Spielberg and Kasdan.

Very interesting. Lots of useful info for screenwriters and fans alike.

http://mysterymanonfilm.blogspot.com/2009/03/raiders-story-conference.html

Thanks for the link.

I find it pretty amusing that George does most of the talking. =p
It's interesting that Lucas keeps going back to the serials.
Star Wars started out as a Flash Gordon type script.
I wish they used Kasdan's idea of Indy grabbing a beer with the whip.
I can see Harrison Ford doing a Miller commercial back in 1980 like that!
It's funny that Lucas was pushing the occult angle so early on.
Somewhere along the line it morphed into sci fi overtones with Crystal Skull.
Kasdan and Spielberg are all like Bogart, Gable, Mifune.
Lucas spends a lot of time on voodoo and haunted horse.
This is a thick read, but I'll have to come back to it soon and finish.
Cheers for finding this!

E.D.

As I continue through this, I'm seeing a pattern.
Many things Lucas suggests for Indy are not present in Raiders.
For instance, Lucas said Indy should never be teaching a class.
I honestly love those scenes and I missed it in Temple of Doom.
To be somewhat fair though, George is doing most of the talking.
Lucas saw Indy as more of a bounty hunter for hire by museums.
I'm glad the films anchored him to one university.
Wow, even in 1978 the sci-fi angle was a bone of contention.
Lucas claims Spielberg told Rolling Stone that Indy has sci-fi elements.
Spielberg denies the claim, Lucas ignores him and goes on a sci-fi tangent.
It looks Lucas a couple of decades to finally with that argument.
And we all got to sit through Crystal Skull because of it, thanks George.
It's pretty amazing they compare Belloch in Raiders to Moriarty.
That actor played Moriarty later in a comedic take on Sherlock called, Without a Clue.
What really surprises me so far is that Marion Ravenwood does not exist!
They are talking about some Mata Hari style double agent that betrays Indy.
That idea got used in  Last Crusade, I much prefer Marion.
I hope we find out as we read along here, who came up with her and Sallah!

To be continued...

E.D.

Glad someone else found this interesting...I thought it was a great look behind the scenes.

I remember reading elsewhere that the reason they didn't make any more Indy films was that Lucas was adamant about the aliens and Spielberg and Ford thought it was terrible...in the end they accepted it because otherwise they would never have got to make another one.

Funny thing is...if they had made it years ago, it may have played out better. In the meantime there has been hundreds of alien films and the X-files. Back then it would have had more power.

What I take from this is just how important collaboration can be. Get the right people together and you can make great things, with the wrong balance even a top notch idea can turn into a mess.

Quoted from Scar Tissue Films Glad someone else found this interesting...I thought it was a great look behind the scenes. I remember reading elsewhere that the reason they didn't make any more Indy films was that Lucas was adamant about the aliens and Spielberg and Ford thought it was terrible...in the end they accepted it because otherwise they would never have got to make another one. Funny thing is...if they had made it years ago, it may have played out better. In the meantime there has been hundreds of alien films and the X-files. Back then it would have had more power. What I take from this is just how important collaboration can be. Get the right people together and you can make great things, with the wrong balance even a top notch idea can turn into a mess.

Yeah, reading spitballing sessions is very helpful about story development.
Getting that kind of talent together for four days and listening in is quite fun!
I'm most impressed with how well Marion Ravenwood came along after these sessions.
They have her as a lame duck double agent type, that would have sucked.
A good point they made is that she should not be forced to come along.
Because then every scene you have to ask yourself, "Why doesn't she run away?"
I had a moment like that in Red Sun, so I took a beat to explain why she stayed.
It came down to greed, with is plenty convincing and needs no lengthy explanation.

I came across another story point that was tossed then later used in Temple of Doom.
They had an idea of Indy waking up on an empty airplane.
It's funny seeing the cast off ideas from this 1978 session show up in later films.
For the water raft plane jump, they had it in taking place in Asia here.
Have the raft slide through the snow and into a village zooming through the square.
Spielberg even suggested that Indy take out a llama with the raft.
That to me is much more fun than what they did in the Temple of Doom film.

There's another proposed sequence to take place in a museum in Paris.
Indy shows up and gleans clues after the enemy has already gone through the place.
That sequence actually shows up in Last Crusade and takes place in Venice.
Wow, they really raped these early spitball sessions for the sequels.

Leave it to Kasdan, writer of The Big Chill, to finally flesh out Marion Ravenwood.
It comes from making engaging exposition and giving her a reason to tag along.
I loved Karen Allen in the film, to me, she was the unsung hero of Raiders.
It's pretty wild reading about this trio formulating the beginnings of a classic film!

To be continued...

Regards,
E.D.

Quoted from Electric Dreamer To be continued...

I am far too busy to read through that right now, but I am quite enjoying your little condensed versions of what you've read.

Please do continue -- just so you know that somebody is looking.

Much thanks for the vote of confidence Bert!
It's nice to know I''m not just typing to hear myself press buttons.
I figured I will continue this in parts, much like the serials Raiders is based upon.

Lucas's first idea about Marion Ravenwood was to make her under aged!
He suggested an illicit affair when Marion was 14 and Indy was 25?!?!? Ewww.
It's handled much better with Marion saying she was "a girl" and leaving it at that.
Bring the numerical age into it and making it a bone of contention, what gives George?
I don't recall the underage affair being a big part of adventure movie serials. =p

A lot of discussion is spent on setting up the first act in Shanghai.
Indy has to go there to follow the trail of clues from the government.
They talk about the historical implications of having this take place there in 1936.
How deep were they involved in Word War II, etc. George leads this part.
I can't help but think this manifested in the opening scene of Temple of Doom.
Raiders actually takes places in 1938, it was Temple that became the WTF prequel.
I can't help but feel so far that Temple was Lucas getting to do it "his way".

It's funny how the trio talk about making Raiders on the cheap.
They talk about using stock footage for the travel and crowd sequences.
It's not even discussed as a tongue in cheek kind of way either.
They say down and wanted to make a film on the cheap with no optical effects.
The airplane wing sequence is something they want to do in Shanghai.
George say they should save it for the desert to cut down on costs.
Whatever real plane they get, its easier to transport it out to the Mojave.
It's funny how such a marquee sequence was moved around to keep it on the cheap.

And here comes the reveal of our hero's name.
George winds up and here's the pitch...

INDIANA SMITH!

Spielberg hates it! Kasdan gets a beer. Will George get his way again?  

To be continued...

E.D.

INDIANA SMITH?!?!

In the not so immortal worlds of Annakin Skywalker...
NOOOOOOOoooooooOOOOOOOoooooooo!

Best line of the transcript so far goes to Spielberg...
With Nazis you have to use your fists, they are a despicable people.

Kasdan broke the idea of using fire at Marion's bar to reveal the pendant.
It was also Kasdan that poo pooed the idea of using a water trap in the ark chamber.
There's been no mention of snakes yet though, I wonder who will crack that part?

To be continued...

E.D.

So, we pick up our story in Cairo.
George seems to think that Sallah, Indy's Arab foreman sidekick, should have a kid.
And that kid should be a motor mouth fast talking pick pocket.
The kid follows Indy around never shuts up and always gets into trouble.
Change Arab to Asian and...Short Round anyone?
Once again, Lucas shoehorns a Raiders cast off idea into Temple of Doom.

I'm beginning to feel a bit cheated by large chunks of the sequels.
It really does seem they just went back over their original notes in several cases.
The idea deemed too lame for Raiders got dragged out for the follow up films. :/

The trio plot out why Marion would get kidnapped in Cairo.
Lucas immediately suggests its random Arab slavers involved in a sex trade.
Because that would be making Raiders an adventure serial, umm, okay George.
Spielberg politely suggests that perhaps the Nazis just want to know what Indy knows.
If you read between the lines, there's many time where they talk around Lucas.
Lucas has so many ideas, that's he's bound to have some decent ones.
The rest of the time, it seems that Kasdan and Spielberg have to referee Lucas.
I can see not having those two around for the new Star Wars trilogy affected things.

Credit where credit is due, Lucas came up with the Hitler spy monkey.
But it was Spielberg that says they need a monkey that can Heil Hitler. Epic.

To be continued...

E.D.

To be fair...I believe it's generally the case that they revisit ideas from the initial discussions for the sequels.

I've heard a few people complain about it when discussing making sequels...saying you end up going back to ideas that you dismissed the first time round. Jurassic Park was something that suffered terribly for that...for no good reason in my opinion.

You make a fair point about the sequelitis condition.
That still doesn't mean I like it one bit.
Screw cast off ideas, give me fresh stuff that germinates from the original story.
I know most sequels are made for the dough, but why not be genuine in its origins?

Jurassic Park 3 was the worst of these offenders in my book.
I felt so cheated by that film. The first two clocked in at around 135 minutes.
So, that's roughly three 45 minute acts.
The third one came in at 90 minutes!
So when the cavalry showed up, I thought it was the end of the second act.
I thought alright, now the firepower is here and the fun begins.
Credit roll. WTF?!?

So, the answer to the question...
Who came up with Indiana Jones's classic fear of snakes?
Spielberg. Originally the ark chamber was gonna flood, Lucas idea.
That's costly and rather silly to have a water trap in the middle of the desert.
It was decided to play it for comedy as a reveal when Indy opens the chamber.
Lucas wanted rats pouring out of the walls. They put that in Last Crusade.

To be continued...

E.D.

So, the big question...
Who will play Indiana Smith?

Spielberg's first thought...
BURT REYNOLDS!  
I suppose that means you get Sally Field to play the German double agent?

The trio hotly debate the climax on the island with the Ark.
Lucas wants to do a mine cart chase and underground escape with the Ark.
This leads to the island harbor followed by a speed boat chase.
In that chase, Lucas wants Indy to sneak between to big ships.
It never ceases to amuse me how these ideas get recycled later.
The majority of them taken word for word from 1978.

So, would you have paid to see, "Indy and the Nazis" with Burt Reynolds?

The final chapter coming soon...

E.D.

The final chapter...

Spielberg wants a roller coaster like mine cart chase with the Ark in tow.
It's funny how they essentially want to smoosh three endings together.
1) Ark melts stuff 2) Mine cart roller coaster 3) Squishy speed boat chase.
They got em all done, just took a trilogy to pull it off.

In the closing notes from a different transcript, I like Philip Kaufman's thoughts.
He likens the Ark to the ring in Lord of the Rings.
With this ultimate power, you can't lose in battle. I like that connection.
I did not connect the dots there, but it makes perfect sense.
Raiders has a lot less walking than Tolkien, and a lot more snakes.

Most legends about the Ark say that it could be somewhere in Jerusalem.
There was only one speculation about the Ark being in Egypt.
And that was enough to create a landmark adventure film.

126 single spaced. Done. Whew.
Fun read, but looking forward to getting back to script reading.

E.D.

Gotta revive this thread with the new "filmumentary" coming out.
The production uses stills from the PDF Rick referenced here.

I can't wait to see the whole thing, what a treat! Check it out!

Raiding the Lost Ark: A Filmumentary - Part 1 from jambe davdar on Vimeo.

Quoted from Scar Tissue Films Spielberg and Kasdan. Very interesting. Lots of useful info for screenwriters and fans alike. http://mysterymanonfilm.blogspot.com/2009/03/raiders-story-conference.html

Great link, thnx.