Back in 1981, when Raiders of the Lost Ark came out, three 12 year old kids in Mississippi saw it multiple times and became a little obsessed with it. They decided that it would be a great idea to remake the movie shot for shot during the summer. 7 summers later it was finally finished.
I had first heard about this remake 5 years ago. It was so fantastic it just couldn’t be true. I looked around for bootlegs, but it turned out to be as hard as finding a copy of “The Day the Clown Cried“. Who has that kind of patience? Who has the resources to create something so epic? It was a huge Hollywood production, how could 3 kids possibly do such a thing? A few nights ago I saw the proof. It is very real, and they totally pulled it off, and it was one of the best movie experiences I’ve ever had in my life.
You really should watch the trailer that The Belcourt put together for this screening. It looks awful, the sound is unintelligible half the time, and pretty much everything about the movie is bad. But there is so much magic in it. What these kids accomplished is nothing short of spectacular. It really reminded me why I love movies.
Obviously there are some things they couldn’t film, but they’re few and far between. For instance, they decided not to film the scene where the muscled dude gets destroyed by the airplane propeller because they thought it would “look fake” when they had to blow up a model airplane at the end of the scene. I don’t want to spoil any more of it for you because half the fun is trying to figure out how they’re going to pull off the next big scene.
The director Eric Zala was in attendance and did a Q&A session after the screening. He told us that Daniel Clowes (writer of Ghost World) is currently writing a movie about their experience during the 7 years. He told a lot of great stories about the filming. But perhaps the best story was about Steven Spielberg writing a letter to him after seeing a bootleg of it and telling him that not only did he love it, but it actually inspired him. That would be like if I was a teenager and somehow got to compete against Bo Jackson in the many things he knows and he gave me a high five after I kicked his butt. That was a really bad analogy. Man I really love Bo Jackson.
The movie can only be screened at non-profit venues. So if you want to see it then you’ll have to bug your local non-profit art house theater or college and demand that they show it. We’re lucky that George Lucas hasn’t pitched a fit and sued the pants off the filmmakers. There have been rumors since 2004 that it will one day be released in an Indy box set or something. They were filming a lot at the event, it looked like they were filming for a documentary perhaps. So maybe it will get released, but don’t hold your breath. Also it’s better than Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
