Steven Spielberg Quietly Turned an Accidental On-Set Moment Into a Classic Horror Scene

6 days ago 14

Published Jun 27, 2026, 1:52 PM EDT

Mitchell Brown is a Wisconsin-based writer, film fanatic, and graduate of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who has written for various publications covering film analysis, reviews (both classic and contemporary), and movie news. He's also a screenwriter, having written multiple spec scripts. When he's not watching movies, writing movies, or writing about the films he's already seen...no, that about covers it.

Almost the entire runtime of Jaws is filled with iconic moments that are still remembered and replicated over 50 years later. When people think of famous scenes from the movie, they think of moments like Quint (Robert Shaw) and his Indianapolis speech, or the dolly zoom on Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) as the Kintner boy gets attacked, or...well, Quint again doing his other famous speech while eating what looks like saltine crackers, though no one knows for sure. Like a lot of old school Steven Spielberg movies, any scene in Jaws could be claimed as the best scene of the movie, and it's very unlikely anyone will refute it. With that in mind, there's one scene that goes overlooked—except by J.J. Abrams—that's possibly the most endearing moment of what's otherwise a thriller, and it happened on the day of filming.

Steven Spielberg Made Family Moments Real in 'Jaws'

Spielberg has a knack for incorporating little moments in his films that maybe don't progress the plot, but make the characters feel more fleshed out and likable. Things like the "Love you" classroom scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark or the water droplet experiment to explain Chaos Theory in Jurassic Park. These moments could be trimmed down or omitted entirely, and very little would be lost from the plot, but it would hurt the affability of the characters, which is often one of Spielberg's strong suits, especially in his blockbusters. There's no better depiction of this in Jaws (save for the "Comparing scars" scene) than a quiet moment between Brody and his son, Sean (Jay Mello).

If you haven't seen the movie in a while—which is forgivable, considering watching Jaws in the winter or spring would be like watching The Shining in the summer (i.e. the wrong way to watch either)—following the capture of the wrong shark and being castigated by the grieving Mrs. Kintner (Lee Fierro), Chief Brody sits at his dinner table and takes a moment to stew in his guilt. Except he isn't alone. His youngest son, Sean, sits with him and quietly imitates everything his dad is doing, much to Brody's amusement. The interaction ends with Sean kissing his dad on the cheek for Brody's simple reasoning of "Because I need it." It's a small, innocuous moment, but it's also a very sweet, meditative character interaction, and one of the few that Brody shares with either of his sons over the course of the movie. As it turns out, this moment wasn't originally intended to be in the film.

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Imitation Won Jay Mello the Role

This moment occurred thanks to the casting and behavior of the young actor. Mello had a tendency to imitate people, which, according to an interview last year with People, got him the role. "I had a habit of copying people," said Mello, "So, when Steven Spielberg was interviewing them, I was copying him as he gave direction. When the interview was over, he said, 'You boys can go, we’re done. But the youngest can stay.'" This habit also caught the attention of the film's leading man, and Mello continued by saying the scene came out of them hanging out on set, "That wasn’t even written in the script," he says, "We were taking a break from a scene where I was sitting in a swing set, and we came inside and Roy Scheider was making funny faces, and I was trying to mimic him. He called Steven Spielberg in and said, 'We’ve got to add this to the film. This is going to be something.'"

The way this scene came about seems to fit perfectly with the fortuitous way a lot of iconic moments worked themselves out as a result of the infamous production nightmare that was the Jaws production schedule. Like the mechanical shark not working, the shooting star, and the on-set hostility that elevated the dynamic between Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss (which Spielberg has since refuted during his recent appearance on The Rewatchables podcast). Jaws is a great movie, even without the context of how it was made, but hearing stories like these adds to the mystique and the "lightning in a bottle" aura that makes it a classic.