Monday, April 21, 2008

You throw me a bootleg copy, I'll throw you the whip

Like a fool I didn't buy tickets several days in advance so I didn't catch Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation at the Hollywood Theater over the weekend. Still, after rummaging around on this site I think I probably know more about the movie than those that have sat through it. The first nine minutes can also be found on You Tube:




Not impressed? This BBC clip will better explain everything.

If this is all news to you, here's a quick rundown (a long one can be found here). In the '80s a group of kids in Mississippi spent seven years recreating and filming nearly ever scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark (they couldn't quite pull off the airplane fist fight). During the course of their odyssey, they nearly burnt down a house, almost killed one of their actors, broke a limb or two, learned how to make pipe bombs, conned someone into loaning them a real submarine and went through five prop boulders. From what I've been told, their recreation of the truck chase is amazing.

It's all an inspiring tale of geekery and indomitable determination. The makers are now in the process of trying to get their careers going in Hollywood. Supposedly, there's also a movie about the production of The Adaptation in the works. Until then, here's hoping the real-deal comes back through town again. As I understand it, it can only show it at charity screenings due to innumerable copyright issues.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I got some of their Q&A questions from their April 18th showing and put them up on YouTube if anyone's interested.

Topics covered include, making the plaster cast (for Belloq's exploding head at the end) that cost Zala his eyebrows and almost his eyelids, the burning bar scene (filmed in one of their basements) that had one of their mothers putting a temporary kibosh on the movie, the creation of several different boulders until they found the right way to do it...

The links are:
Part 1 of 3 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fajm55fwNCU
Part 2 of 3 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_G8Q_A0paM
Part 3 of 3 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF1AxCDUrNc