Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: Perhaps the most often-repeated "Jaws" trivia is that actor Roy Scheider spontaneously ad-libbed the film's most iconic line, "You're gonna need a bigger boat!" Screenwriter Carl Gottleib apparently started this rumor after "Jaws" became a worldwide sensation in 1975, probably because the only thing that generated as much publicity as the film itself was backstory of the film's production; and Gottleib's rumor has charmed fans and persisted to this day. However, when reporter Paul Iorio interviewed Roy Scheider in 2000 (for a story in the San Francisco Chronicle on the occasion of the "Jaws" 25th anniversary), he specifically asked Scheider about the line "You're gonna need a bigger boat." Scheider answered: "That was in the script. The first time he [Chief Brody] sees the shark. But I liked the line so much, it amused me so much, that I said, 'I bet I could work this in a few other places.' So I worked it in two more times." Indeed, Chief Brody does refer to needing a bigger boat twice more, and those subsequent lines are ad-libbed; but the very first and most memorable time he says the line, it was purely scripted. Paul Iorio's question and Roy Scheider's answer were edited out of the published San Francisco Chronicle story.

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: The marine biologist, Hooper, was an unlikable character in Peter Benchley's novel. In the book, Hooper had an affair with Chief Brody's wife, and Hooper was appropriately eaten alive by the Great White at the end. Steven Spielberg originally intended to follow the Benchley novel and allow Hooper to be eaten inside the shark cage. As it happened, Spielberg fell in love with some accidental footage of a real Great White thrashing wildly with an empty shark cage; in fact, he loved that shot so much, the scene was rewritten on-the-fly to allow Hooper to escape the cage and survive.

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: A young and arrogant Richard Dreyfuss thought the movie "Jaws" was going to be a flop. So, weeks before "Jaws" ever opened in theatres, Dreyfuss did television and magazine interviews in which he criticized the film and apologized in advance for his performance in it.

Charles Austin Miller