Why would anyone keep a prop from the set of “Jaws?”

Steven Spielberg was musing about what it felt like while making his 1975 oceanic classic, and how little he thought any of it would matter when shooting the now-legendary opening scene of a woman night-swimming past an ocean buoy. His primary concern was keeping his job as a 26-year-old director amid unfolding disasters.

“How did anybody know to take the buoy and take it home and sit on it for 50 years?” he said.

That prop is among the first things visitors will see as they enter a 50th anniversary “Jaws” exhibit opening Sunday and running through July at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.

The exhibition featuring more than 200 pieces from the culture-changing blockbuster is the first full show in the four-year history of the museum that is dedicated to a single film. It comes amid a bevy of celebrations of the film's five-decade life, including a theatrical re-release last week.

Spielberg spoke to a gathering of media at the museum after touring the exhibit, which takes visitors chronologically through the film's three acts, with some relic or recreation from virtually every scene.

“I’m just so proud of the work they’ve done,” the 78-year-old said. “What they’ve put together here at this exhibition is just awesome. Every room has the minutiae of how this picture got together.”

Museum director Amy Homma also announced a full Spielberg retrospective at the museum planned for 2028.

“Jaws” has been essential to the institution established in 2021 by the organization that gives out the Oscars.

The only surviving full-scale mechanical shark from the production, 25 feet in length and nicknamed “Bruce” by Spielberg after his lawyer, has permanently hung over the escalators since it opened.

The media preview was accompanied by a 68-piece orchestra playing John Williams’ score. Two of the musicians played on the original.

There's that buoy initially kept by Lynn Murphy, a marine mechanic who worked on the film who lived in Martha's Vineyard where the film was shot, before selling it to a collector in 1988.

And there is a dorsal fin prop that struck terror in beachgoers in the film and moviegoers in the theater, and a real great white shark's jaw used for reference by the filmmakers that also appeared on screen.

Film geeks can get a close look at the aquatic cameras used by cinematographer Bill Butler and his team, and a Moviola used by editor Verna Fields.

Spielberg said for him the exhibition above all "proves that this motion picture industry is really truly a collaborative art form. No place for auteurs."

“I just really was not ready to endure the amount of obstacles that were thrown in our path, starting with Mother Nature,” Spielberg said. “My hubris was we could take a Hollywood crew and go out 12 miles into the Atlantic Ocean and shoot an entire movie with a mechanical shark. I thought that was to go swimmingly.”

People played a lot of cards. Others tried to reckon with seasickness.

“I’ve never seen so much vomit in my life," he said.

It would be worth it in the end.

“The film certainly cost me a pound of flesh," he said, "but gave me a ton of career.”