Behind the scenes at blockbuster Jaws - 50 years on

Co-written by Ian and by Joseph Nixon, the piece is inspired by Robert Shaw’s experience playing Quint in the film Jaws. It promises a brilliantly funny play celebrating movie history as it peeks at the choppy waters behind Hollywood’s first blockbuster and imagines what happened on board The Orca when the cameras stopped rolling during the making of Steven Spielberg’s epic movie Jaws.

The critically-acclaimed Olivier award-nominated West End and Broadway production is touring to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1975 film, docking at Theatre Royal Brighton from Monday to Saturday, April 7-12.

We are on the open ocean. It is 1974, and filming is delayed… again. The lead actors – theatre veteran Robert Shaw and young Hollywood hotshots Richard Dreyfuss and Roy Scheider – are crammed into a too-small boat, entirely at the mercy of foul weather and a faulty mechanical co-star. Alcohol flows, egos collide and tempers flare on a chaotic voyage that just might lead to cinematic magic… if it doesn’t sink them all.

As Ian says: “It's a film that changed cinema in many ways. They didn't really know what they had but they took a big gamble on the release. They released it in 460 cinemas at once and they had a long TV campaign. It was a completely different tactic. If it had been a bad movie, it would have been disastrous but people pitched up and saw it and loved it and came to see it. It became a big blockbuster smash that the studio executives were thrilled about.

“I was six when it was released and I didn't see it when it was released but I did see it before my dad died. I would have been seven or eight when I saw it. My memory could be slightly faulty but I feel that I saw it in an editing suite somehow and not on the big, big screen. It still gave me nightmares but it's not like Halloween, the kind of film that is really nasty. It's just about the brutality of nature and in some ways I think (watching it at that age) was fair game. But it did give sharks a fairly unfortunate reputation, and I think Steven later regretted that. That's movies for you. They're trying to get the crowds but even so most people still wouldn't want to be around a great white! I did have nightmares. I imagined sharks swimming around my bed. I called for my dad and he came and comforted me.”

Ian doesn't remember his father talking about the film particularly: “He didn't really talk about his work. He didn't bring it home with him. At home he was just a playful, fun and naughty dad.”

Sadly Robert died in 1978 when Ian was eight: “The film was a big thing for him. He had had a significant career until that point but Jaws took things to another level. He was invited to the Oscars in 1976. He thought that the film was going to be awful. He thought that the script was poor, and he didn't want to do it. His wife, my mum, persuaded him to do it because she wanted to see Martha’s Vineyard.”

The filming itself was dogged by a fake shark that broke and various other problems: “But as the film went on, Robert saw that Steven was different and very talented and he recognised the cinematography was much better than he expected.”

Ian takes the view that the film has got better with the years: “It is funny as well. I've seen it many, many times. And I saw it on a big screen when we were in the West End in 2021, and it was wonderful to see it there. For the 50th anniversary I think there are going to be quite a few big screen opportunities to see the film and I would really urge anyone that loves the film to go and see it on the big screen.

“I think the tone is brilliant. It is very funny at times and then it lurches suddenly to a really scary bit, and because the shark was broken they were very inventive in the way that they created the fear. They say that the unknown is the scary thing but what was also great was that the music was so brilliant. I think it still works really, really well as a film.”

Ian is delighted that the play is coming to Brighton. He went to the University of Sussex and lived in Brighton from 1989 until Covid. He now lives in a village in East Sussex.