Chapter 8, Part 2 - Harrison Ford: Indiana Jones is back

WHEN THE SHOOTING STARTS

Filming on Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom began on 18th April 1983 on location in Sri Lanka and in Macao. When the Chinese sequence was safely in the can, the Macao unit joined the crew in Kandy and, with the two crews working side by side, the location work was wrapped in three weeks. From that lush setting, the cast and crew came back to earth with a bump, spending the next twelve weeks toiling through the British summer at EMI’s Elstree Studios at Borehamwood, just outside London. 

Director Spielberg and his two principal actors arrive at
London's Heathrow Airport for the studio shooting 
of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Additional location scenes were filmed in Northern California in the United States, where Hamilton Air Force Base stood in for Shanghai Airport and the Tuolomne River played the part of the Ganges. Principal photography finished on September 8 1983 without incident, barring one mishap, though the special effects work would continue up until March 1984.

Like Raiders before it Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is packed to overflowing with complex and dangerous stunt work. The ‘one mishap’ very nearly shuttered production on the movie when Harrison Ford fell from an elephant and aggravated an old back injury – with a third of the picture still to be completed! Ford was jetted back to Los Angeles to undergo emergency laser surgery and filming was halted while the star recuperated. 

Riding an elephant (and falling from one) are all in a day's
work for the average action movie star.

When he returned to the set, he found the most strenuous stunts – including his battle with the henchmen of Mola Ram and his climactic fight on the rickety rope bridge – were still before him. Fortunately for Ford, his doctors had patched him up perfectly and filming resumed without a hitch. Ford, as usual, was dismissive about the incident.

‘I’m now as fit as a fiddle,’ he said, ‘but I could never have done it without Vic Armstrong. Guys like Vic are invisible. They never get any credit. Nobody ever interviews them.’

Armstrong had worked with Ford several times before, on Raiders of the Lost Ark, Blade Runner and Return of the Jedi, doubling for Ford when the going got too rough. Armstrong was philosophical about Ford's remarks.

‘We have to be invisible,’ he conceded, ‘if people are going to believe in the film.’

Peas in a pod ... Vic Armstrong (left!) was often mistaken
for Harrison Ford on set

Maybe ‘invisible’ isn’t the right word, for Armstrong bears a striking resemblance to Harrison Ford. While working on the set of Raiders, so many people mistook Armstrong for Ford that it came to be something of a running gag. But there’s more to doubling for an actor than just physical resemblance. Of Ford, Armstrong said, ‘He’s a natural athlete and he wants to do it all. I say to him, “H, we can’t afford to get you smashed up in this scene because we’ve got a whole crew that needs to make a living.” And he says, “Yeah, you’re right,” and does the scene anyway. He could have made a great stunt man himself.’

THAT’S A WRAP!

When Steven Spielberg called ‘Cut!’ for the last time on 8th September 1983, it’s unlikely that he would have realised just how literally that order could be taken. As with Raiders, certain scenes had been cut from the screenplay before and during shooting, obviously with Spielberg’s blessing, but when Temple of Doom was presented to the censors, the word ‘cut’ began to take on sinister overtones.

On the plus side, the scenes that had been excised from Raiders had been modified and incorporated into Temple of Doom.

‘The idea of the plane crash and then jumping out of the door in a life raft had, at one time, been in the original,’ confirmed Huyck.

‘The other thing was the mine car,’ added Katz. ‘George had thought of the mine car race for Raiders. But I don’t know how it was written or what happened to it. He wanted a roller coaster ride.’ And he got one!

Though much of the mine-car roller coaster scene was shot
with miniatures, some of it was filmed full size,
with Harrison Ford and Ke Huy Quan riding the truck.

So there was every reason to believe, then, that scenes cut from Temple of Doom could find their way into some future Indiana Jones movie. Like the scene in which Kate Capshaw, as Willie, was to wrestle a boa constrictor.

‘We had a snake scene that Kate wouldn’t do,’ explained Huyck. ‘They had a boa constrictor and they had trained it. For weeks in advance, she had been trying to psyche herself up for this. She said she touched it and, the first time, it sort of ... undulated. And she thought she was going to die. She started sweating. Then they tried to put it on her shoulders to show her what it would be like, and she just freaked out. Steven (Spielberg) was sort of ashen and said, “That’s all right.”’

‘It was a very funny scene,’ added Katz, ‘because there she is, being strangled by a snake, and Indy is just helplessly standing there!’

‘So they didn’t do it,’ continued Huyck. ‘Kate just couldn’t do it. That’s when Steve said, “Okay, if you’re not going to do this, there’s no way you’re not going to do the bug scene.”’

But Lucas, never one to waste a good idea, did recycle the sequence for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, almost twenty-five years later.

Another cut, involving the child Maharajah, ended up causing the film to be a little less clear than it should have been. It comes as something of a surprise to audiences to discover, late in the film, that the young monarch is under the control of the Thuggees. A couple of explanatory scenes had been written, but had never been filmed. During the banquet sequence, the prime minister Chattar Lal is seen talking to the shadowy figure of Mola Ram in the gardens outside the Palace. Later, Indy is teaching the young Maharajah how to use his whip. When the child comes to try it himself, he gets it wrong and hurts himself. Short Round laughs and a scuffle follows. During the scrap, Short Round sees the Maharajah’s eyes glow red, and understands something weird is going on. Presumably these scenes were taken out, sacrificing clarity for pace, as the dinner sequence was long in itself.

A far different kettle of cuts was the chunk of Temple of Doom hacked out by overzealous censors in their never-ending quest to protect those who share their sensitive dispositions, but not their incorruptibility. The film was given a PG rating for its American release and immediately came under fire from journalists and parents’ associations across the country.

‘The movie,’ said The New York Times, ‘in addition to being endearingly disgusting, is violent in ways that may scare the wits out of some young patrons.’

Parents who had taken their young children to early preview screenings said their offspring were particularly disturbed by the scene in which Mola Ram tears the still-beating heart from the chest of a living sacrifice victim and the victim’s subsequent immersion in boiling lava. The PG rating was called into question in some quarters, and the distributing company, Paramount, added a warning line to the newspaper ads, which read: ‘This film may be too intense for younger children’.

OK, this probably is a bit intense for eight year olds ...

In the UK the British Board of Film Censors took a harder line. Numerous changes were requested from Paramount before the BBFC would grant the picture the desired PG rating. Secretary of the Board, James Ferman, felt that the US version of the movie couldn’t even get a fifteen rating under the British system. To obtain a fifteen, the scene in which ‘the slow burning of a man in absolute agony’ is shown would have to go. Faced with the threat of an eighteen certificate, Paramount decided to make cuts to the British release print. Yet, even in this toned down version, the film drew some flak for its violence. The late Alexander Walker, admittedly not noted for his tolerance towards youth-oriented movies, dismissed the picture as ‘Indiana Jones meets the Marquis de Sade.’

Harrison Ford took such criticisms in his stride. ‘This is a completely moral tale,’ said the actor, ‘and in order to have a moral resolve, evil must be seen to inflict pain. The end of the movie is proof of the viability of goodness.’

... and, of course, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom does
provide the statutory Happy Ending.

Still, in spite of all the fuss, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was yet another in a long line of box office records for George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford. No matter what the critics and the censors thought, the cinema-going public gave the movie the best vote of confidence they knew how. Between them, they spent enough ticket money to propel Temple of Doom to the top end of the movie charts for 1984, putting it in the number three slot, just a whisker behind Ghostbusters and Beverley Hills Cop in the battle for the number one slot and raising it to number 88 in the all-time box-office champs list with a take of almost $180 million in the US and $333 million worldwide. In addition, the American Academy nominated the film in the category of Best Score and awarded the movie an Oscar for Best Special Effects. And no one can argue with that kind of success.

And while the critics and the audiences were chewing over Temple of Doom, Ford was moving onto another of his ‘small time’ films, Witness. ‘It’s a calculated departure,’ stated Ford. ‘This movie is the story of an Amish woman and a Philadelphia cop and the intelligence of the script gives me some wonderful cloth to cut.’

And despite their earlier denials, Spielberg announced in the early part of 1984 that he would be directing the third Indiana Jones film, and Ford, too, had been signed for the project. ‘Playing Indy,’ said Ford, ‘is just a fun thing to do!’

WHAT NEXT FOR THE HARRISON FORD STORY?

Where I go next with this blog is something I have to think about. My original plan was to put the whole of The Harrison Ford Story online. In my day job, I manage websites and in that arena, the conventional wisdom is that no one wants to read extended chunks of text on a screen. We all find it difficult and we all read far slower from a screen than we do from the printed page. And The Harrison Ford Story can be bought in its printed form very inexpensively online from Amazon.co.uk or from any number of online retailers.

So I'm probably doing everyone, myself included, a disservice by continuing down this route. I have no evidence that anyone is reading this, so I think I'll hold off for a while - unless you tell me differently.

Alan McKenzie, Aug 2013

Chapter 8, Part 1 - Harrison Ford: Indiana Jones is back

From Box Office Draw to Box Office Phenomenon

‘Playing Indy is just a fun thing to do.’ Harrison Ford

Every time a big, successful movie looms over the cinematic horizon, you can bet, sure as sunrise, that the same relentless movie-making machinery will grind into motion.

The first stage of this process is that every bozo with a budget in Film City, USA will think he can reproduce the elements that made the original the success it was. Within months, a flood of dismal, copycat movies will be jostling for space on screens around the world. Then, the makers of the film that started it all will begin work on a sequel – if only to show the rip-off merchants how it should be done.

Which is exactly what happened with Raiders of the Lost Ark.

In rapid succession, film-goers were forced to suffer High Road to China (ironically starring George Lucas’ first choice for Indiana Jones, Tom Selleck), Invaders of the Lost Gold (actually just an Italian horror movie Horror Safari opportunistically retitled), Hunters of the Golden Cobra, a kind of spaghetti Raiders starring ex-model David Warbeck and directed by Italian hack-meister Antonio Marghereti, and Treasure of the Four Crowns, another cheesey Italian effort, this time in 3D. Then, in early 1983, the American screen trade paper Variety announced that work had begun on the follow-up to Raiders of the Lost Ark.

INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF ... WHAT?

‘Steven Spielberg is helming Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom on location in Sri Lanka (with lensing in Hong Kong and London’s Elstree Studios to follow) for Lucasfilm Ltd and Paramount, with Harrison Ford reprising his title role characterisation first seen in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Douglas Slocombe back as cinematographer, Kate Capshaw, who had roles in A Little Sex and the current sci-fier Dreamscape is Ford’s new leading lady.’ All of which must have come as something of a surprise to certain American fan magazines which were getting excited about a Raiders sequel called ‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of Death’.

Other than that, information was hard to come by. Not that Ford would have put talking to the press very high on his list of priorities anyway. He had married Melissa Mathison on March 14, 1983, a short time after obtaining his final divorce from Mary and mere weeks before beginning work on Temple of Doom.

What was known was that Lawrence Kasdan, busy with directing his latest film, The Big Chill, had passed on the scripting chores. Lucas had turned to his old friends Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, who had worked wonders with Lucas’ original draft of American Graffiti.

George Lucas himself had hinted at the contents of further Indiana Jones films around the time Raiders was released and confessed that Indy was his personal favourite of the characters he had created. ‘If I could be a dream figure, I’d be Indy,’ He told American magazine Rolling Stone. ‘It’s not just that I’m interested in archeology or anthropology; a lot of that got into Star Wars too. It’s just that Indy can do anything. He’s a lot of Thirties heroes put together. He’s this renegade archeologist and adventurer, but he’s also a college professor, and he’s got this Cary Grant side, too. In some stories, we’ll see him in top hat and tails. We don’t want to make him Superman – he’s just open to all possibilities. Raiders will be the most action oriented of the Indiana Jones movies – the others should deal more with the Occult.’

OK, maybe not top hat and tails, but definitely another side to
Indiana Jones ... kind of a "Bogart in Casablanca" look

Lucas had no problems convincing director Steven Spielberg to re-sign on the dotted line. ‘I’d hate to let it slip through my fingers into some one else’s hands,’ said Spielberg. ‘I’ll certainly not be involved in the third or the fourth one, but I really want to do the follow-up, because the story is even more spectacular than Raiders.’

Coincidence? I think not ...

Harrison Ford was also expressing his pleasure at the prospect of appearing in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. ‘Of course I’m doing the second Raiders film,’ he said. ‘With great pleasure. And for the first time, I think, in the history of sequels and good directors, Steven Spielberg is going to direct it. So this is very exciting for me. It was one of the best working relationship experiences of my life working with Steven.’

Pleased as he was, Ford was a little disturbed to hear from Starburst’s Tony Crawley that there were a total of five Indiana Jones films on the Lucasfilm launching pad, in varying stages of development. After completing filming on Return of the Jedi, the actor said, ‘Actually, I’m only committed to one film at the moment. That’s another Indiana Jones film. I had hoped to have a year off between the end of Jedi and the beginning of the next Indy film. Five (Indiana Jones films) is okay with me. I mean I really enjoy working on them. And I really enjoy the character very much. And certainly I couldn’t hope for better company than Lucas and Spielberg. But having done one, I don’t think I’d do four more of anything. They must be talking to Roger Moore ... one at a time for me!’

THE WRITE STUFF

Though they were newcomers to the Indiana Jones series, script-writers Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz were no strangers to Lucasfilm Ltd. They had written the screenplay for Lucas’ first big hit, American Graffiti, succeeding in producing a workable script where others, including Lucas, had failed.

Huyck and Katz, a husband and wife team, had met at University in California, worked together at Francis Coppola’s studio where they first encountered Lucas and went on to write Graffiti (1973), Lucky Lady (1975) and French Postcards (1979).

The writers were first contacted about writing Temple of Doom in February, 1982. ‘We flew up to George’s house with Steven Spielberg and spent four days there,’ said Huyck. ‘In the first hour, George told us what he had in mind. Essentially, the story started in Shanghai and had Indy get into a situation in which his plane crashes. Then he’s asked by villagers to recover a sacred stone. That’s the basic outline we were given and we started building from there.’

The events in Temple of Doom take place a year before those in Raiders. Consequently, the new script called for a completely new cast of supporting characters, notably Short Round, Indy’s child companion and ‘bodyguard’ and Willie Scott, a nightclub singer.

‘We sat around trying to come up with names for the new characters,’ explains Huyck, ‘and we said that since George named Indiana Jones after his dog, Steven Spielberg and us should be able to name the characters after our dogs. So Steve named Willie after his dog and we named Short Round after ours. But our dog is named after a Korean child in the Sam Fuller movie The Steel Helmet (1951).’

‘Short Round really came out of the notion that George wanted a child in the movie,’ adds Katz. ‘He wanted a girl, but we didn’t like that idea too much, and Steve didn’t feel comfortable with it, either. So we thought of the idea of Short Round and then of his character. How he participated in the script developed out of the story conferences.’

The script went through three full drafts on its way to completion, with pauses for less major rewrites along the way. The first draft took Huyck and Katz six weeks, ‘because we wanted to get something we could talk about immediately,’ says Huyck. The second draft took another six weeks, with the third draft being completed in a breakneck four weeks of work. From there, the writers were called away to attend to their next project, Best Defense, though throughout the period of shooting on Temple of Doom, they were continually called upon by Steven Spielberg for polishing on the final draft.

FINE TUNING

With the script out of the way, the production crew could turn their attention to the casting of both the supporting actors and the locations. In the September of 1982, the ‘line’ producer of Temple of Doom, Robert Watts, set off for Asia with the movie’s production designer, Elliot Scott.

‘First we went to Hong Kong,’ said Watts, ‘looking for locations for the Chinese sequence. Hong Kong was too modern and we had to rule it out. From there we went to Macao, which hasn’t been developed as much as Hong Kong, and we found locations that would do for Shanghai. Then we went to India, where the bulk of the movie is supposed to take place, and we found most of the locations we wanted. The only problem was that they were miles apart.

‘Carrying on to Sri Lanka, we found, to our surprise, that we could get almost everything we wanted in the environs of one town, Kandy, with the exception of the Maharajah’s Palace.’

It was decided to base the production location at Kandy with only three days set aside for filming the Palace sequences on mainland India. Then Watts ran into hurdles. The Indian Government has rigid policies concerning the making of movies within its borders. A number of changes to the script were asked for. Too many for Lucasfilms’ liking.

‘George Lucas had very clear ideas on how the film should be,’ said Watts. ‘It is an adventure and the things that happen couldn’t possibly happen in real life. But the film, if it is to work, has to have the look and feel of reality. We were prepared to go so far to meet the Indian Authorities’ demands, but to have gone the whole way would have robbed the film of that element. In the end we decided it wasn’t worth it, least of all for three days shooting, and we closed our Bombay office.’

To get around the problem of being denied the necessary location, the filmmakers decided to build the Palace on the backlot at Elstree Studios and use matte paintings – a special effects technique to incorporate realistic artwork into live action footage – for the long shots.

Watts’ next objective was to take care of casting the actors. ‘The film has a very small cast,’ said Watts, ‘though this is not always apparent because there are always lots of people on the screen. In fact, I would say that it is possibly the smallest and most difficult casting I’ve ever worked on.’

That Harrison Ford would appear as Indy was never in dispute. But finding the right actor to portray Short Round caused all concerned headaches.

‘We had open casting calls in New York, Vancouver, London – anywhere with a substantial Chinese community,’ explained Watts, ‘and out of hundreds of boys there was only one who was really suitable.’

Ke Huy Quan was discovered during casting sessions in Los Angeles. A Vietnamese refugee, his English was good, but not so polished as to sound like a native American.

Ford with supporting cast members Ke Huy Quan and Kate Capshaw.

For the key role of villain Mola Ram, Indian star Amrish Puri was cast. ‘The only trouble was,’ said Watts, ‘that being such a popular actor in India, he was working on eighteen films at once. Scheduling him was a nightmare!’

Top Bollywood star Amrish Puri was cast as as the
dastardly villain Mola Ram.

The casting of Kate Capshaw for the part of Willie Scott was a lot more straightforward. Capshaw had been introduced to the character of Indiana Jones when she was dragged, under protest, to see Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981. ‘I went, very petulent and sulky,’ admitted Capshaw, ‘and stayed that way for about two minutes! When I came out, I would have been a great advertisement for going to see that movie.’

Kate Capshaw got to perform a spectacular cabaret routine
in the opening sequence of Temple of Doom.

A couple of years later, Kate Capshaw’s agent just happened to be out jogging with one of the casting directors on Temple of Doom ... and the rest is history. ‘Every director has a gut feeling for who a character is, what their special qualities are. They don’t know who has “got it”, but they’ll know it when they see it. Steven felt I had it when he met me.’

With Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom the plan was to set it apart from Raiders, with Indy himself as the only linking factor. This was underlined in the filmmakers’ approach to the character of Willie Scott. Kate Capshaw was at pains to make Willie as different from Karen Allen’s Marion Ravenwood as she could. Where Marion was tom-boyish, Willie was feminine, Where Marion was tough and capable – up to a point – Willie was nervous and flappable.

‘Willie has led this pampered life,’ explained Capshaw, ‘and feels that’s what’s due to her – to be cared for and looked after. She meets Indiana Jones, a person unlike anyone she has ever been involved with, and ends up going off with him. In the course of their adventures, all of her earlier life is stripped away from her and Willie must fall back on her own resources. She discovers that she is a strong woman and a very gutsy lady.’

The screen writers Huyck and Katz don’t necessarily share Capshaw’s vision of Willie. Their intention was to depict Willie as an ordinary person caught up in extraordinary situations, whose first reaction to the assorted plights she finds herself in is to crack up, not an attribute that Huyck particularly admired; ‘I never really cared for the character very much in the first place,’ he said. ‘But we felt that she was reacting realistically to the kind of things Indiana Jones goes through ... the kind of situations where, since she’s not so tough – as few people would be in those situations – she’d scream.’

Kate Capshaw spent most of the movie squealing and complaining,
which didn't endear the character to fans ...

I thought that this take on the film’s female lead was its biggest liability. Willie did little more than scream throughout the whole picture, and ended up as little more than a typical ‘damsel in distress’, but that kind of talk tends to upset Gloria Katz.

‘People have very mixed feelings about Willie,’ said Katz. ‘I’m a little offended by the idea of a macho woman. I think that’s a woman as conceived by men. I don’t think that’s a woman that necessarily, realistically exists. When you’re covered in insects, your instinct is to scream! So I think Willie represents the audience’s realistic point of view, what they would be like if they were thrown out into the jungle. True, it’s not a brave, strong woman but it’s a different kind of woman and, I think, a more realistic one.’

Next: More Temple of Doom

Chapter 6, Part 3 - Harrison Ford: From Artisan to Artist

As was his custom on his other films, Ford did most of his own stunts for Blade Runner. One memorable scene had him clinging precariously to a ledge, hundreds of storeys above the teeming streets.

‘We were using a 65mm Mitchell camera,’ explained effects man David Dryer, ‘which weighed about 75 pounds. With that kind of weight cantilevered out over Ford there was always the chance that the camera would break a casting and come right down on him. So we rigged a special plate and support to get the camera actually looking back down on itself.’

It was Rutger Hauer’s job to haul Ford up onto the roof. ‘Harrison didn’t want to fall down that twenty foot drop, or whatever it was. So he was hanging there, with a wire for support, but it was still kind of tough to get him up.’

But Ford was dismissive of the danger involved. ‘That shot where I’m hanging from the girder ... well, god knows, I’m not hanging 30 storeys above the ground there. Not only am I not hanging from the girder, I’ve got a safety belt on and a wire that’s got me clipped to the bottom of the girder ... and I’m acting like I’m hanging from a girder, from the contortion of my face, the sweat of my brow. That’s all acting ... wonderful acting!’ But on a more serious note Ford is careful to draw a clear distinction between what he does and ‘real’ stunts. ‘What I’ve done in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Blade Runner is “physical acting”. Stunts are falling off a tall building or crashing a car. Something you’re silly enough to think isn’t going to hurt the next day.’

Ford claims he wasn't really dangling from a girder by his fingertips
30 storeys above the ground ... but I don't believe him for a second.

Meanwhile, rumours abounded that Ford had drastically altered his appearance for the movie, one American newspaper even claiming Ford played Deckard with a shaved head. ‘The crewcut was my idea,’ said Ford. ‘And I had to talk Ridley into it, because he was afraid that it might make me less ... gorgeous. The haircut couldn’t be done unless Ridley was there. It took about four hours to get it. With long pauses for consideration by Ridley. My ambition was always to get it right down. Real short. I wanted to give the impression of a character who has given upon himself, was unconscious of his appearance and had lost, to a large degree, that ego that keeps us all doing things like combing our hair, brushing our teeth and all of that. I thought it was important to suggest that and change my appearance in some way. I think it’s more interesting for an audience, even if they know right away who it is. They don’t have the same expectation of you if you don’t look the same. It gives you a foot forward.

‘And one of the other things that drives me nuts when doing a four month shooting schedule is when someone is fiddling with your hair between every shot. I just can’t stand that. It just drives me nuts. If I could have short hair on every film ... I mean, some of my best friends are hairdressers, but it does drive me nuts. The first thing I do after a film where I have long hair is cut it all off.’ The beard was also Ford’s idea. ‘The first day of Blade Runner, I’m shaved. When the events begin to take over my life, it hardly seems a proper time to shave ... when things are going the way they are in Blade Runner, there doesn’t seem time for a bath and a shave. I think that kind of detail goes to make up the character. I try not to lose sight of those little things.’

An early continuity pic of Ford ... here his hair
is longer than it appeared in the final movie.

By this time, Ford had had a chance to think through Deckard’s relationship with Rachael. ‘It’s clear that Deckard doesn’t think very much about women at all,’ he told the author of Blade Runner souvenir magazine. ‘He’s the type of guy that would see them occasionally but not have any use for them around the house. He has a wife and child but they seem to have gone in search of a better life. Deckard acknowledges on Rachael’s first appearance that she is attractive. But then she becomes a puzzle and, when he figures out she is a replicant, he seems to have no further use for her. He sees Rachael as a zero. But her display of emotion, even though he knows it’s false, implanted, pulls him out of his despair. As he begins to become involved with her, he is forced to confront what is really going on around him.’

THE RELEASE

Director Ridley Scott called ‘cut!’ for the last time on Blade Runner during the second week of July, 1981. The production was already over-schedule and over-budget. The filmmakers busied themselves with such vital post-production activities as editing, dubbing and adding the excellent Vangelis music. The following January, the first of the Blade Runner trailers was released in America. It featured scenes from the movie under the music of the Inkspots, enhancing the idea of Blade Runner as a 1940s pastiche.

A rough cut of the film previewed in Denver, Colorado. The feedback from that screening indicated the fans were unhappy with the abrupt ending of Deckard and Rachael stepping into the lift and the doors slamming shut behind them.

‘Fortunately, we had also shot an alternative ending, with Deckard and Rachael leaving the city together in a Spinner, heading towards the unpolluted Northwest,’ said Scott. Also at this stage, there was no Harrison Ford voice-over to explain the more ambiguous scenes in the film. I was lucky enough to see this version at an early preview in London around March, 1982, and feel this ‘first draft’ to be far superior to both the theatrical release cut and the later ‘Director’s Cut’ released on VHS video.

When the film came out on June 25, 1982 in America, the 1940s look and the laconic (some would say, ‘bored’) narration was singled out by the critics as the chief target for attack. Ford was a little defensive about such comments. ‘I thought it had the makings of a very original film,’ he said. ‘It was no ambition of mine to play the character like a Forties Bogart figure, but it was always on Ridley’s mind. It was always my hope that there wouldn’t be a voice-over, that we wouldn’t need one. I thought the character needed to be a representation of a certain type of physical environment, the result of that kind of life. The voice-over was always Ridley’s idea, from the beginning.’

Scott was a little more philosophical. ‘We never addressed the problem of the voice-over early enough,’ he told me. ‘I wanted the voice-over from the beginning. The screenplay was written with a voice-over.’ But that wasn’t the voice-over that appeared in the finished film. And Scott was far from happy with the end result. ‘The voice-over is an essential part of the Marlowe-type character of Deckard and also to a degree helps clarification. One of the most interesting aspects of Apocalypse Now was the voice-over. It was incredible. I think Coppola went on for nearly six months trying to get that right. I think, with hindsight, I would have re-done the voice-over in Blade Runner, and I think Harrison would as well.’

As it turned out, the final narration was no masterpiece and it jarred against the other aspects of the production. Of particular note was the corny speech over the scene in which replicant Roy Batty dies. Ford’s tired voice proclaims. ‘I don’t know why he saved my life. Maybe in those last moments he loved life more than he ever had before. Not just his life. Anybody’s life. My life. All he’d wanted were the same answers the rest of us want. Where do I come from? Where am I going? How long have it got? All I could do was sit there and watch him die.’ Raymond Chandler, it’s not.

Ridley Scott directs Ford during the final showdown
with Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer).

Almost predictably, the reviews weren’t good.

Playboy’s Bruce Williamson thought Blade Runner was a ‘major disappointment’ despite ‘smashing production values and fine actors’ and summed up the movie saying, ‘by the time Ford and Hauer face off for their climactic showdown, Blade Runner had grown dull – a simple case of Philip Marlowe meets Frankenstein.’

The British trade publication Screen International felt ‘the special effects dominate the film while the plot and characters fade into the background,’ and pointed out that ‘in spite of his voice-over ironies, Rick Deckard is no Philip Marlowe.’

The American trade bible Variety said that ‘Ford’s frequent inertia mutes the detective angle of the story which is couched in some hard-boiled Chandleresque narration and in the long run proves to be the weakest aspect of the pic.’

Some critics believed that the level of violence in Blade Runner was more explicit than was necessary. Ford countered this in his usual eloquent style. ‘There’s a really unfortunate and ill-advised attitude to the violence in the film. I am conscious of violence in a film. I abhor it when it is used for the sake of itself. I was anxious to make sure this character represented the abhorrence of violence. And he does. He wanted to get out of the police force because he couldn’t stand the killing. After every incident of having to kill someone, the character’s revulsion is clear. And, ironically, he is not killing human beings. That’s what the thematic backbone of the film is. They’re not really human beings. And yet, his empathy with something that looks like a human being – which is later to lead him into a romance with a machine affects him.’

In spite of the negative criticism of the film, Ford’s performance was praised. Scriptwriter David Peoples was enthusiastic about Ford’s portrayal of Rick Deckard. ‘Harrison is an absolutely magnificent actor,’ he commented. ‘He’s amazing. He’s like the great old guys. He becomes Deckard. I mean, you don’t see him act like Deckard, he is Deckard and Deckard is different from Han Solo and entirely different from Indiana Jones. In Blade Runner he’s a seething guy with a lot inside him. He’s a guy who’s got a lot of problems, who’s holding a lot in, and Harrison does it brilliantly.’

Science fiction author and friend of Philip K. Dick’s, Norman Spinrad was more restrained about Ford’s performance. ‘Harrison Ford is fine in the rather undemanding role of Deckard,’ a comment that seems to me to be sniffy and dismissive.

In my view Blade Runner remains probably the most literate science fiction film ever made. Ford’s performance is a masterpiece of understatement and contributed mightily to the film’s artistic success. Ford himself has spoken critically of his involvement in the film, stating that he’s very unhappy with Ridley Scott’s later claims that Deckard was always intended to be a replicant. However, I never got that Deckard was any kind of replicant from the movie in any of its cuts, just that the momentary doubt about his own humanity the character experiences is enough to finally convince Deckard that replicants are worth no less than human beings.

Some people thought this scene indicated that Deckard
was a replicant because his eyes glowed in the same
way as Rachel's ... I'd want more evidence than that.

Yet Blade Runner was an extremely important step in Ford’s career. It was his first opportunity to show what he could do as a serious actor. It was becoming obvious that Ford was a far better actor than his Star Wars and Raiders vehicles allowed audiences to see. But further expeditions into the area of serious acting would have to wait. Already the date for the beginning of principal photography of the third part of the Star Wars saga was approaching. It was almost time for Ford to return to the worlds of robots and rayguns as Han Solo in Return of the Jedi. But not before he’d rested up a while. ‘It would take an Act of Congress to get me to work before Jedi,’ he said, ‘I haven’t had six months with the kids for a long time.’

But Ford would be back at work quicker than he expected. Melissa had been around on set much of the time during the filming of Raiders, working with Spielberg on the script for E.T. During the filming of E.T., Spielberg had Melissa work with the child actors, rehearsing their scenes. It was inevitable that Ford would end up with a role in the movie. Spielberg also persuaded Melissa to play the part of the nurse who takes the “drunk” Elliot to the principal (played by Ford). As with most of the other adults in the film, their faces would not be seen. But nervous Melissa’s hands trembled so badly during her scene she pleaded with Spielberg to scrap the footage. So not for the first time in his career one of Ford’s performances was consigned to the cutting room floor.

Chapter 5, Part 3 - Harrison Ford: Matinee Idol

‘Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?’

Most people would think that an actor who also did so many of his own stunts, like Harrison Ford, would have enough on his plate in a film like Raiders of the Lost Ark. Not so. The folk who made Raiders knew that the more severe the trials suffered by the hero, the more the audience would be rooting for him. Also, a hero with a failing seems more vulnerable and easier to identify with for an audience. So the filmmakers gave Indiana Jones a fear of snakes and needless to say, Indy met more than just a few snakes during his adventures in Raiders. The Well of Souls was filled with them.

‘Steven Spielberg kept wanting more and more snakes,’ said Ford, ‘but he had to make do with six thousand garden and grass snakes flown in from Holland, and used bits of garden hose to fill the spaces the boas and pythons couldn’t.’

Fords’s co-star, Karen Allen, wasn’t mad about doing the scene in the Well of Souls at first. ‘Harrison has on his boots and gloves, and leather clothes, and I have naked arms and nothing on my legs or feet. In the beginning it was tough, because I just couldn’t stand the snakes on my feet. But I got used to them.’

Producer Frank Marshall, who shot some of the snake footage, wasn’t wild about reptiles, either. ‘I had to cure myself of a common phobia of snakes. But once you see other people, like a snake handler, not worry about it, then you touch one. Then I got to be real comfortable with them. Some of the shots I did were a real challenge. Snakes aren’t afraid of anything, they’d even go right into the fire. So we had to invent a way to get them to stay away from the fire.’

Though most of the snakes used in the scene were harmless, the crew did use a couple of cobras, whose bite can kill, to add a little real danger for Indy.

‘When we used the cobras,’ recalled Howard Kazanjian, the film’s co-executive producer, ‘we had a hospital gurney on the set, and outside the stage we had ambulances with open doors. On the end of the gurney was an open medical kit with a hypodermic needle placed into the phial of serum from India.’ This does sound like a typical piece of studio hype.

The publicity folks obligingly airbrushed the cobra's
reflection out of the picture in this still, but
you can see it quite clearly in the movie.

In the shot where Indy comes face-to-face with the angry cobra, it’s pretty easy to see the cobra’s reflection in the sheet of glass that separates them. The gurney and the hypo were probably for the unfortunates whose job it was to handle the snakes off-camera.

Harrison Ford dismisses Indy’s fear of snakes with his characteristic easy smile. ‘They don’t bother me at all. When I was a kid, I worked in a boy scout camp as a nature councillor, I used to collect them. Used to run and catch every snake we could. And I’m amazed that that’s the most frightening scene for most people.’

But, as I said, all heroes must have a failing. There is something the intrepid Ford doesn’t like. ‘Spiders!’ he told Movie Star magazine. ‘Not because they’re creepy, but inside my house they multiply, and then their kids have kids. Ugh. All those spiders all over the place.’

One particularly gruesome scene in Raiders does just happen to have a few spiders in it. The scene in the Temple in Peru. But unlike the scene with the snakes, it was the spiders that had to be watched out for rather than their human co-stars. ‘It’s funny how people think tarantulas are so dangerous,’ said producer Frank Marshall, ‘when in fact they’re very fragile creatures. If they fall or you drop them, they die. You have to be very careful with them. We did lose one of them one day when two got in a fight – a battle to the death.’

But for Ford, it was the snakes that had the last laugh: shortly after the opening of Raiders, Ford told author Tony Crawley of a strange incident. ‘Back home,’ said Ford, ‘just the other week – you’re not going to believe this – I got bitten by a damn snake in my garden!’

‘I put as much of myself into the characters as possible.’

The only other thing Harrison Ford had to do in Raiders of the Lost Ark was portray the character of Indiana Jones. Director Steven Spielberg had nothing but praise for Ford’s abilities as an actor. ‘Harrison is a very original leading man,’ he said. ‘There’s not been anybody like him for 30 or 40 years. In this film he is a remarkable combination of Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Don Juan and Humphrey Bogart as Fred C. Dobbs in Treasure of the Sierra Madre. He carries this picture wonderfully.’ 

Ford effortlessly conveyed the many aspects of
Indy's character - scholar, brawler, adventurer, scoundrel.

Ford was well aware of what was expected of him. ‘It’s a question of responsibility to define the character for the audience, to make the film as good as you can.’

But he had a good ally in Steven Spielberg. ‘Steve allowed a kind of collaboration that was really a lot of fun for me. I like to become really involved as much, and as long, as possible. If I had a little bit of an idea, Steve added to it, and then I added to it, and then he added to it, and it built into something we both thought was better than before ... or so stupid we both ended up rolling about on the floor with laughter.’

And, in the spirit of Indy’s line in the movie, ‘I’m making this up as I go,’ Ford and Spielberg were making changes to the script even during actual shooting.

‘My only impulse to change lines comes when the words are impossible to get out of my mouth,’ said Ford. ‘The process of film-making involves so many situations and personalities that it becomes a very liquid medium. The physical presence of actors and crew are concrete factors, but the script should relate to them more like a road map of probabilities than a rigid blueprint.’

The biggest change Spielberg and Ford made to the script was to delete the ‘Sword vs the Whip’ duel that was written as a climax to the battle in the marketplace in Cairo. In the film, Indy comes face to face with a giant of a swordsman. The swordsman performs an intricate routine with a huge scimitar. Indy, unimpressed, pulls out his revolver and shoots him. Not sporting, but efficient.

‘I was in my fifth week of dysentery at the time,’ recalled Ford later. ‘The location was an hour and a half drive from where we stayed. I’m riding to the set at 5.30am, and I can’t wait to storm up to Steven with this idea. I’d worked out we could save four whole days on this lousy location this way. Besides which, I think it was right and important, because what’s more vital in the character’s mind is finding Marion. He doesn’t have time for another fight. But as is very often the case, when I suggested it to Steven – “Let’s just shoot the sucker” – he said, “I just thought the same thing this morning.” Sure, the idea was nothing. Putting it on film, that’s the most difficult part.’

The whip vs scimitar battle would have been fun, but Ford
and Spielberg were right to drop it. Indy had to save Marion ...

That scene also told the audience much about Indiana Jones. The world-weary expression on Indy’s face as he draws his gun, sums up the character’s directness. As Ford explains, ‘Indy is a kind of swashbuckling hero type, but he has human frailties. He does brave things, but I wouldn’t describe him as a hero. He teaches, but I wouldn’t describe him as an intellectual. I wanted to avoid any elements in the role that might be too similar to Han Solo. But Indy doesn’t have any fancy gadgetry keeping him at a distance from enemies and trouble. The story is set in 1936, after all, and he’s right in there with just his battered trilby and a bull-whip to keep the world at bay.’

Star!

‘All I care about is good acting,’ George Lucas was once quoted as saying. ‘Star value is only an insurance policy for those who don’t trust themselves making films.’ But when Raiders of the Lost Ark opened in America on July 12th, 1981, that’s exactly what Harrison Ford had plenty of.

‘There’s more excitement in the first ten minutes of Raiders,’ said Playboy’s Bruce Williamson, ‘than any movie I have seen all year. By the time the explosive misadventures end, any moviegoer worth his salt ought to be exhausted.’

Just about all the reviews were of the same opinion. Raiders was a masterpiece of popular cinema. ‘Surely destined to go down in history as one of the great, fun movies,’ said Britain’s trade journal, Screen International.

‘Raiders represents Spielberg’s best work in years, a return to the briskness and coherence that have been missing since Jaws,’ said Time magazine.

At the press screening I attended in 1981, the opening twelve minutes received a standing ovation from the several hundred jaded film hacks in attendance. Now that’s a reaction.

The film’s reception at the box-office was nothing short of exuberant, which came as no great surprise, ending up as the highest earning movie of 1981. Its position in the all-time box-office hit list is just as impressive, with the film at the 40th position earning a US gross of over $242 million.

At the 1981 Academy Awards, Raiders was nominated in the categories Best Music, Best Cinematography, Best Director and Best Picture, and won for Best Sound, Best Special Effects, Best Art Direction and Best Editing. The film also earned Ben Burtt and Richard Anderson a Special Oscar for Achievement in Sound Effects Editing.

Ford himself was happy about his involvement in the film and the end result.

Indy and Marion share a Gone with the Wind moment
as they're reunited after all those years.

‘Raiders is really about movies,’ he explained. ‘It is intricately designed as a tribute to the craft. I’m quite in awe of the film, and the way it was accomplished. Steven set out to make an epic film, technically complex, on a short schedule. He finished twelve days early and under budget. He didn’t waste any time in retakes. Steve was very fast and efficient, and that’s the way I like to work.’

Yet his experience on Raiders did leave Ford with one cautionary thought ‘I occasionally wonder how much longer I can perform in heavy action roles,’ he told an interviewer. ‘Working in sub-zero blizzards and 130 degree deserts is incredibly demanding, physically. Sometimes I think the most difficult part of being in films is being cool as an airplane rolls over your leg – and acting like it doesn’t hurt at all.’

As Harrison Ford’s next film project drew closer, his attitude had mellowed a little ‘With me,’ he said, ‘the last film is always the toughest. I’ll soon be down on record as saying Blade Runner was the toughest.’

By the time Ford had finished with Raiders in late 1980 and returned to his home in Benedict Canyon, Melissa had moved in with him and the tabloids were inexplicably in another feeding frenzy. One of the first guests they welcomed as a couple was British film director Ridley Scott who was courting Ford for the lead in his next picture, a science fiction detective yarn based on the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Chapter 5, Part 2 - Harrison Ford: Matinee Idol

Keeping Indie independent

Despite his enthusiasm for the project, one aspect of Raiders bothered Ford. ‘My only immediate reservation about playing Indiana Jones,’ said Ford, ‘was that in the script the character was a little bit like Han Solo. Steven Spielberg and I wanted to make sure that the characters were spread apart. We did that by making use of the opportunities that existed in Lawrence Kasdan’s screenplay.’

Time was too short for a re-write of the script. Yet Spielberg recognised in Ford a native ability with dialogue and wanted to implement some of Ford’s suggestions. What happened was like a scene out of a Let’s-make-a-movie movie. ‘The production was based in London,’ said Ford, ‘and Steve and I sat on the plane from Los Angeles and went through the script, line by line, for fourteen hours. By the time we got to Heathrow, we’d worked out the entire film.’

It’s just as well that they had, for no sooner had Spielberg and Ford arrived in Britain than the entire cast and crew were whisked off to La Rochelle in France to spend the first five days of the movie’s shooting schedule filming the submarine hijack of the Bantu Wind. It was during these five days that Ford was to get his first taste of the stunts he would be required to perform in the course of portraying Indiana Jones. ‘Swimming to the submarine didn’t involve danger,’ said Ford, ‘it only involved discomfort.’ The worst was yet to come.

Steven Spielberg directs Harrison Ford in the Peruvian Temple set
that features in the strong opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Star Wars had put the phrase ‘special effects’ into everyone’s mouth. Suddenly, after Star Wars opened, reviews were peppered with the words. It was as though George Lucas had invented the concept all by himself. With Raiders, Lucas was to elevate another previously ignored movie art to star status. Stunts.

Much was made, at the time, of the fact that Harrison Ford did many of his own stunts for the film. ‘Hell,’ he quipped, ‘if I hadn’t done some of the stunts in Raiders, I wouldn’t have been seen in the movie at all.’ Yet strangely Ford is no kind of keep fit freak. ‘People always ask me how I keep in shape. Every time the question comes up, I can manage to sneer. It’s a common enough question, considering Raiders. And I say, being in movies is enough exercise for me.’

In reality, Ford was lucky enough to have some of the best stuntmen and stunt directors in the business working with him. Stuntmen are always used for the most dangerous ‘gags’ for the simple reason that if the star of the film were to hurt himself and hold up shooting, hundreds of thousands of dollars would be wasted.

‘There were some very capable stuntmen doing some of the action bits, but I probably did a good deal more action stunts than an actor normally would do. That was important because we wanted to have our fights always be character fights, instead of just having whatever spectacular event a stuntman could come up with. Indiana Jones fights in a certain way, which Steven (Spielberg) let the stuntmen and me choreograph. Some of Indy’s battles are incredible. “How can Indy possibly do all this?” We had to take the edge off that with a bit of humour and at the same time not make fun of the material. So Indiana Jones had to be a character with a sense of humour. It’s Indy’s way of looking at life that makes our fights unique!’

Glen Randall was the stunt co-ordinator on Raiders. Says Randall, ‘They talk about the dangers stuntmen go through, wrecking cars and airplanes, but I think the stunt that gets the most people hurt in this industry is the simple fight routine. When you throw a punch, you’re throwing it with all the force you’d normally use to hit someone, but you’re missing them by inches. There are a lot of stuntmen who just cringe when they find out they’ve got to do a fight with an actor who’s not had a lot of experience doing them – ’cos nine times out of ten, they’re going to get hit!’

Harrison Ford raced the boulder ten times
- astonishing that he won every time.

One of the most spectacular thrills in Raiders is in the opening sequence when Indy races the giant rolling boulder for the exit in the Temple. It was Ford himself outracing the rock. ‘Looked a little scared that scene, didn’t I? I’d have to have been crazy not to be. It wasn’t a real boulder, but it wasn’t cardboard, either. It took 800 pounds of plaster to make it roll right. And if I had tripped, I could have been in big trouble. The director thought at first we ought to use a stuntman - but I thought I could do it and Glen Randall, our stunt coordinator, agreed. We all felt the more action scenes I could personally do, the easier it would be for the audience to identify with and believe in the character. But if I didn’t trust the stunt guys who were manning the safety devices and looking out for me, I never would have done it. No way!’ The scene was shot from five different angles, twice from each angle. ‘So Harrison had to race the rock ten times,’ said Spielberg. ‘He won ten times and beat the odds. He was lucky. And I was an idiot for letting him try!’ 

Indy’s escape from the Well of Souls provided an opportunity to the filmmakers for a really spectacular stunt. In an effort to break a hole through the wall of his prison, Indy topples a huge statue of a jackal god and rides it as it falls, a tip of the hat, perhaps, to Slim Pickens’ riding the Atom Bomb to his last round-up in Dr Strangelove. Harrison Ford, intrepid but not stupid, knew the time to step aside for professional stunt double Martin Grace.

As Glen Randall explained, ‘The Jackal was 28, maybe 29, feet high. Plaster of Paris but still incredibly heavy. And we put big hydraulic rams on one leg and hinged it at the bottom so we knew exactly the plane it was going to fall in. It could only fall one way, if everything went right. We had a huge breakaway wall for it to fall through.’

But for all the planning, something went wrong as the stunt was filmed. If you watch closely during this scene in the movie, you’ll see ‘Indy’ lose his footing for an instant as the statue begins to topple. ‘Yes, it went too soon,’ agreed Martin Grace. ‘And that’s when you have to think very fast. I was actually still hanging down when it started going. I should have been actually on my position ... Stunt people are usually very fast thinking people. In situations like that you have to think very fast and get it together. We’ve got sort of lightning reflexes, very sharp minds and that’s a great combination to come up with the goods.’ Grace emerged unscathed.

With Ford doing so many of his own gags, it’s no surprise that he had a couple of near misses himself.

‘There’s a scene where I run through the jungle,’ Ford told an American magazine, ‘swing on a vine, let go the vine, fall into the river, grab onto the pontoon of a seaplane that’s taxi-ing, get onto the wing and climb into the cockpit as it was taking off – and the plane crashed on take-off.’

Of course Ford wasn’t hurt. But it does show that no matter how careful you are, accidents will happen.

Ford and George Lucas sit in the shade beneath
the Flying Wing aircraft on location in Tunisia.

Harrison Ford must have been on a lucky streak during the filming of Raiders. He had had another near miss on location in Tunisia during the shooting of the Tannis Dig sequence. Ford told the story to Prevue, the magazine published by Raiders’ concept artist Jim Steranko. ‘Indy has a fight which takes place in and around the propellers of a Flying Wing airplane. The engines are running full tilt and one set of wheels is chocked, so the plane’s going round in circles. The bad guy is supposed to throw me down in front of the wheels and I was supposed to roll over backwards to get away from the wheels.

‘All day long the technical crew was having trouble with the plane. It weighed a couple of tons, so they were powering it with low-gear, high-torque electric motors – the kind that can push through a brick wall without slowing down. They had to stay out of camera range, at the end of a cable 50 yards away.

‘I still wanted to do the fight myself. I’m able to add bits of character touches to moments like these, and when the audience recognises the actor, it adds credibility to what is normally straight action stuff. We rehearsed the scene several times, then decided to shoot it.

Ford wanted the audience to see it was really him fighting
the tough German soldier beneath the Flying Wing.

‘Everybody’s ready and the take begins. I go down and start to roll away – and my foot slips, right under the rolling plane’s tyre.

‘Everybody was yelling, “Stop! STOP!” while the tyre crawled up my leg. Luckily the brakes worked – inches before my knee was crushed – but I was pinned to the sand.

‘I’m not normally a worrier, I know they’re not going to kill the main character in a twenty million dollar film. I also know Indy wouldn’t look good with a peg-leg. I was a lot more careful about stunt work after that!’

And he’d have to be. Still to come was the hazardous chase in which Indy starts by leaping from a horse onto the speeding German truck that’s carrying the Ark, and ends with our hero falling from the front of the truck, crawling hand over hand beneath the vehicle, then being dragged for a couple of miles down the road in the dirt before climbing up the tail board. You’d think for that Ford would insist on a stuntman. He did, and he got one ... for the long-shots. In the close-ups, there was Ford, hanging onto the rear of the truck, scraping up the gravel road on his belly. As usual, Ford was dismissive. ‘It couldn’t possibly be dangerous,’ he said at the time, ‘because I have a few more weeks shooting the picture.’

It's pretty unlikely that it's actually Ford in this shot
- almost certainly stuntman Martin Grace.

Being so closely involved in so many of the gags on Raiders has given Harrison Ford a stuntman’s outlook as far as ‘falls’ are concerned. ‘The stuff that always turns out to be dangerous is the stuff nobody thinks about. It’s not the dangerous stunts – which you think about, protect yourself, calculate and worry about, so that you take the danger out of it – it’s the stuff you didn’t think was dangerous that sneaks upon you.’