Quote:
Originally Posted by
thrillbilly 
| In the Indiana Jones scene...Ford was supposed to have a long fight with the scimitar guy...but he had a bad case of the runs from local water...he had been on the toilet all day, and was tired...he asked the director if he could shorten the scene so he could take the rest of the day off....SO, my favorite Indie scene was a accident basically. |
The way I heard the story, as originally written the assassin showed up, made his showy move, and then Jones snagged the sword with his whip, yanked it out of the assassin's hands, and then smacked him over the head with it, before going on to try and catch up with the Nazis who had kidnapped Marian Ravenwood.
Trouble was, Harrison Ford had the flu and was running a high fever in addition to having the trots. The makeup artists could barely keep the makeup on his face; it melted off almost as fast as they applied it. But Ford's a trouper, so he tried to do the scene the way Spielberg and Lucas wanted it.
Now, Lash LaRue trained Ford in the throwing of the bullwhip, and he actually isn't half-bad with it - when he's healthy. But as sick as he was, Ford was a positive menace to the stunt man playing the assassin. The guy would position the scimitar exactly where it had to be, at exactly the right angle for Ford to wrap the lash around it, and Ford would miss the target. A couple of times, he almost got the stunt man in the face, which would certainly have cut his face up and could conceivably have blinded him. Ford was screwing up, and he knew it.
After about the fifth blown take, he finally turned to Speilberg and Lucas sitting behind the cameras and said, "Look, can't I just shoot him instead?"
Spielberg and Lucas looked at each other, and it was like a light bulb went on over their heads. Given that Marian has been snatched by the Nazis and seconds count, that if Indiana loses them in the crowded market they will likely get away clean with her, of
course he'd shoot the swordsman!
So they set up for the revised scene. The stunt man did his display, Ford (aided by the fact he was sick as a dog) looked exasperated and blasted the stunt man, and the stunt man went over backwards, dramatically losing his grip on the sword as Ford turned to the right to get on with the search.
But that's not the end of the story.
If you watch the scene, when the stunt man goes over backwards and the scimitar goes flying, you'll notice it's grabbed by an Arab kid who takes off with it, running straight away from the camera.
That wasn't in the script. The kid is stealing an expensive prop made for the movie!
Spielberg saw the street urchin running off with the sword and yelled,
"Somebody catch that kid!" Then, his mind running through the possibilities at top speed, he shouted, "No! Let him go! I love it! Cut! Print!"
And that's how we got one of the most sensible scenes in
Raiders of the Lost Ark: a combination of Harrison Ford being ill and wanting to get the scene over with, a stunt man being dramatic, and an Arab kid stealing a sword.
I've been waiting for that scimitar to show up on eBay for
years.
