Who directed “Jaws”?
In late 1973, Spielberg called a meeting to figure out just how on God’s green earth he could make a movie starring a shark. Production designer Joe Alves, an ex-race car driver, had consulted ichthyologists, who said that the biggest great white sharks were, at most, 19 feet long, and untrainable. But the shark in Peter Benchley’s (still-unpublished) novel was a whopping 25 feet—which would require a lifelike mechanical monster that could swim and thrash in the ocean. Nothing like that had ever been done.
The production team searched for a special effects expert who could help them do the unprecedented. The one person they needed had retired: Bob Mattey, who had been responsible for the giant squid in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Pulled back into service like a movie sheriff, Mattey planned to mount his mechanical shark on a 12-ton submersible platform with a track, requiring a location with a sandy ocean floor, small tides, and an unbroken horizon. In the dead of winter, Alves traveled to Long Island, where Benchley’s novel was set. Nothing looked right. On a whim, he took a ferry to Martha’s Vineyard, which, besides meeting the nautical requirements, had a quaint little village. Perfect.