Milius

"Hey, I need a new idea for this." 485 00:34:42,481 --> 00:34:46,318 And so John was the idea man. 486 00:34:50,389 --> 00:34:53,759 Well, John had come down to the Shark Shack with me several times. 487 00:34:53,792 --> 00:34:55,494 The Shark Shack was out in the San Fernando Valley. 488 00:34:55,527 --> 00:34:58,730 And it was where we were building the mechanical shark and John really enjoyed it... 489 00:34:58,764 --> 00:35:02,734 because he liked to kind of like stick his whole body into the maw of the shark. 490 00:35:02,768 --> 00:35:08,707 You have to imagine John, who always had some girth, thrust into the shark. 491 00:35:08,740 --> 00:35:11,843 And all you saw was his rear end and his legs. 492 00:35:11,877 --> 00:35:15,514 And you would suddenly hear John yelling "Jaws!"... 493 00:35:15,547 --> 00:35:21,387 and it would echo throughout the belly of the polyurethane, mechanical steel shark. 494 00:35:21,420 --> 00:35:23,789 But because of that, you know, John was interested. 495 00:35:23,822 --> 00:35:26,858 I gave John the script to read, and John read the script and thought it was a good script. 496 00:35:26,892 --> 00:35:33,165 I gave him some books, that were really terrifying books about tiger hunting... 497 00:35:33,199 --> 00:35:35,734 and he employed a lot of those ideas in "Jaws". 498 00:35:35,767 --> 00:35:41,139 Steven had a great respect and admiration for John's ability with dialogue. 499 00:35:41,340 --> 00:35:44,843 And I said, "John, I got this scene about the U.S.S. Indianapolis... 500 00:35:44,876 --> 00:35:46,778 it's only two paragraphs long. 501 00:35:46,812 --> 00:35:51,817 But I think this could be an epiphany for all the other guys on the boat. 502 00:35:51,850 --> 00:35:55,721 The Richard Dreyfuss character, the Roy Scheider character, and the Robert Shaw character. 503 00:35:55,754 --> 00:36:00,659 To be able to share this kind of catharsis about what happened in 1945. 504 00:36:00,692 --> 00:36:03,529 But it's too short, and Howard's not doing any more writing on the movie... 505 00:36:03,562 --> 00:36:05,531 and will you take a crack at this?" 506 00:36:05,564 --> 00:36:07,733 And he said, "Sure!" 507 00:36:07,766 --> 00:36:11,670 MILIUS : I wrote it over the phone. 508 00:36:11,703 --> 00:36:14,473 STEVEN SPIELBERG : I got a ten-page monologue back from John... 509 00:36:14,506 --> 00:36:19,578 a ten-page monologue which basically was very close to what's in the movie. 510 00:36:20,379 --> 00:36:23,949 It was the perfect way of letting the world know... 511 00:36:23,982 --> 00:36:31,189 and the perfect way for us to know about his personality, about Quint. 512 00:36:31,657 --> 00:36:37,363 Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, Chief. 513 00:36:37,396 --> 00:36:40,732 It was coming back from the island of Tinian. 514 00:36:40,766 --> 00:36:45,371 The Lady had just delivered the bomb, the Hiroshima bomb. 515 00:36:45,404 --> 00:36:49,741 Robert Shaw read all ten pages and he loved every word... 516 00:36:49,775 --> 00:36:52,478 but Robert said, "I can't say all this, it's too much to memorize." 517 00:36:52,511 --> 00:36:57,583 It was a very compelling speech, but it was a movie by itself. It was a movie within a movie. 518 00:36:57,616 --> 00:36:59,918 So Robert Shaw sat down and Robert cut the speech in half. 519 00:36:59,951 --> 00:37:03,455 He did all the editing himself. He brought it down to five pages. 520 00:37:03,489 --> 00:37:08,360 Another thing about a shark, he's got lifeless eyes... 521 00:37:08,394 --> 00:37:12,531 black eyes like a doll's eyes. 522 00:37:12,564 --> 00:37:16,535 My favorite shot in the story of that scene... 523 00:37:16,568 --> 00:37:23,275 is when he's in the middle of it and there's this shot on me and I'm going-- 524 00:37:25,344 --> 00:37:29,681 What can you say when you hear a story like that? 525 00:37:29,715 --> 00:37:34,753 But it's Milius' words and Shaw's editing that wound up in the final film. 526 00:37:34,786 --> 00:37:38,557 He has, of course, the gift of the writer. 527 00:37:38,590 --> 00:37:41,660 He knows how to write lines that deliver, sum up everything... 528 00:37:41,693 --> 00:37:45,831 and it's not that the scenes of the lines really stand out... 529 00:37:45,864 --> 00:37:48,767 it's that they sum up the story and the picture they're a part of. 530 00:37:48,800 --> 00:37:51,503 He knows how to put the words together. 531 00:37:52,571 --> 00:37:55,941 I had the opportunity at that point, there was a crossroads... 532 00:37:55,974 --> 00:37:58,677 where I was gonna rewrite something else at Warner Brothers... 533 00:37:58,710 --> 00:38:01,913 but I didn't like the way the movies were done... 534 00:38:01,947 --> 00:38:07,085 and they had tried again and again in Hollywood to do Heart of Darkness. 535 00:38:07,118 --> 00:38:11,823 Orson Welles had tried it and all these other people had tried it and nobody could do it. 536 00: