shark then attacks a woman on a boat. She accidentally pours petrol everywhere and is blown up. She is killed and the shark has scars and burns on its face. The burnt corpse of the woman is shown later on in the film.
Former Police Chief Martin Brody died of a heart attack in the beginning of Jaws: The Revenge. He was not seen, but his death was revealed to the audience in the beginning.
Dreyfuss is justifiably proud of the movie but has more to talk about than running the risk being fish food. On a telephone interview in 2019, he explained, “Jaws was and is one of the most powerful things that ever happened to me, one of the biggest experiences of my life, etc, etc.
Richard Dreyfuss didn't really want a part in "Jaws" at first. He was convinced that his latest picture, "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz," would be a big success, and turned Spielberg down for the role of Matt Hooper.
The debate over the shooting stars in Jaws continues, with some claiming they were real and others asserting they were CGI effects. Evidence suggests that the shooting stars were likely created through CGI, with visual effects artists analyzing the motion blur and lack of distortion.
How did an on-set in-joke become one of the most iconic lines in cinema history? “You're gonna need a bigger boat,” says awestruck Chief Brody (Roy Scheider), the words half-mumbled through the cigarette dangling from his mouth.
Freudian commentators consider the shark a phallic symbol demonstrating everything from the destructiveness of masculinity to the impotence of modern man to castration fears (source). Quint certainly gets castrated in the shark attack, along with losing most of his other parts.
It has been claimed that while shooting in the waters of Isla Mujeres, one of the film's stuntmen, Jose Marco, was attacked and killed on camera by a shark that broke through protective netting. This supposed attack was said to captured on film and prompted a photo spread in Life magazine.
When the shark attacks the man in the estuary, the man is barefoot. However, when the severed leg sinks to the bottom, there is a shoe on the foot. During the scene when Brody is typing up a report about the first shark attack victim, he spells "coroner", "corner".
Though the film takes place in the fictional town of Amity Island in New York, it was actually filmed throughout Martha's Vineyard, Mass. (Long Island was considered "too busy" — the filmmakers wanted an island that would feel eerily empty to filmgoers.)
It's a classic Hollywood story: a chance meeting at a party leads to a career-defining role. In the case of Roy Scheider, that chance meeting was with none other than Steven Spielberg, and the role was Chief Martin Brody in the shark film classic JAWS (1975).
His inexperience is only confounded by the collective knowledge and skill of Quint and Hooper, demonstrated by the numerous battle-scars that they share with each other. Brody's appendectomy scar is unfortunately not a part of the conversation.
The protagonist's fear of water is irrational, but it's his irrational fear that allows him to be the first to recognize the irrational threat in the form of the shark. Being afraid of water also means he has the biggest hurdle to overcome in order to go after the shark.
The three sequels focused far too much on the shark. The shark was the main character just like Michael Myers became the main character in the later, weaker Halloween movies. This simple fact is why these films came nowhere near the level of success of the original.
