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I might have a more in-depth take on Raiders in me somewhere, but it's something that is so ingrained in my cinematic DNA that I could never hope to communicate how much I love this film. To me, the the way Raiders of the Lost Ark makes me feel, that is how movies should be*. It's why the art form means so much to me. So for now, let me just say listening to Pauline Kael's review just about gave me a fucking aneurysm. *Side Note: I certainly don't mean I want ALL movies to be like Raiders. It's just that for me, Raiders and Last Crusade are sort of Peak Cinema, the way Hitchcock was for the directors of the French New Wave or Howard Hawks was for John Carpenter.

I remember watching that series and every time she would get nervous and say her baking was rubbish or something, I would have a very avuncular instinct kick in and want to be a contestant just so I could say, "awww, sweetie, you are AMAZING!"

She's the girl of my dreams: she can bake, she's hilarious, she's stunning,and she called Paul Hollywood a peacock. Honestly I don't know if you could build a more perfect person?

i love this

By the way, Indiana Jones missed running into Charlie Allnut and The African Queen by two years. TAQ takes place in 1914, and The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, Season 1 ep 5, had Indy joining the Belgium army under false pretenses to fight in World War 1, and he was in the German East Africa campaign.

Raiders Of The Lost Ark UNSPOOLED #23OCTOBER 17, 2018 This week Amy and Paul uncover 1981’s rollicking Indiana Jones adventure Raiders Of The Lost Ark! They ask if Indy is actually a good archeologist, find out whether Belloq really ate a fly, and discuss what makes the film’s action sequences so irresistible to kids. Plus: Indiana Jones superfan Guy Klender shares his wealth of Indy knowledge, and talks about his work on the Raiders fan remake. What do you think the film The African Queen is about? If you haven’t seen it, call the Unspooled voicemail line at 747-666-5824 with your best guess! Follow us on Twitter @Unspooled, get more info at unspooledpod.com, and don’t forget to rate, review & subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts.

I hadn't heard about this. It seems pretty well-known that Spielberg has had interest in making a musical for much of his career, but I was unaware of the story that he had wanted to do it after 1941 and that Lucas was involved in talking him out of it. Where can I read about this? As far as Lucas's contributions, I think you're absolutely right that because he is so terrible at writing dialogue, he doesn't get enough credit for his creative abilities with regards to world-building and story-telling. And of course you're right that Raiders would not have happened without him: in addition to his firm-hand as producer and occasional second-unit director that helped the project stay on budget and on time, Lucas had the largest hand in the concept of the character and story as well. It's enough to make us all wish there were more collaborations between Spielberg, Lucas, and Lawrence Kasdan (whose screenwriting can't be discounted either, and whose absence in the following three Indiana Jones films is keenly felt, in my opinion.) I'm of the mind that the Star Wars prequels could have been great with Lucas's stories for them, had they been directed and written by someone else, as Empire Strikes Back was. And it's to his great credit that the universe he built in the Star Wars franchise is rich enough that it will continue for decades without him actively involved. But as you said, I'm sure we'll be talking about this a lot more when we get to the Star Wars episode.

Thank you to all 3 of you for making me look like a crazy person. I am a painter by trade and this podcast literally had me wheezing with fits of uproarious laughter whilst trying to remain near the top of a 20' ladder while holding my paint and trying to brush a straight line. People without a doubt thought i was a mental patient on a day pass as they heard a loud, prolonged cackle ring out from above their heads. I'm not one to usually comment on a podcast, but the pure joy this podcast has given me can not go un-thanked, so THANK YOU Paul, Scott & Lauren. Threedom You 3 BIG hit!

A week late but I finally caught up with watching this completely. To me, the highlight of the film really is the exchange between Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins. I think Perkins performance contributes so much to what makes this movie works. However, I will call out in the shower scene, that shot of Janet Leigh's eye on the bathroom floor is wonderfully vacant, bleak, and fatalistic. Back to the discussion of the merit of the first half versus the second half. I will point out there is a parallel story going on, with the first half, Janet Leigh has committed a crime, how is she going to get away with it? The second half is, Anthony Perkins has committed a crime, how is he going to get away with it? Now, the obvious difference is, you get the internal monologue of Janet Leigh's character imagining how people are reacting to her crime (you can even see her smile a little bit at imagining the cowboy going, "she even flirted with me."), where-as with Perkins, you only get his interactions with other characters, the lighting, his actions. Basically, only what is knowable externally. This seems required by the narration for the first viewing to keep the surprise for the end. However, for the most part, it just works for me because Perkins just seems to do such a damn good job of going, from say, confident and casual when Arbagast (sp?) shows up, to starting to stammer and shake as his story falls apart in front of him while being questioned by Arbagast. Which is to say, at least up through Arbagast's death, this turns into a bit of a verbal cat and mouse game and is enjoyable through that lens. However, when we get to after Arbagast dies and it's only Vera Miles we're following around, we aren't really seeing that much with Anthony Perkins and I'm just not sure through what lens to view this segment to enjoy it. It could be viewed akin to a procedural I suppose. I think I would have preferred something where you could see more from Norman's perspective of the walls closing in as people just kept snooping around (e.g. maybe the local sheriff going to interview Norman could have been an interesting scene). I never got a sense of danger while Vera Miles was looking around motel room #1. However, when she was looking around the house, it became a taut thriller again. Just really well shot - except, for the cuts of John Gavin distracting Perkins. Those seemed really rough and such small snippets that they didn't feel very well fleshed out (and the sound seemed noticeably... different. Something I'd be fine with in a cinema verite type film, but stood out poorly compared to everything else in this movie). Side note: While the $40,000 still feels primarily like a red herring for the plot to me, another podcast I listened to, one of the people said it made them think of the money in Fargo. It seemed like such a big thing, it was the catalyst for a lot of this carnage (though technically not true, since Norman was killing people prior to this), but in the end, no one got it, and all of this, for only this lump sum of money. I found that an interesting (though maybe not entirely accurate) take on the money.

Yeah! It reminds me of a supercut I once saw that was titled something like "Every Spielberg character looking into light." Pretty much a signature auteur style. To side rail a bit to answer by other question, I think the oversaturated colors of many 60s-ish movies fall a bit into uncanny valley territory. It's not real enough to be really real and that's unsettling. Although that might be why Raiders works so well but Crystal Skull (among its MANY faults) falls flat -- the practical effects of Raiders makes it way more visceral of an experience than a CGI environment.

I completely support your right to be a downer, being that I was the one who kind of shit on E.T. for that episode. As far as the Indy and Marion backstory, I generally agree with sycasey: I always had the same thought, that Indy was late-grad-school/early-post-doc aged, and Marion was college-aged. That certainly doesn't mean it isn't a bit inappropriate (having gone through grad school and seen fellow grad students and occasionally post-docs date undergrads, I have pretty firm feelings on the skeeviness of it. I was once a teaching assistant for a class in which the instructor was a post-doc, and I noticed a year afterwards that the instructor was now married to one of the students in that class, which certainly made me rethink some things that I had witnessed between the two of them back then.) According to a cited fact on Wikipedia (I'm too lazy to check out the citation), it was actually Karen Allen herself who came up with much of the backstory between Marion and Indy, including the romance during her teenage years. Does that make it better? I think the time period does have something to do with it, but at the same time, it ultimately doesn't matter if Marion was 15 or 20 or 25: when Marion says "I was a child" and Indy responds "You knew what you were doing," there's no way to read it except that Indy is an asshole. As far as the white dress goes, it does seem male gaze-y, but I think it functions to make Belloq look like a misogynist asshole, and I think it portrays Marion in a strong light too. She is never timid or scared in that scene, she rolls with a punches in such a way that the viewer believes SHE is the one in complete control instead of being the hostage. As sycasey pointed out, she uses the dress as part of her escape plan. I've always felt that I wished her escape plan had actually worked, even if just for a minute, but at the same time, I like that she's not a victim. And I don't ever see her as a damsel in distress. When she gets stuck in the plane's cockpit, it's when she's being proactive and going after the pilot, and that's the only time when Indy really has to rescue her. At all other points, Indy is in the same situation she's in. While I think they could have talked about directing or cinematography choices a little more, I think Paul and Amy basically nailed what makes this film the best action film in history: the breathless pace, the iconic setpieces, the brilliant score, the strong performances, and the story that makes enough sense to tie it all together. I've heard people nitpick the fact that Indy knew to close his eyes at the end as coming out of nowhere (there was a scene in the script that wasn't shot where Indy read about this aspect of the ark mythos), but I always took it for granted that Indy knew his shit. His academic proficiency is part of what makes the character so interesting and easy to root for, that he's a nerd who had to learn to be a pseudo-badass to fuel his nerd-dom. To Paul and Amy's points, he's not a fighter. It's always questionable whether he has the physical abilities to get out of these messes, but it's never in question whether he has the knowledge to get out of them. Anyway, I could go on and on. Suffice it to say that this joins 2001 as my only 5-star films of the AFI list so far. And I really don't think it's nostalgia either, since as a child I enjoyed Raiders and Last Crusade roughly the same. It wasn't until my early 20s that I rewatched Raiders again with a fresh eye and saw what a masterpiece it really is. I still think Last Crusade is a great, fun movie, but it's nowhere near the artistic level of Raiders.

Paul and Amy talked about how perhaps Lucas and Spielberg's divorces influenced the more negative portrayal of the female lead in Temple of Doom (probably true). I'll also point out that George Lucas' wife at the time of Raiders had a big hand in making Marion the character she was: "[Marcia] was instrumental in changing the ending of Raiders, in which Indiana delivers the ark to Washington. Marion is nowhere to be seen, presumably stranded on an island with a submarine and a lot of melted Nazis. Marcia watched the rough cut in silence and then leveled the boom. She said there was no emotional resolution to the ending, because the girl disappears. ... Spielberg reshot the scene in downtown San Francisco, having Marion wait for Indiana on the steps on the government building. Marcia, once again, had come to the rescue." Source: https://www.syfy.co.uk/news/3-ways-which-marcia-lucas-helped-save-star-wars-0 Can you imagine that? If you never saw Marion again? I think Lucas' early work (Star Wars and Raiders) would not have had the same kind of spunky, smart women they did if Marcia had not been in his life. (And as I noted in the Taxi Driver episode, she was also a great film editor in her own right.)

This seems grosser in retrospect, not just in a post-#MeToo era, but also after having read some of the early discussions between Lucas/Spielberg/Kasdan and also the novel/comic-book adaptations that actually peg her age. In the movie itself (absent any outside information), I'd argue that the "I was a child" line reads as more ambiguous. I know that when I originally saw the movie, I took the "child" line as meaning that she was maybe college-aged or late high school (18 or 19) and he was mid-20s. Maybe a little skeevy and you could see why her father would be angry, but not as bad as Indy deflowering Marion at fifteen. Harrison Ford and Karen Allen are actually about eight years apart in age, which doesn't seem wildly out of line for a romantic couple. In some cultures the age of consent is as young as 15 or 16 -- something that you might have to consider given the time period and the globe-trotting nature of this movie. You know, this was also my interpretation when I first watched this scene, but since then I've reconsidered. First, it's maybe a little patriarchal to assume that Marion can't still be the same tough personalty while sometimes also dressing more feminine. Secondly, the way the scene plays out is that she's going along with Belloq's request so she can try to escape. It almost works, too, but then those damn Nazis show up. I don't think this reflects poorly on Marion's intelligence or spunk. There's almost always something in a more than 20 year old movie that does't quite play as well to modern social consciousness, but I'm not sure Raiders is especially bad in this regard.

I think Raiders scratches so many different itches. It’s an Adventure/Paranormal/Romance/Mystery/Comedy. And somehow, it manages to feels both nostalgic and fresh at the same time. Something like The Fast And Furious movies - which I think are just fine - are more one note, and if you don’t dig that note, then you’re not going to feel the symphony. Also, the Fast movies - especially the earlier ones - already feel dated. Setting Raiders in the past allows it to feel more timeless.

Anyone who thinks Paul and Amy are actively praising Melania Trump . . . has not followed their politics very well. "Love it" means they are enjoying how stupid her choices are.

I liked the episode to be honest, though it wasn't my favorite guest segment. But I think, honestly, Paul & Amy match my interest in Raiders. Like it's really fun, and I've always liked it, but what else is there really to say. Snakes' points are good, but they did bring them up, and I'm not sure how much more in depth they could or should have gone? I liked the focus on the fun, or the 'child-like' angle of the movie. Is the movie flawed, sure it is, but let's talk about how fun it is and why and how. That's why the movie is on the list. I do not think Paul & Amy were in any way encouraging of the underage relationship, nor praising Melania, and I feel safe in speaking for them on that.

This might be my all-time favorite Simpsons movie parody scene:

If you've never read it as Paul suggests, check out the Spielberg/Lucas/Kasdan brainstorming session for Raiders. It's super fascinating. Here's a link to an article that links to the pdf in the first paragraph. https://kottke.org/13/03/transcript-of-raiders-of-the-lost-ark-brainstorming-session

"What do you like about this?" "It's rock and roll with a wide-angle lens." "You suck so much." It's fitting that this episode was basically a best-of (I know what best-ofs are) for the Scott & Scott podcasting experience. Looking forward to whatever they come out with next.