‘Bruce’ Review: New Musical About the Making of ‘Jaws’ Is a Shaggy, Sometimes Soggy Saga
variety.comMisha Berson There’s nothing like mechanical malfunction to make you want to break into song. Though that may well be unique to “Bruce” — unless you can name another musical with a spectacularly unruly prop among its main characters.Now premiering at Seattle Rep through June 26 (with wider horizons in mind), “Bruce” tries to make fresh waves from the stormy creation of the mega-hit film “Jaws.” Created by the duo behind the Broadway musical “Bandstand,” “Bruce” is based on “The Jaws Log,” co-screenwriter Carl Gottlieb’s behind-the-camera chronicle of Steven Spielberg’s 1975 creature-feature horror flick — a box office smash that can be credited (or blamed) as the progenitor of Hollywood’s annual summer spree of action blockbusters.
Gottlieb’s wry, informative book is a bonanza for film nerds, a tell-all saga of shooting delays, budget woes, actor feuds and location troubles (on a somewhat inhospitable Martha’s Vineyard and a turbulent ocean).
And it charts the inability of a small navy of special effects people to get a fabricated 25-foot great white shark (dubbed Bruce, after Spielberg’s lawyer Bruce Ramer) to function properly.This debacle-to-triumph saga is also elaborated in “The Making of ‘Jaws,’” an engrossing 1995 video doc offering plenty of location footage and candid testimony from Spielberg, principal crew and cast members, plus many shots of Bruce, who, though literally dead in the water, looks scary nonetheless.
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