Jaws 3D par Romain Néophyte

Passons sous silence le communiqué de presse d’ Universal au sujet de la sortie imminente du Blu-ray de Jaws et profitons plutôt de la récente interview que le fondateur du National Lampoon a gentiment accordé au site Splitsider! Dans cet entretien, Matty Simmons revient un instant sur le projet avorté Jaws 3 people 0 (qui nous aurait privé d’un fantastique film 3D soit dit en passant)… Bonne lecture:

« John Hughes was an editor at the Lampoon. What happened with John Hughes was, I was having lunch at the Friar’s Club with David Brown, who produced Jaws, and he said, “Oh, we’ve got to do a movie together.” As a gag, I said to him, National Lampoon’s Jaws 3, People Nothing. He looked at me like, “What?” Then, [I] came up with a story I made up on the spot, and he said, “I love it!” and ran to the phone and called his partner, Richard Zanuck. He said, “We’re meeting Ned Tannen,” who was the head of Universal, “tonight at the Rainbow Grill.” He said, “We’ll do this. You’re a producer, we’ll be executive producers.” He calls me back, he says, “Ned wants to do it.”

So, I go back to my office and I call my secretary in, and I had to remember the story I told, you know? I dictated the story, and when they called and told me the studio wanted to do it, I walked into the editorial office, and I know who I was looking for. Two of the editors were sitting there: a guy named Tod Carroll and a guy named John Hughes. Neither of them had ever written a movie script before. I called ‘em into my office, and I said, “This is the story for Jaws 3, People Nothing. You guys are gonna write the screenplay.” And they wrote it. The leading lady was Bo Derek, Richard Dreyfuss was in it, and Joe Dante, who was an unknown director at the time was gonna direct it. The studio had $2 million into pre-production, and  Tannen called me on the phone, “I have to see you.” He said, “I have to pull the plug.” I was furious. I had just closed Animal House, I was the hottest producer of the year. He wouldn’t tell me why. I found out in later years that Spielberg went to the heads of the company and said, “If you do this movie, I’m leaving.” He thought it demeaned him and demeaned Jaws.

And that’s how John Hughes got into the business, and then his first movies were my movies. Vacation, which was a short story he wrote for the Lampoon. “Vacation ’63.”