When I was a kid -- aroud ten years old, I think -- I used to go to my Lake Wales, Florida backyard and pretend that I was Indiana Jones. My sister and I made up all sorts of new adventures for the daring archeologist (a time bomb inside a stuffed penguin, etc.), even though I had never actually seen the movies. I had my own little fedora, a brown belt that I used for a whip, and a cat that would occasionally become embroiled in plot developments.
So tonight at Isaac Wardell's country-rock concert, my friend Lang told me about some other kids in Biloxi, Mississppi who did the same thing. Only these kids had seen Raiders of the Lost Ark, and loved it so much that they decided to remake it, shot for shot, with themselves as stars. And somehow, between 1982 and 1989, they did it.
And they did it stunningly well, even though they started when the were 10 years old. Sarah Hepola writes: "The film is a crowd-pleaser, turning all the Raiders action -- clichéd after 20 years of imitation -- into a new and genuinely startling viewing experience. How will they do this next scene? How can they pull that stunt off? And don't forget that these kids are literally growing up in front of the camera. Voices deepen, hairstyles change, and though writers abuse this phrase: It's like nothing you've seen before. The hero grows stubble, and the heroine grows breasts."
They made fake boulders. They did stunts on moving trucks. They had a friend play all the Nazis, and get killed over and over. They almost burned down a house. And last week they finally screened the movie at a theater in Austin. The VHS was in circulation underground for years (even Spielberg saw and loved it), and now the trailer is online. Hopes are the full film will soon be coming to a theater near you.
I'll be there. And I'll bring my belt.
Posted by mesh at June 7, 2003 12:55 AM | TrackBack