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That Image in Your Head



Suppose I say the phrase "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

What is the first image (not the first word or phrase) that pops into your mind?

I'm guessing for many of you the first image is of a man in a fedora running frantically away from a giant boulder through a narrow cavern, in imminent danger of some nasty flattening.

Thanks to Mad Dog Movies, we have available a recreation of the moment at which that scene came into the head of director Steven Spielberg, under prodding from  producer George Lucas.

Lucas, just coming off the success of the Star Wars opening, met Spielberg and screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan for some old-fashioned spit-balling. Some of the ideas discussed in that first meeting were immediately discarded, others were left open at the time but never made it into the movie, still others like the boulder became images permanently affixed in our heads.

Here's the transcript.

At the top of p. 4, Lucas says, "I thought it would be interesting to have him be an expert in the occult, as an offshoot of the anthropological side of this thing. He has a tendency to get into situations where there are taboos, voodoos, things, especially when you start dealing with pyramids you get into all that."

At the top of page 5, Spielberg asks, "What's he afraid of? He got to be afraid of something."

You have to whisper the word "snakes" to yourself when reading that question, doncha?

And you have to get to p. 11 before Spielberg comes up with the idea for that boulder. The 3 men are planning at this point that Indiana will have a partner with him in that opening character-establishing adventure in the jungle. Spielberg says:

"I have a great idea. he hears the sand... When he goes into the cave, it's not straight. the whole thing is on an incline on the way in. He hears this, grabs the thing, and comes to a corridor. There is a sixty-five foot boulder that's form-fitted to roll down the corridor coming right at him. And it's a race. He gets to outrun the boulder. It then comes to rest and blocks the entrance of the cave. Nobody will ever come in again. This boulder is the size of a house."

Lucas adds, "It mashes the partner."

The scene works better without the mashed partner.

This look into the creative process is a lot of fun.






  
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