The Midget Stuntman In Jaws You Never Got To See

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The character Hooper in Jaws was originally meant to die during the course of the movie just like he did in the books the movie was based on, however, a rogue shark creating some undeniably bitchin’ footage caused a last second re-write that saved the character. Also a midget was involved.

To explain before you think we’ve just started to post buzzwords in an attempt to gain clicks. For the scene in which Hooper hops into a shark cage and attempts to stab Jaws in the face with a pointy stick, for science, Spielberg wanted to use actual footage of a shark, since their notoriously shitty robot shark they used to film with just couldn’t do what they needed it to.

However, since Robo Jaws was roughly 25 feet long, and most great whites clock in at around 16 feet, the crew needed a way of making an actual shark look bigger. To accomplish this they built a smaller, virtually identical shark cage into which they planned to put a midget stuntman in full scuba diving gear. This would create the illusion of the real great white being much larger than it was and allow them to use footage of it alongside footage of  Robo Jaws without it seeming like Jaws was magically changing size between shots. Even though that would have made the movie like 30 times better in our opinion.

The story goes that the crew got as far as creating the smaller cage and even found a midget stuntman willing to leap into the water in a shark cage made on budget thinner than a freshman’s wallet. Seconds before the heroic and no doubt handsome stuntman was about the jump into the cage and shoot the scene however, the real shark tore apart the mini, yet supposedly shark-proof cage like it was made of silly string and lies.

For some reason, the stuntman then refused to go back into the water to shoot the rest of the scene, leaving the crew with awesome footage of a great white shark tearing apart a shark cage, but a huge problem. Upon seeing the footage, the crew knew they had to put it into the film but since the script called for Hooper to be killed and there was clearly no one in the cage when the shark started making out with it, they were left between a shark shaped rock and a hard place.

Rather than lose the footage, the script was altered so that Hooper escaped from the cage before it was destroyed, in the process saving the character from death and giving the audience a treat in the form of some of the most visceral and striking footage of a great white ever captured on film.

Sadly, we have no idea what became of the midget stuntman after his brush with death, but we hope it was something fitting of a man with the balls to jump into the water with a 16 foot long great white shark. Perhaps he invented a solid gold blowjob machine or just spent the rest of his life taunting sharks in Sea World, we guess we’ll never know.