#73 Billy Van Zandt Talks JAWS 2

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Looking to sound like you know what's going on in the world, pop culture, social strategy, comedy and other funny stuff. Well join the club and settle in for the Jeff Dwoskin show. It's not the podcast we deserve, but the podcast we all need with your host, Jeff Dwoskin.

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Alright, Roy, thank you so much for that amazing introduction. You get the show going each and every week and this week was no exception. Welcome, everybody, to Episode 73 of live from Detroit the Jeff Dwoskin show. As always, I am your host, Jeff Dwoskin. We have an extra special episode for you today. It's not often but we have a return guest to the show. We're so happy to welcome back Billy Van Zandt. That's right You loved Billy in Episode 28 of live from Detroit the Jeff Dwoskin show and he is back. check out Episode 28 if you want to hear all about his book, get in the car Jane adventures in the TV wasteland. But this episode, we're going in a different direction. This episode we're talking all about JAWS 2. That's right, Billy Van Zandt was one of the stars of JAWS 2. And we're going to be discussing the movie in depth. And he's gonna be sharing tons of great stories from the making of that movie from the very beginning to the very end. It's a great conversation, and it's coming up in just a few minutes.

Now some of you might immediately be thinking to yourselves, Jeff, you seem to have an obsession with JAWS. And I do I love the movie. And I've learned to love it even more as I've been able to talk to so many people involved with the movie who Jeff who well glad you asked after you thoroughly enjoy this amazing deep dive into that jaws to Bailey Van Zandt, I have a little homework for you. Episode 26 with Carl Gottlieb. That's right, Carl Gottlieb script writer for JAWS 2, Billy Van Zandt mentioned him a couple of times during the interview, but Carl also worked directly with Steven Spielberg in writing the screenplay for the original JAWS movie. So some great stories in Episode 26 from Carl, also Episode 59 Joe Alves. Billy Van Zandt also talks about Joe during this interview in regards to his work on JAWS 2. But Joe als in Episode 59 goes deep into the making of the original JAWS movie as well as Close Encounters of the Third Kind. So definitely check out Episode 59 with Joe So between this Episode Episode 73 Episode 26 and Episode 59 and a couple extra stories in Billy's original Episode 28 you've got so much JAWS. I don't even know what you're gonna get lockjaw from this JAWS talk though, see a doctor if that happens, but please don't hold me accountable. Just enjoy the interviews and stay safe next time you're in the ocean.

I also wanted to take a minute to mention something going on with a past guest and friend of the show. Kelli Maroney. Kelly was one of the stars of Night of the comet. You can hear our interview in Episode 25 of live from Detroit, the Jeff Dwoskin show. If you're also interested in more Night of the Comet, listen to Episode 62 with Catherine Mary Stewart back to Kelli for a minute. So Kelly was trying to track down her costume, her cheerleader costume that her character Samantha Belmont wore in Night of the Comet she thought she had lost it but then she actually threw the prop store found out the costume the original costume was available so she's trying to buy it back. And she has it and she started a GoFundMe though if you love Night of the Comet, you want to help out any amount is great. I'll put a link to the GoFundMe in the show notes. And you can check that out. So hopefully Kelli will get the cheerleader costume back soon sending her all the good wishes.

Speaking of wishes, I wish you would head over to my website Jeffisfunny.com why Jeff? Well, I'll tell you because there you can listen to every episode of the podcast, you can click a button that says follow the Jeff Dwoskin show. That button leads you to a land of riches. And by riches I mean links to all the different podcasts apps, whichever one you love the most Apple castbox good pods, any of them. Whichever one you'd love the most. Follow me on ad or follow me on all of them. Totally your choice. I'm not trying to press you into it. But if you don't, I will cry at night until you do. But don't let that sway you at the website. I also encourage you to join my mailing list. You can buy me a coffee, you can click on the link that says crossing the streams and watch all the past episodes of crossing the streams. You can follow my youtube channel every Wednesday 9:30pm eastern time we go live with crossing the streams to an interactive show where we talk about what TV shows you should be bingeing. Yeah, me and a bunch of friends week after week, tons of great suggestions. So if you're looking for great stuff to watch, definitely check out that show. And now it's time for the social media tip.

All right, this is One of my favorite parts of this show where I share a little bit of my social media knowledge with you a little 411 I picked up on the street I've been deep into social media management for many many years and I love sharing quick tips with you. The whole idea here is awareness. Sometimes awareness is half the battle you don't know a feature even exists you find out it does your deep dive a little bit on your own into it to see if it's for you. Today's Oh awareness on Twitter is a little thing called topics you might see it when you go to somebody's profile page it'll just say topics to follow. Well if you click on one of those in your for you feed, you'll be served up some cool tweets that match the topics of interest. But if you don't want to hunt and peck for certain topics in feeds, then you can go to where you find your settings and privacy and lists and profile information bookmarks moments there's another button there called topics and when you click on topics gives you a ton of suggested things you might be interested in. Like for some reason Twitter things I'm interested in sausage french fries, but they get it right with movies and TV and the Marvel Universe and Spider Man and comedy and podcasts. So I click on all those you can also dive into categories like food and outdoors. Once you follow a topic, then they'll show up in the for you feed so you'll be able to find tweets that maybe you went over found otherwise that are very specific the things you're interested in. The cool thing about the topics feature is you can also tell them things you're not interested in so it tailors it even more and you can follow as many as you want. So check out topics I like it so I know you'll love it too. And it's the social media to do me a favor and tweet me at Jeff Dwoskin show let me know if you love the way I'm singing the intro and outro to that section, but only be kind at Jeff Dwoskin show on Twitter or at Jeff Dwoskin show on Instagram. Follow me tweet at me. I love to hear from you.

Hopefully by this point, most of you have checked out Rick Overton's amazing setlist comedy special. I believe it's now available on prime as well. If you're a Prime member, check that out. Episode 72 with Rick over 10 was chock full of amazing comedy stories and stories from his career. So definitely check that out.

And as always, I do want to thank everyone for supporting the sponsors week after week. Y'all never disappoint. The sponsors are always so excited and happy when they hear from all of my fans that live from Detroit the Jeff Dwoskin show so you guys keep making me look good when you support the sponsor. You're supporting us here and that's how we keep the lights on Thank you so much. Our sponsor this week is Hog's Breath Salon that's right after a long day of sailing, fishing or surviving shark attacks head over to Hog's Breath Salon located in beautiful Key West Florida hogs breast saloon offers live music great food and don't forget to grab one of our world famous t shirts. Are you hungry? Well get ready to hog it up and sink your jaws into one of our hogs brass crispy wings or grab yourself a plate of whole hog barbecue nachos, cocktails your thing order yourself a hog snore or one of our world famous hugger he does and don't forget it's still time to register for the annual hog's breath backgammon tournament who will win this year's prize in trophy $1 registration fee stands between you and backgammon infamy Hog's Breath Salon because a hog's breath is better than no breath at all. All right, well if you're in Key West, Florida check out the Hog's Breath Salon snap photo and Instagram you and one of their world famous hogiritas and tag us at Jeff Dwoskin show looking forward to seeing that

Alright, well with that said and done I think it's time for me to share my amazing JAWS 2 deep dive with Billy Van Zandt with you Don't be afraid to wade into this water. It's gonna be great. Enjoy. I'm so excited to have return guest Billy Van Zandt with me Billy, welcome back to the show.

9:05

Thank you. Good to be here.

9:07

Everyone remembers Billy Of course from Episode 28 of the Jeff Dwoskin show we went so deep into his book, which is amazing and I just want to we're gonna go deep into JAWS 2 In this episode, but I do want to tell everyone as a reminder to buy Billy's book. The book is called Getting the car Jane adventures in the TV wasteland and we spend an enormous amount of time in Episode 28 going over it is highly recommended. Billy, do you highly recommend that episode?

9:33

I enjoyed that immensely. I had a good time with you. And you got a lot of my stories from the book in that episode. It was fun.

9:40

Yes. And there's many more so go go buy the book. It's an amazing read. But if you listen to Episode 28, you'll also know that I was watching JAWS 2 which is one of the movies that Billy starred in. I happen to mention his hat. And that led to a bunch of other stories. And then and Billy's like we should I could talk about JAWS 2 for all day and I'm like, oh well they just do that. Because that would just be great. And so here we are. Welcome back.

10:05

Thank you very much. I was actually I'm just in the process, the entire cast is getting together for a big zoom call because we haven't talked to each other in a while. So I'm gonna see all my old JAWS 2 pals.

10:15

Ooh, that sounds fun. Yeah. So all right, so JAWS 2. So you have we have Jaws, the first blockbuster, Steven Spielberg, huge. It's the biggest thing ever. So of course, JAWS 2 is inevitable.

10:31

Yeah, it was just it was my first very first movie audition. I've been an actor, I'd done a lot of theater. I've done I'd gone out for some TV things. But it was my very first movie audition, they brought me back a couple times. And you had to do improvs in the room with all the other actors. And then they asked you to do monologues from things that you had done on stage and you're pulling things out of left field just to do things. I remember I did a monologue from a play called El grande de de Coca Cola, which is in Spanish. And I did the model. I had nothing to do with anything I was doing in JAWS 2 . But that was my big audition piece because I didn't have a monologue. And that was I was scrambling to come up with something. So I had just done that show. So I did that. By the end of the day. Shirley rich was the casting director, very famous old timer casting director. And if you look up her credit, she did every great movie that there was in the 70s and 60s, and she made everybody really comfortable. She said that's part of my job. I've worked with casting directors and do the opposite. They like trying to throw you off. So if you can get through this, then you can get through anything. She worked the opposite way she made you feel relaxed and comfortable and talented. So you had a shot at doing something you were proud of. So they cast me in the film. I got a four week contract, because that's how long it was supposed to shoot. We went up to Martha's Vineyard, we rehearsed for a couple of weeks. And at that point, they taught us how to sail and they taught us to them. It taught us they made us good tan that was our first two weeks of rehearsal, get tan and learn how to sail. Pretty good job. Then at around three o'clock in the afternoon, every day, we'd have a small rehearsal and they would literally tape out the tape on dirt on the ground around around the hotel or at the tape was all our boats. So they we stood in our boats, and we rehearsed scenes from the from the movie. And then we did improvs with Roy Scheider and Lorraine Gary. And then that had nothing to do with the film either. It was just just get everybody getting to know each other and get friendly and everything. And then we started shooting. And I did about I think I did maybe two three days of shooting. And the original script was very dark, very adult. It was an adult horror movie and it probably would have been a fantastic film. JOHN Hancock who directed bang the drum slowly he was our director, his wife, Dorothy Tristan had written the script. The premise was that Amity is now boarded up, and it's just a rundown ghost town because of the first movie. So they're trying to open up this big Holiday Inn thing to bring tourists in, and that's when the first shark attack happens. So that was the tone of the of the first film. And I had a gruesome great gruesome death in that film. I was I they had me playing the character called sideburns. They had me grow sideburns, which I could I this side was great. This side was really sad. But I had sideburns. I was Robert Shaw's son. I was Quinn son. My opening scene was on the ferry coming from Chappaquiddick, I think and I was whistling to see chanting and the ditty that the Robert Shaw sings and the first thing about bow legged women that was I was whistling that that was the connection that made you say, Oh, he must be the son. Right? There was no other real connection. Other than that, David Elliot who played Larry, he was just called Vaughn Jr. In the first one. He was the mayor son in that and the mayor son in the second one. In the second version, we were real bad SS nasty, nasty people. At one point he actually he held little Shawn over the water and said he's Shark Bait and threw him in the water. I mean, he was a psycho. And we got tickets for driving our bikes across the ferry. At that point, David Elliot rips up the ticket because he's the mayor son, and this is a worthless ticket. So we were just creeped after about two, three days of shooting. They shut the whole thing down and they sent everybody home and they started firing people. No explanation. Just couple people got fired. We were all sent home and told her you're coming back in about you know, coming back in a couple of weeks. I didn't know any better and went home and I got a phone call saying Okay, now you're going to go to Florida, and you're going to film in Pensacola, Florida, though, got on a plane I get down to Florida. They have an entirely new cast of people that are in the film now. The john Hancock has been fired and replaced with Joe stork, who had primarily been a TV director did a lot of CO Jack's and those kinds of shows. And he had done one horror movie called bug about all the bugs. Take over. The world and started attacking people, Carl Gottlieb who wrote the original Jaws, and wrote for the Smothers Brothers and wrote for STeve Martin the jerk, great, great guy. They brought him in to rewrite the entire film as we shot it very strange job for someone to have. Again, once we got the Florida, we were told we have to just get tanned, and learn how to sail. So we started doing that. But there were all these different people all of a sudden, and I had found out that the entire cast was made to fly out to California and re audition. I didn't do that for some reason. I think David Brown the producer like me, and maybe that was it, but I didn't have to re audition I just showed up and all these great new people showed up the floor. I remember the first thing they made us do was we had to tread water to make sure we could swim. So they brought us out into the Gulf of Mexico and we had to tread water for five minutes and I think if you couldn't tread water for five minutes you were going to be on a plane in a minute. You know, what they didn't realize is that some of us were tall I was standing on the bottom and just moving my arms up and down the look like I was swimming because I didn't feel like doing that. You know, I didn't feel like treading water. But I can swim anyway by poor Gary Dubin, who were they brought into play, Eddie couldn't swim at all. He was touching bottom and he could fake his way through the you know, looking like he was swimming. So by the time they ended up shooting his scene where he gets killed, the look of pure terror on his face has nothing to do with the shark and nothing to do with his acting ability. He was afraid of drowning as they dragged him through the water because he couldn't swim. That was eye opening. That was the introduction to us in Florida. And I remember Murray Hamilton who played the mayor, terrific guy, this really great guy, weird guy, but it was terrific. He used to walk around in shorts, they dinner jacket, and a big lobster claw that would come out of his jacket. So people went to shake his hand and get a lobster claw. He thought that was hilarious. All the time, all the time. So we started shooting down there, everything was different from the first one it was it was later the colors, the costumes were brighter, the lighting was brighter. Even the you know, when you saw the beach, when you see the the darkness of the Martha's Vineyard where the first shots are. And then Roy Scheider drives basically into Pensacola and the opening scene. Suddenly the beaches are bright white and the sun is so everything was lighter. So it would get a PG rating nor rating, you'd lose money at the box office peih Gee, they make a fortune. They were so determined about that, that everything was was geared around that. The problem for me with that was it meant that my character who was supposed to have this fantastically gruesome death at the end of the film, it was touch and go whether I could die or not because they were afraid certain number of deaths would constitute an R rated movie. So originally, this would have been so good. I was swimming towards shore at the end of the film, Roy pulls me by one hand out of the water and only the top half of me came out of the water. The shark had eaten the bottom half. It was grotesque, but it was great that so they decided well, they can't do that they can definitely get an R rating for that. So they decided instead, they're going to stick me on a pontoon and I'll kick my legs as I swim towards shore. And then the shark would eat the bottom half on my legs. That was still grotesque. We couldn't do that. So ultimately, what they did is they had a stunt man dressed like me on a pontoon. They had the shark come crashing down on top of him and the shark and the stunt man disappeared underwater. But I saw it in dailies The next day, and I said, that doesn't look like me. I want to why can I film that? They said no, you can't film I said I want to film that. And David Brown said to me, okay, you can film it, but it's going to be the last thing we shoot. And I said Why does it have to be the last thing we shoot that in case you die? So I said okay, fine. So they put ropes around my waist, they put me on the pontoon. They were scuba divers underwater, ready to yank me underwater. As soon as they got the cue that the shark on his little roller coaster track was about to crash down on top of me so that we shot it and the shark came crashing down and right before it killed me literally killed me. The scuba divers pulled me underwater, and we all disappeared. And it was fantastic. But they then decided any number any death I had would have given it an R rated movie because too many people had died in the film. So they quickly when we shot some pickup scenes in in California, they had me swim up the rocks and go Thank you, thank you, thank you in case I was going to live and I didn't know whether I lived or died whether I went until I went to see the movie in the theater. And it was like ah, they let me live. Damn it. But everybody remembers. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So that's nice. But I want that footage. I know what's out there somewhere. And I want it. It was great. That scene got cut and my opening scene got cut. There are a lot of opening scenes in the Holiday Inn scene that just got cut out of the film and they established who the characters were which was frustrating because my opening scene was with six pack of beer which probably like probably thought R rated movie, I had a six pack of beer and I was on my way to meet the brebner twins where they were but that got cut out of the film too was like oh, I put those two things back in I would have been happier. But we had a great time doing the film. And my four week contract turned into 11 months because of the shutdown and because a couple of times the shark wasn't working. little rain and a little hurricane down there kind of destroyed a couple of boats at one point, you know, and we were stupid kids. So we would we did all our all our own stunts. It's like okay, sail your boat into that boat. Okay, sure. Mash. There were no stunt people doing that we did it young and stupid. That's funny. The there's a scene where the helicopter shark eats the helicopter. Everybody remembers that, because they go that couldn't happen. It's based on a thing that actually happened but nobody ever believed that so for one of those shots, they had us all get on top of the pontoon to the boat, and they threw the propellers from the helicopter at us while we were laying come as laid out and then they threw threw things at us, which are it's still in the film, but it's like, you know, we did a lot of stupid things we shouldn't have done

21:07

so originally, if you're going to be Quint's son, then the whole movie must have been completely different dude, did you then go with Roy Scheider, his character and try and hunted or was it What did you go with one of his kids like what was some of the original plot with you as Quint son pretty much

21:25

the same structure as the second version. But the difference was we were we weren't all pals and friendly little, you know, Disney people. We were the bad guys. And we were with the good guys. And we were in the same boat, you know. So it was we were all in parallel. And that sort of brought us together. But Originally, it really started the difference. The real difference was the start the top of the film where we were just creeps. And suddenly we're thrown into this horrific situation with all the heroes of the film

21:54

gag. I had read that Howard Sackler, one of the writers with Carl Gottlieb at least he got a credit but originally they were going to do something about the USS Indianapolis, like they wanted to make it more of a prequel.

22:07

That would have been a great film, I would have loved to have seen that film. You know? Yes, that's true. I think he has credit on the of the of credit on the film, or does he have credit on that? I know they did a novel version of the of the movie, and I know he has credit on that. That was similar to the john Hancock script, whatever, if you see the job to book anywhere, that's the version of the first screenplay.

22:30

Right? I read that and it's much more gruesome even. I also read it Steven Spielberg didn't want to come back. But then at some point, he considered it. But then he also wanted to do the USS Indianapolis kind of thing. But then he got caught off because he was doing Close Encounters of the Third time.

22:47

There was a moment almost throughout the film, there was a moment where we thought Richard Dreyfus was going to do a cameo from his ship 5000 miles away. I think he wisely wisely decided not to do that. There's a whole sequel thing when you're in the when you're in a classic film, do you really want to come back and do a second one, Roy hated being there, hated being there. He was under contract universal, and this was part of his contract that he had to do a sequel, but I know he gave up the deer hunter, which would have been a great film for him. And I know he talked about that a lot. Forget there was one other film he was supposed to do. And he invite he had to give them both up to go to jaws too. So he was not not a happy camper. When we were making the film. He barely talked to any of us kids. When he did he was planning but he wasn't shooting movie the movie. He was sitting on a lounge chair in a black Speedo bathing suit, and a middle sun reflector under his face all the time. And this is the tennis human being ever saw in your life. And we're filming in the sun all day long. I don't know why he did that I was time off. It was kind of strange. Keith Gordon, who played dug in the rubber in the raft, he did all that jazz with him after jaws till he played Roy as a young boy. And he said he was a completely different guy because he was doing a great you know, a great film that he wanted to do. And when he apologized, I guess to keep or being as cold as he was back then. He was pleasant guy and he you know, he worked very hard. The very first day of shooting with Joe with the second director, who I love, by the way, a great guy. And just I'll segue for a second Joe and Carl Godley came into an impossible situation they just did with a cast of people half of whom they didn't even know and a director that that Roy didn't know we had to shoot the film. in sequence as we went It was a very strange setup. And the very first day Roy in front of all these hundreds of extras in the how big holiday insane. He threw a massive fit. And I think it was a challenge to see if he was going to be able to push this director guy around. didn't have a lot of credits, and you know, had worked with some fantastic people in his career. And he shut it down really fast. It was an ugly moment, the only ugly moment of the entire movie. And I think it was a test to see what he was going to get away with. And after that, they got along fine. But it was an ugly day. It was one of those things, you know, there's nobody's talking and everybody's looking around, like, you know, should we leave that was in the big house in the Holiday Inn scene that everybody's you know, so happy and partying with. But what I was gonna say is, you know, an audience doesn't care what goes into making a play or a TV show or a film. They just want to see a good product. But when you know what Joe and Carl had to go through, to actually pull this off, it was it was incredible feat is so impressive to me knowing especially knowing now because I've been, you know, produced and directed and all this other stuff, knowing what they had to do to pull that off was an amazing feat. It's amazing. It's as good as it is.

25:58

Overall, I really enjoyed JAWS 2. I mean, as a sequel, you have to believe that the shark two shows up at the same place again.

26:06

Yeah, there was there was going to be I don't know if you know that there was going to be a third one. I mean, there was there eventually was a 3d movie. The original third movie was going to be a National Lampoon spoof of a shark movie called jaws 3 people's zero, David Brown called Keith Gordon. And he called me to ask if we'd want to be in it, like yeah, I want to be in never happened. But man, I would have been fun. I never saw a script either. But I knew that it was supposed to be a spoof of making a shark movie, which still is a good idea which somebody should do.

26:34

I did read about that the and then eventually, I think got shut down because it became so much of a spoof. I think some of the people were upset that they were being made fun. Oh, okay. Speaking of jaws 3,D guy, did you have any interactions? or What was it like working with Joe Alves

26:49

Joe Alves is incredible, incredible, incredibly talented man. Everything you love about Close Encounters, Joe Alves, everything you love about Jaws, Joelle, and I still see him time to time and he still looks exactly the same, because here's a little grayer. But he lives it looks easy, same guy could not be more fun to be around. And he did a lot of the second unit directing for jobs too. I think it was part of his deal. He hung around with us Amity kids all the time. He was he was great. It was great.

27:18

I read that he would have potentially been the director of JAWS 2. But there was some director guild rule that you couldn't give it to necessarily someone on the set.

27:29

I think that's true. I think that's true. He was there through the whole thing. And a Roy Arbor gas did the shark. But Joe, he did the storyboards for everything we shot, they're great, even, they're just great pieces of art by themselves. But you can see he's like, you can see he's a good director. just from looking at the storyboards.

27:46

Yeah, I had an opportunity to actually talk with him and like it was interesting to learn like he's even responsible probably for the first movie being made. He was on board before the book was even released before Spielberg was around. And he drew a lot of those famous scenes that we all know love from the first movie, and Verna fields

28:03

who edited the first movie and probably helped save that too. She was an executive at Universal by the time we were shooting. She was fighting for us the entire time she wanted she wanted me to get killed so bad. She was really sweet. I liked her. But she lost that battle to the only scary moment for me. I don't know if I told you this last time. My brother is a rock musician. And everybody knows little Steven. I've heard of him. Yeah. So he was touring with Bruce Springsteen at the time while I was filming that. And one night, somebody started pounding on my hotel room door two in the morning. And I thought a lot of pranks going on in the hotel. We were the only people in the hotel there was nothing around us. There were no hotels next to us it was our hotel and then miles of beach and that's it. So I thought somebody's playing a prank and I just ignored it. The next day I got on the the van in front of the hotel to go to the location where we were going to film the harbor scenes. The assistant director says are you related to the rocket and the rock musician Van Zandt who died in the plane crash last night? And I you know, before cell phones I flipped out cuz I put my brother's on tour and shit, you know? So I got off the van and I went into the hotel and I and I called my parents trying to politely ask Have you heard for Stephen? No, I haven't heard from him at all. I owe nothing. I think everyone's wondering. And I couldn't find out who you know if he was alive or dead for a couple hours. And it turned out when I did find out still a horrible story, but it wasn't my brother, Leonard Skinner's band, that's when they went down. And but that was a scary, you know, worst for them. But it was a scary moment for me when Steven Steven came back from a tour. A couple days later, I think walked into my parents house and saw these funeral arrangements because people had sent them to my parents and he looked at his family saw his own funeral. arrangements, and they saw one of them. That's all they thought of me. So anyway, but that was scary. But for the most part, we were alone in that hotel, we ate the same damn menu for 11 months. And I didn't eat around the Gulf of Mexico. I didn't need fish. So I ate steak for 11 months, every meal, I think. And there were a lot of parties that went on that I didn't know about because I was innocent in those days. But there were a lot of a lot of parties going on. And I just said, Why is everybody so tired when they show up for work the next day, because we were there for so long, we've just bonded like it was our graduating class or something. You know, I also learned to play great backgammon. Everybody played backgammon on that show, and Keith Gordon and I wrote, we started writing a screenplay for bored out of our minds, because he didn't work all the time. And there was nothing to do because you're It was just an empty hotel and beach. And that's it. So we wrote a script called murder in my sanitarium. That's all I remember about it. And we wrote about 30 pages on it. And it was so intricately plotted, we knew that when you got to when you found out who the killer was you or your mind was going to blow it. Well, Keith and I found that a couple of years ago, and we're looking at it, like I can't figure this out, I have no idea what this is supposed to be. Oh, we just never finished it. So

31:20

that's funny, man. So you questions? Alright, so Roy Roy Scheider, I had read is a kind of tag onto that. Well, you have said that he was trying to pretend to be crazy to try and get out of the contract. Like he really didn't want to be there.

31:35

No, not at all. I think they gave him a new Jaguar just to show up and it was sitting there for him and he you know, again, eventually drove it back to California I guess. But it was like they kept trying to make him happy. He was not happy the entire time we were

31:52

you know, it's interesting because if they had done the USS Indianapolis, then they would have redefined the entire future movies of JAWS 2 because they wouldn't have gone down the path of somehow it has to be related to the the right roadies. So it's like cuz it's weird right you have the same location it happens again. Right? And then in jaws 3 d the two brothers in the future yeah I and SeaWorld and lo and behold to be part and and to to shark show up their baby in a mama yeah and then I barely remember for before was I think the idea of four is one of the kids gets one of the Shawn or Mike gets killed the very beginning. The mom moraine goes to some Island and she's with Mike Okay, I don't remember like somewhere else in the shark follows and like they're like they're just going

32:47

That's right. jaws the revenge. And you know, this time it's personal, or one of those kind of things. Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad for the range. You got to make a film. But you know, it wasn't the right film to make

32:59

now Michael Caine was in that he was in everything at one point, I think I read he never even saw the movie, which is interesting. Well, I don't know why the studio people thought Oh, no, it has to be connected to the bro. Like, like in Star Wars. everything's connected to this. Yeah, Skywalker. They could have just made some really, really powerful shark movies, and it would just have all been in that genre. So that would have

33:21

been great. Yeah, I still wish that make the Indianapolis would really be good.

33:25

I think I read that somebody has the script options. And if you were Queen son, you could have just played young Quint.

33:30

There you go. So boom, now I'm even more upset.

33:35

I did not mean to upset you believe it is scary about your brother that story. I mean, glad it ever turned out. But it's like it's just it's interesting. When you you think you you tell that story. If that happened today, though, it went up because you would add a tax I would have had 50 people going, No, this is actually who die. It's funny. I watched a TV show friends, like my wife's is obsessed with it. And like I'm like 90% of these plots. You couldn't even you couldn't even air the show today because none of these plots would even work. It's like the everything's changed.

34:06

All the great Broadway shows all the great comedies basically, from the 50s 60s you can't do them now unless you said it in a period piece because cell phone you know, can't do the odd couple of cell phone ruins the entire plot.

34:20

It's interesting. So Alright, so a couple of things about jaws just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water. Consider one of the biggest and best taglines of all time.

34:30

It was great. It really was great. The JAWS 2 poster I have is one from the the john Hancock version. And it the poster they ended up coming out with has the skier and the shark going up better. The original one is reds, it's like a sunset water and you just see the fin going sideways and it's like Oh, it's so creepy. That's the one I have just when you thought it was safe to go in the water.

34:55

The other interesting thing I read about JAWS 2 was it was the first movie To use a number and not a Roman numeral in a sequel

35:05

people hate us for

35:08

I always thought it was like the dumbing down of America like we needed when people when they went when they went Hollywood finally decided I don't think we will know what Roman Roman numerals do we just stick to actual numbers

35:20

it was also the highest grossing sequel of all time until Empire Strikes Back rocky 2 so we had maybe two was a rocky so I know we hadn't we had two or three years of being the you know, the highest grossing sequel which is all about the first film you know really

35:36

one of the big one of the biggest sequels of all time. Interestingly enough it is categorized as a horror film. I

35:43

find that so weird because when we came out it wasn't a horror film. It was just the film a couple of these conventions as horror conventions like Comic Con all those things. That's when it started getting labeled as horror film and it's like really I guess it is because Donna Wilk screams through the whole thing so yeah. The poor the poor girl. People always give her a hard time because she screams like a lunatic at the end of that film. She's screaming cuz she's watching me get killed out in the film. But the screaming still.

36:13

It's funny it's like it's remembered is one of the better ones Siskle and Ebert we're not kind to them.

36:19

You know what I don't I swear to God, I don't read. Well, I do. I try not to. I don't like reading reviews. Especially because most of the time I'm doing comedy. Nobody gives comedies good reviews. They just don't does it? You know, it's not theater. You know, it's just comedy. actually got to review once I said it's great if it's mindless entertainment. If you like that kind of thing. It's like Oh, geez, okay, every one of my TV shows I've got bad review, bad review review. The ratings are good. And the audience is like it but the critics

36:47

don't care about the critics. Yeah, critics can suck it. Yeah. So what was it like just kind of being on those boats? I mean, that was that was as good. Seems like it might have been a pain in the ass. I mean, you're just floating in the water. Or

36:59

I'll tell you what was weird about it, because, you know, had never worked on the water before. You know, he did crime dramas on television. And so we would be out in the Gulf of Mexico all day. And we would get we had walkie talkies that were hidden under on straps on the boats, and we would get, you know, the walkie talkie. Okay, sail towards the reflections in the water, the sun reflections. And I was like, but the angle you're looking at is different than the angle we're looking at. We don't know what you're talking about. So it took a long time for us to you know, how can you you're out an entire Gulf of Mexico. How do you give directions to a boat if you want them in a certain shot, you know, there's no marker you can go toe which doesn't water. So it took a long time for us to figure things out. And David Elliot and I were no help because we used to flip the boat over all the time, we would start sailing the boat would go up on one of the pontoons then we'd flip it and we actually lost. We lost a couple of walkie talkies, we lost I think we lost the camera at one point. They didn't like us too much for that. But we had a good time doing it. There's one shot that I still I still get upset when I see the film. My grandmother passed away. My father's mother passed away during the film. And it was over Thanksgiving weekend. So I flew home for for Thanksgiving, not knowing she when she was passing away. I was I was on the plane. So I found out she died and I called the production office and I said you know my grandmother passed away. I'm gonna they're gonna bury her on Monday. So I'm not going to come back till Tuesday. And they said, Oh, no, no, you're filming on Monday. I said, but my grandmother just died. But you know, Billy, you know, it's a big production. You have to be here. So not knowing any better because again, I was a stupid kid doing the film. I obeyed and I got on a plane and I went back down to Florida and missed my grandmother's funeral. And the scene they use me for is I think it's Polo is taking Mike Brody who's hit his head, taking him back to shore and he looks into the horizon and you see boats that are maybe a quarter of an inch pie. That's the scene they had issues fly me back to put me on a boat. You could have put me in a clown suit out there nobody would have be able to tell the difference. But that's the scene where I miss my grandmother's funeral it burns me every time I see

39:21

I'm sorry about that. Yeah, so you mentioned earlier Eddie. He was afraid of water and that kind of helped because yeah, it's funny when I was when I was watching it and he gets he kind of lifts himself onto the boat and then was in the boat with him Tina is is kind of screaming or whatever the shark comes and grabs that and like when I was watching that I was like oh I'm surprised that's not a like a room on the raft moment you know like in Titanic cuz I'm because my first thought was Tina didn't even try and help him. She didn't even know even like

39:55

I also think it was a violent poll that the guys did. Yeah, cuz I think they were pissed off. They couldn't swim, they had to work twice as hard. So when they yanked them under they just yank them.

40:06

I remember JAWS 2 when it came out I didn't see it in the theater because I was too young and I remember wanting to see it and everyone telling me about it but it was just one of those things I don't I don't think I saw it till years later.

40:18

First time I went to say it in a film it was my hometown put my name on the marquee and really sweet they had me there to Universal have me sign things there. So lady comes up to me in the lobby, and she says, oh, would you sign this thing for my my neighbor? I fell Yeah, be happy to and I said, we just signed this thing for my son. I said, Sure. Would you sign this for my daughter? I said, Yeah, and I'm planning another one. She's Oh, and I need a couple from my my neighbors over there. I said, Fine. So I'm planning all these things for I said, So did you are you going into see jobs too? And she said, No, we're going to see Greece because john travolta is better than you. That was my introduction to celebrity.

40:55

Zanetti. See john travolta here signing? dry. The one death that always bothered me, and I remember like, even rewatching I was like, this is the one the one that bothered me the most, and like always kind of stuck in the back of my head is when is even the most gruesome one. But it's like when Margie the character gets Shawn back on to the boat, the young Sean onto the boat, and the shark basically just comes right up and kind of just eats her. Yeah. And again, that's it. And I was like that, Oh, that one always bothered me. For some reason. It was just like,

41:27

because she's so innocent. She's just so completely innocent. And you can hear her in her voice that she's just trying to save the kids. Martha who played Margie, Margie, Marge, Marge, Marge, she and her sister Susie were two of the number one or number two sailors in the world when they when she got cast and your sister Susie helped train us how to sail the boats and stuff. And she's a school teacher now. So I keep in touch with them all.

41:53

Do you can do you still sail to this day?

41:55

I probably can. But I haven't. We haven't again, there's funny when I was when we were on the Gulf of Mexico. It didn't feel dangerous at all, despite the fact that the locals didn't want us there and they were chumming in the water when we were shooting trying to bring sharks in to kill us while we were shooting the actual film. So but for some reason on the Gulf of Mexico, it never bothered me never felt scary or anything, even though you know you'd have these huge basking sharks go past you. And you know, that could have been scary. But had we filmed it in the Atlantic Ocean, I would have been freaked out and most of the time, I'm either in the Pacific Ocean or the Atlantic Ocean. And I don't want to say I want to be a passenger, but Gulf of Mexico just felt like it was just a big bathtub or something.

42:40

Did I read that there was an actual shark they kind of came into the actual thing. Like while you were filming,

42:46

they literally were there was a shark rodeo. They call them which was a fishing contest one pier down from the pier from our hotel, and they only did that to piss us off. They were charming all the time. And we were so naive the they told the kids all his kids, don't worry about the sharks. We have scuba divers with dark guns, so you'll be fine. Well, if you know anything about sharks gonna take two seconds they're not gonna even have loaded that thing. Yeah, so that was that was scary. Keith Gordon on his little rubber boat. He had a little shark maybe a foot long that just you must have thought Keith's boat was the mother or something. He just he followed it around for a couple of days. And then I think he accidentally was coming into shore and he killed it by like going over the top of it. But the horrible story anyway.

43:36

Oh, I did read it as something kind of funny about the movie is in the beginning, like when Roy Brody's character, and they find the Orca kind of bitten and he's like, this is a shark and that was kind of like there was a little bit of movie trolling going on. Right so there was a movie called well jaws came out and then Orca. The movie came out in an orca. Orca kills a great white shark is sort of a swipe at JAWS

44:01

doe who was more dangerous. Yeah, that was Bo Derek was

44:04

no dad. I don't remember. I don't know if he's a worker.

44:07

yet. We've never been there. I don't remember the Orca you remember Bo? Derek. Yeah.

44:13

And then you guys re swipe back by having that debt or movie trolling and it's best right there right there.

44:21

That was cool that short that that Orca was uh, I don't know what they made it out of fiberglass. It wasn't a real dead animal. It was a it was fiberglass or something that they had put together. They did a nice job on that, too.

44:33

Pretty cool. And then director Jeannot Szwarc went on to do somewhere in time. Yeah, which is, you know, I'm from Michigan. So that's a Michigan classic because it was done at Mackinac Island with Christopher Reeve.

44:45

That's on every woman's top 10 list, I think. Yeah. And then I remember the score is beautiful. Just the score of that film is gorgeous.

44:53

And he also did Supergirl, which I'm sure you also remember the score from Supergirl?

44:57

Yes. And Santa Claus. He did Santa The cause of the movie to who was that Dudley Moore? Huge, huge Christmas movie. At least they still work. You still doing this thing?

45:08

So important question. Do you have any of the JAWS 2 topps trading cards as collector's items? I have all of them. Yeah, yeah. Signed.

45:19

They could be sorry, but they're not. I have. What do I have from that? I have my hat. I had the life jacket. But it was it was in a without a shelf in a garage of my house back east. And we had rain damage and thing got moldy odor, throw it out if I had those today, because, you know, every every good actor steals their costume. What else do they have ice and I have the Farrah Fawcett jigsaw puzzle with her famous poster picture that Roy Scheider gave me for my birthday, when we had a birthday gave me a birthday party when we shot right that's my memorabilia from that movie.

45:57

Oh the other question did did you ever before they removed it, go to the universal jaws ride?

46:02

Not on it because we were shooting the Martin TV show Martin Lawrence's show. We were shooting right near that. And I used to walk over and my boat was on that ride. They had that the red sizzler park there for a long time. But I never did the ride.

46:18

I did get to do it before they switched it to Harry Potter didn't realize like oh, it's actually based on JAWS 2 because he bites the cable which thinks oh yeah, oh that's funny. And then the other thing is that was funny about JAWS 2 is it's like open wide say ah is that's the big killer thing. Where's his smile You sent him?

46:40

Yeah, he was gonna tone it out.

46:45

Yeah, I know you keep in touch with a lot of the cast. Yeah. But went on to what I mean. You don't have to list up everyone but I didn't want to one person you were going to be a director

46:55

Keith Gordon. Keith Gordon is one of the hardest working directors every every great one hour drama on cable and Netflix all this up. It's all Keith Gordon. He's fantastic. And Dewsbury still acting she's married to Brad Fidel, Oscar winner for terminators music, and then went on to leave Lucille ball's daughter in her last series. That's that's how I got connected. Gigi vorgehen, who played Brooke, very popular, New York Times bestselling author with her husband, Gary small, Jeffrey Kramer, still, who played Hendrix, still producing a lot of stuff, a lot of TV shows, and a lot of us have veered away from acting. I still act on my plays occasionally in film or TV. But you know, even me, I'm mostly writing. David Elliot played Larry is a he works on the other side of the camera. He's he works on the crew building stuff. And he's been doing that for a long time. And then he ended up in the movie about Andy Kaufman, because they, again, I don't know what the real story was like. He'd already been retired from acting for a while, and somebody either didn't show up for work, or they needed somebody in the last minute and they said, anybody here have a SAG card and he went, and they gave him the role. So he got a job on the set of them. The movie, he was on the crew for a couple of years ago, Tom Dunlop who played Timmy was coming out to have dinner with me. He was coming out for business. And he said, Let's have dinner and I said, Sure. I said, You know, I was about to have dinner with Gigi. I haven't seen her in a while. Why don't I call her and the three of us will have dinner. He said, that sounds great. And I hung up the phone and I started thinking about it. And I started making phone call. And I called Jeff Kramer who called lorien Gary and I call this one who called that one. And within 48 hours we had the entire cast the entire living cast. I think with the exception of two people Joe swore Carl Gottlieb Sid sheinberg from Universal Lorraine, Gary Joe Mascolo, who played blend we all had dinner together in Westwood. And it was so much fun. It was so much fun and we picked up like we had all seen each other the day before. It was so much it was just great.

49:05

Did Lorraine go on and on about Jaws the Revenge? Never.

49:09

It never came up. Never. She's a great lady. I really like her. I really like her.

49:16

I'd say it's really it's neat. You guys all keep in touch and it's like a little Yeah, little club. No just to club.

49:22

Oh and Gary Springer. That's the other one I wanted to mention Gary Springer, who played Andy. He is one of the biggest publicists in in showbusiness. He took over his father john Springer's business. He represents films all over the world and my plays too. So yeah, yeah, we all keep in touch.

49:39

That's so cool. Well, this is so fun.

49:41

Oh yeah. Good. I had a good time. I don't know if I didn't think I had enough stories to even though I did okay.

49:48

Now you know, you'd agree that was a it's always fun kind of hearing about a movie, the point of view of someone who was actually there and you can read a bunch of stuff and there's always a top five things about Jaws, to get I mean, but but it's great to have your perspective. I really appreciate you hanging with me again.

50:05

I love it any time.

50:07

Oh right. How amazing was Billy Van Zandt, Jaws 2 everybody? I hope you loved it as much as I loved it. I love going deep on one topic that was a lot of fun. Check out JAWS 2 if you haven't seen it in a while. Check out Billy Van Zandt book getting the car jane adventure it's in the TV wasteland links of course to the book and all the JAWS podcast interviews I've done will be in the show notes. So get your JAWS on and enjoy all of those interviews on live from Detroit the Jeff Dwoskin show

As we near the end of the show it can only mean one thing you guessed it, it's time for another hashtag when the family of hashtags it hashtag around up Follow us on Twitter at hashtag roundup or download the free hashtag roundup app on iTunes or Google Play Store. Play along tweet with us. And one day one of your tweets may show up in a future episode of live from Detroit the Jeff Dwoskin show, fame and fortune await you. Today's hashtag brought to you by sci fi tags a weekly game on hashtag Roundup. The hashtag of course is shark related #AddSharksToSciFi, take anything's ifI and add a shark to it. The end result can only be hilarious so without further ado, here are some #AddSharksToSciFi tweets Jurassic shark, the left shark files, Close Encounters of the shark kind ,the shark Knight Rises, shark trek, Donny shark,go shark ship troopers, either some amazing #AddSharksToSciFi tweets for feeling inspired, head over to Twitter and tweet your own #AddSharksToSciFi tweets but here's some more for you for inspiration. Gil Gerard is Buck Rogers ,sharks on a plane, Jurassic SeaWorld, The Rocky Horror shark show ,2001 a shark Odyssey,the left shark strikes back, the shark Christo, the day the shark stood still and our final #AddSharksToSciFi tweets. Land Shark of the last Oh, all right. Those are some awesome #AddSharksToSciFi tweets as always, they'll be retweeted at Jeff Dwoskin show head over there retweet that they'll be in the show notes. So show him some love one day you'll be there too and you'll want somebody to retweet you so do unto others as you want them to tweet on to you little advice bomb for you just at the very last second of the podcast.

Can you believe it? We're at the end of the podcast episode 73 has come and gone can't believe it went so quick. I want to thank my special guests Billy Van Zandt for coming back and talking JAWS 2 with us. I am no longer afraid to get in the water. So thank you for that, Billy. I also want to thank all of you for coming back week after week. It means the world to me and I'll see you next time.

53:07

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Jeff Dwoskin show with your host Jeff Dwoskin. No Go repeat everything you've heard and sound like a genius. catch us online at the Jeff Dwoskin show.com or follow us on Twitter at Jeff Dwoskin show and we'll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai