LEE KRAMER'S ROOM: With Views

[blackhawks]

The virus is off Amity Beach and circling Trump to this music....

Ahh, the summer of '75 when the country was scared out it's wits by a movie that showed the perils of a 'too early reopening' of the goddamn beaches, bumbling Gerry Ford was, well, bumbling along as our replacement POTUS and SNL's debut lay just a few months away.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaws_(film)

On June 20, Jaws opened across North America on 464 screens — 409 in the United States, the remainder in Canada.[124] The coupling of this broad distribution pattern with the movie's then even rarer national television marketing campaign yielded a release method virtually unheard-of at the time.[125]

Box office

Jaws opened in 409 theatres with a record $7 million weekend[134] and grossed a record $21,116,354 in its first 10 days[135] recouping its production costs.[136] It grossed $100 million in its first 59 days from 954 playdates.[137] In just 78 days, it overtook The Godfather as the highest-grossing film at the North American box office,[123] sailing past that picture's earnings of $86 million[138] and became the first film to earn $100 million in US theatrical rentals.[139] Its initial release ultimately brought in $123.1 million in rentals.[136] Theatrical re-releases in 1976 and Summer 1979 brought its total rentals to $133.4 million.[138] In June 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic closing most theaters worldwide and limiting what films played, Jaws returned to 187 theaters (mostly drive-ins), and grossed $516,300.[140]

The picture entered overseas release in December 1975,[141] and its international business mirrored its domestic performance. It broke records in Singapore,[142] New Zealand, Japan,[143] Spain,[144] and Mexico.[145] On January 11, 1976, Jaws became the highest-grossing film worldwide with rentals of $132 million, surpassing the $131 million earned by The Godfather.[146] By the time of the third film in 1983, Variety reported that it had earned worldwide rentals of $270 million, from a gross of approximately $550 million.[147]

Jaws was the highest-grossing film of all time until Star Wars, which debuted two years later. Star Wars surpassed Jaws for the U.S. record six months after its release and set a new global record in 1978.[148][149] Adjusted for inflation, Jaws has earned almost $2 billion worldwide at 2011 prices and is the second-most successful franchise film after Star Wars.[150] In North America, it is the seventh-highest-grossing movie of all time, with a total of $1.017 billion at current prices,[151] based on an estimated 128,078,800 tickets sold.[152] In the United Kingdom, it is the seventh-highest-grossing film to be released since 1975, earning the equivalent of over £70 million in 2009/10 currency,[153] with admissions estimated at 16.2 million.[154] Jaws has also sold 13 million tickets in Brazil, the second-highest attendance ever in the country behind Titanic.[155]

On television, the American Broadcasting Company aired it for the first time on November 4, 1979 right after its theatrical re-release.[156] The first U.S. broadcast received a Nielsen rating of 39.1 and attracted 57 percent of the total audience, the second-highest televised movie audience at the time behind Gone with the Wind and the fourth-highest rated.[157][158] In the United Kingdom, 23 million people watched its inaugural broadcast in October 1981, the second-biggest TV audience ever for a feature film behind Live and Let Die.[159]

Casting

Though Spielberg complied with a request from Zanuck and Brown to cast known actors,[16] he wanted to avoid hiring any big stars.

He felt that "somewhat anonymous" performers would help the audience "believe this was happening to people like you and me", whereas "stars bring a lot of memories along with them, and those memories can sometimes ... corrupt the story."[21] The director added that in his plans "the superstar was gonna be the shark".[14] The first actors cast were Lorraine Gary, the wife of then-president of Universal Sid Sheinberg, as Ellen Brody,[16] and Murray Hamilton as the mayor of Amity Island.[27]

Stuntwoman-turned-actress Susan Backlinie was cast as Chrissie (the first victim) as she knew how to swim and was willing to perform nude.[14] Most minor roles were played by residents of Martha's Vineyard, where the film was shot. One example was Deputy Hendricks, played by future television producer Jeffrey Kramer.[28] Lee Fierro plays Mrs. Kintner, the mother of the shark's second victim Alex Kintner (played by Jeffrey Voorhees).[29]

The role of Brody was offered to Robert Duvall, but the actor was interested only in portraying Quint.[30] Charlton Heston expressed a desire for the role, but Spielberg felt that Heston would bring a screen persona too grand for the part of a police chief of a modest community.[31] Roy Scheider became interested in the project after overhearing Spielberg at a party talk with a screenwriter about having the shark jump up onto a boat.[16] Spielberg was initially apprehensive about hiring Scheider, fearing he would portray a "tough guy", similar to his role in The French Connection.[30]

Nine days before the start of production, neither Quint nor Hooper had been cast.[32] The role of Quint was originally offered to actors Lee Marvin and Sterling Hayden, both of whom passed.[16][30] Zanuck and Brown had just finished working with Robert Shaw on The Sting, and suggested him to Spielberg.[33] Shaw was reluctant to take the role since he did not like the book, but decided to accept at the urging of both his wife, actress Mary Ure, and his secretary—"The last time they were that enthusiastic was From Russia with Love. And they were right."

[34] Shaw based his performance on fellow cast member Craig Kingsbury, a local fisherman, farmer, and legendary eccentric, who was playing fisherman Ben Gardner.[35] Spielberg described Kingsbury as "the purest version of who, in my mind, Quint was", and some of his offscreen utterances were incorporated into the script as lines of Gardner and Quint.[36] Another source for some of Quint's dialogue and mannerisms, especially in the third act at sea, was Vineyard mechanic and boat-owner Lynn Murphy.[37][38]

For the role of Hooper, Spielberg initially wanted Jon Voight.[33] Timothy Bottoms, Joel Grey, and Jeff Bridges were also considered for the part.[39] Spielberg's friend George Lucas suggested Richard Dreyfuss, whom he had directed in American Graffiti.[16] The actor initially passed, but changed his decision after he attended a pre-release screening of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, which he had just completed.

Disappointed in his performance and fearing that no one would want to hire him once Kravitz was released, he immediately called Spielberg and accepted the role in Jaws. Because the film the director envisioned was so dissimilar to Benchley's novel, Spielberg asked Dreyfuss not to read it.[40] As a result of the casting, Hooper was rewritten to better suit the actor,[32] as well as to be more representative of Spielberg, who came to view Dreyfuss as his "alter ego".[39]