Raiders of the Lost Ark Transcript

Anybody who has been following my blog for any length of time will know that I am a BIG Indiana Jones fan.



I was visiting The Raider website and there was this posting to Mystery Man on Film's blog and he had a transcript that was or a meeting between George Lucus, Steven Spielberg, and Lawrence Kasdan. Check below for the links. The transcript is in Adobe pdf file format.



Quoting Mystery Man on Film's blog: "Some background first. Spielberg suggested that Kasdan write Raiders because he admired his Continental Divide script. Lucas agreed. Now, imagine with me: Lucas had just released Star Wars, the biggest film in the history of Hollywood and a cult phenomenon. Spielberg had just released Close Encounters of the Third Kind and before that, Jaws. Now Kasdan was called in to have a story conference with the biggest names in Hollywood who wanted to talk about their next blockbuster. The conference took place at the L.A. home of Jane Bay, who was Lucas’ assistant. They had 5 consecutive 9-hour days to talk about the story. This .pdf is a transcript from taped recordings of those meetings."

Indiana Smith was one of the earlier versions of the famed explorer. It just doesn't have any Zing! But, as far as spoofing, then Indiana Smith would be a great name indeed.


Again, quoting Mystery Man on Film: "... Spielberg and Lucas were idea machines. They could’ve sat there coming up with Indiana Smith ideas forever. There were enough ideas generated in these meetings for two films, which they actually used for two films."

And this is going to be my last quote from Mystery Man's website. It covers the background history of Indiana Jones and Marion Ravenwood: "Interestingly, the discussion about Marion was hardly as thorough as the one about Indy. For a while, they weren't sure what kind of girl to have as a counterpart to Indy. Lucas had first described the love interest as a blonde double-crossing German agent, which they ended up using in Last Crusade.

"Spielberg said, “She should have hair like Veronica Lake. You only see one eye at a time.”There was talk about a big name professor who taught Indy everything he knew. Then there was the idea about this German girl, and for the sake of expediency, Kasdan suggested that Indy instead have an affair with the mentor’s daughter, which they loved.

"And then Lucas and Spielberg were off and running with ideas about how’s she’s been left in Peru and has this bar and is trying to get money together to get back to the States and loves (and resents) Indy to no end. In fact, Kasdan said he wanted Indy and this girl to already have a history when they meet because, “I like it if they already had a relationship at one point. Because then you don’t have to build it.” Hehehe…

"Then the discussion turned to how old Marion and Indy were at the time of the affair: (NOTE: G = George Lucas, S = Steven Spielberg, L = Lawrence Kasdan).

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

"And now consider the dialogue of that scene in the film:
INDY: I never meant to hurt you.
MARION: I was a child! I was in love.
INDY: You knew what you were doing.
MARION: It was wrong. You knew it.
INDY: Look, I did what I did. I don't expect you to be happy about it. But maybe we can do each other some good.
MARION: Why start now?
INDY: Shut up and listen for a second. I want that piece your father had. I've got money.
MARION: How much? (End Quote)"

Have fun reading it.

____



Ref. The Raider.net ( http://www.theraider.net/)
Mystery Man on Film blog ( http://mysterymanonfilm.blogspot.com/2009/03/raiders-story-conference.html).
Transcript link itself ( http://www.sendspace.com/file/cnoe3r ).