Great Scene: “Jaws”

It’s the antithesis of “show it, don’t say it”… and it flat out works.

Monologues are common with stage plays, but not so much with movies. Of course, “motion pictures” are primarily a visual medium — motion pictures — so dialogue, while important, is a secondary form of communication cinematically. However, great dialogue can transcend the adage, “show it, don’t say it.” And perhaps nothing better exemplifies that point than this great scene in the movie Jaws (1975), screenplay by Peter Benchley and Carl Gottlieb, based on the novel by Peter Benchley.

And here’s the movie version of the scene:

Incredible delivery by Robert Shaw. Incredible scene.

UPDATE: In comments, Dan Gagliasso wrote this:

Come on guys — it is very well known that John Milius wrote that scene over the phone as a favor for Steven Spielberg. Then Robert Shaw (who was a fine writer himself) cut it down some and made it his own. That credit is given in all of the books on the making of “Jaws” and Spielberg has been very public about giving Milius the credit, as well.

The Milius connection is well-known, indeed, as well as Shaw’s reworking of the speech. However that is only part of the story. Here is a direct quote from Spielberg himself taken from a 2011 Ain’t It Cool News interview:

I owe three people a lot for this speech. You’ve heard all this, but you’ve probably never heard it from me. There’s a lot of apocryphal reporting about who did what on Jaws and I’ve heard it for the last three decades, but the fact is the speech was conceived by Howard Sackler, who was an uncredited writer, didn’t want a credit and didn’t arbitrate for one, but he’s the guy that broke the back of the script before we ever got to Martha’s Vineyard to shoot the movie.

I hired later Carl Gottlieb to come onto the island, who was a friend of mine, to punch up the script, but Howard conceived of the Indianapolis speech. I had never heard of the Indianapolis before Howard, who wrote the script at the Bel Air Hotel and I was with him a couple times a week reading pages and discussing them.

Howard one day said, “Quint needs some motivation to show all of us what made him the way he is and I think it’s this Indianapolis incident.” I said, “Howard, what’s that?” And he explained the whole incident of the Indianapolis and the Atomic Bomb being delivered and on its way back it was sunk by a submarine and sharks surrounded the helpless sailors who had been cast adrift and it was just a horrendous piece of World War II history. Howard didn’t write a long speech, he probably wrote about three-quarters of a page.

But then, when I showed the script to my friend John Milius, John said “Can I take a crack at this speech?” and John wrote a 10 page monologue, that was absolutely brilliant, but out-sized for the Jaws I was making! (laughs) But it was brilliant and then Robert Shaw took the speech and Robert did the cut down. Robert himself was a fine writer, who had written the play The Man in the Glass Booth. Robert took a crack at the speech and he brought it down to five pages. So, that was sort of the evolution just of that speech.

Per Spielberg, the U.S.S. Indianapolis speech has its roots in three ‘authors’: Sackler, Milius, and Shaw. Interesting backstory for what is in my view the high-water mark for exposition in movies.

Comment Archive

For more Great Scene articles, go here.