lee marsh wants to know
i've taken your questions before lee marsh i remember your name uh i remember your name
specifically specifically because
um my touring company the touring company that i tour with magic space entertainment
is run by my friend lee marshall and i always do a double take when i see your name and i think
is lee marshall joining the live stream anyway hi lee marsh uh which vfx
excited me the most on the indie films ooh ooh that is a great question
i think that for me i'm going to think about it in terms of a sequence
because i was 13 when i first saw the film and it's not like i was watching it going oh how
did they do that i'm just along for the ride i was the perfect age to be completely immersed
and get the brain transfer of that movie when it happened but in terms of sequences obviously
the most amazing sequence is in the under the car pulling himself up to the truck with a whip and
fighting off all the germans in the car and that that guy punching india in the bullet hole man
that hurts me every time i watch that movie ow it hurts just thinking about it it is such a
you can feel that he's probably raising that metal knuckle to get right in that bullet hole oh um
we really really talked about a way to do that for mythbusters because i so wanted to spend
a couple of days being dragged behind a truck dressed in my indie costume what could be better
what nothing literally could be better because dressing up as indie for two whole weeks for
that episode it's like one of the best cosplay experiences i ever had my wife would see me
dressed completely as indian my full costume every morning and be like have a good day at work indeed
but the sequence that i think i was most enamored with and it is a vfx sequence because there's some
miniatures there's some full-size pieces is the fistfight around the the the flying wing
with the big german guy that you know gets vaporized by the propeller that sequence
that sequence is amazing there's so much character in that sequence and what i mean by that is
it's easy to watch some modern movies where they take action sequences and chop them up and
just feels like action action action but you're not actually getting a sense of where you are
and the thing about spielberg and what's one of the things to me that's so important about
him as a director is you never don't know where you are in the space right like that's the mark
of a great action director you always understand your spatial relationship to the world you're in
and where your characters are and that sequence with the plane okay first of all you've got indian
marion she's in the white dress but she gets in the cockpit because she's a girl you can throw the
gun to and she's ready to like you know help out then there's the the uh the guy he knocks out to
to get in the plane he's gonna fly the ark somewhere else and then the big german guy
shows up and the big german guy is not there to stop indy from taking the ark he just sees a guy
who's ready to fight he's like clearly likes a good fight that's a great bit of character i mean
all of a sudden that guy is interesting for a whole new reason than just being a bad guy with
his shirt up he takes his shirt off and he's just like yeah let's go like he's just he's adding some
extra entertainment to his day as a nazi um which i guess for him is already going pretty
well because he likes beating people up uh that character is such a great character development
and it also him and makes you like him a little bit which frankly makes his death um
sting just a tiny bit as it does for india and marion neither of them like watching him die
and again that's even more character building it's not just shooting nazis and moving on like there
are stakes to this and the stakes are not just let me stop you from doing this spielberg adds in
character stakes for each of the characters and i remember being 13 and being involved in
this oh look at that guy oh he's big he's taking his shirt off oh my god he just wants to fight
wow and then when he takes his first shot at indy and indy like falls back and falls on his ass
that's not something you regularly saw action heroes do like even at 13 i recognized this was
kind of a remarkable development for our main character that like one punch and he's down and
he has to get back up and fight this guy and now you're like okay that where's what's gonna happen
now yeah it's a phenomenal sequence and the more i watch it every time i watch it so you remember
like at a certain point the guy gets shot and he falls against the thing and the props start up and
the plane starts moving so now it's a fist fight on a tarmac with the plane whose propellers are
moving and the plane is spinning and it's dripping gasoline towards the fire and spielberg is able to
keep you just remember watching it or watch it after this live stream and notice that you never
don't know where you are you are always anchored in the space that's that's amazing directing
when norm and joey and i made uh a farewell to arms our film with what a workshop and richard
taylor and peter jackson where i wore the suit of armor and my arm gets knocked off
um we got the tiniest increment of a taste of what it's like to make us to make an action sequence
which is not our baileywick right like i mean joey and norm have more training in this than i do by
far but you know we're making our kinds of videos we're not shooting action movies so to actually
put together the pieces of an action sequence and make sure you had enough for an edit was really
complicated for us and there's a lot of discussion back and forth and reaching out to the weta people
and the weather producers we were working with to give us advice um but just giving that tiny
window into what it is to like have two people battle and know where you are in space and be
able to follow that battle and have that battle have stakes and a res results that you care about
super non-trivial super super complicated so there are ways in which the way modern movies are made
is way easier for directors like you know later michael bay just like chop chop blur blur blur
action action action um but what a thrill to watch a master do it like spielberg
vicki bly are you related to cap and lie lineage of captain blair i i wonder
not that that's necessarily a bad thing i mean you know he was compromised too but i always
wonder kerry byron is a descendant of lord byron i didn't know that until i made a joke about
it and she said no it's obviously true uh vicki bly says did you ever get your stolen whip back
no no i did not uh for reference my land cruiser was broken into i think earlier this year i think
in like january my land cruiser was broken into and they sold a bunch of stuff out i didn't
keep a bunch of important stuff in it but i had literally just i i was on a shooting location
for something and i whenever i'm out in the middle of nowhere i tend to bring one of my indie whips
so i can practice cracking it uh because you can't do it here in the city it sounds like a rifle shot
people come people show up by the way the very first time i finished my first whip
which was made out of cowhide and i built it in like 1995 or something like that and i took
it to the biggest field i could think of which was one of those big grassy fields on the side
of the embarcadero office buildings down at the embarcadero and i started cracking it and
i started cracking it and the cops showed up um and they were like we're getting calls about gun
shots so they said can you please stop doing this so then i went over to uh delores park
because i lived on bartlett street and 23rd at the time so i went over to dolores park
and i cracked it a couple times and this guy walking his dog came over and he was like tell
me about the whip that you've got there and as he came over i could see he looked like a totally
normal guy except that underneath the white collar of his shirt he was wearing a dog collar
clearly like you know he was a little freaky it's totally fine and awesome it's just you know the
freaky folks are going to find you if you're out there in public cracking a whip i mean that's
just you know you're you're intersecting with their interest level it's totally totally fine
so all of this is to say it's not like i'm going to go out into dolores park today and
crack a whip because i'm me and that's just gonna is it's going to lead to a series of events that
don't necessarily feel private or like practice to me and so i put my raiders whip now i have a whole
bunch of raiders whips uh i have the one i built myself in 1996 95 96 i have actually two that i
built myself i have a couple of beautiful ones that i commissioned from some great bookmakers i
have a great anthony delanges style longer handle whip the whip that got stolen is the one that
that ron morgan david morgan's son sorry david morgan is the maker of the whips for
the raiders films and uh he is no longer making whips but his son ron built this whip for our
mythbusters raiders episode and he built it for me specifically to whip over a branch
and swing across the chasm which i was able to do so it had a real special meaning to me
i can reach back out to the david morgan company and ask and commission them to build me another
one exactly like that they have their notes they should be able to do that i haven't gotten around
to it um and it's probably the reason i haven't gotten around to it because it's expensive and as
i have said before i don't make tv money anymore and that expense is significant so it's you know i
i haven't i haven't felt a burning need to replace it because i felt like i had time um but it's not
like an unlimited amount of time i would hate to look up in 10 years and the david morgan company
is no longer there and i can't get another one so i should probably get on that yeah i think i will
thank you for asking
um and i i appreciate that um you folks my fan base will ask me about these things like losing
the sankara stone at the party or the whip or stuff that got stolen out of my car and i i
really want you to know like i don't i don't even have negative feelings now about losing that stuff
i mean i wish i didn't lose it i wish i hadn't lost it i miss it but i i know several things i
know whoever robbed me has probably got a terrible life right like that you know and i think of that
then i think they didn't know what they were taking it wasn't like they were stealing this
thing from me to harm me right so i don't feel like a sense of enmity there it's just it's just
the world and frankly i'm grateful that i had any time with these things i consider myself stewards
of these objects a steward of these objects not their owner because hopefully many of these
objects will outlast me and outlive me uh so while i really i really appreciate you guys checking in
about the things that have been taken from me but please know that like i'm okay with it you know
i can make other stuff i can make more things not that i want you to come steal stuff for me
but yeah um
i mean one of the things i think when i've each time i've been robbed one of the things i think is
at least i'm healthy at least i didn't get hurt i've been mugged directly on the street and
money's money it goes away it comes back you know that that's an ebb and flow but my health is not
right like that's a yes i can get better if i got injured but what a terrible thing that would be so
weirdly loss tends to imbue in me a sense of gratitude that is something i have learned
this year having lost my dog and three close friends each time i think upon those things
including huxley or grant or michael or john friends of mine who i cared about so much
the predominant emotion i have when i think about those losses is gratitude gratitude for
what i was able to share with those amazing people and my amazing animal and gratitude
for the time i got to do that yeah um that got darker and deeper than i thought it would