Peter Benchley

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“The Shark Plays Such A Marvelous Part In The Film”

June 22, 2015 in Film, Videos | Permalink

Prior to 1975, the summer was a dead season for movies, but Jaws changed all that. Released in the warm months to capitalize on its beach theme, Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Peter Benchley’s bestseller remade the film business, and not only for the better, as the chase for the next blockbuster, the trusty tent pole, began in earnest. (It also had a bad effect on sharks, which have much more to fear from us than we do from them.)

Four days before the film’s momentous release, Benchley, who wrote the screenplay, and star Roy Scheider, guested on Good Night America hosted by Geraldo Rivera, who describes the picture as “the chilling story of a prehistoric eating machine.” At the very last moment, his production team talked Rivera out of wearing a only Speedo and a mustache during the interview, though he really, really wanted to.

Geraldo begins the program with allegations about the Rockefeller Commission further clouding the Kennedy Assassination. There are also filmed interviews in Louisiana with Mick and Bianca Jagger and an exposé on psychic and faith healers, including Rev. Bernard Zovluck of Times Square. The guest announcer is Don Imus, who once killed a shark he suspected of stealing his cocaine. Watch here.•

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“Irrational Behavior Has Always Been Man’s Reaction To The Presence Of Sharks”

November 17, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Film, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

This strange 1975 photo captures Ingmar Bergman in Hollywood enjoying a tender moment with the Jaws prop shark nicknamed “Bruce.” Before that film was a big-screen game changer helmed by Steven Spielberg, it was a 1974 bestseller by Peter Benchley, and before that still it was a 1967 Holiday magazine article (“Shark!“) from the same writer. Here’s the opening of the first, journalistic version:

ONE WARM SUMMER DAY I was standing on a beach near Tom Never’s Head on Nantucket. Children were splashing around in the gentle surf as their mothers lay gabbing by the Styrofoam ice chests and the Scotch Grills. About thirty yards from shore, a man paddled back and forth, swimming in a jerky, tiring, head-out-of-the-water fashion. I had just remarked dully that the water was unusually calm, when I noticed a black speck cruising slowly up the beach some twenty yards beyond the lone swimmer. It seemed to dip in and out of the water, staying on the surface for perhaps five seconds, then disappearing for one or two, then reappearing for five. I ran down to the water and waved my arms at the man. At first he paid no attention, and kept plodding on. Then he noticed me. I pointed out to sea, cupped my hands over my mouth, and bellowed, ‘Shark!’ He turned and saw the short, triangular fin moving al­most parallel with him. Immediately he lunged for the shore in a frantic sprint. The fish, which had taken no notice of the swimmer, became curious at the sudden disturbance in the water, and I saw the fin turn inshore. It moved lazily, but not aimlessly.

By now the man had reached chest-deep water, and while he could probably have made better time by swimming, he elected to run. Running in five feet of water is something like trying to skip rope in a vat of peanut butter, and I could see his eyes bug and his face turn bright cerise as he slogged along. He didn’t look around, which was probably just as well, for the fish was no more than fifty yards behind him. At waist depth, the terrified man assumed Messianic talents. He seemed to lift out of the water, his legs churning wildly, his arms flailing. He hit the beach at a dead run and fled as far as the dunes, where he collapsed. The shark, discovering that whatever had roiled the water had disappeared, turned back and resumed his idle cruise just beyond the small breakers.

During the man’s race for land, the children had miraculously vanished from the surf, and now they were being bundled into towels by frenzied mothers. One child was bawling, “But I want to play!” His mother snapped, “No! There’s a shark out there.” The shark was out of sight down the beach, and for a time the ladies stood around staring at the water, evidently expecting the sea to regurgitate a mass of unspeakable horrors. Then, as if on mute cue, they all at once packed their coolers, grills, rafts, inner tubes and aluminum beach chairs and marched to their cars. The afternoon was still young, and the shark had obviously found this beach unappetizing (dining is poor for sharks closer than a half a mile off the beach at that part of the south shore of Nantucket). But to the mothers, the whole area—sand as well as water—was polluted.

Irrational behavior has always been man’s reaction to the presence of sharks.•

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“As Benchley Became A Successful Journalist…His Shark-Watching Continued”

October 21, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Film, Videos | Permalink

In a 1974 People article, Joan Oliver profiled Peter Benchley after his novel Jaws had become a huge bestseller, but before anyone knew that its adaptation would forever change Hollywood. An excerpt:

“The book is the tale of a great white shark which cruises Long Island’s South Shore, gobbling up unwary swimmers, while a resort town’s police chief, civic leaders and citizens battle angrily over which is more important—the safety of the residents or the tourist-based economy of the swank community in its high season.

Jaws grew out of young Benchley’s fascination with sharks, triggered by family swordfishing expeditions off Nantucket. ‘We couldn’t find any swordfish,’ he recalled recently, ‘but the ocean was littered with sharks, so we started catching them.’

As Benchley became a successful journalist—reporter on the Washington Post, free-lancer for such magazines as Life and The New Yorker, an editor of Newsweek—his shark-watching continued. In the 1960s he capitalized
on his interest with two magazine articles, not long after a 4,500-pound great white shark was taken off Long Island’s Montauk Point. A few years later he was assigned to do a piece about Southampton—Long Island’s tony watering place. Benchley remembers thinking, ‘My God, if that kind of thing can happen around the beaches of Long Island, and I know Southampton, why not put the two together.’

The star attraction of Benchley’s book is the marauding monster whose savage attacks Benchley describes with horrifying clarity. On the fate of a child snatched from a raft, he writes: ‘Nearly half the fish had come clear of the water, and it slid forward and down in a belly-flopping motion, grinding the mass of flesh and bone and rubber. The boy’s legs were severed at the hips, and they sank, spinning slowly, to the bottom.'”

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“I wrote a novel about a great white shark”:

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“I Wrote A Novel About A Great White Shark”

June 4, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Film, Videos | Permalink

Here’s a rarity: Peter Benchley, author of Jaws, in a part of the preview featurette promoting the novel’s 1975 big-screen Spielberg adaptation, which changed so much about Hollywood filmmaking, pretty much creating the summer blockbuster season. The novelist interviews the director as well as producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown.

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