pres.umptuo.us

I’d first heard about the Raiders of the Lost Ark adaptation a few years ago. Apparently three 12-year-olds had filmed their own version of the classic film, creating a shot-by-shot remake of the Indiana Jones film which captured their imagination when they first saw it in theaters in 1981. I didn’t think it would ever see the light of day, unless somehow it was leaked onto the internet.

Then the 2006 Newport Beach Film Festival comes around, and I find out it’s being screened with the creators in attendance to share their experience afterwards. Despite the fact that I’d just stopped my daily commute to Newport Beach a couple of months ago, getting a chance to see this film was totally worth the drive.

After their re-creation of the famous intro I just knew the rest of the movie was going to be great. It had fake spiders. It had poison darts. It had a cheesy idol. It had a freakin’ giant boulder.

The movie took them seven years to film, which is amazing considering how hard it is to even get two people to agree to help you make a film “for fun”. But I couldn’t believe they made this film while in high school. They built almost every set from the film, lit a garage on fire for the bar fight, and even had someone go underneath a moving truck and hang off the back with a whip. Insane.

Then again, it makes you realize that only true passion, and love for the film itself, could have crafted something so laborious and without any immediate rewards other than the accomplishment itself.

There were some rumors about a DVD being released about them making the adaptation, but if the movie’s screened in the LA area again, I’m dragging everyone I know to go see it.