THE reunion of some of the major participants in the film adaptation of Peter Benchley's Bermuda-based novel at the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute this weekend has brought back memories, at least to more mature residents, of that interesting summer of 1976, when Hollywood invaded Bermuda and there were daily reports of sightings of stars Robert Shaw, Jacqueline Bisset and Nick Nolte.

Mr. Benchley, leading lady Ms Bisset, director Peter Yates, and Oscar-winning actor Louis Gossett, Jr. are here this weekend, but they might agree that the component of a film that is most often overlooked is the screenplay.

Inside we speak to screenwriter Tracy Keenan Wynn. Before working on , Mr. Wynn, the winner of two Emmys, had written such highly acclaimed films as , and .

Since then he has written and produced many films for television. He lives in Aspen, where he writes, consults on screenplays and lectures on screen-writing to college students.

He is the son of the late eminent character actor Keenan Wynn, and grandson of vaudevillian and actor Ed Wynn

Q: When were you first approached to write the screenplay?

A: I don't remember exactly, probably late 1975 or early 1976. They had a working draft that Peter Benchley had written, and, of course, he was very well known because of the success of . So, it was going to be a big studio picture, there was no doubt about that. Peter writes very cinematically in certain ways, and that's why books are always difficult to translate to the screen, because the book is in the mind of the reader, and it is hard to translate what the reader perceives from the book, especially with interior monologues, thought processes and things of that sort. There was a lot in the book, much more than you could put in a movie. Today, I thinkwould make a very good TV movie of two or three parts. Easily, in which case you could capture more of the book. Screenplays are generally about 110 pages or so, but you try to turn a 400-page novel into a 110-page screenplay, you have to really cut into it very quickly, and get to the essence of each character and move on. Well, I used quite a bit. Basically, made it a little more cinematic, and I think we bifurcated the dives, so that there would be two set pieces under water, which is basically what the movie is. There's a lot of sub-plots and side-bars, but the bottom line is that it's an underwater movie.

Of course, this is way before digital manipulation of special effects. Today, much more could be done in that regard. I think they could talk to each other underwater, but when you have forty people underwater doing a shot, you had better know what you are doing.

Q: Did you not prescribe large goggles so we could see Jacqueline Bisset's beautiful face?

A: That's important, and one of the reasons that race car movies never worked, because Paul Newman looked like everyone else with a helmet and goggles on. There had to be an announcer to tell you who you were looking at. "Water" movies are very problematic anyway, very tough, and underwater is even worse. Changes of light are very difficult to cross-cut.

Yes. I had a lot of experience, even at that point, with different types of film, but this was probably the most commercial, studio film I have ever worked on, in that it was a well-known adventure / thriller. It was plot-heavy, and not usually the sort of film I would work on. I am more interested in character-driven films. I tried to balance the character with so much of the plot, because the plot was really what carried the movie. The trick for me was to focus on the character relationships as much as possible.

I think I started before that, but it may have carried over to the point when the casting had started. As I recall, they had done some shots already, not with the principals, but a lot of the second unit stuff. But they were on their way, it was that big a picture. So, some of it was already etched in stone, and I couldn't change certain things.

I certainly didn't write with any of the cast in mind. It's possible that as we got into the actual first unit shoots, that I may have worked on dialogue polish for certain people. Like Louis Gossett, who was playing Henri Cloche, and we didn't want the French accent to be too heavy. I always enjoy a movie like this, because it's a 'movie-movie', no one's trying to save the world.

Q: Having written the screenplay, what did you think of the final product on the screen?

A: Well, I was insecure about it, I must say. I didn't think people would "buy" it. It's so hard when you have written something, until you actually sit in with an audience. Of course, the audience loved it, and I felt a lot better after that. It's like opening-night jitters for a stage actor.

You're just not sure until you've done it. Once I got the audience feedback, it seemed to come together just fine, and it was wildly popular ? the audience took it just the right way, with a little bit of humour.

Q: And Miss Bisset looked quite entrancing coming out of the water, don't you think?

A: That may have been something they did right on the set, because I didn't write anything that looked like a wet T-shirt contest. (Laughs). It's not something I put in specifically, because probably she would have challenged it. The way it worked out was fine. She was in a B-movie with Tony Franciosa, a surfer movie, believe it or not, right at the start of her career, when I was an intern at Twentieth-Century Fox, where they made that movie.

Yes, was a watershed movie. You can see the strings, where people end up doing a series of films together. I was supposed to, but I ended up getting married in Sweden. I would love to have come down, but I had other priorities in my life! The film was essentially done then, it would have just been a vacation.

I got along with Peter Guber during the writing of it, but at that point, he was just making his break to becoming an A-list producer. He's not my style, basically, in terms of socialising, and that may be another reason why I headed for Europe rather than Bermuda, but we got along fine professionally.

Q: A minor footnote to cinematic history ? is it true you introduced Roy Scheider to Steven Spielberg, who then cast him as the Sheriff in his adaptation of Peter Benchley's ?

A: That's right, and it was so funny, because we were at a party, and I am a big fan of both of them, and I remember Roy and I were commiserating about poor Steve, who was going to be doing this movie and he had this big mechanical shark that wasn't working.

We were saying that the poor guy was going to be working on water, which is difficult enough, and his shark 's not working. (Laughs loudly) What did I know?

Steve pulled it off, as he has with everything he has ever done. From his first movie, a TV movie called with Dennis Weaver, which was just a great job. He knows how to keep a film going, even a film like, which was heavy on character and associations. That movie moved along very quickly.

Q: Back to . In general, were you pleased to be associated with it? Did it turn out as you hoped?

A: If I was a film critic, I would judge movies on how successful they are in achieving their goal. This movie achieved it's goal, which was to entertain. Everyone was highly professional, but it wasn't meant to be . No one had delusions of grandeur in that regard. It was simply an entertainment, and as such, it fits in that genre very well. it was a good experience.