Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I’m so, so, so tired. I began my day 24 hours ago in Austin and had a whirlwind trip to LA. I’m going to write a big piece detailing my crazy day tomorrow, but I wanted to give you guys a quick greatest hits of the big event today: Hero Complex’s 30th Anniversary screening of Raiders of the Lost Ark with Steven Spielberg in attendance.
The big stuff from the Q&A is below, with a detailed write-up coming when I’m not about to collapse into a giant pile of exhausted geek.
First off, no real Indiana Jones 5 news other than Spielberg saying he’d want to do one. When talking about the infamous shooting of the swordsman scene, Spielberg was saying how Harrison partook of the local cuisine the night before, it caught up with him and he told Spielberg, “Pal (because he always called Spielberg “Pal” apparently), you got me for ten minutes.” They had 3 pages of extravagant sword vs. whip fight, so Spielberg decided why doesn’t he just pull his gun… Then a gravely voice comes across the theater’s speakers saying something like, “That’s a load of crap” and the audience is clued in to the big surprise of the night a second before Indiana Jones himself walks out on stage.
It was pretty spectacular. So, knowing that Q&A involved both Harrison Ford and Spielberg, I want to touch on a couple key moments before sleep overtakes me.
ET Blu-Ray: It’s coming. Spielberg said he wanted to poll the audience. He asked us if there was anybody in the crowd that would be disappointed if the 2002 Special Edition was not included on the Blu, if it was only the original 1982 version. He was greeted with a roaring “No!” from the crowd and said, “Well, that settles it then.” So, he strongly implied the ET Blu-Ray will be the original theatrical cut only and not even include the gun-less, penis breath-less CGI’d ET version.
On the ET SE: Spielberg said he let the immense criticism from parent groups after the theatrical release of ET get to him, which is what prompted the guns being taken out and the removal of the penis-breath line. He admitted that was a mistake and that he realized after the fact that changing the movie was “robbing the people of their memories of the movie.” He had a very hard time with that and said he confirmed what he told me in our interview that you won’t see any more digital tinkering in future releases of his films.
Indiana Jones on Blu-Ray: “Soon.” No date, but he did accept that soon for Spielberg and soon for Lucas weren’t exactly the same thing.
Random trivia: Did you know that Spielberg’s first choice for Alan Grant in Jurassic Park was Harrison Ford and Ford turned him down? True story, says Spielberg to which Ford just shrugged.
On Indy 5: Ford said he loves the character and would definitely do it again, “But I ain’t gonna go to Mars!” he said. There was a bit of light ribbing on Crystal Skull tonight, which made me happy.
Okay, so that’s the highlight reel. If I go into too much detail there’ll be nothing left for my coherent writing tomorrow, so at least you got a primer.
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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