As an enormous fan of Jaws, I looked forward to catching up with screenwriter Carl Gottlieb’s account of its making, and certainly it’s very valuable as the first hand account by a key participant of a particularly interesting project. Yet I was strangely disappointed by it.
Written in 1975, right after the film was made, it has been revised for the new edition through addition of a new introduction (by Peter Benchley), a foreword by Gottlieb, some great set photos, and copious endnotes that predominantly recount events since the book was first written. The result, unfortunately, has neither the strengths of a fresh eyewitness account nor a considered opinion made with the benefit of hindsight. The 1975 material (the body of the text) seems overly keen not to offend anyone, resulting in strange and inconsistent self-censorship: on page 46 Gottlieb grants anonymity to the second screenwriter on the project (Howard Sackler), apparently at Sackler’s request, but on Page 137 he goes ahead and names him regardless. He is also unrelentingly eager to promote the movie, which at the time was still in cinemas, and which the 1975 incarnation of Gottlieb tends to assume we haven’t seen. (Speaking of the mix of real and mechanical shark footage he earnestly informs us that we’ll “never be able to guess what footage was shot where.” Hmmm.)
