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

Product - Review

Arcola Theatre, London

***

Written by Mark Ravenhill

Directed by Robert Shaw

Olivia Poulet

Ten years is a long time in the theatre and as geo-political influences and events have shifted, so too has Mark Ravenhill’s Product that was written in 2005 for a world post 9/11, come to look a little dated.

The one-hander focusses around movie producer Leah who is attempting to sell the role of Amy to Julia, a wannabe starlet. The emptiness of Amy’s life and by analogy Leah’s, is highlighted in the sharp contrast between what motivates her and what motivates the tall, dusky ‘hero’.

Ravenhill’s perspectives would have been timely and relevant in their day, with Amy having been wounded by the events of 9/11 and the loss of her lover in the Twin Towers’ destruction. The writer’s aim of confronting our own prejudices, stereotypes and interestingly, our fantasies too, not so much of Islam, but of Islamic men, would also have made for an interesting conceit, giving us a flavour of the appeal to loveless faithless Western women of the tall, dusky men whose lives are dominated by ‘the knife’ and ‘the prayer mat’, subservient to the mullah and a guaranteed path to paradise.

But the shadow of recent years’ atrocities, both in the UK and abroad, have cast a sobering shadow over Ravenhill’s “romanticized” perspective and writing a decade ago, he could never have conceived the notion of young women fleeing this country in the hope of finding love amongst terrorist fighters abroad. 

Olivia Poulet’s Leah is a powerful performance with the cliché rich text that Leah enthusiastically thumbs throughout the 50 minute monologue quite possibly serving as a metaphor for her own cliché ridden life. The passion with which she enthuses the storyline’s references to its heroine’s huge loft style apartment in a converted East London abattoir, albeit lacking a loving relationship, suggest her own lifestyle might be somewhat similar.

Whilst its relevance may have waned, Product remains a powerfully performed and sharp observation of the humiliating process of pitching, written with a generous measure of humour that draws an empathetic laugh from the audience. Poulet’s creation of the parallel characters of Leah and Amy, bringing the starlet Julia to life through her one-way exchanges with the audience, is masterful and her performance alone justifies the ticket.

Runs until 23rd May 2015