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ACADEMY MUSEUM SPOTLIGHTS PROPS AND MEMORABILIA FROM 'JAWS,' THE 1975 MOVIE THAT INVENTED THE SUMMER BLOCKBUSTER

- BY JOSH ROTTENBERG

A SMALL replica of Bruce the shark, the museum's unofficial mascot, from top. Director Steven Spielberg speaks at the recent "Jaws: The Exhibition" press preview. The exhibit features items from the film, including a beach sign, an annotated script and character costumes.

WHEN HE MADE his 1975 blockbuster “Jaws,” Steven Spielberg was just 26 — a wunderkind director taking on a killer-shark thriller that nearly sank his budding career before launching him into Hollywood history. Stepping onto the stage at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures recently to help launch a new exhibit marking the film's 50th anniversary, the now-78-year-old filmmaker said he felt just as unprepared now as he did then. “I decided to risk it again and not come prepared with any remarks today,” he told the crowd. “I’m empty-handed, except with a collection of memories stimulated just in the last hour and a half by walking through the exhibition they've so ingeniously assembled.”

What struck Spielberg most as he strolled through the galleries were the relics that somehow survived, like the buoy that bobs in the water after the film's unforgettable opening attack when a young woman is dragged under during a midnight swim by the unseen shark. “Why would anybody think to take the buoy, keep it for 50 years and then loan it to the academy?” Spielberg said, sounding genuinely stunned. “How did they know? I didn't know.”