The Last
Crusade completed the adventurous trilogy
Lucas envisioned and the character of Indiana
Jones was about to take his place in film history
as one of the greatest cinematic figures ever
created. In the time following Indy's third
outing Lucas got involved in the development of
The George Lucas Education
Foundation. At the same time he turned
to another medium he found attractive, television.
Realizing the potential of storytelling through
a medium, which hasn't the two-hour limit
of a feature film Lucas started research for a
television program that would be educational and
entertaining at the same time. Remembering his
old love for history and anthropology that led
to the creation of Indiana Jones he came up with
the idea of presenting historical events by using
the popular appeal of Indiana Jones to attract
audience. The project was named A
Walk Through 20th Century: History with Indiana
Jones and as it kept evolving it became
a TV series entitled The
Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.
George Lucas
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"It started out of a love of
an idea. I have an educational foundation working
with interactive projects, and I got this idea
to get kids involved in history through the Young
Indiana Jones character," said Lucas about
the inspiration that led to the creation of the
series. "The turn of the century is my favorite
part of history because it has so much to do with
the emergence of the modern age we live in today.
It seemed like such a great idea and such an interesting
adventure that I just got lured into it by the
creative potential. I took it to the network and
said, ‘Would you be interested in this?
It's a little bit esoteric for television,'
but they said, ‘Great! They've been
very cooperative and we've been off making
this adventure ever since… and it has been
a true adventure."
Hitting two birds with one stone
was a way of life for George Lucas who decided
to use some new techniques in his new venture.
"I was eager to experiment with a few production
techniques that I had always wanted to incorporate
in making the features, but I've never really
been in a situation where I could afford to it,"
explained Lucas. "In a feature, when a mistake
is made, it costs you huge amounts of money. Because
The Young Indiana Jones
Chronicles is not very expensive to produce,
they're moderately priced hour adventure
shows, I really wanted to see if I could successfully
use feature-production techniques in the context
of a TV series. So part of it was a production
experiment, and part of it was trying to deal
with this creative idea that's sort of esoteric."
The series would not deal with Indiana
Jones globetrotting to unearth lost artifacts
and battling bad guys but it would reveal the
events that shaped Indiana Jones into the hero
everybody loved in the feature films. Actually,
the series would show Indy in two different periods
in his life. The first period would take place
from 1908 to 1910 and the second from 1916 to
1920 while the series would also show Indiana
Jones at the age of 93 recalling his youthful
adventures. Although, this last phase would not
be thoroughly explored it would introduce and
close each episode.
"That's something that
some people weren't too happy to have me
do, but I really wanted to tell about those two
periods in time. Both are very interesting periods,
and I didn't want to do one, and then if
the series went well, do the other. I really wanted
to deal with both periods and mix it up,"
Lucas and continued, "The network and the
studio were afraid, because television has its
rules and its little formulas that they go by.
They want one strong identifiable figure. Television
is a character-driven medium, so they're
very focused on making sure that they basically
have one marketable figure or actor. We actually
have three different actors playing Indiana Jones.
And there's a possibility, if it goes another
year, that Indy will range from five-year-old
all the way up to a twenty-two-year-old. It's
all the Indiana Jones character personified by
Harrison Ford in his mid thirties, but in these
other time periods you can't use Harrison,
so I think it's perfectly natural that different
actors play those characters. The show explores
how Indiana Jones got to be the way he is. How,
like in the features, did he learn to speak so
many languages? Where did he pick that up? How
did he decide to become an archaeologist? There
are so many fascinating things about the character
that you can't deal with in the features
because they move along so fast on an action level.
I thought it would be interesting to understand
how that happened and to build up, mainly for
the teenage audience, a character who likes to
learn. He's not a nerd; he's not a
jerk, but he loves learning and what the result
of that learning gets him in the end. It doesn't
make him rich or famous, but it definitely puts
him in good stead in terms of his walking through
life."
Lucas with
his two
young Indy actors. |
|
The back story created by Lucas
for the entire series started with five-year-old
Indy and his early years at Princeton. Then at
the age of eight he went on a world tour with
his mother and father, who was a professor of
medieval studies and was giving guest lectures
at universities around the world. Following his
return to the States two years later the story
continues with his mother's untimely death,
when Indy was thirteen-years old and he was left
in the care of his authoritative father, who neglected
him. With the bridge, his mother, between father
and son, ruined, the two drifted apart. After
high school Indy got involved in the Mexican revolution
and ended up in the trenches of
World War I. Seeing in the battle field
the cruelty and the insanity of war he became
a spy and at the war's end he returned to
the States to study archaeology at the university
of Chicago, where he met professor Abner Ravenwood,
father of Marion Ravenwood from Raiders
of the Lost Ark. During his travels Indy
would meet many new cultures, places and important
people from the early 20th century. He meets people
like Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, Winston Churchill
as a young lieutenant, Emperor Karl of Austria,
Pablo Picasso, Norman Rockwell, Theodore Roosevelt
and others. "As a whole piece, it's
a lot of fun because you can follow his life,
and that's very interesting," said
Lucas. "This is the true life story of the
man that the character was based on in the features.
It's about somebody who's very interested
in learning about things, somebody who's
had some incredible adventures in his life that
really revolve more around learning and exploring
various ideas than getting involved in action/adventure
things."
Lucas, as in the feature films,
would serve as executive producer and story consultant.
For the head of production Lucas turned to Robert
Watts with whom he had worked with on all three
Indy films. Watts didn't want to get involved
with the Chronicles
because he wanted to pursue his own projects so
he introduced to Lucas Rick McCallum, a London-based
producer who had worked in television and film
for years and had produced such projects as the
award-winning BBC
series The Singing Detective,
Track 29, Strapless,
Dreamchild, Castaway,
Pennies from Heaven
and a dozen British films.
Lucas met McCallum in March 1990
and explained his plans for the series and he
was immediately interested. After a few more chats
McCallum accepted the offer and started to work
on the show immediately.
Rick McCallum
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Once aboard, McCallum began his
search for the people who would bring Young Indy's
adventures to life. Lucas didn't want the
Chronicles to
be just another sitcom, each episode to be the
same as the last one but he wanted to be different
in theme and pace. To achieve that he decided
that he should hire more than one writer and more
than one director. So, McCallum began a search
to assemble two groups of artists. From March
to July he looked for scriptwriters and from July
to September he looked for directors. During these
months McCallum met around sixty or seventy writers
from both the United States and England and almost
every director working in England.
When he managed to narrow down the
candidate writers to a considerable number McCallum
arranged some meetings for Lucas to meet them.
Finally, Lucas settled with a group of renowned
writers that came from different backgrounds and
expertise.
• |
Rosemary Ann Sisson was a British novelist who had been a dramatist
for many years. She had written many episodes
of Upstairs, Downstairs,
as well as Manions
of America, she had written plays,
movies and had more credits than anyone
else on the show.
|
|
• |
Jonathan Hales,
another British, had written a few things
including the Hercule Poirot movie, Death
on the Nile. |
|
• |
Jonathan Hensleigh
was a Wall Street lawyer up until a year and
a half before the show's creation, who
got sick of what he was doing and decided
to be a scriptwriter. He came to Hollywood,
got a three-picture deal with Disney
and ended up working in the Lucas camp. |
|
• |
Reg Gadney was
a novel writer and had written a few adventure
novels, he was also an artist. |
|
• |
Frank Darabont,
who had turned from production assistant to
scriptwriter, had co-written A
Nightmare on Elm Street 3, The
Blob remake and The
Fly II. He had also worked uncredited
on several films such as
The Rocketeer and had made his directorial
debut with the USA
Cable Network movie Buried
Alive. Other writing credits included
Tales from the Crypt
and the Two-Fisted
Tales. |
|
• |
Matthew Jacobs,
British, had written a couple of feature films
and many TV movies before getting involved
in the Young Indy
Chronicles. According to Darabont's
description Jacobs was the most stream-of-consciousness
of them all. "He's delightful.
It's always a pleasure to follow his
train of thought, or try to, anyway." |
|
• |
Gavin Scott was
born in Hull, Yorkshire in 1950 and lived
there until his family immigrated to New Zealand
in 1961. Scott had lived an adventurous life
already before he began working for BBC
in mid-seventies. At 17 he spent a year as
a volunteer teacher in the jungles of Borneo,
working with the children of head-hunters,
after which he studied history and political
science at Victoria University of Wellington
and journalism at the Wellington Polytechnic.
He returned to Britain overland across Asia
in 1973 and worked for Shelter,
the housing charity, before joining the Times
Educational Supplement, from which
base he also wrote features for The
Times. In 1975 he became a reporter
with BBC Radio
and in 1990 he decided to become a full-time
screenwriter. |
|
• |
Last but not least,
Carrie Fisher, the former Princess Leia of
Star Wars
who had begun a writing career. Her semi biographical
Postcards from the
Edge were very successful and it was
adapted into a movie staring Meryl Streep
and Shirley McClain. |
Lucas and
McCallum with the writing group.
Darabont and Carrie Fisher not included. |
|
"This is an incredible talented
group," Darabont asserted, "from all
walks of life, all different perspectives and
point-of-view. We all, of course, have strengths
and weaknesses, but we manage to complement one
another. For example, there's nobody better
at writing a sentimental, hearts-and-flowers kind
of show than Rosemary. I couldn't write
that kind of stuff nearly as well as she does,
but then again, I write a pretty damn good battle
scene. It all evens out."
As with the series' writers,
a group of highly acclaimed directors from all
over the world were brought aboard to helm each
episode. Among them were Jim O'Brien, Terry
Jones of Monty Python,
Nicholas Roeg, Bille August winner of Palme
D' Or in 1991, René Manzour,
Deepa Mehta, Carl Schultz, Simon Wincer and Vic
Armstrong, the former stunt double of Harrison
Ford in many films.
In September 1990 all of the writers
were invited at Lucas' Skywalker
Ranch for a story conference that lasted
a whole month. During that month all the writers
lived together under the same roof working from
seven-thirty in the morning until seven-thirty
at night. Every day was spent to plot out an episode
and the next morning rewriting that episode. Following
Lucas' schedule they managed to write fifteen
episodes in thirty days.
Most of the writers had never before
worked in a group and they enjoyed the whole experience.
"It's been inspiring," said Matthew
Jacobs. "Personally, I've never done
this before, working in a group. But when you're
working that way, you don't know who in
the group is going to write which screenplay.
So we all go through the process, caring about
every story, because we might have to write that
one. We write out a little list of our favorites.
We don't know… maybe we're not
going to get the ones that our favorites. This
is the way I'd like to work on other projects.
I think it's a shame that writers can't
talk more to each other and may be able to exchange
ideas."
At the end of the month each writer
was assigned to write two episodes and from those
basic outlines, which were very structured, McCallum
went off to scout for locations and get the necessary
permissions. Naturally, different episodes appealed
to different writers for different reasons: some
liked romance more, others liked action, and still
others liked such serious topics as the horrors
of war, or the differences in world religions
and so.
Jonathan Hensleigh who wrote the
India 1908 episode
defended his episode of choice and explained its
educational value. "This episode is an explanation
of the world's religions. Benares is the
most holy city in India, and all the religions
are kind of featured there prominently, you know,
there's an enormous Islamic mosque, there's
a Buddhist temple, there's an Episcpalian
church, there's all kinds of Hindu temples.
The India episode will actually be the most controversial
of any, I think, because any studio executive
will tell you that you can't show anything
that has to do with religion on American television.
And this one hour is a comparative study of the
world's religions, basically, with Indiana
Jones."
Matthew Jacobs chose
Kenya 1909 and Vienna
1908. "I particularly wanted the Kenya
episode, because the idea of doing an ecological
adventure story was very strong. Teddy Roosevelt
is a great character, and the relationship between
Indy and the Maasai boy was something that I knew
I could write well, and I knew would be great.
Also, it's interesting this story is about
language as well. Whenever Indy travels, he tries
to learn the language, and so you're talking
about communication between two boys from totally
different cultures."
Rosemary Sisson opted for two very
different stories, China
1910 and London
1916. Although the first required extensive
research on the Chinese culture, the other, was
taking her back to the familiar time period she
wrote about in the British series Upstairs,
Downstairs. "I think the England episode
is very simply a statement that a woman can have
a career," said Sisson. "It's
set in its own time, because it's not such
a new message for today, but it is looking back
at a time when a woman's principal objective
was to marry and have children. If she couldn't
marry and have children, as many women after the
Great War couldn't because their fiancés
were killed, then in a way she was a failure."
The other subject Sisson explored in that episode
was the age-old concept of timing in love. "I
think the charm of the England episode is that,
in a way, Indy is the right man at the wrong time,
which is something else that happens. His love,
Vicky, admits she'll probably never love
anyone as much. They were simply at the wrong
time and place."
Frank Darabont could not be present
at the first writers' meeting at the Ranch
because he was busy in Los Angeles doing rewrites
on The Rocketeer.
But even though he got the left-over episodes
he said he really lucked out. Darabont's
first episode, which was initially supposed to
be a single episode, got expanded into two parts
because the source material provided by the research
was so vast and rich. The episode begins in December
of 1916, in German East African. The Belgian and
the British forces were pushing the Germans east
to try to get them out of Africa. Indiana Jones
and a group of fellow soldiers were given the
assignment to trek across Africa and pick up a
shipment of weapons and bring them back, which
in 1916, was not an easy task because helicopters
had not yet been invented then. In fact, in 1916,
the only way to get across Africa was by train,
boat, or walking. But the real problem in 1916
Africa was not so much battle casualties but disease.
Writer Frank
Darabont. |
|
"There are certain serious
episodes, but we're seeing many interesting
things," stated Darabont. "And this
is one of the reasons George Lucas decided to
invent this show. He's truly a history buff,
and is disturbed by the fact that history isn't
very well taught in this country. We tend to forget
anything that happened prior to last year. All
the writers on the show share that sentiment,
which is probably why we're there. We're
all history buffs; this brings the past to life
in a very fresh and interesting way."
"The interesting thing about
the approach George has taken," Darabont
pointed out, "is that the people Indy meets
aren't the obvious people in the obvious
period of time, nor the obvious events. For example,
there's an episode that takes place during
the Russian Revolution-but it's not the
October Revolution; it's the false Revolution
that took place earlier in the year, when everyone
thought, ‘Aha! Here's the Revolution,'
but they got slaughtered by the Cossacks. When
we meet T.E. Lawrence, he's not yet Lawrence
of Arabia; he's this young man bicycling
around Egypt looking at pyramids because he's
a student in archaeology. We meet Albert Schweitzer
when he's a young man, off in the jungle,
doing his humanitarian work with the natives,
but working in virtual obscurity."
As for Indiana Jones himself, "he's
a bright kid, a little goofy, somewhat precocious,
interested in things and definitely has some mischief
in him; he's really an American boy. Reflecting
the character, as we know him from the films,
Indy just can't say no to a puzzle or a
challenge. He has a bit of a strained relationship
with his father, while his mother is supportive.
One of the themes of this character's
life, as a rule, is his constant learning of things.
He's very bright; he knows something like
a dozen languages; every time we tune in, he's
trying to learn another one. He's not the
‘Ugly American' who thinks the entire
world should be speaking English or ‘Amurrican'.
I think, in a way, that George probably
equates adventures and learning as being part
and parcel of the same thing, as being part of
the same experience," the writer continues.
"Indy, mind you, does chafe a bit-especially
when he's younger, at having to sit down
and learn from books. He has a tutor, a very proper
British lady named Helen, traveling with the family,
who believes that proper schooling must come from
books. But being a nine-year-old, Indy's
not having a good time studying. They're
in fascinating places, for God's sake. They're
in China, they're in Russia; he would rather
get out and see things. But as he goes along,
Indy does definitely develop an appreciation for
book learning as well. Don't expect the
whip, the battered hat and the leather jacket.
Bear in mind that this is a young man, a young
man who has been swept up in a historical event
- the First World War
- that is enormous. I don't think
that people can really relate anymore to what
that war was. By the time the dust settled there
were 10 million people dead; it went on for years
and years. Indy is a soldier, fighting in the
trenches. He's sent to Africa, joins French
intelligence and works as a spy toward the war's
end. It would be a little arch-and a little silly,
I think, to have Indy traipsing around with his
Indy accouterments as we know them. We're
taking the show very seriously; we're doing
a very straightforward kind of thing, although
some of the shows will be wildly funny, some will
be quite satirical. We're not doing anything,
I believe, at the character's expense. George
is only being semi-facetious when he says, ‘This
is Masterpiece Theater for the masses.'
We will, however, get our share of trains blowing
up and Indy swinging from chandeliers and stuff."
Sean Patrick
Flanery
as Indiana Jones. |
|
Darabont continued his description
on the character and didn't hesitate to
make parallels to its creator, "In a way
my theory is that Young Indy is definitely Young
George Lucas, and he's getting to act out
physically now by sending Indy all over the world.
I think Young Indy is visiting all the people
and places that George visited in books when he
was a kid."
As for the fantasy that formed such
a strong element of all three features, Darabont
admits that "the series doesn't do
so much, although there will be episodes in which
that come into play, but it's not something
George has decided to hang his hat on. He's
really going for a different approach."
The writers were given a two months
period per episode to come up with their first
draft. At the end of the fourth month, they met
and they spent three weeks in a room together
again and each person had to defend their script
against the others, everybody got to read everybody's
scripts. Then there were rewrites again in order
to get the scripts closer to what Lucas wanted.
From the beginning McCallum had
cleared out that the scripts had to be finished
by the time preproduction would start, so that
they wouldn't go through the madness of
rewriting up to the last minute and incurring
huge production costs because things weren't
available. The minute they locked into the scripts
McCallum started official preproduction. McCallum
had wisely set up the foundations of working in
whatever country they'll be shooting in
already by sending all the department heads out
to the locations.
The production team McCallum set
up would include David Tattersall as the director
of photography, Louise Rubacky and Edgar Burcksen
as the series' editors and Gavin Bocquet
as production designer.
Charlotte Holdich would be costume
designer, assigned with the task of creating the
costumes for the series. "In England we're
lucky because we have a lot of costumers that
specialize in this," said Holdich when talked
to journalist Dan Madsen. "And so I use the
real thing whenever possible because you do get
an authentic feel… But one of the problems,
particularly with Sean's episodes, is that
there are a lot of stunts and things, so you have
to have five or six outfits that are the same.
I choose a style, try them on Sean, photograph
him, and send the photos to George. He makes his
comments and lets me get on with it because we
think along the same lines. I then get a fabric
that has a period feel to it. I get enough of
it to make five or six outfits. Often it has to
be dyed and made up by a tailor. Shirts and ties
must be made, too. Then it's sent off to
be broken down so the whole thing doesn't
look brand new. It's crumpled up and made
to look authentic. That's a very specialized
job."
Corey Carrier
as Indy. |
|
Although Holdich had to research
hundreds of photos of the historical figures she
had to dress she was much freer with the character
of Indy. "The idea with Corey's Indy
is that we meet him first in Princeton and you
see his life-style there. He looks like a nice
young eight-year-old boy. I've got him in
a sort of soft-colored brown suit and such things
as spotted bow ties, a sort of informal look.
Then he goes to England and meets his very strict
governess and immediately she comments on his
clothes and the way he stands. As soon as he's
under her tutelage, he's changed his look
and he's in stiff Eaton collars, and a Norfolk
suit, a heavy gray fabric that looks scratchy
and uncomfortable, and indeed it is. He's
also wearing these thick black stockings and laced-up
boots. That's his image then. When he travels
abroad to Egypt and wherever, he's wearing
a similar suit made in a lightweight fabric, but
again with this high collar, which is typical
of young boys of that period. The governess tries
to keep him looking as smart as possible. But
being a young boy, he tends to get himself a bit
grubby. George is very keen that whatever happens,
he still looks like a young boy and tends to get
grubby fingers and his clothes a bit messed up
in his adventures."
Since the majority of the show's
episodes were about sixteen-year-old Indy Holdich
had the opportunity to create many different costumes
for the character, still she was presented with
the same challenge every time. Indy's brown
fedora. "In all our episodes, if he's
not in uniform, he's wearing his hat. I
sort of have to incorporate this hat with all
the various disguises and jobs that he does. I
have to get the hat in there so it doesn't
look too odd with a smart suit! It's a bit
challenging."
Lucas with
Old Indy
actor George Hall. |
|
For Old Indy's appearance
Lucas was more precise. At the age of ninety-three
Indy still wears his trademark brown fedora, he
is dressed in tweed suits and has traded his leather
bullwhip for a walking stick with a brass handle
shaped like an eagle's head. But Lucas did
a step further and inspired by the famous Western
director John Ford's look made Old Indy
wear an eye patch and a pair of glasses over it.
The reason for the patch was a scar on Indy's
forehead that continued down his cheek and off
to the side suggesting his eye had been damaged.
Though, Lucas never gave a story for that scar.
Next: Casting
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