Inventing Indiana Jones
You can now read the transcript of the very first story conference for Raiders Of The Lost Ark. The participants were Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Lawrence Kasdan. Spielberg and Lucas were just crackling with ideas, bouncing them off the walls and furniture. It all starts with a very clear idea of the hero’s character. Spielberg hated the name “Indiana”. Here’s the bit about the snakes:
Spielberg: It would be funny if, somewhere early in the movie he somehow implied that he was not afraid of snakes. Later you realize that that is one of his big fears.
Lucas: Maybe it’s better if you see early, maybe in the beginning that he’s afraid: “Oh God, I hate those snakes.” It should be slightly amusing that he hates snakes, and then he opens this up, “I can’t go down in there. Why did there have to be snakes? Anything but snakes.” You can play it for comedy.
Yeah, yeah, the last three Star Wars movies were crap and the last Indy didn’t have the wit and inventiveness of the earlier movies. You know what it is? A lot of successful people, when they get older, don’t feel like trying anymore. The hunger is gone. The challenge is to stay hungry. Ideally, without actually having to be hungry.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
March 11th, 2009 at 10:16
And why aren’t the new prequel/sequel movies fun anymore? In my opinion, all those lightsaber scenes in the Star Wars prequels will never beat the “garbage chute” scene in A New Hope. Star Wars and Indiana Jones worked for me because they were very interesting, very fun, and somewhat cheesy; otherwise I wouldn’t love them. The last Indy movie was still fun (and I still like it), but it seems to be mocking the first three.
When Spielberg and Lucas grew up and grew old, they took themselves very seriously, and took their movies very seriously too. I guess it sucked the fun and creativity out when they started earning big by being “serious.”