MOVIE NEWS – When John Williams first played the theme song to Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, the director thought he was teasing him.

When it comes to iconic movie themes, the theme tune to Steven Spielberg‘s Jaws is probably one of the most iconic pieces of music in film history. While this may be true today, when the director first heard John Williams’ piece, he thought it was a joke. In fact, the simplicity of the world-famous duh-duh, duh-duh, which has been incorporated into many parodies over the years, seems to contradict the film’s seriousness, but it is now undeniable that the tune was a perfectly timed composition.

Jaws became one of the first summer blockbusters in film history, bringing equal parts terror and horror to moviegoers in 1975 and ensuring that a generation of movie fans had a little doubt about swimming in the sea. This was one of the first times Spielberg worked with John Williams, but it was far from the last, as the pair worked together on many more blockbusters over the decades.

Spielberg recently recalled the first time John Williams pitched the idea for the theme song to Jaws, and it didn’t immediately go down well with the director, who genuinely thought Williams was “putting him on.”

Williams wasn’t joking, however, and despite the simple structure and long build-up, the tune became one of the most iconic things in the film.

As THR reported, this is how Spielberg remembers the events:

“I expected to hear something kind of weird and melodic, something tonal, but eerie; something of another world, almost like outer space under the water. And what he played me instead, with two fingers on the lower keys, was ‘dun dun, dun dun, dun dun.’ And at first, I began to laugh. He had a great sense of humor, and I thought he was putting me on.”

In the years since, Spielberg has acknowledged that John Williams’ music became the backbone of Jaws, the two voices playing every time the residents of Amity Island were threatened with attack. Even those who haven’t seen the film know the music, and every time it plays, it immediately conjures up images of the monster great white sharks ploughing through the sea. Not only did Jaws contribute to the success of the film, but the collaboration was also the starting point for one of the longest composer-director relationships in film history, followed by such masterpieces as Indiana Jones and the now-iconic soundtracks of Jurassic Park…

Source: The Hollywood Reporter