Useless Movie Trivia For
Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
Memorable Quotes
Sallah: [to Indy] Asps... very dangerous. You go first.
Belloq: Dr. Jones. Again we see there is nothing you can possess which I cannot take away.
Sallah: [catches date and points to dead monkey] Bad dates.
Brody: The Bible speaks of the Ark leveling mountains and laying waste in entire regions. An Army that carries the Ark before it... is invincible.
Indiana: Marion, don't look at it. Shut your eyes, Marion. Don't look at it, no matter what happens!
Trivia
Tom Selleck was Steven Spielberg's second choice for the role of Indiana Jones. Harrison Ford was his first, but George Lucas objected, since Ford had been in both American Graffiti (1973) and Star Wars (1977). Selleck was not able to take the role because he was committed to "Magnum, P.I." (1980). However, that series did not go into production until Raiders' filming had already wrapped. Selleck was in fact in Hawaii waiting for the series to start as the final scenes to be filmed (the opening sequence) were being shot in Hawaii. "Magnum" did an episode called "Legend of the Lost Art" that parodied "Raiders", complete with hat, whip, booby traps, etc.
When Indy is dragged under and then out behind a moving truck, it's a tribute to Yakima Canutt's similar famous stunt in John Ford's Stagecoach (1939). In fact, it was a stunt that stuntman Terry Leonard had tried to pull off the year before, and failed to do so, on The Legend of the Lone Ranger (1981). He was thrilled at the chance of having another shot at it, but only agreed to do it if his friend & colleague Glenn Randall Jr. was driving. The truck was specially constructed to be higher above the ground than normal so as to allow clearance for Indiana Jones to pass underneath safely. The center of the road was also dug out to allow more clearance. In Great Movie Stunts: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) (TV) we see, on the camera slate, that the camera was set at 20 frames per second instead of the traditional 24 fps; in other words, the shots were done in "fast motion," so the truck was not really moving as fast as depicted on screen. Harrison Ford was actually dragged behind the truck for some of the shots, badly bruising his ribs.
For the DVD release, over 970,000 frames were cleaned up by Lowry Digital Images, the same company that cleaned up Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), North by Northwest (1959) and Sunset Blvd. (1950) for DVD.
To achieve the sound of thousands of snakes slithering, sound designer Ben Burtt stuck his fingers into a cheese casserole. This was augmented by applying wet sponges to the rubber on a skateboard.
1981's biggest grossing film.
Philip Kaufman shares story credit with George Lucas because they originally dreamed up the film together in the 1970's. Reportedly, it was Kaufman's idea to pursue the Lost Ark of the Covenant. Originally, Kaufman was going to direct.
Indy's battered leather jacket was actually brand new and had to be artificially aged by the costume department. There were 10 jackets for general wear and tear and stunt purposes.
Indiana Jones's hat came from the famous Herbert Johnson hat shop in Saville Row, London. The hat was the shop's Australian model. On the Bonus Features DVD, costume designer Deborah Nadoolman said that in order to properly age the hat, she grabbed and twisted the hat, then she and Harrison Ford both sat on it, and it eventually looked like "a very lived-in and well-loved" hat.
Alfred Molina's screen debut. His first scene on his first day of filming involved being covered with tarantulas.
The giant boulder that chases after Indiana Jones at the start of the film was made of fiberglass. On the Bonus Features DVD, sound designer Ben Burtt said that in order to get the proper sound effects for the giant boulder, he and the sound crew tried pushing boulders down a hill, but the sounds they were getting weren't up to par with what they were looking for, and later that day, as they were leaving in a Honda Civic that they coasted down a gravel embankment, Burtt noticed that the sound was just what they were looking for, so he grabbed a microphone and held it near one of the Civic's rear tires to record the effect.
The out-of-control airplane actually ran over Harrison Ford's knee, tearing his ligaments. Rather than submit to Tunisian health care, Ford had his knee wrapped in ice and carried on.
Three different stunt men were used to double for Harrison Ford: Vic Armstrong when riding the horse; Martin Grace at the falling statue and Terry Leonard when pulled behind the truck.
Most of the body blows you hear were created by hitting a pile of leather jackets with a baseball bat.
To create the sound of the heavy lid of the Ark being slid open, sound designer Ben Burtt simply recorded him moving the lid of his toilet cistern at home.
The original name of the lead character in the script was Indiana Smith. His name was changed to Jones on the first day of production.
The spirit effects at the climax were achieved by shooting mannequins underwater in slow motion through a fuzzy lens to achieve an ethereal quality.
During filming in Tunisia, nearly everyone in the cast and crew got sick, except director Steven Spielberg. It is thought that he avoided illness by eating only the food he'd brought with him: cans and cans of Spaghetti-O's.
The building used for one of the exterior shots of the university is the large music conservatory on the campus of The University of the Pacific in Stockton, California.
An early draft of the script had Indy traveling to Shanghai to recover a piece of the Staff of Ra. During his escape from the museum where it was housed, he sheltered from machine gun fire behind a giant rolling gong. Also in the same script, Indy and Marion flee the chaos caused by the opening of the Ark in a wild mine-cart chase sequence. Both of these scenes were cut from the script, but ended up in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984).
Director Steven Spielberg was quoted as saying: "I made it as a B-movie... I didn't see the film as anything more than a better made version of the Republic serials."
The crate in which the Ark is placed at the end of the movie has the number 9906753.
Indiana Jones' kangaroo-hide bull whip was sold in December, 1999 at Christie's auction house in London for $43,000. His jacket and hat are on display at the Smithsonian.
George Lucas made what was at the time an unusual deal for this film. The studio financed the film's entire $20-million budget. In exchange, Lucas would own over 40% of the film and collect almost half of the profits after the studio grossed a certain amount. It turned out to be a very lucrative deal for Lucas. Paramount executive Michael Eisner said that he felt the script for this film was the best he had ever read.
In the submarine pen, the German who comes upon Indiana says, in German, "Good day" "Tired? Why do you sleep? Wash yourself! And straighten your shirt, so that you don't look like a pig at your court martial..." "Stand up... straight" He is cut off by Indiana's punch.
The truck used in the chase scene from the excavation is actually a WWII 2 1/2 ton GMC CCKW-353, with the hood and cab converted to approximate a pre-war Mercedes truck.
The floatplane in the opening sequence has the registration prefix "OB-", which indicates that the action takes place in Peru.
The instructions for the construction of the Ark are found in Exodus 25:10. The clothing that Belloq wears while acting as a high priest during the ceremony at the end is found beginning in Exodus chapter 28.
Harrison Ford actually outran the boulder in the opening sequence. Because the scene was shot twice from five different angles, he had to outrun it ten times. Ford's stumble in the scene was deemed to look authentic and was left in.
Renowned British wrestler Pat Roach gets killed twice in this film - once as a giant Sherpa left in the burning Nepalese bar and once as the German mechanic chewed up by the plane's propeller.
Steven Spielberg and Melissa Mathison wrote a script during shooting breaks on the location of this film. Mathison was there to visit her husband, Harrison Ford and Spielberg dictated to her a story idea he had; that script was eventually called E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982).
The famous scene in which Indy shoots a marauding and flamboyant swordsman was not in the original script. Harrison Ford was supposed to use his whip to get the swords out of his attacker's hands, but the food poisoning he and the rest of the crew had gotten made him too sick to perform the stunt. After several unsuccessful tries, Ford suggested "shooting the sucker." Steven Spielberg immediately took up the idea and the scene was successfully filmed.
While filming the snakes scenes inside the Well of the Souls, First Assistant Director David Tomblin at one point had a python bite his hand and latch on without letting go. Tomblin then calmly asked someone to grab the python (still attached to Tomblin's hand) by the tail and whip it, so that the snap would send a wave up the snake's body and force it to let go. A stage hand did just that and the python released its bite from Tomblin's hand. Tomblin then got medical attention on his hand and the python itself was not injured.
According to the novelization, the writing on the headpiece of the Staff of Ra included a specific warning not to look into the Ark. This is why Indy and Marion survive the conflagration at the end simply by closing their eyes. It may be an allusion to 1 Samuel 6:19, where God "smote" the men of Beth Shemesh for looking into the Ark.
The submarine pen on the island where the Ark is taken and finally opened is not a set, but in fact an actual German U-Boat pen left over from World War II in La Rochelle, France. Producer Robert Watts was amazed at how preserved the submarine pen was (even down to the graffiti on the walls) that he described it as "a actual set in existence".
Goofs
Continuity: Amount of hair in Marion's gag in the tent.
Continuity: In the scene in Marion's bar, when Indiana ducks behind a corner, the type of pistol he is shooting changes with every cut.
Continuity: Blood on the truck windshield when Indy is shot in the shoulder.
Anachronisms: The Afrika Korps didn't exist until 1941.
Marion is seen lighting a cigarette with what appears to be a butane, flint-ignition lighter (as she is talking to Toht at her bar in Nepal) - while the butane lighter was invented during the 1930s, it did not become a household item until the latter half of the 20th century and it would have been unlikely to find one in Nepal in 1936, let alone in the hands of a presumably penniless bar owner.
Anachronisms: Map of Indy's plane route includes Jordan, which before 1949 was known as Transjordan.
Continuity: During the gunfight in Marion's bar in Tibet, Indy's pistol changes from a Colt 45 revolver, to a Colt 45 Automatic, most obvious when the automatic's slide holds back after the last round is fired.
When Indy and Marion push the large heavy stone block away to escape from the pit, you can see the shadow of it bouncing weightlessly on the ground below.
When Sallah's diggers first open the tomb, there is a distinct rush of air, which is common when sealed areas are opened to fresh air. But the tomb was not a sealed chamber because there were live snakes inside. Also, when Indy and Marion break out through the burial vault, they only have to displace one loose stone block - further proof that the Ark was not in a sealed chamber.
Box Office Info In USA
Budget: $18,000,000
Opening Weekend $8,305,823
Gross $230,329,080
Filming Dates: June 23, 1980 - October 1980
Filming Locations
Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, England, UK
Bushey, Hertfordshire, England, UK
EMI Elstree Studios, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, England, UK (studio)
France
Kairouan, Tunisia
Kaua'i, Hawaii, USA
La Pallice, La Rochelle, Charente-Maritime, France (WW2 German submarine base)
La Rochelle, Charente-Maritime, France
Rickmansworth Masonic School for Girls, Chorleywood Road, Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, England, UK (Barnett College)
Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, England, UK
San Francisco, California, USA(as Washington DC)
San Rafael, California, USA(Indiana Jones' house exterior)
Sedala, Tunisia
Sidi Bouhlel, Tozeur, Tunisia (city of Cairo)
Sousse, Tunisia
Stockton, California, USA
Tozeur, Tunisia
University of the Pacific, Stockton, California, USA