50 Fun Facts About Jaws 2

Which real sharks circled the teenage actors of Jaws 2 while the distant crew took their cries for acting?

Hammerheads circled the young cast during one shot, and because their characters were meant to be in distress, the crew filming from a distance did not realise the calls for help were real.

What kills the shark at the climax of Jaws 2, after Brody lures it toward his inflatable raft?

Electrocution ends the sequel: Brody beats an oar against an undersea power line until the shark bites down on it. It was also the last sequence the crew filmed on location.

What did the Jaws 2 actors hold in their mouths during cold December filming to hide their visible breath?

Ice cubes chilled their mouths so no breath would fog on camera: a story set in high summer was still shooting days before Christmas.

Which rescue craft does the shark drag under as it starts to tow the stranded teenagers in Jaws 2?

A helicopter from the Harbor Patrol sets down on its floats to tow the wrecked boats, and the shark bites a pontoon and tips it over. The pilot drowns.

Which US president's daughter was hired to shoot publicity photographs on the set of Jaws 2?

Gerald Ford's daughter Susan, a trained photojournalist, took the stills, and many of them were printed in the official book about the making of the film.

Where is oceanographer Matt Hooper when Chief Brody tries to call him for help in Jaws 2?

Antarctica, on a research expedition, is where the script sends Hooper. Richard Dreyfuss had declined to come back because Steven Spielberg was not directing.

Jaws 2 set an opening-weekend record in June 1978 despite sharing its release day with which hit musical?

Grease took about $9 million that weekend, yet the shark sequel beat it with the biggest opening weekend any film had managed up to then.

Which country gave Jaws 2 the suffix 'Part 2' because the plain number made its title sound like a swear word?

France knew the series as Les Dents de la mer, and adding deux after mer sounded like merde, so the sequel took the suffix Part 2 instead.

How many new mechanical sharks were built for Jaws 2 after the originals were found rusted beyond repair?

Three were built, led by a platform shark with a new head and jowls, though the story itself features only one shark. Of the old models, only the bare frames could be saved.

Howard Sackler first pitched Jaws 2 as a prequel about the sinking of which warship from a famous Jaws speech?

USS Indianapolis, the ship whose sinking Quint recounts in the first film, was Sackler's idea for a prequel. Universal's president found the treatment intriguing but rejected it.

Most of Jaws 2 was shot off Navarre Beach, where the water was warm and deep enough, in which state?

Florida hosted the production from August until late December 1977, and the unit rented a hundred rooms of a beachfront hotel that doubled as its headquarters.

How does the shark in Jaws 2 get the burn scars that mark its face for the rest of the film?

A boat explosion does it: a woman driving a ski boat fires a flare gun at the shark and blows up her own craft. The filmmakers used the scars to give the new shark a more menacing look.

In the opening scene of Jaws 2, two scuba divers are attacked while photographing which sunken boat?

The Orca, the boat lost in the first film, lies wrecked on the seabed. The divers' camera keeps firing during the attack and later hands Brody a close-up of the shark.

What does Chief Brody mistake for a shark when he fires his gun from the beach tower in Jaws 2?

A school of bluefish casts the dark shape, and Brody's shots send a crowded beach into panic. Soon afterwards the town council votes him out of his job.

What are Mike Brody and his teenage friends doing when the shark attacks their group in Jaws 2?

Sailing in a group of six boats, against his father's orders, puts Mike in the shark's path. The scenes were a trial to film: the wind kept shifting and blowing the sails the wrong way.

What is the name of Chief Brody's younger son, who tags along on his brother's forbidden boat trip in Jaws 2?

Sean, nine years old in the sequel, catches Mike sneaking out and is taken along to keep him quiet. He was played by Marc Gilpin, whose stepsister Peri later starred in Frasier.

Which piece of Jaws 2 marketing, credited to trailer-maker Andrew Kuehn, became one of the most famous in film history?

Its tagline, which warns that the sea is dangerous once more, has been borrowed and parodied ever since, including in the ads for the 1996 film Flipper.

Which composer returned to score Jaws 2, using a larger orchestra than he had for the Oscar-winning original?

John Williams kept the famous shark motif and wrote a youthful new theme for the teenagers at sea, starting work before the film was finished because the shoot ran late.

The Jaws 2 shark reused the body mold of the original, which Quint estimates at what length?

25 feet is Quint's estimate when the first shark surfaces behind his boat. The sequel's builders kept that body and sculpted a new head with jowls to hide its pinching cheeks.

Which novelist, author of the bestseller behind the first film, created the characters Jaws 2 is based on?

Peter Benchley never returned to the series after the first film, and he came to regret writing the book at all, believing it had fed a widespread public fear of sharks.

Roy Scheider agreed to make Jaws 2 to settle his Universal contract after walking off which Vietnam War drama?

The Deer Hunter lost him two weeks before filming over creative differences, and Robert De Niro took the part. Universal forgave the breach in return for one more outing as Brody.

After Jaws 2, Roy Scheider earned a Best Actor Oscar nomination for which musical modelled on Bob Fosse's life?

All That Jazz cast him as Joe Gideon, a fictionalised version of the film's own director, and brought the second Oscar nomination of his career.

Murray Hamilton, Amity's mayor in Jaws and Jaws 2, also played the husband of Mrs. Robinson in which film?

The Graduate put him opposite Dustin Hoffman as the wronged husband. Hamilton also faced Paul Newman in The Hustler, as a wealthy billiards player who gambles for high stakes.

Which actor made his film debut as class clown Doug in Jaws 2 and later starred in John Carpenter's Christine?

Keith Gordon went on to direct, with films such as The Chocolate War and A Midnight Clear and episodes of Fargo, Homeland and Better Call Saul.

Which director, best known then for the film Bug, took over Jaws 2 after his predecessor was fired?

Jeannot Szwarc restarted the shoot with the complicated water-skiing scene, which bought the writer time to finish a script that was still being revised.

The replacement director of Jaws 2 later made which comic-book film starring Helen Slater and Faye Dunaway?

Supergirl arrived in 1984 and Santa Claus: The Movie a year later, big studio fantasies from a director who never attended film school.

In a deleted scene from Jaws 2, who casts the only vote against removing Brody as police chief?

Larry Vaughn alone sides with Brody when the selectmen vote, a turn from their feud in the first film. The scene was cut because it was thought to slow the pace.

Which deputy takes over as Amity's police chief after the town council removes Martin Brody in Jaws 2?

Hendricks gets the badge, and actor Jeffrey Kramer got his part back: the deputy had been missing from the script until the new director reinstated him.

What is the name of the small rocky island where the stranded teenagers end up in Jaws 2?

Cable Junction was really a floating barge dressed with fibreglass rocks so the shark platform could sit close to it. It once broke loose and began drifting away.

Which New England island again stood in for Amity in the town scenes of Jaws 2?

Martha's Vineyard greeted the returning crew with mixed feelings: many islanders enjoyed working as extras, while T-shirts telling the studio to go home appeared on the streets.

Which famous American film critic dismissed Jaws 2 on its release as pure trash?

Roger Ebert's verdict was blunter than that of his Chicago rival Gene Siskel, who found the film worth watching only when its leading man was on screen.

An underwater scene of the shark attacking a drowning man was cut from Jaws 2 to secure which rating?

PG was won only after a struggle with the ratings board. The lost footage survives among the deleted scenes included on home releases.

What condition strikes diving instructor Tom Andrews in Jaws 2 after he bolts to the surface on meeting the shark?

The bends, along with an embolism, puts Andrews in an ambulance without a tooth mark on him, and the other divers can say only that something scared him.

Which Amity teenager is found alone and terrified in her boat after the shark kills her boyfriend Eddie in Jaws 2?

Tina Wilcox, played by Ann Dusenberry, tearfully confirms to Brody what the town had refused to believe: the shark is real.

Which teenager in Jaws 2 is eaten by the shark moments after saving Brody's younger son from the water?

Marge dies rescuing the boy after the shark knocks him overboard, and one critic cites her as proof of the comradeship and heroism of the film's teenagers.

Which co-writer of the original Jaws was brought in to rewrite Jaws 2 with more humour and less violence?

Carl Gottlieb wrote on location while the cameras rolled, and hiring him mid-shoot cost the producers more than hiring him at the start would have.

Howard Sackler, who wrote the first draft of Jaws 2, won a Pulitzer Prize for which hit Broadway play?

The Great White Hope won him a Pulitzer and a Tony in 1969. Sackler also did an uncredited rewrite of the first film's script and conceived its famous warship monologue.

Lorraine Gary, who plays Ellen Brody in Jaws 2, was married to which powerful Hollywood studio boss?

Sidney Sheinberg, president of Universal, suggested that his wife's character go out on a boat and help rescue the kids, an idea one producer flatly refused.

Which producing duo behind the original Jaws took on Jaws 2 because someone else would have made it otherwise?

Zanuck and Brown preferred to stay in charge of the sequel themselves. They never drew up a budget, since the studio would not have approved one so large.

Which director of the Robert De Niro drama Bang the Drum Slowly was fired from Jaws 2 a month into filming?

John D. Hancock had made only small-scale dramas, and studio executives disliked the dark, subtle tone of his footage. He left for Rome with his wife, who had been rewriting the script.

Which Oscar-winning editor of Jaws offered to co-direct Jaws 2 before the Directors Guild blocked the plan?

Verna Fields, by then a Universal vice-president, proposed sharing the job with the production designer, but the guild would not let a non-member replace one of its directors.

Which production designer of Jaws 2, who also directed its second unit, went on to direct Jaws 3-D?

Joe Alves had been the series' production designer since the first film, and he won a BAFTA for his art direction on Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

The director who took over Jaws 2 already knew its production designer from their work on which TV series?

Night Gallery had employed him on 19 episodes, part of a long television apprenticeship that also took in Kojak, Columbo and The Rockford Files.

The Jaws 2 crew called one mechanical shark Harold, after a producer's lawyer, and nicknamed the other what?

Fidel and Harold were the on-set names, though officially the new sharks were Bruce Two, after the original Bruce, who had been named for Steven Spielberg's lawyer.

Which real hotel chain opens a resort called Amity Shores in an early scene of Jaws 2?

Holiday Inn's Amity Shores opens to the sound of a high-school band, played by 28 real student musicians recruited from a school near the location.

Which publisher released an adaptation of Jaws 2 drawn by Gene Colan and Tom Palmer?

Marvel Comics worked from an earlier script, so its version differs from the finished film, as does the tie-in novel written from the same draft.

Which company famous for baseball cards issued a set of trading cards to tie in with Jaws 2?

Topps cards joined beach towels, shark-tooth necklaces and Coca-Cola paper cups, as the sequel attracted far more merchandise and sponsors than the first film had.

Which future presidential candidate's adopted son plays the teenager Polo in Jaws 2?

Michael Dukakis's son John was cast while still a university student, and in 1987 he moved south to help run his father's campaign for the presidency.

Which diving couple filmed the real shark footage used for movement shots in both Jaws and Jaws 2?

Ron and Valerie Taylor, Australian divers, supplied shots of living sharks wherever the mechanical ones could not move convincingly.

Roy Scheider's biographer says the star tried to escape Jaws 2 by feigning insanity while staying where?

The Beverly Hills Hotel was the stage for his protest, but the money won: he quadrupled his salary from the first film and took a share of the profits.