“I began to laugh”: the iconic movie moment Steven Spielberg thought was a practical joke being made at his expense
Few directors in cinema history have been responsible for more iconic moments than Steven Spielberg, even if he thought one of the most famous was a practical joke being made at his expense.
From the opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark to the first time the dinosaurs are glimpsed in full in Jurassic Park via the haunting singular lash of red in Schindler’s List and the eardrum-shattering D-Day landings in Saving Private Ryan, the three-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker knows how to stun an audience with a seminal moment in cinema.
It may not have been his first feature, but Spielberg’s ascension to his current position as the highest-grossing director to have ever stepped behind the camera began when Jaws overcame a famously troubled shoot to emerge on the other side as a transformative moment for the industry at large.
From the outside looking in, a relatively untested wunderkind still in their 20s dealing with faulty mechanical sharks, a cast that was constantly on the brink of civil war, and a production that couldn’t stop spiralling behind schedule and over budget doesn’t have the makings of a landmark picture, but that all changed when the shark attack thriller sailed into multiplexes to become the biggest box office hit of all time.
The first scene indicated that something special was on the cards, but a key part of Jaws’ iconography is its theme tune. It’s one of the simplest compositions John Williams has ever put together, but it’s in with a strong shout at being named his single most memorable, which is saying something when considering his vast array of classic themes.
And yet, Spielberg was so unconvinced the first time he heard it that he thought Williams was having a joke at his expense. He wanted to create a sense of primal fear that chilled viewers to the core, and it took him a minute to warm to Williams’ decision that the easiest musical route would be the most effective by far.
“I expected to hear something kind of weird and melodic, something tonal but eerie; something of another world, almost like outer space under the water,” Spielberg recalled. “And what he played me instead, with two fingers on the lower keys, was ‘dun dun, dun dun, dun dun’. And at first, I began to laugh.”
The arrangement was so simple that Spielberg didn’t think for a second that Williams was being serious. He knew the composer “had a great sense of humour”, and with Jaws being a nightmare from start to finish, the auteur “thought he was putting me on” when he presented a theme that anybody could play.
Of course, Williams was deadly serious, and once Spielberg came to the conclusion that his leg wasn’t being pulled, one of the most instantly recognisable tunes ever composed was woven into the fabric of Jaws.
