Even the way in which Gottlieb was hired to work on the picture had an element of improvisation about it. He was initially brought on by his friend Spielberg to give the script a polish, and he took on the assignment thinking it would be a quick rewrite. Peter Benchley's third draft screenplay had already been worked over by playwright Howard Sackler and tinkered with by Matthew Robbins and Hal Barwood, who had written The Sugarland Express. Gottlieb met with the director and his producers in the lobby of a Hollywood hotel and went through the script scene by scene. It was clear that they were not going to be ready for the start of shooting in early May, and so within a week Gottlieb found himself on a plane flying to the location with Spielberg.
It was Gottlieb himself who suggested that he take a small role in the picture, which would allow him to fine-tune dialogue on set. Although he had to audition for the part, it was probably just a formality. Not only did he share the same bulk as the character of Amity's newspaper editor Harry Meadows, but he was also a close personal friend of the director. His one big scene in the movie - where he tries to get Amity's fisherman to pose for a picture - would have allowed him to channel his real-life on-set frustrations. Without a full working script and a full working mechanical shark, the movie quickly became one massive piece of improv.
