Language Barrier

[Ed. Note: The Management apologizes in advance for the approximately thirty-seven dozen references in this blog post, both in print and via hyperlinks, to “Star Trek” and “Star Wars”. This blog's author is a nerd.]

 

This week, I spotted an online question: what’s your favorite English accent? Half the responders thought the questioner meant “what’s your favorite accent from the British Isles?” and the other half thought he meant “what’s your favorite accent in which to hear English spoken?”  So I got thinking about both. What are my favorite accents, and why?

 

“It comes to pass oft that a terrible oath, with a swaggering accent sharply twanged off, gives manhood more approbation than ever proof itself would have earned him.” –William Shakespeare

“A great actor is independent of the poet, because the supreme essence of feeling does not reside in prose or in verse, but in the accent with which it is delivered.” -Lee Strasberg, acting instructor

“I personally am not conscious of my accent.” -Jared Diamond, American author and scientist

I live in New England, so I probably have a touch of New England in me, but I try to downplay it. If I catch myself pronouncing “there” as “thay-uh”, I stop and think, “no, no, no, no, no.” Why do I do that? Because I hate the New England accent? Hardly. But I try to be careful. Hmmmm.

Background: my standard line is, “my mother grew up in New Jersey, my father grew up in England; we moved to Massachusetts when I was a year and a half old: I got nothin’.” It’s mostly true, possibly thanks to the amount of time I’ve spend amongst people other than New Englanders.

Historically, I’ve been an accent sponge. My favorite story about this comes from my senior year in high school: our music ensembles traveled from Massachusetts to Quebec in the first half of a “home-and-home” exchange trip with high school musicians from Rosemere, a suburb of Montreal. We lived with the families of many of the Rosemere musicians, so for three days we were immersed in the accent of the area. Upon our return home, we jumped off the buses and were met by our parents… and after I spoke exactly five words to my parents, they were chuckling at me. “What?” I said. “You’ve been in Canada,” they said. “Well, yes,” I said, “what’s your point?”

In a really flat and nasal version of a Canadian accent, my Dad said, “You sound just like a hockey coach, eh?”

Oh fine. Guilty as charged. So I’ve got a pretty good ear… ease off!

 

So. Thinking about the various accents that have crashed down on me throughout my life…

[] The Boston Accent. Stereotypically, we pahk the cah in Hah-vid Yahd, but there are other elements to the thing that make it both charming and irritating. Depending on the speaker, the thing can make a person sound either dashingly Kennedy-politician-esque or as dopey as, well, Mayor Quimby of the Simpsons’ city of Springfield. I get a grand kick out of the “Car Talk” guys, but others may not. A college friend of mine from Pittsfield, out in the far west of Massachusetts, had (to my ear) very little of an accent, except that if she was talking about one-fourth of something, she referred to it as a “quotter”.

Well okay, I guess we’re working our way east to west in the United States, so…

[] The New York Accent. Or at least the New York City-centered one. If it’s a Brooklyn accent, to me it just makes everything sound funnier. Thanks, probably, to a combination of Bugs Bunny cartoons, the Marx Brothers and the Abbott and Costello “Who’s On First?” routine. As for the 1010-WINS radio news reader accent, the cultured Manhattan thing … that is a different thing altogether. Until Los Angeles became the entertainment production capital of the United States, a New York accent was the sound of entertainment. (Ever heard an World War II-era newsreel narrator? Check out the opening 20 seconds of any episode of the animated “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” shows for an attempt at the modern equivalent.)

As a close cousin geographically and sonically of the New York accent, the New Jersey Accent has no better proponent than my mother. Born and raised in New Jersey, she has taken no end of abuse from New Englanders (who ought to exercise caution when mocking accents) for her pronunciation of certain words. Because man’s best friend is in fact a Doo-awg.

[] The Pennsylvania Accent. I never knew there was such a thing until I experienced the work of a particular couple of band instructors in college. Then I figured it out, and then some. I still can’t reproduce it on cue myself, but every so often a hint of it slips out and I think, “oh – Pennsylvania.” Not to mention the Philadelphia schtick of a certain summer colleague of mine (which I suspect is a touch over-the-top… then I wonder if perhaps it’s not).

[] The Min-ne-SO’-ta Accent. If for some reason you think either the movie “Fargo” or Garrison Keillor’s “Prairie Home Companion” crew are overexaggerating it, you need only listen to listen to national talk radio shows and hear “Ken from Minneapolis” … and holy smokes, it turns out they’re soft-pedaling it. Extra-credit proof: Michele Bachmann. In general, the generic Midwestern accent gets spoofed quite a bit … and some of that treatment might be at least a touch accurate. There are moments when a Midwesterner’s nasal, flat, wide “o lemme tell ya ’bout dat” is indeed as wide and flat as the Plains. Now, how is it that a Chicago native says “God” and a Bostonian says “guard” and they sound the same?!

 

“I used to say that whenever people heard my Southern accent, they always wanted to deduct 100 IQ points.” -Jeff Foxworthy, comedian

[] The Southern Accent. I take a risk by being a New Englander and commenting at all on the Deep Southern Drawl, I recognize that. Save your cards and letters for a more important issue, please. I like listening to Jeff Foxworthy’s stand-up act, and Minnie Pearl always cracked me up! When I make my voice into the southern college football referee – “we have holding! (holding! holding!) on th’ dee-faynse! (dee-faynse! dee-faynse!) Fifteen yards an’ an automatic firs’ down! (firs’ down! firs’ down!)” it’s out of a wish that all referees could sound that way.

But for every example of the Georgia-and-environs drawl that may cause its purveyors to sound less than fully connected with human intelligence, I would offer any speech by Roy Blount Jr. It’s more than just “ah do declare” and “frankly, Scah-lett, Ah don’t give a damn”. When one wishes to make a pungent point, there might be no better accent in which to do it.

[] The Texas Accent. Maybe the best one in which to exude swagger. As a political observer, I have had lots of opportunity to check out this version of English expression. To my ears, for every Molly Ivins, adding three layers of smart and funny to a phrase, there’s a Rick Perry adding three layers of dim. And then, for three added layers of greed and evil, watch the documentary “The Smartest Guys in the Room”, about “Kenny Boy” Lay and the other corrupt sons of guns of the Enron scandal, based in Houston. Phew. Swagger firmly on display, earned or not.

 

Now. As long as I had an English father, I figure that’s my qualification for examining accents from across the Pond – or perhaps my excuse. And I will limit myself to that. I truly would love to hold forth on things like the French accent (my first exposure: Inspector Clouseau!), the German accent (I first heard it up close from my Dad, while he was creating different voices for bedtime story characters: Dennis the Dachsund was from Munich, no doubt!), and the Russian accent (Ensign Chekov; did you really have to guess?) … I’m not knowledgeable enough. But the British Commonwealth nations? Them, I can talk about…

 

“Americans like the British kind of quirkiness and the strange accent. They find it kind of cute or something, with a certain charm.” -Nick Park, co-creator of “Wallace and Gromit”

If you were from England, and you spoke briefly with my Dad, he could tell where you came from to within about 20 miles. And apparently this is not uncommon.

 

“I learned to change my accent; in England, your accent identifies you very strongly with a class, and I did not want to be held back.” -Sting, lead singer/bassist, “The Police”

Well, heck!: “My Fair Lady” is a whole Broadway musical about how what you sound like can affect your public image, your prospects for career advancement, your economic status, almost everything about you, in England at least.

[] Many many English Accents, therefore: the Upper-Crust… the Cockney accent… the Midlands (the Beatles)… Ian Darke’s soccer calls… and a remarkable number of extremely local variants of each, and more. And that’s just within the borders of England, never mind the rest of the United Kingdom.

I always thought that “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” was just funny stuff; the more I look at it, the more I realize that those gentlemen’s ability to mimic regional accents did as much to sell their satirical commentaries on British life as the actual dialogue did. (Thanks to their “Holy Grail” bit about the Holy Hand Grenade, I cannot listen to the annual radio broadcast of the Christmas Eve service from King’s College without chuckling.) Although I must say that along with Peter Sellers’ Goon Show work, the Pythons made sure that I grew up thinking that anything spoken with any British accent was automatically funnier, too.

 

“I shouldn’t be saying this – high treason, really – but I sometimes wonder if Americans aren’t fooled by our accent into detecting brilliance that may not really be there.” -Stephen Fry, comedian

“I love my accent, I thought it was useful in Gone In 60 Seconds because the standard villain is upper class or Cockney. My Northern accent would be an odd clash opposite Nic Cage.” -Christopher Eccleston, actor

True fact: all the members of the Imperial military in “Star Wars” (the bad guys) spoke in English accents (except Darth Vader, of course). All the Rebels (the good guys) spoke like Californians. Eddie Izzard has commented very expertly on this. Some of the “Star Wars” hardcover fiction writers have actually come up with a cover story to explain this: the accent of a native of the planet Coruscant — the capital of the Old Republic and then the Empire — is basically that of the House of Windsor. The accent is very cultured, very refined (English!). The Emperor apparently had a spectacular anti-alien bias (i.e. anybody not human), therefore the Imperial Navy officer corps is dominated by humans, therefore all the officers are from Coruscant, therefore they all sound like that. Clever reverse-engineering.

Also: for one single scene in Episode IV, Princess Leia adopted an English accent. The rest of the movie, she was regular ol’ Carrie Fisher, and many of us out here in Audience Land assumed it was a mistake. One “Star Wars” novel has deftly suggested that Princess Leia was doing this to mock Grand Moff Tarkin (played by Peter Cushing, owner of one of the ULTIMATE upper-class British accents of all time). Imagine! Mocking the chief Imperial Governor, possibly the third most powerful man in the entire Empire, to his face! –Ah, but his revenge? He blew up her planet. Think before you impersonate, folks.

[] The Irish Accent. I know very well that there is more than one sort of Irish brogue. But the Irish accent that I am familiar with just might be the most musical, melodic accent I know. It seems to me that Irish-inflected speech can’t be done in a monotone.

[] The Scottish Accent. When this accent is done right (by a faker) or done at all (by a native speaker), it is unmistakeable, and to my ears, makes every word more funny, or passionate, or sarcastic, or heroic, –just MORE. My first exposure to a Scots accent, obviously, was James Doohan as Scotty in “Star Trek”. Clearly that was not the best way to start a meaningful relationship with a brogue: the rolled R’s, and the use of the word “aye” without “sir” behind it, were nearly all he got right, sadly. The practitioners that I’ve since experienced have been, well, Scottish: therefore clearly a bit more authentic. Folk singer Jean Redpath… comedian Billy Connolly… and Simon Pegg as Scotty in the 2009 re-boot of “Trek”, which has potential to re-define the character!

 

“I played a lot of leaders, autocratic sorts; perhaps it was my Canadian accent.” -Leslie Nielsen, actor

[] The Canadian Accent. I have Canadian relatives. When they visited my house when I was 13, that was when I really focused for the first time on how Canadians aren’t just far-northern Americans. My cousins were all full of those constricted vowels, and indeed, whenever I hear a hockey coach interviewed, I think fondly of them. Beyond the stereotyped yet ever-present “eh”, there are all kinds of curious and to my ear very flattened sounding things about a Canadian accent. One can forgive Mike Myers, or the fine SCTV gentlemen who brought you Bob and Doug MacKenzie, since they, um, are Canadian.

[] The Australian Accent. Oh my Lord. Isolate British citizens on a Pacific island for a century or two, and you end up with curious speech patterns like: the “ay” vowel sound has become an “eye” (G’day!); and an “ee” vowel sound has been tacked onto the end of every word which in print would otherwise appear to end in an “oh” sound. “Hello(-ee), is there a pho(-ee)ne boath neeah’-boy, do you know(-ee)?” Amazing. And Crocodile Dundee is just the tip of the iceberg. (“Oys-beug.”) It sounds like an English accent and a Boston Brahmin accent had a head-on collision.

 

“But I just know from experience that accent wise, even if you’re an accent genius, crossing the Atlantic is the hardest thing in the world either way.” -Hugh Grant, actor

By the way: we all think that our particular accents are neutral, because we’re around them so much. Therefore, as an American, I find it amazing that British, Scottish, Irish actors can adopt an American accent. To me, it’s as if they had to sand down what they start life with … into nothingness; like temporarily sandpapering the rough edges off a block of wood. So okay: actor Ewan MacGregor (Scotsman) can adjust his accent to sound like Sir Alec Guinness (not a Scotsman). But he can also adjust his accent to sound like an American fellow?! And Hugh Jackman is as Aussie as they come, but when he’s Wolverine in the “X-Men” movies, he’s definitely North American. How does that happen?

Well, obviously it does…

 

“I think it’s sort of a rite of passage for a British actor to try and get the American accent and have a good crack at doing that.” -Orlando Bloom, actor

“I think most British people who say they can do an American accent are so bad at it. I find it excruciating. I find it excruciating the other way around, too.” -Eileen Atkins, actress

One example of this is a BBC recreation of a Marx Brothers half-hour radio comedy show. British actors got close to decent impersonations of Groucho and Chico Marx, but not quite close enough. No blame, no shame: one of the great things about the Marx Brothers is that to imitate them well looks easy, and is very hard indeed. No doubt the British feel just the same way about Americans desperately trying to sound English (Kevin Costner and Christian Slater attempting the feat in 1991′s “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves”).

 

Anyway. If you’re looking for a slam-bang ending, full of philosophy and wise musings and clever ways to tie together toss-off phrases (a/k/a loose ends) from throughout this post … sorry. No such luck. I guess I’m just continually amazed by how many different-sounding ways there are to pronounce words from one single language. It’s a wonder anyone can learn English to start with (all the different version of plural noun forms alone would be off-putting… “you mean it’s mouse/mice, but house/houses? Box/boxes, but ox/oxen? Hell with this, I’ll go back to speaking Spanish”), and then on top of that, how many different accents and brogues are out there, lurking, waiting to confuse not merely the “English as a second language” contingent but people from our very own US of A?

Makes my head hurt. Meanwhile, I gotta go make some suppah, before I siddown and watch the Broons play hawkey.

O, Ye of Little Faith

Or, How I Thought the Latest Star Trek Movie Was a Violation of Every Trek Rule In The Book… Till I Actually Watched The Thing.

 

During the previous entries in this blog, there may be one detail which has not come through loud and clear. Faintly, perhaps, but not at all in the heavy-handed way that it should. That detail is that I am a Trekkie… a Trekhead… a Trek nerd… whatever the current term is, I am him.

Since the age of 9, not only have I been entertained by this phenomenon – I have gotten quite good at details like, Captain Kirk didn’t always wear the yellow shirt, he sometimes wore the slightly more green-looking wraparound jersey, and besides, the shirts only looked yellow on TV, they were actually much more green if you saw them in person while filming was going on, even though I obviously never saw the filming in person, but I read about that in a pretty official-sounding book when I was 13.

To be equally clear, when I went to my first Star Trek convention, during the “Next Generation” era, I went largely to hear Patrick Stewart give the keynote speech. I did NOT wear a full Starfleet uniform like the people sitting next to me on the subway, a family of four who were also going to the Con. I have the books, the CDs, the videos, and the Internet bookmarks … but I also have my dignity.

And although The Original Series was clearly done on a shoestring budget, with only the cinematic technology of the 1960s (only slightly more advanced than the stuff my fifth-grade best friend had in his basement), and even though the entire last third of the series sounded like it was written by someone who wasn’t smarter than a fifth-grader, a lot of it is still a heck of a great basis for an American entertainment franchise. It has a terrific (if unrealistically Utopian) philosophy: lots of different-looking people (and non-humans) working together for the common good – on a spaceship with lots of fun blinky lights.

A lot of the writing on the “Next Generation” series (after the first year or two, when they’d figured out that Captain Picard would never say that!!) did what great science fiction should do: it told stories (thinly-veiled or not) about current controversial issues – and slid their social commentary in right under the noses of whatever TV network was distributing it. “Deep Space Nine” did a version of that, taking on religious issues as well as the Bosnia/Herzegovina situation of the years of its production; “Voyager” was an interesting concept (kick the cast halfway across the galaxy and introduce a whole new set of adversaries and situations) and featured the wonderful Kate Mulgrew as, essentially, Captain Katharine Hepburn; and “Enterprise”… well, perhaps best not to delve too deeply. (I liked the idea of using that pop tune as the theme song, but I might have been the only person in the world who did.)

And that seemed to be the trend. The further away from the original series the Trek franchise got, the more diluted it seemed to get. Or maybe that was just the response of the fan base. The movies tried hard, and occasionally succeeded, in getting things right, but for every great Trek moment, there was a truly awful one. Are the people making these films, these TV shows, aware that there is a history here, a canon, that needs to be followed, or at least understood?  (Talk about a subject about which there has developed a corps of True Believers…)

 

So, a few years ago, word came down that J.J. Abrams was making the next Star Trek movie. And it wouldn’t involve Captain Picard. It was going to be a re-boot. Re-invent the franchise. Start from Kirk and Spock again. Get younger actors to play the parts. Some fans rejoiced (“oh hey, J.J. Abrams!”). Some fans despaired (“oh Lord, J.J. Abrams!”). After all, the last two decades of American filmmaking have been littered with re-boots and re-imaginings and re-envisionings of Classic American Entertainment Franchises. I’m not sure I was the only fella who went to see the Dan Ackroyd/Tom Hanks movie version of “Dragnet” and actually chuckled at it, but I might have been.

I awaited the movie release with guarded interest. I saw the opening episode of “Lost” and it looked interesting, after all… so maybe this Abrams fellow would have the same effect on the Trek franchise as Nicholas Meyer did with “Wrath of Khan”. I was willing to hope.

But the more images of “Star Trek” (2009) that I saw via the Internet – even as I desperately attempted to avoid finding out too much about it because I hate spoilers – the more skeptical I got. To wit:

[] The Starship Enterprise was built on planet Earth? Not true; it was built at a shipyard in Earth orbit. It was supposed to be too big and too heavy to land on a planet and then get off it; that’s why Gene Roddenberry invented transporters.

[] The Enterprise bridge looks like an Apple Store? Me, I was kinda hoping that the basic look of the bridge, and the rest of the ship, would look like the 1960s version, but with more blinky lights because we now have the money and technology to build sets that look and work realistically. The rail around the edge of the bridge isn’t red? What is this?

[] Spock and Uhura are kissing in a turbolift?! A Vulcan and a human are in a relationship? Not tr– … oh, wait, Spock’s parents were Vulcan and human, respectively, so that’s not so far-fetched. But the last I heard, Spock was desperately trying to fight down his human half and would never, ever, in a million zillion years, smile at humans, let alone smooch them. Have ye not known, have ye not heard about the “Nurse Chapel is hopelessly infatuated with Mr. Spock” recurring subplot?

All right, so they found someone to play Spock who was the spitting audiovisual image of Leonard Nimoy in 1967. The rest of it looked suspect to me. And, as I have been out of the habit of going to see movies in the movie theaters over the last several years, I therefore knew I’d wait for the thing to come out on video. And then I didn’t even have the grit to buy the DVD. After all, I gave “Star Trek: Nemesis” the same treatment, and Patrick Stewart was in that one. This Abrams re-boot didn’t have a prayer.

 

I discovered some more details. It didn’t give me a lot of hope.

[] Kirk’s father died without meeting his son? Not true. Not according to the “Star Trek Concordance”, a tome assembled in the 1970s to package all the known facts about the known Trek story (all 67 episodes and no movies yet, at the time).

[] Kirk and Lt. Uhura and Dr. McCoy and Mr. Spock all knew each other before they got aboard the Enterprise? Not true. Besides, what are the odds? Starfleet’s a huge organization. What are the odds of me being on the same teaching staff as someone I knew in third grade? Remote, thanks.

[] The entire crew is intact from the start? Hmm. The Enterprise‘s first crew, in the original pilot episode, “The Cage”, featured many characters, but not: Kirk, McCoy, Scott, Sulu, Chekov or Uhura. The Enterprise crew in the second pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before”, features more of the well-known regulars but still not McCoy or Uhura, and Chekov was added only during the second Trek season in 1967 as a response to the accusation that no Russian was aboard the ship even though the first man in space was a Soviet cosmonaut (and that Trek needed a younger, “Beatle”-looking cast member). Everybody knows that.

[] No Romulan has ever had a name like “Nero”. Or had a tattoo. And no Romulan ship has ever looked like that.

[] The planet Vulcan is destroyed before the movie is 45 minutes old? If they plan to do lots more Trek movies or even TV, you’ve just lost a huge part of the Trek universe in which or about which to tell stories. Wise?

Then I heard that Leonard Nimoy was in this thing. That should, logically(!), have given me happy pause, but then I remembered that he was in “Star Trek V”, which was awful in nearly every way, and he was heavily involved in the creation of “Star Trek VI”, which had more than a few little details and large performances that went spectacularly against the original Trek canon. Nimoy’s presence did not necessarily guarantee quality or authenticity.

 

Then, a friend of mine suggested to me that “if you liked the original Trek, you’ll like this one.” And eventually herded me in front of a large-screen TV, sat me down, and forced this thing on me.

It takes a brave guy to admit he’s wrong.

So. I was forced to be brave.

I liked it.

A lot.

Partly, the story involves time travel, which, from the moment of James Kirk’s birth, throws the Trek universe into an alternate timeline. Granted, this plot point was not explained unto the audience till more than halfway through the movie, so the first 75 minutes of the thing had me appreciating a lot of the nice touches but still maintaining my air of jaded skepticism – I know Trek, after all. I had to admit that the sound effects alone started the process of dismantling my defenses within the first five minutes of the film. But out of some desperate need to defend the Original Version of the Original Intent of the Original Series, I remained safely guarded.

But as soon as prime-universe-Spock told the film’s backstory, I got the idea. Within this story, it’s okay (even helpful) for some things to be slightly different, to be slightly “wrong”. I’ve been a fan of alternate-reality stories for a long time, and Star Trek has done them at least as elegantly as any science-fiction franchise (the Original Series’ first-season award-winning “City on the Edge of Forever” and Next Generation’s “Parallels”, for starters).

And, as soon as the movie was finished, I realized that Abrams and his writing team had managed to include every famous Trek line of dialogue, integrating each “logically” and appropriately into the story. “Captain, we’re being hailed,” says Uhura. Doctor McCoy gets more than his share of the fun: in his first scene, he gets to deftly and canonically-accurately foreshadow his “Bones” nickname. “Green-blooded hobgoblin,” he mutters sotto voce, after asking Spock, “are you out of your Vulcan mind?” As Spock explains a plot point, McCoy responds, “Dammit, man, I’m a doctor, not a physicist!” There’s a 15-second riff on Chekov’s Russian accent. In his first scene wearing the yellow captain’s jersey, Kirk bounds down the bridge steps and calls out “Bones!” in a manner that is vintage Kirk and yet not precisely a William Shatner impression. At the last moment, Spock gets an opportunity to say, “Fascinating.” And, gloriously, in a Scots accent that is in fact finally authentic, Chief Engineer Scott cries out from the engine room, “I’m givin’ ‘er all she’s got!!”

Which, in the end, it looks like J.J. Abrams might have been saying, too.

Yes, the film is heavy on ferociously-paced action sequences and a bit low on the classic Trek philosophical and ethical themes, but I suppose I can hope this was because Abrams needed to use this film as setup for some other ones he wants to do, in this new, slightly revised Trek world. And those Trek ethics lectures could be a bit long in the tooth, way back when.

I was even a little bit wrong about the musical score of “Star Trek” (2009) as well, but that’s a thought for another day.

 

It’s possible that there may be a lesson in all this (speaking of philosophical and ethical lecture opportunities). But for the moment, I’m content to sit down every about couple of weeks and screen this movie again, and just chuckle. The kids are alright.

It’s Not the Years, It’s the Mileage

Thirty years ago tomorrow, Paramount Pictures released a little tiny movie. It somehow became the top grossing film of 1981, and remains one of the highest-grossing movies ever made. This little movie was made to satisfy the yearnings of its producers for movies “like they used to make” … weekly serial adventures about daring swashbucklers and nasty villains and heroines who could deliver a mad right cross, with impossible chase scenes and supernatural happenings and globe-trotting settings.

“Raiders of the Lost Ark” might be the perfect adventure movie.

I think a distinction can be drawn between movies (like “Raiders”) and films (documentaries and other cinematic creations that aspire to serious and lofty goals concerning serious and important topics). When you make a movie, you set out to entertain your audience: to force them to suspend their disbelief, to suck them completely into your story, and to make them forget there’s a world outside that movie theater. In fact, to make them forget they’re IN a movie theater. The best movies, for the length of their running time, are the only thing happening in the whole world. They are the whole world.

“Raiders” was a Hollywood all-star team. Producer George Lucas, fresh off the success of an unlikely box-office science fiction hit (what was it called again?), and well on his way to being the most powerful independent filmmaker in American history. Director Steven Spielberg, fresh off the success of his summer blockbuster, “Jaws”, and possessing an impressive directorial and creative resume even before “Close Encounters”, “Raiders” and “E.T.” would become American pop-culture touchstones. Composer John Williams wrapping up six years, 1975 through 1981, in which he would add to the list of Tunes That Everybody Knows (and can hum): the “Jaws” shark motif; the opening theme from “Star Wars”; the “Close Encounters” alien five-note contact theme; the fanfare from “Superman”; Darth Vader’s theme; and the Raiders March (no other film composer has had this profound an effect on American pop culture). And Harrison Ford, swinging a bullwhip and delivering terse one-liners, taking his place among the pantheon of Hollywood’s great leading men: Humphrey Bogart, Errol Flynn, Clark Gable, Gregory Peck, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Paul Newman…

There are plenty of examples of all-star teams that didn’t quite live up to expectations. A friend of mine once described a particular late-night television program’s house band as “less than the sum of its parts”. “Raiders” is considerably more than the sum of its parts. Every time I watch the thing, I’m freshly impressed: there is not a single false note in this movie; not a single line of dialogue you’d like to rewrite; not a single scene in which the actors fail to do their jobs; not a musical cue that is out of place; not a single special effect that causes a viewer to say, “whoops!  Blue screen.  Matte painting.  Miniature model.” – except perhaps when the poor villains get caught up in the Ark of the Covenant’s Biblically violent revenge during the finale – and somehow, even if you know that the melting heads were in fact the product of wax head models, a hair dryer and some time-lapse photography, that makes it all the more fun to watch. (For the DVD release, they even fixed the jump cut that had previously showed Harrison Ford looking through a surveyor’s scope at the desert dig site and then suddenly standing straight up.)

When I think of “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, I think of specific moments, big and small, blunt and subtle – creative imagery and fun little quotes (as excerpted from the original screenplay):

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[1] INT. TEMPLE:

Indy reaches the altar. The tiny idol looks both fierce and beautiful. It rests on a pedestal of polished stone. Indy looks the whole set-up over very carefully. From his jacket he takes a small, canvas drawstring bad. He begins filling it with dirt from around the case of the altar. When he has created a weight that he thinks approximates the weight of the idol, he bounces it a couple times in his palm concentrating. It’s clear he wants to replace the idol with the bag as smoothly as possible. His hand seems ready to do that once, when he stops, takes a breath and loosens his shoulder muscles. Now he sets himself again. And makes the switch! The idol is now in his hand, the bag on the pedestal. For a long moment it sits there, then the polished stone beneath the bag drops five inches. This sets off an AURAL CHAIN REACTION of steadily increasing volume as some huge mysterious mechanism rumbles into action deep in the temple.

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[2] EXT. IN THE AIR – DAY

A DC-3 flies west from Nepal to Egypt, skimming around towering cloud formations. Simultaneously, a map appears beneath the plane, and a red arrow extends across it, describing the route of the plane.

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[3] EXT. CAIRO MARKETPLACE

[This scene reportedly was not scripted but rather improvised on location, thanks to Harrison Ford's rather severe case of dysentery, contracted during weeks of filming in the Tunisian desert. He, um, didn't want to spend too much time away from easy access to a restroom, so a rather lengthy fight scene was cut and became the movie's first genuine belly laugh. Interesting how it lines up with another Ford line in another movie: “...there's no substitute for a good blaster at your side, kid.”]

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[4] INT. TANIS MAP ROOM

The moment has arrived. Even the tension of the circumstances cannot distract Indy from the purity of what he is about to do. All his calculations are adjustments complete, Indy takes the Staff of Ra and places it—CLINK!– in the right depression on the base line. This is as active and exciting a moment as any archeologist can dream of and, at heart, that is exactly what Indy is. The sunlight catches the very top of the headpiece and moves within a fraction of an inch of the tiny hole in its sun. The edge of the sunlight moving across the miniature city is still a good two feet beyond the spot Belloq has settled on. And now that line of light is broken by the shadow of an ornate sun at the top of the staff. Indy’s face reflects his concentration. And then his immense pleasure. He sees what he came for. Out of the miniature city, one small building is being lit by a tiny beam of sunlight in the center of the shadow of the metal sun. And by some trick of ancient artistry, this one building responds to the sunlight like none of the others. The golden light permeates it: it seems to glow. The building is in a direct line with Belloq’s – all the Frenchman’s other calculations were right – but it is a foot and a half beyond it.

[And John Williams' musical cue for this scene is majesty, mystery, history and Biblical bombast, all in one.]

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[5] INT. WELL OF THE SOULS

Indy drops his torch to the floor of the Well. This is answered by the most horrific HISSING imaginable. WHAT HE SEES: That thick dark carpet is moving. It’s alive. It’s thousands and thousands of deadly poisonous snakes – Egyptian asps. And the only thing that seems capable of avoiding this venomous groundcover is the altar. The snakes ebb and flow near it, but never encroach on it, as though repelled by some invisible force.

SALLAH: Asps. Very dangerous. You go first.

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[6] EXT. AMONG THE TENTS – DAY

Sallah and Marion look at Indy. Belloq and Gobler climb in the back seat of the front car and the caravan [carrying the Ark] pulls out. Indy watches it go, thinking hard.

INDY: I’m going to get that truck. I’ll meet you at Omar’s. Be ready for me.

Sallah nods. Marion looks at him like he’s nuts.

MARION: How are you going to get that truck?

INDY: I don’t know. I’m making this up as I go.

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[7] INT. INDY’S CABIN – NIGHT

INDY: (to Marion) It’s not the years, honey; it’s the mileage.

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[8] INT. GOVERNMENT WAREHOUSE

The Ark of the Covenant sits in a wooden crate. A wooden lid comes down and hides it from view. The lid is solidly nailed to the crate as we read the stenciled message on top– “TOP SECRET • ARMY INTEL. #9906753 • DO NOT OPEN!” The hammering is completed and hands shift the heavy crate onto a dolly. THE END CREDITS ROLL AS WE SEE– a Little Old Government Warehouseman begin pushing the crated Ark down as aisle. Soon we see that the aisle is formed by huge stacks or crates. They come in many and sizes, but when it comes right down to it, they all look like the one that holds the Ark. All have markings like the message we’ve just seen. Pretty soon we’re far enough and high enough away from the Little Old Government Warehouseman to see that this is one of the biggest rooms in the world. And it is full. Crates and crates. All looking alike. All gathering dust. And then we notice that the Little Old Government Warehouseman, pushing his new crate ahead of him, has turned into another aisle and disappeared from view. FADE OUT.

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Tip of the iceberg, actually.

I’ve watched “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”, and although they’re fun, they’re typical sequels: close, perhaps, but no cigar. I can’t say any of the same things about them that I can say about “Lost Ark” – and in each case, most of the same people were involved. “Lost Ark” is a prime example of right people, right place, right time, right creative environment, right moment in American history, add a lightning strike and you get something very, very special. All the technological improvements in cinematic production in the world probably will still never recreate this 1981 movie’s magic.