Bruce the shark drops jaws at the Academy Museum

Film fan, blogger and The Daily Jaws follower Sebastian, from California, takes us on his journey to the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, where he comes face to face with the 25-foot-long shark recreation of Bruce the shark from JAWS.

For those who have been unable to make that visit, nay pilgrimage, Sebastian delivers fantastic images of the shark from every angle imaginable and evocative words that almost transport us to those escalators.

Although it is Sebastian travelling past the stunning shark model, it's hard not to think of that first moment in the film where we see the mechanical shark swim past the Orca and its stunned crew of Brody, Quint and Hooper. Like a giddy Matt Hooper, he shoots the shark with his camera capturing the amazing model in all its glory.

He's very kindly let us share an excerpt about his shark encounter in LA.

Outside the exhibit halls, suspended from the ceiling between floors, you’ll see a massive recreation of the original mechanical shark prop from “JAWS” (1975), named “Bruce” after director Steven Spielberg’s then-lawyer, Bruce Ramer.

While the actual shark props from JAWS didn’t survive into the 21st century, makeup artist/producer/director Greg Nicotero (“The Walking Dead”) used the original blueprints to recreate a near 1:1 mannequin of the prop (without the original’s troublesome mechanical innards).

The 25 ft shark (“three tons of him”) greets visitors with a wide, toothy grin and those infamous “black eyes, like a doll’s eyes…” to quote Robert Shaw’s “Quint.”

As longtime readers of this column might have guessed from my lengthy reviews of the four JAWS movies (yes, even the rotten fourth one), I am a JAWS maniac.

And while I was aware this was not the actual prop from the movie, it still made my heart skip a beat when I first caught sight of this amazing leviathan from cinematic lore so lovingly recreated.

It truly is “a miracle of (cinematic) evolution”, as Richard Dreyfuss’s “Matt Hooper” might paraphrase.

Pro-tip: viewing the creature on the escalator rides between floors gets you some terrific angles for photographs.

For a deeper dive into Sebastian's Academy Museum of Motion Pictures visit, you can read his full tour in his blog, where he also encounters props from The Godfather, Star Wars, Gone With The Wind and King Kong.

In a fitting end to the museum visit Sebastian bought a replacement copy of The Jaws Log by JAWS co-screenwriter and Harry Meadows actor Carl Gottlieb. We are sure Bruce would have approved of the book about the now legendary behind the scenes exploits of filming on Martha’s Vineyard.

Republished from with persmission from author Sebastian aka ‘Musings of a Middle-Aged Geek’. You can read the original article here.