Jaws Exhibit at Academy Museum

On Sunday Mikhail took me to the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures given they were running an exhibit on Jaws in honor of it’s 50th anniversary. It was pretty amazing.

We originally signed up for the tour, but it was a bit too packed and moved too fast for our taste, so we lingered back and really dug in on all the different artefacts on display.

But first, we tried our hand at the severed arm sand dune crab scene with pretty good results.

Made me think was Sam Raimi quoting this scene in Evil Dead 2, maybe? This exhibit had a few built-in, hands-on moments where you can play with some scene from the film in real life, like the sand dune arm scene. The other one that was fun was the Dolly Zoom shot that tried to re-create using your phone. As Mikhail said, a little BYOD experimental fun in the museum.

Mikhail and I gave it a go and while the final result is underwhelming, the idea was fun.

But the real joy of this exhibit was all the different props and details that I totally geek out on, like the 1971 model of the IBM Selectric II that the Brody used to type out SHARK ATTACK:

Or the Jaws t-shirt silkscreened for the crew … I want one!

And then you got a look at the underwater camera casing that they used to film the shots with the cage.

Behind the actual casing they had a blown-up photo of them using the camera, and I have to say the image of the shark behind them is absolutely horrifying.

Mikhail scratched the blackboard to get my attention, which worked!

But details like the concept illustrations by Joe Alves that were used to sell the concept to the execs are pretty amazing.

I also liked learning that the artist for the shark on the poster got his inspiration from taxidermied sharks at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC. That’s were all the great artists go 🙂

But I kinda wanted a Jaws shirt like the one the crew had made for them, or with this shark from the original production office sign they had on display:

You can see how each item in this exhibit, and there were over 200, becomes a rabbit hole/fetish all its own if you are of a certain generation and this film helped define the world for you. That is certainly the case for me, in fact Michael Branson Smith and I did a Family Pictures Podcast episode on Jaws as part of our Hot Summer 70s Family Horror series that digs into just how impactful this film was for children of the 1970s—and this exhibit really brought that point home.

MBS and I talked a lot about the making of the shark in that episode, and it was pretty cool to see the illustrations of the original 25’ model of Bruce (on the back wall) as well as to play with the hydraulics in this miniaturized version that reproduces the mechanical logic of the original:

I was thrilled to see an original Killer Shark arcade cabinet on display. Unfortunately we couldn’t play it (in my world you would have), but that is a special game that I remember playing at Nunley’s in the late 70s.

The interface/control panel was a harpoon gun and it was very much a transitional electro-magnetic game to the more first-person shoots that would dominate the video game world just a few years later.

I also appreciate the shout-0ut to Academy Award-winning editor Verna Fields. They had some great video of her editing the film and talking to Spielberg, and it is pretty apparent that she was not only amazing at a lost art form of physical film editing, but that she knew that Spielberg’s film was going to be amazing. it was clear she was a huge advocate for his work as an artist—and that is cool to see.

Boy was I glad Mikhail and I slowed down and smelled the roses with this exhibit:

One of the coolest details for me were the blueprints for the building of Quint’s Shack.

This was one of the few building the created from scratch, and this part of the exhibit had various design sketches, the shark jaws on the wall, as well as the metal weathervane that was hung on his shack. What an amazing set, it also became apparent to me from this exhibit that production designer Joe Alves was an absolute GOAT. All those details are very much part of his vision of the space of the film.

I also found and reclaimed one of the lost stars of the film, Mikhail!

I also appreciated the prop yellow barrels that played such a huge role standing-in for the shark.

There was also a reproduction of the deck of the Orcaa that highlighted a bunch of artifacts from that moment in the film. There is the machete, the harpoon, and even some re-written pages from that great scene when Shaw is in the pulpit reminding Hooper that he is smart enough to know when he is wrong 🙂

The scale of this exhibit is about what they graffitied on the “Welcome to Amity” billboard.

It was an absolutely amazing experience for a Jaws fan like myself, and I am sure there are others out there who might lose their s**t entirely 🙂 There are a lot more details that I didn;t even get to, like the gallery of posters from around the world that has an amazing instance from Ghana during the 90s.

Or the 1976 Mad Magazine cover that I definitely remember seeing in our local candy store, newsstand.

The cultural impact of this squalus is legend, and the exhibit does a pretty good job paying that reality some very particular and detailed love if you take the time to dig in. It’s worth it. I actually put over 100 photos with even more detail in this album for anyone who might be interested in storyboards, marine maps, and more.