Speaker 1: Hey guys, welcome back to the Shirley You Can't Be
Serious podcast. Please go down and check out our show notes.
We've got some links to some really awesome memorabilia from
the movies we're talking about today, so be sure and
check that out. We want to thank you guys again
so much for all of the positive feedback that you're
giving us. Want to say thank you especially to Arlen
Bullard for a five star review on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 2: I'll read that review now. These are the droids you're
looking for. Two guys, one mic and a fountain of
eighties and nineties knowledge, which they use to debate the
issues that most Americans wonder about which movie, album, etc.
From the eighties and nineties was better. I don't necessarily
agree with either one of them all of the time,
but they give you a lot to think about. If
you were a child of the eighties or nineties, or
just a fan of the two greatest decades of the
last millennium, then this podcast is for you. And I
am serious, but don't call me Shirley. Well maybe just
this once.
Speaker 3: That's great.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much, Thanks.
Speaker 3: Arlen, it was a great review.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Thanks man. Thank you.
Speaker 1: All right, everybody, this is Raiders of the Lost Arc
versus Back to the Future Part one. The Professor and
the Slacker join us as we discuss our two favorite
movies from the eighties, and please join us in the
weeks to come for parts two through four. So, without
further ado.
Speaker 5: Hello everybody, and welcome to the Surely Can't Be Serious podcast,
discussing and debating the iconic and the forgotten of eighties
and nineties pop culture with your co hosts James D.
Graves and Jason Colban.
Speaker 3: Thank David and at Hyder Hedis. Go man, I'm excited
to be here once again.
Speaker 6: We are here today to discuss our two favorite movies
of the eighties.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, both of these are top five for me.
Speaker 6: Both of these are yeah, probably even top three for me.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I've been waiting thirty five years to really get into
and talk about these two men.
Speaker 3: Have we accept the name of the movies?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 6: No, no, no, oh gosh, that's this important part, right, Okay,
So we're here to talk about Raiders the Lost Ark
in Sark and Back to the Future. They are both
mega hits from the eighties. I think they'll probably be
on anybody's top ten list who was alive at that time,
and one of them is Jason's favorite and one of
them is my favorite. And wait for final judgment to
find out which way let that go.
Speaker 7: And once again, after we make our final judgment, we
would love to hear from you, give us feedback on
what you think on you side with the these with
me or we're both crazy.
Speaker 6: We'd love to hear from you. Yeah, come see us
on Twitter. We love any comments that you have to give.
If you think that we're completely off base and you
think these movies are terrible, there's something.
Speaker 3: Wrong with you, right, But you can go ahead and
tell us what.
Speaker 7: You think anyway, right, So find us on Twitter at
Shirley Podcast and on Facebook at Shirley Podcast.
Speaker 3: Yep, and that's s you are l e y podcast, right,
don't call me shirt.
Speaker 6: Okay, So to get a roll, and let's talk real
quick about our memory of what we were doing at
the time that we saw these movies. Razers of the
Lost Arc came out in nineteen eighty one. I was
five going to turn six that year. Back to the
Future came out in nineteen eighty five, and so I
was nine going to turn ten that year, how about you.
Speaker 7: Okay, So nineteen eighty one, I was a fourth grader,
so I was eight and nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 3: I was had just turned twelve.
Speaker 6: Okay, so you were close. We were close in age.
You were closer to my age at the time. I
saw Back to the Future when you saw Raiders of
the Loss Right, very impressionable time anybody's life.
Speaker 3: Eight and nine years old. Yes, so did you see
both of these movies in the theater?
Speaker 6: I honestly can't remember whether I saw Raiders of the
Lost Ark in the theater or not. I think that
I did. Keep in mind, I was pretty young, you
are five to six, right. I know that we owned
a VHS copy of it, and I know I watched
it over and over and over. Sure, I have some
confidence that I did see it in the theater. It
was my dad's favorite movie of that time.
Speaker 3: Period, for sure.
Speaker 7: Okay, okay, I absolutely saw both of these movies in
the theater multiple times. The first time I saw Raiders,
I have a very clear recollection of that viewing. You
want to get into it, yeah, yeah, tell me what happened?
Speaker 3: So I saw it.
Speaker 7: There's a little two plex un Tulsa, Oklahoma at fifty
first and Harvard is called Fox Theaters, a little two
plex there, and I don't know why I remember, but
they had the video game battle Zone out front. I
remember that tank game anyway took me. And so I'm
watching Raiders have Law to start with my mother. And
as I'm watching this, this is a life changing experience
for me. Right like Star Wars four years before, when
I saw in the theater, I came out the other side.
I'm a different person. I'm like, right, what the heck,
I'm a new man. Right, So I see Raiders and
I think as I'm absorbing this movie, I'm thinking to myself,
this is the greatest thing I've ever seen. Right, this
is amazing. As it's escalating the movie and the tension,
the action is building and building building.
Speaker 3: For me, it came to this point where India is
fighting that German boxer around the plane. We all remember
that iconic scene.
Speaker 7: And they're fighting and the guy's trying to shoot him,
and Marian's got the machine gun and she's killing Germans
and blowing stuff up and there's gas on the ground
and oh my gosh, what's gonna happen? And here comes
the plane and the propellers are coming right, and as
a fourth grader, you can imagine, I'm like, holy smokes,
this guy's going to get chopped into fish bait right
here on the big screen. And at that exact moment,
I'm like, what in the world am I.
Speaker 3: Getting ready to see?
Speaker 7: My Mom's hand goes over my eyes, right and before
I can remove it. Of course, I know now that
they didn't really show anything, but at that moment, I'm like,
what what did I Yeah, yeah, so mom covered my eyes.
Thanks Mom, appreciate it.
Speaker 6: But so that's I mean, that is crazy because that
is also the one memory that I have, different scene,
but the same type of memory. And I'll just say,
as a side note, one of my kids, when we
were watching Batman Versus Superman, there's a scene where Lois
Lane's in the bathtub and we're all watching it together
and suddenly my nine year old was putting his hand
over my eyes.
Speaker 3: It's like, what do you what are you thinking, dude?
Speaker 6: So my dad would always go see movies before he
took me to see the movie, right, even with a
PG rating, which, by the way, it's insane that this.
Speaker 3: Movie got a PG.
Speaker 6: Rating PG thirteen didn't exist at the time, right, And
as it turns out, Indiana Jones and the Temple of
Doom is what brought about I mean, it was a
major factor in PG thirteen skiing or rating at all, right,
because this movie, and a lot of respects, is a
horror movie. I mean, it's you've seen Poltergeist. It's the
same stuff going on at the beginning of the movie
at the end of the movie. And so yes, it
was that my dad had gone to see it to
make sure about things before we went, and I was
I was a super obedient kid, and so at the
point that he says, don't look, Marian, my Dad's like,
cover your apps, and I was like, ohkay, And I
covered my eyes and I heard all the noise in
the screaming.
Speaker 3: As I said.
Speaker 6: We had this on VHS for the rest of my
life until I was like seventeen years old. Every time
that I every time that that part came, I would
cover my eyes up because I didn't want to see
whatever this my dad thought was too horrible for me
to watch. And then you know, at seventeen, I'm finally like,
wait a minute, I'm seventeen years old. Why am I
still covering my eyes up? And so I uncovered my
eyes and I watched the scene for the first time.
I was like, oh my gosh, she was right. I
shouldn't have watched it.
Speaker 3: Scary faces melt off. It's well.
Speaker 7: And Raiders was originally slotted to be rated R because
of Bellock's exploding head. Yeah, and then they actually they
put fire over and they kind of filtered it and
you have.
Speaker 6: To kind of of the faces melting and the head exploding.
I think the face is melting is far more disturbing, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Far more.
Speaker 6: And even I mean I looked back at it. You
know what, you rewatched movies from twenty thirty years ago,
and you go and the special effects, and I thought
to myself, I'm going to watch this scene and I'm
not going to be impressed with the special effects.
Speaker 3: It still holds up.
Speaker 6: It's still pretty darn good. I mean, if you look
at CGI today, you look at like that new Will
Smith movie where he's playing himself old and young. I'm
still looking at it. I'm going I can still see
the CGI, right, So even though I can kind of
in my head say, yeah, that's just wax, but it's.
Speaker 3: Really good effect. It's good.
Speaker 6: It's really good. Let's talk about Back the Future real quickly. Okay, okay,
so back to the Future. I was like, like, we
I said, close to your age. And I can remember
my brother coming home from having seen it and he's like,
I just watched this movie. We need to go watch it.
And I was like today, He's like, I've just seen it.
Come with me, We're gonna go watch it. And I
was like, okay, yeah, and I went he's and we're
talking the whole time. And I mean my brother was
older brother, eight years older than me, so I very
much looked up to him and for him to give
it this kind of recommendation, I had really high expectations
and I was not disappointed. I absorbed that movie from
the first watching it, and I don't remember how many
times I came back to watch it again. But the
coolness of Michael J. Fox, the fascination with the guitar playing,
the whole time travel, it was just it was a
paradigm shift for me as well.
Speaker 7: So this movie works as a teen comedy, yeah, sci
fi and an action movie yep, and all.
Speaker 3: Three in a bit of a room. It's from Coom.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and all three hit it out of the park
in every aspect of that.
Speaker 3: Absolutely totally agree with you.
Speaker 7: When I saw it, I thought, man, this is the
coolest movie I've ever seen.
Speaker 3: And Michael J. Fox was amazing, Christopher Lloyd was amazing.
Leah Thompson, I'm like, who is this girl?
Speaker 4: Man?
Speaker 3: I don't want to marry this girl? Right? The music,
the effects.
Speaker 6: Yeah there and again looking back on this one, there
except for one part, which even at the time that
I watched.
Speaker 3: It, I went, it's a little hokey, yeah, in which
I found out the reason for later.
Speaker 6: But other than that, the special effects hold up. They
don't do anything over the top. And in nineteen eighty
five they were creating real storms and lightning back then,
and there was no green screen, and he was really
up there on top of a tall building. So I mean,
the realism is there because it was real.
Speaker 3: I think both of these movies do a great job
of making action amazing without going over the top.
Speaker 6: Yep, Okay, so let's let's get started on the movies.
Let's start with just the introductory scenes. In both movies,
we have the introduction of our main character, and in
both movies, you don't see their face for a good
three four minutes.
Speaker 3: It's amazing how similar the introduction of both characters are.
Speaker 7: Right, Yes, it's really You see the back of them,
You see their shoes stuck.
Speaker 3: Hello, anybody, hom ey stick give me boy?
Speaker 7: You see their hands. You don't see their eyes either
one of them until three minutes after you see their
You see their body, but you don't see their eyes.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 6: That creates a suspense that you have to have in
the beginning part of a movie in order to and
you buy in immediately, right, who is this person?
Speaker 3: Right? So let's talk about just the introductory scene. Right.
Speaker 6: You know, we talked about how these movies follow the
old Greek the way you write stories that we've known
for thousands of years of act one, act two, and
act three, and you mentioned that you thought, well, maybe
this is the four act one. And I think the
introduction is just a telling of the story before the story.
It is the perfect foreshadowing of what's about to happen.
So and then also the light throughout the movie, especially
at the beginning, but throughout the movie, the light that
is used on Indiana's face as a definition of who
he is and his struggle with right and wrong is amazing.
The light itself, even without Indiana, is a symbol of
the power of God and death that might come from it.
Speaker 3: Right. I mean, one of the India's.
Speaker 6: Very first line is stay out of the light, right, yep,
because something bad's about to happen. Which if you just
think about that for just a second, he's in this
mysterious labyrinth where he's searching out the treasure and there's
a booby trap that is activated by someone being in
the light. That is not even.
Speaker 3: Possible that we're not capable of doing that today.
Speaker 6: Right, unless it's supernatural. Unlet's it's supernatural, which is a
key for this whole movie franchise, really right, absolutely so,
at the beginning, he's in shadow the whole time. We
see a silhouette at one of the very first scenes.
And then once you know, you see the map and
the guy pulls out the gun. I mean, the other
characters talk a bit, you still don't see him, you
still don't know what he looks like. He's just this shadow.
We figure, we don't even know who he is at
this point. And then at the moment that the guy
pulls out the gun and he whips around literally whips
the gun out of the guy's hand.
Speaker 3: Let's back up, even war Okay.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 7: One of the cool things that I always thought was
really neat when I was a kid is the Paramount
logo dissolves into a mountain at the very very beginning
of the movie. Right, Okay, So I said this in
nineteen eighty one. The Paramount logo, which is a mountain, yes,
dissolves into an actual mountain. It's supposed to be in Peru, right, right.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 7: In twenty sixteen, I visited Kawai, which is an island
in the Hawaiian Islands, right and outside of the town
of Anahola. I had a cheeseburger overlooking this mountain. This
mountain is called Mount Kalalia and sat there, had a
cheeseburger cheeberg called an Island Girl, which is kind of cool.
You go and say, I need to take an Island
Girl home with me, right, which was kind of fun.
But yeah, and so I got to see the mountain
and this mountain range is actually used in several different movies.
I went on a journey to a place called Keepoo
Ranch Adventures plug for Keepoo Ranch. If you ever in Kawai,
you definitely want to do this. They've shot all kinds
of movies there. They've shot Priced the Caribbean, They've shot
Jurassic Park, and they shot the beginning where the j
Vito's are chasing Indiana Jones when we swing out and
swings down to the river, and I actually got to
go there, swing from that spot out into the river
where all that happens. But Keepoo Falls is a waterfall
and that's where he whips the guy's hand, he drops
the gun.
Speaker 3: Keep It False.
Speaker 7: And when I went there, I'm like, literally one hundred
yards away from it, right. I'm like, it's beyond that fence.
It's like over there, right, How do I get over there?
So I talked to the guy and he was really cool.
He's like, I can't do It's on private property. And
I said, well, what if I was intent ongoing? He's like, well,
here's the deal. I'm not saying you know, I wouldn't
call the cops or anything. He's like, but the homeowner
has fired his weapon at people who have climbed the
fence and gone over there. So I'm like, that's okay.
I don't need to go see keep You False. Although man,
I was so close. I really wanted to go.
Speaker 3: But I could make it over there.
Speaker 7: Knocked on the door, there's no door knock, It's just
a fence. It's like acreage jungle.
Speaker 3: Nobody has come out of that alive.
Speaker 6: So back to the powers and the lights and all
that they're going through the labyrinth. It's brilliant that as
we go through this introduction, it's foreshadowing and foreshadowing what's
going to have happened. He has troubles as he's pursuing
this religious idol. That's what the whole movie is, right, right,
it's just a different religious idol. It's a it's a
native religious idol as opposed to a Christian religious idol.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 6: And so he's hyper aware, hyper sensitive, right right, So
he's and he's so cool, I mean, with the whip
and the and the figuring out all of the traps
bit by bit, observant cool got it all down. He
comes to this religious thing, and you know, you've got
to wonder, how, like I said, how much of this,
how much of the booby traps are things the natives built?
And how much of it is just pure supernatural power?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 6: That's again part of a big part of the movie.
And then he comes up and the light that shines
on his face is gold.
Speaker 3: Where is that gold light? From? Right?
Speaker 6: And this is the point that his face is completely illuminated.
And then this is the point that we find out
that he values the religious aspect about as much as
a bag of dirt, right, And so his face is illuminated.
He switches out the dirt for the idol, and there's
this half second feat where he's still in the light,
and then it is just at the moment that he
turns and is completely in the darkness again that it
begins to sink.
Speaker 3: And then all of a.
Speaker 6: Sudden, this cool James Bond of the nineteen thirties esque,
you know, hero becomes a bumbling, stumbling dashing forward without
care fool, right, And that's the way it keeps going.
And then he loses the treasure, and then he gets
it back right, and then he loses it again, right,
and it is all just foreshadow, foreshadow, foreshadow of what's.
Speaker 3: To come in the movie, and it happens about the whole.
Speaker 4: Movie, right.
Speaker 6: And then we're introduced to the villain Bellock right there
at the intro, and once again, you've got something that
I am taking.
Speaker 3: Away doctor Joees again. We see that it's nothing you
can possess, which I kind of take away. Right. That's right.
Speaker 7: So let's back up for one second. So you and
I have discussed pieces of these movies that we have
small problems with. We're willing to overlook him because everything
else is so great. But here's one of my problems
with Raiders. At the beginning, like you said, he's like,
stay out of the light, don't step on this.
Speaker 3: It's too easy, right, cautious, cautious, cautious. But at the intro,
at the very beginning, as he walks into the cave,
he grabs his dirt and just throws it in there.
Oh that's good enough. I mean, how much does that
that head of gold way way more than that second dirt? Right?
Speaker 6: No, apparently the dirt ways more. Otherwise it would have
sunk the dirt.
Speaker 3: Apparently. Was it well thought through? Indy, Come on, he's
just like And then when he gets to the idol,
he actually takes a handful of it.
Speaker 6: He just didn't take it home. He just wasn't thinking.
He's good and he's he's figuring it out as he gets.
Speaker 3: I don't know I'm making this up as I go.
So he meets Bellock. I don't know either way, I
do fla.
Speaker 6: Which again introduces another key aspect of this movie, which
is it's okay to be smart. Intelligence actually helps you
out even if you're the bad guy sometimes. And he's like,
if only they knew you, like I know you.
Speaker 3: Is too bad. You could one that if only you
spoke of Vitos And he's absolutely right.
Speaker 7: Bella O thanks him several times in this movie, and
so he ends up falling from the school guy to
a guy running in front of a giant rock and
bursting cobweb covered out of a cave and running as
soon as the natives' backs are turned down this mountain
just almost like a Keystone cop episode where they're all
chasing the bad act.
Speaker 6: Start the engine, Jock, start the engine, So Jock. For
all of my life, I thought, why wasn't Jock in
any more of the movie or any of the other movies.
I mean, he was a great character, and I did
some research on him. It's the only movie he's ever
been in because he's not an actor.
Speaker 3: He's a pilot.
Speaker 6: Yes, So when they came and they're scouting locations. You know,
they're in Hawaii and they're needing to fly around. He
was the pilot that was buying them around to find locations,
and they needed a pilot for this scene. And they
liked him so much. He was just like this good
natured guy. They said, Hey, do you want to just
be in the movie. It's super cool. Now here's the
other interesting part. Ten years later, eleven years later, when
they're filming Jurassic Park, also in Hawaii, a hurricane hits
the island of Hawaii and they're stuck, like the crew
like Steven Spielberg, Attenborough that's at Lord Erne, Jeff Goldboom
crew all stuck on this guy, the guy who plays Jock,
whose name is Fred Sorenson. He flies in and saves
the crew from the hurricane that's hitting the island.
Speaker 3: It's incredible. Yeah, it's great, I mean true life. Okay.
Speaker 6: And then another interesting bit from the intro scene and
the actors. Okay, the guy who pulls out the gun
to shoot at Indy before they even get to the labyrinth.
Speaker 3: Do you know who that is? No? I don't, Okay.
Speaker 6: The actor's name is Vic Tablian. Okay, do you know
where else you've seen him. I can't think of anything now.
Speaker 3: In Raiders of the Lost Ark, what he is the
guy who owns the monkey, who has the.
Speaker 6: That's awesome, isn't that amazing? I was just like, I
find him. I'm like, I wonder what else he's done.
And that shows me a picture of the guy with
the monkey, and I'm like, what's the wrong?
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, that's the same guy. Nice. Nice, That's cool.
Isn't that crazy?
Speaker 7: Well, here's something else that I learned while visiting Hawaii.
All of the Jovitos. Yes, those guys are surfers. Those
are Hawaiian surfers that they gathered up. And if you
look closely, they all have swimsuit pants you can see
their surf pants.
Speaker 3: They've got tan lines. Yeah.
Speaker 7: So they get on the plane in which do you
know the name or the number of the plane that
they fly on on?
Speaker 3: Obi CPO No h does that sound relatively familiar? Of course?
Remember owning the Troy absolutely.
Speaker 6: Not to not to George Lucas and the star wars.
So then he magically escapes. I loved watching, you know,
I love watching Jock like trying to decide whether to
keep fighting the fish or I got one. Hecking drops
it in there. He's brilliant. And then we find just
before the end of the interest scene, we find Indy's
biggest fear and what is his biggest fear?
Speaker 3: There's a big snake in the plane. Jock that flake
might I hate save Jacques?
Speaker 6: I hate him and so obviously this again the foreshadowing
comes in tells us at the outset, Indy's biggest fear
is snakes.
Speaker 3: Snakes. Hang on to that. Okay, so let's get into
introduction introduction the future.
Speaker 6: Right, So we're just talking in our break about how
characters are defined in your head, like you know they
talk about in good comic book character would be recognizable
from his silhouette and you know, you think of the
silhouette of Batman or the Hulk. You know, I'm going
to recognize that guy. Indy is one of those guys. Yes,
And in my opinion, his hat is like the cake
like without the hat. He's no longer Anyanna Jones, He's
no longer Superman. He's just a guy. He's Henry Professor, right, Yes,
he's Professor Jones with the glasses. I mean he really is.
He's Clark Kent. That's right, right, Marty is less of
a silhouette character, but we still get a strong introduction
for that one as well.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 6: Now this one we start off with sound as opposed
to starting off with these silhouetted figures walking through the jungle.
Speaker 3: And it's.
Speaker 6: Tick because the whole thing is about time, and what
better representation of time than clocks, which just what we
open up on and we see clock.
Speaker 3: We see clock.
Speaker 6: Of course, you know, the critical moment in this movie
revolves around a clock. And then we're like, oh, hey,
is that Harold Lloyd hanging from a clock over there?
Speaker 3: On the thing? Is that something coming up in the future.
Be weird with that apple later? All right?
Speaker 6: And then inventions are being activated at specific times. Who
lives here, Wiley coyote? What is this radio hand thing
that we've got going on here? And then we've got
the radio talking about the toyotap, set up, yup TV
talking about the stolen plutonium, set up, missing dog because
you've got a big pilot dog, food all over the place,
set up, mansion, set up, burned toast. Okay, that's just
burned toast, that's all that is. Wait a minute, it
was at a JBC camcorder that I saw down there
on the pillow next to pictures of Edison and Piandstein
and then enter legs. Once again, we don't see his face.
What we see is Nike shoes, acid washed jeans, a
skateboard and we know already is going to is obviously cool, right,
obviously cool? And wait a minute, did that create that
the skateboard just hits say plutonium on it.
Speaker 5: In other news, officials at the Pacific Nuclear Research Facility
have denied the rumor that.
Speaker 3: A case of missing plutonium was in fact stolen from
their vault. Two weeks ago, Olivian terrorist group had claimed
responsibility for the electric death.
Speaker 6: I love the montage close ups of the amp cranking
it up, cranking it up, cranking it up again. We
are establishing Maury's character, the guy who wants it wow
right right right, And then we have yeah to darmlouds,
and then we have even still before we see his face.
If you watch it, you're like, oh my gosh, this
is so obvious that they're not showing his face. We
see his back as he backs up and stands in
front of this ten foot speaker, and then we have
a stainless steel pick that comes up, same stell, Maybe
we should make a car like that, right, yeah, all right,
and then blam crash instead of whip bang and whoa
rock and roll, rock and roll, And then we see
the actual fantastic he has to take down the sunglasses.
Speaker 3: Yes, a little more revealed even after the big bang.
You're exactly right.
Speaker 7: It's a fantastic intro, very similar to the way Harrison
Ford's Indiana Jones is introduced the beginning right, Yes, the
back of him, but you get all those iconic elements, right.
So Andy has the leather jacket, he has the whip,
he has got the fedora, he's got the gun. Yes,
Marty has the skateboard, the guitar, the sneakers, the plutonium.
Speaker 3: The genius jacket, the jean jacket. Yeah, it's all set
in the first and.
Speaker 6: You you know who these characters are. At the moment
that you see in their face. You're like, Okay, I
know this guy, and I like this guy. I know
this guy and I like him already. And there's a good,
you know a great question for both of these guys.
Are the good guys?
Speaker 3: Right? Absolutely?
Speaker 6: And what I think makes both of these movies great
is that we don't know, they're just kind of relatable, right,
I mean India. When we look at some of India's
history and see what some of the things that he does,
we're like, he's kind of a cromey guy in certain situations.
And obviously Marty is a slacker.
Speaker 3: He's got a real attitude problem with Fly.
Speaker 6: You're a slacker. I mean he wants to blame Doc
for making him late for school, but I mean he
walked in there like three minutes before the clocks started
going on. Is it's not Doc's fault for his weird experiment?
Speaker 7: Listen, there's no doubt that Indian and Jones makes some
questionable moral choices throughout.
Speaker 3: The movie Raiders, right, But we love him anyway.
Speaker 7: Yes, I think that he's got a heart that he
has to kind of find sometimes. Absolutely, And Marty is
definitely a little bit rebellious, a little bit mischievous.
Speaker 6: But he's still he's scared of things. Like he's in
the intro.
Speaker 3: We see cool cool, cool, cool cool.
Speaker 6: And then a bookshelf full of objects is falling on
top of him and all of a sudden, it's goofy again.
And then he's this kid who's just late for school, right,
I in both scenarios didn't really think to myself, this
is a relatable character, right, I just went I like
this guy.
Speaker 7: Right, Let's take it a step further. Harrison Ford is
Indiana Jones. He's absolutely Indianjos. We'll talk more about who
almost was Indiana Jones or who was Okay, well, we'll
talk about that later. Eric Stoltz is not Marty McFly.
Speaker 3: Now, Michael J.
Speaker 7: Fox is Marty McFly And I would argue that from
the moment that he's blown back by the giant stereo
and he's covered with stuff, yes, and the phone rings,
and he's trying to stand up, and the guitar chord
is keeping him down, and he's it's funny, absolutely watching
him try to stand up and get to the phone.
Speaker 3: It's funny, right, it's about he's funny.
Speaker 6: So both movies we have this strong, strong introductory scene
that establishes to the carecharacter is and that they are
both definitions of foreshadow. It's a different type of foreshadow.
With Raiders of the Lost Arc, you have what some
people call a prefiguration, where you have a short story
that is mirrors what the long story is going to be.
Speaker 3: Right with Back to the.
Speaker 6: Future, you have, as I mentioned, set up after setup
after setup. This is all here's a little piece of
something that you're going to see later on. That's right,
and it's not. It doesn't tell the story of what's
going to happen. It just says, here's something, and here's something,
and here's something that all come into play in just
a little bit, and that is what happens throughout the
whole movie. The whole movie is all about set up
and pay off.
Speaker 7: It's like a scavenger on. Here's some plutonium, hang on
to that, you're going to need it. Yeah, here's a
guitar pick, you're going to need that to.
Speaker 3: Hang on to the skateboard. It's going to come into
play here. How fun is that? So good?
Speaker 6: Here's a whip that's going to come into play later.
To toss this gun into a suitcase that's going to
come into play later, right, righte?
Speaker 3: Imagine you you and no matter.
Speaker 6: I think at this point we could probably start talking
about how these movies both came into being. What I
said to you before, they're like cousins of each other. Absolutely,
they really think they are not only in their structure
and you know, mix of adventure and bigger ideas, but
also because they're both me and they're both Spielberg. They
both involve a classic plot structure that goes to act one,
act two, act three. So the fact that they're our
favorite movies makes a whole lot of sense, I guess right.
Speaker 3: Right now, quickly. I just wanted to cover that.
Speaker 7: When we were talking about this before we start recording,
we talked about, you know, act one, act two, act three,
and I made mentioned that I think that the beginning
part of Raters Lost Dark is actually an act three
to a previous adventure, yeah right, which culminated with him
getting the idol, the fertility idle. By the way, if
you look at it, it's a woman and a little
bitty baby in between her laymen. Yeah, you have to
look really cool and ham deposit. But so it's a
fertility anyway.
Speaker 3: Be sure it's a woman and a baby and not
a man. Pretty sure.
Speaker 7: I'm pretty sure is that a it's ahead, but I'm
pretty sure it's a job.
Speaker 3: So anyway, that is one of the things I like
is because, as we'll talk about, Indiana Jones is a
serial character this is a serial story. You know, he
goes on multiple adventures. This is just one that we're
catching up.
Speaker 6: With, and this and that, you know, that leads us
into how this movie came into being in the first place. Yes,
there were classic serials that George Lucas and Steven Spieldberg
and the guys that are of that era grew up watching,
and they included these kind of swashbuckling type of characters,
very much like the treasure Hunters. Are a treasure hunter
that Indiana Jones is, or to be more specific, grave robber.
Speaker 3: And I just want to say it a pertainer of
rare antiquity as saying, why don't you sit down, It'll.
Speaker 6: Be more comfortable, because that's really what is Oh yeah,
no doubt Raider was not a not a compliment.
Speaker 3: No, And he was stealing that idol from the Jovitos.
Speaker 6: Yes again, because he has absolutely no respect for the
religious That's.
Speaker 4: Right, That's right.
Speaker 3: So here's how he needed Jones's story. Okay, go ahead.
I mean the backstory on these two stories is really cool.
I think so. George Lucas just finished wrapping Star Wars. Yes,
Steven Spielberg just finished close encounters right, and had Jaws Joe.
Speaker 7: So Lucas and Spielberg take their wives at the time
go on a joint vacation to Hawaii.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 7: They're staying at the Monaca Hotel on the Big Island
and they're building the sand castle.
Speaker 6: Yeah, because that's what you do when you're the two
greatest directors of the day, you go build a sandcastle.
Speaker 3: That's right. So Lucas is in Hawaii going I don't
even want to think about Star Wars. I don't know
what's going on back home.
Speaker 6: But you got to you gotta imagine that even with
them obviously be in friends, and I don't know how
their friendship developed.
Speaker 3: I don't know how that started.
Speaker 6: We know that they're there in Hawaii together, but I
don't know how they got introduced and decided to take
the family vacation together. But there's got with all alpha
characters like this, there's got to be this kind of
hint of competition, and so I think that is kind
of what inspires Lucas to ask Steven Spielberg, what are
you planning.
Speaker 3: To do next? Sure? Absolutely well, they're both Titans now
at this moment.
Speaker 7: Spielberg had Jaws and Lucas is back home. Star Wars
is going through the roof right, which it was a
nightmare production. He finally got it done and it's blowing up.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Jaws and Close Encounters American graffiti and Star Wars.
Speaker 3: American Graffiti was a huge hit. Yeah. Star Wars was
a big question whether it was going to be a
hit or not.
Speaker 7: Okay, So anyway, the building sand Castle, George Lucas says
to Spielberg, what are you going to do next? And
he says, I'm looking at trying to direct to James bondman,
James Bond right right now. Of course, the Bond folks
are like, no, some American can't come and direct this
thing right right. I forget Jaws, You've never done James
Bond right totally different, which I love James Bond.
Speaker 3: What do you know about actually.
Speaker 4: Stupid?
Speaker 7: So Lucas says, listen, dude, I got something way better
than James Bond. Yes, and he proceeds to tell him.
Indiana Smith, this archaeologist who is a serial type of
guy and based on the serials that they watched of
their youth, right, he wears a leather jacket, he has
a fedora. I think in maybe a bullwhip, and he
just kind of tells him just a little bit about it, right,
and he says what he thinks.
Speaker 3: Bieler says, I want to direct that.
Speaker 6: Yes, And so that's really as much as George Lucas
had at that moment. The story that Lawrence Caston tells,
who is the writer of this a movie?
Speaker 3: Who is He's really the unsung hero.
Speaker 6: Oh he's He's brilliant, and you know, he just to
tell his story. He is somebody who had loved movies
from his childhood. He wants to be in movies his
full life, but like many of us, ends up doing
the safe thing and gets a job as an ad
exec doing copyright stuff and has a child and you know, hey,
the ad exec job paid for the marriage and a kid.
But I wanted it to be in movies. I want
to do movies. And so his wife's wanting another kid,
he says, I'm not having another kid. As an ad
exec where we need to go out to Hollywood and
he finds his way out there and he's recognized for
the quality of his work. He does some good work
with Warner Brothers, and then as he's coming along, he says,
I got this great script called Continental Divide. I'd like
to take a look at one of the Warner Brothers guys.
And the Warner brother guy reads it and says, I
like it right, I'll show it to Stephen or George
and see what they think about it. And he's like,
who Steven Spielberg. George says, oh, okay, yeah, that'd be fine.
And so then just a few, you know, a little
bit of time passes. He sets up a meeting of
Steven Spielberg and goes out and sees him on a set,
sitting on a fake sidewalk, and Spielberg's got Condone Divide
in his hand, and he says, I love this script,
but I'm not going to direct it. I'll find somebody
else to direct it. Let's not worry about that. What
we like to talk to you about is writing another
movie for us. And he's like, okay, all right, And
he's like who's us And he's like, well, me and
George Lucas. He's like, oh, okay, you mean the guy
who did Star Wars, right, the guy who did, yeah,
the biggest movie of all time, and yeah, you're the
biggest director of all time. Okay, I'm interested. Let's see
what that is. And so they get together. They meet,
they have a really short meeting and George Lucas says
exactly what you said. He's like, Okay, his name's going
to be Indiana because we're naming him after my dog, right,
and he's going to be based on those old series.
He's going to have a f door, he's going to
have a bull whit and I'm thinking maybe a leather jacket.
Oh and the mcguffin here is the lock Stark of
the Covenant. And Lawrence Kasson is like, okay, so what happens,
that's your job, right, go for it. Yeah, and then
he's like, okay, see you later. And kas and it
was there with some other guy and they walk out
and the like do we just get that? Is that
what I mean? Are we writing this now? And when
they got home there was a call from their agent
and yes, they're on board. Kasin spends the next six
months writing the script. He's he and George and Steven
spent a little bit of time together to kind of
iron out some ideas, and then he spent six months
writing the script. He comes in, he hands it TOAs
Lucas throws it on the table and says, let's get
to lunch.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 6: They go eat lunch and he's like, listen, I'm in trouble.
I've got these huge sets that are being built over
in the UK right now, and the lady who is
writing the script for my second Star Wars movie has
passed away, and he's like, so I would like you
to write Yeah, I'm in a big, big trouble.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 6: He's like, so I'd like you to write it. Eleanor's
CA's like, do you want to read Creators of the
Laws Dark first? And he's like, oh, yeah, yeah, I'll
read that tonight. And if I don't like it, then
this offer is with drunk.
Speaker 3: But apparently he liked it. Right, It's a pretty cool story.
That's great.
Speaker 7: Can you imagine the type of pressure Okay, Star Wars Okay,
I'm working on the sequel now on building sets and
oh my writer just died.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, can you imagine being the guy who's who
wrote Indiana Jones and Empire Strikes Back in the same year,
I mean, and then and then you know, I don't
know how far into shooting they were and how far
into the script writing process. They were, but at some
point George Lucas says to Lawrence Casten, Oh, by the way,
Darth Vader's looks deack. No, he says, yes, oh, no,
any guys ever go to Sunday School.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Great, that's this story of the beginning of Raiders. Let's
talk about the beginning of Back to the Future. So
Back in the Future was directed by Bob Zamachis Robert
Macus and written by Bob Gail. Zamacis obviously was involved
in the writing process, but largely it was it was
Bob Gail who had done that. They had previously worked
with Spielberg on a movie Paul nineteen forty one, which
was kind of a flop for Spielberg. I still think
it's a decent movie, but just didn't have a lot
of appeal.
Speaker 3: That's true.
Speaker 7: And he did a movie called Used Cars, Yes, which
is one of my favorites. I mean, it's an unsugn
movie from the early eighties.
Speaker 3: It's a favorite. It's a cult favorite.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it wouldn't like it did Gangbusters at the box
not at all, not at all. Now, the reason why
they were able to do Back in the Future was
this little sleeper hit in nineteen eighty four called Romancing
the Stone.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, Romancing the Stone was another great movie and
so so much inspired by Indiana Jones.
Speaker 3: Right, no, now again.
Speaker 6: You have this very anti hero lead who's got a
tougher girl to protects. It's it's very Indiana Jones, but
stands on its own for sure. I loved it. I
need to watch it against too long.
Speaker 3: We're gonna have to. I'm Romancing the Stone at some point,
absolutely so. But the script from the time of its
inception to when it was completed, this was turned down
forty four times.
Speaker 6: Right, Well, it was conceived in the early eighties, and
this is what happened. Bob Gail was going through some
of his dad's old yearbooks and he's looking through and
he sees a picture of his dad and it says
class president on the bottom of it, and he's like,
my dad was the class right, And his thought is,
I mean this kind of tells you his perspective. He
was like, you guys know, class presidents, they're all a holes.
He's like, would I even have liked my dad if
I had gone to high school with him? And that
was the impetus for the whole script that's it, which
is I mean, and it continues through like it lasted.
They started pitching this thing in the early eighties. They
started pitching this around the time that Raiders had come out,
and didn't get green light on it until eighty four.
They had pitched it to all kinds of studios that
reject it because it wasn't raunchy enough, which is odd,
you know, And I mean, you think about the movies
at that time. You've got risky business, you've got Porky's,
you got all these right, let's go show some movies
for no reason at all things, which is one of
the things to my dad would complain about, that's a
good movie. I wish they didn't have to do this
so that you can't watch it.
Speaker 3: She said, yeah, that's all reason.
Speaker 6: And so it wasn't dirty enough, and so finally somebody said,
why don't you pitch it to Disney, And so they
go to Disney with it, and the Disney Disney's like,
the mom is kissing the sun. We're Disney, for goodness sake,
we can't make this right. And so they're like, gosh,
you know, nothing to be done. But they do Romancing
the Stone and Steven Spielberg kind of swings in and
saves the day on this. He's like, let's let's make
this happen.
Speaker 7: Actually, when Bob Gail brought that idea to Bob's, Mecas
Yeah said, Hey, my dad was class president and I
saw the yearbook and I thought, would I even be
friends with this guy?
Speaker 3: Yeah? If I was there at the time.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And Bob z and Mecas's addition to that was, what
if you found out that your mom was the town slut?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 6: So join us next week for part two of the debate.
Thank you so much for your support of the Shirley
You Can't Be Serious Podcast.
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