''They
didn't laugh at all, they started screaming'' … Bruce in a poster for Jaws.
Giles Hardie, The Sydney Morning Herald, reports
"I started very young and was fortunate to work with some
pretty impressive people," Joe Alves says of a film career featuring the
names Spielberg, Carpenter and Hitchcock and titles Forbidden Planet, Escape from New York and Jaws.
The latter is one of 12 films being shown over the next month at
the State Theatre to mark 100 years of Universal Pictures. Alves was the
production designer central to the film - and the shark - getting made.
"I started very early on the project, before script,"
Alves says of the early-1970s project.
"They asked me to do some illustrations to show the studio,
about this [as yet unpublished] book that was about a shark. Steven [Spielberg]
hadn't signed on yet. No one seemed to be excited about doing Jaws. They said they had
bigger movies. At that time it was Earthquake
and The Hindenburg.
"[Universal's head of production] Marshall Green got very
upset at the negativity and said Jaws
could be a bigger film than The
Hindenburg, and people laughed … As they left he said: 'Do you
think you can get the shark made?' and it was a great opportunity for me.
''The studio effects department said they needed two to three
years to build this animatronic creature. Disney said they could build it, but
wouldn't take it into the ocean.''
Alves defends the temperamental mechanical sharks. He was
concerned that Bruce - as the creature was dubbed - would be more funny than
scary. "It made a silly sound,'' he says. "In the dailies people
would laugh at the shark because it seemed silly.''
Once the film was edited, and set to that famous score, "they
didn't laugh at all, they started screaming", Alves chuckles.
The studio didn't know how big the film would be, intending a
small release. Then, at a second screening, "the audience went crazy,
screaming and carrying on", leading to an impromptu meeting of executives
in the men's room. ''They said: 'We have a different game plan, we'll release
it large,'" Alves says.
So was born Jaws,
the film that spawned the summer blockbuster.
The
digitally restored Jaws screens at the State Theatre on Sunday.
For the full program see statetheatre.com.au.
Jaws is available for the first time
on Universal Blu-ray on August 22nd
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