Jaws : The Exhibition

Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, Los Angeles

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Robert Shaw as Quint during production of Jaws (1975)
Courtesy of Universal Studios Licensing LLC

Walking around the West Hollywood district of Los Angeles, one could easily be mistaken into thinking that Jaws had only just opened. With its posters and banners adorning nearly every lamppost and billboard it appears as though as much marketing spend is being splashed on Spielberg’s classic picture as on the latest smash hit of 2025.

Today’s razzamatazz however is not so much about the film as about the the Academy’s exhibition that is all about the movie. For the first time in its history, the Academy Museum is mounting an an event centred solely on one motion picture in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the film’s opening.

(When the movie celebrated its "40th anniversary", I interviewed Carl Gottlieb) 

50 years is a long time to look back on. If one were to rewind 50 years back from 1975, back in 1925 Tinseltown was still producing silent movies. Think of Harold Lloyd in Safety Last (1924) and then remember that the first truly celebrated ‘talkie’ The Jazz Singer was not to be released until 1927 and you start to get some context of the significance of this 50-year milestone. 

Director Steven Spielberg was not widely known outside of Hollywood in 1973/74, when the movie was first conceived. It was a combination of his vision and passion to translate Peter Benchley’s bestselling novel, together with the visionary confidence of hardened producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown who had secured the movie rights even before the book was published, that saw the movie take shape.

Jaws (1975) production clapperboard
Courtesy of The Amblin Hearth Archive

As a piece of cinema, Jaws is close to perfection. With a screenplay penned by Carl Gottlieb and Benchley himself - both men have neat cameo appearances in the movie too - the script is a beautifully crafted examination of the human condition, set to a backdrop of thrilling tension and sometimes horror. That the odd moment of perfectly timed humour is also added to the mix only adds to the movie’s pedigree. If Hamlet is considered to be perhaps the finest stage play ever written, then Jaws ranks alongside Shakespeare's masterpiece as its cinematic equivalent. 

As a pre-teenager (just) I queued excitedly in December 1975 to catch the movie on its Boxing Day release in the UK. Since then (and latterly with my sons) I have watched it countless times in the cinema, in IMAX, as well as on smaller screens too. So my sense of anticipation, expectation and excitement on entering the Academy’s 4th floor exhibition hall this week was as pumped as Richard Dreyfuss’s Matt Hooper on catching his first glimpse of the shark in the movie.

I was not disappointed. My expectations were not just exceeded, rather, and much like the shark’s final moments in the movie, they were blown to bits. In a stunning array of exhibits, the Academy’s curating team have deconstructed the movie, virtually scene-by-scene, explaining both the story’s narrative and the technological accomplishments of Spielberg and his gifted cast and crew.

Concept illustration by production designer Joe Alves
Courtesy of Universal Studios Licensing LLC

The exhibition’s displays are both imaginative and informative. Aside from a breathtaking presentation of props and costumes that have been wonderfully preserved over the last 5 decades, a number of ingeniously presented looping projections present some of the movie’s key moments. Chrissie’s death, the attack on Alex Kintner (which, through Spielberg’s vision, brilliantly included so much of the Mayor’s despicable behaviour in the few minutes immediately prior to the young lad’s demise), Quint’s USS Indianapolis monologue are all there to be savoured. There is even “that” scene with Ben Gardner’s severed head, looping in a discrete corner of the exhibition hall -  complete with the prosthetic head that was created for the moment displayed alongside!

Director Steven Spielberg and editor Verna Fields during production of Jaws (1975)
Courtesy of Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

The explanatory texts that accompany each exhibit are fascinating. Who even knew that that head scene was only added to the picture after the first preview audiences had seen an early cut? It was on seeing the muted audience reaction that Spielberg knew he needed to add a “jump-scare”. With principal photography having long concluded – and the budget exhausted - the scene was shot in the backyard swimming pool belonging to Verna Fields, the movie’s Oscar winning editor. Not only that, Speilberg funded the costs of that scene out of his own pocket!

The exhibition has some interactive moments too: explore the pneumatic workings of Bruce the shark; try your hand at that famous dolly-zoom shot before going on to see (carefully preserved within a clear viewing case) the massive Panavision anamorphic zoom lens that Director of Photography Bill Butler actually used to create that shot.

Roy Scheider as Martin Brody and Lorraine Gary as Ellen Brody in a scene from Jaws (1975)
Courtesy of Universal Studios Licensing LLC

Cast and crew during production of Jaws (1975)
Courtesy of Universal Studios Licensing LLC

The details on display at the exhibition ensure that it will appeal equally to students of cinema as well as to fans of the movie, or of Spielberg's work, or just those who enjoy a good story that is brilliantly told.   

Exhibitions of this outstanding quality and detail are as rare as an attack by a great white shark off the New England coast. If you are able to find your way to LA in the next nine months, then a trip to the Academy Museum is essential. 

Jaws : The Exhibition. It's the head, the tail, the whole damn thing.

Runs until 26th July 2026

Jaws: The Exhibition is organized by Senior Exhibitions Curator Jenny He and Assistant Curator Emily Rauber Rodriguez, with Curatorial Assistant Alexandra James Salichs

My thanks to the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures for allowing me to access their image collection 

Director Steven Spielberg, kneeling with camera, during production of Jaws (1975). Others unidentified
Courtesy of Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

The Shark Is Broken - Review

Ambassadors Theatre, London

****

Written by Ian Shaw and Joseph Nixon

Directed by Guy Masterson

Ian Shaw, Liam Murray Scott and Demetri Goritsas

I declare an interest. I saw Steven Spielberg's movie Jaws (for what was to be the first of countless times) in December 1975 on the day that it opened across the UK. I have read Peter Benchley’s book, devoured The Jaws Log by Carl Gottlieb (the movie’s screenwriter and whose book described the story’s journey from page to screen) and in 2015 I interviewed Gottlieb for this website. I know my Jaws...

The Shark Is Broken is an intriguing conceit. Actors have famously commented that while shooting a movie, most of the time is spent sat around doing nothing, waiting for the shot to be ready with only a fraction of time being spent in front of the camera. So it is that Ian Shaw, a son of Jaws star Robert Shaw (who played shark-hunter and fisherman Quint in the movie) together with Joseph Nixon, has created this one-act play set entirely on board Quint’s fishing boat Orca and featuring the interactions between the three actors who played the movie’s protagonists Roy Scheider (Police Chief Brody), Richard Dreyfuss (Oceanographer Matt Hooper) and Robert Shaw.

The show's dramatic structure works well, as with reference to his father’s diaries and stories, Gottlieb’s book and masses of additional research, Shaw Junior has constructed a very plausible narrative. Add to this the uncanny resemblance that Shaw bears to his illustrious dad and the evening is complete. To be fair Demetri Goritsas (Scheider) and Liam Murray Scott (Dreyfuss) both put in fine turns, Goritsas in particular, but – unlike Spielberg’s original, where the narrative was driven in equal measure by the trio – it is Shaw who delivers the piece's core energy, offering us a glimpse into his father's literary genius as well as a suggested dependance on the bottle. There's humour a'plenty too, with Shaw cleverly capturing his father's maverick brilliance.

Guy Masterson directs with an economic precision, the whole work being elegantly presented on Duncan Henderson’s cutaway Orca and Nina Dunn’s ingenious projections cleverly capturing the roll and sway of the New England seaboard. If there are criticisms, it is that some of Shaw & Nixon’s gags about the future are a tad too blatant, and Scott’s take on Dreyfuss’ anxieties errs too often towards a slapstick Leo Bloom – mental health should be no laughing matter.

But this is fine imaginative writing, and as the evening unwinds we see Shaw progressing through his development of Quint’s speech about the torpedoing of the USS Indianapolis, and the ensuing shark attack that befell those sailors who survived the sinking. While Jaws is a work of fiction, the tragedy of the Indianapolis is true – and as Ian Shaw recreates his father’s masterful telling of that terrible tale, he holds the audience spellbound.

Click here to read my interview with Jaws screenwriter Carl Gottlieb

Runs until 15th January 2022

Photo credit: Helen Maybanks

July 4th - On Jaws 40th Anniversary - I speak to Carl Gottlieb

"You're gonna need a bigger boat..."

On the Fourth of July 2015, some 40 years after Steven Spielberg's summer blockbuster Jaws exploded into the world's cinema and psyche, it's worth recalling a line in the movie spoken by Amity City's odious mayor Larry Vaughan (played by Murray Hamilton) to Roy Scheider's police chief Brody, as the mayor summed-up the impact of a shark attack on his seaside town's summer season.

 "I don't think you appreciate the gut reaction people have to these things.., it’s all psychological....

You yell 'Barracuda!' everybody says 'Huh? What?'  

You yell 'Shark!,' we've got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July."

Memorable words penned by gifted American screenwriter Carl Gottlieb, who in one movie gave the world both a fabulously structured fable and some of the most oft-repeated movie-quotes of all time. 

Gottlieb was kind enough to take some time to talk with me and as an LA late bird, his preferred local time to speak on the phone is around 1am. So it was that early on a foggy London morning I found myself speaking with the man whose Twitter name says it all: @JawsWriter

JB:    Tell me about the genesis of your Jaws screenplay?

CG:    I had read the book and had a good understanding of the story and started working on the script maybe three weeks before principal photography commenced.

I kept writing just ahead of the schedule. The text is mine and although the structure of the movie is mine and Steven's, he is the author of the film.

I don’t think anybody had any notion of Jaws' global impact. In telling a story that was to be plagued with mechanical difficulties, we were trying to get through it un-damaged and be faithful to the idea of making a good movie. That’s all we wanted to do.

JB:    Peter Benchley's novel included a passionate love affair that develops between oceanographer Hooper and Ellen, Brody's wife. Why did you excise that from the film?

CG:    I made the decision to remove the love interest. When we started filming, the love interest was still in there. But it quickly became apparent from the performances that the idea for thee affair was all wrong and misplaced the actors' motivation. The three principals are so likeable and attractive, I couldn’t imagine Hooper cuckolding Brody. So we said it muddies the waters, lose it. And we did.

JB:    Over the years, many observers have commented that the movie's plot marginalises women. Was this an intentional thread?

CG:    1974 was to see the first real wave of American feminism, with consciousness of the issue only starting to emerge. Neither Zanuck and Brown (Jaws' producers) nor the studio had their consciousness raised and it was only myself and Richard Dreyfuss (who played Hooper) that had mixed in the same circles in which this new paradigm was emerging.

In our storytelling it was men against the sea and to be fair, there isn't a strong woman in the novel. It wasn’t in our minds at the time, we were making an adventure movie. Three guys - and that’s how it appeared. Post-analysis has asked: where was the feminine angle? In 1974 that was a long way from being anyone's concern. 

JB:    You just referenced Jaws as an adventure film, yet increasingly it has been badged as horror, with the American Film Institute including it amongst their Top 100 Horror Movies. What genre would you apply to it?

CG:    Its true genre was probably horror. In 1974, no mainstream studio made horror per se except the rarely scheduled items such as The Exorcist or Psycho. The horror genre was widely considered exploitative.

JB:    The quality of writing and performance, make it very much a drama movie.

CG:    (laughing) Moby Dick meets Enemy Of The People!

JB:    Jaws is widely credited as being a seminal and influential piece of cinema. Do you ever see your work in Jaws being reflected elsewhere?

CG:    I think so, yes. I was simply following the basic principles of good story telling as I understood them, but remember, my background was in comedy. I knew the value of humor both in adding dimension to a character and in setting the audience up for a scream or a shock.

The wise cracking action hero has kind of become the template but that’s not to do with me. Burt Lancaster did a wonderful send up in 1952 with The Crimson Pirate, a perfect parody, yet at the same time an excellent action piece. The use of comedy and laugh lines to lull the audience off guard, so that they can be shocked a moment later has become part of the vocabulary of the action film, to varying degrees of success depending upon the cleverness and the sense of humour of the writers and directors.

In some cases, there is no sense of humour, because the director is pre occupied with big things banging together.

JB:    Your line - and a classic- "You're gonna need a bigger boat ". Does that characterise your comedic approach?

CG:    Yes – that and a little earlier, when the shark makes its first full-face appearance which comes straight after the laugh line, "you come on down and chum some of this shit”. The shriek when the shark appears, works better because of the line that came before it.

I wrote those words, or I wrote something so close, that when the actors were ad-libbing, which is of course a tribute to the writer. A character has been written so completely, such that when the actor inhabits that character and goes “off book", he will ad lib in character.

I also want to pay a tribute to Howard Sackler who located the Indianapolis episode (in which Robert Shaw's shark-hunter Quint tells of a shark attack on the survivors of the torpedoed USS Indianapolis) and who is very little remembered for that contribution. Good writer, sailor and navy man.

JB:    In the evolution of mobile story telling over the last 40 years, who has impressed and who has disappointed you?

CG:    CGI (computer generated imagery) storytelling has devolved rather than evolved. We are seeing great stories in low budget pictures, whilst studios, in order to protect multi-million dollar tentpole movies, continue to offer sequels / prequels / reboots / reimaginings or comic book adaptations. In large budget films, there is often very little story telling going on. Frequently the narrative is a stupid hero's journey, with some guy having to fight titanic forces, that explode across the screen in ever increasing CGI complexity, with no doubt of the plot's outcome.

JB:    How easy do you think CGI makes the task for the writer?

CG:    CGI makes some things easier - but in terms of storytelling which is character and relationships, a good writer is still very much in demand. The screenwriter is more concerned with telling a compelling narrative, with interesting characters in interesting places in complex relationships. Tentpole action, genre film doesn’t do that. Andrew Marlow, the screenwriter, has described big action as like writing a libretto for opera, where the crash and burns are the arias and the narrative is the recitative and typically out of 100 pages, maybe only 40 are dialog and character with the rest being a description of explosions.

It is simpler (and more simple minded) to write a series of interstitial scenes between explosions. The challenge remains to write that in an interesting way. Probably one of the few films that has managed that successfully was Iron Man 1 where Robert Downey Jr brought a certain charisma and wit to the performance. 

The writers who I admire now, like perhaps the Wachowski brothers, don’t write in that genre, whilst the old masters of the big action genre are not even being hired to write the new movies.

The writing profession is being split in two. Today it's guys who can construct a big action narrative and who get used by the handfuls on each major project. The other half is writers who compare about narrative and dialogue and for that you need a longer slower movie, or at least a more literate one, where actors can speak actors and compellingly. I use compelling a lot, because much of what I am seeing now is not of interest.

JB:    Carl - Thank you very much.

Jaws is widely available to download.

On July 4th the movie will be screened in London at The Prince Charles Cinema and in LA at The New Beverly Cinema

Carl Gottlieb