Katz, Huyck, & the Temple of Doom screenplay

Attila the Professor

Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
I was doing some research for another thread, and came across this information. How much of this is new to us?

In May 1982 Steven Spielberg asked them to write Indiana Jones, and they moved into Lucas' home at his Marin County ranch for a four-day story conference. At this point the plot consisted of two notions of Lucas': that Indy would recover something stolen from a village and decide whether to give it back, and that the picture would start in China and work its way to India. The rest was marathon rambling. George was very single-minded about getting through meetings, says Willard, while "Steve would always stop and think about visual stuff."

The four brainstormers were temporarily stumped trying to devise a scene that would keep the audience awake while a human-sacrifice cult was explained. Huyck and Katz proposed a tiger hunt. "There's no way I'm going to stay in India long enough to shoot a tiger hunt," Spielberg said. They finally settled on a dinner scene. "Steve and George both still react like children, so their idea was to make it as gross as possible," says Gloria. Thus the banquet of beetles, monkey brains and baby snakes was cooked up. When Willard and Gloria got back to L.A. they discovered how seriously Lucas had taken the talks: A 500-page transcript of their taped conversations arrived. Gloria and Willard began writing at once, and finished the first draft in six weeks.
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A tiger hunt that gave way to the dinner? Gloria Katz, potentially passing the buck for that scene's excesses to Spielberg and Lucas? An entire other story conference transcript that we can only hope to discover?

Of course, the entire idea of needing something special to keep the audience awake during the exposition of a <I>human sacrifice cult</I>, when they were already splitting the exposition into more scenes than was the case in Raiders, is a little ludicrous to me.

(Additionally, we don't seem to have a thread about either this screenplay or its writers yet, so this is it.)
 
C

Colonel Corey

New member
Wow! This is an amazing find! (y) I wonder how the tiger hunt would have played out. :whip:


So, how do you think we might discover this transcript? :confused:
 
Lance Quazar

Lance Quazar

Well-known member
A tiger hunt would have been terrible - utterly inefficient, from a storytelling point of view, and a big waste of time.

The sad part is, if you take out all the ridiculous, childish and culturally insensitive (racist) crap out of the dinner scene, the rest of it is actually quite good.

The conversations with Indy, Blumburtt, Chatter Lal, etc. about the Thuggee are very interesting and creepy, creating a looming sense of mystery and dread about what is to come later.

And Chatter Lal's riposte to Indy about his less than sterling reputation was a great bit of shading on the character's backstory and provided a legitimately funny joke (as opposed to the cringe-inducing "humor" in the rest of the scene.)

Heck, I'd love to see a "fan edit" with as much of the bugs, brains and eyeballs taken out as possible.
 
Moedred

Moedred

Administrator
Staff member
Attila the Professor said:
An entire other story conference transcript that we can only hope to discover?
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It's mentioned in the Complete Making Of book. 500 pages, wow. The Raiders transcript always seemed rather short. Five 2-sided tapes and change for 117 pages sounds like about one day's output, not five.
 
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