The Trouble-Filled Set Behind Jaws
You probably know Jaws as the movie that made people afraid to go in the water, but making it nearly tore the crew apart. For Steven Spielberg, who was barely in his late 20s at the time, filming on the open ocean was one roadblock after another. Originally planned for just 55 days, the shoot stretched to a whopping 159 days. The main culprit? The infamous mechanical shark—Bruce—who seemed determined to avoid his big screen debut by breaking down at every turn.
Every time Bruce’s rubber jaws failed to close, or his motor refused to cooperate, scenes were rewritten on the fly. Spielberg, boxed in by broken tech, leaned into old-school suspense techniques instead. It’s why you rarely see the shark for most of the film; the unseen menace ended up being much scarier. This accidental magic changed not only the film, but how thrillers would be made for decades.
But mechanical headaches were just the start. The cast—Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, and Robert Shaw—reportedly clashed throughout, sometimes taking their on-screen tensions off screen. The production’s mood turned raw, and as stress levels crept up, patience wore thin. The cramped, soggy conditions and endless retakes made the smallest disagreements feel titanic.
Disasters, Danger, and a Reluctant Legend
The chaos didn’t stay on land. The setting itself kept throwing curveballs. Weather constantly threatened the schedule, tossing the filmmakers around with high wind and rough waves. The most notorious moment? The Orca—main fishing boat for the climactic scenes—started sinking in the middle of a take. Spielberg instantly told the actors to ditch ship, but sound engineer John Carter’s priorities slipped out in true Hollywood style: "Forget the actors. Save the sound department!". Lost gear meant lost shots, and they couldn’t afford any more setbacks.
There were close calls, too. Screenwriter Carl Gottlieb had a truly cinematic brush with disaster, ducking out of the way just as a spinning boat propeller sliced by—reminding everyone just how far they’d gone to catch their great white whale. Crew and cast toughened up fast, but the pressure cooker environment led some to confront Spielberg directly about the endless hours and chaos. He was inexperienced at filming on water, but his improvisational streak ended up being exactly what the film needed.
Ironically, all the off-screen drama became baked into the lore of Jaws. The hidden-shark approach built the kind of tension that keeps audiences wide-eyed, even now. Spielberg’s gamble—forced, but brilliant—turned production setbacks into storytelling gold. These behind-the-scenes nightmares have actually lifted the film from blockbuster to legendary, with the legacy of its disasters as much a part of movie history as any line from the script.