[Upbeat music playing in the background] If you’re an Indiana Jones fan then stick around,
because you're about to discover 15 behind the scenes facts about “Raiders of the Lost Ark”.
[Film clapper sound, music continues]
“Raiders of the Lost Ark” was an idea George Lucas pitched to Steven Spielberg
while they were on a Hawaiian vacation to celebrate the opening of “Star Wars”.
Spielberg was looking for his next project
and he had always wanted to do an action/adventure movie like James Bond,
but Lucas said he had an even better idea for a trilogy based on old adventure serials of the 1930s.
George Lucas was already busy with his own trilogy, so he decided to produce “Raiders”
while Steven Spielberg agreed to take the director’s chair.
Spielberg searched for 6 months to cast “Indiana Jones” and Harrison Ford was his first pick,
but George Lucas didn’t want Ford to be his “go-to guy”
since he had already been cast in two of Lucas’s most successful movies.
They had auditioned many actors including Tom Selleck whom they really liked and had
offered him the role.
But the head of CBS forced him to back out because Selleck was already booked for the
TV series “Magnum P.I”.
So with just three weeks left before “Raiders” started filming, Steven Spielberg decided
to go with his gut and asked Harrison Ford to star in the movie.
Indiana Jones really was named after the dog.
The hero’s nickname came from George Lucas’s pet malamute “Indiana”, who was also the
inspiration for Chewbacca’s appearance.
The famous archeologist’s name was first going to be “Indiana Smith”,
but Steven Spielberg didn’t like the sound of it,
so George Lucas came up with the idea to switch it to “Jones”.
If Satipo looks familiar to you it’s because he was played by Alfred Molina who you may
know as Doctor Octavius from Sam Raimi’s “Spider Man 2”.
Back in the early ‘80s Molina had been a stage actor for about 5 years,
but “Raiders” was his first movie.
Another famous person in the movie is known for his voice.
Frank Welker provided the monkey noises,
and you may know him as the voice of Fred from old “Scooby Doo” cartoons,
Megatron from “Transformers”,
and Abu from “Aladdin”.
Over a dozen tarantulas were placed on Alfred Molina’s back
and at first they all looked fake because they wouldn’t move.
But that all changed once the spider wrangler put a female on the actor,
so at that point it didn’t take much for Molina to act scared for the cameras.
The iconic boulder from “Raiders of the Lost Ark” was made out of fiberglass,
and it was 20’ in diameter and rolled on a 50’ track to film Indy’s dramatic exit out of the cave.
Filming for a month in Tunisia was extremely hot with temperatures over 130 degrees Fahrenheit.
The set was about 60 kilometers away from the nearest city, so 5,000 gallons of water
were shipped to the set every day to keep 600 extras and a crew of 80 people properly hydrated.
Food poisoning was a real problem during filming, but not for Steven Spielberg
because he ate all of his meals from canned food shipped over from the UK.
However all the rest of the cast and crew had dysentery because they ate the local food.
This is why Indy just shoots the swordsman because Harrison Ford was very sick that day
and didn’t have the energy to do the whip and sword fight they had initially planned.
John Rhys-Davies had an embarrassing moment due to being sick, which got cut from the movie.
While filming a scene Steven Spielberg asked Davies to bend over to improve his eye line with the camera,
and as he did the actor dropped a load in his pants in front of 200 people
and he was so sick he said didn’t care one bit.
The stuntmen were sick the day they were filming the airplane fight, so they needed someone
else to be the pilot who gets hit over the head with the chocks.
So Spielberg had the producer Frank Marshall play the part, which the producer thought
was going to be great fun, but little did he know that he committed himself to spending
three days in a jumpsuit inside a cockpit that was about 140 degrees Fahrenheit.
Frank Marshall wasn’t the only one who suffered on the airplane set because Harrison Ford
had a major injury during the fight scene when he rolled on the ground and the airplane
ran over his legs and tore his left ACL.
But instead of subjecting himself to the medical care of Tunisia he just wrapped up his knee with ice
and continued filming.
The Well of Souls required a lot of live snakes.
They first ordered about 2,000 snakes, but that wasn’t enough to fill the set for any wide shots.
So they ordered 7,000 more to equal over 9,000 snakes, which included boa constrictors, pythons,
legless lizards called glass snakes,
and of course the cobra
that they put behind a glass panel to safely get the shots of Indy and Marion falling in front of it.
There’s a small “Star Wars” easter egg in the Well of Souls where R2-D2 and C-3PO
were engraved in the hieroglyphics.
Another subtle reference to “Star Wars”
is that the canyon where Indiana Jones is looking down on the Nazis with a rocket launcher
is the same canyon where R2-D2 was taken by the Jawas.
“Raiders of the Lost Ark” was almost rated R.
Not because of the melting head effect,
but because of Belloq’s head explosion.
But they were able to negotiate a PG rating
once the decision was made to use a flame wall to obscure the effect.
If you’re wondering why “Raiders” got a PG rating instead PG-13, that can be answered
in a video about the prequel sequel “Temple of Doom”.
So let me know in the comments if you’d like to see that,
and in the meantime click on one of these videos
to discover more fun facts about your favorite films.