INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM.
CHINA , 1935.
It is 1935, the city of Shanghai, China. Seated around a table at the exotic, smoke-filled Club
Obi Wan, local crime lord Lao Che and his henchmen are watching the beautiful American
cabaret singer Willie Scott captivate her audience. But Lao Che isn't here for the entertainment.
He has an appointment to keep and, very soon, Indiana Jones - in full evening dress - joins the
party.
Indy has with him something Lao greatly covets - a jade urn containing the ashes of Lao's royal
ancestor Nurhachi. After Indy trades the ashes for a fabulous diamond, Lao tries a double-cross.
His son slips poison into Indy's champagne and the fiendish gangster demands the diamond
back - in exchange for the antidote.
Indy's head is swimming and his vision blurs as the poison goes to work. He makes a futile grab
for the vial containing the antidote and a raging brawl breaks out. Willie Scott, who has joined
the table, finds herself scrambling on the floor of the club desperately trying to recover the
diamond Lao Che originally gave Indy.
Bullets are flying and the situation is out of control as Indy grabs Willie, who has missed the
diamond and snatched the antidote, and the pair escapes behind a giant, rolling gong.
They flee through the narrow streets of Shanghai in a powerful car driven by Indy's
"bodyguard", Short Round - an 11-year-old Chinese orphan whom Jones has befriended.
With Lao and his thugs in hot pursuit they arrive at Nang Tao airfield where a small trimotor
plane is rewing its engines ready to take them to Siam. They've made it!
Unknown to them, however, the airfreight company and the pilots are his paid hoods. Once
airborne, the pilots empty the fuel tanks of the plane and bail out with the only parachutes on
board. Undaunted, Indy inflates a rubber life raft and, the trimotor skims low over a snowy
mountainside just before crashing, exits on the raft through the cargo hatch with Willie and Short
Round holding on for dear life.
After a nerve-shattering "bobsled" ride down the mountainside, over a bluff and into terrifying
white water rapids, the raft floats to a gentle stop at the base of the Mayapore hills. They have
arrived in India.
They are met by a native shaman, a holy man, who leads the bewildered party to a nearby
village. The shaman informs Indy that the village is under a curse. The village's sacred stone,
kept in a shrine, has been stolen by the Maharajah of Pankot. Since its disappearance, the crops
have withered, the animals have died and the children mysteriously vanished. Indy is intrigued
and sympathetic but is anxious to get to Delhi where he can take a flight home to America.
However, the sudden appearance of one of the village children who has escaped from Pankot,
clutching a tattered fragment of cloth, changes Indiana's archaeological mind.
Despite Willie's protests, the three companions travel by elephant to Pankot Palace and meet
the maharajah who turns out to be a 13-year-old boy. They are also introduced to the
maharajah's advisors and to Captain Blumburtt of the British cavalry, who is visiting the
palace on a routine inspection tour. Following an elaborate but nauseating banquet, the
simmering romance between Indiana Jones and Willie Scott begins to boil. Their flirtation is
interrupted, however, by an assassin who attempts to strangle Indy in his suite. Dispensing with
the assassin, Indy searches for his means of entry and discovers an inscription that
matches the fragment of cloth he has brought from the village. A sliding door reveals a secret
passage.
Indy and Short Round walk through the tunnel, which is inhabited by millions of hideous
insects, and accidentally trigger a booby trap in a small chamber at the end. Lethal spikes from
the ceiling and floor begin closing in on them. Their yells for help bring Willie to their aid.
Goaded by Indy's desperate urging, she plunges her hand into a hole in the wall literally crawling
with insects, and flips a lever which deactivates the spikes and opens the door to the chamber.
Indiana, Short Round and Willie make their way from the chamber along a wind tunnel, through
which a roaring gale howls eerily, until at last they are staring down into a colossal subterranean
temple, the Temple of Doom!
They have arrived in time to witness a terrifying Thuggee ceremony. Mola Ram, High Priest of
the evil cult, leads a throng of chanting worshippers in a ritual sacrifice to their bloodthirsty
goddess, Kali, whose giant statue looms above them all. After the ceremony, in which Mola Ram
pierces the chest of a sacrificial victim and has him lowered into a pit of boiling lava, Indy
descends into the silent temple. He is determined to retrieve the three strange, glowing
stones placed by the priests under the statue of Kali. Indy knows that these are three of the five
Sankara Stones which radiate intense light when brought together and, according to legend,
give their possessor supernatural powers.
Indy has barely grasped the treasure when he is captured by Thuggee guards working in the
underground mines beneath the palace. Short Round, too, is overpowered and thrown into the
same cell. Dr. Jones is brought before the evil Mola Ram who unveils his incredible plans.
Enslaved children are toiling in the mines searching for the last two Sankara Stones. When
they are found, their terrible power will be unleashed; Mola Ram's followers will expand their evil
influence until Kali rules the world! As the full horror of it begins to penetrate Indiana's mind, he
is forced to drink "the blood of Kali" from a skull-shaped bowl. He falls under the evil spell and
when Willie is brought to the temple as an intended victim, he ignores her pleas and assists in
the preparation for ritual sacrifice.
Meanwhile, Short Round has been forced to work in the mine with the other slave children.
Here he discovers that intense pain from fire can cause a person to "wake up" from the
nightmare trance. He makes a brave and daring escape and reaches the scene of Willie's
impending doom. Shorty thrusts a burning torch into his hero's side; Indy springs back to life and
saves Willie from certain death in the lava pit.
Once more in possession of the Sankara Stones, Indy and his companions help free the slave
children and begin a hair-raising journey to the surface. On the way, they release the young
maharajah from his trance and His Highness races off to get help from the British forces. Indy,
Shorty and Willie are engaged in a desperate flight through the mine tunnels, riding roller
coaster style in empty mine cars, pursued by Mola Ram's Thuggee guards. Other guards
demolish the supports of an enormous underground cistern, releasing a monster tidal wave that
crashes through the mine tunnels and threatens to sweep Indy, Willie and as Thuggee guards
close in, Short Round in its path.
In the nick of time, they exit from a tunnel on the side of a mountain, just barely ahead of the
booming water. They are on a ledge hundreds of feet above a crocodile-infested river gorge.
Only a rickety rope bridge will lead them to freedom. A rope bridge fiercely guarded by Mola
Ram's waiting Thuggees! Indiana Jones must now fight the fight of his life in order to save
himself and his two companions and return the sacred stone to Mayapore... and perhaps
save the world from the evil Kali...Can he do it? TRUST HIM!
IN THE BEGINNING - SCOUTING FOR LOCATIONS
ROBERT WATTS
We had our first draft screenplay in September of 1982. The story, of course, is by George
Lucas and the screenplay by Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz. I brought in Elliot Scott as
Production Designer from England and after Steven Spielberg had approved that choice we
began to turn our thoughts to locations. I still remember when we looked at the script in the early
days and we all said: "How the hell are we going to do all this?" We always feel that way about
each new movie. But somehow or other we do it. It gets done. Don't ask me how!"
ELLIOT SCOTT
"Robert (Watts) and I set off, first for Hong Kong and Macau. We were looking for a location to
resemble China in the Thirties. That's a very difficult thing to find. Hong Kong is just covered in
skyscrapers and concrete, so we ended up in Macau. We examined it very carefully and
worked out how we could adapt this street or build around that, or blind off obstructions to shoot
various scenes later. I have the easier job, taking photographs, slides and notes for reference
later. Robert's task is obtaining all the permissions and permits while I'm just keeping my eyes
and ears open searching for the right spot . . . "
ROBERT WATTS
"After Macau, I went with Scotty to India where we travelled very extensively looking for possible
locations. We covered a lot of ground - India is a big country - and we found most everything we
wanted except a gorge to string the rope bridge across. But the locations were widely spread
apart and I was concerned about the rivers which had to be clean enough to allow the actors
to swim in them for some scenes. I collected water samples out of each area and sent them back
to England for analysis.
"It was always in the back of my mind to shoot part of the movie in Sri Lanka. Other movies,
including Bo Derek in Tarzan, had been shot there and I knew that the rivers were probably
cleaner. We travelled from India to Sri Lanka and were pleasantly surprised. I had been
concerned that as a location it might prove to be too lush, but virtually every kind of location we
needed was there with the single exception of a suitable maharajah's palace. So our original
assessment from this trip was that we would spend three days shooting at the palace in Jaipoor,
India and then proceed from there to Sri Lanka to shoot everything else. But it didn't work out
that way in the end. . . "
FRANK MARSHALL
"There were problems with the Indian Government. They began putting restrictions on what we
could do and these eventually became creative restrictions. They wanted to change the script
and wanted approval of the movie once it was finished. So we ended up abandoning the idea of
shooting in India and opted to create the exterior of the palace at ILM (the Lucasfilm special
effects "factory") with Mike Pangrazio and Chris Evans, ILM's special effects matte artists,
painting those scenes."
Producer
Production Designer
Producer
Executive Producer
PRE-PLANNING WITH STORYBOARDS
DOUGLAS SLOCOMBE
"The wonderful thing about working with Steven (Spielberg) is that he plans everything very, very
carefully in advance. He starts off by doing rough sketches, little drawings of the visuals which
are eventually finalized by professional artists. These give one an initial plan of the picture and
six or seven times out of ten what ends up on the screen came from those sketches.
"Of course, he adapts certain shots on the day, but the important thing is that everyone has had
a pretty good idea weeks and months in advance of what he intends to portray. This helps
one enormously in planning what equipment will be needed and what conditions one is likely to
encounter."
ELLIOT SCOTT
"I've never worked with a Director like Steven Spielberg before. He plans and plans and plans.
He's not a hard man at all, in fact he's rather pleasant, but his sheer enthusiasm just carries you
forward. He uses sketches to map out virtually the entire film, forcing himself to consider all the
options at the drawing board stage. These are very rough sketches visually, but there's a
lot of depth in them, a lot of information.
"He would have sketch artists adapt his roughs and send them over to me saying: "This is the
way I want the action to go. " Then I would try to adapt the sequence to fit the set. Prior to that I
would have shown him a model of the set so he knows in general where things are, but using
these action sketches he would find that he needed, say, another camera or another doorway or
another this or that. He would ask us to adapt the plans of the set, make something
longer, shorter. . . all at the drawing board stage, which saves considerable amounts of money in the
long run and allows everyone involved to know where they are going."
ANTHONY POWELL
"Take Harrison Ford's costume for Indiana Jones. We couldn't use the original costumes (from
Raiders of the Lost Ark) because they had been virtually destroyed. To the public, Indy wears an
old shirt and an old pair of pants - but they don't realize how much is involved and how
expensive it all is. For a start, you need six of everything because what clothes have to go
through on an action picture is phenomenal. Every time Harrison falls down a ravine or jumps in
a river, he will need a change of costume. There are also stunt men and doubles who have the
same requirements. On this movie alone, we needed about thirty shirts for Harrison, and it
doesn't show on the screen at all.
"Continuity is another problem. Films aren't shot from the beginning to the end. Quite often,
shooting starts at the end of the script and works backwards. This poses special problems on
clothing. By the end of the movie, Harrison's costume has to look like he's crawled through
jungles, fallen down mines and fought his way to hell and back. Now to make clothes look as if
they're in that condition and as if someone has been wearing them for ten years involves much
more than just designing, say, a grand ballgown. The cost of aging clothes artificially can
be much more than the cost of making them in the first place. There are a million tricks of the
trade involved: staining, bleaching, washing, dyeing, sandpapering. It's very hard work!
"There is a great deal of research involved in costume design. I visit museums and have spent
25 years building my own research library. Even for a movie which isn't strictly based on reality,
like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, it's always worthwhile doing careful research
beforehand. Truth really can be stranger than fiction. For example, while researching pre-war
China for the scenes shot in Macau, Elliot Scott, the Production Designer, showed me a Cartier
Bresson book of photographs from 1937. I spotted a photograph of a little Chinese boy wearing
baseball shoes and immediately thought of Short Round. Steven (Spielberg) loved it and said:
'Let's give him an American baseball cap which he's gotten from one of the tourists. '
And that's exactly what we did.
"In the Bresson book I also found photographs of Chinese and European refugees at an airport.
Now there's an airport scene at the beginning of the movie. The real life refugees were dressed
in ways one could never invent. Priests wearing pith helmets and carrying tennis rackets.
Chinese people wearing absolutely conventional European suits but with the most bizarre
Chinese hats on their heads. Again, I showed them to Steven and we ended up putting a huge
crowd of missionaries into the airport scene. If you look carefully at those missionaries, you'll see
they are played by Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Sid Ganis (our publicity man for Lucasfilm)
and myself and others working on the movie.
"I like to make my original costume drawings not too specific. As long as the drawing gives the
director and actor an idea of what they're going to get, that's sufficient. The real work comes in
the fitting room. It seems to me that unlike theater, where an actor can transform himself and be
totally convincing, cinema is a different medium. The camera sees through artifice. The
most interesting and successful screen actors have been those who have traded on their own
personalities, presenting different aspects of themselves in various movies. What I feel I have to
do is take what is actually there in an actor, not just physically but in the quality of personality,
and take the character in the script as it's written and bring these two together halfway. One may
have worked something out very carefully on paper, but the important moment is in the fitting
room. Clothes have to look absolutely right for that person. You have to strive for something that
looks inevitable, that looks as if it has been airbrushed on the person. All of that happens in
the fitting room, not in preliminary drawings. "
Director of Photography
Production Designer
Costume Designer
TRANSPORT LOGISTICS
PATRICIA CARR
"We had to ship a complete shooting units with all its equipment, to Sri Lanka. There's nothing
available on the island itself, of course, in the way of technical equipment. In addition to Sri
Lanka we had a second unit in Hong Kong and Macau, so there were certain items that went
from London to Hong Kong, Hong Kong to Macau, Macau back to Hong Kong, Hong Kong to Sri
Lanka and Sri Lanka back to London or over to California. I have a shipping file about the size of
three London telephone directories!
"It's an exercise in logistics moving so much equipment, from props to construction materials,
costumes, cameras, sound equipment, walkie-talkies, food, catering trucks, mobile generators,
arc and "brute" lamps. the list is endless. Steven Spielberg once said to me when he saw one of
my movement orders, 'It's like moving an army!' I told him, 'That's exactly the way you have to
look at it.' "
Production Manager
ON LOCATION
ELLIOT SCOTT
"We chose a post way up in the mountains, near Kandy. Working from models and
drawings I had done in England after our reconnaissance trip, a Sri Lankan Art Director used
local labor to construct the village set. We had chosen a site in an old tea plantation on very hilly
terrain and they did a first class job constructing this village, which consisted of about twenty clay
houses including a great water wheel. Clay cracks wonderfully when it dries and the effect was
excellent.
"Our problem was that in the movie, Indiana Jones arrives at the village when it is desolate and
by returning the magic stone transforms it back to health at the end of the story. We solved this
by shooting events chronologically backwards. So we filmed the scenes at the end first, when all
the tea bushes were green and fresh, and then grubbed out the bushes to create a dead coca
later "
ROBERT WATTS
"The rivers in Sri Lanka, which were the one thing I'd figured would be terrific, in actual fact
proved to be a problem. When I'd first been there they were fine. In fact, I had been swimming in
them myself. But when we took samples on the final scouting trip they proved to be
inacceptable. There had been a drought and the water levels had dropped considerably. For the
scene where Willie falls off an elephant into the river, we had to create a pool and fill it with fresh
water ferried up in tankers to ensure Kate (Capshaw) wouldn't get sick."
KATHLEEN KENNEDY
"We were pretty lucky with the weather in Sri Lanka. Theoretically we had timed our arrival to
coincide with a period between two regular monsoons. But the first monsoon hadn't hit by the
time shooting began and we only experienced one serious tropical thunderstorm. We were up in
the mountains at the "village" attempting a night shot, standing around waiting for the sun to set,
waiting for the twilight. The caterers were just serving out chicken and baked beans when it hit. A
cloud descended over the hill from nowhere and broke into a deluge like nothing I'd ever seen.
The lightning was spectacular, the thunder deafening. Everyone scattered to their cars for
shelter and to get out of the mountains before the roads became impassable. I recall Robert
Watts waving at us shouting: 'Wait a minute, just a minute 'til this shower is over and we'll get on
with the shot . . . ' but we were already half way back to Kandy!"
ROBERT WATTS
"It's common in Sri Lanka to see people stopping at the little white road temples. I'd heard that it
was for good luck, so whenever we were approaching Kandy I would make the local driver stop
and give an offering. When you're in a place like Sri Lanka, you've got to hedge your bets
just a little."
FRANK MARSHALL
"In the credits you'll see: 'Physical Conditioning for Mr. Ford by Body by Jake, Inc. ' That's Jake
Steinfeld, whom you may have seen in People magazine. He specializes in training
entertainment personnel and worked with Harrison Ford before and during the movie, keeping
him in shape. He was also working out Steven (Spielberg) every day. Jake used to double for the
Incredible Hulk and every once in a while in Sri Lanka you'd hear this voice bellowing, 'Okay!
Drop and give me fifty, ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR. ' Amazingly enough, there was an old YMCA
in Kandy, so he and Harrison would go down there to work out two or three times a week. It was
the most primitive weight room I've ever seen, with very old weights and ancient benches.
Incredible."
Production Designer
Producer
Associate Producer
Producer
Executive Producer
THE ROPE BRIDGE
FRANK MARSHALL
"The site for the rope bridge was a lucky find, just north of Kandy. We needed a deep gorge we
could string the bridge across and Robert Watts and Elliot Scott located one close by a huge
dam construction project. The dam had been under construction for three or four years by a
British company, which meant that there were engineers available and plenty of machinery close
by. We used their surveyors and people who seem to be able to just hang from sheer rock faces
and ended up witha a great bridge which was totally safe and built to exacting specifications.
"I'll admit I was apprehensive while we were shooting around the rope bridge. It was a
precarious location and while we had every safety precaution, specila harnesses, lines and
ropes, still people will be people. For the first couple of days they're cautious. But once they get
used to being there and their minds are on the making of the movie, they tend to get a little
careless. It was a sheer drop, hundreds of feet down. For five or six days I was extremely
nervous, and found myself constantly reminding people, 'Hey mind the edge,' 'Walk slowly at all
times!' and so on. And of course nobody wants to stay in a safety harness when it's hot and
humid.
"We finally cut the bridge for a spectacular scene towards theend of the movie. We only had
one shot at it, since once the bridge was cut, the cost and time involved in putting it back
together would have been prohibitive. It had to be right the first time or we were sunk. Naturally,
it was one of those difficult days with intermittent sun and cloud. We needed to shoot with direct
sunlight, so we had to roll our nine cameras, get them all up to speed and go at just the right
moment. If the sun had gone behind the clouds at that point, we would have lost the shot. When
the bridge parted we had articulated, motorized dummies activated that kicked and jerked their
arms as they fell. It looked very real, spectacular.
"That wasn't the only bridge we built. We created another smaller bridge in Sri Lanka, this time
only fifteen feet off the ground for certain shots that would have been just too dangerous on the
real thing, plus another on the studio lot in England which we positioned so that all you could see
was sky behind it. There was even a cliff face hanging bridge set in England which itself was
sixty feet high. We had to do all this because we couldn't lower the cameras and equipment into
the gorge in Sri Lanka."
DOUGLAS SLOCOMBE
"There were logistical problems with the rope bridge scene in Sri Lanka. We had to shoot from
both sides and below the bridge, perched on slippery ledges and rock faces. In addition, it was
difficult to get equipment from one side to the other quicky. At first, we thought that none of us
except the stunt boys would set foot on it, but within ten minutes of Steven Spielberg arriving he
had crossed it - tru to form. After that, everybody wanted to cross it. But equipment was
another matter and that had to be trucked all the way around the valley which could take several
hours. The right equipment had to be in the right place at the right time. Equally important,
when we were shooting from one side of the bridge, we had to ensure that no equipment was
visible on the far side which was no easy task as arc lights and so on would take a considerable
amount of effort to put in position.
ELLIOT SCOTT
"We knew we wouldn't find an existing bridge and that we'd have to build it. We wanted one
three hundred feet long, infinitely longer than any real rope bridge. We needed a structure that
was (a) long and dangerous looking, (b) absolutely safe and (c) capable of being cut
quickly. Also, it had to support the weight of twenty people working it. Eventually it was
constructed of steel cords and faced with old rattan ropes."
GEORGE GIBBS
"I had to devise a way to cut the steel cables on the rope bridge without any sound and without
any smoke from explosions because the plot calls for Indiana Jones to cut the bridge with a
sword. When you look back, you always think: 'Why was there a problem? It was all so easy. '
But that's always afterwards. At the time I'm thinking: 'This might be one of the biggest effects I'll
ever be responsible for. Now, how do I do it?'
"The steel cables were 90 millimeters thick, the same cables that the construction company,
Balfour Beatty Nuttall, were using on their cranes on the Victoria Dam project nearby. I
eventually located a firm just outside Marseilles, France who make explosively activated
metronactuators which are used for blowing and releasing hatches on spaceflights. They
manufactured special cable cutters for me. And on the day they cut through ninety millimeter
cables without any smoke or noise at all, not even a snap. They were only the size of a tea cup.
Their power was just unbelievable."
END OF PART 1
Executive Producer
Director of Photography
Production Designer
Mechanical Effects Supervisor