Issue 95: A Bulletin for Big Ideas and Better Business

OPINION/ Creativity

The Fish was Broken

Brian Collins is co-founder and chief creative officer of COLLINS, a transformation design company in San Francisco and New York City.

💬 Brian Collins

In the spring of 1974, a young man set out to direct a movie about a shark. The movie’s giant, expensive, mechanical shark promptly disintegrated the moment it hit the saltwater on Cape Cod.

So there he was: Steven Spielberg, 27, trying to direct a horror movie about a monster shark that refused to show up for work.

This was a nightmare, since the entire film hinged on its presence.

The script? In flux. That’s Hollywood for “no one likes it.” Meanwhile, Bruce – the name of said robot fish – went to the bottom of the bay, useless and sulking.

Spielberg, apparently unfazed by the collapse of his production, did something radical.

He removed the shark from his movie.

Instead of showing the fish, he showed nothing. A fin here. A shadow there. With music from John Williams that has kept people out of the water for half a century. And all of that, as it turns out, was terrifying.

The audience did the work themselves. They imagined the underwater monster, which is always worse than actually meeting it.

Spielberg, a student of Hitchcock movies, knew this. That knowledge saved his film.

Now, if AI had been around in 1974 – some eager intern might have suggested, “Can’t we just generate a shark? Simulate a shark? Rewrite the script with less shark?”

And that? That would have been a mistake. An efficient, responsible mistake.

Because what Spielberg learned, accidentally and under duress, is that catastrophe can lend itself to greatness. The absence of something can be more powerful than its presence. Especially if what’s missing went haywire.

The absence of something can be more powerful than its presence.

This is one lesson, by the way, AI will never truly grasp. AI is successful because it seeks to prevent accidents. To optimize. To protect you from the glorious mess and pain that real invention demands. It will quickly offer you the safe middle. Something smooth, reasonable and familiar.

The shark refused to cooperate. And because of that, “Jaws” works. It became the first blockbuster. And it terrified the world without ever really showing the thing it promised to show.

Well, except at the very end. (And holy shit.)

Otherwise, a triumph of forced restraint.

Now, this is the part where people start talking about “happy accidents,” as if disaster is just a fussy collaborator. This was no happy accident. It was a catastrophe. Careers were at risk. Spielberg’s genius came from being too broke and too pressed for time to fix it.

Thus, imagination. Which is why, whenever something goes wrong, I try to remember: There might be something good in this.

Whenever something goes wrong, I try to remember: There might be something good in this.

Yes, the fish was broken.

And thank God for that.

We asked Brian a couple of questions on how he personally relates to creativity, here’s what he had to say…

TBOC: What is your Creative North Star?

BC: “My North Star? It is whatever refuses to leave me the hell alone. I never quite trust inspiration that arrives at my front door wearing a glowing halo and Dior gown. I only trust what shows up screaming, outside my apartment on 62nd Street – usually at 2:30 a.m. – and says, “No. You’re not done, yet. Keep working.”

A real North Star ain’t poetic. It is irritating. It nags. Pushes. Demands. It forces me to face the thing I’d really rather avoid facing. Which, frankly, is the only thing worth doing. It asks me to look at the parts of my work and my life I’d much prefer to … sidestep. But it keeps me there just long enough to start to do something about it.

My North Star is a steady pull toward what really matters, whether I want to deal with it or not.”

TBOC: What has inspired you lately?

BC: My youngest nephew recently appeared at my house on Cape Cod in a cardboard crown clearly engineered with tape, optimism, and no adult supervision. Not a single dreary “mood board” was consulted. No humorless Purpose Police had to approve it. The entire enterprise existed solely because of his one decision: 

I am royalty today. He insisted on wearing it to get ice cream with me.

His whole display has been echoing in my head ever since. A small reminder that imagination does not wait for your permission. It asks only for some cardboard, crayons and the confidence to parade down the street in a dazzling homemade coronet while everyone else pretends not to envy you.

Look – we live in a time when self-esteem seems to be hoarded by people who’ve done very little to deserve it. Especially in the face of the tidal waves of AI slop they are dragging ashore. Those of us with actual imaginations have to start showing up more often—more loud, more visible and less embarrassed—before all the cardboard is gone. And we have to move fast.