John Williams the prankster

Jaws' theme is one of the most iconic cinematic melodies of all time, and its distinctness can be attributed to the fact that it only has two notes. Still, Steven Spielberg was not very impressed to begin with.

After asking legendary movie composer John Williams to create a theme for the film, the music maestro turned in the famous tune, though Steven thought he was pulling his leg due to its simplicity.

He said: “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.”

However, John explained to the director that its simple nature was intentional, and argued that it would add to the tension of eventually seeing the shark.

He said: “You could alter the speed of this ostinato; any kind of alteration, very slow and very fast, very soft and very loud. There were opportunities to advertise the shark with music. There are also opportunities when we don’t have the music and, the audience has a sense of the absence. They sense the absence because they don’t hear the ‘dun dun’ because you’ve conditioned them to do that.”