RAIDERS MARCH
Look who took up residence in my living room telly last week. “Tip-tap, tip-tap, tip-tip-tippy-tap” (the sound spiders make when walking where they shouldn’t be) goes this little thing right across an actor’s face. I sprang up to relocate it outside and couldn’t make contact. It had found its way inside, behind the screen. A brightly lit scene with many flashes of differing light was up next, and the spider seemed to scurry this way and that a bit erratically. It then made its way over to the side and stayed put. I turned off the telly just in case it was a freaky experience for this would-be weaver of webs. It’s not there any longer, and I hope it found its way back out versus dying in the bottom of the tv. A quick Google relayed many stories of others finding spiders in their tubes of boob as well, but no solutions short of a dismantling project I wasn’t game for.
I’ve been waiting to see this – Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made. I just wish I’d been paying attention so I could’ve seen it when it was in Seattle this past June. In the summer of ’82, three pre-teens set out to make a shot-for-shot remake of Spielberg’s Raiders of The Lost Ark. The endeavor consumed their summers up to college. Years later, they reunite to shoot the final scene never completed as kids. The documentary covers their struggles and triumphs in capturing the footage, some of the paths the kids took in their early adulthood, and how they wound up back together, ready to finish what they’d started so long ago.
I was so inspired!
The storyboards created and drawn up from memory.
The telling of the reaction and appreciation a copy of their film received back in 2002 when it was shown at the Butt-Numb-A-Thon festival, making it a cult sensation in all the years to follow.
The different ways the kids wrangled props and configured sets in replicating scenes.
Their tenacity and faithfulness.
I was moved!
I cried toward the end, their dream realized.
I remember several years back, when it was touch and go with my dad from day to day, in and out of hospitals and care facilities, waiting, waiting, waiting. I knew when my phone rang, when I heard the ringtone that means that my dad is calling, that of the Indiana Jones theme, that finally, everything would be okay. I remember the moment, I was at my desk working on a design, when the music began. Tears of joy welled in my eyes, my dad was with it once again, coherent and ready to call, to resume his routines and our patterns. My boss at the time had a dad struggling with health issues back in PA, and though not close nor particular buddies with me, his eyes too, welled for me, knowing what it meant and bolstering hope for his own father’s recovery as well.