So much of this is so good, and so much of this is so bad that it’s good, and some is just bad. Spielberg, Lucas, and Lawrence Kasdan brainstorm Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Lucas: I think basically he’s very cynical about the whole thing. Maybe he thinks that most archeologists are just full of shit, and that somebody’s going to rip this stuff off anyway. Better that he rips it off and gets it to a museum where people can study it, and rip it off right.
…Lucas: … there’s a couple native bearers, whatever, and sort of a couple of Mexican, well not Mexican… Let’s put it…
Spielberg: They’re like Mayan.
Lucas: They’re the third world local sleazos. Whether they’re Mexicans or Arabs or whatever.
…
Spielberg: It’s kind of like one of those rides at Disneyland.
…
Lucas: I think also, you’ve been describing this to people as a science fiction flim [sic], which is good.
Spielberg: I have not.
Lucas: It’s in Rolling Stone.
…
Kasdan: In the way you have it now, in the final confrontation with the arch-rival, the arch-rival is victorious, then he gets fried by the Ark.
Lucas: Right. The Ark is ultimately victorious.
…
And finally, on Marian…
Kasdan: I like it if they already had a relationship at one point. Because then you don’t have to build it.
Lucas: I was thinking that this old guy could have been his mentor. He could have known this little girl when she was just a kid. Had an affair with her when she was eleven.
Kasdan: And he was forty-two.
Lucas: He hasn’t seen her in twelve years. Now she’s twenty-two. It’s a real strange relationship.
Spielberg: She had better be older than twenty-two.
Lucas: He’s thirty-five, and he knew her ten years ago when he was twenty-five and she was only twelve. It would be amusing to make her slightly young at the time.
Spielberg: And promiscuous. She came onto him.
Lucas: Fifteen is right-on the edge. I know it’s an outrageous idea, but it is interesting.
…
Actually, I couldn’t read much more than that.
Via MeFi.
26 comments
March 10, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Jason B.
Well, I guess we know why the latter Star Wars films sucked so badly–Lucas didn’t have these genius conversations to invent the scripts.
They’re the third world local sleazos. Whether they’re Mexicans or Arabs or whatever.
Holy crap–that can’t be real, can it? Okay, I suppose it can.
Man, people suck.
March 10, 2009 at 4:25 pm
Bitchphd
And people think those films are problematic. Hmph.
March 10, 2009 at 5:00 pm
andrew
the arch-rival is victorious,
Leaving aside Temple of Doom – a very good place to leave it – all the Indiana Jones movies follow this pattern.
March 10, 2009 at 6:15 pm
ekogan
They’re the third world local sleazos. Whether they’re Mexicans or Arabs or whatever.
Holy crap–that can’t be real, can it? Okay, I suppose it can.
Tonight on Channel 9 News: three guys say un-PC things during a long bull session. Film at 11.
I’ve read the summary on the Mystery Man site and here’s the part I found the most interesting: What happens in the past, off screen, good or bad, does not affect sympathy. It’s what we see the character do in the present that determines how much we will or will not care about that character.
March 10, 2009 at 8:27 pm
Hemlock
My friend asked me that other day: “Anyone notice how the alien villains in the Star Wars films seem like some sort of ethnoracial stereotype based off a socioeconomic identity (i.e., a “merchant”)?” I want to point out that, in order to be sure, one has to ask the source author (Lucas)–”interpretation is a dialogue between the historian and the source author.” If the source is deceased, that’s where analysis comes in.
Interpretation is not a reflection of subjective bias of your own motivations–but interpretation always has to include interrogating the source author. Or so I learned in historical method and theory.
I think that the “sleazos” quote may count as evidence, although Lucas is still alive and kicking. Back to NGOs and the end of the Cold War…
March 10, 2009 at 8:37 pm
Vance
in order to be sure, one has to ask the source author…Or so I learned in historical method and theory.
Really? So if Lucas were to deny using a stereotype, that would close the case till he died?
March 10, 2009 at 9:05 pm
Bitchphd
Intentional fallacy! Intentional fallacy!
March 10, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Hemlock
I should have said “interrogate” as I did at the end of the post. Oral historians and (I guess) cops know the process well. I’m getting to know it!
March 10, 2009 at 9:25 pm
Vance
What, in the lit sense?
March 10, 2009 at 9:41 pm
Hemlock
The problem is…where to stop questioning? For example, I began to question a contact’s motivations for investigating the deletion of outspoken adolescents from tribal rolls bleh. If find it helpful to have an intellectual partner(s) at hand to say that’s it–a fellow grad student, my sister, or a cool guy that runs a snazzy research institution! The process usually has a quite simple denouement–in the words of the Joker in the Tim Burton Batman, “Who do ya trust?” In any case, I know first-wave post-structuralists may have issues with me (deconstructing both documents and images).
But this is the reason I’ve become such a diehard second-waver!!!
Although, I have to say, George Lucas does seem to feel that Mexican-Americans and “Arabs” lack sweet emotion. Perhaps past experiences led him to believe that all Mexican-Americans and “Arabs” are sexually aggressive and that (therefore?) they all lack emotion. Go figure. Back to the Panic of 1819 as causation, for well, everything, if you think about it heheh…
March 10, 2009 at 9:43 pm
Hemlock
Ok ok…how about “analysis” or “questioning?”
March 10, 2009 at 9:47 pm
JPool
”interpretation is a dialogue between the historian and the source author.”
I’m not sure who you’re quoting here, but no it’s not. Interpretation is what historians do from a variety of different sources. If you’re fortunate enough to be able to ask direct questions of someone associated with a historical text that you’re also looking at, then that’s one more source of data. You’re still the one who has to figure out what you think.
I’m also not sure what sort of department your historical methods course was in, but oral historians generally interview different people from the ones we have texts for. I was fortunate enough at one point in my research to interview someone who I also had a set of documentary records he was involved in. In this case he was a more sympathetic character on paper than he was when I met with him, and he had a less ideological view of his work while he was doing it than when he was looking back upon it.
March 10, 2009 at 10:04 pm
Steal
Yes it is. I think Hemlock assumes “a variety of sources” in “the historian.” Interpretation is not just structural, and all departments teach interdisciplinary approaches. You’re making assumptions about “interpretation.”
Oral historians at times interview different people from the ones they have texts for, yes. But, according to your reasoning, they draw upon a variety of sources–so texts and oral inteviews of the same “historical” subject if available.
I think Hemlock’s reasoning is sound (clap).
March 10, 2009 at 10:46 pm
Steal
The quote is a loaded statement that required explication throughout an entire book on historical methodology (I hestitate to cite without a critique, because I have reservations). Steal is quite right (bow). I believe that when JPool cites a “variety of sources,” in the next statement JPool must implicitly define oral historians as scholars without access to a “variety of sources,” which precludes such scholars from being historians, no? So, according to that logic, “oral historians” or whatever do not “in general” make “interpretations.”
Perhaps I initiated this fallacy by constructing (buzz word) the category of “oral historian,” which is quite contrary to interdisciplinary historical analysis taught in my quite distinguished department. My apologies to “oral historian” or other designator JPool for facilitating it.
So more sympathy, less ideological, and less sympathy, more ideological? That’s a fascinating set of binaries :).
March 10, 2009 at 10:48 pm
Hemlock
My sister and I, ladies and gentleman (bow).
March 10, 2009 at 10:52 pm
JPool
Steal, it’s fine that you think Hemlock’s reasoning is sound, but I honestly can’t understand what they’re saying in some of the comments above. I’m also not following your reasoning. I know all of the words you’re using, but I don’t know what you mean by them here. How does assuming a variety of sources as available to the historian (which is what I assume you mean) turn interpretation into a dialog/interrogation/questioning with/of the source author? Hemlock seemed pretty clear that they meant this literally rather than metaphorically. Of course you can talk to the author of a particular text if you’re able, but it’s ridiculous to say that, barring authorial death, this is what constitutes interpreting a text. What assumptions do you think I’m making about “interpretation?” How would you reinterpret “interpreting” so that Hemlock’s dictum either makes sense or describes the common practices of historians?
But, according to your reasoning, they draw upon a variety of sources–so texts and oral inteviews of the same “historical” subject if available.
Uh huh, I said that, and said that on one occasion I’ve done that. It’s just not that common. My point about oral historians is just that usually folks interview people to get at voices and experience that otherwise fall outside of the textual record. It seemed rather idiosyncratic to suggest that interviewing is primarily about asking folks what they really meant in writing xyz lo these many years ago.
March 10, 2009 at 10:54 pm
JPool
OK, I’m done.
March 10, 2009 at 10:59 pm
Hemlock
It’s helpful to have a partner, eh? It is literal, but requires explication into history, source, author, dialogue, etc. I’m not sure what you meant by metaphorical.
And, point taken: I think “folks” is better than “oral historians,” if that’s your point. I’m not denigrating “folks” here, which is my point.
March 11, 2009 at 6:37 am
Charlieford
Spielberg and Lucas are the least interesting film-makers of their Hollywood cohort. “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-And Rock ‘N Roll Generation Saved Hollywood” by Peter Biskind is chatty but very revealing, and I’d recommend it.
March 11, 2009 at 9:44 pm
ben
“Intentional fallacy!” is often just as fallacious as the intentional fallacy.
March 12, 2009 at 6:00 am
dana
amen.
March 12, 2009 at 6:54 am
politicalfootball
I was wondering what ben meant by that, but then I realized it didn’t matter.
March 12, 2009 at 7:44 am
rea
Maybe this thread makes more sense if you are a professional historian, but speaking as an attorney who sometimes dabbles in criminal defense, of course you don’t necessarily accept a source’s claims as to his motivations, not even after rigorous interrogation–heck, not even after waterboarding!
Draw a conclusion about motivation after examining all the evidence, both direct and circumstantial.
March 12, 2009 at 7:55 am
JPool
Maybe this thread makes more sense if you are a professional historian
No one’s paying me for my historianness at the moment, but I’m going to say, no, it doesn’t. After the ventriloquism and the inability to understand the term “metaphorically”, however, I can’t be bothered.
March 12, 2009 at 8:21 am
Jazz
I think “examining all the evidence” and “drawing a conclusion” are the subjects here, which are both a bit more complicated than they seem to be. I also think that “metaphorically” is the wrong term to use here, and that the ventriloquism was an attempt to be honest. But I’m not sure you need to be a professional historian to understand the thread, nor do you need to be a professional biologist to understand basic biology.
March 12, 2009 at 9:09 am
politicalfootball
I have come to the conclusion that consulting a professional economist can be actively harmful to your understanding of economics.