Attila the Professor said:
To address this point, I feel that "almost shot for shot" is a pretty unambiguous phrase...
Out of context, yes, it would seem that way, but in context it seemed to me that she does not
mean that. If she has watched either film while sober, she has to realize that
Raiders could not be a "shot for shot" remake as you and I understand the phrase. (Either that, or her reels of
Secrets of the Incas include some deleted face-melting scene of which none of us are aware.) In the interview, it seems evident enough that when she says "shot for shot" (prefaced by "in some ways" and "almost") she is referring to the general mise-en-scene of the films, and not the actual composition of each still and scene. This makes it a case of her misspeaking and using the wrong phrase rather than her "bullsh!tting." I don't think she means what one could (and some have) read her as saying.
Attila said:
Also, "in many ways," while a phrase open to interpretation most readily suggests that there are multiple ways in which the statement following it is true.
That's interesting, and a point worth pursuing (at the risk of derailing the thread). Personally (and this could certainly be a question of personal interpretation), I tend to use "in many ways" to imply the opposite; that is, something is "in many ways" true, but not "in every way." The following statement is not always true, but enough for the purposes of whatever comparison is being drawn or whatever argument is being laid out; i.e.,
__so and so__ is in many ways unfit to be the President of the United States, but (s)he is not entirely unqualified. That's how I took her to mean it in the interview, especially since she also added "almost" in the 06 interview. I'd just like to stress that it is almost certainly not the case that she is under the impression that
Raiders and
Secrets of the Incas are virtually the same picture, and so it seems more likely that she simply misunderstands what "shot for shot" means. In her eyes, it could very well be that the earlier scenes (I always imagine that she is referring to the opening in Peru) are "shot for shot" very similar to those in
Incas. For her statement to be bullsh!t, it seems like she would have to be meaning something that is false, rather than meaning to say something that is true but using the wrong words to go about doing so. Seems to me like the only bullsh!t one might smell would be in her possibly overstating the influence of
Incas on
Raiders, because I am pretty sure she does not mean what she is being criticized for meaning.