8 ms·

“Raiders of the Lost Ark” Story Conference Transcript (1978)

115 points by samclemens 5y ago

germinalphrase 5y ago
It’s a fascinating look into the process; shame that there is probably a lot of material like this wallowing in filing cabinets somewhere.
banana_giraffe 5y ago
There's been a few recreations/audio performances of this transcript, such as: https://podbay.fm/p/the-hollywood-gauntlet/e/1369888493 https://podbay.fm/p/the-hollywood-gauntlet/e/1369888493 Interesting to listen to like an audio book or radio play.
- lai-yin 5y ago
  Thank you! Anyone know why the original audio isn't available?
  - banana_giraffe 5y ago
    As I understand it, the provenance of the transcript itself isn't really known. It was eventually acknowledged by one of the participants (Kasdan, I think). Dunno why whoever has the recording hasn't released it, but I'd personally guess they just haven't bothered trying to get the permission from everyone involved, which may involve studios too, or at least they think it might.
taylorfinley 5y ago
The controversial section: L — I like it if they already had a relationship at one point. Because then you don't have to build it. G — I was thinking that this old guy could have been his mentor. He could have known this little girl when she was just a kid. Had an affair with her when she was eleven. L — And he was forty-two. G — He hasn't seen her in twelve years. Now she's twenty-two. It's a real strange relationship. S — She had better be older than twenty-two. G — He's thirty-five, and he knew her ten years ago when he was twenty-five and she was only twelve. G — It would be amusing to make her slightly young at the time. S — And promiscuous. She came onto him. G — Fifteen is right on the edge. I know it's an outrageous idea, but it is interesting. Once she's sixteen or seventeen it's not interesting anymore. But if she was fifteen and he was twenty-five and they actually had an affair the last time they met. And she was madly in love with him and he...
- ahefner 5y ago
  Charitably, maybe he's borrowing from Taxi Driver. Puts the Padme / Anakin Skywalker relationship in an interesting light though.
- ravel-bar-foo 5y ago
  Is there actually controversy here, or is it some twitter rage-baiting? I see no news articles about it, it was more than 40 years ago (the speaker has been relegated to a rightholder, no longer making film), and it was stopped in the spitballing stage of the (bad) idea. Does anyone care?
  - taylorfinley 5y ago
    I wish I could remember where I heard about it--it may have been gossip back when I worked in a writers room on the Warner Brothers lot more than a decade ago--but when I saw this posted just now I remembered hearing about this section and went looking for it. I didn't go looking for something controversial just to rage bait, I already knew about it, for whatever that's worth.
    - sho_hn 5y ago
      I recognize the section, it's definitely something that gets mentioned here and there in "behind the scenes" type pieces on the film.
  - deanCommie 5y ago
    There were LOTS of news articles about it when the transcript first came out a few years ago. Just Google "raiders of the lost ark transcript controversy" Here's why people care: It surprised a lot of people how casually these 3 famous intelligent creative people were talking about making their main character an abusive creep. Except...they didn't think it would make him an abusive creep. This tells you something about the normalization of the idea of a 25-year old man sleeping with a twelve year old girl. Either by the parties involved or their perception of the audience. By modern sensibilities, this would be an irredeemable character trait. Does that say something about how things have changed in the last 40 years? Is that worth acknowledging? etc.
alister 5y ago
George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Larry Kasdan sat around talking through all the ideas they had for “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. They tape recorded their meetings. This is a transcription of those tape recordings. I read it a long time ago, and the most interesting thing that stuck in my mind had to do with the headpiece with a crystal in the center that Indiana Jones had to obtain. A quote from the movie itself to refresh memories: "And what you did was you take the staff to a special room in Tanis... a map room with a miniature of the city all laid out on the floor and if you put the staff in a certain place, at a certain time of day, the sun shone through [the crystal] and made a beam that came down on the floor... and gave you the exact location of the Well of the Souls. [Which is] where the Ark of the Covenant was kept." Lucas, Spielberg, and Kasdan got into a discussion about why it had to be a physical thing like a crystal. It couldn't be a map, diagram, or document that gave the exact place to dig. Because valuable information like that, even if it were engraved or printed on a gold artifact, would have been photographed and distributed to museums around the world. Then Indiana wouldn't have needed to go to Nepal to retrieve the original. Hence the headpiece with a crystal -- which isn't easily copied. There was so much attention to the logical flow of the story.
- Jedd 5y ago
  > There was so much attention to the logical flow of the story. In some ways, but the most famous observation (that I've heard) about the first Indiana film is that the outcome -- all the bad guys getting fried when they open the ark -- would have also happened had Indiana done nothing.
  - bbarnett 5y ago
    Hmm. True, but I suppose if he wasn't there, the nazis might have reclaimed the ark post-death of their team, learned, and done something different? And maybe the woman he was tied up with would be dead... But yeah, I get it. Never heard it before.
  - sonofhans 5y ago
    The Nazis may never have found the headpiece if they hadn't followed Indy. That's his primary contribution. He clearly knew exactly where Marion was, even though he bullshitted the spooks about it. So he was careful with that information, and it's not likely anyone else would know. Here's a question: how do we know those were government spooks at all? Maybe they were Nazis trying to setup Indy just so that they could follow him :D
corbins 5y ago
Lucas seems like the well-spring of ideas here. He goes on long rambles, almost free-associating, and then Kasdan or Spielberg will have a one sentence reply. And then another rant. It's like they're providing minor course corrections while he generates ideas and ideas and ideas... Anyone familiar with writing rooms or the like, is this asymmetrical pattern common?
- kradeelav 5y ago
  I've participated in storyboard brainstorm sessions (more on the design/drawing side) and the kind of asymmetrical energy you're talking about definitely exists. Largely depends on the personalities in the room - if there's one particularly "extrovert" personality that tends to think out loud, the others tend to shift into an editor mindset.
- everyone 5y ago
  It sounds like Lucas has been thinking about this for a long time and has already worked on it a little with others + done a little research, whereas the idea is newer to the others.
  - Fricken 5y ago
    Lucas had been thinking about it for a while. His initial premise was some kind of Archeologist James Bond type action/adventure film that pays homage to the Saturday matinee cliffhanger serials Lucas enjoyed as a youngster.
fractallyte 5y ago
Hah, and not a mention of the movie from which they 'borrowed' so much, Secret of the Incas! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_of_the_Incas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_of_the_Incas One of the most famous scenes - positioning the artifact at just the right moment to reflect the rays of sun to reveal... - straight out of the 1954 movie. Secret of the Incas was filmed on location in Cusco, before it was a tourist destination. The city is raw, colorful, a snapshot in time. The script is full of humorous sarcasm, with an interesting (but fairly slow) story, based in fact. As for Charlton Heston's character? The prototype for Indiana Jones: fedora hat, leather jacket, pistol, mannerisms... The full movie is on YouTube: https://youtu.be/OYQD24HrNlU https://youtu.be/OYQD24HrNlU
- jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
  Thanks for posting. That was interesting to skim through. IJ really is a blatant rip off of it.
- nile-crocodile 5y ago
  >The full movie is on YouTube: https://youtu.be/OYQD24HrNlU https://youtu.be/OYQD24HrNlU There's a 1080p Amazon WEB-DL in existence.
- nemo44x 5y ago
  I think that was intentional as they really wanted to reach back into the golden age of Hollywood as something of a reaction to the “new Hollywood” styles of the 1970’s. Interesting it was filmed on location way back then as that must have been very expensive and difficult with the tech they had in the 50’s.
- dTal 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure that Secret of the Incas didn't invent that trope, although it may be the inspiration for Raiders. Journey to the Center of the Earth also has a scene involving standing at the correct place at the correct time for the sun's rays to cast a shadow in the correct place, and I'm sure it's even older than that.
  - 5y ago
nickloewen 5y ago
I have a carefully designed HTML copy of this at https://nloewen.com/docs/lucas-spielberg-kasdan--raiders-of-the-lost-ark-story-conference/ https://nloewen.com/docs/lucas-spielberg-kasdan--raiders-of-...
- dang 5y ago
  What's not to like? Changed to that from http://maddogmovies.com/almost/scripts/raidersstoryconference1978.pdf http://maddogmovies.com/almost/scripts/raidersstoryconferenc.... Thanks!
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
fogof 5y ago
> What’s he afraid of? He’s got to be afraid of something. Cool to see how the iconic fear of snakes starts out as a vague desire to make the character vulnerable, and grows from there.
Razengan 5y ago
I really miss the sense of world-spanning (and era-spanning) adventure that Indiana Jones had (which culminated in the epic game Fate of Atlantis that sorely deserves a movie more than anything). Has anyone found anything relatively recent which generated the same feeling for you?
- Neil44 5y ago
  I know what you mean. Same with James Bond, when the first books and even movies came out such travel and places were almost inaccessible to almost everyone. Just the places alone were so exotic and mysterious. It’s a different world now.
  - Razengan 5y ago
    I’d think a movie involving lots of travel would be more appealing in a world of pandemic restrictions.
- yann2 5y ago
  Yup that sense, which existed when I was younger has evaporated. Adventure overload I guess. I vaguely remember reading a while back Spielberg wanted to go back to that theme for the 5th Indy movie (currently in production) but Ford wanted something new and Spielberg dropped out as Director.
m0llusk 5y ago
Count the cliff hangers and make the characters interesting. No wonder the story is meaningless dribble that goes nowhere and means nothing. The conception was never anything more than a series of empty thrills disconnected from deeper meaning. The ending was just a way of cementing that the story didn't actually amount to anything or make any real statement. Great that this entertains some people, but also notable that watching this film is one of the least rewarding experiences I have ever had.
- question000 5y ago
  I mean the story of Indiana Jones 1 is about the power of religious symbolism, nostalgia , history in general. It's not just about the actions of the plot but about how we see that era the film is set. Nazis aim to use the Ark for power, Indy wants to put in a museum, ultimately it ends up hidden again in a warehouse. I mean seems pretty meaningful statement about how knowledge is used and controlled.
excalibur 5y ago
It's interesting how much of Temple of Doom was actually pieced together out of deleted scenes from Raiders. In a few places you can actually see glimpses of Last Crusade in this.

115 points by samclemens 5y ago

It’s a fascinating look into the process; shame that there is probably a lot of material like this wallowing in filing cabinets somewhere.

banana_giraffe 5y ago

There's been a few recreations/audio performances of this transcript, such as: https://podbay.fm/p/the-hollywood-gauntlet/e/1369888493 https://podbay.fm/p/the-hollywood-gauntlet/e/1369888493 Interesting to listen to like an audio book or radio play.

lai-yin 5y ago
Thank you! Anyone know why the original audio isn't available?
- banana_giraffe 5y ago
  As I understand it, the provenance of the transcript itself isn't really known. It was eventually acknowledged by one of the participants (Kasdan, I think). Dunno why whoever has the recording hasn't released it, but I'd personally guess they just haven't bothered trying to get the permission from everyone involved, which may involve studios too, or at least they think it might.

taylorfinley 5y ago

The controversial section: L — I like it if they already had a relationship at one point. Because then you don't have to build it. G — I was thinking that this old guy could have been his mentor. He could have known this little girl when she was just a kid. Had an affair with her when she was eleven. L — And he was forty-two. G — He hasn't seen her in twelve years. Now she's twenty-two. It's a real strange relationship. S — She had better be older than twenty-two. G — He's thirty-five, and he knew her ten years ago when he was twenty-five and she was only twelve. G — It would be amusing to make her slightly young at the time. S — And promiscuous. She came onto him. G — Fifteen is right on the edge. I know it's an outrageous idea, but it is interesting. Once she's sixteen or seventeen it's not interesting anymore. But if she was fifteen and he was twenty-five and they actually had an affair the last time they met. And she was madly in love with him and he...

ahefner 5y ago
Charitably, maybe he's borrowing from Taxi Driver. Puts the Padme / Anakin Skywalker relationship in an interesting light though.
ravel-bar-foo 5y ago
Is there actually controversy here, or is it some twitter rage-baiting? I see no news articles about it, it was more than 40 years ago (the speaker has been relegated to a rightholder, no longer making film), and it was stopped in the spitballing stage of the (bad) idea. Does anyone care?
- taylorfinley 5y ago
  I wish I could remember where I heard about it--it may have been gossip back when I worked in a writers room on the Warner Brothers lot more than a decade ago--but when I saw this posted just now I remembered hearing about this section and went looking for it. I didn't go looking for something controversial just to rage bait, I already knew about it, for whatever that's worth.
  - sho_hn 5y ago
    I recognize the section, it's definitely something that gets mentioned here and there in "behind the scenes" type pieces on the film.
- deanCommie 5y ago
  There were LOTS of news articles about it when the transcript first came out a few years ago. Just Google "raiders of the lost ark transcript controversy" Here's why people care: It surprised a lot of people how casually these 3 famous intelligent creative people were talking about making their main character an abusive creep. Except...they didn't think it would make him an abusive creep. This tells you something about the normalization of the idea of a 25-year old man sleeping with a twelve year old girl. Either by the parties involved or their perception of the audience. By modern sensibilities, this would be an irredeemable character trait. Does that say something about how things have changed in the last 40 years? Is that worth acknowledging? etc.

alister 5y ago

George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Larry Kasdan sat around talking through all the ideas they had for “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. They tape recorded their meetings. This is a transcription of those tape recordings. I read it a long time ago, and the most interesting thing that stuck in my mind had to do with the headpiece with a crystal in the center that Indiana Jones had to obtain. A quote from the movie itself to refresh memories: "And what you did was you take the staff to a special room in Tanis... a map room with a miniature of the city all laid out on the floor and if you put the staff in a certain place, at a certain time of day, the sun shone through [the crystal] and made a beam that came down on the floor... and gave you the exact location of the Well of the Souls. [Which is] where the Ark of the Covenant was kept." Lucas, Spielberg, and Kasdan got into a discussion about why it had to be a physical thing like a crystal. It couldn't be a map, diagram, or document that gave the exact place to dig. Because valuable information like that, even if it were engraved or printed on a gold artifact, would have been photographed and distributed to museums around the world. Then Indiana wouldn't have needed to go to Nepal to retrieve the original. Hence the headpiece with a crystal -- which isn't easily copied. There was so much attention to the logical flow of the story.

Jedd 5y ago
> There was so much attention to the logical flow of the story. In some ways, but the most famous observation (that I've heard) about the first Indiana film is that the outcome -- all the bad guys getting fried when they open the ark -- would have also happened had Indiana done nothing.
- bbarnett 5y ago
  Hmm. True, but I suppose if he wasn't there, the nazis might have reclaimed the ark post-death of their team, learned, and done something different? And maybe the woman he was tied up with would be dead... But yeah, I get it. Never heard it before.
- sonofhans 5y ago
  The Nazis may never have found the headpiece if they hadn't followed Indy. That's his primary contribution. He clearly knew exactly where Marion was, even though he bullshitted the spooks about it. So he was careful with that information, and it's not likely anyone else would know. Here's a question: how do we know those were government spooks at all? Maybe they were Nazis trying to setup Indy just so that they could follow him :D

corbins 5y ago

Lucas seems like the well-spring of ideas here. He goes on long rambles, almost free-associating, and then Kasdan or Spielberg will have a one sentence reply. And then another rant. It's like they're providing minor course corrections while he generates ideas and ideas and ideas... Anyone familiar with writing rooms or the like, is this asymmetrical pattern common?

kradeelav 5y ago
I've participated in storyboard brainstorm sessions (more on the design/drawing side) and the kind of asymmetrical energy you're talking about definitely exists. Largely depends on the personalities in the room - if there's one particularly "extrovert" personality that tends to think out loud, the others tend to shift into an editor mindset.
everyone 5y ago
It sounds like Lucas has been thinking about this for a long time and has already worked on it a little with others + done a little research, whereas the idea is newer to the others.
- Fricken 5y ago
  Lucas had been thinking about it for a while. His initial premise was some kind of Archeologist James Bond type action/adventure film that pays homage to the Saturday matinee cliffhanger serials Lucas enjoyed as a youngster.

fractallyte 5y ago

Hah, and not a mention of the movie from which they 'borrowed' so much, Secret of the Incas! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_of_the_Incas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_of_the_Incas One of the most famous scenes - positioning the artifact at just the right moment to reflect the rays of sun to reveal... - straight out of the 1954 movie. Secret of the Incas was filmed on location in Cusco, before it was a tourist destination. The city is raw, colorful, a snapshot in time. The script is full of humorous sarcasm, with an interesting (but fairly slow) story, based in fact. As for Charlton Heston's character? The prototype for Indiana Jones: fedora hat, leather jacket, pistol, mannerisms... The full movie is on YouTube: https://youtu.be/OYQD24HrNlU https://youtu.be/OYQD24HrNlU

jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
Thanks for posting. That was interesting to skim through. IJ really is a blatant rip off of it.
nile-crocodile 5y ago
>The full movie is on YouTube: https://youtu.be/OYQD24HrNlU https://youtu.be/OYQD24HrNlU There's a 1080p Amazon WEB-DL in existence.
nemo44x 5y ago
I think that was intentional as they really wanted to reach back into the golden age of Hollywood as something of a reaction to the “new Hollywood” styles of the 1970’s. Interesting it was filmed on location way back then as that must have been very expensive and difficult with the tech they had in the 50’s.
dTal 5y ago
I'm pretty sure that Secret of the Incas didn't invent that trope, although it may be the inspiration for Raiders. Journey to the Center of the Earth also has a scene involving standing at the correct place at the correct time for the sun's rays to cast a shadow in the correct place, and I'm sure it's even older than that.
- 5y ago

nickloewen 5y ago

I have a carefully designed HTML copy of this at https://nloewen.com/docs/lucas-spielberg-kasdan--raiders-of-the-lost-ark-story-conference/ https://nloewen.com/docs/lucas-spielberg-kasdan--raiders-of-...

dang 5y ago
What's not to like? Changed to that from http://maddogmovies.com/almost/scripts/raidersstoryconference1978.pdf http://maddogmovies.com/almost/scripts/raidersstoryconferenc.... Thanks!

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

fogof 5y ago

> What’s he afraid of? He’s got to be afraid of something. Cool to see how the iconic fear of snakes starts out as a vague desire to make the character vulnerable, and grows from there.

Razengan 5y ago

I really miss the sense of world-spanning (and era-spanning) adventure that Indiana Jones had (which culminated in the epic game Fate of Atlantis that sorely deserves a movie more than anything). Has anyone found anything relatively recent which generated the same feeling for you?

Neil44 5y ago
I know what you mean. Same with James Bond, when the first books and even movies came out such travel and places were almost inaccessible to almost everyone. Just the places alone were so exotic and mysterious. It’s a different world now.
- Razengan 5y ago
  I’d think a movie involving lots of travel would be more appealing in a world of pandemic restrictions.
yann2 5y ago
Yup that sense, which existed when I was younger has evaporated. Adventure overload I guess. I vaguely remember reading a while back Spielberg wanted to go back to that theme for the 5th Indy movie (currently in production) but Ford wanted something new and Spielberg dropped out as Director.

m0llusk 5y ago

Count the cliff hangers and make the characters interesting. No wonder the story is meaningless dribble that goes nowhere and means nothing. The conception was never anything more than a series of empty thrills disconnected from deeper meaning. The ending was just a way of cementing that the story didn't actually amount to anything or make any real statement. Great that this entertains some people, but also notable that watching this film is one of the least rewarding experiences I have ever had.

question000 5y ago
I mean the story of Indiana Jones 1 is about the power of religious symbolism, nostalgia , history in general. It's not just about the actions of the plot but about how we see that era the film is set. Nazis aim to use the Ark for power, Indy wants to put in a museum, ultimately it ends up hidden again in a warehouse. I mean seems pretty meaningful statement about how knowledge is used and controlled.

excalibur 5y ago

It's interesting how much of Temple of Doom was actually pieced together out of deleted scenes from Raiders. In a few places you can actually see glimpses of Last Crusade in this.