I had never written a screenplay, but I had asked for and been given permission to write the first couple of drafts of Jaws. At our first meeting, after an exchange of pleasantries, Richard Zanuck said to me (I’m paraphrasing here), “This picture is going to be an A-to-Z adventure story, a straight line, so we want you to take out all the romance stuff, all the Mafia stuff, all the stuff that’ll just be distracting.” You who have never read Jaws, you who have only seen the movie, I can see you frowning, I can hear you saying to yourself, “Romance? Mafia? What’s he talking about? Where’s all
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