Steven Spielberg and Crew Nearly Drowned While Filming Jaws
Steven Spielberg admits that one of the incidents he remembers was when working on the legendary film Jaws, released in 1975. He and his crew almost drowned while filming.
In an interview with Vanity Fair in July 2023, Spielberg said that the incident that nearly claimed his and his crew's lives was related to the Ocra ship.
Ocra is a ship in the Jaws story that becomes the vehicle of Chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider), Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), and Quint (Robert Shaw) to search for sharks that are terrorizing the people.
"The problem we face is when the speedboat pulling the Orca moves too fast and damages the hull," Spielberg said, as reported by Screen Rant Thursday, August 3, 2023.
"The water immediately entered, and the ship sank in about two minutes," he continued.
The incident clearly made the crew panic. They are called Spielberg, automatically trying to race to save themselves. They screamed for help and were sent to a rescue boat.
But at that time, said Spielberg, some people didn't seem to care about the emergency situation. That person was sound engineer John Carter who later won the Best Sound Oscar with his team.
"John lifted the Nagra recorder above his head, and said, 'To hell with those actors, save the sound department!'," Spielberg echoed.
"Until now, I still clearly remember John drowning while holding the recorder with the water rising from his ankles to his knees while the rest of the crew struggled to pull people out of the submerged Ocra," Spielberg said.
"A few months later, he was holding Oscar in both hands!" he continued.
Released in 1975, Jaws succeeded in bringing Spielberg's name to becoming a famous director. Jaws also considered the first blockbuster.
This thriller, adapted from the novel of the same name by Peter Benchley, follows a local sheriff who teams up with a marine biologist and a boat captain to hunt a great white shark.
TSteven Spielberg his massive white shark is considered to have terrorized the community's survival in the coastal area of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, USA.
The success of Jaws is also considered by many experts to create the standard of modern blockbuster films in Hollywood's golden era. Jaws is also the inspiration for a film with a similar theme.
