“Another director had already been assigned to the project”, says exhibition curator Jenny He. “It was quickly evident that director wasn’t right for the role, and Steven was promptly given the job.
“Had Steven not gotten the job the film may have been made. But I’m confident in saying Jaws would not have been Jaws - one of the defining films of American cinema history - without Steven Spielberg.”
Gottlieb became both character and screenwriter, asked, he says, by Spielberg “to look at Jaws and see if I could find a part for myself because he liked what we did together and how we worked on scripts.” Gottlieb saw himself in newspaperman Harry Meadows: “I got the part, he sent me a copy of the script and scrawled on the cover ‘eviscerate it’. Part of his remit was to bring some levity to Sackler’s early draft, which he says was “humourless”.
Spielberg and Gottlieb, who worked nightly on rewrites of the script throughout the months of shooting were in agreement about one thing: “If we did our jobs right people would feel about going into the ocean the way they felt about taking a shower after seeing Psycho.” And indeed, the American Film Institute’s list of best horror movies of all time cited Hitchcock’s Psycho as No.1 and Jaws as no.2.
The production was further threatened by going so far over budget that “the suits” came to the New England set “to see why we were so late and so expensive,” recalls Gottlieb.
“The hardest part was fabricating a structure where there was none, trying to keep the whole film in our heads because there was a script which had been storyboarded and budgeted, but Steven and I were the only ones who knew what the new script was.”
Jenny He confirms: “There was a point where Sid Sheinberg, then president of Universal Pictures, visited the set on Martha’s Vineyard to assess whether to pull the plug.” The exhibition includes rare footage of Sheinberg reflecting on Jaws, which his gut instinct, detecting a potential blockbuster, told him to go forward with, and the enduring impact of the film.
Steven Spielberg[Missing Credit]
Richard Dreyfuss, who played the young scientist Hooper, originally passed on the script. “But he happened to be in New York when I was I with Steven in Boston and we were able to get him to come and take another look at it,” says Gottlieb.
Spielberg rewarded the young star for reconsidering by not killing off his character, who dies in Benchley’s book. “When Hooper resurfaces after Brody has blown up the shark audiences cheered,” recalls He, who considers the scientist’s survival a dramatic device “to return hope to viewers” after the poignant death of shark-fighter Quint.
When the film, edited by legendary Jewish film editor Verna “mother cutter” Field, was done and dusted, the hot new director started reinventing himself. “Steven had a good sense of fitting in, and noticed he was driving an orange Pontiac fit for a kid in Arizona while everyone else was driving a Mercedes,” says Gottlieb. When Spielberg quickly changed track and started driving his own Merc: “he very quickly became a Hollywood person.”
There can be no true Jewish saga without a broiges, and Gottlieb may have been resentful of Sackler, who was Spielberg’s first choice for developing an outline. “Steven talked about collaborating with Howard Sackler, meeting daily at the Hotel Bel-Air for three weeks and tossing story ideas back and forth, says He, adding: “The draft he turned in was more or less the structure of the final film.” Yet she acknowledges Spielberg and Gottlieb, who got a co-writing credit, worked every night together during the actual shoot on a Selectric typewriter like the model on show at the museum.
Filming at the beach[Missing Credit]
And Gottlieb also cashed in as the author of The Jaws Log, which he says is “the best-selling book about the making of a movie ever.” Of the experience of being involved so closely in Jaws - to the point he forced himself to rewrite his character to be less prominent than originally envisaged - he says: “It’s basically thank your lucky stars. You can’t say ‘when I am 35 I will have an iconic film in my repertoire’. Jaws was my first produced screenplay.
“But it’s folly to let yourself be defined by your hit. All you can do is be grateful and see if you can take it to the bank.”
Jaws: The Exhibition is at the Academy Museum, Los Angeles until July 26, 2026.
