Why Steven Spielberg thought John Williams’ iconic ‘Jaws’ theme was “a joke”
Few filmmakers can claim to have had such a diverse and potent impact on cinema over the past half-century as Steven Spielberg. The Ohio-born director opened his filmography in the early 1970s and gradually built his status as a crucial player in the so-called New Hollywood era alongside the likes of George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese – a group of filmmakers retrospectively named the ‘Movie Brats’.
Spielberg’s expansive oeuvre ranges from the child-oriented wonder of E.T. and The Land Before Time to the abject horror of Jaws and Saving Private Ryan. While his movies vary so wildly stylistically and thematically, Spielberg maintains a crucial constant of spectacular cinematography, flawless casting and memorable soundtrack scores.
Perhaps the most iconic movie of Spielberg’s early rise to fame was 1975’s Jaws. The classic thriller starred the late great Roy Scheider as police chief Martin Brody, who, with the help of a marine biologist portrayed by Richard Dreyfuss and a professional shark hunter played by Robert Shaw, tracks down a man-eating great white shark that causes havoc on the shoreline of a popular summer holiday destination.
Beside Spielberg’s cutting-edge camera work, Jaws is remembered for the fearsome shark’s dramatic soundtrack. The simple score, written by John Williams, revolves around just two notes that build in frequency and intensity to indicate the shark’s alarming proximity and impending threat. The simple piece of music is widely regarded as one of the most ingenious and iconic soundtrack contributions of all time, but Spielberg initially thought it was a “joke”.
“Why just those two notes in Jaws? Was the budget that tight?” Stephen Colbert asked Spielberg and Williams during a recent interview on The Late Show.
“I thought it was a joke when Johnny played that for me on the piano at his house,” Spielberg admitted. “He called me up, and he said, ‘I’ve got the theme for Jaws. Come over and listen to it on the piano!’ And I came running over to Johnny’s house, and Johnny sat down at the piano. Johnny was really excited to preview this for me, and he takes a couple of fingers – not all ten, just a couple because he didn’t need all ten – and he goes ‘Duh-duh… duh-duh’ [mimics Jaws music].”
“I started laughing! Because I knew Johnny had a sense of humour, but he’d never teased me before,” he continued. “I thought, ‘Oh, this is a new side of Johnny. We’ve only done one movie together before that, which was [1974’s] The Sugarland Express. Now he’s looser, and we’re buddies now, and now he can tease me.'”
“No, here’s the real music,” Spielberg expected Johnny to say. But Williams kept a straight face and said, “I’m serious! I’m serious!” as Spielberg recalled.
“Well, he did say, ‘You can’t be serious,'” Williams interjected. “And I said I think we’ll try it with cellos and basses in the orchestra.”
Watch the full interview below.
