Jaws

This was only Spielberg's second theatrical movie, and it was the one that made him world famous. The prevailing wisdom before 1975 was that people would not come in great numbers to see a movie in summertime, because they were busy entertaining themselves in other ways, but the studio took a chance and released Jaws in summer, and broke all box office records; that was the beginning of the tradition of the summer blockbuster. The TV reporter whom we see for a few seconds reporting from the beach on July 4 is played by Peter Benchley, the author of the novel on which the movie is based; he was the grandson of the great humorist Robert Benchley. When this movie was made, the story of what had happened to the U.S.S. Indianapolis had only been recently declassified.

I have not been back in the ocean since I was 13 years old because of this movie. I just turned 50 this year.