George Lucas, Creator It’s hard to define exactly why Indy has
remained so popular for so long. I’d love to claim that we had the formula
for success hidden away somewhere, but that’s not the case. We were just
making movies that we wanted to see, and we were having fun doing it.
Raiders was designed to be entertaining. Of course, all movies try to be
entertaining on one level or another, but with Raiders, entertainment was
our explicit focus and sole objective. We wanted to make a rollercoaster
ride that harked back to the serials of the 1930s - something big, fast and
fun.
Indy captured the classic duality of a modern hero: the “secret identity”. Dr
Henry Jones Jr is really just a regular guy – a mild-mannered college
professor by day, wearing glasses and tweed coats. But he also has an
ability to transform into a rugged, globetrotting adventurer, to become
Indiana Jones. He puts away the spectacles, packs the fedora and whip, and
he’s off to exotic lands. That’s really what we wanted Indy to be –
an Everyman version of James Bond. We were almost using a kind of cultural
shorthand, building Indy out of these superhero traditions, yet grounding
him with weaknesses that make him identifiable. It’s those weaknesses that
make him different, and his desperation that makes Indy so much fun. He’s a
great hero, but much of the time he’s just stumbling around, trying to stay
alive.
Harrison Ford, Actor
I spent time learning the whip, just lashing the shit out of myself for about
two weeks until I learnt the timing of it. The trick is to know when it is
at its full extension before you bring it forward.
I didn’t have time to have any input into the costume. It’s a bizarre costume,
if you stop to consider it, a man wearing a leather jacket in generally hot
locales. But I understood that if he’s carrying a whip, he might as well be
wearing a leather jacket, because it doesn’t make any f***ing sense anyway.
I was never bothered or frightened about working with the animals. It was the
presentation that made them look scary. A rat is a rat until you go down
into a sewer in Venice and there are 6,000 rats. Then you’re dealing with a
phobia. Filming with the animals, whether spiders, rats, snakes or bugs, was
always a struggle, but all in a day’s work.
The most off-the-wall moment in Raiders, of course, was the shooting of the
Arab swordsman. I was suffering from dysentery (as were most of the crew).
There was supposed to be a big whip-versus-sword fight. I wasn’t in love
with it, and it was going to take three days. Terry Richards, the stuntman,
had worked for months to become the greatest movie swordsman. We were all
dying to get out of there - I could stay out of my trailer for as long as it
took to expose 400ft of film, which is about 10 minutes, then I was back in
the trailer on the throne. It was our last sequence, so Steven and I decided
that, considering I have this gun at my side, why don’t I just use it to
shoot him?
The first time I shot him, Terry took a minute and a half to die. Steven said,
“Well, this isn’t going to work.” I said, “No.” So, the next time, as soon
as the camera guys said “Speed”, I just shot him. He was so surprised, he
just fell over. It was a great moment, but I keep thinking about that poor
son of a bitch, because he was robbed.
Steven Spielberg, Director
I had a lot to prove when I made Raiders, because I had done three movies in a
row that had gone wildly over budget and schedule - 1941, Close Encounters
and Jaws. I was ready to turn over a new leaf, and Raiders was my chance to
make a movie responsibly: under schedule and under budget. Fortunately,
George is a tremendous producer and gave me a lot of support and help with
preparation. I wasn’t dreaming of big box office or making a classic; all I
was focused on was making a film the audience would like, and doing it in a
way that was fiscally responsible.
When it came time to do Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, George wanted Indy
to go after the Holy Grail, but I just didn’t think that sounded very
exciting. It was static, it was a cup - what’s it going to do? Sit on a
shelf while I take pictures of it? But George said, “Well, there could be
something paranormal about it, a legend that says, if you drink from the
cup, you get everlasting life, just like the fountain of youth.”
Still, I thought it wasn’t compelling enough, but as we talked, I thought,
what if the grail means more than that? Maybe it could stand as a metaphor
for the relationship between Indy and his dad? Indy sets out for the grail,
but ends up closing the distance between himself and his father. I could
relate to that emotionally because I had experienced something similar with
my own father. Once Sean Connery came on board as Indy’s dad, I really felt
we had something special. When Indy’s dad calls him “Indiana” instead of
“Junior”, and tells him to let go of the grail, when our hero chooses wisdom
and family over fortune and glory, I felt we’d completed the character’s
journey. And when they rode off into the sunset, we’d finished the trilogy.
The curtain had come down on Indiana Jones.
But the years went by, and the idea of doing a fourth film kept coming up
again and again. Eventually, Harrison, George and I decided we would bring
back Indiana Jones if we could find the right story line. It took a while,
but here we are, 19 years after Last Crusade.
I was determined that advances in film technology would not change the heart
of this movie. No blue screens - I wanted to walk on real sets, to stage
real stunts. We approached this new adventure in a traditional way, to stay
true to the original trilogy and to the adventure serials that inspired it.
I can say bringing Indiana Jones back for another adventure was a privilege
and the right thing to do. For those of us who made the film, and hopefully
for the audience as well, it certainly was worth the wait. Indiana Jones’s
story, which started in the jungles of Peru, has finally come to an end in .
. . C’mon, you didn’t really think I was going to tell you the ending, did
you?
Frank Marshall, Producer
If the Indiana Jones movies have taught me one thing, it is how to improvise.
For me, these movies have always been an exercise in how to make an A
picture in the style of a B movie. For example, in Raiders, we needed a
close-up of a snake in Indy’s lap in the cockpit. Steven showed me what he
wanted, and I just found a snake guy, rented a camera and airplane, then
took a couple of people down to Long Beach to shoot it. I put on Indy’s
pants and this huge snake was fed through the front of the plane, up onto my
lap. There were no trucks, no equipment, just four people shooting the shot
like it’s a student film. That’s the B-movie style, and it’s lots of fun
because everyone pitches in.
I guess I became the designated “snake man” in London, when he asked for a
shot of a snake going through Karen Allen’s shoe in the pit. We didn’t have
time for the first unit to wait around for it to happen, so I said, “I’ll do
it.” Of course, this attitude caused me to get cast as the Flying Wing
pilot. We were on location in the Sahara and, on the day we started shooting
the sequence, all the stuntmen were sick with stomach problems, so Steven
said, “Go put on the jump suit. I want you to shoot at Harrison.” It was 130
degrees in that cockpit and, because I was in the background of the fight,
my role grew from one to three days. I’ve never been so hot, and on top of
that, Karen gets to clonk me over the head with the chocks!
Vic Armstrong, Stunt arranger
The great thing about the stunts is the spontaneity: they don’t look
overchoreographed or overrehearsed, they just look improvised, joyful,
realistic and dangerous. The stunts are integral to the story. They get a
laugh or add drama; they are never just there because we needed a big stunt.
The first scene I was given to coordinate on Raiders was the Flying Wing
sequence. During the fight, Harrison throws a punch. Pat Roach, as the
German mechanic, pops his head back and Steven yells, “Great! Print it.
Let’s move on.” I said, “Excuse me, sir, that was a miss.” He said, “Are you
sure? It looked like a hit to me.” I said I was sure, so we did it again.
Four days later - it took four days to get dailies to Tunisia - we were
watching dailies in the lobby of the hotel. I’m sitting two rows back,
behind Spielberg. My heart is pumping because the shot is coming up. We
watch, Harrison throws a punch, and it is just off. Steven turns to me and
says, “Good call, Vic.”
Spielberg is a tough taskmaster. You’ve got to bring your A game to the table
because he’ll ask for the impossible, but he’s open to ideas as long as they
add to the story or add to the energy.
We moved at a great pace - it just rattled along, not like today’s movies,
which take months. I’ll never forget when Les Dilley, the art director, was
dusting the German cars down and Spielberg said, “C’mon, Les, get a move on.
Remember, this is only a B movie.”
Michael Kahn, Editor
Raiders had a very stylised opening. The rolling ball was fun to put together.
Steven shot it with many cameras and we just kept it rolling and rolling
with editing. It was a great cheat. We had a lot of laughs on that show. My
favourite line is, “Asps, very dangerous - you go first.”
Steven completes his first cut with me. George will then come in and we’ll run
the entire film. He makes his suggestions, then Steven and George just
mitigate - “I like this, I don’t like that.” That’s how it’s always worked.
George is great to work with, he always has so many ideas, but Steven has
final say on how the film is edited.
Ben Burtt, Sound designer
The bottom line from the first conversation I had with Steven was that we
wanted to create a soundtrack in the grand tradition of action-adventure
movies. I grew up loving those sound effects. I could tell you whether it
was a Paramount movie or a Warner Bros movie just by the face punches or the
thunderclaps. I was crazy enough to be that interested, so it worked out
great for Indiana Jones, because I could draw on my love of the classic
sound-effects repertoire.
We could have created the soundtrack for Raiders by going to a library of
prerecorded sounds and saved ourselves a lot of trouble. But we wanted to
take the sound vocabulary of those films and redo it in high fidelity, with
an epic, almost cosmic quality. We wanted to exaggerate everything. Gun
shots in Indiana Jones became cannon shots - everything was magnified.
For the slithering of the snakes, we used the sounds of hands stirring a bowl
of my wife’s cheese casserole. It’s a goopy, squishy sound that we also
ended up using for Jabba’s body movements. The rats in Last Crusade were
speeded-up chickens. The sound should create a feeling in the audience, tell
the story or add a special sensation to the moment. It’s also important to
pick sounds that have the right emotional association with them. When I
succeed at that, I feel like that’s the most satisfying part - a little bit
of cheese casserole can have a big effect.
Indiana Jones is a realy good movie and I can't wait to see the new one!!!!!!!!!!
Love Ashlyn
Ashlyn, palmbay, united states of america