I heard about the story of some high school kids that shot scene for scene Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. It took 6 years, about $10k and the logistical problems one could face when doing a movie out of your house and you need nazi’s, a huge boulder, prop planes and Tibetan people. In Mississippi.
In the newest issue of Vanity Fair, they have a fabulous article about the three guys who made this film and how it was made, what happened to them along the way and where they are now.
Their film was shown, years after completion, at the Butt-Numb-A-thon for film geeks in Austin, TX in 2002 or 03, and it stole the show.
*It stole the show out from the unofficial release of Lord of the Rings Two Towers. *. How cool is that?
I really, really want to see this. I adored this movie probably as much as they did at that age.
This is the coolest thing I’ve ever heard of. I had tears in my eyes after reading the second link. I would love to see this film – I wonder if it will get some sort of wider release – maybe to arthouses or something. It would also be a great subject for a book. I would certainly buy it.
I saw the trailer a while back and while I understand the desire to pay tribute to Raiders (it’s one my top five favorite movies), I can’t help but think that it would have been a LOT more impressive if they had put their time, money, and effort into creating something original. You can pay tribute in a lot of ways without making a scene-for-scene duplicate. Didn’t everyone criticize the shot-for-shot remake of Psycho? Not because the remake was a bad movie (I never saw it), but because it was pointless.
I know the ‘creativity’ involved here was in duplicating Raiders on a shoestring budget, but couldn’t they have applied the same creativity to make a great new movie?
