GregHowley.com

In preparation for the upcoming Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, there's been a lot of Indiana Jones on the tube recently. Aside from the crystal skull documentary, which we had on in the background yesterday while cleaning, they re-aired the trilogy. Although Linda and I seem to have missed Raiders, we (unfortunately) caught a bunch of Temple of Doom, and watched pretty much the entire Last Crusade movie. All I know is, if I have to hear "fortune and glory!" one more time, I'm gonna get sick.

There was a lot of chatter on Twitter this weekend about the showings of these movies - mainly KJ Johnson, Scott Sigler and myself. Scott thinks Last Crusade was campy, which I suppose I can understand, but at least you didn't have a wacky Indian witch doctor trying to pull out Indy's heart. Instead, you get great banter between Harrison Ford and Sean Connery. How can you not love it? Think of Indy imitating a Scottish lord, or getting his father's diary signed by Hitler, or the scene on the blimp... "No ticket!" I can only hope that the fourth movie is half as good. I just want a Jonathan Ke Quan cameo. He hasn't been in anything good since Breathing Fire.

Continuing my steam of consciousness, I've got to mention one final thing. Back in 1981, when I was seven years old, Raiders of the Lost Ark hit the theaters. I was probably too young to see it, so I didn't, until later. But a few kids in Mississippi, ages 10-12 did see it. And they loved it. They went back to the theaters many times, taking notes and recording the audio with a tape recorder. And they decided to remake the entire movie, shot-for-shot. This was the early eighties, and they were just kids, so they used VHS and Betamax camcorders. They grabbed Salvation Army clothes and sewed costumes, they somehow managed to get lots of snakes, they dressed their friends up as Nazis, and they got grounded for setting the basement on fire. Amongst the other near-death experiences they had during filming: Being dragged beneath a truck, and making a plaster mold of their heads to use during the head-melting scene when the Ark is opened. When there's hardening plaster on your face, breathing can be a challenge.

All in all, it took them seven years to complete filming, and they called it Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation. This was their entire childhood. It's really pretty amazing when you think about it. The kid who played Indy had his first kiss on tape. They set up a web site for the film here. You can visit the site and read about stuff like this:

The boulder went through no less than five different versions: 1. Massive bamboo frame covered in cardboard and duct tape. It was too big to get out of Chris’s bedroom. 2. A cable spool covered in cardboard, painted grey. It looked horrible and was half Indy’s size. 3. Chicken wire. It blew away in a hurricane. 4. Weather balloon covered in Paper Mache. It popped. 5. Fiberglass was the last boulder. Eric and Jay dug a hole, made two individual halves and glued them together.

Nearly all of the interiors were shot in Eric’s mom’s house in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. The Cave Scene, the Well of Souls, the Map Room, the Catacombs, the Bantu Wind hold, and the Bar fight (which nearly burned the house down) were all shot in the basement. Sallah’s Porch, the Cabin Scene, the Tent Scene, Indy’s House, were shot inside the house proper, while Indy’s flight from the Hovitos across an open field was shot in Eric’s backyard.

In Indy’s Study, there are artifacts on his desk. Those "artifacts" are actually fragments of plaster that were surgically removed from Eric’s head during a mishap whilst preparing the FX shot where Belloq’s head explodes.

There's also a trailer here if you want to check it out. I've got the complete (poor quality) version sitting on my Tivo, thanks to BitTorrent. I hear there's going to be a making-of documentary made, which I look forward to seeing.