A Legendary Remake of 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' Is Finally Finished
The Indiana Jones fans on set
Decades before YouTube, two kids from Mississippi decided that they loved Raiders of the Lost Ark so much, they would just have to remake it.
Chris Strompolos and Eric Zala spent much of their teenage years shooting and re-shooting a very cheap and extraordinarily loyal reproduction of the iconic Harrison Ford-starring, Steven Spielberg-directed film. (Strompolos donned the fedora as Indiana Jones.) The duo completed their film in the late ’80s, except for the big fight scene where a Nazi plane blows up, but unfortunately their friendship dissolved after they both moved to Los Angeles.
The film, however, became one of those underground sensations, passed around via bootleg videotape without the now-adult directors ever knowing it. Eli Roth was a fan, as was Quentin Tarantino, and even Spielberg gave them his seal of approval. Eventually the pair were reunited for a screening at the Alamo Drafthouse, and a profile that appeared in 2004 in Vanity Fair.
They struck out in their attempt to become real, full-time directors; no one in Hollywood wanted to finance a movie made by a pair of guys whose only experience was shooting an amateur remake 30 years before. (A bummer, though understandable.) So they decided to finally finish their Raiders remake, in hopes of proving they were viable filmmakers. A Kickstarter was launched, raising over $58,000, and they got to work.
It was just as much work as it was when they were kids, but a lot more pressure, as LA Weekly’s Amy Nicholson captures in a new profile.
“It’s cool in concept that we’re putting the band back together and going to our hometown to create this missing scene,” Strompolos said, “but we need to earn the same reaction as watching us kids light ourselves on fire and drag me behind a truck: ‘Holy shit, I can’t believe they did it!’ ”
Things didn’t look great when they began production: Production assistants quit, extras revolted, the director had his iPhone stolen, and the explosives team was largely MIA. They were working on a shoestring budget, far from Hollywood, and hadn’t shot a scene in decades.
But they did have a few things working for them: An ex-stripper and hairdresser who bleached his eyebrows and hair to play the Nazi, a lot of dynamite, and a stunt double willing to stand right in the shadow of the flaming plane.
To read the rest of the story, click over to LA Weekly.
Watch the first 10 minutes of Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation below:
