Movie: Raiders of the Lost Ark
This is a blog about movie grace-notes, and there’s surely no filmmaker with a greater appreciation of this concept than Spielberg. He’s a blockbuster director, to be sure. Yet he repeated shows his skill at celebrating small moments (that little girl in the red coat, or the woman’s face opening like a CD player in A.I.) that lesser directors will overlook. And with Raiders of the Lost Arc, he gave us surely the greatest grace-note of all time.
It is somewhat ironic, therefore, that this scene was a result not of Spielberg’s genius, but Harrison Ford’s diarrhea. The story goes that filming in Tunisia places unexpected pressures on the production. When the script called for a two-page battle between a swordsman and Indi’s whip, the entire cast and crew (save the director, thanks to a personal supply of tinned spaghetti) was struck down by a stomach illness. A weakened Ford read the script and whined: “Can’t I just shoot him instead?”
And thus arguably the coolest moment in matinee cinema was born.
Grace Notes 