Director, marking new exhibition in LA, tells of chaotic filming – and says he’s ‘never seen so much vomit in my life’
Before Jaws became a cinematic classic, and the very first American “summer blockbuster”, director Steven Spielberg thought the 1975 film would be the last one he would be allowed to make.
Spielberg, who was just 26, had decided to shoot his second film, a thriller about a killer shark, on location on the east coast island of Martha’s Vineyard.
“My hubris was that we could take a Hollywood crew, go out 12 miles into the Atlantic Ocean, and shoot an entire movie with a mechanical shark. I thought that was going to go swimmingly,” Spielberg told an audience of journalists at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles this week, where an exhibit marking the 50th anniversary of Jaws is opening on Sunday.
“I thought my career was virtually over halfway through production on Jaws, because everybody was saying to me, ‘You are never going to get hired again,” Spielberg recalled.
