There’s no question that Steven Spielberg’s Jaws is a true film classic. Still, despite its popularity, the film’s concept of a man-eating shark has ultimately resulted in promoting fear of real-life sharks. Recently The Hollywood Reporter stated that Spielberg revealed during an interview with BBC’s Desert Island Discs that he regrets the negative impact that Jaws had on the shark population.
Initially, during their chat, the director spoke about some of his favorite tunes in addition to discussing his lengthy cinematic resume and his work on movies like The Fabelmans, West Side Story, E.T., and Schindler’s List. Spielberg also spoke about his personal life as well as pop culture influences like Bruce Springsteen and Alfred Hitchcock.
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According to the director, the inspiration that Spielberg took from Hitchcock truly made Jaws the iconic film it is today. He said, “I had to be resourceful in figuring out how to create suspense and terror without seeing the shark itself. Hitchcock did that, and I think Hitchcock was a tremendous guide for me in the way he was able to scare you without really seeing anything,” he said. “It was just good fortune that the shark kept breaking. It was my good luck and I think it’s the audience’s good luck, too, because it’s a scarier movie without seeing so much of the shark.”
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Steven Spielberg Is “Truly” Sorry for the Negative Impact Jaws Had on Real-life Sharks
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However, despite finding plenty of success with his 1975 film, Spielberg noted that there was an unexpected consequence that came with making audiences fearful of stepping back into the water. In addressing the impact that Jaws had on real-life sharks, Spielberg said, “That’s one of the things I still fear — not to get eaten by a shark, but that sharks are somehow mad at me for the feeding frenzy of crazy sport fishermen that happened after 1975, which I truly, and to this day, regret the decimation of the shark population because of the book and the film,” he explained. “I really, truly regret that.”
Peter Benchley, the author who wrote the 1974 book that Spielberg’s film was based on, also publicly apologized for the negative impact that his work had on the shark population. Similarly, due to the fact that Benchley’s book contributed to more people catching sharks as trophies, the author spent chunks of his life after the book’s publication campaigning to save the creatures that his book had helped to villainize.
THR reported that Benchley told the London Daily Express in 2006, “Knowing what I know now, I could never write that book today. He added, “Sharks don’t target human beings, and they certainly don’t hold grudges. There’s no such thing as a rogue man-eater shark with a taste for human flesh. In fact, sharks rarely take more than one bite out of people, because we’re so lean and unappetizing to them.”
