When Eric Zala set out with his 12-year-old colleagues to make a shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark in Mississippi during the 1980s, the scene was set for an eruption of imagination at the level of Calvin and Hobbes. Years later, it became something better than that: After Hostel director Eli Roth gave a copy of Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation to Steven Spielberg, the movie reached a whole new level of exposure. An adorable tribute that works as more than pure pastiche (teenagers wearing false beards somehow reflects the childlike joy of escapism), the movie screens July 6 and 7 at Anthology Film Archives, with Zala in attendance.
NYPress: Do you recall having a sense for the complexity of your project as you were working on it?
Eric Zala: I recall that when we started, at age 12, we had no idea what we were getting into. Then, as the years progressed, the full scope of it became revealed as the gigantic undertaking it was. I personally hoped to sort of inhabit that world, by retracing the footsteps of the masters. It was an amazing way to learn—film school on the fly—and the cost (having a “normal childhood,” goofing off every summer) was not too great a price to pay, as it turns out.
Does your version of Raiders bring something new to the story?
In this situation, imitation is intended as a form of flattery. One viewer described our film as a love letter, which I think sums up the core of our intentions well. People often watch, not only for the usual unfolding of plot, but to see how the next scene is improbably done by a bunch of kids: fiery barfight, Sahara desert, truck scene, submarine scene and so on.
If you were to make another Raiders adaptation today, would you incorporate anything else that isn’t in the current version?
When we did our remake, we didn’t have the benefit of renting or owning the original Raiders to match the shots. This was before the age of video stores. We did our replication through committing as much of the movie to memory as possible when it was re-released in theaters in ’82. We were close, but there are some shots where the composition is off, or some such detail. As a perfectionist, that gets at me, and so, if I could go back in time, I’d correct those flaws. And do the airplane scene. That’s the sole scene that we wound up not doing, because there was no way to accomplish the exploding plane at the scene’s end without resorting to miniature—and that would look cheesy.
What do you think about the other Indiana Jones movies?
The sequels, while fun, did not capture the imagination, nor captivate me in wonder to the degree that the original Raiders did. Of course, that’s a high bar: It’s still the only movie that I can imagine wanting to spend seven years of my life recreating.
Are you excited for the fourth one?
Definitely. A recent online photo of Harrison Ford on the Indy IV set, after all this time wearing again the shirt, the pants, the fedora...jaded adult cynicism washed away in an instant. For Chris [Strompolos] and I both, it was like being 11 again, giddy with excitement.
Did you get a chance to speak with Spielberg about the adaptation?
After we each received Steven Spielberg’s very kind letter, thanking us for our “very loving and detailed tribute,” about a year later we actually got invited over to his office to meet him. It was an utterly singular experience. The three of us are sitting in a conference room at Amblin, on the Universal lot, drumming our fingers on the table nervously as we await the arrival of our host. The door swings open, and in walks Steven Spielberg: “Hey, guys, what’s going on?” He sat down next to us, and we just talked—about Raiders, his filming his original, our filming our remake...movies... art...life. It was amazing. He couldn’t have been more down-to-earth and real.
Daniel Clowes is adapting your experiences into a screenplay...
After some long interviews over the phone, the three of us got to meet Dan in person when we were out at the San Francisco Independent Film Festival. It’s been a real pleasure getting to know Dan. I was a fan of Ghost World long before this all occurred. And he’s exceptionally gifted in writing emotionally-complex, adolescent characters. I feel like we’re in very good hands.
What do you think about contemporary Hollywood entertainment? Transformers looks fantastic, but it has none of the subtle exchanges that a detail-driven movie like Raiders allows.
While I haven’t seen Transformers yet, I would agree that much of what I see lately misses the mark in terms of what made Raiders and other films around that time so magical. It seems like that quaint old truism—about how it all ought to be in the service of the story—seems discarded. There are bright spots, occasional movies that really connect with people, critically and commercially successful, inexplicably without glossy CGI and MTV-style-epileptic-fit-inducing-pace editing. That, to me, confirms that it’s not that people no longer want a well-crafted story. It’s that some filmmakers have forgotten that what makes many of us care about going to the movies.
