MARTIN BRODY

Jaws co-screenwriter Carl Gottlieb on the landlubbing police chief

COMIC-BOOK HEROES are built on invulnerability. The same with most action heroes. But in Jaws, Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) grows from first scene to last, from nebbish new guy to a survivor who kills the shark in his own element. He embodies an ordinary man who rises to the challenge and succeeds.

When I started on the picture, Roy was the only actor already signed. I knew him from The French Connection and The Seven-ups, where he played a New York cop, so making him a New York cop who had retired to Amity Island tied in with his persona. He had a real keen sense of character. If you notice, Brody wears his police badge on the right side of his shirt. All cops wear their badge on the left. Roy insisted on it so I asked him, “Why are you doing that?” He said, “I want the audience to think this guy is complicated. This subconsciously throws the audience off balance.” It was great to have an audience’s interest piqued by this little wardrobe tweak. I always thought that was an amazing choice.

The film’s dramatic structure was a classic triptych. Quint (Robert Shaw) was Dionysian man, a creature of impulse and appetite. Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) was an Apollonian man, a creature of rationality and super-ego. And then you had Brody, who had to mediate between these two extremes. A general audience can’t identify with Hooper or Quint because they are larger-than-life characters. But Brody’s got a wife, kids, drinks a little more wine at dinner than necessary because he is uptight and doesn’t feel at home on the island, partly because he is a little afraid of the water. Roy had a more complex task than Shaw and Dreyfuss: he had this bland character who has to acquire strength and, just when he is about to be devoured, do the right thing. It’s a classic hero’s journey.