CHAPTER 4: HARRISON FORD
Steven Awalt: Kids of our generation were already in complete and total awe of Harrison Ford as Han Solo between Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, so to see him in a brand-new, earthbound role just sent us all over the moon.
Charles de Lauzirika (producer/director, Dangerous Days: Making Blade Runner; producer, Blade Runner: The Final Cut restoration): As soon as Indy stepped out of the shadows in that first scene and revealed himself to us with that badass confidence and intensity, I feel like in that moment, Harrison Ford truly became a movie star of the highest order.
Lee Pfeiffer: Ford had been kicking around the film industry since making his screen debut in 1966 with a brief scene in Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round as a young man who delivers a telegram to James Coburn. He worked steadily but generally in nondescript parts in lackluster movies. Even George Lucas failed to see star potential in him when he cast him in a minor role in American Graffiti. Fortunately, he had the inspired idea of giving him another chance with Star Wars at a time when Ford had resumed working as a carpenter to support his family. The role of Han Solo brought him recognition and pop culture status. However, he had a major problem: the films he starred in between the first two Star Wars movies had bombed badly. He needed to prove to himself and the industry that he had drawing power beyond the Star Wars films. Raiders provided that opportunity and Ford recognized that he had to do all he could to make the film succeed. According to Spielberg, he went beyond the role of actor and personally took a great interest in suggesting enhancements and changes to the scripts. He also insisted on doing many of his own stunts to maximize the impact of the action scenes. Ford’s laid-back persona was in the style of Gary Cooper and Clint Eastwood. He wasn’t overly verbose and had a laconic attitude that capitalized on his ability for underplaying scenes with a wry sense of humor. Audiences responded in an overwhelmingly positive manner and Ford found himself in the role of a new screen hero who would become iconic.
William Kallay (author, The Making of Tron: How Tron Changed Visual Effects and Disney Forever): Harrison Ford is Indiana Jones without question. As much I have enjoyed watching Tom Selleck in numerous TV and movie roles, he would have made Raiders feel like a much different film.
Charles de Lauzirika: This wasn't Han Solo in a fedora. This character was entirely new, even if superficially he was built upon many action heroes of the past. He has a very personal set of strengths, weaknesses and quirks. And I think that's the big reason why people have been so hesitant to recast Indy, as if he were a renewable character like James Bond or Batman. That might have been the original plan, but I think Ford's performance as Indy works on such an almost genetically deep level, it's doubtful anyone, no matter how talented, could come close to that unique mix of bravado, vulnerability, heroism, rudeness, and most importantly, resolve. Indiana Jones, flaws and all, is ultimately a man of purpose. I think we've seen that in Ford's work ethic as an actor over the years, and even if he occasionally appears in a less-than-satisfying film, it's never because of him. It's not because he wasn't busting his ass to make it work. And to me, that's Indy, through and through.
Chris Salewicz: It's held together by Harrison Ford's tremendous performance—as he becomes a cinematic icon forever. I love the term Spielberg dreamt up to describe the actor to Lucas, why he was perfect for the role—his “grizzled irrepressibility.” Couldn't say it better myself!
Steven Awalt: Casting Harrison Ford was a boon, and for the very reason that Lucas resisted the idea following Ford's portrayal of Han Solo. Audiences had come to know Ford through the Star Wars films, so we had expectations in place—the cocky, overly confident braggart who somehow gets out of terrible situations by the skin of his teeth. When we first see Ford step out of the shadows as Indiana Jones though, we see a grizzled, unshaven, and rightly pissed off character that seems like he'll be worlds away from the character of Han Solo.
Paul M. Sammon: Harrison Ford was perfectly cast. On paper, Indiana was a combination of an adventurer, an athletic man’s man, and an intellectual with professorial-level skills. What many audiences did not realize in 1981 was that Ford in real life personified his fictional character. I have met Harrison a number of times, including watching him work on Blade Runner and talking to him on a one to one basis through the years for my book Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner about Ford’s viewpoints on life, work, and the films in which he’s been involved. I can claim from experience that Ford he is a genuine polymath. Using an impressive toolbox. Harrison has become a highly skilled carpenter, a helicopter and fixed wing airplane pilot, and the owner of an 800-acre ranch, 400 of which he has donated as a well-kept nature preserve. He is simultaneously a well-read individual with impressive articulation skills and a wryly amusing sense of humor. In other words, the real-world personification of Indiana Jones.
William Kallay: What further enforced my enjoyment of Ford’s performance was his believability and how funny he was. The fact that he is petrified of snakes or his childlike pouting after Marion whacks him with the mirror is priceless and relatable. And who does not howl out loud in laughter when he shot the swordsman?
W.R. Miller: Harrison Ford cemented himself in the public consciousness as a leading man, and the rest is history.
Zaki Hasan: The Indiana Jones movies have heart, stakes, and spectacle, but most importantly they have the quintessential protagonist at their center played by the quintessential star. As perfectly captured by Harrison Ford, Indiana Jones is no slouch in a fight, but he’s an intellectual who finds more thrills in solving ancient puzzles than getting caught up in fisticuffs. If Indiana Jones is the everyman action hero, then Harrison Ford is the everyman action star who made him relatable through multiple films, multiple decades, and far into the future.
CHAPTER 5: THE CONCEPT
Jonathan Rinzler: Like Star Wars in relation to Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, Raiders (and the Indy films) in relation to the Republic serials and adventure comics took the essentials out of those earlier media—fun, adventure, cliffhangers, comedy and heroism—and gave them a high-budget sheen and the talents of some of the best filmmakers of their generation.
Michael Rubin (author, Droidmaker: George Lucas and the Digital Revolution): By the time Raiders was starting pre-production, Lucas was getting buried in The Empire Strikes Back, for which he was exceptionally stressed. When he hit snags with the screenplay, he was so impressed by Lawrence Kasdan’s work on the Raiders script that he enticed him to put it on hold to help with Empire. Some of the best elements of Empire and Raiders were from Kasdan’s writing. (Lucas repaid the generosity by helping get Kasdan’s directorial debut produced: Body Heat.)
Saul Pincus: When Lucas hired Lawrence Kasdan to write the screenplay, it’s said he told him he wanted to pace the film with sixty scenes running no more than two pages each. Lucas also demanded the script contain [at least] six outstanding sequences (i.e. “set-pieces”): the escape from the temple, the destruction of Marion’s bar, the street chase, the snakes, the toppling of the statue in the Well of the Souls, the fistfight under the flying wing, the truck chase, the climax opening the Ark.
John Cork (co-author, James Bond Encyclopedia): The famous story is that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are on the beach in Hawaii in 1977, both staggeringly successful. Spielberg opines that he would love to direct a James Bond movie, but can’t get the gig… Lucas says to forget Bond. He has an idea for a character that could launch a series. That character’s name back then? Indiana Smith. Okay, so the name was only halfway there. Regardless, George Lucas has many strengths, but one of the most formidable is coming up with iconic characters that can capture the public’s imagination. Indiana Jones remains one of his greatest ideas… Lucas, Spielberg, and Lawrence Kasdan met in late-January 1978 to hash out the story. Lucas laid out his goal for Indiana Jones right at the start: “We want him to be extremely good at what he does, as is the Clint Eastwood character or the James Bond character. James Bond and The Man with No Name were very good at what they did. They were very fast with a gun. They were very slick, they were very professional”…. That’s from the transcripts of that first story conference, where you can sense Lucas’s genius. Steven, who at that point is about to find out his limitations with comedy, keeps pitching sidekick “buffoons” and gags where character’s pants fall down. Lucas pushes back, talking a more hard-edged, realistic film. Kasdan and Spielberg keep talking silly scenes with the bullwhip Lucas wants Jones to carry, but Lucas stays focused on it being “a dangerous weapon”…. Lucas keeps coming back to James Bond: “Instead of being a martini drinking cultured kind of sophisticate, he's the sort of intellectual college professor James Bond”…. Boom. Lucas doesn’t want a James Bond clone, but someone worldly, dangerous, adventurous with his own unique personality. It is in these transcripts you see how focused George Lucas is on taking only a few qualities from 007 and the Bond films to enhance his vision…. They talk big Bond stunts and how to end the film, with Steven Spielberg embracing a James Bond ending, the destruction of the villain’s lair, and Lucas pushing for something more in the mold of The Maltese Falcon…. The result, over three years later, was one of the most iconic and entertaining action films ever made. Spielberg structured the film like a 007 adventure while Lucas kept the character true to his vision. Spielberg had the idea for the giant boulder to climax the film’s Bondian opening sequence. Lucas made sure that the secret Nazi submarine base was based in reality and did not feel like the similar set in The Spy Who Loved Me. Spielberg drew from the Disco Volante fight in Thunderball for the movie’s signature truck battle sequence. They took liberally from other sources, too: Disney adventure films like In Search of the Castaways, King Kong, Tarzan movies, and the old Republic serials that George Lucas so loved.
Ray Morton (contributing editor, Script Mag; author, A Quick Guide to Screenwriting and Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Making of Steven Spielberg’s Classic Film): For my money, Lawrence Kasdan’s screenplay for Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of the best movie scripts ever written. When he penned the screenplay, Kasdan had to take the character of the daring archaeologist and treasure hunter Indiana Jones dreamed up by George Lucas, a rough story outline created by Lucas and Phillip Kaufman (which introduced the film’s MacGuffin—the legendary Lost Ark of the Covenant), and dozens of ideas for scenes and set-pieces dreamed up by Lucas, director Steven Spielberg, and Kasdan himself and synthesize it all into a coherent narrative. He did the job brilliantly. The story construction is as precise as the working of a Swiss watch; the plotting is endlessly clever, exciting, and full of surprises; the characters are vivid and engaging; and the dialogue is witty and sharp. It’s an expert piece of work, an accomplishment that is even more impressive considering that it was only Kasdan’s second produced screenplay.
Mike Matessino: With Raiders the screenplay perfectly balanced story, action and character. There is not a single spare moment in it.
Ray Morton: There are two parts of the script that I think are exceptionally good: The first is the film’s opening sequence in which we see Indy performs incredible stunts and feats of derring-do (including leaping over a bottomless pit, swinging out on a vine and diving into a river, and outrunning a giant boulder) as he faces and overcomes all manner of dangerous obstacles (natural hazards, treacherous allies, ancient booby traps) to recover a valuable ancient artifact (in this case, a golden fertility idol), only to lose it in the end (in this case to his devious rival Rene Belloq). In those first ten minutes, Kasdan perfectly summarizes the essence of an Indiana Jones story, because this is exactly what happens to Indy not only in the rest of Raiders, but also in the three (soon to be four) sequels that followed…. The second [exceptionally good element of the script] is the sequence that follows the opening, in which two U.S. Government agents come to the university where Indy teaches and ask for his help in trying to figure out what the Nazis are up to in the desert outside Cairo. In this sequence, Kasdan lays out every bit of information (save one) that we need to understand the story that follows: we learn who Indy is (“…professor of archaeology, expert on the occult, and—how does one say it?—obtainer of rare antiquities…), what the Lost Ark is and what its powers are, how it will be discovered (by using the headpiece to the Staff of Ra to locate the Ark’s hiding place on the scale model of the city of Tanis), and why it is vital for the Allies to retrieve the Ark before the Nazis do (because “…an army that carries the Ark before it is invincible”). As every screenwriter knows, exposition is an enormously difficult thing to deliver smoothly and here Kasdan does it in a way that feels effortless. Also, by loading all of this necessary information into a single scene, Kasdan frees up the audience—we don’t have to stop every few minutes to digest some new piece of information in order to comprehend what’s going all. We already know everything we need to know, so now we can just sit back and enjoy the ride. (The one bit of necessary info this scene doesn’t give us is to tell us who Marion is, which Kasdan then does in the very next scene.) All of this is screenwriting of the very highest order.
Jeff Bond: Raiders leans heavily on imagery from DeMille’s The Ten Commandments. Filmmaker Philip Kaufman suggested the idea to George Lucas and Steven Spielberg that Indiana Jones, in his first movie adventure, should be tracking down the Ark of the Covenant—the golden chest that contains the stone tablets that Moses brought down from Sinai with the ten commandments written on them. The movie conflates the Ark’s involvement in several Hebrew military victories like the fall of the walls of Jericho with the power of God (“an army that carries the Ark before it would be invincible,” one character explains). It might have been an esoteric concept had audiences not seen it in action every year at Easter during TV broadcasts of The Ten Commandments. Late in the film, with Moses on Mt. Sinai receiving the commandments from God, the Hebrews begin to lose faith and eventually riot in a massive orgy, constructing a golden calf idol as a new god. Moses returns to them and in a fury hurls the stone tablets at the idol, destroying countless “idolators” in a fiery conflagration. Audiences in 1981 had been raised on yearly viewings of this saga so the idea of the Ark of the Covenant and the tablets as a powerful, unearthly, and potentially destructive force—the power of God—was wired into them. And after an hour and 45 minutes of movie serial action, Raiders delivers its Ten Commandments moment as the skies open, evil spirits emerge from the opened Ark and lay waste to a crowd of Nazis, zapping them up into the clouds on a pillar of flame right out of the DeMille movie. (Even Spielberg’s ghost-directed Poltergeist features homages to Gillespie’s cloud tank effects, a biblical tornado and a hint of Moses in JoBeth Williams’ suburban mom, whose hair transforms with streaks of white the morning after her confrontation with supernatural forces.)
Scott Higgins: I think our conception of “action-adventure” as a distinct part of the action film tradition comes largely from the Indiana Jones films. Part of what makes them “adventure” is tone—they are throwbacks to Fairbanks’ Thief of Bagdad and Flynn’s Adventures of Robin Hood in their broadly drawn subsidiary characters, gleefully obvious comedy, and basic sincerity. These films are rollicking, in a way that adult-oriented action films were not. For better or worse, they created a model for the “family actioner”—movies pitched broadly enough to play cross-generationally, but still crafted around physical problem solving and violent encounters. I guess I’m describing the basic tent pole film—and it has served the industry well (Independence Day, Avengers) and disappointed terribly (Wild, Wild West, anyone?). The Indiana Jones films didn’t invent this approach, but they carried it off with originality and set a certain standard.
