Raiders of the Lost Ark (w/ Chasah & Charliese West)

Eli Price (00:02.385)
Hello and welcome to the establishing shot a podcast where we do deep dives into directors and their filmography's I am your host Eli price and we are here on episode 44 of the podcast getting deeper and deeper into the the caverns of our early Spielberg series and hopefully

There's no booby traps along the way as we go through this episode, which is Raiders of the Lost Ark. And I have some special guests with me today. Chasa and Charlize West are joining us. The West sisters, as it says in the little corner of our Riverside recording studio for them. But yeah.

The West Sisters (00:54.542)
Hahaha.

Eli Price (00:57.841)
Chasan, Charlize, it's great to have y 'all on. Why don't y 'all tell a little bit about yourselves? And yeah, I might ask some follow -up questions that the listeners might like to know. But yeah, just share a little bit about who you are, what you do, that sort of thing.

The West Sisters (01:20.238)
Well, I'm Chasa. I'm the slightly older sister. I'm Charlize, the younger sister. And we are writer, directors, screenwriters, and directors of a few short films. We write films that are both of shorts and feature length, essentially as a creative enterprise. Let's say that. Anything you want to add?

And we dabble in doing a few things outside of film as well, but screenwriting has definitely been our bread and butter.

Eli Price (01:59.505)
Yeah. Yeah. You all have, um, uh, I guess day jobs, as you would say, but, uh, but your, your passion, I guess, is from what I gather, at least from the, our discussions we've had is, is doing your screenwriting and directing and that sort of thing. Am I right there? Yeah. Great. Yeah. So I'm, I was excited, um, to have, uh, have Chasen Tralis on just bringing kind of, um,

The West Sisters (02:17.23)
Yes, yes, absolutely, absolutely. Yes.

Eli Price (02:29.041)
A different perspective than we've had. I don't think I've had anyone on that's done any screenwriting or directing before, at least not that they've told me. So, yeah. But yeah, what, I guess, do y 'all wanna share maybe about some projects that y 'all have worked on?

The West Sisters (02:43.342)
Well, we're excited.

Eli Price (02:55.089)
I know y 'all have had some recent stuff that's been premiering. If you want to talk about that or maybe even kind of share where people can check out stuff that y 'all have worked on or at least follow you to find out where they can see it in the future. Yeah.

The West Sisters (03:12.398)
Definitely. So our first short film we co -directed, it's called Heritage or Héritage in French because it kind of specifically deals with the Creole language here in Louisiana and a young girl who reconnects or connects for the first time with that Creole language heritage. And the second...

project that we've completed was a solo directing project by me called Never Even and Charlisse was the producer that I hired to get that short film done and she did an amazing job helping to bring together the actors, the behind the scenes crew and currently both of those films, you want to talk about the process we're in for both of those?

Yes, so for both of those they are complete. We finished post -production on both of them basically neck and neck, even though they were filmed at separate times. But we are in the process of submitting these short films to film festivals.

Eli Price (04:21.137)
Awesome. Yeah. Um, I was actually able to check out heritage. Um, it was at the, correct me if I get the name of the festival wrong. I think it's just like the French film festival out of New Orleans. Um, yeah, I wasn't able to attend, but I, but there was an online package that you could get to be able to watch it. And so, um, yeah, I enjoyed it. I thought it was like a very sweet.

The West Sisters (04:34.734)
Yes, the New Orleans French Film Festival. Correct.

Eli Price (04:50.385)
Um, fun little, uh, short film. Um, yeah.

The West Sisters (04:54.318)
Yeah, it's kind of like a coming of age story, essentially, that also blends with language in a fun way. Yeah.

Eli Price (04:58.549)
Yeah. Yes. Yeah, for sure. So, yeah. And where can people kind of follow y 'all so they can see where they might be able to watch those in the future?

The West Sisters (05:13.632)
Well, I believe the best way would be through Instagram. Our Instagram handle is at set .west, set as in S -E -T dot west, our last name.

Eli Price (05:17.617)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (05:25.649)
Yeah. And I'll make sure to link that in the, in the episode description as well, so that people can just go click on it. Um, I always appreciate when podcasts do that. So I always try to make sure I, I do that for mine. Um, but yeah, it's, uh, it's really cool to have you guys on, bring in a little bit of different perspective. Um, but like to, I guess to transition into Spielberg talk, um, what was.

The West Sisters (05:29.39)
Thank you.

Awesome. Perfect.

Eli Price (05:54.595)
Y 'all's first introduction that you remember at least to Spielberg. My memory personally is like very blurry on that. I have like, I have like a few that I'm like, I know I watched this as a kid, but I'm not sure what I watched first. Um, but I don't know if y 'all have a similar kind of, uh, thing or what.

The West Sisters (06:02.38)
Mmm.

The West Sisters (06:08.654)
Yeah, same.

Honestly, yeah, I think because his films were just on TV constantly and talked about a lot. I remember knowing of Indiana Jones and, you know, probably also saw parodies of Indiana Jones before I really knew that that was the movie it came from. We were really enamored with the young baby Drew Barrymore in ET when we were young. But honestly, I think once we got into writing and directing, which was honest, like,

Eli Price (06:18.927)
Yeah.

Eli Price (06:30.543)
Oh yeah.

The West Sisters (06:42.946)
Much later, it became much clearer to us that there were directors behind the movies that we were watching. And so then became a lot more aware of him. And especially through people's conversation about just his directing techniques and just his amazing ability to do a couple of things. Jurassic Park became a movie that we watched. And I remember loving the way that he handled tension and suspense and.

and things like that in Jurassic Park mostly. And then for me, Chasa doesn't seem to remember this as much, but for me, I remember watching the terminal, probably not when it first came out, but it was probably a few years after that. And since we grew up traveling a lot, our parents were missionaries. We were always in and out of airports. And so as kids, we actually did do a lot of the cart returns so that we could get a quarter.

Eli Price (07:12.625)
Oh yeah.

Eli Price (07:34.065)
Hmm.

The West Sisters (07:40.878)
or sometimes whatever currency of the airport we might have been in and tried to actually make some, you know, some change so that we could go to the vending machine and get a snack. It was so fun. I remember running around the airport, grabbing those cards and you know, sometimes my mom would say, okay, it's time to go. Like we got to get to our gate. We got to catch our flight. Let's go.

Eli Price (08:02.417)
Yeah, that's fun. I actually haven't seen Terminal. So hopefully whenever I do further Spielberg series, because for this one, you know, I'm just covering 70s and 80s and I'll kind of decide if I want to keep going or maybe do something else. But I will definitely eventually make it through all of Spielberg's stuff. So maybe I'll catch up before that I do the series or maybe I'll wait till the series. But.

The West Sisters (08:05.742)
Oh.

The West Sisters (08:24.302)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eli Price (08:32.497)
But yeah, I haven't seen the terminal. So that's, that's definitely one, but Jurassic park was one of my early ones for sure. And ET. Um, so I, you know, we're, we're a similar age. So we probably like are that, um, I mean, ET was, you know, early eighties, but Jurassic park is like the nineties kids, uh, you know, like Spielberg movie.

The West Sisters (08:50.732)
Mm -hmm.

The West Sisters (08:57.486)
Mayor.

Eli Price (08:59.377)
Like the Spielberg movie for the nineties kids, I guess. Um, but yeah.

The West Sisters (09:02.094)
Yeah. Yeah.

A little bit nightmare fuel, a little bit awe mixed together.

Eli Price (09:08.945)
Yes, for sure. Yeah. I always, um, whenever I think of Spielberg, uh, well, as far as Jurassic park goes, I think of, you know, obviously the T -Rex, which is the fear, but also like the first time they see the dinosaurs like that is like an image, you know, that I can picture in my mind. Um, which is the wonder, which is kind of like something Spielberg just does. He does fear and wonder like all throughout his.

The West Sisters (09:27.246)
Yeah.

Eli Price (09:38.565)
his filmography. But yeah, let's let's jump into the Raiders content. What do y 'all remember the first time you saw Raiders or is it just kind of well you kind of mentioned it's kind of like you knew about it.

The West Sisters (09:53.55)
Yeah, I think there were probably cartoon shows we were watching that were using the theme song and had the hat thing going on and the whip and then we finally, maybe later, saw it and made the connection. So I honestly don't remember the first time I saw it all the way through. I just know Indiana Jones was always a thing, you know?

Eli Price (10:03.889)
Oh yeah.

Eli Price (10:13.265)
Mm -hmm. Yeah, I don't either.

Right. Yeah. It's he's kind of like the character is just kind of like an iconic part of culture that will the character and the yeah, the the like March thing, the Indiana Jones March kind of John Williams score.

The West Sisters (10:26.446)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (10:34.894)
In fact, I think it's a Rugrats episode where little Tommy Pickles is pretending to be an explorer and doing the whole thing. Yeah. So I'm going to say that's exactly, yeah, exactly. And the camera angles and they're looking at him as the heroic leader. And I'm going to say that's officially the first time we encountered.

Eli Price (10:46.385)
do remember that actually now that you say that he even has like a whip of sorts doesn't he?

Yeah.

The West Sisters (11:04.342)
some semblance of Indiana Jones was an episode of Rugrats.

Eli Price (11:08.785)
You know, you know that now that you're saying that you're bringing back memories of being a kid watching Rugrats. So I might have, I might have a similar introduction to Indiana Jones. To be honest. It's fun. It's fun too, to go for like when you're thinking about like references in pop culture. The first thing that one of the things that I did for this are.

The West Sisters (11:20.206)
Yeah.

Eli Price (11:38.289)
I did it for something. It might have been looking at like Jaws or something like that. I was wondering how many references in The Simpsons there were because The Simpsons just like reference movies like endlessly. And I've never been like a big Simpsons watcher. I've maybe seen a couple episodes, but I was just curious like how many.

The West Sisters (11:46.55)
Mmm.

The West Sisters (11:59.182)
same.

Eli Price (12:06.189)
Spielberg references are in Simpsons. But yeah, let's jump into talking through Raiders. It's a really interesting story. So George Lucas is kind of the...

The West Sisters (12:09.206)
Yeah.

Eli Price (12:28.753)
Hold on. I'm gonna mute myself. I've got some like stuff going on with my throat.

Eli Price (12:50.833)
Sorry about that.

The West Sisters (12:53.134)
No worries.

Eli Price (12:54.883)
I was fine before I started talking. And then, of course, as soon as I start talking. All right, I'm going to pause and then jump back in.

Eli Price (13:05.777)
Yeah, George Lucas is kind of the, I guess, mastermind behind Indiana Jones. It's I guess now it kind of has Spielberg stamped on it. But George Lucas was a huge part of making this movie happen. And it's interesting. George Lucas, I feel like when you kind of look at stuff, he that was like his idea versus stuff he directed himself.

It's kind of like, okay, he's the idea man. Like he, he has great ideas. Um, maybe he doesn't always need to be the one behind the camera. Um, and that's, that's why producer is a, is a job because producers and story makers like make good stories, but maybe they don't, maybe they don't do as good of work behind the camera as someone like Spielberg. Um,

The West Sisters (14:02.926)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (14:03.697)
But yeah, Lucas, the inception of this started way back in 73. Um, he started kind of playing around with the idea. Um, he ended up sharing it with Spielberg actually after star wars in 77, they were both in Hawaii. He kind of shared the idea with him. Um, and, uh, yeah, he, he worked with Philip Kaufman.

On the script in seventy five is when they kind of sat down to really dig into the script. And yeah, they had at that point it was still Indiana Smith, the adventures of Indiana Smith. And so that would have been very it sounds strange. Maybe it would have been normal if if it if it had been called that from the beginning. But but yeah, that actually a fun fact, the name Indiana.

The West Sisters (14:33.998)
Mm -hmm.

The West Sisters (14:50.19)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eli Price (14:59.185)
came from Lucas's wife's dog. They had an Alaskan Malamute or Malamute dog named Indiana. And so that was where the name came from.

The West Sisters (15:13.262)
It's so unique.

Eli Price (15:15.409)
Yeah. Um, and I think too, um, I looked up Alaskan Malamute, so I know what it looks like in my head and it doesn't look like Chewbacca, but apparently that dog also inspired the character of Chewbacca. I guess maybe like the companionship aspect.

The West Sisters (15:31.916)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (15:40.305)
Um, but yeah, so anyways, he, he, he worked with, uh, Phillip Kaufman on the script. Uh, Kaufman, uh, had, had some of the really good ideas too. He came, kind of came up with the MacGuffin of the arc of the covenant. Um, he was the one that kind of started the idea of having Nazi villains because the Nazis, some of the Nazi leaders apparently were like in real life, really like attracted to a cult kind of stuff.

The West Sisters (16:09.558)
Hmm.

Eli Price (16:10.289)
And so, um, yeah, he, him and Kauffman worked on it a lot. Um, and, uh, eventually it got to a point where, um, they wanted, uh, Kauffman couldn't really do it. He had another movie going on so he couldn't direct it. Um, and they eventually Lucas decides, okay, Kauffman can't do it. I'll bring on Spielberg. Um, and Spielberg kind of like pretty at this point is.

pretty aware that he's not the best writer. Um, and so he's, he's kind of like, okay, we got to bring a writer on. And so, um, they had liked the script that was going around, um, by, uh, Lawrence Kasdan who had written, uh, empire strikes back for Lucas. So he was familiar with them. Um, and, uh, so they brought him on to do the script and in 78, they started kind of brainstorming the three of them, Lucas Spielberg and Kasdan.

The West Sisters (16:54.51)
Yeah.

Eli Price (17:08.945)
And, um, yeah, they took, I always liked to see what inspirations there are, but they were looking at like Michael Curtiz movies, John Huston, Howard Hawks. So all these kind of, um, these kind of directors that do these like very like kind of epic American movies. Um, and then also they're just like looking at all these different genres, thrillers and Westerns and spy films and samurai films.

The West Sisters (17:28.48)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (17:38.737)
And, um, just kind of pulling elements from all of these. Um, but the idea really started, um, with, uh, kind of wanting to call back to the, the kind of serials that would show at the theater in the forties and fifties, um, or really thirties and forties, I guess. So obviously at that point, people didn't have TVs in their homes, but there was still kind of what we would think of as TV shows just at the theater. So.

The West Sisters (18:07.574)
Yeah.

Eli Price (18:08.497)
You know, they would go to the theater and you would see like a feature film, but then they would show these cereals too. And they had their, they called them either cereals or cliffhangers because they would always end with a cliffhanger that you had to come back the next week, the next Saturday to see what happened next.

Eli Price (18:35.163)
I'm really sorry, I got this like thing in my throat that I can't get rid of.

The West Sisters (18:39.468)
No worries.

Eli Price (18:51.729)
So they that was kind of a big inspiration for Lucas and then you know when he brought on Spielberg Spielberg was like all in on that idea too. And they kind of had the idea to just like put one cliffhanger right after the end at the next until it was a feature length film and so.

The West Sisters (19:10.798)
You can definitely see those influences shining through.

Eli Price (19:14.033)
Oh yeah. Yeah. And Spielberg, uh, I had actually have a quote. He said each cliff, cliffhanger is better than the one before. Um, that's kind of, he wanted to just build and build and build. And, um, yeah, I mean, you really do see that in the movie because every like 10 to 15 minutes, like something is happening. There's not like, there's some like maybe exposition here.

The West Sisters (19:25.)
You can see it.

Eli Price (19:43.57)
Maybe some like drama here, but then like when that 10 minute mark hits or 10 to 15 minute mark hits, like there's more like action.

The West Sisters (19:52.046)
Yeah, Indiana is either hanging off of the bottom of a car or climbing onto a submarine. Yeah.

Eli Price (19:58.129)
Absolutely. You know, running away from a giant rock. But yeah, Indiana Jones, the character had a lot of kind of development. They obviously like pretty vital to have a character like this to really like hone in on who he's going to be when the movie really like kind of.

rides on the success of this particular character. Um, but yeah, um, Spielberg was wanting kind of like a Humphrey Bogart or Clark Gable type gruff kind of character. And then Lucas, it's, I think it's interesting because I think what we get with Indiana Jones is the result of collaboration. Um,

because they had different ideas about who they wanted this character to be. And they, they each kind of had to compromise and they met in the middle. And I think, you know, the result that we end up with is probably better for that. Um, and I, I don't know, I would assume y 'all doing some writing together, probably have some, some similar, um, experiences where you have different ideas of what you want to do and have to kind of like compromise a little bit. Uh,

The West Sisters (21:02.774)
Mm -hmm.

The West Sisters (21:23.79)
Yeah, I'd say it's happened in the past with characters that we've come up with where if it seems like we're seeing the character too differently, like in a strong way, they'll usually divide and then it becomes two characters, you know what I mean?

Eli Price (21:40.081)
Okay. Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's interesting. I could see that, um, for sure. Uh, but that, yeah, I guess they couldn't really split Indiana Jones. Um, so, but I guess kind of they did. Lucas really, um, wanted, uh, him to have like a university man kind of contrast for, I guess, like, I think like a little bit of like comedic effect. Um,

The West Sisters (21:51.104)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

The West Sisters (22:09.612)
I know right, a professor going on all of these adventures. It's a dichotomy for sure.

Eli Price (22:09.905)
But, um...

Right. Yeah. And I'm not, it seemed like spill rug was kind of like indifferent about that idea, but I guess kind of just gave in because this is Lucas's story, his idea. So, um, but yeah, early on even they, uh, they kind of envisioned the transition from opening in the jungle and then going straight into a scene like at a museum or it ends up being, you know, at the university. But, um,

The West Sisters (22:24.59)
And thank you.

Eli Price (22:41.297)
So early on they had kind of envisioned that contrast right from the get go and ended up doing it.

The West Sisters (22:44.878)
I think it allows it to feel more like a complex character, which then makes him feel more real instead of one dimensional. So I think it all came out for the better in that sense. Yeah.

Eli Price (22:57.041)
Sure.

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I think I definitely think their compromises work. Um, because, well, another thing is Lucas really wanted him to be kind of like a, um, he described it as like a grave robber for hire or an outlaw archaeologist. And there's definitely hints of that, but Spielberg like waters it down a lot. Um, cause he probably would have been less likable if you leaned too much into that kind of.

The West Sisters (23:29.166)
Yeah.

Eli Price (23:30.689)
character I guess. Oh yeah. And then you know there's there's real archaeologists that went on adventures like I haven't seen the movie The Lost City of Z but there is that archaeologist that it's based off of I think his name is Percy Fawcett and and others that kind of influence it and and yeah it

The West Sisters (23:31.788)
especially back then.

Eli Price (23:59.151)
Indiana Smith turned into of course, Indiana Jones because Spielberg hated Indiana Smith. Um, I think there was another, like a Western that had come out, uh, at that time that was something Smith and Spielberg was like, Oh, I don't want it to be like that. Let's change it. And so they went with the first, uh, like most had surname, I guess, too, I guess the second, I don't know if that's how they decided, but.

The West Sisters (24:04.654)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (24:15.948)
Mm -hmm, that makes sense.

The West Sisters (24:24.556)
Yeah.

Eli Price (24:27.729)
I'm pretty sure Smith is like the highest surname in America. And I think Jones is the second. So, um, yeah, I just think that's funny. Um, he also had influence. There was, um, a Charlton Heston character named Harry steel in a movie called secret of the Incas, who also had like a worn leather jacket and the fedora and a whip. And so definitely some influence there too. Um,

The West Sisters (24:30.702)
Very common. Yeah. Yeah.

Eli Price (24:58.129)
But yeah, so they do that brainstorming session. And then, of course, Lucas goes on to direct Empire. Spielberg starts working on the movie 1941, which comes out in between Close Encounters and this movie that we're discussing, which I still haven't seen because I'm recording these a little out of order. So I'll be watching that probably.

The West Sisters (25:21.934)
You neither.

Eli Price (25:27.089)
Maybe this weekend or, or very soon, but, um, you know, 1941 was kind of a big flop, um, both critically and commercially. Like it just didn't do well. The critics didn't like it. The audiences didn't go for it. And so this really like ends up being Raiders ends up being a pig. Pick me up for, for Spielberg after that. Um, but yeah, um, one of the.

The West Sisters (25:50.604)
Mmm.

Eli Price (25:56.913)
One of the really interesting things that this movie, I guess, kind of like more studio, the inner workings of Hollywood kind of thing is Lucas at, I guess, coming off of Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back really started having some kind of power, I guess, in the studio system. And this is kind of around the time when there was like this big sw -

starting to be this big switch from, you know, the the studios and the head haunches of the studios having all the power to guys like directors and the actual filmmakers having more power because their names started being the main thing. It stopped being like this is a Paramount picture. This is an MGM picture and started being this is a Spielberg picture. This is a, you know, that, you know, that sort of thing.

The West Sisters (26:49.462)
Oh yeah.

The West Sisters (26:53.27)
Yeah.

Eli Price (26:54.961)
And so Lucas has a lot more power. So he sits down with studios. It ends up being with, uh, making it with Paramount, but, um, he bypasses using an agent and, um, asked for a $20 million budget upfront. Um, he required, he wanted like a five film commitment. He wanted, uh, 80 % of the profits before the studio recouped anything. Um, one.

The West Sisters (27:23.31)
Sounds like a sweet deal.

Eli Price (27:24.717)
Yeah, he wanted rights to spinoffs and sequels and the ability to keep artistic control. Um, and yeah, he, he really just like went for it. Um, and I, he might've gotten most of that if it weren't for the fact that he was nailed into having Spielberg as the director. Uh, cause at this point Spielberg was, Oh, that's the director that goes over budget and over schedule. Um,

The West Sisters (27:53.772)
Hmm.

Eli Price (27:54.257)
And so the studio did kind of give him most of what he asked for, I think. And I think there was a kind of, I think it was slightly lowered because he, he wouldn't, he was like committed to Spielberg and that makes the studio nervous. So he had to give in a little, little bit, but, but yeah, he,

The West Sisters (28:14.444)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (28:19.857)
He gets most of what we wanted. There was a clause, I think about going over budget. Like they would have to pay penalties if they went over budget. Um, and so, but yeah, Spielberg kind of, I think Spielberg was obviously in on some of those talks and, um, he kind of ends up kind of rolling with that in the future. Like that becomes his MO is upfront, um, budgets because you know,

The West Sisters (28:27.638)
Oh.

Eli Price (28:47.889)
That wasn't typically how things were done. You don't get everything upfront. But, but I guess when you're, when you're Steven Spielberg and you're able to put out Jaws and then Close Encounters and have one bad movie, but then put out Raiders, it's kind of like you start to be able to kind of, Oh yeah. And it also helped that Spielberg started his own production company.

The West Sisters (28:50.924)
Mm -hmm, mm -hmm, mm -hmm.

The West Sisters (29:06.734)
You deserve a little trust after all of that.

Eli Price (29:17.809)
that same year. So he had brought on, he had actually requested for producer Frank Marshall to, um, to come on to produce. Um, he had just seen some of his work and respected them and really wanted him to produce. They struck a, struck a relationship, uh, along with Kathleen Kennedy, who also produced, um, on Raiders. And yeah, those three, uh, Spielberg.

Uh, Marshall and Kennedy ended up starting, starting Amblin studio, Amblin production studios, um, in 1981. So, um, I'm guessing it was probably after this movie released, um, or maybe before, I don't really know. It was after they made the movie, but obviously it released in 81, but it was shot and produced in, in 1980.

The West Sisters (29:49.196)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (30:12.169)
But yeah And I didn't see Kennedy. I saw somewhere Kennedy was really good at keeping track of Spielberg's ideas and compiling them because Spielberg is just like You know, he's just throwing out all these ideas and you Yeah And you know, I think Marshall Frank Marshall was kind of the guy that's like

The West Sisters (30:27.662)
Yeah. Yeah, it takes all kinds. You need both skills.

Eli Price (30:40.089)
protecting him from the studio and kind of doing that role of being like the guy that He kind of like the ambassador on both ends like he's going to Spielberg with the studio stuff and being like hey This is you know, what let's let's work on this but also like Going to the studio and being like no Spielberg not doing that, you know kind of being the middleman there so you really do need like all of that I've

The West Sisters (31:05.614)
Yeah.

All positions on the team, yeah.

Eli Price (31:11.633)
Yeah. Um, it's always interesting. Sometimes director producer relationships are like really like not great, but it's always fun to see like when they work well together, like, like in this case, obviously they did, or they wouldn't have started their own production company together, but, um, but yeah, uh, let's talk about the cast.

The West Sisters (31:32.782)
Right, right.

Eli Price (31:41.105)
Harrison Ford, Indiana Jones, but it almost wasn't Harrison Ford. At one point, they wanted Jeff Bridges, I think. Yeah.

The West Sisters (31:42.604)
Mm -hmm.

The West Sisters (31:47.598)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (31:54.478)
That would have been interesting. I could see the gruff, the gruffer thing that you were talking about.

Eli Price (32:00.433)
Yeah, he would have. Yeah, maybe Gruffert Jeff Bridges was. He took he had some strange roles, I don't know. You know, I guess today, maybe people don't think of him as like a strange actor, but like he was doing movies like have you ever seen Star Man?

The West Sisters (32:22.222)
I've heard about it. I haven't seen it, but yeah, he's like an alien. I'll have to add it to the list.

Eli Price (32:24.049)
It's a weird movie. It's a weird movie. And yeah. And, and he, he plays our weird role. Like, I think it's, I don't think it's a bad movie. It's just weird. And, um, but yeah. Uh, so I don't really know what he would have been like as Indiana Jones. Um, but that really didn't, um, have much traction. I do know that Lucas did not want Harrison Ford. Um,

He like had this weird thing where he was like, I don't want to be tied to an actor. Um, I, he, I think it was kind of like, Oh, I don't want to be like Scorsese and De Niro where you like get kind of tied to an actor. Yeah. Which I guess I can see, but also like, if they're right for the role, they're right for the role, you know? Yeah. Um, but they actually had, um, uh, they had cast.

The West Sisters (33:06.222)
the same person. Yeah, yeah.

The West Sisters (33:13.806)
It worked out anyway.

Eli Price (33:21.871)
Tom Selleck for the role of Indiana Jones. He had a really good audition. I actually heard a clip on something I was listening to of his audition. I didn't see it, but I heard a clip from it. But yeah, he they he was basically like, yeah, it's going to be Tom Selleck. But Tom Selleck had just.

The West Sisters (33:26.222)
Wow.

The West Sisters (33:34.54)
Mm.

The West Sisters (33:38.19)
Yeah.

Eli Price (33:49.465)
shot the pilot for Magnum PI. And when he had when he had done that, he had signed an exclusive contract with that studio and Lucas and Spielberg and, you know, their team were just like begging the studio, please, you know, let us have time for this movie. And they wouldn't budge on that contract. And so Tom Selig falls through. And at the last minute, they kind of call in Harrison Ford.

The West Sisters (33:53.388)
Oh wow.

Eli Price (34:18.097)
Lucas is like, I guess we got to use, use old Harry. Um, yeah. Um, yeah. And, uh, one of the things I liked, uh, in one of the making of doc things I was watching, um, Ford was sitting there and he was like, yeah, ordinary things make me nervous, but movies, they don't make me nervous anymore. Um, it's kind of like.

The West Sisters (34:21.138)
This guy is... Lucky Harrison. Yeah.

Eli Price (34:48.849)
And you can kind of see like when you watch him on set and stuff, he's just kind of like in his element, you know, um, and really similar with, with Spielberg. It's like, he's just in his element when he's on set directing. But yeah. Um, other cast members, Karen Allen plays Marion Ravenwood, which I always forget her last name is Ravenwood, which is a really cool last name. Yeah.

The West Sisters (34:53.344)
Relaxed. Yeah.

The West Sisters (35:13.836)
Mm -hmm. Yeah, it is. It's very epic.

Eli Price (35:18.545)
And she, I want to say she had some like stage acting background. And which I think really came in handy because there was one of the quotes I had put down from her was she said that she had never done this kind of stylized acting on film. Which is true, you know, in stage acting, you have to be way more expressive and big and you don't always.

The West Sisters (35:38.838)
Mmm.

Eli Price (35:47.953)
That doesn't always translate to film, but for a film like this, it's like perfect. She's, she has to be very expressive and big, especially because she's like acting against Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones. Um, and then, you know, also being attacked by, um, corpse skeletons. Um, so, uh, but yeah, I thought that was, um, I thought that was interesting, you know, where.

The West Sisters (35:54.638)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (36:17.105)
Normally that wouldn't translate well, but for this movie, it's like perfect.

The West Sisters (36:22.158)
I feel like she fits right in. Yeah.

Eli Price (36:24.497)
Yeah, oh yeah. Other other casting things. Paul Freeman, who plays Belloc. He which Paul Freeman is an English actor. Which is, I don't know, there just seems like there is for a long time this thing where anytime you have someone a foreign character is just like, oh, we'll just cast an English actor to play whatever foreign character. Yeah.

The West Sisters (36:48.462)
Yeah, any nationality from Europe.

Eli Price (36:53.787)
From anywhere like I mean, yeah But uh, yeah, they he they did have a French actor Jacques du tronc du tronc I'm probably butchering Saying that lot that French last name, but I don't know what happened with him, but he couldn't do it So they brought bring in Paul Freeman Who I think is really good as bellocke You know, he is smart and

The West Sisters (36:54.798)
From anywhere, yeah.

Eli Price (37:23.117)
Menacing enough. He's not like evil scary kind of thing but like You can tell he's a he's a bad player has a has a bit of light side dark side talk even with with Indiana Jones when they meet up in in Cairo, so Yeah, you also have John Reese Davis as sala and not again

The West Sisters (37:27.114)
Right.

The West Sisters (37:32.302)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (37:41.046)
Yeah.

Eli Price (37:51.953)
English actor for I guess he's supposed to be from yeah, Middle Eastern from Cairo or something like that. But the funny casting what if for this one is that they originally had Danny DeVito as their first choice. And I just can't see it. I'm sorry, Danny DeVito, but I just can't see it.

The West Sisters (37:57.326)
Middle Eastern Egyptian Middle East. Yeah. Yeah.

The West Sisters (38:15.47)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (38:19.822)
Was he in the romancing the stone? I believe he was. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Eli Price (38:27.033)
Vito that sounds right that might have been what did that come out in 81 also?

The West Sisters (38:32.654)
that I'd have to look up, but I just, I know he's done an adventuring movie, so maybe he was really, you know, open to doing either that beforehand or afterwards. But he kept his accent for sure in the, yeah, romance of the stone. Yeah.

Eli Price (38:40.849)
Yeah. Yeah.

Hahaha.

Yeah. Yeah. I just, I can't see him playing Sala at all. He did. He had like a scheduling conflict so he couldn't do it. Um, and I think that's, I think that's for the best. Let's be honest. Um, but yeah, there's a, there's a lot of other guys that pop up. Um, of course, uh, you have Ronald Lacey is the guy that plays, uh, taught the kind of main evil Nazi guy. Um,

The West Sisters (38:51.342)
I'm sorry.

The West Sisters (38:57.13)
Again, oh shucks.

Yeah.

Eli Price (39:17.521)
Who I didn't really like, I should have looked at his filmography to see if I knew him from anything else. Um, but he doesn't like look super familiar from anything else, but he does have like, I feel like the perfect face for that role. Just kind of like, I don't even know how to describe his face. It's, it's kind of like, um, I don't know. His face almost looks childlike.

in a way, which makes them even creepier because I don't know. But yeah, you have a lot of others. Marcus Brody played by Denim Elliott. You have, oh, you have Alfred Molina making his, making a young appearance as one of the, he's the, is he the guy that like leaves Indy behind in the cave? Is that?

The West Sisters (40:08.078)
Yes.

The West Sisters (40:17.006)
Yes, very early on. Yeah, almost unrecognizable. Right. He does not last the whole movie, of course, as we know. Spoiler alert.

Eli Price (40:17.425)
That character. Yeah. Uh huh. Uh huh. He's so young. No. Spoiler. Yeah. Oh, the other you have Pat Roach, the big guy. He's actually in two roles. I think he's in the tavern kind of gunfight sequence. He's a big guy there and dies, of course. And then.

He's the big mechanic that, uh, Indy fights, uh, next to the plane. Uh, but he was like a pro wrestler, I think, which makes sense. Yes. Um, so I thought that was good casting too. Um, and then, uh, another kind of fun fact, they were kind of short on extras when they were shooting that sequence at the plane. And, uh, so Spielberg asked Frank Marshall.

The West Sisters (40:53.55)
Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. He's very, very big. Yeah.

Eli Price (41:14.354)
the producer to step in and be the pilot. So, um, so that the pilot that's like in the plane, um, and trying to like shoot at Indy. Yep. That's, uh, that's the producer frame Marshall. Um, so that's a fun fact.

The West Sisters (41:20.526)
Yeah, right before she takes him out. Yeah, before Marion takes him out.

The West Sisters (41:28.63)
Wearing those double hats, it happens.

Eli Price (41:33.293)
Yep. Uh, always fun. Um, yeah. Uh, and then, uh, real quick, we can run through some of the crew. Um, it's, you know, some interesting you, you, of course we have, we've talked about Lucas and Kaufman and Casden all and entwined in the story and screenplay. Uh, the, the DP or cinematographer was Douglas Slocum.

who I didn't recognize that name, but he did shoot all three of the first indie movies. And the only other big movie that I noticed was the original Italian Job movie. He shot that. So that was really the only one that popped out to me. But yeah, interesting. You have this.

The West Sisters (42:15.606)
And then...

Nice.

The West Sisters (42:25.774)
Yeah, makes sense why they all look so consistent as well. Yeah.

Eli Price (42:29.617)
Yeah. Yeah, that's true. I didn't think about that, but that is true. Um, uh, and then Michael Kahn, um, he kind of started on with Spielberg for Close Encounters. And, um, I want to say, I think we talked about it in that episode, but he's edited every Spielberg film since Close Encounters, except ET and the Fablemans. So that is a very strong collaborator. Um,

The West Sisters (42:57.614)
Yeah, I love it when people find their, I just was going to say I love it when people find their collaborators and are able to get in a good rhythm and groove. So that's really cool.

Eli Price (42:59.601)
John Williams, of course. Go ahead.

Eli Price (43:08.465)
Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I think I want to say in that, in that close encounters episode two, um, either in that winter jaws, I kind of wanted, I was like giving a shout out to editors because editing is like very hard. The more like I learned about filmmaking and everything. Yeah. The more I'm like, editing is like, you really don't have a movie until it's edited.

The West Sisters (43:29.486)
She would know.

The West Sisters (43:37.486)
Yeah.

Eli Price (43:37.969)
Um, and like, I think people don't realize like how much storytelling goes into the editing too. Um, it's not just like the screenplay that tells the story, but it's the way it's edited that tells the story too. And so for him to like find Khan and like, basically like he's his editor for every film. Like that's a huge deal. Um, to find a guy like that and to like,

The West Sisters (44:01.422)
Yeah.

Eli Price (44:06.705)
have him stick with you for basically your whole career. Makes things easier, I'm sure. Maybe not easier, but.

The West Sisters (44:09.326)
Yeah, right.

The West Sisters (44:15.95)
You probably develop a shorthand and definitely got to be nice to that person.

Eli Price (44:18.947)
Right, yeah.

Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah, did you have any editing insights, Charlize?

The West Sisters (44:29.678)
Basically just know your technology know your software programs and YouTube have patience have patience because I think something that's found in the edit as well is sometimes the emotion like the actors portray something and Honestly, the music plays a big role, but sometimes it's the cuts that actually Give that fine -tuned action reaction, which you need to

Eli Price (44:39.569)
Yeah.

Eli Price (44:46.577)
Right.

The West Sisters (44:59.086)
understand what's going on screen on an emotional level. Yeah.

Eli Price (45:00.657)
Oh yeah.

Eli Price (45:04.881)
Yeah, for sure. And they actually were doing, you know, film, like film stock editing, not using they didn't have software. They were they were cutting the film and splicing it. And it's got to be real fun. How do you think? How do you feel about doing some of that editing?

The West Sisters (45:24.334)
Oh my gosh. Well, so our mom used to work in news and before that at her school, she did do a lot of actual, you know, clipping and editing by hand and she's told us about it. And to be honest, I just thought it was very tedious. I don't think I would have been a filmmaker if I was born in her time. Yeah, because this was for her school, her like high school library. Right. Yeah.

Eli Price (45:30.609)
Yeah.

Eli Price (45:36.335)
Yeah.

Eli Price (45:43.025)
Yeah.

Eli Price (45:47.441)
Hahaha.

Eli Price (45:51.505)
Wow. Yeah, that's really cool. It's a, I think it's a cool like skill to know. Not as useful these days, unless you're Christopher Nolan, but, but yeah, I think it's still really cool. I think, yeah, I don't know. I think Nolan is definitely like the main guy that's still like shooting and editing on film and stuff like that. But, you know, yeah, it's,

Technology is good too, though. It's good to have. Yeah. It definitely helps me with this to be able to quickly edit out when I'm coughing or something like that. The only other cast member or crew member, sorry, I wanted to shout out was Norman Reynolds, who was the production designer. Because I mean, just iconic production design.

The West Sisters (46:23.726)
That helps.

The West Sisters (46:34.51)
Movie magic.

The West Sisters (46:49.644)
Yes.

Eli Price (46:50.225)
Just everything is just so good. So I definitely wanted to shout out him. Good old Norman Reynolds. I should have looked up his filmography too. I wonder if he did all the indie movies or I guess we'll find out on future episodes. Tune back in for the Temple of Doom episode to see if Norman Reynolds stuck around as production designer. John Williams too, of course. I think I...

The West Sisters (47:06.592)
Mm -hmm, yeah.

The West Sisters (47:13.454)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (47:19.724)
iconic.

Eli Price (47:20.369)
briefly mentioned another big collaborator. But yeah, let's let's talk about the production because there's a lot of fun stuff in the in the production side of this. The film was organized rigorously from the start, which is because the exact reason we talked about earlier of Spielberg's reputation of being.

The West Sisters (47:30.638)
Oh yeah.

Eli Price (47:47.441)
the over budget and over schedule director. I know y 'all have done a couple of movies. Do y 'all have like people telling you, cause I know y 'all's are just mostly like more independent and stuff like that, but do y 'all have like, hey, you know, we funded you, we want it done by this. Have y 'all had any of that sort of thing?

The West Sisters (48:13.262)
We have some deadlines that are within, let's say, a 12 year span or let's say we have a nine month span to do something based on the grant we've received. But actually what ends up being more of a time constraint and kind of putting a parameter around what we have to do was the fact that when we shot both of our short films, we had day jobs and we were using actors who and crew members who.

Eli Price (48:21.857)
Gotcha.

Eli Price (48:26.959)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (48:40.079)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (48:43.214)
aren't necessarily doing that stuff full time. So they also had jobs to go back to. And so for Heritage, we had a three day shoot and for Never Even, we had a one day shoot. And the three day shoot was like a Saturday, Sunday, Monday, I want to say. We took off the Monday. And then the shoot for Never Even was a Saturday shoot, I want to say. So.

Eli Price (48:56.177)
Yeah.

Eli Price (49:01.425)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (49:10.289)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (49:10.572)
Again, helps that they are short films, they're not super long, but definitely had to get it done within a very short span of time.

Eli Price (49:13.057)
Yeah.

Eli Price (49:18.961)
Yeah. So how much, how much like prep did y 'all do before y 'all got there to shoot? Was it like just a ton of.

The West Sisters (49:26.478)
Yes, so especially for Heritage, Heritage was a labor of love that we had been working on probably for about a year and a half prior to shooting for Never Even. It may have been a little shorter, but it was still closer to probably eight, nine months before, you know, gearing up to to film it. And part of it was as well for Heritage doing storyboards. So I drew a bunch of pictures beforehand and

Eli Price (49:31.353)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (49:46.449)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (49:55.374)
showed them to Charlize to kind of make sure we were both picturing the same thing as to like how we wanted to capture stuff. And then for Never Even, because it's a story told in reverse, we had to do what they call in like the big leagues pre -visualization. So we basically shot it all on our phones with us playing the characters and then reversed the footage to make sure that it made sense. And then.

Eli Price (50:14.513)
Yeah.

Eli Price (50:24.305)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (50:24.494)
we knew what we needed to capture on today.

Eli Price (50:27.249)
Yeah. Which, um, kind of calling back to an episode I did, uh, for the Nolan series that they did a ton of previs work for Tenet, obviously, um, to kind of see how it would play out forwards and backwards. Um, so yeah, that, that was a wild to watch some of the kind of computer generated things they were like using to, um, to previs for that movie.

So I definitely can see how that's a lot of prep work to make sure that that's going to play out right.

The West Sisters (50:59.022)
Yeah. And I would say pre -vis is like the fancy way to say it. Really what happened is we shot it. We just shot it twice. We don't have any fancy CGI.

Eli Price (51:09.457)
Right. Yeah. It, you know. Yeah, but it still is. It's still previsualization. It's it's just without computer software. But. But yeah, so so Spielberg obviously does. He's he's kind of coming into into this to kind of like prove himself. He's like, I don't want to be the over budget, over scheduled director anymore.

The West Sisters (51:17.708)
Yeah.

Yes. Yeah.

Eli Price (51:39.345)
Probably partly because he wanted to have a better relationship with the studios. But it's not like he had planned to go over budget and over schedule on his movies, but he just like, he was young and you know, I mean, he was making Jaws when he was like in his mid twenties. So I mean, you know, he's just young. He doesn't, he doesn't.

The West Sisters (51:44.3)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eli Price (52:06.417)
completely know what he's getting into. He just has a dream and a vision and wants to capture it. But like Jaws went like a hundred days over schedule. It was like, it was like a, it was like a crazy nightmare of a production. And so he's just like, I'm, I'm changing a new, I'm starting a new leaf. We're getting this done in budget under schedule.

I think he had officially like 85 days for shooting and he had like this kind of secret goal for himself of getting it done in 73 days. And some of the things he did, they did a lot of like not doing a bunch of takes. So Spielberg, I think even on one of the making of things, I saw him kind of like saying,

We're not getting hair out of face. We're not like doing all this. Like if the hair's in the face, that's just part of the shot. You know, yeah, we're not shooting it again. That's just gonna, I even heard at one point he was like walking away and he said, that's Hollywood next shot. And then it like cut to a talking cat of him saying something to the effect of the more we lie to ourselves, the more money we save. Just meaning like,

The West Sisters (53:08.174)
Alright, yeah.

The West Sisters (53:18.446)
Yeah.

Eli Price (53:29.553)
lying to himself that that was a good shot. Because, you know, I'm sure y 'all can relate to having something envisioned in your mind and wanting to get it perfect, but also like having the constraint of we need to move on. We've got more things to shoot. And we don't want to like destroy the morale of our cast and crew.

The West Sisters (53:46.878)
Definitely.

Eli Price (53:55.825)
But yeah, he also for the first time took on a second unit director for this movie, which he had never done before. So it was a guy named Michael D. Moore. Probably the biggest work he did was with the car chase scene. He did like probably like two or three weeks worth of shooting before Spielberg and Harrison Ford even like got there to shoot that stuff. They were working on some other.

Uh, location and shots. And so, um, they did a lot of the shooting for that car chase scene, basically like anything that Harrison Ford's face is an N, um, was shot before Spielberg even got on set. Um, and it's just, he was like, I want to be under, I want to be under schedule. I don't want to go over schedule. So yeah, the second unit director. It's a good choice when you want to stay.

The West Sisters (54:36.492)
Mm -hmm.

The West Sisters (54:51.214)
Nice. Yeah. Yeah.

Eli Price (54:53.521)
is to hand their schedule. But I did also see, I read that despite all this, it was, most of the people involved recalled a pretty relaxed atmosphere, even despite this, which I guess makes sense if he's not being so hard on, let's get this shot perfect. I could see how that could create like,

The West Sisters (55:19.126)
Uh huh.

Eli Price (55:22.289)
an atmosphere where you can be more relaxed because you're like not uptight and not trying to get everything exactly perfect. That's probably like that. That's how I probably would be if I was a director. All right, let's you know, let's move on. You know, we'll work with what we've got. But yeah. But yeah, so basically Spielberg's like, we got to get this thing done. So they start off.

In June 1980 in La Rochelle, France, they use that location for the Cairo port kind of section of the movie. They rent an Egyptian steamer that was in Ireland for some reason. And they got that boat for that section. They rented a U -boat from another movie that was shooting in the same location at the same time, Das Boot.

The German film was shooting there too. And so they rented the U -boat. That's, you know, probably like the titular boat from that movie from them, or maybe it's, I don't know if it is the titular boat, but one of the boats in that movie, they rented it from them for the, you know, the submarine portion.

The West Sisters (56:38.06)
Mm. Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Eli Price (56:45.393)
So yeah, they're there shortly and then they moved to Elstree Studios, which is outside of London. And so all of the interiors were shot at Elstree Studios. So, you know, the map room, you know, with the staff, you have the secret military base at the very end, the Peruvian cave full of traps, the, you know, where they find that, the set where they find the Ark.

you know, with the huge statues and the snakes. All of that is shot at Elstree Studios. And yeah, it's kind of one of those things where Lucas had shot Star Wars there. So he had shot Star Wars at Elstree and then also they did work in Tunisia for that's basically Tatooine is Tunisia.

The West Sisters (57:15.222)
Mmm.

Eli Price (57:42.385)
in Star Wars and so all the desert stuff and Raiders is in Tunisia. So it's just kind of like Lucas is like, I'm familiar with these, we can work well, we know what we're doing. So that's what they went with, which probably helps a ton, the familiarity, at least on Lucas's part. I don't know how many of the other people had spent time in Tunisia that were on.

The West Sisters (57:57.422)
Yeah.

Eli Price (58:12.241)
on the crew. But yeah, one of the things that happened at L3 studios that I thought was interesting was they were shooting The Shining in one of the studios there and there was like a fire or something during that shooting. And so there was like a delay in getting started with the shooting for Raiders.

But the benefit was they kind of expanded that studio because I guess like fix when they were fixing whatever happened with the fire. And so Spielberg was able to like fit those huge statues in the studio because they expanded it. So it's like, you know, thank thank you Stanley Kubrick and Jack Nicholson for expanding the studio for us.

The West Sisters (58:52.576)
Oh, nice. Nice. Lucky, lucky.

The West Sisters (59:01.326)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (59:06.318)
We might have had really tiny statues otherwise.

Eli Price (59:09.169)
Yeah. Or at least not as like giant and menacing as the ones you get there. But yeah, they they do. You know, I'm sure they I don't have like exact time frames of how long they spent in each location, but I would imagine they probably spent a good amount of time there getting all those shots for for those, you know, those set pieces. And it's it's really cool, too, to see like all that stuff getting.

The West Sisters (59:13.518)
Right.

Eli Price (59:39.089)
kind of put together, like when you watch the making of stuff and just see them, you know, I mean, there's like the, the site where they, you know, recover the arc is that's a huge set. It's, it's like ginormous and you've got, you know, those giant statues that Indiana rides into the wall. Um, it's just, it's just really good, like production there.

The West Sisters (01:00:01.814)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:00:07.534)
adds to the epicness. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:00:09.681)
Yeah. And so, but they move on from there. They go to a place called Kai Ruin, which I probably butchered that it's in Tunisia. It's the little town that they use to kind of be a stand in for the streets of Cairo. And I read that the production team even removed like hundreds of TV antennas.

because they were doing a wide shot of this town. And at this point, these people have TVs, so they've got antennas. But yeah, they chose it because it still had a lot of the architecture had the feel of this would have been set in the 30s. So it had a feel of 30s Cairo in this little town.

The West Sisters (01:00:46.606)
Yeah. Wow.

The West Sisters (01:01:05.454)
Nice.

Eli Price (01:01:06.929)
but 30s Cairo with TV antennas doesn't really look quite right. So I thought that was like, yeah, I thought that was a fun fact. But while they were there in Tunisia, they were obviously plagued by intense heat. I read that it was 130 degrees in the sun and like 120 degrees in the shade. So.

The West Sisters (01:01:09.07)
A little less believable.

The West Sisters (01:01:32.698)
That sounds about right.

Eli Price (01:01:35.377)
Yeah. Um, I think in the making of they were, they said something like 5 ,000 gallons of water used every day or something like that. I guess between like getting water to all the cast and crew and you know, whatever else they're using water for, for cooking or, um, you know, whatever, which is wild. Um, but they were also plagued by, um, a stomach, some.

The West Sisters (01:01:45.71)
That's insane.

Eli Price (01:02:03.953)
I've read stomach bug in some places. I've also read dysentery, which I guess dysentery kind of is basically like a stomach bug of sorts. Um, so, Oh yeah. So basically like everyone got it except Spielberg because Spielberg was just like eating canned food. He had brought, I don't know if he got like a warning from Lucas, like, Hey, when you go to Tunisia, you better, better bring some canned food.

The West Sisters (01:02:14.35)
Mm -hmm. And didn't Harrison Ford get it too? Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:02:29.966)
Maybe so.

Eli Price (01:02:33.265)
But I can just imagine like Spielberg just like nominal and SpaghettiOs and like being like, oh, you guys should have brought your, yeah, you guys should have brought some canned food. Yeah, everybody got it. Harrison Ford had it bad at one point. But we got something great out of that because I think we,

The West Sisters (01:02:38.57)
Feeling fine. Wondering why everyone else is vomiting.

The West Sisters (01:02:50.798)
Yeah, it's changed.

Eli Price (01:03:02.929)
Something we haven't mentioned, I did like a faith and film small group at our church and Chasa and Charlize were really like pretty much the only people that were part of that. So it was like a three person discussion group. So we did talk about Raiders in that discussion group for one week, which was really fun. But I think we did talk about how that the swordsman, so there's the scene where.

The West Sisters (01:03:29.614)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (01:03:31.505)
Jones like shoots the swords and he just like pulls out the sword and he pulls out his gun and shoots them. Yeah. Um, like a great, like kind of, I guess, comedic action, um, little thing. It kind of makes you like chuckle when it happens. Um, but that wasn't in the script. They actually had like this, that swordsman had done like a few weeks of like training for a whole like fight sequence. And, um, it got to that day and.

The West Sisters (01:03:36.406)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:03:57.87)
Thank you.

Eli Price (01:04:00.945)
Harrison Ford was so sick, he like begged Spielberg like to not make him do that sequence. Yeah. And so that's what they came up with. And it ends up being like, I don't know. I don't know. It's hard to say if it's better, but it's definitely like something that a lot of people remember and think is funny, you know. Oh yeah.

The West Sisters (01:04:07.278)
for our baby, yeah.

The West Sisters (01:04:24.462)
Yeah, yeah, it's definitely memorable.

Eli Price (01:04:30.627)
It's funny how like you have kind of happy accidents with stuff like that and when you're like putting together something like this where Something you didn't plan for like ends up being actually like working out really well for you Yeah, and Yeah Really like the last week of filming they did in Hawaii was the last location they did

The West Sisters (01:04:34.86)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:04:46.328)
That's true.

Eli Price (01:05:00.753)
And they did a lot of like the opening scene there in Hawaii, which I would imagine that's like I Don't know if they did it on purpose for this reason necessarily, but I would imagine it's like alright everybody We're finished wrapping things up. Let's all go to Hawaii. I bet it's like everybody's like oh, yeah What a nice place to finish our production, you know Yeah to recover from

The West Sisters (01:05:04.182)
Hmm. Hmm.

The West Sisters (01:05:25.39)
to recover from all this dysentery too. I wouldn't mind it.

Eli Price (01:05:30.393)
recover from Tunisia in Hawaii. Probably a good idea. One of the fun facts that comes out of that was it was kind of like a last minute idea Spielberg had, which was to crossfade the Paramount logo with the first shot of the film. And so they did like, yeah, they did a bunch of scouting to find a mountain that looked real similar to the Paramount logo there in Hawaii. And, um,

The West Sisters (01:05:50.286)
you would notice that.

Eli Price (01:06:00.081)
And shot did that shot, you know. And then, you know, it's it's cool too, because not only do you get the crossfade with the Paramount logo, which is like. I guess maybe another way of Spielberg like being like, hey, studio, look what I did cool with your logo, you know, you can like me, give me more big budgets for movies, you know. But he also like is after a second of seeing that mountain, you know,

The West Sisters (01:06:09.078)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:06:18.988)
You like?

Eli Price (01:06:30.289)
They're the first like image next image you see is the silhouette of of Indy, you know, walking up with the fedora. And it's like you've basically like introduced your character right off the bat. And like you don't even have to like. Know anything else about him, you just see kind of his figure and you're like, oh, yeah, this is the guy, this is the adventurer, this is this is the guy I'm excited to.

The West Sisters (01:06:43.808)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:06:55.308)
Yes.

Eli Price (01:06:58.865)
to follow through this movie just from seeing him step into frame and seeing what the back of him looks like.

The West Sisters (01:07:08.334)
Right, because I think it also does a great job of establishing setting, you know, to just start off with something strong like that and to understand a character's setting helps you to understand them too.

Eli Price (01:07:13.553)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:07:22.321)
Oh yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Um, yeah, that's so they, that's kind of like all the locations they ended up in. Um, we talked a little bit about Spielberg, uh, and his directing, but, um, I really think like I watched, um, the making of documentary, like from back in 81, there was also like a 2012 kind of on the set thing that I didn't like.

I didn't like watch and take notes. I kind of just had it on in the background while I was doing some other stuff. Um, and one of the things that I really appreciate was Spielberg just looks like he's having so much fun filming this, making this movie. And I just like, I always appreciate when I can like see a director just like really having a good time. Um, and, um, yeah, he, uh, he like for this one, uh,

The West Sisters (01:08:02.19)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:08:11.5)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:08:20.529)
You know, I think he had started doing this. This one, I think, is like really where his storyboarding like became real strong. He like notoriously can't draw well. His storyboards are like stick figures. And so he has like, yeah, that would be me too. He has like artists come in and turn his stick figure storyboards into like nice looking storyboards. And but yeah, he like.

The West Sisters (01:08:46.894)
and

Eli Price (01:08:50.353)
runs through the, you can see like footage of him running through those with the actors, which is fun. And there was, there's one that's, it was actually in both of those documentaries that I watched the same little thing where he's like going through the, the arc site, like dropping into the arc site with the actors and stuff and flipping through the storyboard and talking through it with them.

And like Harrison Ford's like eating a sandwich or something while he's like telling them. And at one point Ford like goes like, I'm going to go get some mustard. And he like, looks off. He like just leaves Spielberg in the middle of him going through that and Spielberg, Spielberg like looks up and he's like, Harrison, you, you left at the best. I'm getting to the best part. Like come back. And it's just like, Oh, they're having fun. You know, it's, it's relaxed. They're having fun.

The West Sisters (01:09:30.744)
Ah!

The West Sisters (01:09:34.702)
you

The West Sisters (01:09:46.146)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:09:49.393)
I just really appreciate that. I don't know, you know.

The West Sisters (01:09:52.854)
Non -toxic, a non -toxic set. We love it.

Eli Price (01:09:56.113)
Yeah, yeah, because there are a lot of toxic sets in Hollywood from just stories, you know, just stories you hear breaking. And, you know, I'm sure every production has its moments. But it did seem like overall, like everyone's just mostly kind of having a good time and, you know, getting their job done, of course, but having a good time.

The West Sisters (01:10:05.174)
Mm -hmm. Right.

The West Sisters (01:10:21.422)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:10:24.817)
Another thing I appreciated was Spielberg, like you see a decent amount of him like talking one -on -one with actors. And there's even like a talking head where he says, quote, I have to be a different director for each actor moment to moment. And I don't know, I just, I feel like one thing that maybe we don't often think about with directors is they really have to be,

I guess like.

socially. Yeah, that's exactly the word. That's the word I popped in my head and I was like, is a depth the right word? And so thank you confirmed that. Yeah, they have to like.

The West Sisters (01:11:01.962)
Adapt.

The West Sisters (01:11:11.968)
Some people we've heard have talked about it as like mothering.

Eli Price (01:11:17.137)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, you have to know, okay, I want to get this out of this actor. Uh, but if I do it the same way, like if I do it with, um, Karen Allen, the same way that I do it with Harrison Ford, like it's not going to get the results I want. So I really, I have to know how to speak to this person to get not like, it's not like you're milking them for what you can get out of them, but it's just being like,

The West Sisters (01:11:33.804)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:11:46.929)
Um, I guess like empathetically aware of what, how, like they receive criticism or receive, um, encouragement best or receipt, like how, you know, how you need to give them a note so that they can understand it well and, and employ it well and not be like mad at you. And, um, it's like, it's, it's a very like,

The West Sisters (01:11:59.02)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:12:10.702)
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Eli Price (01:12:18.257)
I think unique job in that sense of like really like having to be able to communicate to so many different people in so many different ways. Cause not only do you have to do that for your actors. I mean, you have to do that for your crew members. Um, it's, um, it's a lot, you know, uh, and that's why I like, I think a lot of times people don't like, like when Spielberg was getting his start, like in TV.

The West Sisters (01:12:31.31)
Exactly.

Eli Price (01:12:45.745)
No, none of the older like actors and stuff wanted to work with them. Not because like they were like, this kid sucks. It was kind of, he was a kid and like, you know, they're like, I don't want to work with this kid. He's, he's not going to know how to like work with people. Well, um, and so, you know, as you, I guess like, as you mature as a director, you, as you just mature in life,

you probably mature as a director and knowing how to communicate better with people and that sort of thing. It's probably a note that just all of us can take from directors. Let's be more like directors and learn how to communicate well and be emotionally intelligent with people. Good directors. Yes. Let's not be Stanley Kubrick.

The West Sisters (01:13:16.918)
Mm -hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:13:31.854)
The good directors, let's be like the good direct.

kind directors.

Eli Price (01:13:41.905)
Let's be more like Spielberg. But that's another good point. Yeah, production design. What was y 'all's... I'll ask you this. What was your favorite set in the movie? That's a fun thing to think about because there's a lot of good ones.

The West Sisters (01:14:02.734)
That's a good question. Yeah. I think the first thing that jumps out to me is that opening scene. And I don't know if it's necessarily the set itself, but it's how it's utilized and the way what I think Spielberg is good at and any really good director does this setting up an understanding of the geography of what we're walking into. So why I like that, that set is.

Eli Price (01:14:09.689)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:14:15.855)
Hmm.

Eli Price (01:14:26.297)
I'm sorry.

The West Sisters (01:14:32.398)
You understand what they're walking into. So the obstacles seem clearer when they're running away from it, when they're exiting as well. You understand what's at stake because of all the things that they have to do to get in. So even just running away from the boulder, you may not remember that they have to jump over a large cavern, a large hole in the ground. But when they do, you're like, oh, that's right. They had to navigate that to get in. So.

Eli Price (01:14:46.353)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:15:00.017)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:15:02.318)
I think that's a really well utilized set, which becomes a set piece. Yeah. I would probably say, um...

Eli Price (01:15:07.193)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:15:13.398)
Cairo because it does get very complicated with the winding streets and trying to find Marion at the part when she gets put in the basket. But I would say that it was definitely one of those things where you feel immersed in it. So they did a really great job at, you know, making it look like 1930s Cairo. As we know, they took down all those TV antennas and then it was just.

Eli Price (01:15:24.687)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:15:40.273)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:15:41.518)
I mean, it's a lot of complexity in terms of the logistics behind the camera, so I can appreciate that a lot.

Eli Price (01:15:47.057)
Mm -hmm. Yeah. And like mapping all that out, because that is a like, I mean, it's like an alleyways chase kind of thing going on. I think I talked about in maybe the overview episode in this series, I had watched a studio studio binder video. I don't know if y 'all ever watch their stuff on YouTube. They have some just great stuff.

The West Sisters (01:15:55.63)
Yeah. Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:16:11.468)
Mm -hmm. Yeah, they're great. They're awesome.

Eli Price (01:16:17.233)
But there was a video this guy had made where he talked about kind of, I don't know if he like, it seemed like he kind of like made up this term for something that he's he noticed that Spielberg does. And he used that sequence as the main example of it. And he called it instead of point of view, its point of thought. And so it's something to where you're not.

It's not about like necessarily having the point of view of the character, but having, having like being able to put yourself in their mind. And so he uses that. He talks about how like, you know, Indy's running around in these alleys and then you're cross cutting that with like the baddies, like carrying Marion around in the basket and Indy's trying to find her. And there's this sequence where it cuts to, um,

The West Sisters (01:16:47.532)
Mm -hmm.

The West Sisters (01:17:05.132)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (01:17:13.553)
It's like, it cuts to Indy's face and you hear, well, it's like Marian being carried across an alleyway. You see them cross in front of an alleyway and it cuts to Indy's face and he runs up and you hear a sound and it's coming from one way and he looks kind of off to the side to kind of like, oh, the sound's coming from this way. And so,

The West Sisters (01:17:24.012)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:17:40.721)
If you were just like looking for you'd be like, oh, he just saw her cross in front of him. But it's like, no, he's turned around. And so it's kind of like this, he's putting you not in his point of view, but in his like mind, like, oh, the sound is coming from this way. I'm running this way. Maybe I need to cut back the other way. And so, yeah. So you're not like seeing her run in front of him. You're seeing her somewhere else and he realizes, oh, she's not this way.

The West Sisters (01:17:46.86)
Mm -hmm. Disorienting.

The West Sisters (01:17:57.07)
Yeah, yeah, that's interesting.

The West Sisters (01:18:09.134)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that is.

Eli Price (01:18:09.617)
Uh, in that moment. And I just thought that was a really cool way of thinking about it. A point of thought instead of point of view. Um, but yeah, that's a really good, um, sequence. And that one is like to, um, Spielberg at one point in the documentary is talking about how, um, he wants to use this like small town for Cairo because, because of the geography, um, having like less.

The West Sisters (01:18:17.164)
Thank you.

Eli Price (01:18:38.929)
space to work with kind of is allows the audience to have a better sense of the geography, which allows you to build the momentum of the action better. If people could kind of keep up with where you are. Um, and so, you know, you have that little like town square that's kind of used, um, a couple of different times. Um, you know, and it's like where they end up pulling the truck into and pulling it into that building and covering it up.

The West Sisters (01:18:40.268)
Mm -hmm.

The West Sisters (01:18:50.638)
Yeah, yeah.

The West Sisters (01:19:07.086)
Everyone's being a vendor after that moment, yeah.

Eli Price (01:19:10.289)
Yeah, yeah. And they really kind of just like dress that little area up with like some small little sets and vendors and stuff, which is always fun to see. They also like made miniatures of a lot of those locations. Like they would go scout these locations and then they would make miniatures of them so that, you know, while they're shooting here, they can.

Spielberg and his team or whatever can like check out the miniatures which were like to scale and everything and like be working on, you know, be working ahead of time on kind of some composition or like what how they were going to shoot, like where they were going to put the camera, that sort of thing. So that by the time they get there, they kind of have a lot of that stuff worked out from working with the miniature. So that little town square was a miniature they showed on the making of dock. And it's like,

The West Sisters (01:19:43.086)
That's cool.

The West Sisters (01:20:02.414)
Yeah, that's awesome.

Eli Price (01:20:07.921)
It looks just like it. It's really cool. Yeah. Yeah, I think mine. I think it would. It's hard not to say the opening set piece just because. Yeah. A fun fact about that, it's actually the idea was inspired by a 1954 Uncle Scrooge comic book.

The West Sisters (01:20:09.518)
That's awesome.

The West Sisters (01:20:24.17)
So classic.

The West Sisters (01:20:37.338)
Really? Wow.

Eli Price (01:20:38.161)
So, uh, old Scrooge Duck. Yeah. Some there's something with like this boulder rolling boulder or something in this uncle Scrooge comic book. Um, and you know, of course Spielberg, I I'm sure read it as a kid and like had this idea. Um, and he, he's actually like got so excited by it that he extended that sequence by a decent, like more than was in the script. Um, and like extended a ramp that was like,

The West Sisters (01:20:46.606)
Wow, it's funny.

The West Sisters (01:21:02.702)
Hahaha.

Eli Price (01:21:07.441)
I think he made it 50 feet longer and you know, I think the ball was like 500 pound ball. It wasn't just like, Oh, it's going to hit me and bounce off of me. It was a fiberglass ball. So yeah, watch out. Um, yeah, I think the snake, uh, the, like the Arc site with the snakes is a really good one. Uh,

The West Sisters (01:21:15.366)
Sponge. Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:21:22.414)
So look out Harrison.

Eli Price (01:21:36.209)
You know, they actually like at one point Spielberg is like yelling at his production team. He's like, we don't have enough snakes. We need to get like, we need to get 5 ,000 more snakes than we have right now. It's like, whoa, 5 ,000. Um, and I think there was like a day where they shut down production because I want to say it was Vivian Kubrick who was Stanley Kubrick's daughter was like really like lambasting them about like animal safety and stuff. And so they had like,

The West Sisters (01:21:48.782)
Wow. Wow.

Eli Price (01:22:05.873)
some animal safety people come in and make sure everything was like up to par, I guess. Um, cause I mean, you watch the documentary, they're just like, it's chaos in there. There's just like snakes everywhere and like, not just like the crew members, but like you got Harrison Ford kind of like tossing around snakes and stuff. Um,

The West Sisters (01:22:11.468)
Yeah. Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:22:17.964)
Good mornings.

The West Sisters (01:22:27.214)
Yeah, we saw some kind of YouTube video that it might be the same. It might be the same behind the scenes we talk about, but it was just smaller clips from YouTube where they started to talk about how some of the snakes were just escaping, you know, into Hollywood, just leaving the set and going into people's backyards and whatnot.

Eli Price (01:22:35.249)
Probably, yeah.

Eli Price (01:22:42.161)
I believe it. Yeah.

Maybe so, yeah. Yeah, that.

The West Sisters (01:22:49.23)
And that's why the count kept diminishing. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:22:52.561)
Yeah. And they're not even all snakes. I think there's like some different kinds of lizards and stuff like that in there too. Um, yeah, that's, uh, one of the, I wrote down this quote from Ford where they're, they're like having to like move these snakes around and he kind of looks up and he's like, let's, uh, let's maybe reconsider this whole thing. Maybe I'm tired of working with the snakes, you know? Um, Oh man.

The West Sisters (01:22:56.494)
Glass lizards. Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:23:13.614)
Hahaha.

The West Sisters (01:23:18.574)
Yeah, deeply reconsidered.

Eli Price (01:23:22.513)
Uh, the, um, another like fun fact, uh, that I thought was really funny. Um, apparently the sound that the stone makes when they're taking, um, taking it off, like that, the big stone that's like covering up the arc when they recover the arc and it makes a sound, you know, the stone against stone. Um, apparently that was like one of the sound guys, toilet cover, um, that they recorded.

The West Sisters (01:23:44.076)
Yeah. Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:23:49.71)
haha

Again, movie magic. Yes, 100%. We met someone who did the sound design for Titanic at a workshop once and he said that the sound of Rose's hair rising from the frozen door near the end of the film when they're in the water, spoiler alert, is the sound of crunching lettuce. And he showed us exactly how he did it.

Eli Price (01:23:55.409)
movie magic, because it sounds perfect.

Eli Price (01:24:06.097)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:24:17.157)
Ha ha ha.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's it's crazy what they do. The Star Wars has some really fun like sound stuff to you that that's fun to look up on YouTube or whatever. There there are some Star Wars references in the movie, which is always fun. The plane in the opening is registered to OB 3PO, which is obviously, you know, reference to Obi -Wan and C3PO and also in the.

The West Sisters (01:24:46.606)
Yeah.

Thank you.

Eli Price (01:24:52.761)
Arc Recovery site in the hieroglyphics on the background, you can see C3PO and R2D2 in the hieroglyphics. Yeah, you'll have to look up an image of it. But that's always fun. There's a lot of fun production stuff. Obviously, they made plaster molds with wax for the...

The West Sisters (01:25:01.358)
Oh, I missed that.

Mmm.

Eli Price (01:25:20.529)
the face melting sequence, which is fun to see. It's fun to, it's like to watch people making those plaster molds of people's faces. I'm like, I would never want a plaster mold of my face made, because it looks just like, it does look torturous.

The West Sisters (01:25:22.156)
Mmm.

The West Sisters (01:25:38.638)
It's torture. It looks like torture. Yeah. Perhaps that's something AI would be able to help with in the future. In a good way. In a positive way. We'll see. We'll see.

Eli Price (01:25:45.873)
Yeah, maybe so. Maybe so. I mean, you have you have like deep fake technology and stuff like that, that, you know, maybe you can get a deep fake face face melt going. Yeah, I would I would sign off on that before I would sign off on getting a plaster mold of my face made. Oh, it looks awful. Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:25:54.38)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:26:00.414)
than 3D printed.

The West Sisters (01:26:06.866)
Having to put the straws up your nose and all of that. Definitely torture.

Eli Price (01:26:15.705)
Yeah, there's there's a lot of fun stuff Harrison Ford does a lot of his stunts, which is always fun. He did He did do some of the like dragging behind the truck he doesn't do the whole like crawling under it There's like a stunt man that does that it was fun to like see like him being interviewed kind of in the making of And they like they even like had to like and dig a trench and

Um, for the truck to like follow because they're to give him a little bit more clearance. Um, yeah. Um, but yeah, that was, that was intense to watch, like the make it's intense to watch in the movie, but it was just as intense watching, like them, like filming it in the, in the documentary. Um, it's a really cool, a really cool sequence, um, which maybe we'll talk more about, uh, but yeah.

The West Sisters (01:26:48.174)
Oh wow. Yeah, yeah. Oh good. God. Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:26:59.502)
the end.

The West Sisters (01:27:04.642)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:27:15.953)
Yeah, he definitely like bruised his ribs when he was being dragged behind the truck Harrison Ford and then in the plane Sequence apparently the one of the wheels of the plane like rolled over his leg at one point and tore its ligament and his knee. Oh Man, I'm just like I can't imagine I Just can't imagine doing some of the stuff he did movie because I think he was like 38 when they were filming this like he wasn't

The West Sisters (01:27:28.422)
Uh oh. Ooh, painful.

The West Sisters (01:27:42.318)
Right. Yeah. Spring chicken. It's another, just a whole other level of suffering for your art, I guess. That's true.

Eli Price (01:27:44.145)
He wasn't a young pup, like he was. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:27:50.545)
Yeah. A commitment to the, to the role. Um, uh, you know, we've talked about the score. Iconic. Um, and, uh, I really feel like at this point, like John Williams starts to become John Williams scores starting to become synonymous with like Spielberg movies. Um, like he's, I want to say, so he did sugarland express.

The West Sisters (01:28:13.004)
Mmm.

Eli Price (01:28:18.961)
He did Jaws. He did Close Encounters. I don't know if he did 1941. And then Raiders. So like at least four of Spielberg's first five movies, John Williams does the score. I'll have to look up if he did 41. I mean, I will when I record that episode, but yeah. So.

The West Sisters (01:28:24.93)
I'm going have to look it up.

The West Sisters (01:28:30.028)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:28:40.974)
He did a little YouTube retrospective recently, which is really interesting to watch because he reflects on his own creative process. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:28:44.815)
Hmm.

Eli Price (01:28:49.969)
Yeah. Yeah. I didn't get to watch. There's like a bunch of like, um, in the, the blue rays that I have, there's like a bunch of like making of stuff that's kind of like behind the scenes, but it's, it's like for all four movies, um, all of the first four movies. So it's like, um, it's like, um, the music of Indiana Jones, but it's like, it kind of encompasses all four. So I didn't get, get around to watching a lot of that stuff, but there is one that's.

The West Sisters (01:29:07.278)
Nice.

The West Sisters (01:29:15.5)
Very cool.

Eli Price (01:29:19.729)
focused on the music. Um, so I'll have to watch that at some point to see what old, old Johnny Williams has to say about, about the score for this one. Um, one thing I did notice that like, I couldn't get out of my head until like, I listened to them back to back to see if I was crazy or not was, um, so there's like the theme with, for Marion where anytime there's something like semi romantic going on between Indy and Marion.

The West Sisters (01:29:23.82)
Mm -hmm. Yeah. Jonathan.

The West Sisters (01:29:46.764)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (01:29:47.217)
There's like a theme that plays and I'm hearing it and I'm like, this is like, this sounds like it sounds like Princess Leia and Han. Um, and so like I went, yeah, I went back and like, and listened to them back to back and I'm like, yeah, I'm not crazy. They're not like the same, but they're so similar. Uh, yeah. Um,

The West Sisters (01:29:52.588)
Familiar sounding? Yeah.

Yes. Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:30:09.062)
Pretty similar, yeah. I guess romance just has a sound for John Williams, and it's that.

Eli Price (01:30:15.697)
Yeah. And I guess like they have, there's a similar dynamic going on, like two strong headed characters that are kind of like love each other, but don't like want to say it kind of thing. Um, so I guess John Williams was like, well, this is the same dynamic. I'll just write something similar for them.

The West Sisters (01:30:26.528)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:30:33.454)
And the guys just weirdly look alike. Could be twins.

Eli Price (01:30:36.337)
Yeah, so strange. Hanford.

The West Sisters (01:30:46.89)
Or Han Jones.

Eli Price (01:30:48.529)
Yeah. Hon Jones, um, Han Smith, maybe Indiana Smith. Uh, yeah, obviously there's a lot of some post -production work for this movie too. Um, Spielberg even talks about how, like, um, he talked about this in close encounters too, how like, it's kind of difficult sometimes to direct actors.

The West Sisters (01:30:53.55)
It's a whole different vibe.

Eli Price (01:31:15.889)
when you're getting them to act off of something that is going to be added in post. And so, yeah, so that's always interesting to see. But yeah, I mean, you have some post, like, there's a decent amount of post work. You obviously have the apparitions that pop out of the arc that are basically clay animated things that they film and add in.

The West Sisters (01:31:19.926)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:31:45.007)
in post. And then a ton of this movie was 80 yard, which I'm sure y 'all know what that is. But if the listener doesn't know that's, I can't remember off the top of my head what the acronym stands for.

The West Sisters (01:31:54.198)
Uh huh.

The West Sisters (01:32:01.038)
I think a bunch of people just say automated dialogue replacement now, even though it's not automated. There's another ADR acronym, but I think people say automated dialogue replacement.

Eli Price (01:32:05.553)
I think that is.

Yeah.

Eli Price (01:32:12.353)
Yeah, but that's basically what it is. It's basically like they go back into the studio and record like the dialogue and stuff like that. In post to get clear. I guess like sound, yeah, clear quality. And like 80 % of this was was done that way, which isn't true for a lot of Spielberg stuff like. They.

The West Sisters (01:32:26.542)
Quality. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:32:40.593)
But yeah, for this one, I guess it makes sense. There's a lot of like, I've always wondered too, like, there's a lot of ADR done because there's so much extra sounds going on while you're making the movie. Like, you know, you watch a making of documentary and you know, Spielberg's just like yelling out stuff for people to do. And like there's dialogue happening, but then like Spielberg would be like, everybody go. And you're like, like, how do you edit necessarily out?

The West Sisters (01:33:01.206)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:33:09.394)
Yeah. Yeah. Extras pass. Extras pass. There's a ghost right behind you.

Eli Price (01:33:10.065)
Spillberg yelling and really I guess yeah. Yeah, yeah, hit your mark, hit your mark like you know there's there's all that kind of stuff and I guess like. Yeah, you would have to really. Go back in and re record a lot of that, but.

The West Sisters (01:33:27.214)
Yeah, I think it could be that. And we had to do just a small percentage of ADR for hours. And some of that was because there was a phone call and the character, you know, the actor wasn't there that day. And so different, different scenarios. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:33:35.377)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (01:33:44.529)
Yeah. For sure. But yeah, they they actually did, you know, go going a little bit backwards because I just talked about post pro work, but going a little bit backwards, they did complete it in 73 days. Amazing. And they didn't have additional cost. Yay, Spielberg, you did it. But yeah, so the movie.

The West Sisters (01:34:01.102)
Yeah, that is an amazing currency. You go, Spielberg, yeah.

Eli Price (01:34:13.745)
Gets done, it gets released in June of 1981. And this is crazy. Raiders of a Lost Ark was in theaters for like 13 months straight. It just stayed in theaters. It opened at number one in the box office and then stayed in the top five for a few weeks, moving up and down. And then in week six.

The West Sisters (01:34:24.046)
Oh my goodness.

Wow.

Eli Price (01:34:38.641)
It had like a resurgence for some reason and it moved back up to number one and then stayed number one for like nine weeks straight. Which is just crazy. But I mean, I guess if you think about it, like this really is kind of the beginning of like people having cable in the in the early 80s, it wasn't like fully widespread yet. It was just kind of burgeoning. And so if you're like, I want to see this move.

The West Sisters (01:34:44.782)
Impressive.

Yeah.

Eli Price (01:35:08.305)
Like I want to watch this movie again. You kind of just have to go to theaters again. And I guess there's not like necessarily a ton of movies playing on TV all the time. And so it was kind of like by necessity, I've got to go to the theater again. If I'm going to the theater again, I guess I'm going to see Indiana Jones. Um, but yeah, it's just crazy. And then it stayed in the top 10 for like 40 weeks straight, which is wild. Um, yeah.

The West Sisters (01:35:18.254)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:35:25.548)
Why not?

The West Sisters (01:35:34.976)
It's incredible, yeah.

Eli Price (01:35:38.329)
It did it grossed like I think 50 million in the first month and Ended up with a worldwide box office of over 350 million. I saw some different numbers, but they were all like in the 350s So that's like that's like the gross like worldwide that it ended up with eventually Because I had like some rereleases and over the next like a couple of years

The West Sisters (01:35:59.468)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:36:08.881)
But yeah, it did obviously very well with the general public. Critically mixed, mixed reviews critically. You have guys like Vincent Canby saying things like one of the most deliriously funny and genius and stylish American adventure movies ever made. And then you have people like Dave Care, who didn't like the character much and didn't like the pace of the film.

The West Sisters (01:36:36.494)
Oh wow.

Eli Price (01:36:36.977)
And and Paul, the infamous Pauline Kale, who up to this point, like really was kind of like, I hope Spielberg does something. There's something there. And then kind of saw this as a regression. I think in her piece, she did talk about how the first like the first 30 minutes of this movie were like perfect.

Um, which I kind of agree with, like the first 30 to 45 movie minutes of this movie is just like, just perfect. Like no flaws, you know, everything's just like so precise and, and just perfect. Um, but yeah, she was kind of, um, one of those critics that wasn't a fan of like the, the beginning of like the blockbuster era. Um, and like,

The West Sisters (01:37:07.118)
Mm -hmm.

The West Sisters (01:37:11.694)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:37:28.386)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:37:30.481)
high merchandising of movies and that sort of thing. She just saw it as like a kind of watering down of the art, which like it's kind of like, yeah, I get it. But at the same time, it's like a really well made movie. Like it can be both. Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:37:32.27)
Oh yeah, oh yeah.

The West Sisters (01:37:46.2)
Yeah, maybe the watered down of a certain kind of art, but it can still be art in and of itself of a different genre.

Eli Price (01:37:54.961)
Yeah, right. So yeah, you know, mixed critically. But the Oscars did give it its due. It had nine nominations nominated, but didn't win for Best Picture and Best Director. Best Cinematography and Best Score also didn't win, but nominated. It lost to, I want to say, blanking.

The West Sisters (01:38:11.5)
Mmm.

Eli Price (01:38:23.351)
Now the Chariots of Fire is the score that it lost to and so it's kind of like okay, you know, that's a good score too Yeah, yeah, I haven't either but I do know the score so that says something right Yeah, but it did win it had five wins for art direction set slash set decoration one for sound for editing

The West Sisters (01:38:30.67)
I have to add it to the list. I haven't seen it. That's true.

The West Sisters (01:38:39.308)
Yeah, yeah, I guess so.

Eli Price (01:38:52.017)
for visual effects and some sort of like special award for sound effects editing, which I don't know if that was like special for that year. That's not like a category anymore. So I guess so. Like that was like, well done. You want to, you want to, you want a little tiny gold man for recording your toilet, putting it in a movie. Um,

The West Sisters (01:38:59.028)
Interesting.

The West Sisters (01:39:04.078)
It was just for the toilet seat, I guess.

The West Sisters (01:39:13.844)
I'm

Eli Price (01:39:19.985)
But yeah, obviously, like Paramount's like, OK, we're all in. They they they sign on for the five film deal, which eventually we got five films. So have you all seen the newest one yet? I know last time we talked about it, you hadn't. Yeah, it was really good. I liked it. I thought it was good. But yeah, had a TV show, video games, the whole shebang.

The West Sisters (01:39:29.004)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:39:33.198)
Yeah, we watched it on Disney Plus. Yeah. Yeah.

some good things.

Eli Price (01:39:49.521)
It actually was for a long time the most owned movie. Paramount, VHS was getting big at this time. Paramount put out 500 ,000 copies released in 1983, and they sold them at $40 each, which sounds crazy to us now, but at the time, VHS tapes were upwards of $100 each.

The West Sisters (01:39:54.892)
Oh wow.

Eli Price (01:40:18.769)
And so $40 was actually like a really cheap price. Yeah. Um, but yeah. And then eventually in 1999, it was admitted to the U S library, uh, library of Congress's national film registry. So, so now it is officially an important movie in American history. Um, yeah, you can't argue with it. It's yeah, you can't argue with it now.

The West Sisters (01:40:20.238)
Yeah. Wow.

The West Sisters (01:40:33.134)
That's really cool.

The West Sisters (01:40:41.248)
Indiana deserves that. He deserves that.

Eli Price (01:40:45.233)
Sorry Pauline Kael and Dave Care like it's in the National Film Registry. It's important. But yeah. Now you know really just an incredible movie. Let's let's talk a little bit. I know we're going to have to cut off our discussion here soon, but let's talk a little bit just about some key things with this what.

I'll let y 'all kind of share a couple of your takeaways from the movie. What is maybe something done in the filmmaking that y 'all just just really stands out to y 'all, whether it be camera work or composition or what's something that y 'all are just like, this is incredible. I want to see more of this in movies. I want to do this in a movie myself.

The West Sisters (01:41:36.972)
Yeah.

Honestly, there's so much, but I am really drawn to composition and scenes that are composed in a way that tells a story in the shot itself, or is just like really striking. And I feel like Spielberg is really good at doing that, especially when he's playing with lighting. So it's kind of small, but there's just the scene where they're digging in Cairo, I want to say, and the sun's up in the sky.

Eli Price (01:41:51.887)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:42:05.137)
Mm -hmm.

The West Sisters (01:42:06.894)
and like the sky is orange and you can still see the outline of the workers, but that's a cool scene. And just other things throughout the film that are similar to that, I aspire to be able to do that. It's kind of photography and filmmaking, holding hands, but yeah, it's just a small example. Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (01:42:13.937)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:42:28.689)
Yeah, I love his silhouettes. He like, it's like a recurring motif of like using silhouettes in his movies. And that one really feels like kind of a Spielberg is, is like, at one point he, when he saw Lawrence of Arabia, when it came out, he like, I think he walked out of the theater and was like, well, I'll never be a director. Like no, nothing can top that. Um,

The West Sisters (01:42:35.406)
Yeah. Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:42:52.558)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:42:56.145)
And so that particular silhouette scene that you were talking about really feels like an homage to Lawrence of Arabia, a silhouette in the desert with the sunset, for sure.

The West Sisters (01:43:04.206)
You can see that.

The West Sisters (01:43:10.378)
What about you? For me, I would say a lot of the authenticity shines through and I know that sounds strange to say for a genre film like this, but it sort of probably stems from what you were talking about earlier with the production behind the scenes where, you know, Spielberg was sort of saying, you know, not everything can be perfect. I really like those moments where you can see a lot of the realness. One of the

Eli Price (01:43:21.681)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (01:43:33.329)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:43:38.766)
funniest scenes to me is when the capuchin meets Marion, sort of jumps on her shoulder and then it's paused just sort of like in her mouth almost and it kind of just like swipes her face and she's like, hmm yeah, nice to meet this little thing. Things like that, they really get me and I like seeing those little things.

Eli Price (01:43:44.369)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:43:49.329)
Hehehehe

Eli Price (01:43:54.009)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:44:00.689)
Yeah, I think that is a benefit of not getting to do like telling yourself I can't do extra takes because you get like very like real feeling stuff like that. That sounds like that seems like an example of like, oh, they just didn't do more takes. They just ran with it. But it feels like it's like very character building to which I appreciate. One of my favorites is actually the the like plane fight sequence.

The West Sisters (01:44:06.35)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:44:15.822)
you

The West Sisters (01:44:20.302)
Yes, that's true.

The West Sisters (01:44:30.188)
Oh yeah, when it starts spinning.

Eli Price (01:44:32.049)
Yeah. And it's because like it's it's something that, um, um, I had written down some like new Spielberg distinctives. And I think it's like some stuff that he does in this movie that like, he kind of carries forward in his career. And one of them that you can kind of see a little bit starting in like jaws and close encounters, but especially in this is like multi -layered action intention.

And so like, if you think about that plane sequence, you have, um, you have him like trying to get to the pilot and then he has to climb off and he has to fight like the big giant guy, the big giant bald Nazi. Um, and then the pilot's like pulling out a gun and the pilot's going to shoot them. And then Marion's knocking out the pilot and he's still fighting the Nazi. And then Marion gets stuck in the cockpit and, uh, the plane starts spinning.

The West Sisters (01:45:13.312)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:45:22.318)
Yeah. And then the gasoline start. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:45:27.953)
And so there he's having to avoid the, yeah, he's yeah, the gasoline starts pouring out. You, you see like, Oh no, everything could explode at any minute. And he's, you know, trying to avoid the propellers and trying to fight the Nazi. He's trying to get Marion out of the cockpit. Like there's just so many layers of like tension and action going on at the same time that are like the composition keeps it to where, you know, exactly what all where everything is, what's happening.

The West Sisters (01:45:47.214)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:45:58.001)
And also like the editing put together in such a way where like, you're never like lost with all those things going on. You're never lost. And it's just like building tension and building tension and adding more layers to the tension. And it's just like, really like phenomenal. I mean, just to.

The West Sisters (01:46:16.718)
If there was a second thing, I would say it's that. And I think that goes back to the writing as well, where as a writer, you have to really understand goals and obstacles to those goals and layering the obstacles to keep the conflict and tension going. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:46:31.729)
Oh yeah.

Eli Price (01:46:35.313)
for sure. Yeah. Let's talk a minute about character because I want to get y 'all's take on this. You know, I'm just a dude and I have I try to I'm trying and it's hard to get as a guy more female guess on. But when I do, I want to get the female perspective.

What is y 'all's perspective on the like indie Marion relationship? Um, because, uh, just like watching the movie and then like reading some, some different takes on it. Um, one of the books I'm listening to is by, um, a critic named Molly Haskell who really was like a harsh critic against Steven Spielberg back in the day and ended up writing this biography on him.

The West Sisters (01:47:25.398)
Hmm.

Eli Price (01:47:29.329)
And so it's interesting because she, she really respects him, but also like, it's still like, can be like critical of him. Oh, choices a little bit in the book. So it's, it's good to get a different perspective from that, but she kind of was questioning like, um, the, how Marion like moves from this very like tomboy tough girl to like almost an exaggeration of femininity with.

The West Sisters (01:47:41.902)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:47:59.249)
You know, the white dress and the screaming and all that. Um, and, and then on top of that, you have like the weird age dynamic with, with Indy and Mary and that she kind of briefly mentions. And obviously like they took out some of the stuff that was in the original script that was more specific about that, probably for the best. Um, but I don't know, what are y 'all's just general thoughts about, about that?

The West Sisters (01:48:09.174)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:48:18.958)
Oh yeah?

The West Sisters (01:48:25.742)
You had a good point on that. Let's see if I can remember what I said. Well, for the romance part, my take is I think it works within the film, within what we're seeing, but I do feel like the backstory is kind of problematic. And I feel like that's something, especially if made today, I think people would really reconsider that, that age gap. But I think for within the film, what we're seeing on screen, it works. And then for the...

Eli Price (01:48:38.511)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:48:42.127)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:48:48.977)
No sir.

The West Sisters (01:48:57.102)
femininity part and her kind of changing. I think again like Indiana Jones, she's a dynamic character. She has both sides in her just because when they're in peril, she may act a certain way that doesn't negate that she was kind of a tough cookie when we first meet her. So that's what I would say. What about you? Actually in your overview of Spielberg, Eli, you had mentioned how...

Indy is the type of character that sort of is like flying by the seat of his pants and you know you're saying he should definitely be dead. I was sort of seeing a lot of that you know similarity in Marion. Maybe there are a few more points to where she may be you know sort of screaming and a little more frazzled about it but I would say in the same way she is flying by the seat of her pants and as we know in a lot of situations...

Eli Price (01:49:28.881)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:49:35.697)
Mm -hmm.

The West Sisters (01:49:50.926)
She's not waiting for Indy to rescue her or for anybody to rescue her. She is, you know, trying to devise her own way to get out, thinking what's the next step ahead. So it is interesting to see her as a character. I can see a little bit of a digression from the beginning to the end, but I would say that she, you know, she comes to Indy's aid as much as other characters do because he does need

Eli Price (01:49:58.577)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:50:09.745)
Mm -hmm.

The West Sisters (01:50:20.078)
somebody to save them every now and then. And both of them, both of them need other people to save them.

Eli Price (01:50:23.407)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think another thing that Haskell have pointed out that I kind of saw too, this time around was there is also a bit, you know, her being like more gracious with, with her kind of take of. There's also a, you can see a bit of Spielberg kind of being in on the joke of the exaggerated femininity that's trying to like make way for the masculine male to prove his masculinity and save her.

Um, because of that aspect of Indy where it's, it's almost like this mock heroism, um, with Indy because he's the hero, but he also like, doesn't really ever have a plan and isn't like, isn't like on top of any, anything like he's very fallible and like that screws everything up a lot. Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:51:09.39)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:51:14.446)
Mm -hmm. He's just doing what he can. Yeah. And I think she's doing this. She's in the same boat. She's just doing what she can with the circumstances that she's been put in.

Eli Price (01:51:26.545)
Yeah, for sure. But what? Yeah. And then to like with Ford. So this is something that I was thinking about, too. Like if you had someone like Tom Selleck playing this character in my that relationship might be very different just because of the kind of like persona that Selig would probably bring, just like being aware of his some of his other work.

you know, he might be bring a more strong and domineering presence to that relationship. Whereas Ford just kind of like, he's so nonchalant and like about certain things and it's just kind of like, you know, oh, you know, whatever Marion and I don't know it, it ends up kind of like working. There is chemistry there. I think, I think as corny as the like, where does it hurt sequence?

The West Sisters (01:51:59.758)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:52:04.686)
Hahaha.

The West Sisters (01:52:12.366)
Okay.

Eli Price (01:52:22.929)
is it somehow works. I think it half works just because of the score. So good. But yeah, it's it's corny and I like all shucks like look at their cute kind of way that's that somehow works.

The West Sisters (01:52:29.228)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:52:35.502)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:52:40.078)
the rom -com watcher in me I guess sees their relationship and goes like this is you know for a movie like that's how most romances go it's uh you know it's not perfect but it's cinematic.

Eli Price (01:52:49.489)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

for sure. But yeah, Indy is just, he's a fun character. There is a bit of like, you can question like, well, is he actually like that great of a guy? I think, so something that Haskell had written is that he is an adventure loving scholar who is actually quite brutal.

a grave robber, imperialist mercenary looting third world countries and killing the natives. And like when you read that, it's like, yeah, actually he is doing all he is all those things. But like when you watch the movie, it's done in such a like cartoonish, almost tongue in cheek way that it makes it like palatable. And it's kind of like.

I don't know. I don't want to say it's a good or bad thing, because I think you can make an argument either way. But when I watch it, it's like it's not taking itself that seriously. And so it's hard to like really fault it for something that. Is so serious, you know. But yeah, I appreciated that. And then, like on top of that, Indy, like.

The West Sisters (01:54:04.078)
Yeah, yeah, that's true.

Eli Price (01:54:14.321)
One of the things I noticed is at the ending, Indy like has nothing to do with it. He's just like they're tied up. Like he, he has no, like, he doesn't have anything to do with like stopping the Nazis or anything like that. And so I don't know. It's just funny to me. Like he's just there tied up with Mary and just as helpless. They're just both helpless, just sitting there and the ending happens. Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:54:18.862)
in.

The West Sisters (01:54:39.95)
I do have, I have a perspective on that though, which I think ties with a lot of things that people say, which is the argument that if Indiana hadn't been a part of the movie, then the same events would have happened or actually really, he just helps the bad guys to get what they want. And I think in that case, I would say,

Eli Price (01:54:44.529)
Yeah!

The West Sisters (01:55:05.422)
That might be true and they may be tied up and they may have nothing really to do in that moment, but that's, you know, the plot, I think emotionally and like in terms of a character arc, which also some people say he doesn't have one. I think he does. And I think it has to do with going from being a skeptic to a believer and that his actions in the end, it really more is about him showing the growth that he had.

being in the circumstance that he is, where he can't really do anything else, versus it being a moment of action and heroism, which we already know by that point, he could probably do and could probably have done away with all the bad guys and all the terrible situation that they're in by the end. I think it has to do more with the internal journey of the character than the external journey of the character.

Eli Price (01:55:44.741)
Thank you.

Eli Price (01:55:59.377)
Yeah. Yeah. And I think too, like it kind of matches with kind of what we've been talking about with him being kind of a fly by the seat of your pants, like doesn't really have a plan kind of guy. It's like, yeah, he's really just like an archeologist professor that like is pretty good at having adventures and going and getting.

objects, but like all throughout the movie, like you never like, you don't walk away saying like, man, what a great archeologist. You're just like, man, this guy found a lot of stuff and like lost it to bad guys. Um, and it kind of like it, the movie's like kind of in on the joke of this guy is like how I would be if I was dropped into the middle of the jungle and had like maybe a little bit of capability physically.

The West Sisters (01:56:36.928)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:56:42.444)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:56:52.974)
you

The West Sisters (01:56:58.06)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (01:56:59.793)
Um, and, and like, was a nerd about archeology, uh, and, and, you know, reading hieroglyphics and finding cool stuff. Um, but yeah, he, and I think Harrison Ford, this is why I think Harrison Ford is like so vital because he does bring that, that kind of air of the every man kind of thing. That's like just dropped into the jungle and that's like a recurring thing of a sp -

The West Sisters (01:57:07.852)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (01:57:22.382)
Yeah, yeah, he does.

Eli Price (01:57:28.771)
of Spielberg's of like the everyman it's he wants you to relate to that. And I think you can I think you can watch this movie and be like, okay, like some of this, I could see like if I was like maybe a little bit more good with a whip and physically adept in this way, and was a nerd about where ancient objects can be found, like, yeah, that would be me I would screw it all up probably to.

But But looked cool doing it absolutely And then to like it it kicks off that ending to kicks off like a series of inexplicable encounters with the transcendent, which I think is really cool and maybe we'll get more into that as we get further into this series because I think I

The West Sisters (01:57:58.286)
look cool doing it. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:58:27.249)
I think Last Crusade is a real big thing. It really expands. This one, it just kind of happens, but they don't talk about it. And then they really, I guess, like, Indy really faces that and talks through it as a character. And once you get to Last Crusade, so we'll probably unpack that more once we get to that movie. But yeah, it definitely starts with this one, which I think is an interesting.

The West Sisters (01:58:47.63)
Nice.

Eli Price (01:58:56.527)
Aspect of it's really an interesting aspect of Spielberg's career as a whole and explicate inexplicable encounters with like ordinary people But yeah, really cool. Did y 'all have any final thoughts on Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark?

The West Sisters (01:59:19.18)
I'm -

I think it's just a really good mixture of things that we love in genre films. I think you mentioned it earlier, but the fact that it isn't just one thing, it has a little bit of mystery, a little bit of suspense, some good fight scenes, a little bit of romance, you know, just a, you know, being here, a little bit of espionage, being here in South Louisiana, we love a good gumbo. And I feel like that's what this film is.

Eli Price (01:59:30.127)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (01:59:38.737)
Yeah. Mm -hmm. Some espionage.

Eli Price (01:59:50.993)
Yeah, yeah, the Lanyop, you know, all the Lanyop thrown in. Absolutely. Yeah, I do like to ask my guests, where does this fall like in the Spielberg movies you've seen? Like, I don't expect you to have seen all of his movies because I haven't. But is this like top tier? Is it like next tier down or?

The West Sisters (01:59:53.39)
Yes.

The West Sisters (02:00:10.702)
Yeah, it is. I would say it's top tier. And then in terms of just the Indiana Jones movies, I would say for me, it's it goes between being first and second.

Eli Price (02:00:26.929)
What's the, what is the other one?

The West Sisters (02:00:28.75)
Um, I mean, I guess that also really depends, but I would probably say Temple of Doom. That's the second one, the one with like the child sacrifice. Basically, I mean, I like the comedy in that one.

Eli Price (02:00:36.593)
OK. That's.

Eli Price (02:00:46.353)
See, I'm not a big fan of Templadoom. I'm excited to revisit it for the episode upcoming. But yeah, it's one of my least favorite Spielbergs. So that's fun. It's fun to get differing opinions on that sort of thing. But yeah. Okay.

The West Sisters (02:00:57.07)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:01:06.449)
What about you, Chasa? Is this like top tier for you?

The West Sisters (02:01:07.566)
Yeah, I'd say out of out of a lot of his films, it's it's really up there because of that mixture like I talked about. And I did actually very recently just watch The Color Purple and I can see some of the even with a movie like that, that silhouette kind of shot usage throughout the film, really strong themes of characters being connected. And so I liked that as well. But yeah, he's just he does.

Eli Price (02:01:20.305)
Yeah

Eli Price (02:01:24.751)
Yeah.

The West Sisters (02:01:38.35)
pretty like consistently great stuff. So that's a really hard question, but I would say it's in the top tier. I just, I couldn't give you a number right now.

Eli Price (02:01:47.793)
Yeah, it's for so for me, it's not my favorite indie movie. Last Crusade is my favorite Indiana Jones movie. Yeah. So that's my favorite one. This one is definitely second. I just think the character development and stuff like that is just more interesting and better in Last Crusade, which will I'll get to that later in the series. But yeah, it's.

The West Sisters (02:01:55.094)
Mmm, with the dad.

The West Sisters (02:02:11.222)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:02:17.777)
It's, um, yeah, jaws is probably will always be my favorite Spielberg. Um, I think it's his best one just for me personally. Um, but yeah, most people really, like if you did a poll, like probably nine times out of 10 Raiders would win the poll for the best, for the favorite Spielberg movie sort of thing. Um,

The West Sisters (02:02:26.603)
Mm -hmm.

The West Sisters (02:02:38.254)
For me, it would be below that first Jurassic Park movie, but probably second and third.

Eli Price (02:02:42.385)
Yeah, that's fair. I think I probably like Jurassic Park more than Raiders 2. Yeah, there's a nostalgia factor in there a bit, but that's okay. It's my ranking. I can do it however I want. Well, we're going to cut off our discussion with Chasa and Charlisse. I might go back and add a few more points that I wanted to make.

The West Sisters (02:02:48.59)
same.

The West Sisters (02:02:53.774)
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Eli Price (02:03:11.185)
But we are out of time for recording this. So just a reminder, you can find out more about Chasa and Charlise's work at Set West on Instagram. And I will link that in the episode page. But yeah, next week, they're going to be joining me again for a short discussion on screenwriting.

get some insight for them on what that process looks like, at least for them. So I'm excited to talk with y 'all about all that. And then we'll, of course, be jumping into ET, which is the next movie in the series. So I'm excited to revisit that one too. But that is all we have for this week on Raiders. So yeah, we'll...

We'll look forward to talking to you guys again next week for the show. Thank y 'all for coming on.

The West Sisters (02:04:10.958)
Thank you, Eli. Thanks for having us.

Eli Price (00:03.418)
I did want to come back on after my discussion with Chassa and Charlize and add a few more points that I wanted to hit. Just kind of around some of my thoughts on what we see for Spielberg in Raiders of the Lost Ark. One of them is that this in this movie, I feel like it is like the ultimate escapism movie.

just like you hear in interviews, Lucas and Spielberg both talking about how they just wanted to make a movie that they would love watching. And I think Spielberg to this day still says like out of all, you know, all of the movies he's ever made, this one is one that he can just go back to and watch over and over and never get tired of it. And so it really is just a movie that's

just enjoyable to watch. There's not really a big moral here. There's not necessarily like, you know, a big right and wrong and we got to like, there's some deep stuff to dig into here. It's really just like kind of a black and white, good versus bad, cheer for the hero kind of movie.

And I wanted to point that out because I feel like sometimes that can be looked down on from an artistic perspective. And I don't know, I feel like if a movie is well made, like if you have a movie that's like that, that isn't well made, then yeah, sure, you can, you know, have your critiques of it. But yeah, I don't know.

A movie that's well made, that's not trying to go deep into any themes and is just like, yeah, these are the good and bad characters. Let's cheer for the hero and watch some really fun stuff. Man, that's that's great art if it's made well, you know, that's fun. It's a lot of things Spielberg's doing here is difficult stuff to pull off. And so, yeah, I just wanted to touch on that point.

Eli Price (02:27.642)
You know, you have you hear sometimes the theme park analogy used for this movie. It's just a theme park. It's just a bunch of rides. And it's used like in a bad way. But I don't know about you. I kind of enjoy going on rides and theme parks. And if I can do that in a movie theater, then I don't really see anything wrong with that. Yeah, I don't know. You know, you have.

Something happening every 10 or 15 minutes is another big heel on a roller coaster. And I just think that's fine. You know, it does a movie doesn't have to be saying something deep and special about humanity. It can just be fun and be something that you can escape into. Now, like, do I think every movie should be that way? No, like you need you need good movies made that go that are deep, that deal with.

You know humanity and deal with problems and deal with grief and deal with all these things You know, you need good movies made for all those things and so Yeah, every movie shouldn't just be a purely escapist movie But when a good one is made like yeah, I'm gonna enjoy it and you know, you should too so Yeah, I appreciate that movie

You know, the action still holds up today. The, um, the, you know, you think about the, some of the action in this movie is very like slowly built up and it takes a long time for it to reach its climax. Um, and it kind of, when you juxtapose that against some of more recent action or like kind of big superhero Marvel, maybe movies, you don't.

necessarily get that. It's just like go, go, go. Big thing, big thing, big thing. And so I think you I think it's probably good for people to go back and watch stuff like this. That takes its time with the action and really like builds the tension. Well, another thing I do appreciate, too, is, you know, this Spielberg and Lucas made this as a callback to those 30s and 40s serials.

Eli Price (04:53.818)
And they, they kind of build a mythology of the past, but you, as the audience member, you don't have to have that foundation to enjoy it. Um, you don't have to have familiarity with those sources to really understand it and to be on board with it. It's kind of like just universal storytelling is probably why you have. You have a good guy. You have a bad guy. Good guy wants this thing. Bad guy wants this thing. Let's see who gets it first. Um,

Another thing I really appreciate about Spielberg. So these are a few things I mentioned already in discussion with Chassa and Charlize, the multi -layered action intention that he builds. There's some other really cool things that I really noticed in this movie in particular that I think Spielberg would carry with him. One of them is little details. There are so many little details that either...

build the world or build tension in some way or build a character in some way. They're just little details. I wrote down a list. So in the opening sequence, you have that the corpse skeleton head turning over towards Indiana Jones. And it's just this little detail. It's just this little movement that happens that adds so much to both like the horror intention of the situation to.

Indy's reaction when it does turn. It's a little detail. You have the hilarious I love you written on the eyelids, which was just this kind of like on a whim decision that they made in the production of this movie. That is just this little detail. It's just this little side thing that happens that's really funny, like goes by so fast.

You have a lot of other like stuff that happens in action where There's there's a couple of things with the swastikas that are kind of like small details, but also are like saying yeah Nazis are bad do you have the blood being splattered on the the tail of the plane which has a swastika on it when the the big Nazi bald guy gets chopped up by the propeller Just a little detail. I

Eli Price (07:21.562)
Um, and you also have the swastika on the box where the ox is, uh, the arc is being held. Um, that gets burned up, um, from, you know, the holiness of the arc being inside the box, I guess. Um, uh, another blood splatter is, um, when Indy gets shot, you see blood splatter on the windshield and from there on out in the car chase, that blood is there. It's just a little detail that adds to the narrative and.

gives you that sense of where you are. Like, you know, when you are looking through the windshield, you're like, oh yeah, he was shot. You can see the blood right there on the windshield. Um, and I also appreciated kind of another cut at the Germans is, um, is that Indy's, uh, you know, on the front of the truck and it's a Mercedes Benz and he, you know, which is a German company and he rips the, um, Mercedes Benz logo off trying to pull himself up. Um,

Yeah, just so many things. Another thing that could kind of fall into this category of little details is the efficiency of everything used. You there's not. There's not a single, I guess, thing in this film that's wasted. So the way I think about this is you have these comedic callbacks to things earlier in the movie that are used to.

build a character and also like give you an awareness of kind of what's happening in a kind of comedic way later in the movie. So a few examples of this one is Marion when she's having the drinking contest, when you're introduced to her, it builds her character. It's introducing you to her as the kind of person she is, the tavern that she runs, what it's like. It's doing so much.

But it's not just for that. You also get the later sequence with Belloc where you know you're aware of that because of that sequence earlier and you're aware that she's trying to get him drunk so that she can escape. And it's kind of a funny callback to at the same time to that earlier scene. Just like being so efficient with stuff like that. Another couple of examples, you have the dates, you know, you have the interaction with.

Eli Price (09:50.106)
with Indy and Marianne where he's like, they're dates, you eat them. And then he's walking around, of course, later with, you know, holding the date and you know, you know, something's up with the date that he shouldn't eat it. So that's, that's kind of another one. And then you have, of course, the probably the most recognizable one is the snakes, you know, you open with the opening sequence ends with, you know, Indy yelling, I hate them.

About the snake that's in the cockpit of the plane with them and then of course later When they open the hatch to the site where the Ark is it's filled with snakes And what does any say he says well, why did it have to be snakes? You know You already are aware that this is gonna be torture for him as soon as you see those wriggling reptiles down there below Just nothing wasted in the film all these little details that are

used efficiently and more than once as those examples I gave. The other thing is it kind of goes along with those other two things of the little details, the multi -layered action. You also have Spielberg really exploiting every ounce of action from a sequence. Best example is the car chase scene.

which arguably should have been drafted in our car chase draft that we did, that I did with a guest Dave Lester. Going back, I'm like, man, one of us should have taken this because rewatching it, it's like, it's an incredible car chase scene.

ah

Eli Price (11:42.426)
But yeah, it he exploits everything. Every square inch of that truck is used at some point. The back, the inside of the back. The top someone's on top of it, they're crawling along the sides. People are hanging off the front. You know, Indy goes under it and pulls himself back up the, you know, both side. People are going in both sides of the cab through the windows out of the doors.

Every square inch of that truck is used for action. And it's done to the effect of making the audience as exhausted as the characters are in that sequence. And it's just like, it's just masterwork of action and geography and building tension and, you know, getting your audience to feel the same as the characters.

just so well done. But yeah.

Eli Price (13:02.906)
I just really wanted to touch on those few things because we are going to be seeing that as we keep going through this series, those little details, that multi -layered action intention building, using every square inch of something for an action sequence. And then, too, another little thing is

kind of genre blending, which we talked about, um, me and Justin Charlie's a little bit of all the different genre kind of stuff influences that you can see in this is something that he'll do in future films here and there. Uh, but yeah, I just wanted to make sure to touch on those things. Uh, that is really kind of all I have for, for you for this week for Spielberg, um, Raiders of the Lost Ark. Great movie.

Iconic, not my favorite Indiana Jones movie, but still great. Um, hard to fault it. Uh, and, uh, yeah, I am looking forward to, um, to, to next week talking with Chassa and Charlie's about screenwriting. They've done some work in screenwriting and directing, so I'm excited to get some insight from them next week. Um, remember to go rate and review the show.

If you haven't ever done that before, it only takes a minute of your time, helps a ton. And yeah, if you have any feedback on the episode, I'd love to hear that too. You can email us at establishingshotpod at gmail .com. You can even leave a voicemail on the website. If you go to establishingshotpod .com, click leave a voicemail and I'd love to hear from you.

feedback on the show thoughts about this episode or other episodes Maybe you have an insight to a movie that you want to share that we've covered I'd love to hear that and feature that on a future episode But yeah, I'd I'd love to hear from you if you have a chance to do that Otherwise, that is all we have for this week Yeah, I have been Eli price

Eli Price (15:26.938)
And for Chasah and Charlise West, you've been listening to The Establishing Shot. We will see you next time.