Steven Spielberg thought his career was finished. He was behind schedule, his actors were fighting, the crew were mutinous and worst of all, his shark was broken. It looked like Jaws was destined for failure, but the movie that came out defined the Hollywood blockbuster. In this special episode celebrating 50 years of Jaws, we take lessons from the greatest monster movie that almost wasn’t made.
Further reading
The key sources for this episode were The Jaws Log by Carl Gottlieb and Joseph McBride’s Steven Spielberg: A Biography.
On Jaws:
The Daily Jaws blog
Summer of the Shark Time. June 23, 1975
Jaws: What If The Mechanical Shark Never Broke Down?
In the Teeth of Jaws – BBC TV, 1997.
The Untold Truth of Jaws. Looper. By Andy Scott. Sept 13, 2016
On Creativity:
Teresa M. Amabile, Constance Noonan Hadley and Steven J. Kramer Creativity Under the Gun Harvard Business Review