Legacy and Final Thoughts

Hello and welcome back to What went Wrong, your favorite podcast full stop that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone a screaming sequel that left its impact on the rating system and on Chris's heart, perhaps, as we learned in one of our more recent episodes. I'm one of your hosts, Lizzy Bassett here as always with Chris Winterbaowerer and Chris What movie do you have for us today? Well, the heart ripping joke was right there for the take. I'm sorry You didn't do it. We're gonna move on. in Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom, The feel Bad movie of nineteen eighty four. I'll save my thoughts for a moment. This is Squel mononth if you guys didn't know. We did a poll in the fall and we offered a number of sequels to films that we've covered and the top two winners were the Empire Strikes Back and Temple of Doom. second darker entries into the respective Lucas and Spielbergian tririlogies, George Lucas obviously spanning both. So Lizzie, I have to ask you Are your thoughts on Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom? Thoughts as a child and thoughts as a grown adult person? I believe I've seen this, although upon rewatching it for the podcast, I was less certain that I have actually sat down and watched the whole thing prior to now. I grew up on Raiders of the Lost Arc for sure. That's the one that I remember. I love that movie seex criminal boat, Indiana Jones aside. this one, as I was watching it, I was like, okay, I remember this image, I remember this sequence. I'm sure I watched clips of it on TV all to say, I don't think I'd ever actually sat down and watched this whole thing I have a lot of thoughts and a lot of feelings. Not unlike Kate Capshaw, at least in the feelings department, maybe not the thoughts. There's almost no plot to this movie. There's basically no character motivation with the potential exception of the movie's only hero played by Ki Hui Kwuan, but it starts at eleven and it stays there for two hours. There's just almost no variation to it. It's very fun. I certainly enjoyed watching it I'm so sorry, Kate Capsha, I know that you are a wonderful actress, performer, artist, wife to Stehven Spielberg. I find her borderline unwatchable in this movie. She just screeches her way through the whole thing and it's so slapsticky and weird. and I don't know why she's there other than that she like can't go anywhere else, which isn't really that fun. And it's also like she probably could go somewhere else if she just set her mind to it. So I guess where I stood with this is that the first Indiana Jones felt so epic, both on, you know the fun world traveling scale, but also on what was at stake for the characters and what they were trying to get. And I don't think this movie He has that really? especially because Sort Round does not continue beyond this movie. If this had been kind of his entry into the franchise and then that character you know continues on as sort of Indiana Jones' true love in some ways, which is kind of how they set him up in this movie, which I really like, then I would be more on board for it. But they don't. It kind of just goes Nowhere F stunts aside. So I guess that's my review of this. It's very fun. There's almost no substance. There's just nothing going on here, really. So that's it, that's my review. Chris, what about you? So I did see this movie a lot as a kid And I think because it felt very taboo and provocative and as we'll talk about with the rating system, this movie felt far more graphic and violent than the first movie ever ever. I actually don't think it is. I think a lot of that has to do with if you're seeing Nazis melt, there is a different feeling evoked than seeing an innocent man's heart being ripped out of his chest So I really liked this movie as a kid. It was I don't know if it was my favorite Indiana Jones, but it's one we kind of watched over and over again in large part because as a young kid, seeing Kihui Kuan as short round was really exciting because here was a kid hero with Indiana Jones. He's the best part of this movie. Yeah, and there was like a very fun wish fulfillment element of it where you think, wow, I could be Indiana Jones' sidekick that I really liked. hadn't seen it in a while reewatched it. I think this movie is on the one hand, an extremely well crafted roller coaster ride. That's basically what it is. It's just getting you from set piece to set piece. I stand by, I think the first fifteen minutes are pretty outstanding I don't agree with you on Kate Capshaw. I'm one of the few people. I like Kate Capsha in this movie quite a bit. I don't mind Willie Scott. I feel like the as we'll talk Judy Holiday thing that she's doing is totally fine with me. It's so absurd, but I'm kind of in for it. And yet, this movie has all sorts of weird western lens sort of exaggerations, fictionalizations Straight up blasphemy when it comes to presenting, obviously Indian culture and we will dive into that specifically from the perspective of folks from that culture later on in this project. So it's a movie that feels very retrograde in many ways. I don't think it's aged as well as the other Indiana Jones films have in very specific ways. And yet I stand by, I still love watching Kihui Kwan in this movie. I think Harrison Ford is very good embracing his darkness in this movie. He's totally watchable. I love Harrison Ford. He's very fun I think he's substantially more fun to watch in the first movie, perhaps because he's not on quite as sure footing. And I know Indiana Jones as a character is, you know, very confident in himself, but there was something really alive about watching Harrison Ford find it in Raiders of the Lost Arc and you know, moments like the guy with the swords and then Harrison Ford just shoots him, which you know famously we know was a production issue. But moments like that, like unexpected moments like that I found very lacking in this movie.ure. All right, well, let's dive in because we'll get into all the problems and all the ways in which this movie fell short for a lot of audience members at the time, and a lot of folks were disappointed in both Spielberg and Lucas, and we'll talk about that So your point about short round specifically, the way in which this movie is so different from the Empire strikes Back, structurally is that this is technically a prequel. So this exists one year prior to Raiders of the Lost Stark. The chronology, if anybody's unfamiliar. So the Raiders of the Lost Stark, I believe part of this choice was Lucas not wanting to continue with the Nazi storyline. And so if you were to do it one year Later, in theory, the Nazi threat has only grown on the world stage, so better to do it one year prior before Iy gets involved with the Nazis. And it's interesting because, you know, listen, if you want a safe villain, it's a Nazi every time and they work great in the first movie. To your point, I think the villain element of this movie really doesn't work super well. I agree. Well, I think it's the weakest part of this movie by far. It's the weakest slash, most racist part of this movie by far And I have a pitch. I was gonna ask you, who would you have made the villain? There's an easy pitch, but let's save it. Okay. And it's actually a pitch I think they could have done. Meaning it's easy to always pitch movies from the past when there were different value systems, et cetera. Is it a communist? No, but I actually think there was a pitch available to them maybe, and you can tell me if you agree or disagree, and we'll go from there. Okay Last thing, this movie requires an enormous suspension of disbelief in the fact that somehow Wh part Honestly, it's not the heart ripping out of the chest. No. It's the fact that everyone in this tiny rural town in India speaks English. Why? Why would literally everyone speak English? Come on like use subtitles anyway. And how does Harrison Ford know about their stone? Whatever. It's just you have to make so many leaps so fast to get to where they're going in this movie and it's fine. I did it. It's just it doesn't feel as smart as Raiders of the Lost Arc did to me. Also, it's the Ark of the Cvenant. We all know what it is. I don't know what the fuck this stone is anyway, continue Yeah, I think that they obviously the Ark of the coovenant famously pitched by Philip Kaufman in the original film as the McGuffin, and then they return to religious iconography with the Holy Grail in the third film and they returned to Nazis as well. So yeah, stick with that. Yeah, they found the formula. they were trying to mix it up in this movie. make it the Holy Grail. come on guys. Don't disagree with you, but let's get into the why becausecause they were trying to do something very specific with this movie. I think in some ways it's successful. in many ways it's not. Is it promote a roller coaster? Well, and there's some specific references cinematically and in terms of film history that we need to talk about as well Before we dive in, of course, the details. Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom is an action adventure film, ostensibly, directed by Steven Spielberg. It is the second entry into the ongoing Indiana Jones series. It was penned by screenwriting duo and married couple, Gloria Katz and Willard Hike, who we have discussed on the Howard the Duck episode. They're offt collaborators with George Lucas It was based on a story by George Lucas, although I think there was input from a lot of folks on the story. And it was produced by Lucas, Robert Watts, Frank Marshall, and Kathleen Kennedy. It stars, of course, Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, Kate Capshaw as Willie Scottes, as Lungs, as we'll call her Kihui Kwan as Short Round, Amris Puri as Molaram, Roshan Seth as Chatar Lal, and many, many more. It was released in the United States on may twenty third, nineteen eighty four after a premiere on may eighth in Westwood, California. It was produced by Lucas Film distributed by Paramount Pictures in the IMDB logline Reads In nineteen thirty five, Indiana Jones is tasked by Indian villagers with reclaiming a sacred stone stolen from them by a secret cult Lizzy shaking her head. She disagrees or she does not approve. I don't approve. A child trafficking cult, which I guess is a real cult except I don't think they were child trafficking. Anyway, continue. Sources for today's episode include but are not limited to Indiana Jones Making the tririlogy, the two thousand three documentary The Making of Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom, officialollectors's Eedition, the nineteen eighty four Making of Magazine Temple of Doom and Oral History published in twenty twelve by Empire, The complete making of Indiana Jones by JW. Rinsler and many more articles retrospectives in interviews with those involved in the film. So Lizzy. question remains. How did the two men behind the most successful, family friendly four quQuadrant films of all time? Yeah, ET and Star Wars make the feel bad blockbuster of the nineteen eighties and what went wrong So to tell the story of the Temple of Doom, the darkest entry in the Jones franchise, we need to head back to an unexpectedly dark moment for our heroes or antiheroes. It's June of nineteen eighty one, and Steven Spielberg and George Lucas are back in Hawaii as they are off to return whenever they have a movie that's about to be released. and they're waiting to see how Raiders of the Lost Arc will be received Do well, according to Lucas, Spielberg is on the hook for two more. Not contractually, but Lucas made him promise that if he directed one, he would direct a second and third because Lucas claimed that he had three stories in mind Spielberg agreed and now they waited on the verdict from audiences and they engaged in a superstitious tradition. They built a sandcastle and they waited to see how long it would take the waves to destroy it. And this time it lasts a pretty long time. and they think this is a sign. Raiders is going to work openpening for Raiders of the Lost Arc was not quite as strong as they were hoping. made eight point three million dollars in its first weekend Spielberg later said that he thought they'd failed. And I think he was just a bit sensitive because do you remember what movie he directed before Raiders of the Lost Arc ninet one. That's right, which seemed to prove that Hollywood's golden boy who had done jaws and then close encounters of the third kind was fallible Then something wonderful happened Nothing Raiders of the Lost Dark held steady in its second weekend at eight million dollars. And it was back atop the box office in its sixth weekend and it only dipped to six point four million dollars, which is less than a twenty percent dip across six weekends. Yeah. Nowadays, if your movie dips only twenty percent from weekend one to weekend two, that would be a miracle. This is over six weeks It spent most of the following nine weeks as the number one film in the country, forty weeks in the top ten. As you mentioned, Lizzie, very fun ride of a movie. I think people were enamored with Indiana Jones. And by October, it had become Paramount's biggest movie ever passing Greece. Oh, wow It was in theaters for ten months, brought in over two hundred million dollars, and was the highest grossing film of nineteen eighty one People couldn't get enough of it. Pulpie, throwback, action, archaeologist, adventurer ripped from the serials of George Lucas's youth, Marian Ravenwood. Mbe she was a little too young, but they didn't really focus on that in the movie, thank God. The pair didn't have much time to celebrate because they were both extremely busy Spielberg's producing pololtergeist, he's directing ET, and Lucas is writing and prodroducing Return of the Jedi And the three stories Lucas said he had in mind for Indiana Jones, turnurns out that maybe wasn't entirely accurate. And he actually only had one idea for Indiana Jones. I feel like that's the story of George Lucas. These aren't the droids you're looking for. That's just him constantly is trying to like Jedi mind shrike his collaborators, I feel like. Well, it works. It does. So he doesn't have a script. He doesn't have a story, but he has an idea The next Indiana Jones is going to be dark. In the same way that the Empire Strikesack was the Dark seconde chapter of Star Wars. I'm so confused because the end result isn't really. The end result feels more like a cartoon than Raiders of the Lost Ark does. Raiders of the Lost Ark feels darker to me, maybe because of the emotional trajectory of it. I would argue Temple of Doom is far darker I guess there's child tra heart ripping out and it's just, I don't care, maybe is the problem. Like Indiana Jones teechnically becomes evil during Temple of Doom and slap short round across the fil. thirty seconds. I'm just saying if you're a child, that's very shocking to see us, you know, as a youngster. He's in very goodape, H lovely arms. He's shirtless when he's evil, I should specify. Let's talk about that. So here's the way Spielberg remembers it. My job and my challenge was to balance the dark side of this Indiana Jones saga with as much comedy as I could afford Now, it does seem like George was the one pushing for the darker, more morally ambiguous version of Indie, which I like done. If you remember our discussions of the earlier development meetings between Spielberg Castden and Lucas, which you guys can read a transcript of online, it always felt like George was pushing for the more debonaire, morally ambiguous James Bond sex criminal Indiana Jokes Now, Lucas remembers things a little bit differently because Lucas and Spielberg were both in a pretty bad mood. Quote, Part of it was I was going through a divorce. Stehven had just broken up and we were not in a good mood. So we decided on something a little more edgy. To be clear, he had not yet gotten divorced, but things were very strrained with Marcia Lucas and she would privately ask him for a divorce in mid nineteen eighty two Spielberg was on and off again with actress Amy Irving. So according to Lucas, this is a f a joker fleiadeeu situation. Great. Okay, his first idea. Kind of fun is to set the movie in a haunted castle in Scotland It's just rocky horror picture show. It is yeah. Indiana Jones. Okay. Spielberg says, I just made poltergeist. I don't really wantan to do a ghost Indiana Jones movie. And so Luas says, Okay, okay, let's move the story to Asia. We're gonna open it in China and then move it to India along the way. Okay Indy would recover something stolen from a village and then he decides whether or not to give it back. and he's gonna be in a terrible horrible, no good, very bad movie the entire time And Lucas says this is a great story, but I don't want to write it. We need to hire a writer. And Lizzie, who would be the obvious choice to write this script? Lawce Casten. Lawce Casten, the scribe of Raiders. Although again, doue credit to Philip Kaufman for coming up with the Ark of the Covenant McGuffin. Go back to that. How about the shhroud of Turin? It's gott to be able to do something, I don't know. That's right Hasnan, it seems, could sense that the vibes were off with this one from the beginning. And this is from the man who'd just written the Darkest Star War, But this movie was just too dark for him Star Wer? Yes, as he later put it, I didn't want to be associated with Temple of Doom. I just thought it was horrible. It's so mean, There's nothing pleasant about it. Okay, I agree. I think Temple of Doom represents a chaotic period in both Spielberg and Lucas' lives, and the movie is very ugly and mean spirited And George said, Well, shut up, Lawrence. G away. So he reached out to two writers he'd worked with many times, Willard Hike and Gloria Katz. Now Lizzie, you made a bit of a face when I said Howard the Duck, but I will remind you. Hike and Kats were Oscar nominated for their work penning American graffiti, George Lucas' first foray into human emotions And they'd done polishing and dialogue work on the first Star Wars. These are two very accomplished writers. I know. It's just the duck condoms and the duck breasts. It's a lot to move past. I don't know if I could have done better. I'm just gonna say. like the source material Who knows? They have a project in deevelopment Hell with George Lucas, the Radioand Murders, which would get made in the early to mid nineteen nineties. But writing an Indiana Jones movie with Steven Spielberg to direct, this is as close to a sure thing, I feel as a screenwriter could imagine. And they had a funny history of almost working with Steven Spielberg. The first time, Steven Spielberg had asked them to adapt a book called Flushed withith Pride about Thomas Krapper who invented the toilet, supposedly. So they wrote a treatment, they sent it to Spielberg. He said, this is great. Let me send it to my agent. And then they hear nothing. And finally, they call Stehven and they say, Stephven, what happened to Thomas Krapper? And he said, Oh, my agent told me that if this is the kind of film I want to make, he doesn't want to represent me. Oh No So that project does not come to fruition. They were looking for a director for their follow up to American graffiti, lucky Lady for Fox, and they think, guysuys, we should hire Steven Spielberg. They tell the producer, go watch Sugar Lland Express. It's Spielberg's theatrical debut. Fox digs it, they meet Spielberg and he says, I'd love to make it, but I'm on the hook to make this shark movie. I wish I could do it. I wish I could get out of it. and of course that becomes Jaws The third time they go to lunch with Spielberg, and Spielberg says, I want to do a movie about what would really happen if a spaceship landed on La Sienga. and hiking cats are like I don't know about that, Stehven. so they basically pass and that becomes close encounters of the third kind. Yeah. Back to Temple of Doom, whichich at this point is called Temple of Death L.ust you needed to spend a little bit more time in Hawaii on this one. So Hike and Kats didn't just know Lucas and Spielberg, they weren't just Oscar nominated writers. According to them, they were very interested in Indian culture, which is not super apparent from the finished film, but more on that later. So in May of nineteen eighty two, Hike Kats Spielberg and Lucas gather at the Jedi Council, I mean, Skywalker Ranch for four days of story conferences And for Ion cats, they're saying this is a dream. There's no story, but there's also no studio. Theyve worked on projects where there's you know twenty five people are around a table and you're voting on whether or not to push things forward. In this instance, quote, Stehven and George just let you do your own thing. And they're not starting completely from scratch. So if you guys are fans of the An Janna Jones franchise, I'm sure you know this already, but this story features a number of elements That had been developed for raaiders, but ultimately cut from that film. And we talked about this in our episode years ago, Lizzie on Raiders, but an airplane raft escape, a mini tsunami created by giant vats of water, a mine cart chase, a big fight in Shanghai. Where does the vat of water come from? Why is it there? Why do we not see it until they dump it out into the mine shafts I feel like they built it, forgot about it, and then Stehven said, Ohh, oh, wait We should shoot that. It did it. By Spielbergian standards, it's perhaps not that well established. Let's say not established at all. Reference though, I mean, obviously they're pulling material that was exised from the first film, but what they're really doing is pulling a lot of inspiration from a controversial, although somewhat celebrated nineteen thirty nine film called Gungad Din. Oh, Lizzie, have you ever seen Ggad Din before? I have not seen it, but I am familiar with what it is. Yeah, George Stevens directed. I know you're going cover a film of his soon, probablyroably most famous for Place in the Sun, Shane, Giant. It's based on Rudyard Kipling's poem of the same name. It's set in India. Rudyard Kipling, a famously not racist man. So Rudyard Kipling, who features into the third act of this movie. It stars Carry Gant, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Victor McLaughlin It is It's so similar to Temple of Doom, not just in the fact that Temple of Doom pulls liberally from this movie, including a rope bridge that the characters nearly fall off. The big gong at the beginning of the film is in Temple of Doom is clearly a reference to the gong that is used at the beginning of Gunadin to do the credit sequence. The Tuggie Colt and the worship of Kali, those are the antagonists in Ggadin and they are the antagonists in this movie. Tell me if I'm wrong, that a real The tuggy cult is real, right? Not in the way that we see it in this movie, but it did exist in the nineteenth century. Kind of. Let's wait for a second and get to it. Okay, okay. So it's interesting. The way that Gunad Din presents it, there is a title card that says, those portions of this picture dealing with the worship of the goddess Kali are based in historic fact, Not exactly, but we will dive into that in a moment Again, you just see so many influences here. The whipping of Indiana Jones by the Dougie Colt in this instance, there's a snake pit in this movie that feels like it influenced the first film. There's many hijinks with elephants, the secret ct location being in one of these amazing, beautiful Indian palaces. There's so much pulled from this movie. Also this movie is clearly the influence for something like Three Kings by David O' Russell about Three British soldiers who are also kind of soldiers of fortune who stumble their way into a situation where they're in conflict with this quote thuggy Colt. And then there's a water bearing character, an Indian man it's called a Beastie, whose name is Gunadin, who's obviously played by a white person and brown face in this instance. certainly. He's the classic sort of the naive foreign born character who strives to achieve the moral goals of the British and then like proves their own moral code to them by dying at the end of the film. Think like Queelck and Galaxy Quest, for example. That's what the poem's about as well. The movie, it's entertaining. It's got some amazing set pieces, some amazing cinematography. and Tonally, it's a bit of a mess in the same way that Temple of Doom is. It just goes all over the place. It's a comedy, it's an action movie, you know Cerry Grants the only person who seems to know what he's in. He is just doing the shell oil, you know this sort of thing the whole time. Man, I love Cerry Grant. I don't think I've ever seen a movie with Cerry Grant in it where even if the movie is an absolute pile of shit, he is so confident in himself and having a good time, he holds it down every time. Yeah. By the way, I don't think Kunin is a pile of shit. It is in some senses The review I read that I really agreed with was it is classic Hollywood at its both most seductive and pernicious. I thought that was a great way of describing it Throughout this process, aside from lifting everything from Gunadin, they decideed to lift from other movies they're working on. So the opening musical numers. I loved that. I love it. That's why I like the first fifteen minutes so much. first fifteen minutes are great. Yeah. So Lucas suggested this, lifting it from radioand murders. So again, they are just moving so quickly for this project that they are just pulling every piece of available material that they can from other references that they already know They flesh out the Sankara stones, which are fictional, the releligious cult, more on that later. and the character of Willie Scott, Okay, Lizzy. Who else would it make sense to theoretically maybe bring back for this movie were it not the fact that it was a prequel? Karen Allen. Exactly. Karen Allen to play Marian Ravenwood. But because it's said a year before the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark and it's set up that it's been years since Iy seen Marian Ravenwood in Raiders of the Lost Ark, you can't really bring her back Plus, George Lucas wanted Indiana Jones to be a playboy sex criminal like James Bond, so he figured we should have a different female lead in each movie. Enter Willie Scott. I don't like that. Again, I think what actually works really well about Indiana Jones is that he does have emotional connections to these people, and then they just keep cutting them off. Like he has a real emotional connection to Marion Ravenwood. He has a real emotional connection to Short Round And they just cut him off at the knees every time, and I don't really understand why. 'causeuse Harrison Ford is really good at that. Yeah, it's George Lucas, I think. George Las was not like emotal connection. I understood. So Billy Scott, a quote Judy Holiday type character who, like Indiana was named after a dog, Spielberg's dog in this instance, whose name was Willie. For other characters, they lifted the names of Indian painters, including Mola Ram, who was a famous seventeenth century painter who definitely did not remove the beating hearts from people's chest. As far as you know, right According to one source, George Lucas also pitched, quote, a virginal young princess. There were no takers for that idea, so they came up and said with a young boy, they decided to call him short round, which is the name of the child sidekick in the low budget Korean war film, the steel helelmet, and again, also the name of Hike and Kats's Dg Short round leads to another idea about a young Maharaja, and then finally, they add in the story of kidnapped children Now, regardless of the order of operations, it's again just more and more pastiche. They're pulling from Village of the Damned, for example, when they're making this. You're putting hats on turbes here guys. So they need something to keep the audience engaged while explaining evil cult, Hike and Cats pitch, a Tiger hunt. And Spielberg says, there's no way I'm going to stay in India long enough to shoot a tiger hunt. Little did you know he's not going to actually shoot in India at all They land on the very controversial dinner scene instead According to Hyikeke, he and Kats were concerned about some of these story elements. Quote, We told George, We know a lot of Indians, we've been to India. I don't think they're going to think this is really so cool. Do you think you're going to have trouble shooting there? And he said, Are you kidding? It's me and Steve Again, to be clear, this is a very dark movie that's blending some real elements of Indian culture, at least words, with heavy stereotypes, tropes, Western fictionalizations, and outright lies. Well, maybe we should explain a little bit of what you're seeing in the dinner sequence.ureust in case anybody doesn't remember. So for context, this is a scene in which the esteemed guests at Pangcot Palace of the Maharaja, which features an emissary, I shall say Roshan Seth Chataral, he's presented as a British PhD emissary for this Maharaja, serves like Beetles to suck the guts out of, eyeball soup, chilled monkey brains, live eels cut out of a dead snake To be clear, this isn't a country that has a deeply vegetarian lineage to it. I believe almost forty percent of India is vegetarian and over eighty percent limit meat consumption. Also some of the most delicious food you could poss Yes. Exactly. as a vegetarian. huge fan of Indian food. So accccording to Hyike, though, Steve wanted to do a very dark movie. This was going to be his nightmare movie Spielberg later said, We all collaborated together in the screenplay, so it wasn't like I was on the outside under protest, but it really went against my nature in the eighties. I have a really hard time figuring out if Spielberg's doing revisionist history with this movie or if he really was against a lot of these ideas and they were more coming from Lucas. I believe him just because obviously Steven Spielberg has covered a lot of supernatural things, but like even if you look at something like Jaws, there is an attention to realism and naturalism. And I think that that's the case across Even something like ET, even though I know it's, you know fantastical, I believe him that this may have urked him So hk and cats go back to LA to write and they get a five hundred page transcript of their conversations with Lucas and Spielberg in the mail. and Lucas says get moving because he is afraid that they are going to lose Steven Spielberg Hiking cats have both said that Lucas pressured them to finish it as quickly as possible so Spielberg wouldn't be able to back out. And according to one secondary source, Spielberg said at the time that he was considering just co producing the movie with Lucas and not directing it Spielberg later said he had a lot of concerns about making a sequel. He didn't know if he could top the first one, Could he make it different enough to be creatively satisfying and yet similar enough to attract the same audience? And there's another motivating factor for Hi and Kats, which is that Kats is now pregnant So they write the first draft in six weeks. They turn it in at the top of august nineteen eighty two. They turn around to rewrite in mid September Debie Feine, a researcher at Lucas Film, noted a bunch of potential problems, quote, The Maharaja would not eat monkey brain. The torture scenes are very violent. and apparently Steven Spielberg loved it. Hike later said, Steven was amazed. He couldn't get out of it because we did it so fast. Now, to be clear, Lucas's fears about Spielberg dropping out were well founded. He'd followed up Raiders of the Lost Drark with ET the Extraterrestrial. Released in June of nineteen eighty two, it quickly became the highest grossing film of all time. Lizzie, how would you describe the tone of ET as it relates to Temple of Doom I'd say they're on either side of the monkey brain from each other. ET is very much geared towards families, children. You know, at its heart, it has the quest to do the right thing. It has, you know, the quest to find your home and your family and the importance of emotional connection and Temple of Doom It justust kind of throws all that out into the crocodile river. I did like the crocodile Death Rolls, though, that was good. A L lot of cuts to crocodile Death Rolls at the end of this film. Yeah, I agree. They were good. I was glad they included that. In addition, Spielberg's name was also associated with some darkness and an onset tragedy that we've discussed at length on this podcast. Twilight Zone, the movie. That's right In April of nineteen eighty two, two months before ET hit Theaters, Spielberg officially agreed to co produce and co direct Twilight Zone the movie with his friend, director John Landis Be Spielberg shot his segment, Kick the Can, which is very Spielbergian and is the one upbeat segment of the four different components of the Twilight Zone movie. There was a horrible and aavoidable onset accident On july twenty third, nineteen eighty two, actor Vic Morrow and two young children who were hired illegally, Mica Din Lee and Renee SXhin Chen were killed on John Landis' set. A dangerous helicopter stunt resulted in a crash that killed all three performers. The movie was obviously closely associated with Spielberg's name One of the crew did claim that Spielberg was on set the night of the accident. He told federal investigators he was never at the Indian Dunes location of Twilight Zone on the night of the accident or at any other time. Yeah, And if I remember, because we've covered this in a two part episode from a couple years ago, as far as I remember from our research, there doesn't seem to be any indication that he was there the night of. He was never directly questioned. He never testified in any of the wrongful death suits that related to the accident, and he later said that nineteen eighty two mixed the best, ET with the worst the Twilight Zone of his career And he was about to embark on arguably the most controversial film of his career so far as the Sole director. But before he could They needed to find somewhere to shoot Now Lizzy Could you imagine some problems trying to get China or India to allow you to film this movie there? The racial insensitivities particularly towards the Indian culture So the script is set both to China and India, so producer Robert Watts figured they should shoot in India and China. The Chinese government passed, and the Indian government didn't love the scripts. So Robert Watts said he tried to compromise and set the movie quote in a little principality on the border of India, so it wasn't actually India, end quote, But there were bigger, more fundamental problems that you've pointed out The government reportedly wanted Final cut and asked to make certain changes like removing the word Maharaja. I believe, though we could not confirm this, that this is because they did not want people to think that the use of words like Maharaja meant that what was being portrayed was not fiction Maharaja, real word, real part of Indian culture, eels cut out of snakes being fed to said Maharaja, Maharaja using a voodoo doll, you know what I'm saying? Got, N not real things being used. Okay. That is our guess. They also apparently did not appreciate portraying the ruler of Pangot, which is a fictional palace or city as a kidnapper and master of child slaves. I would think that that would be the bigger issue, yeah. Or that it misrepresented tuggy or thuggie culture as participating in volcano sacrifice and ritualistic heart extraction. All right, Lizz, you ask some questions on the Thuggies briefly. Okay, so the word thug, you may not know this. I did not know this traces its roots to the Hindi and Urdu word thug, which means thief or swindler. Did not know that. And according to NPR, this traces back to the Sanskrit verb Thagati to conceal. I apologize if I got that pronunciation wrong. nineteenth century colonial Brits believed that thee Thuggy Colt was an organized crime gang of sorts that strangled thousands of people across India. And in Gunadin, they make the comment that, quote, the ten thousand strong Tuggy Colt killed thirty thousand people these numbers seem completely made up. They quote worshhiped Kali, the Hindu goddess of death and destruction and represented hereditary criminal Okay. So the Brits quote hunted them down. four thousand thugs were discovered, two thousand convicted, many sentenced to death. Now, it does seem like there was a phenomenon of frequent highway robbery in India in the nineteenth century, including a number of deaths by strangulation. The cult angle of the Tuggies seems to have been largely a colonial British myth The Thuggies were the subjects of some nineteenth century English novels, like they showed up in Mark Twain's Fllowing the Equator and even in the nineteen sixty film, The Stranglers of Bombay, which gives you a sense of how they're being presented. I think that really what this comes down to is that with so few representations of Indian culture in Western media, and specifically India has an enormous film industry. Yes the Bollywood film industry, which we have not spoken about, well, an enormous and diverse film industry that produces an incredible volume of films, very few of which ever breach the border into western countries, especially the United States. I think you can see why the government would take issue with a number of these elements of the script. Yeah. And also like to use the name of the thuggy or tuggy cult, for example, like you're using a real thing or at least something that was real in that it was referenced by the British government, whether or not it was actually a real secret society organization. It sounds like we don't know. But you're mixing in just enough and maybe this is your point about the Maharaja. You're mixing in just enough quote unquote real, recognizable words and ideas to make it potentially problematic with how much you are distorting them Yeah, I think the point they're making is like this is not going to be obviously fictional to a Western audience. I think it's a fair point. evenven though it's obviously fictional to an Indian audience. Right. So Lucas wouldn't budge. So they decided to shoot in Sri Lanka instead for the location work and then L Street Studios in England for all of the stage work They use miniatures and matte paintings to fill in the palace and the temple. And I think there's a certainly like a reasonable interpretation that Spielberg and Lucas were a bit arrogant given their position within the industry at this point in time. And they may have been miffed that they were turned down by China and given notes by the Indian government. It's also possible that they were just running out of time because they needed to get this movie going. But Lucas was taking a similar hardline approach back in the United States with Paramount So according to Barry Diller, the then chairman and CEO of Paramount, Lucas went back on the deal they'd agreed to when they made raaiders. Diller said he'd negotiated terms on raaiders that would ensure Paramount wasn't in the same position as Fox if the film had been successful. Fox had to renegotiate for the sequel rights on Star Wars, and Lucas intentionally tried to phase them out as much as possible, which we talked about in Empire Strikes Back Here's Dilller's quote. I insisted had the right to make the sequels on the same terms as Raiders, given that the terms on the first movie were so much higher, meaning better than anyone else had ever received. I wanted to wt once and then not have to regurgitate in a new negotiation if the film was a success. Diller didn't want any new negotiating, and yet here's Lucas insisting they negotiate So Diller is enraged and at first he assumes it's coming from Lucas's lawyers. So he calls Lucas up. and Lucas says, yeah, no, it's me. According to Diller, Lucas believed it wasn't worth it to make the movie if he wasn't going to get more money. According to Diller, he could not believe this. Lucas, who famously refused to live in Hollywood because he hates the backstabbing nature of this company town, is going back on the deal that he signed with Diller, But Dilller gave in because he had to And then he famously called Lucas a sanctimonious, though supremely talented hypocrite. E quote Barry Dayler wasn't the only one in a squeeze. Casting director Mike Fenton was running out of time to find Willie Scott. It's early nineteen eighty three and he's already seen more than one hundred actresses for the role. One very famous blonde actress who was starting to blow up and would especially blow up in the early nineties. Michelle Peiffer? It's great guess, Sharon Stone. Sharon Stone was my other guess. I believe you As the story goes, My Fent went jogging with his friend and agent at William Morris, and he suggested his new client, actress Kate Capshaw. So Capshaw's agent calls her up, and he says, they're casting the sequel to Raiders of the Lost Art. Steven Spelberg wants to meet you. And she says, I don't want to meet him. She's twenty nine. She's a special ed teacher, turned model, turned actress. She'd been in a soap opera, a TV movie She'd done a comedy called A Little Sex, fun fact directed by Bruce Paltrow. Oh, Gwyethsstad. Yeah. She was a serious actress. She wanted to do foreign films and art films. She didn't want to do a sequel with some schmven sppielberg. Her agent was, according to Capshot, very patient and tolerant of my judgment and arrogance. And so we set a time to meet with Stehven. She walked into the meeting And it seems like Spielberg's not interested in meeting her. his back's facing her and he turns around and he says, Ohh, you're not who I thought you were. But then he brings her into Read. She tapes her audition, and he's convinced that she's the one. He goes to Ford and he says, I have nineteen girls on tape, but I'm only gonna show you one. I put Kate's tape in and he immediately said, That's the one Maybe she was just screaming. It's unclear exactly what the tape was. Again, I really like Kate Capshaw in this movie. I have a condo on Kate Capsaw as Willie Scott Island. I am the only resident. No, David enjoyed her too. I honestly think that Sharon Stone may have been able to counteract some of the more like Maudlin elements of Willie Scott because Sharon Stone has sort of hardness to her that could have gone up against Harrison Ford in a way that I may have personally found a little bit more watchable. It's not to say Kate Capshaw is't a wonderful performer and actress. I think she's amazing in the opening sequence. Like I really enjoyed all of that. Although I just want to point out to all of our Mandarin speaking listeners, we do acknowledge that that sequence Is Gibberish apparently. I mean really? I've heard what I learned online is they did translate the lyrics to anythingthing Goes into Mandarin, but because it's such a tonal based language where the emphasis and inflection put on words is as important as you the ordering it would be in Western language, it sounds like doesn't make any sense Gibberish. Yeah, exactly. Interesting. That's the best I could figure out via Reddit and whatnot She just she has like basically no agency in this. and then to cast someone who feels very sweet and sort of soft in a role that has no agency is a little bit of a tough watch. Interesting One thing I love about my husband, David is that this man cannot pass up a good deal. As soon as he sees a yard sale, it's like a tractor beam is pulling him in and he cannot resist. And his deal hunting obsession has rubbed off on me, except I'm not pulling my way through cobweb covever yard saals, I'm on whatnot Whatnot is the number one live shopping app in the US where shopping happens in real time with real people, real conversations, and incredible deals. Seriously, I cannot emphasize enough how great the deals are. You almost never pay full price on name brand perfume, clothes, makeup, handbags, jewelry, and so much more. Plus, it's fun. You're connecting with sellers and other shoppers, It's like hanging out and shopping with friends I just got an amazing Goodfellass t shirt from Treasure Chest TX for nine dollars that I can't wait to wear and a vintage Gucci cross body bag from the Don's luxury that I picked up for like half the price of other retailers. I am obsessed with it. Everything arrived so quickly and in excellent condition. Download what Not today and get twenty dollars off and free shipping on your first purchase Search What notot W H A T N OT in the App store, sign up and start finding the best deals on the products you love with twenty dollars off and free shipping on your first purchase. M. Well, Lizzy. Steven Spielberg told her to watch a movie that we've covered in preparation for this role. Is there any movie that you covered that involves a much stelier performer perhaps or steeier performance? I have a guess. Please. Is it the African Qeen? It is the African Qeen. And maybe that's why she didn't thoroughly read the script because she was busy watching that movie, which to be fair, the script was mostly action and difficult to picture in your head M more on that in a bit. Well, that's a great example though, because in the African een, sure, she's grossed out by the rough and tumble Humphrey Bogart at the beginning, but she also ends up being the one driving them forward into the jungle by the end of it. She's also the protagonist. It's a very different, you know movie. Yes. I think the biggest hitch in the Indie Willie relationship is the fact that ultimately This movie's aboutat inian short round for me, at least. And so hundred percent. And if that's the case, great, like make it more about that and you know, get rid of her halfway through. I'm sorry. like she doesn't need to be there at the end. And he's like, byye bye lady, and she's just gone. Yeah So obviously casting short round is going to be important. Spielberg says that they held at least eight open casting calls involving six thousand boys across New York, San Frcco, Hawai, Toronto, Chicago, Montreal, Hong Kong, London, and Los Angeles Ki Hui Kuan was twelve years old when they passed out fllyers at his elementary school in Los Angeles. He's so cute. One of the teachers thought he knew just the kid for the park Pys Brother. No. Ki had been born in Vietnam into a family of Chinese descent and had eight siblings. Now the family was split for a period. Kee and his father and five siblings went to Hong Kong, and they lived in a refugee camp when his mother and remaining siblings went to Malaysia. W This is shortly after the Vietnam War ended The family reunited in the United States in nineteen seventy nine and they landed in Sunland, T Hunga, up in the northeast corner of Los Angeles, just northwest of Aladina, where I used to live. Back to the audition. Ky tags along with his brother and he says, quote, As he was auditioning, meaning his brother, I was behind the camera coaching him what to do. I had no idea why I was doing that because I didn't even know what was going on This should be clear, I believe My guess is he didn't really start learning English until nineteen seventy nine when he came to the United States. So he's only been speaking English for a few years now. So the casting director asks him to come in and do a read. and he said he did, but quote, I couldn't even pronounce the words. But it didn't matter. Spielberg watched this tape and quote, the search stopped at that moment. I just loved his personality. I thought he was a fifty year old man trapped in this twelve year old's body So Kei's mom puts him in a three piece suit and sends him off to meet Spielberg. There's one more audition with Spielberg Ford and apparently Lucas, and I'd like to play you a clip of young Ki Huei Kan describing this interaction After that, I met Steven Spelberg and Helison Ford I I don't know who they are because I't see I don't really see American movies so Stephven told us to pretend to play cards. Had you ever acted before? No. That's extraordinary. There must be all those child actors waiting for that part and you just walked in there and got it.. So cute. had never seen a Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, or Harrison Ford movie prior to this meeting. G who hadn't seen Star Wars, he hadn'ten Raiders. He had never acted. That's crazy. And he's improvising in his second language And possibly third, because actually now that I think about it, he probably speaks Vietnamese. I know he speaks Ctonese in the beginning of the movie, and then he's speaking in English. And he's improvising the scene, playing cards with Harrison Ford And that's it. It's just a I cheat small, you cheat big That's the scene that they're doing. He is the shining beating ripped out heart of this movie. and abutely He's honestly the only reason to watch it because he is so great. And he's great both in terms of his acting, his timing, also his physical comedy and all the action that he's doing. I mean, it really is Absolutely remarkable. That's right So for the roles of Chatar Lal, who's the advisor to the Maharaja and Mola Ram, who's the thuggy priest, so to speak, Spielberg and Lucas turn to two actors who had recently appeared in Richard Aon Boroughs. Oh, Gandhi. That's right. British Indian actor, Roshan Seth. Yeah. I was wondering where I recognized him, okay. He plays Neru he's one of the like Indian congressmen who kind of And act two is following Gandhi around and coming around to him. Yeah. He'd given up acting years earlier. He'd been in the UK for fifteen years and he just was not getting the roles that he wanted. He later told the New York Times that he was quote, too English for the Indians and too Indian for the English. And so he returned to India and edited a journal. And then Richard Attenborough convinced him to do Gandhi and then he returned to journalism. But then that movie came out and playwright David Harr shows up in India with a role for him to come do in England again. and he just said, you know what okay, I'm coming back to acting. And that brings him back into the world of acting and obviously Temple of Doom and many more. And then you have Amarish Puri, who'd played Khan in Gandhi, who Lizzy, if you remember, in the first act of Gandhi when he's in South Africa, he's a Muslim Indian merchant at the beginning of the film, who's helping Gandi at the beginning. I haven't seen that movie in I remember him less, but I definitely Yeah he's like unrecognizable in comparison to makeup in the shaved head. But he's a wonderful actor He's the most experienced actor in this movie by a mile. So Amirish Puri had acted in hundreds of films across his career. He is a Bollywood like known name, and he'd also just begun what would come to be known as kind of his villain era. You played this antagonistic smuggler in nineteen eighty two's Vidata, which was the highest grossing Indian film of the year, the fifth highest grossing of the decade adjusted for inflation He played another big bad in nineteen eighty three's hero, and he's not interested in Temple of Death at the time, as it was called. Fair enough. Indian casting director Dali Takur sends stills of him from the nineteen eighty horror film, Guera Yi, I'm not sure about the pronunciation to Steven Spielberg. Now Gera Yi is kind of an exorcist movie done in India It reminds me a little bit of something like the whaling, for example, if you've seen it out of Korea, and honestly poltergeist, because a lot of it has to do with the sale of land that has spiritual connections Brief note also on Dolli Takora, she's like this veteran theater actress, newscastter, journalist, casting director, like really incredible career in life. and she'd begun her career as a casting director on Gandhi. And so like she's jumping into, you know, Gandhi, Temple of Doom. That's like a big high place to start. Yeah. So Spielberg sees these stills and he wants Puti even more. And we're pulling this from Puti's book and we had a little bit of a hard time exactly parsing the order of operations here, but it seems He maybe took offense at the request from casting agents to do a read because it seems like they were almost wanting to make sure he spoke English, which would be very offensive because if you were to just watch the first ten minutes of Gandhi, you'd see He speaks English yeah. So he refused to audition or read a page of English text and he said, comeome watch me on the set of his new film Which I tried to figure out what it was, but he's in so many movies that I could not figure it out. In fact, some sources claim he was working on eighteen other movies while he was working on a Temple of Doom. Whichever movie they saw, Porty was cast, but he had the most difficult schedule to manage, according to producer Robert Watts. Quote, This was something I had never come up against. The Indian film industry operates in a manner that would drive me stark raving mad The actors work sometimes two or even three shifts a day, four hour shifts, and they may work on two or three different films. They'll be in one in the morning and another in the afternoon. Oh my God. crazy. Is that why he's barely in this movie? Because there's like almost no establishing of him. Yeah, I'm not sure. I feel like it makes sense for the character, but it may be, you know, he said they had four different visits, one in Sri Lanka, three in London And it may be that they just had to write it in strategically because he was unavailable. And he's great, obviously in this movie. He is great. He's veryy fun to watch. Now, unlike Star Wars, Ford had signed on to the Indiana Jones sequels from the Jump. And on the one hand, there was one secondary quote we found where Lucas had said they were gonna to do five Indiana Jones movies and Ford seems to have bristled at that and said He must be talking to Roger Moore because I didn't know about this. You know, he didn't want to be known as the sequel guy. But on the other hand, I think he had fewer qualms with the material and character of Indiana Jones than he did with Hans Solo and Star Wars. That makes sense. He's the lead. It's also like a recognizable world.. He's not famously. As he said, you know, George, you can write this stuff, but you can't say it when it comes to the Star Wars dialogue. That was not the case with Indiana Jones In fact, he really likes the Indiana Jones diallect, and we'll get to that in a second Generally speaking, outside of Indiana Jones and Star Wars, he had not had a big hit. So if you look at you know Force ten from Navaron, nineteen seventy eight mixed reviews at flops, Hanover Street, nineteen seventy nine flops the Frisco Kid with Gean Wilder flops. M American graffiti, which I think he's barely in critically flops does not do as well as the first film. Blade Runner, nineteen eighty two famously flops both critically and commercially He has a cameo and ET as Elliot's principple, but that gets cut. Apocalypse now was a smash, but he's in it for about ten minutes. I've always forget terminate with extreme prejudice. That's right. He's great in the conversation, but again, it's a tertiary role. So Ford presumably needs Indiana Jones as much as it needs him. But Spielberg's really worried about how Ford's going to receive the script. So according to Hike,ote they gave the script to Harrison right after we finished it. Steve called us up and says, haveave you heard from Harrison? I said, no, I think he'll probably call you first And Steve says, Well, he hasn't called me. I'm really worried. And I said, whyy? And he said, For one thing, he can make my life really miserable on the set if he's mean to me. but he seem to be very afraid of Harrison So Hike and Kats get the call, Ford wants to meet them about the script. and they get together to do a read through. It's Spielberg, Hike, Kats, and Ford. They get to a scene with shhort Round, and Ford hemms and haws a bit and I'll try to do a Harison Ford This line of short rounds bothers me. The kid's supposed to be Tan. I don't know if he'd say something like this. And hiking cats say, yeah, but he's a really cocky kid. That's the whole take on him throughout the fil. He's why he's cracking with Americanisms and so forth. And F says, I don't know. It's a great line. I think it's probably something that Indie would say. And they keep reading, they get to another line and he'd say I think that's probably something Indy would say. And according to Hike, they would just get to these lines and he'd steal them, which was so obvious that Spielberg apparently left the meeting to watch TV while Ford poaches short rounds lines. So Hike and Kats do rewrites on the final shooting script in the spring of nineteen eighty three. And according to Kats, she goes into labor ten minutes after they print the script out to turn it over Now Lizzie, you mentioned Spielberg wanting to find like moments of levity in the movies that he makes, for example. Spielberg famously storyboards intricately for his movies. And that's I think obviously why his action set pieces are so inventive and they're so compelling and you remember them. But for this movie, while he did obviously storyboard all of the action set pieces, I'm sure the Minecart sequence, for example, a lot of the interstitial scenes, he decided not to storyboard because he later said that he was uncomfortable with how dark the story was, and he wanted to leave space to quote lighten the mood with humor Another attempt perhaps to lighten the mood was changing the title from Indiana Jones in the Temple of Death to Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom, which happened just eight days before shooting began. Which I do think is a more tongue in cheek fun title. I think Temple of Death is much darker. So Princial photography begins on april eighteenth, nineteen eighty three in Sri Lanka just a week after the Oscars where Spielberg lost Best Picture and Best Director to Richard Einborgh and Gandhi. Yeah, well perhaps Spielberg and Lucas should have known that they were tempting fate. After all, they were spurning local traditions, working with water, children, and animals. Lots of animals in this movie, Lizzie. Harrison Ford said that riding the elephants felt like being stretched out over a medieval rack And not in a fun Jamie Dornan kind of way.. Now you mentioned his body, Lizzie. Yeah, it look good. It looks good. He'd been training with Jake Steinfeld of Body By Jake at a YMCA in Sri Lanka. What is Body byy Jake? That's his brand. He was a trainer to the stars. I think he started with Spiilberg and Ford back in, you know, back in the eighties. There were some of his first big clients And then he had, you know, TV series, a ton of infomercials and whatnot. Very, very you'd recognize his face if you saw him. Also fun fact, he is, I believe Hay Steinfeld's uncle.. But he started feeling some twinges in his back. We more on that in a second. Now during the campfire sequence on the way to Pangcot, an elephant started eating Kate Capshaw's one of a kind dress that she still needed to wear for the opening number of the film, which they hadn't shot. She had itt come in, man. She is screaming on those elephants. Yeah. I gotta say, the sequence where she's like hitting the elephant's trunk away from her, I was so mad. Maybe it's because we just went to the zoo and saw an elephant and it was really beautiful. But I think that's where I lost all faith in Willie Scott. Yes, fair Spiberg probably made that choice and not her. I know it's not her. None of it is her fault. So the elephants did wreak havoc on the schedule because only the baby elephants could be loaded onto a truck and the bigger ones just had to walk wherever they were going. And it just took as long as it took them to get there. Now back at the hotel, Mike Culling, the animal Wrangler, had brought three fifteen foot pythons from England He checked them into a room under the names mister and misses Longfellow. And like Indiana Jones, Kate Capshaw hated snakes. Yeah. And she didn't know that there were going to be snakes because she hadn't read the whole script. So producer Frank Marshall took her to visit and pet the snake first, like exposure therapy. It didn't help. It got so bad that Spielberg, when he saw her shaking in hair and makeup before filming the scene, decided to cut the scene, Wh which is why we don't have this Cate Capshaw snake scene. There's one brief moment, obviously with the elephant. Yes. She was really relieved he But you have got to do the bugs. And she's like, what bugs? Okay, you got You gota read the script, girl. Little did Capshawn know, Cooling would spend two weeks in Sri Lanka collecting thousands of insects to bring back to England On the lighter side, the bridge at the end of the film was created by British engineers who happened to be building a dam nearby. and the dummies that kick and wave off as they fall were made by the effects team. These are supposed to be done by a specialist in the United States. It slipped through the cracks. So those are just mannequins like made from molds filled with very crude battery powered mechanics, which is why when they fall, they're just like zing, Zing's fine. It's fine They had one chance to get the shot right and that's the shot that you see in the movie because they only had so many mannequs. Yeah So they said. All right. But what are they feeding the crocodiles to get them to do the death rolls? Is it the mannequs? D they I think it's the mannequionss and probably like hamburger meat. They're chumming the water would be my assumption They got through the location portion of the shoot without too much trouble. They moved to Elstreet on may fifth, one day after may the fourth, and the pane is just around the corner Capshaw took a Balswood bat to the eye when Ky's prop bat split in two, resesulted in a black eye, but nothing compared to the bugs, Lizzie. The bugs did not take direction. According to Marshall, you can arrange a pile of snakes. That's impossible with bugs. People were also much more scared of the insects. Every once in a while you'd hear this shriek when the bugs found their way onto the tap dance rehearsal stage bad place for a bug to be. The problem was, it didn't seem like a lot of thought was put into how to contain the bugs. According to Steven Spielberg The first day, they just lay out thousands of bugs and seventy five percent of them just disappear through the walls. Yeah and the floors. They're the first day of shooting. They're gone. That's disgusting. It's like the horses in Lawrence of Arabia, but bugs. Well, and these are potentially invasive species. Yeahar. L apparently five hundred snakes had escaped that same location three years earlier on Raiders of the Lost Arc and now it's just thousands of bugs going with them. They also needed thousands of bugs to even cover three square feet The bugs were kept in a cold room before shooting, and then they'd bring them in on hot lights, and of course they'd scatter and hide immediately. They were constantly showing up in the cast and crew's clothes and capapshot even took a valum before shooting with them. Yeah, one hundred percent. Which probably wasn't helping her achieve the direction that Harrison Ford had given her.Quote, Harrison was constantly reminding me that I was a gal in a B movie and that I didn't need to put notes in the margin Faster and funnier was all the direction we got. Okay, so it's Harrison Ford's fault That's Harrison Ford Okay. Now to be fair though, he may have needed the valum more than anybody because his back pain was getting worse. Now there's some debate over what exactly was the final straw that broke Harrison Ford's back, but it was either getting jerked around in the mine car or flipping one of the thuggies over his back The Buls couldn't have helped, it got to the point where they had to put him on a hospital bed in between takes. and Spielberg realized it couldn't go on like this. But according to some sources, Ford didn't want to stop filming. So Spielberg called Lucas, who is also in a lot of pain. On the one hand, reteturn of the Jedi had just come out, it's a massive hit, but it had gotten the most mixed critical reception of all of the Star Wars films, and Lucas's marriage was officially and publicly coming to an end with Marsha Lucas So he hops on a plane to England to help sort things out. He later said, Harrison was in terrible pain. He would be on a set bed and then they'd sort of lift him up and get him and he'd sort of walk through things and then he'd get back on the bed and I said, we can't do this. If we have to shut the picture down, we'll shut the picture down So they shut it down and send Ford back to the United States to receive medical attention. But they didn't tell Vick Armstrong Ford's stunt double. So the next day he shows up and goes, Where's Harrison And they go, let's keep shooting with you! And so for the next five weeks, they shot Vick Armstrong as Indiana Jones. And I believe this movie features more Vic Armstrong than any other Indiana Jones movie. And Lizzie, I'd like to show you a photo of these two men standing next to each other because it is crazy. Oh wow Go ahead and start rolling. So apparently on the first film when they were in Tunisia, Spielberg had gotten within five feet of Vic Armstrong in the costume thinking he was Ford. Wow L speaking to him as if he was Ford. So he had doubled Ford a bunch of times before, and Ford has even said that Armstrong added things to the character. According to Armstrong, he did all the stuff releasing the kids, a lot of the mine cart sequence, jumping around the gantry, and the big fight on the rock crushing conveyor belt. Whoa! Back in the United States, Ford decided to undergo a new procedure for his back pain called chmopapain injection whereere they take an enzyme derived from papayas, injected into the herniated disc and dissolve part of it. Yeah. Okay. On the one hand, less invasive than surgery, on the other hand, it had just been approved by the FDA months earlier. Ford said his doctor had only done the procedure a handful of times prior. It's no longer used in the United States and there's a lot of conflicting information out there about why exactly that is. According to the FDA, it was not discontinued due to safety concerns But according to Harrison Ford, quote they stopped doing it after a couple years because less qualified surgeons were turning people into paraplegics. Dicey. So while Ford is away, work ramps up on the opening musical number, which is great. and they have George Lucas there to help. But he seems to have been a little distant. And I get the sense that George was in his feelings a lot during this period of production. Also like if there's one sequence that I don't think George Lucas is really gonna thrive directing, it's probably this massive sparkly musical number. It's possible. So Frank Marshall says there's this big production meeting to discuss storyboards for the second unit shooting they could do while Ford was out, and halfway through, Lucas just gets up and leaves And he says, Well I guess we'll see you guys later And Spielberg says, whereere are you going? And he goes, I've got a guitar lesson. And he just walks out. Okay. Capshaot was originally supposed to do the entire dance with the backup dancers, but the dress was so tight fitting that they just ditched that plan and they just kind of rotate her out and bring the backup dancers in, which I think works fine. it also adds to the joke that like Willie Scott's not that talented, maybe and is like doing this, you know gangster routine as a result. Except she sounds great. She sounds great. Well, H mandarin doesn't sound great. No she sounds great. Yes Now, Ford came back to London and Spielberg basically just shot his close ups at this point. So they' shot a lot of the wides with Vick Armstrong. But to be clear, he was still in pain. and for any haters of Body by Jake out there, he believes it's because Jake had gotten him to such good shape that he recovered so quickly. And also, he looks amazing in this movie. Yeah he really good. It's probably like Pete Harrison Ford from a physique perspective. It's pretty crazy. Definitely. And you know, we talk about this all the time, but like Think about what his body would probably look like today if this were a modern Indiana Jones. Oh it'd be, you know, body by Dbble, body by steroids, yeah. Right. And it's nice that like he doesn' he doesn't look like that. He looks like a gorgeous jacked archaeologist. He does. A couple other fun facts, The Mine cart set was really an electronically driven roller coaster builto a soundstage so you could ride on it. It was safe. It looked so scary and uncomfortable. Yeah. There's also a miniature version for a lot of the longer shots where it When they j Yeah jumped. Yeah. The dinner scene features rubber bugs filled with custard, the monkey heads were filled with custard and raspberry sauce Okay, so Lucas says he wanted it to be quote goofy thirties humor. Yeah. and Spielberg says that he hadd actually been the one that pitched the idea, What about a meal of the worst stuff you would ever imagine eating as long as you live But Lucas actually came up with the idea to add the eyeball soup in Python full of eels because he and editor Michael Kahonn were cutting the movie during production and they said that there wasn't enough gross stuff in there. So they decided to just double down and add more.. So they rarap in August of ' eighty three, but there are still fifteen more days of live action shooting required for the special effects and they have seventy five scenes to be completed by ILM whichich is in a very different position than it had been when it was making raiders. So in a sense, the company's a victim of its own success. The studios all now see ILM as integral to creating blockbusters. So there's a ton of work. But of course, Temple of Doom hits their desks, and it's Lucas and Spielberg, so they can't say no, we're backed up. So similar to the Empire Strikes Back, they hit a bottleneck at the optical printer stage As model shop supervisor Lauren Peterson described it, everything had to go through optical ILM to be compositive, and those people were starting to work late until the night, sometimes six and seven days a week and literally weren't seeing their families. Yeah. Now according to editor Michael Konan, the first cut was actually too fast. It clocked in an hour and fifty five minutes and they actually added matte shots, establishing shots to slow the movie down But Lizzy, the pace was not what bumped audiences. How do you think early test screenings went for the Temple of Doom? I'm guessing they took a turn when a beating heart was ripped out of a man's chest. As Gloria Katz said, everybody was appalled. Yeah. Hike said that they were getting calls from Michael Eisner, then the head of Paramount, and he said, according to Hyikeke, I'm really worried. Could you guys talk to Stephven for us because he's not listening to us It's really violent. E quote. So at this point, there are four ratings, GPG R and X, which would later become seventeen. The MPA would often struggle to decide if a movie was suitable for children Spielberg apparently did slightly tone down Riders to get a PG rating. And Riders by modern standards would definitely be PG thirteen at least, like the melting Nazi face at. Yeah, for sure. I don't think it would be rated at R, but I think it would be PG thirteen. Spielberg appealed to the NPAA to also make pololtergeist PG instead of R, which by the way, features a man peeling the skin off of his face in the bathroom mirror. Yeah, Poltergeist also is just horrifying, so for going on the level of like maybe things that children shouldn't see, I think that's on the list. Also, somehow PG Jaws. Spielberg insisted, I don't make R movies. I make PG movies. You don't though. ET was. Yeah. justust days before Temple of Doom was released, the NPAA gave it a PG rating, but rumors of a new rating were already brewing So Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was released in the United States on may twenty third, nineteen eighty four and set a record for the largest one week gross, forty five point seven million It would go on to make three hundred thirty three million dollars worldwide against roughly a twenty eight million dollars budget But Paramount was clearly nervous. They'd added a warning to their newspaper ads. This film may be too intense for younger children. but maybe they should have said, a guy's gonna pull another guy's heart out of his chest while it's still beating because nobody was expecting that and it really upset a lot of parents. Yeah. Spielberg later said everybody was screaming, screaming, screaming that it should have had an R rating, and I didn't agree People Magazine gave it a very harsh review that I'd like to read It is an astonishing violation of the trust people have in Spielberg and Lucas's essentially good natured approach to movies intended primarily for kids. If they had set out to prove that they could get away with anything, insult the intelligence of viewers and literally make them sick, they couldn't have done it more effectively. No parent should allow a young child to see this traumatizing movie. It would be a cinematic form of child abuse Even Ford is required to slap Kwan and abuse Capsha, but then there are no heroes connected with this film, only two villains. Their names are Spielberg and Lucas. Disagree with a couple of points there. I would argue there very much is a hero of this movie, though it is neither Willie Scott nor Indiana Jones. No, it's Ki Hui Kwan L Short Round is the hero of this movie. one hundred percent. I mean, he literally saves them He saves him. He turns Indie. like his goodness turns Iie. I love that he's the reminder. L he re uses the flame and then, you know, he's the reminder that pulls him back. He saves them at the beginning, he saves them at the end.. Like absolutely he's the hero. The other thing I disagree with there is essentially saying Steven Spielberg is known for making movies for children. That's like that's just technically not true. I mean, you know, to your point, he broke out with jaws That is not a movie for children. Yes, it was a summer blockbuster, but close Encounters of the third kind. Also not really a movie for children. That's very much an adult movie. ET Yes. I think close Encounters, though, you could argue is generally child friendly. They can watch it, but it is not geared towards children. It's mature thematically. That's what I mean. Like if you're going to call someone a director of like children's movies, I actually think you can make more of a case for George Lucas there than you can for Spielberg. I don't think you can make the case for Spielberg on that at all, really Yeah, I would agree that I think both of them have one obvious children's oriented movie or Lucas two with the Return of the Jedi at this point. Yeah. Spielberg has ET. Everything else that he's associated with is not explicitly geared towards children. I think they're saying Raiders was, but I agree with you that I think Raiders was closer to this in a lot of ways. The point, Lizzie is that Spielberg's feeling the heat. And then Gremlins is released and the debate then kicks up. So this is two weeks after Temple of Doom is released. Comes Gremlins. I love Gremlins. Oh, it's great. Can you get me, can you give me your Gremlin really quickly? L To this, the best Gremlin I've ever heard outside the movie. The trailers for Gremlins were pretty misleading. Director Joe Sante said they purposefully imitated the color and style of the ET ads to remind audiences that Spielberg was an EP on this movie. And if you remember, Lizzie, one of the biggest things that people had complaints about was that this movie features a monologue in which the female love interest reveals that her father died pretending to be Santa Claus. Yeah, because he gets stuck in the chimney Stuck in the chimney and she discovers him D later. Man, I love Greamlins. It's so dark. So Spielberg calls up Jack Valenti, who was then the president of the MPAA. And he had developed the rating system in nineteen sixty eight. And if you guys don't know, Jack Valenti, former special assistant to US presresident Lyinda B Johnson, famous lobbyist, known hater of the VCR, fun quote, I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the womoman homeome alone, which is quite a quote Okay He's also the father of producer and executive Courtney Valenti, head of film at Amazon MGM. So Spielberg calls up Valenti and says I' taking a lot of heat right now. I'm making this quote up. But he apparently calls him up and suggests a new category. and he says that he was the one that suggested they do something like PG thirteen or PG fourteen. And so PG thirteen is introduced just three months after Temple of Doom was released. And of course, the first movie to receive the rating Red Dawn Red Dawn, starring Patrick Swzy PG thirteen may have solved Temple of Doom's violence, but it likely wouldn't have impacted another element, which a lot of folks took issue with, which is the film's engagement in racist stereotypes. So there was at least one protest of the movie in Seattle organized by citizens against commercial racism. Protest organizer Aslam Khan, a political science professor told a local paper Imagine a child of Indian background confronted with questions from his classmates who have seen Indiana Jones. Do you eat snakes? Do you have voodoo dolls at home? Why is your religion so stupid According to several sources, though we could not directly confirm this, the Indian government temporarily banned the film Now for his part, Rosan Seth, who plays Chatar Lal, says he later got a great deal of flack for his participation in the movie How does an intelligent man like you agree to be in a film that shows Indians dining on beetles and eels? Now, Seth states that Spielberg intended that as a joke, quote, The joke being that Indians were so smart that they knew all Westerners think that Indians eat cockroaches, so they served them what they expected. The joke was too subtle for that film. I believe that, I believe that. I think you needed something to indicate though, that that's what was happening If that was the intention, I agree it's too subtle for the film. Yeah. Now Amris Poty later said, It was a chance of a lifetime working with Spiilberg and I don't regret it even for a moment. I don't think I did anything anti national. It's really foolish to take it so seriously and get worked up over it Now, people were also very worked up about Kate Kapsaw's performanceces Willie Scott. She got a lot of criticism. I don't think there was a good review. I was blindsided by it. The thing that surprised me most was that the critics, women critics in particular, were very critical of Willie Scott as if we were making a political statement and I was doing nothing for my sisters. I found it odd that it was an action adventure film and we were meant to be doing message work quote Now Temple of Doom did win an Oscar for Visual effects. It received another nomination for Best Original sccore, John Williams. But it's a movie that Spielberg often tries to distance himself from. He's since said that he wasn't happy with it, that it's too dark, that quote, there's not an ounce of his own personal feeling in the movie, and that it's his least favorite of the original three. He said it ended up darker than we thought it would be. Once we got out of our bad moods, which went on for a year or two, we kind of looked at it and went, hmm We certainly took it to the extreme. That's kind of what we wanted to do for better or worse. And Lizzie, you talked about how much you like the beginning of the movie. I wonder if a lot of the criticism actually stems from the fact that the movie opens on a real nice high. It does almost like a joyous high. This is what Roson says said, You know, quote, the first fifteen minutes of Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom are perhaps the greatest fifteen minutes in cinema They're all about what cinema should be, sitting on the edge of your seat in excitement And I don't disagree that it's one of my favorite openings. Yes. It's maybe my favorite opening of the Indiana Jones series. Great opening sequence. You know, it's interesting to me that they keep using the word dark to describe this movie because it doesn't strike me I guess because maybe they were trying to counteract it with what they thought of as levity, it doesn't come across as like dark to me. It comes across as just like a void. It just doesn't have any heart to it.ure. And calling it dark almost like negates, I think, what the actual problem with this movie is. I think mean spirited is the better way to describe it, which even though I do like this movie, I completely agree with that criticism I would like to end with the heart of the movie, Ki Hui Kwan. Let's get to him in one second. So the legacy of Temple of Doom is complicated as we talked about, but it's certainly not completely bleak. Amres Puti embraced the shaved head look and he continued to use that look in a lot of his films. It also allowed him to explore a lot of hairstyles via wigs, I read in subsequent movies Spielberg and Kate Capshaw married a few years later. He actually did get back together with Amy Irving. then they got married, then they got divorced and then he married Kate Capshaw. I've also seen speculation that he and Capsaw were having like an affair onset, but to be clear read nothing to confirm that also and they do seem flirty on like there's an attraction on set.. Spiberg was single, to be clear at this point is my understanding at this point in time. Also, although Lucas, Spielberg, and Ford were having a tough time on set, it doesn't seem like any of the bad mood trickled down to Kihue Kuan So he later said, of Lucas and Spielberg, they were just really nice, down to earth, humble people watching me do takes. They were by the monitor and were just laughing and having a really good time. In fact, I was never allowed to watch playback. I shot the entire movie without ever looking at myself on screen. He said that when they werere on location, he would just hang out in Harrison Ford's room, Harrison Ford taught how to swim, and he loves that Harrison Ford just played jokes on Stehven all the time on set Kuan didn't see Star Wars and Raiders of Lost Ar until after filming rarapped. On then did he realize how successful Lucas and Spielberg were. And the first time he saw Temple of Doom was at the LA preremiere. He'd fallen in love with the movie when he made it, but he fell in love with movie making as a career when he saw the movie played back but the movies can be cruel So Ki Hui Kwan followed up Temple of Doom with his turn as Data in Goonies, which was another Amblin production. But he faced a drought of opportunities that far too many Asian American actors face. And he did end up taking a nineteen year hiatus from acting, turning to stunt and choreography work. before we wrap him, a brief point. When I was trying to look up reactions to this movie, because I always like to get a sense of how do people feel about this movie? You know, do my reactions seem to match other folks or not? There's a lot of criticism, obviously about the portrayal of Indian culture in this movie, which makes complete sense to me, and I hope we've done a good job exploring this episode. But there were also a number of people who were saying that they really felt that short Round was a racist stereotype, which I wonder if there's a way to parse this in two directions. I disagree. I think he's a great character. I read some people saying like, you know, oh, they're making him do an exaggerated accent, having listened to him in interviews at the time. I belie's the way he spoke. He had just started to learn English. It makes sense for the character. I think he's given the hero's arc in this movie. That's why I loved this movie as a kid so much On the other hand, I did read a lot of people, especially on Reddit and a couple of film critics saying, because of the dearth of any think about this is the eighties, right? Yeah. You have John Hughes, you know what I mean? where it's like, we're going to engage in Asian stereotypes for high school students. becausecause there is a dearth of any other Asian American representation at the time, it seems like a lot of folks were very frustrated with this movie because they would be you know, the one Asian kid at their school and then all of a sudden all their white friends would come up to them and start yelling doctor Jones in their face as They are short round in this instance. And so the problem becomes the lack of other roles around short round. you know is what kind of makes the most sense to me. And again, which is this void that Kihui Kuan, who's untrained and amazing in this movie steps into as an actor in Hollywood at the time. You know, he would later say there's nowhere to go but down from Spielberg and Lucas Which is somewhat true, but really this should have been like a launchpad, you know what I mean? Because he's wonderful in this. So he takes a nineteen year hiatus from acting. He turns to stunt and choreography work. And then of course, the movie he shoots in twenty twenty, which doesn't get released until twenty twenty two by Daniels, E everywhere all at once, brings Ki Hoi Kuan full circle Instead of a fifty year old man in the body of a twelve year old boy, what I love about that movie is that it feels like he's a twelve year old boy in the body of a fifty year old man And he brings the same joy, also incredible fight choreography Yes and heart. That's the thing to that movie. he's a hero. L he gets to be a hero, he gets to be a romantic love interest. It's so wonderful Apparently, Spielberg has sent him a Christmas gift every year for the last thirty eight years between making Temple of Doom and now. But He had not seen Harrison Ford in thirty eight years. And I would like to play you a brief clip of him describing their reunion after everything everywhere all at once. Well I haven't seen Harrison Ford in thirty eight years. So I was scheduled to attend an event called D twenty three for Disney. and I was told that Harrison Ford was going to be there And I was in the green room And I was looking around the room trying to see if I can findind him And my sising came running up to me and he says Harrison Fort is just right outside the green room And I got really nervous, my heart was pounding And and he says, do you want to go see him? And I, of course I want to go see him So I walked out And sure enough fififteen feet away, I saw him talking to Phoebe Waller Bridge. And as I get closer He turns to me and takes one look at me And all of a sudden he has that classic Harrison Fought Grumpy Lock Yes. And he raises his finger and again points it at me And I got really scared because I thought he, you know, he's thinking I'm a fan. He's going to say, donon't you get neew me, right? But instead he says You short r. Immediately, I was transported back to nineteen eighty four When I was a little kid looking up to him, and I said, Yes, Indy. I la. And that was their reunion and they hugged and they chatted. and then Ky Hake One won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his turn in everything everywhere all at once. and when the film won Best Picture, Harrison Ford presented the award. In a fun conclusion And that concludes our coverage of Temple of Doom. And Lizzie, before I ask you what went right, can I share my soul? Yeah. My Temple of Doom sl. If you were to remake Temple of Doom, we've all been waiting The solve is that the Thuggy Colult is actually a front Yeah created by the British who are exploiting the local children to mine, you know, these materials and find the Sankara stones. And it could just be like think Marlin Brando in Apocalypse now, right? It's like one colonial British guy who's gone off the end. Chris, if there's another safe villain next to the Nazis, it's gotta be the Conials And I feel like by then we knew that we could make the colonial the villains because they were the villains in Gandhi. Yeah. So it just feels like it's sitting. My point is like sometimes it's totally unfair. and peopleople have called us out to do revisionist history on some of these movies. No this one just sounds like it was so fast. I think it was right there. Yeah and they just made it too quickly. But I actually do think this is one that and Hike and cats are so talented like as writers, I really do love a lot of sequences in this movie But it feels like they were moving so quickly that they never stopped and really thought. They wanted to make Gunadin and like a nineteen thirty style movie but they didn't take the time to figure out how to make it feel fresh, I think. And that's To me, that is ultimately like the biggest flaw of this movie. and from that original sin come the stereotypes and whatnot that kind of bog it down. But anyway, I will kick it to you, Lizzie for what went right? Well, my what went right is obvious By the way, I would have loved to have seen that. I think that would have made this movie excellent and something different and unexpected. My what went right is Ki Hui Kan. He is, as we've discussed across this whole episode. Honestly, he's the only joyful part of this movie to me. he's the only part that I looked forward to every time he came on screen Physically he's such a great performer. It is absolutely remarkable that he had not done any acting prior to this. I didn't know that. I just love him. I love the story arc that he ended up getting. I love that he has become a success, although obviously it came far too late and I wish we had gotten mid career Ki Hui Kwan as well, but I'm thrilled that he's back. I just think that he's one of a kind performer and as we've said, he is the hero and the heart of this movie. And without him, I think it's like borderline unwatchable. I completely agree. I want to give mine to Harrison Ford in this instance and the reason is like To be fair, Kihui Kan is very he's always generous in his interviews, right? He will never say something bad about anybody. So I want to cave out this. But it sounds like Ford had a really, I cannot imagine doing a role this physical while you're dealing with like a herniated disc in your back. and yet it sounds like they had a really lovely almost parent child relationship mov Well, you can tell they like each other. And that's really cool because there are some actors and some performers or some crew members or directors who are not interested in any personal relationship beyond the professional one and there's nothing wrong with that. But this young man is thousands of miles away from home doing his first movie experience with one of the unbeknownst to him, one of the biggest movie stars in the world He taught how to swim. And Kihui Kuan you know told a story that I almost put in here where I believe it's when they're shooting the scene where he is either one of the mine cart scenes or when Indy slaps him, I couldn't find the context. But he got very scared and Kiwui Kan started crying. and Harrison Ford apparently pulled him aside and said, I need you to know. I would never hurt you. Like I will always protect you. And he said that, you Having Indiana Jones tell me that you know, he loved me and he was going to protect me just made all the difference in the world. And by the way, also kudos to Spielberg. It sounds like he did a very good job in coaching and directing this young actor and he's very good with kids. Yeah. So despite how gnarly this movie is in so many ways, intentionally and unintentionally, it was still a good set for this young performer. And we've covered so many movies where that's not the case All right, Lizzy, if folks are enjoying this podcast, how can they support it? Well, you can tell a friend or family member, go listen to what went wrong. They just covered Temple of Doom, It'll rip your heart out. O if you want to take it to the next level, you can leave a rating or review on whatever podcas or you're listening to this on. if you would like more what went Wong content. You can also subscribe on Apple or Spotify and you will get at least one bonus episode every month that is not available unless you subscribe And in fact, this month, we have two. We just covered the Delaware' Prada two, and we will be covering the Vandalorian and Grogu at the end of this month. And if you want to go all the way into the temple of Doom Death, You can join our Patreon For just five dollars, you get everything that I've mentioned previously. plus you get to enjoy the community there. There are polls, there are interactions, there are posts, there's extra credit, there's a lot of things. You should join ourat. Pat Inaction. There are inter. A lot of euphemism You're gonna love it And for fifty dollars a month, you get everything I've just mentioned, interactions, bonus episodes, all of the above, plus, you get a special shout out just like one of these Uh George Lucas here just wanted to say a few things about Temple of doom. U yeah, Stehven was was usefully on board This movie was as much his idea. as it was mine. He also u he also wanted Indiana Jones to u CSX criminal. Don't let them tell you otherwise. Film's a collaborative medium. and you couldn't do it. I couldn't have done it without Stehven, him without me. and This podcast couldn't be made without you guys. So Mate, Ashley Beatrix Eirhart The cast and crew of When a trip to Brownntown, Mark Bertha, Mary Post' humans Frankenstein, Angeline Renee Cook. Evan Downey Jose Emilano Salto Bill Giorgio Amy Ogishhawker McCoy., you know, I wanted to make experximental films. So this is mostly Stehven. not not so much me. Joy Hillpiper, Felicia G., Scott Oshida, Karina Kanaba James McAoy, Cameron Smith, Suzanne Johnson, Ben Schindelman the Provost family, Galen and Miguel, the Broken glass kids. And you need to remember Willard Hike and Gloria Katz, were they were the experts on on Indian culture. Not me. David Friscocalanti, film it yourself, Chris Zaka. Kate L Rington, M Zodia, C. Grace B Blaze Ambrose, rural juror, Nate the knife Lenna LJ. A Did I add the eyeball soup? And the eels? Yes. But you know, my thinking was If you're going do it halfway, you might as well go all the way. U Half Greay Hound, Brittney Morris, Darren and Dale Conkling, Matthew Jacobson, Grace Potter, JJ Rapido Lazy Freddy, Sadie just Sadie, Ryan Donghue Adrian Pang Korea Uh you know, I couldn't have been making these decisions. I was I was doing guitar lessons, as you guys know. So Chris Leal, Kathleen Olsen, Brook Steve Winterbauer, Don Schibel, Rosemary Southwward, Tom Kristin Jason Frankl, Summon Chinani, Michael McGrath, Lydia House. Uh yeah, so, you know Temple of Doom was was it was all of us equal amounts All right Thank you so much for that, Chris Next week, we have You know, a movie that I would argue goes about ten steps further in terms of the racist depiction of an Asian character. Chris, what do we have coming up? We have breakfast at Tiffany's We do. But before we have breakfast at Tiffany's, we're doing a really fun dive into the work that really broke Truman Capote out Yes. I know he was already broken up, but the work he would be most remembered for in cold blood. We're discussing the real case, the Clutterers. Lizzie is walking me through that. We're also talking about the nineteen sixty seven film and of course, Truman Capoti's groundbreaking novel Nonfiction novel in cold bllood. Yeah, so come on Friday for that. It's not essential that you listen to that prior to the Breakfast at Tiffany's episode. They're going be very different. but I do think it's a good companion piece to understand more about Truman Capote, especially because the movie adaptation of Breakfast at Tiffany's is so drastically different from the novella, which we will discuss in the episode. So I'm very excited for that. It's maybe one of the it's one of the weirdest adaptations in terms of what they did from book to screen that I think we have covered. So come back on Friday