{"id":364,"date":"2015-06-01T14:37:00","date_gmt":"2015-06-01T18:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/2015\/06\/01\/unearthed-transcript-reveals-the-origins-of-indiana-jones\/"},"modified":"2015-06-01T14:37:00","modified_gmt":"2015-06-01T18:37:00","slug":"unearthed-transcript-reveals-the-origins-of-indiana-jones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/2015\/06\/01\/unearthed-transcript-reveals-the-origins-of-indiana-jones\/","title":{"rendered":"Unearthed transcript reveals the origins of Indiana Jones"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"clear: both;text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.barnesandnoble.com\/blog\/sci-fi-fantasy\/the-1978-spielberglucas-meeting-that-spawned-raiders-of-the-lost-ark\/\" style=\"margin-left: 1em;margin-right: 1em\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" height=\"225\" src=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-KW3PqF89LWA\/VWymYUOpWhI\/AAAAAAAABrg\/Mr8NH3XstXo\/s400\/cobwebs.jpg\" width=\"400\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p>The National Geographic Museum downtown recently opened an exhibit about <i>Indiana Jones<\/i> and the films&#8217; connections to actual history. This had us thinking about our favorite tenured action hero. Coincidentally, a link has been making the rounds revealing how Indy got his start \u2013 and what he might have been in an early draft.<\/p>\n<p>In 1978, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and writer Lawrence Kasdan sat down to discuss who Indiana Jones was and what his films would be like. Barnes &amp; Noble&#8217;s <i>Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog<\/i> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.barnesandnoble.com\/blog\/sci-fi-fantasy\/the-1978-spielberglucas-meeting-that-spawned-raiders-of-the-lost-ark\/\">provides a good summary<\/a> of the most interesting parts of <a href=\"http:\/\/moedred.livejournal.com\/2009\/03\/04\/\">a transcript of that meeting<\/a>, first posted online in 2009. There&#8217;s mentions of scrapped characters, like an elderly mentor for Indiana who previously assumed the mantle of daring renegade archaeologist. Indiana was also very briefly inspired by <i>Columbo<\/i>&#8216;s Peter Falk, and several ideas from the back-and-forth about his adventures ended up in later movies, spinoffs, and media.<\/p>\n<p>(You can also see some of the unfortunately dated politics and language on display when the writers talk about adding &#8220;exotic&#8221; characters. Nearly forty years have passed since this meeting.)<\/p>\n<p>This transcript is an insightful slice of film development that offers insights into how three of the brightest minds in movies conjured such a memorable character. Only the general idea of an archaeologist in serialized adventures was fully formed; the rest needed hours of discussion. The full conversation is worth committing a day to read. And relevant to the exhibit, it shows how the directors and writers connected real history to a fantastical movie setting.<\/p>\n<p>The finished product is, of course, available in the collection (<a href=\"http:\/\/catalog.wrlc.org\/cgi-bin\/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=7004930\">HU DVD 3251<\/a>).\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The National Geographic Museum downtown recently opened an exhibit about Indiana Jones and the films&#8217; connections to actual history. This had us thinking about our favorite tenured action hero. Coincidentally, a link has been making the rounds revealing how Indy got his start \u2013 and what he might have been in an early draft. In [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[212,355],"class_list":["post-364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-links-of-interest","tag-timely-things"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}