The one hundred and three pages that make up Part Two of the novel are landlocked. Even when the shark makes a belated appearance in Chapter Ten the action is described from the shore, with only the fin - "a sharp blade of brownish gray" - briefly glimpsed. None of the scenes Benchley describes over these pages - Ellen Brody's meeting with Matt Hooper in the hardware store, the Brodys' dinner party, Ellen's lunchtime tryst with Hooper, Brody's confrontations with Vaughn over his mob connections, and the young swimmer's close encounter with the shark - make it into the movie.
The filmmakers essentially gutted the novel, ripping out the offensive offal of infidelity and bad sex. Benchley clearly had ambivalent feelings about the way his book was adapted for the screen. He famously bad-mouthed Spielberg in the Los Angeles Times and his interview was published just as he was due on location to deliver his cameo. Spielberg was already on record as having described the book's romantic sub-plot as 'too much like Peyton Place.' Ironically enough, both men accused each other of being weak on character development.
Jaws the novel was the work of one man, but the movie was a 'charmed churned circle' of collaboration: the writers, the director, the producers, the actors, even the composer and the editor. Peter Benchley can rightly take credit for his book, but no one individual can take credit for the movie.
