Spielberg had his first major success with Jaws (Picture: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)
Steven Spielberg said he ‘truly regrets’ the ‘decimation of the shark population’ following the success of his 1975 film Jaws.
Spielberg, 75, is known for Hollywood blockbusters including ET, Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park, as well as emotional dramas like Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan over his successful, decades-long career in the industry.
His Oscar-winning thriller, which served as his mainstream breakthrough, tells the story of a man-eating great white shark that attacks a US seaside town, which prompted a rise in sports fishing across America.
Jaws starred Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss, boasted an iconic theme from composer John Williams and also delivered stone-cold classic movie one-liners like ‘We’re gonna need a bigger boat’.
However, there was also a downside to the popularity of Jaws – and Spielberg still thinks of it today, almost 50 years later.
He was speaking to Lauren Laverne on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs on Sunday to discuss his career and new semi-autobiographical film The Fabelmans, when he made the admission.
The 1975 thriller is considered a classic today (Picture: Universal History Archive/Rex/Shutterstock)
It starred Richard Dreyfuss, Roy Scheider and Robert Shaw (Picture: Universal Studios/Courtesy of Getty Images)
Asked Laverne how he felt about having real sharks circling the desert island he had been cast away to for the programme’s format, he 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 sports fishermen that happened after 1975.’
He added: ‘I truly and to this day regret the decimation of the shark population because of the book and the film. I really, truly regret that.’
Spielberg’s latest film The Fabelmans tells the mostly true story of his own childhood and introduction to filmmaking in post-war America.
Crowds lined up outside the cinema to see Jaws (Picture: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)
The film, starring Paul Dano and Michelle Williams, has already received wide critical acclaim, picking up top nods at both the 2023 Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards.
Discussing the making of the film, Spielberg admitted he had initially thought the project would be the ‘most self-indulgent thing I’ve ever asked people to accompany me through’.
He also described it as ‘$40 million (£32m) of therapy’ and ‘a tight rope to walk for a while’ as he tried to recapture some of the memories of his late parents – who died in 2017 and 2020 – ‘in some way that wouldn’t seem too indulgent to actors I really respected’.
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Speaking more generally, he said the role of a filmmaker was not to ‘manipulate’ the audience by playing on their emotions, though he confessed to having done so himself with Jaws and the 1982 supernatural horror film Poltergeist, for which he wrote the screenplay.
‘A filmmaker must never manipulate the audience unless every single scene has a jack-in-the-box kind of (scary moment). That’s manipulation,’ he said.
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‘I did that a couple of times in Poltergeist and I certainly did it once in Jaws where the head comes out of the hole. That’s okay, I confess that…’
He added that he felt it was a director’s job to ‘guide an audience to really forming a better understanding of themselves through the stories that we’re telling’.
The full interview with Steven Spielberg on Desert Island Discs aired on BBC Radio 4 and is available to listen to now BBC Sounds.
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Jaws kicked off Spielberg’s mainstream career in Hollywood.
