Indiana Jones is a Lifetime Experience

The Man with the Hat
By Robert Leese

I don't remember having a choice.

My mother, sister and I would see The Great Muppet Caper while my aunt and grandmother were in the theater next door, which was showing a movie called Raiders of the Lost Ark.

It was the summer of 1981. The five of us were standing outside the multiplex at Machesney Park Mall in Machesney Park, Illinois. I was six, a recent graduate of kindergarten from Summerdale Elementary School in nearby Rockford, Illinois.

Did I have a choice? Did I actually choose Kermit over Han Solo from Star Wars?

Best not to think about it.

The important thing is that I eventually saw the movie my aunt and grandmother raved about in the car on the way home. My dad took me to see it. Simply put, I haven't been the same since. My reaction to the film - even as it was unspooling - was unique. I hadn't been so enthralled by a movie since the original Star Wars. More importantly, Raiders was the first film that engaged me on an intellectual level.

During the show, I remember asking my dad endless questions about the characters' motivations, the exotic locales and the fearsome villains. The fact that this movie took place on Earth and not in a galaxy far, far away made it different. Intuitively, I understood that many elements of the story were at least partially based in fact, and this realization expanded the scope of my imagination: The real world could be just as compelling as outer space. So I interrogated my father, listening intently to his answers between gun battles and fist fights. It must have been annoying for the other theatergoers, but I couldn't help it. Instead of simply allowing the images to cascade over me, I wanted to understand this film, mine it at a deeper level.

I think it was Indy's tenacity that affected me most. Why was he so determined to stop the bad guys? Spielberg's concise exposition at the beginning of the film had given me an idea of the Ark's power, but what made one man think he could take on an entire army?

There's that scene aboard the Bantu Wind, after the Germans have retaken possession of the Ark, when one of the crew members reports to Captain Katanga that Indy is nowhere to be found. After being instructed by the captain to look again, there is an abrupt reversal:

"I found him," the crewman says.
"Where?"
Pointing, the man says, "There!"
And we see Jones pulling his battered, water-logged body onto the German submarine as the crew of the Bantu Wind cheers him on.

It was this moment in the film that brought into sharp focus abstract concepts like bravery and self-sacrifice. "Never giving up," I thought to myself, sitting in a darkened theater twenty-six years ago, "That's what it means to be a hero."

I saw the film at exactly the right moment in my childhood. My parents' marriage was falling apart; their arguments were frequent, their animosity toward each other a suffocating force. In addition to the roller coaster ride of action and suspense that Raiders served up, the character of Indiana Jones provided me with exactly the figure I needed in my life, someone whose goodness and indomitable will to succeed transcended everyday squabbles about money and recriminations about past deeds.

Squinting into the afternoon sunlight after the movie, my only wish - besides seeing the film again, immediately - was to spend the rest of my life discovering ancient treasures and beating up Nazis.

Over the next three years, I continued to immerse myself in the worlds created by George Lucas, buying Star Wars and Raiders action figures, reading the comic series based on these properties, seeing Return of the Jedi the day it came out. (I'd started seeing the latest entries in my favorite genre film series "first day, first show" when The Empire Strikes Back came out a year before Raiders, in 1980. This tradition - or compulsion, depending on how you look at it - lasted until The Phantom Menace. After that, I was cured.)

Bullwhip Needed

I don't remember when I put the Indy costume together. If I had to guess, I'd say it was the spring of '84, maybe a month or two before the release of Temple of Doom.

Searching my closet and toy box, I found a faux-leather Fonzie jacket (an old garage sale find I'd never worn), a white button-down shirt (my only one), a tan cowboy hat (a gift from my mother's boyfriend - my parents had divorced in 1982), khaki slacks (again, my only pair), and a plastic belt and holster complete with a toy revolver (sans orange tip; in the '80s, toy guns could still be mistaken for real ones).

I lacked a bullwhip, but my aunt - who had seen Raiders that day I spent watching the Muppets - found one for me. It was pretty close to the real thing - leather, braided, about three feet long - and I set about training myself to become adept with it, placing blades of grass between the boards on the picnic table, swinging until I snapped the thin green filaments into oblivion. Cracking the whip was easy; menacing my little sister and her little friends with it, easier.

Dad took us to see Temple opening day. Predating the costumed spectacles of geek culture by several years, I dressed up in my Indy gear for the occasion, and when we entered the nearly empty theater at Colonial Village Mall, a pair of college kids sitting on the aisle regaled me with the Raiders March: "Da-da-da-daaa DA-da-DAAA, Da-da-da-daaa Da-da-da-da-DAAA!"

I was on top of the world. My costume was authentic enough to past muster with the ardent fans. (It is only in hindsight that I realize they were probably making fun of me.)

I loved the movie, and to this day will defend it against charges of its being inferior to the third film in the trilogy. "It's better than Crusade because, among many other reasons, its story is more original," I say. "Yes, it's a lot darker, but it's called ‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,' not ‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Methodists.'"

Alas, my refutation of the belief (popular among casual fans) that Crusade is better than Temple always falls on deaf ears.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Fantasy Firmly Fixed...in Reality

In 1984, at the age of nine, I decided I wanted to become an archaeologist just like Dr. Jones. When I returned to school in August, I resolved to check out history books from the tiny school library. There was so much to learn.

In the meantime, I read the Indiana Jones Find Your Fate novels, picking my way carefully through trick questions, and, every once in a while, peeking ahead to see if a choice I made was a good one, with the adventure continuing, or if the page I turned to read "THE END," which usually meant a grisly demise.

My mom had to beg me to remove my costume that summer. I wore it everywhere, recreating both movies with friends (simultaneously directing and starring, playing the parts of Spielberg and Ford), going on solo adventures, carrying priceless artifacts (polished stones) in my satchel, tying the end of my whip to tree branches and swinging across imagined ravines, crocodiles snapping far below.

After obtaining a clip-on bow tie and fashioning a crude pair of glasses out of wire, I was able to act out the requisite classroom scenes in front of an imaginary group of students. I even went so far as to dress up my little sister as Short Round, forcing her to wear a cardigan sweater and a homemade Yankees cap. (The first time our babysitter saw us in our respective get-ups, she asked if we were dressing up as hobos.)

I got into a lot of trouble, too.

One day, a pair of older kids chased me home. (They were mad about something. I don't remember what. Honest.) One of the boys had an extension cord in his hand. He got in a good lick with it, too, striking my back with the plug.

I wasn't wearing the outfit that day. Mom had probably insisted on washing it. Anyway, the kids chased me home, and I made a bee-line for the bullwhip. Out I came from the house, swinging it and screaming. For about thirty seconds, my street, Montrose Avenue, on the northwest side of Rockford, became a dusty back alley in Cairo, Egypt.

Until one of the kids grabbed hold of the whip and reeled me in like a fish. By the time my mom caught up with me and drove the kids away, the boy had his hands around my neck and was squeezing for all he was worth. I lost the use of the whip for about a week after this. Mom put it on top of the refrigerator. (Surely Indy never had to face such an indignity.)

Even before I assembled my costume, I nearly killed myself pulling Jones-like stunts. Like the time, several months after Raiders came out, when my dad took my cousins and me to a toboggan run at a nearby park. The first and only time I went down the slide, I fell off at the bottom. Instead of scrambling away in the snow, I got up and waited for the next toboggan to come down. I jumped out of the way of the sled at the last possible moment, and my shenanigans got the whole family kicked off the run.

Years later, hat perched on my head, sweating buckets wearing a winter jacket in the middle of the summer, I'd ask friends to pull the cord on their garage doors as hard as they could so I could attempt to dive under them before they closed. Like Indy, I received my fair share of bruises. My long-suffering buddies did not go unscathed, either: Feigning an Indy-style punch, aping Ben Burtt's sound effects, I once accidentally socked my friend Brian in the eye.

I didn't have a problem distinguishing between fantasy and reality. On the contrary, I was acutely aware of my circumstances. I acted out in desperation, out of a desire to transcend the pain I felt. Home was an unstable, discordant place for several years following my parents' divorce. By the mid-'80s, Indiana Jones became a figure representing escape more than anything else. Lacking the ability to hitch a ride with a convoy headed to Pankot, I dramatized my fantasies, using my imagination to break free.

By the time I started fourth grade in September of '84, I think the entire neighborhood was pretty sick of the kid in the Jones gear, repeating his favorite lines from the most recent film:

"Mola Ram, prepare to meet Kali - in hell!"
Or, in a quieter voice, because that's how Indy said it, trapped on the rope bridge by the Thuggee: "Oh, shit."

In keeping with the resolution I made that summer, I began checking out history books from the library, eagerly learning as much as I could about Mayan history, Egyptian mummies, pirates, and European explorers of the New World.

Eventually, the hysteria surrounding the release of Temple faded and the Indy franchise returned to dormancy, but I continued wearing the costume on the weekends, continued spending whatever money I could find or earn buying up the last few issues in the Marvel comic series.

Every Halloween, I wore the costume to school for the parade. By the sixth grade, the Fonzie jacket no longer fit, and I had lost my bullwhip while trick-or-treating the year before (probably a great source of relief to my mother). Sadly, the outfit had to be retired.

Where was the Crusade Hype?

Is it just me, or was there not much hype about Crusade before it came out in May 1989? I was excited, sure, and I made certain to arrange a trip to the theater with my dad, but it wasn't the same.

It was probably me: I was older (14 and already world-weary and cynical), and the preceding few years had been difficult. Still, I had high hopes for the film and looked forward to seeing it.

At first blush, I was disappointed with Crusade. What struck me at first, and what continues to bother me about the film, were the lower production values. I've always been annoyed by people who point out minute flaws in a movie's ability to create and sustain a suspension of disbelief (I hate comments like, "That's impossible. That's so far-fetched." Or: "Look, the boom mike!") But the worst special effects in the Lucasfilm pantheon are on display in Last Crusade. From crappy blue screen (Vogel waving his fist at the dirigible) to the fakest-looking bookshelf ever created (behind Indy in the Venetian library) to the "X" that varies in clarity on the library floor - for me to notice these things was kind of a bummer.

The story - the first time I saw the movie - was just okay. Sean Connery's performance as Indy's dad went a long way toward redeeming the film, but the whole affair, in the words of one contemporary reviewer (I read his comments in a genre magazine, probably Starlog), felt like "Raiders Retread."

The magic of the first two films just wasn't there.

I saw it again, and with my expectations recalibrated, I enjoyed the movie for what it was - a character study - and allowed the interplay between the Joneses to become its highlight while ignoring its flaws: Where was the grand finale? The rope bridge snapping apart? The spirits in the Ark laying waste to the evil Nazi soldiers?

(At least I got some comedic mileage out of quoting Connery's lines. Once, when entering the high school gym for a pep rally, I leaned over and, in a passable imitation of Henry Sr.'s voice, told my friend, Tom, "We're pilgrims in an unholy land.")

I admired Crusade's ending, which was fitting - that great shot of Indy, his father, Sallah, and Marcus riding off into the sunset - and so final. Until the mid-'90s, when the first rumors of a possible fourth film began circulating.

The early part of that decade was a bad one for my favorite archaeologist. The Indy novels and comics published in the wake of the third film had been unimpressive, so the idea that Dr. Jones might don the fedora on the silver screen again was thrilling, especially after Harrison Ford's cameo in an episode of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. My thinking was, even if the movie is bad, it'd be great to see Indy in that outfit again.

It's been a long wait. Whenever a bit of news about a fourth Indy film hit the media, I'd get nostalgic and stick my beat-up VHS copy of Raiders into the VCR. I'd take out the old comics, imagine set pieces for the next movie, and wonder what artifact Jones would track down next.

After several years, I started to get pretty skeptical about the chances of the project ever coming together, and by the early part of this decade I'd more or less given up on the possibility of a fourth chapter. That all changed, of course, at the beginning of this year, with the long-anticipated, hard-to-be-believed announcement that, at last, we'd get another one.

This past spring, I read everything I could about the movie, becoming more and more excited as the start date for production neared.

Seeing that first photo of Ford in costume brought me back to the very beginning. I studied the picture for a long time, reacquainting myself with my greatest hero. He looked older, wiser, but just as battered as ever. I speculated as to how he'd received that scrape on his face and why there was blood on his knee. The photo captured Ford between takes, but the steadiness of his gaze was all Indy. His expression said, "The world needs saving again."

"The Man with the Hat is back," I thought.

And so is the magic.

All images TM & (C) Lucasfilm Ltd.