As Funny as a Screen Door on a Fridge (In a Nuclear Test)

(Indiana Jones 4 SPOILERS!)

Indiana Jones screenplays are Frankenstein creatures to begin with, be they gags that didn't make it into earlier Lucas or Spielberg movies (the coat-hanger Nazi gag from Raiders is also a deleted scene in 1941), set-pieces from earlier drafts (Temple of Doom's opening bears similarity to a cut sequence from Lawrence Kasdan's third Radiers draft where Indy fought a samurai, and a boat chase from Chris Columbus's rejected 1985 Indiana Jones and the Monkey King was recycled into Last Crusade), or just stupid in-jokes.

But in the early Kingdom of the Crystal Skull sequence when Indy survives a nuclear test blast by climbing into a refrigerator, it seemed like an poke towards to a parochial Spielberg movie: the first Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis draft of Back to the Future. When the time machine was itself still a fridge.

See, in the exclamation mark filled original version, instead of driving a Delorean 88 miles per hour right as lightning struck it to generate a nuclear reaction charge, they drove the fridge out to a nuclear test site and left it in there.

EXT. MOVING TRUCK

The truck barrels along toward the crater as Marty climbs into the back of the truck and throws the switches on the Time Machine!

CONTROL VOICE...9...8...7...

The truck hits the crater!

Marty is thrown from his feet, into the bed of the truck!

The truck lodges into the hole with the nose slightly off kilter from the tower!

Marty climbs to his feet and turns the solar cell back toward the bomb!

CONTROL VOICE...5...4...3...

Marty opens the refrigerator door and climbs in!

CONTROL VOICE...2...1...

Marty slams the refrigerator door shut!

INT. DETONATION CONTROL

TIMEKEEPERDetonate!

Three technicians turn their detonation keys in unison!

EXT. BOMB SITE

DETONATION! An incredible FIREBALL WHITES OUT EVERYTHING for a moment, then recedes into a YELLOW GLOW!

EXT. TRUCK

Brilliant light strikes the power converter!

The urban myth goes that this version was rejected because Universal didn't want kids climbing into fridges. But that strikes me less that a producer of Spielberg's stature could be shot down for an inane product safety thing and more that Zemeckis didn't have his first hit till early 1985's Romancing the Stone. (This draft was early '80s, right after Used Cars.)

I kind of have a theory that this scene's inclusion is revenge for this first draft's original opening:

FADE IN:

EXT. OUTER SPACE

The MOTHER SHIP rises above Devil’s Tower and sails off into space to the strains of John Williams. In a moment we realize that we’re watching the end titles of “Close Encounters”, and then we

PULL BACK TO REVEAL

that the image is on a TV monitor...as we continue PULLING BACK, we discover a bank of video equipment, and “Close Encounters” is being pirated, from 3/4” cassette to VHS and Beta.

INT. VIDEO WORK AREA – LABORATORY – DAY

The video pirate operating this equipment is MARTY McFLY, 17, a good looking kid who has an air of confidence just shy of cockiness.

In that version Doc operated out of a movie theater. He and Marty were friends because Marty pirated movies—including those of Zemeckis/Gale's boss, Spielberg.

But, honestly? I just think the shot of the mushroom cloud in KotCS is just cool. I swear at two points it looks like a skull, with two eye-sockets of demonic light shining out.

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Blast of Silence (Fri.)

See Yourself in Any/Everyone

My brother: "Mom thinks that he [Ethan, my nephew] look like you in this picture."


I'm leaving for Indiana Sunday to give my young doppelganger way too much attention. And maybe some future haircut advice. For example: don't buzzcut your hair for most of your life as a lazy default style.

To quote David Spade: "Buddy, welcome to hell!"

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Right as Rain by George P. Pelecanos

Indiana Jones and the Gimmicky Serial Parody Title

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was getting bad advance Internet reviews before it showed at Cannes and select press screenings today. Our theater held one of those screenings. (I thought the first half hour was the worst Indiana Jones sequel, and the rest was its best.) In celebration of both, I used my fascist hold over the theater's in-between music to play a specific joke on expectations for the movie:

I played John Williams' Phantom Menace score. I thought it was funny.

As I was sitting and waiting for the movie, this conversation happened behind me.

Little Kid: Mommy. They're playing Star Wars music. [x6]
Mother: No, that's Indiana Jones music. [x6]

To have the adult not get the joke but have the kid get the reference without irony? I felt like I was a Blue Sky Studios screenwriter. (Being fair, though, John Williams' Phantom Menace score liberally rips off his Temple of Doom one.)

Recently Viewed:
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Sun.)

Belabor-the-Point's Coming, Hide Your Heart Girl

In the last 24 hours I've

• had to pay $200 to make sure my registration didn't abruptly expire (since IN didn't send me a renew notice),
  
• received a ticket for parking in a handicapped spot
  • at my job
    
  • after having parked there only after business had closed (11:00 p.m.)
    
  • having had the car there for only only 45 minutes before citation
    
  • in a well-lit and near-the-building spot I'd been using for over a year
    
  • (because my car had been broken into last year, and the cops couldn't keep a security guard from getting stabbed, much less patrol the parking lot)
    
  • despite the fact that all management uses the spot (frequently in business hours)
    
  • (because, c'mon!, like normal, I was working there late)
    • (and it's not like chance of theft increases at night or anything!)
• then I dropped my PowerBook, which is now not starting up.
  • (after having literally said earlier in the day, to someone in sympathy at having heard about damage to their computer: "Man, I don't know what I'd do if my computer got busted; my whole life's in my laptop").

And as soon as the computer comes back up, expect a full debriefing, people-who-don't-like-to-see-me-so-worked-up.

In the meantime, I want to open up a topic for comments that's been on my mind. Do I rant too much? Do you just accept it as a part of my personality? Or has it gotten worse? Because, due to that ticket, I yelled so much it caused a friend to leave my presence because she was "scared." I can't believe I'm saying this, but I almost wish Stacey or Dustin had been there to mock me.

Recently Viewed:
Baghead (Thurs.)

To Compensate for Nothing

First off, these are random, untimely links I had set aside to write about, but, I'm afraid, didn't.

• Considering the critical drubbing Speed Racer's gotten (and my still-strong love of the last two Matrix movies), I officially became a card-carrying Warchowski brothers apologist last Wednesday night. I fucking adored the Warchowski's cheesy, earnest, non-campy-but-still-goofy Speed Racer. While the peanut gallery's bitching about how pop and gimmicky the editing style is (in a way very similar to reactions for Ang Lee's Hulk), the complaints insultingly diminish the Eisensteinian and Eisnerian ways they put images together. (I'd die if Frank Miller brought any sequential art editing to his increasingly one-note, monochromatic approach to adapting Will Eisner's Spirit.) Whatever dorky reasons there were for the Warchowskis' to do it are irrelevant—they still managed to push the grammar of film and had fun with it. This stuff should not go ignored and without lauding. And while I've never been a Michael Giacchino fan, the score is goofy, wild and amazing.
  
• Speaking of new adventures in hi-fi filmmaking, this month-old interview about the "stereo filmmaking" going into his first fictional feature in ten years, Avatar, is, as John August wrote, "[a]n example of why James Cameron is the Steve Jobs of filmmakers." Back in the '90s around every article or featurette or bubble-gum label about visual FX cited four major pioneers of recent years: Lucas, Spielberg, Zemeckis, and Cameron. Since then Lucas pushed too much and too misguidedly, Spielberg hasn't pushed, Zemeckis hasn't fully justified his retirement solely into mo-caps animation, and Peter Jackson and the aforementioned Warchowskis' have been added to the list. Meanwhile, Cameron's been MIA; so it makes sense that when he comes back from his Lean-esque decade sabbatical, a freaking cinematic Athena will burst from his head to kick our ears and eye-balls' asses. I admit that reasons to get excited about Cameron's big return are varied ("One friend went from saying 'It's going to be a really expensive cartoon, albeit a very cool one,' to 'It's nothing like his other films... it's very cerebral and the world is so immersive... it's not what I expected, but it’s also not like anything I can reference'") and abound ("I don't know if this will be a good film, great film, awful film, but I can say with absolute certainty that you will see stuff you've never imagined"). But before this interview—despite how much I liked U2 3D (and even acknowledged that Hannah Montana 3D looked kinda cool)—I had trouble giving three shits about 3D. I remember around the time of Spy Kids 3D mocking anyone and everyone around me who was excited for the format ("Were you a fan of odorama, too?"). But, to abate people with less reason to trust him, Cameron dumbs down and explains, a little in a NSFTP (Not Safe For Techno-Phobes) way, how these frame-rates will change everyth—…. I now find myself wanting to go on about frame-rates, the history of frame-rates, this time a friend changed around a shutter fan so 35mm showed at 48 fps, the difference in quality (according to the friend) what the shutter fan changes, explaining what a shutter fan is, 4k, 8k, the long unwritten short story I have planned about an alien whose visual sense doesn't have a persistence of vision and their first viewing of a motion picture, 3D, RealD and other competing formats, focus, focal points in composition, convergence, convergence-as-focus, 3D headaches, projecting, work, and puking. And to quote Tim from the British Office, "…and I've just bored myself." Just read the interview. The man is so articulately prepared to change movies his first salvo thoroughly bitch slaps an oft-quoted Godard maxim. In an aside.
  
• There are plenty of de rigueur reasons to love/hate personality-profiling networks sites, the least of which, for me, involves putting the effort into qualifying your personality into taste lists, only to have the coolness of the site sink while the hipster rats jump ship. (What happened to Friendster? My MySpace was just fine! Facebook has so many cool options and is so addictive! And Goodreads makes me look good!) Still. Who'd've thought that the taste-condensing was the more insidious, evil part? (This is nicely similar to an NY Times link Melissa sent me a month ago about reading tastes and dating.) (I think I ultimately decided that the only thing I should feel unashamed for judging is when someone brags that they never read anything. And, still, that's pushing it.)
  
• Roger Ebert has begun blogging. Since more and more people are blogging (or, at least, writing one post and semi-abandoning said blog), it's been a while before I've been excited that someone else had been brought into the blogging fold. But Ebert is one of the most thoughtful, prolific, plain-spoken, yet articulate writers for anything. (The man's won a Pulitzer, for chrissakes.) Last week he had a fascinatingly nerdy, funny theory about the origins of the 'Net's collective tone. And he's only a few weeks in. If he keeps this up he might replace Neil Gaiman as my favorite blogger.

Now. The other semi-monthly bullshit. A feared, possible testimonial from my future kids (is it odd that it's datelined at the only town my dad's lived in aside from Eville?):

Son Discovers Dad's Welcome Back, Kotter Spec Script While Cleaning Out Attic

WEST LAFAYETTE, IN—While cleaning out his parents' attic Sunday, Mark Norton, 24, stumbled upon a Welcome Back, Kotter spec script...

And, this month's mix.

5/8/08 Mix

1. "Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas Toward Heaven" — Godspeed You! Black Emperor (Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas Towards Heaven)
   
2. "You Spin Me 'Round (Like a Record)" — The Mullets (Sit Down Mamaw)
   
3. "Muscle Museum" — Muse (Showbiz)
   
4. "Smile On" — Mock Orange (Captain Love)
   
5. "Lipstick Vogue" (live) — Elvis Costello & The Attractions (Live at the El Mocambo)
   
6. "Librarian" — My Morning Jacket (Evil Urges)
   
7. "The Empty Page" — Sonic Youth (Murray Street)
   
8. "Salty" — Enon (High Society)
   
9. "Charity, Chastity, Prudence, and Hope" — Hüsker Dü (Warehouse: Songs and Stories)
   
10. "Game of Pricks" (live) — Guided by Voices (Hardcore UFOs: Live at the Wheelchair Races)
    
11. "Heart Throb" — Be Your Own Pet (Get Awkward)
    
12. "The Engine Driver" (live) — Colin Meloy (Colin Meloy Sings Live!)
    
13. "Magic Doors" — Portishead (Third)
    
14. "Anytime" (live) — Neil Finn (7 Worlds Collide: Live at the St. James)
    
15. "In McDonalds" — Burial (Untrue)
    
16. "Lady Shoes" — The Jesus Lizard (Goat)
    
17. "Cath…" — Death Cab for Cutie (Daytrotter Sessions)
    
18. "Superstition" / "Going to Town" (live) — The Afghan Whigs (Live at the Howlin' Wolf)
    
19. "One of These Days" — Pink Floyd (Meddle)
    
20. "Everything I Own" — Bread (Baby I'm-a Want You)
    
21. "Violet Hill" — Coldplay (Viva la Vida or Death and His Friends)

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Baby Mama (Tues.), Redbelt (Wed.), The Life Before Her Eyes, My Blueberry Nights (Sun.), Iron Man (Tues.), The Foot Fist Way (Wed.), Speed Racer (Wed.)
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