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The following features interesting trivia and stories about the productions and actors of older and current films. Titles are chosen arbitrarily but requests are taken at chapworld@charter.net. This page will be updated every other Tuesday. |
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Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981) |
(Part 2) .. If you missed Part 1...click here or scroll down |
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Following the success of Raiders, a prequel, The Temple of Doom, and two sequels, The Last Crusade and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, were produced. A television series, entitled The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, was also spun off from this film, and details the early years of the character. Numerous other books, comics, and video games have also been produced...
In 1998, the American Film Institute placed the film at number 60 on its top 100 films of the first century of cinema. In 2007, AFI updated the list and placed it at number 66. They also named it as the 10th most thrilling movie, and named Indiana Jones as the second most thrilling hero. In 1999, the film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. Indiana Jones has become an icon, being listed as Entertainment Weekly's third favorite action hero, while noting "some of the greatest action scenes ever filmed are strung together like pearls" in this film...
An amateur, near shot-for-shot remake was made by Chris Strompolos, Eric Zala, and Jayson Lamb, then children in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. It took the boys seven years to finish, from 1982-1989. After production of the film, called Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation, it was shelved and forgotten until 2003, where it was discovered by Eli Roth and acclaimed by Spielberg himself, who congratulated the boys on their hard work and said he looked forward to seeing their names on the big screen. Scott Rudin and Paramount Pictures have purchased the trio's life rights and will be producing a film based on their adventures making their remake...
Assessing the film's legacy in 1997, Bernard Weinraub, film critic for The New York Times, which had initially reviewed the film as "deliriously funny, ingenious, and stylish", maintained that "the decline in the traditional family G-rated film, for 'general' audiences, probably began" with the appearance of Raiders of the Lost Ark. "Whether by accident or design," found Weinraub, "the filmmakers made a comic nonstop action film intended mostly for adults but also for children." ...  The only video game based exclusively on the film is Raiders of the Lost Ark, released in 1982 by Atari for their Atari 2600 console. The first third of the video game Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures, released in 1994 by JVC for Nintendo's Super Nintendo Entertainment System, is based entirely on the film...
In 1981, Kenner released a 12-inch doll of Indiana Jones, and the following year they released nine action figures of the characters in the film, three playsets, as well as toys of the Nazi truck and Jones's horse. They also released a board game...
The film was released on VHS in pan and scan only and on laserdisc in both pan and scan and widescreen. It was also released on Betamax. For its 1999 VHS reissue, the film was remastered in THX and made available in widescreen. The outer package was retitled Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark to correlate with the film's prequel and sequel. The subsequent DVD release in 2003 features this title as well. The title in the film itself remains unchanged, even in the restored DVD print. In the DVD, the glass partition separating Jones from the cobra in the Well of Souls was digitally removed. The film (along with Temple of Doom and Last Crusade) was re-released on DVD with additional extra features not included on the previous set on May 13, 2008...
Tom Selleck was Steven Spielberg's second choice for the role of Indiana Jones. Harrison Ford was his first, but George Lucas objected, since Ford had been in both American Graffiti (1973) and Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977). Selleck was not able to take the role because he was committed to "Magnum, P.I." (1980)... Actors considered for the role of Indiana Jones included Nick Nolte, Steve Martin (who chose to do Pennies from Heaven (1981) instead), Bill Murray (who dropped out due to scheduling conflicts with "Saturday Night Live" (1975)), Chevy Chase, Tim Matheson, Nick Mancuso, Peter Coyote, and Jack Nicholson. Harrison Ford was cast less than three weeks before principal photography began... When Indy is dragged under and then out behind a moving truck, it's a tribute to Yakima Canutt's similar famous stunt in John Ford's Stagecoach (1939). In fact, it was a stunt that stuntman Terry Leonard had tried to pull off the year before, and failed to do so, on The Legend of the Lone Ranger (1981). He was thrilled at the chance of having another shot at it, but only agreed to do it if his friend and colleague Glenn Randall Jr. was driving. The truck was specially constructed to be higher above the ground than normal so as to allow clearance for Indiana Jones to pass underneath safely. The center of the road was also dug out to allow more clearance... In Great Movie Stunts: Raiders of the Lost Ark, it was revealed that the camera was set at 20 frames per second instead of the traditional 24 fps; in other words, the shots were done in "fast motion," so the truck was not really moving as fast as depicted on screen. Harrison Ford was actually dragged behind the truck for some of the shots, badly bruising his ribs. When asked if he was worried, Ford quipped: "No. If it really was dangerous, they would have filmed more of the movie first." During the chase, Harrison Ford dispatches all three of his stunt doubles, all of which are playing German soldiers. Terry Leonard plays the driver of the truck, who gets punched out of the cab by Harrison. Vic Armstrong and Martin Grace play soldiers hanging onto the side of the truck before being knocked off. The truck chase took approximately eight weeks to film...
Indy's battered leather jacket was actually brand new and had to be artificially aged by the costume department. There were 10 jackets for general wear and tear and stunt purposes...
Indiana Jones's hat came from the famous Herbert Johnson hat shop in Saville Row, London. The hat was the shop's Australian model. On the Bonus Features DVD, costume designer Deborah Nadoolman said that in order to properly age the hat, she grabbed and twisted the hat, then she and Harrison Ford both sat on it, and it eventually looked like "a very lived-in and well-loved" hat...
Indy's whip is 10 feet long, although some shorter versions were used, depending on the shot required. The kangaroo-hide bull whip was sold in December, 1999 at Christie's auction house in London for $43,000. His jacket and hat are on display at the Smithsonian...
Indy's line to Marion when they are on the ship, "It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage", was ad-libbed by Harrison Ford... Although the Nazis speak German in many scenes, most of the lines were dubbed for the German versions of the film because the actors spoke very bad German with a very strong American accent. Some lines were simply wrong. On the recent DVD release, no German lines are wrong. The majority of the German lines seems to be spoken by native German speakers with a slight south German accent... Instead of the standard Blue Mountain opening logo used between 1975-87, the opening logo was a version of the Paramount logo used in the 1940s or 1950s which read: "A Paramount Picture". The only difference is that it also read "A Gulf+Western Company"...
The scene where Jones fires at the truck was a botched stunt. The truck was supposed to flip over by means of a telegraph pole being fired by explosives through the floor. The explosive wasn't powerful enough and it simply forced the truck to tip over at an angle as can be seen in the finished movie. Time did not permit any further attempts at getting it right... The last line to be added to the script was Dietrich's "I am uncomfortable with this Jewish ritual" because after reading through the script, the screenwriters realized that there was no mention of Jews or the Nazis' hatred of them... During the scene where Indiana threatens Nazis with bazooka, you can clearly see a fly creeping into the mouth of Paul Freeman, and he swallows it. Empire Magazine chose this scene as one of the most common scenes people press "Pause" button on their VCR for...
According to Graham Hancock's book "The Sign and the Seal", the Lost Ark of the Covenant actually resides in the city of Axum (Ethiopia), at the Saint Mary of Zion church...
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(Part 1) |
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Raiders of the Lost Ark (also known as Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark) is a 1981 American action-adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg, produced by George Lucas, and starring Harrison Ford...
It is the first film in the Indiana Jones franchise, and pits Indiana Jones (played by Ford) against the Nazis, who search for the Ark of the Covenant, in an attempt to make their army invincible. The film co-starred Karen Allen as Indiana's former lover Marion Ravenwood; Paul Freeman as Indiana's nemesis, French archaeologist René Belloq; John Rhys-Davies as Indiana's sidekick, Sallah; and Denholm Elliott as Indiana's colleague, Marcus Brody... The film originated with Lucas' desire to create a modern version of the serials of the 1930s and 1940s. Production was based at Elstree Studios, England, and filming also took place in La Rochelle, Tunisia, Hawaii, and California from June to September 1980...
Cast and Characters: Harrison Ford stars as Indiana Jones Released on June 12, 1981, Raiders of the Lost Ark became the top grossing film of 1981; it remains one of the highest-grossing films ever made. It was nominated for nine Academy Awards in 1982, including Best Picture, and won five (Art Direction, Film Editing, Sound, Visual Effects, and Sound Effects Editing). The film's critical and popular success led to three additional films, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), a television series, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (1992-1996), and 15 video games as of 2009...
  
In 1973, George Lucas wrote The Adventures of Indiana Smith. Like Star Wars, which he also wrote, it was an opportunity to create a modern version of the film serials of the 1930s and 1940s. Lucas discussed the concept with Philip Kaufman, who worked with him for several weeks and came up with the Ark of the Covenant as the plot device. Kaufman was told about the Ark by his dentist when he was a child. The project stalled when Clint Eastwood hired Kaufman to direct The Outlaw Josey Wales. Lucas eventually shelved the idea, deciding to concentrate on his outer space adventure which would become Star Wars... In late May 1977, Lucas was in Maui, trying to escape the enormous success of Star Wars. Friend and colleague Steven Spielberg was also there, on vacation from work on Close Encounters of the Third Kind. While building a sand castle at Mauna Kea, Spielberg expressed an interest in directing a James Bond film. Lucas convinced his friend Spielberg that he had conceived a character "better than James Bond" and explained the concept of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Spielberg loved it, calling it "a James Bond film without the hardware," although Spielberg told Lucas that the surname Smith was not right for the character, Lucas replied "OK. What about Jones?". Indiana was the name of Lucas' Alaskan Malamute...
The following year, Lucas focused on developing Raiders and the Star Wars sequel The Empire Strikes Back, during which Lawrence Kasdan and Frank Marshall joined the project as screenwriter and producer respectively... Between January 23-27, 1978 for nine hours a day, Lucas, Kasdan, and Spielberg discussed the story and visual ideas. Spielberg came up with Jones being chased by a boulder, which was inspired by "The Seven Cities of Cibola," an Uncle Scrooge comic by Carl Barks. Lucas later acknowledged that the idea for the idol mechanism in the opening scene, and deadly traps later in the film were inspired by several Uncle Scrooge comics. Lucas came up with a submarine, a monkey giving the Hitler salute, and Marion punching Jones in Nepal. Kasdan used a 100-page transcript of their conversations for his first script draft, which he worked on for six months. Ultimately some of their ideas were too grand and had to be cut: a mine chase, an escape in Shanghai using a rolling gong as a shield, and a jump from an airplane in a raft, all of which made it into the prequel, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom...
Spielberg and Lucas disagreed on the character: although Lucas saw him as a Bondian playboy, Spielberg and Kasdan felt the professor and adventurer elements of the character made him complex enough. Spielberg had a darker vision of Jones, interpreting him as an alcoholic similar to Humphrey Bogart's character Fred C. Dobbs in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. This characterization fell away during the later drafts. Spielberg also initially conceived of Toht as having a robotic arm, which Lucas rejected as falling into science-fiction. Comic book artist Jim Steranko was also commissioned to produce original illustrations for pre-production, which heavily influenced Spielberg's decisions in both the look of the film and the character of Indiana Jones himself...
Initially, the film was rejected by every major studio in Hollywood, as most executives thought that the story was too over the top and would be exceedingly expensive to produce. Eventually Paramount agreed to finance the film, with Lucas negotiating a five picture deal. By April 1980, Kasdan's fifth draft was produced, and production was getting ready to shoot at Elstree Studios, with Lucas trying to keep costs down... With four illustrators, Raiders of the Lost Ark was Spielberg's most storyboarded film of his career to date, further helping the film economically. He and Lucas agreed on a tight schedule to keep costs down, and to stylistically follow the "quick and dirty" feel of the old Saturday matinee serials. Special effects were done using puppets, miniature models, animation, and camera trickery. "We didn't do 30 or 40 takes; usually only four. It was like silent film, shoot only what you need, no waste," Spielberg said. "Had I had more time and money, it would have turned out a pretentious movie." Lucas also directed some of the second unit... Filming began on June 23, 1980 at La Rochelle, France, for scenes involving the Nazi submarine, which was rented from the production of Das Boot. The U-boat pen was a genuine one that had survived from World War II. The crew moved to Elstree Studios for scenes involving the Well of Souls, the interiors of the temple in the opening sequence and Marion Ravenwood's bar. The Well of Souls required 7,000 snakes, though the only poisonous snakes on set were the cobras. However, one crew member was bitten by a python on set. To shoot the scene where Indiana comes face-to-face with the cobra, a glass sheet was put between Ford and the reptile, which is partially visible in the film when the light hits it at a certain angle. Unlike the character he portrayed, Ford does not actually have a fear of snakes; Spielberg was not afraid either, but seeing all the snakes on the set writhing around made him "want to puke"...
The opening sequence featured live tarantulas: Alfred Molina had to have many put on him, but they did not move until a female tarantula was introduced. A fiberglass boulder 22 feet in diameter was made for the scene where Indiana escapes the temple; Spielberg was so impressed by production designer Norman Reynolds' realization of his idea that he told Reynolds to increase the length of the boulder run by 50 feet...
All of the scenes set in Egypt were filmed in Tunisia, and the canyon where Indiana threatens to blow up the Ark was shot in Sidi Bouhlel, just outside of Tozeur. The location was previously used in the Tatooine scenes from 1977's Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, since many people in the location crew were the same for both films. Notably, that canyon was the exact same location where R2-D2 was attacked by Jawas. The Tanis scenes were filmed in nearby Sedala and it was a harsh experience due to the heat and disease. Several members of the cast and crew fell ill; Rhys-Davies in particular defecated in his costume during one shot. Spielberg was never ill, as he only ate tinned foods from England... Spielberg did not like the area and quickly pushed forward a scheduled six-week shoot to four-and-a-half weeks. Much was improvised there: the scene where Marion puts on her dress and attempts to leave Belloq's tent was improvised, as was the entire plane fight. During shooting of that scene, Ford tore his cruciate ligament in his left leg as a wheel went over his knee, but he did not accept local medical help and simply put ice over it. The fight scenes in the town were filmed in Kairouan; by then Ford was suffering from dysentery and did not want to shoot a fight scene between Indiana and a swordsman. He said to Spielberg "Let's just shoot the sucker." Spielberg agreed, scrapped the rest of the fight scene, and filmed the gag of Indiana quickly gunning down the swordsman. The truck chase was shot entirely by the second-unit who mostly followed Spielberg's storyboards, though they decided to add Indiana being dragged by the truck. Spielberg shot all the close-ups with Ford afterwards...
The interior staircase set in Washington, D.C. was filmed inside of San Francisco's City Hall. The University of the Pacific, located in Stockton, California, stands in for the exterior of the college where Jones works, while his classroom and the hall where he meets the American intelligence men was filmed at the Royal Masonic School for Girls in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, England. His home exteriors were filmed in the city of San Rafael, California. The opening exteriors were filmed in Kauai, Hawaii, with Spielberg wrapping in September, finishing under schedule in 73 days, in contrast to his previous film, 1941... The Washington, D.C. coda, although it appeared in early drafts of the script, was not included in early edits and was added later when it was realized that there was no resolution to Jones's relationship with Marion. Shots of the Douglas DC-3 Jones flies on to Nepal were taken from Lost Horizon, while a street scene was cut from a shot in The Hindenburg. The filming of Indy boarding a Boeing China Clipper flying-boat was complicated by the lack of a surviving aircraft. Eventually a postwar British Short Solent flying-boat formerly owned by Howard Hughes was located in California and substituted in its place...
The special visual effects for Raiders were provided by Industrial Light & Magic and include: a matte shot to establish the Pan Am flying boat in the water and miniature work to show the plane taking off and flying, superimposed over a map; animation effects for the beam in the Tanis map room; and a miniature car and passengers superimposed over a matte painting for a shot of a Nazi car being forced off a cliff... The bulk of effects shots were featured in the climactic sequence wherein the Ark of the Covenant is opened and the wrath of God is unleashed. This sequence featured animation, a woman to portray a beautiful spirit's face, rod puppet spirits moved through water to convey a sense of floating, a matte painting of the island, and cloud tank effects to portray clouds. The melting of Toht's head was done by exposing a gelatin and plaster model of Ronald Lacey's head to a heat lamp with an under cranked camera, while Dietrich's crushed head was a hollow model from which air was withdrawn. The spirits were shot underwater for a ghostly look. The firestorm that cleanses the canyon at the finish was a miniature canyon filmed upside down...
Ben Burtt, the sound effects supervisor, made extensive use of traditional foley work in yet another of the production's throwbacks to days of the Republic serials. He selected a 30-30 Winchester rifle for the sound of Jones' pistol. Sound effects artists struck leather jackets and baseball gloves with a baseball bat to create a variety of punching noises and body blows. For the snakes in the Well of Souls sequence, fingers running through cheese casserole and sponges sliding over cement were used for the slithering noises. The sliding lid on a toilet cistern provided the sound for the opening of the Ark... John Williams composed the score for Raiders of the Lost Ark, which was the only score in the series performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, the same orchestra that performed the scores for the Star Wars saga...
The score most notably features the well-known "Raiders' March." This piece came to symbolize Indiana Jones and was later used in Williams' scores for the other three films. Williams originally wrote two different candidates for Indy's theme, but Spielberg enjoyed them so much that he insisted that both be used together in what became the "Raiders' March". The alternately eerie and apocalyptic theme for the Ark of the Covenant is also heard frequently in the score, with a more romantic melody representing Marion and, more broadly, her relationship with Jones. The score as a whole received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Score, but lost to the score to Chariots of Fire composed by Vangelis... The $20 million budget film grossed $384 million worldwide throughout its theatrical releases. In North America, it remains one of the top twenty highest-grossing films ever made when adjusted for inflation. The film was subsequently nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture, in 1982 and won four (Best Sound, Best Film Editing, Best Visual Effects, and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (Norman Reynolds, Leslie Dilley, and Michael D. Ford)). It also received an additional Special Achievement Award for Sound Effects Editing. It won numerous other awards, including a Grammy and Best Picture at the People's Choice Awards. Spielberg was also nominated for a Golden Globe. For Best Picture, the film was up against Atlantic City..Chariots Of Fire..On Golden Pond and Reds. (Chariots Of Fire won). Steven Spielberg was nominated for Best Director. He was up against Louis Malle ("Atlantic City")..Hugh Hudson ("Chariots Of Fire")..Warren Beatty ("Reds") and Mark Rydell ("On Golden Pond"). (Warren Beatty won)...
The film received highly positive reviews from most critics. In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby praised the film, calling it, "one of the most deliriously funny, ingenious and stylish American adventure movies ever made." Roger Ebert in his review for the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, "Two things, however, make Raiders of the Lost Ark more than just a technological triumph: its sense of humor and the droll style of its characters [...] We find ourselves laughing in surprise, in relief, in incredulity at the movie's ability to pile one incident upon another in an inexhaustible series of inventions." . Stephen Klain of Variety also praised the film. Yet, making an observation that would revisit the franchise with its next film, he felt that the film was surprisingly violent and bloody for a PG-rated film... Today, the film is considered to be a classic of the action and adventure genres by many contemporary critics, and carries a 94% "Certified Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes...
Coming up in Part 2..The impact of "Raiders of the Lost Ark," also merchandising, video releases and trivia. Part 2 will be posted July 27...
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