Jaws Exhibition Opens at Academy Museum: A Blockbuster Tribute

The summer blockbuster film “changed popular culture in ways that are still reverberating today”

When it was released in the summer of 1975, Jaws established the new norm of what a blockbuster movie should be, and fifty years later, it remains a cultural touchstone across generations of moviegoers. Steven Spielberg’s shark-infested classic is the subject of a massive new exhibition newly opened at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. Jaws: The Exhibition is “The first large-scale exhibition dedicated to a single motion picture,” museum president Amy Homma said at a preview. “Jaws is the summer blockbuster that changed popular culture in ways that are still reverberating today.”

Credit: Photo by Chris Nichols

Credit: Photo by Chris Nichols

While some disaster movies like The Towering Inferno and Earthquake had made waves, the previous year’s crop of films saw family comedies like Benji, Herbie Rides Again and Young Frankenstein topping the charts. Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles was the highest-grossing movie of 1974. Jaws was a whole new kind of cinematic experience, only to be topped by Star Wars a couple of years later. Today, studios count on their summer tentpoles to drive much of the year’s business.

Credit: Photo by Chris Nichols

Credit: Photo by Chris Nichols

The star of the new exhibition was already waiting in the wings of the museum. The 25’ fiberglass shark hanging above the entrance, the largest single object in the museum’s collection, was saved from a junkyard and restored in 2021. The extraordinary display of artifacts includes iconic elements from the movie, including sections of the Orca boat, the costumes Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Shaw and Roy Scheider wore and the shark’s dorsal fin with the rig that allowed it to swim into frame, terrifying audiences whenever it appeared onscreen. The big shark, Homma says, has become the “mascot” of the museum.

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Credit: Photo by Chris Nichols

Visitors can use a rig to recreate the famous dolly zoom shot of Chief Brody on the beach, learn notes from the iconic John Williams score on the keyboard, and even try their hand at piloting a miniature of the mechanical shark.

Credit: Photo by Chris Nichols

The props and costumes in the show, which runs through next July, were sourced from the archives of collectors all over the world who “knew something I didn’t know,” Steven Spielberg said at the museum. “When we shot the opening scene of Chrissie Watkins being taken by the shark, we had a buoy floating in the water. How did anybody know to take the buoy and take it home and sit on it for fifty years? And then loan it to the Academy. How could they know?”

Credit: Photo by Chris Nichols

Spielberg recalled the travails of filming on the open water of the Atlantic Ocean with a finicky mechanical shark. “It was a real exercise in hubris and futility. I thought my career was virtually over halfway through production,” the legendary director said. “Everbody was saying to me ‘you are never going to get hired again. This film is way over budget and way over schedule and you are a real liability as a director.’ I thought I’d better give this my all because I’m not working in the industry again after they see the movie. Fortune smiled on us.”

Credit: Photo by Chris Nichols