Blood In The Water: Dueling âJawsâ Docs Circle Distribution Ahead Of Blockbusterâs 50th Anniversary
One fish, two films.
The massive 1975 hit Jaws will get a pair of documentaries to mark the 50th anniversary of the Steven Spielberg blockbuster. One of them, Jaws: Making a Splash in Hollywood, tossed chum in the water at Sunny Side of the Doc last week â looking for a bite from potential buyers at the documentary marketplace event in France.
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News of that film, from distributor Newen Connect and directed by French filmmakers Olivier Bonnard and Antoine Coursat, comes just days after Deadlineâs exclusive report that National Geographic has greenlighted another documentary about the movie, under the working title Jaws @ 50.
ChloĂ© Persyn, head of factual distribution for Newen Connect, says the cinematic oceanâs big enough for both films.
âI would strongly believe there is room for two different documentaries with a different angle,â Persyn tells Deadline. âWe already know that now, being at Sunny Side where we launched the project to look for international partners, thereâs room and an appetite from our buyers around the world.â
NatGeoâs doc is being produced by Spielbergâs Amblin Documentaries and Nedland Media. The ârivalâ shark tale â a Capa production for Arte France â will feature vintage interviews with Spielberg and actor Richard Dreyfuss, who played oceanographer Matt Hooper.
âWe could not interview Steven Spielberg because he was doing his own documentary, but we have wonderful archives,â says producer Maud Gangler. âSo we have him in another way.â
Jaws: Making a Splash in Hollywood will feature fresh interviews with Wendy Benchley, marine conservationist and widow of Jaws author Peter Benchley; Jaws screenplay co-writer and actor Carl Gottlieb; actress Lorraine Gary, who played Ellen Brody; and Ian Shaw, son of Robert Shaw, aka old-salt sharkhunter Quint. Ian Shaw wrote the Broadway play The Shark Is Broken about the relationship of his dad, Dreyfuss, and Roy Scheider â who played Chief Brody â on set.
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Directors Bonnard and Coursat also interviewed Joe Alves, production designer on Jaws who also directed the 1983 second sequel Jaws 3-D.
âHeâs basically Mr. Shark,â Bonnard says of Alves. âEverything about the shark malfunctioning and everything, he was in charge of that. So he has a very interesting point of view on the whole shoot.â
They also spoke with writer Matthew Robbins, who contributed to the Jaws screenplay. He wrote Spielbergâs first big-screen film, The Sugarland Express (1974) and contributed to the screenplay of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), the Spielberg films that came before and after Jaws.
â[Robbins] was part of that generation, of the new Hollywood,â Bonnard notes, âand he was really great at sharing with us what it felt like to be part of that group at that time, at that place in California. They really wanted to change everything, and they had, letâs say, different ways to go about it.â
The thrust of Jaws: Making a Splash in Hollywood â what it sinks its teeth into â is the way Jaws dramatically changed Hollywood, spurring the studios to focus virtually their entire attention and business model on creating gigantic hits.
âThereâs a before and an after Jaws,â Bonnard says. âVery unknowingly, but Spielberg basically made the very first blockbuster. ⊠It was a very realistic movie shot entirely on location with actors who were not huge stars at the time. And yet itâs the template for the big Hollywood blockbusters that Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark and everything are going to build upon.â
The directors suggest Hollywood drew the wrong conclusions from Jawsâ success.
RELATED: âThe Shark Is Brokenâ Broadway Review: Gentle Comedy Snatches Life From Jaws Of Movie History
âThis movie, which is like a happy accident, a series of happy accidents, Hollywood basically tries to make it into a formula. And thereâs no encapsulating that magic again,â Coursat maintains. Adds Bonnard, âVery, very often I think Hollywood tended to forget that Jaws also had some very, very well-drawn characters and the first half of the movie is setting up those characters, the dynamics between them, which ultimately pays off so well in the second half.â
Hollywoodâs pursuit of the tentpole, to the exclusion of just about everything else, has given us the Marvel and DC âuniversesâ among other decidedly mixed cinematic accomplishments.
âIt is kind of like the side effects of that revolution,â comments Bonnard. âFunny enough, Spielberg himself, I think, and Lucas, for example, are pretty critical of those side effects â again, unknowingly, that they created a monster basically that weâre seeing right now the latest stage of that monster, which is probably the superhero movies.â
Laurent Bouzereau is directing National Geographicâs Jaws @ 50 (wt). His credits include Faye â the soon-to-be-released film about Faye Dunaway â an upcoming film on Jaws composer John Williams and Timeless Heroes: Indiana Jones and Harrison Ford.
Bonnard says magnanimously of the Bouzereau film: âIt is going to be very well done. I feel it probably will be another âmaking ofâ with fresh material. But we are not doing a making-of. Itâs really not so much about the âhowâ but about the âwhy.â About Jaws 50 years down the road. Very few movies are that enduring. Back to the Future may be another one. Jaws is the new Wizard of Oz, basically.â
Its appeal has extended well beyond the shores of (fictional) Amity Island, crashing ashore around the world. âItâs as huge in Europe as in America,â says producer Maud Gangler.
âItâs a cult movie that has marked our collective pop culture,â adds Newen Connectâs Persyn. âAnd this is why [the documentary] will be a success on the international market.â
Gangler says what Jaws: Making a Splash in Hollywood will offer is a different perspective on the classic. âWe have insiders, so weâre quite proud to have Carl Gottlieb, Lorraine Gary â thatâs cool for us,â she says. âAnd itâs a point of view of two French directors. They have a lot of experience in cinema, both of them. So itâs not le regard of Steven Spielberg, but the regard is already interesting.â
Notes Bonnard: âWe are looking at why Jaws was such a phenomenon at the time and to this day, itâs pretty incredible. Itâs very, very few select films that have that kind of a legacy, such an enduring echo.â
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