User Reviews

This short allows Keith Gordon to talk entertainingly about Jaws 2 as his first film experience. He was in the original cast assembled by director John Hancock who was subsequently fired, and Gordon says he was not fired like so many of the actors since his original part was so small. However the new writer Carl Gottlieb and new director Jeannot Szwarc allowed him to improvise and create a stronger impression. He talks about the sex and clique pitfalls of working in a cast of teenagers, the hazardous and unpredictability of pre-CGI special effects, and how working in the sea on a shark film made him wonder about whether there were going to be real sharks in the water to contend with.

Jaws 2: A Portrait by Actor Keith Gordon (2001)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Very good ten-minute featurette is basically just an interview with Keith Gordon who started his career as one of the teens in JAWS 2. The actor talks about how he ended up with a role and also says that many of the kids were fired after the original director quit the movie and a new screenplay was written. Gordon says he believes he wasn't fired because his part in the original screenplay was just so small that people forgot about him. From here Gordon talks about how the production went including stories about sex and groups within the teen cast, how he was 16-years-old when they started shooting and he also talks about how so many of the cast went onto do bigger things. Gordon also tells a funny story about his scene in the movie where he's standing on the boat and the shark comes up from behind and hits him. He talks about how scared he was because no matter how much preparations they had stuff was still going wrong all the time. Fans of the film will certainly get a kick out of this featurette, which is fun from start to finish.