Interview: Cate Blanchett & Shia Labeouf
Indy Movie
Admit it, you’re already humming the theme... Nineteen years after the third Indiana Jones movie left theatres the intrepid archaeologist finally returns. The franchise’s newest cast members — Cate Blanchett, Shia LaBeouf and Ray Winstone — describe stepping onto the set of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
By Bob Thompson
Some film follow-ups are worth waiting for, but even the most optimistic fans figured the fourth Indiana Jones movie just might be doomed to languish in development hell.
Preliminary plans for another Indy pic began soon after the release of 1989’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which most regarded as a revitalization of the adventure franchise that features Harrison Ford as Professor Henry “Indiana” Jones, Jr.
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From left: Shia LaBeouf, Harrison Ford
and Karen Allen
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Nineteen years and countless rewrites later, Indiana Jones and the
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will finally hit screens this month.
Directed
by Steven Spielberg from a story co-written by executive producer
George Lucas, the blockbuster truly is one of the most anticipated this
year. Set in the mid-1950s, an aging but still robust Indiana, played
by the 65-year-old but fit-as-a-fiddle Ford, battles a Cold War Soviet
spy named Spalko (Cate Blanchett) for possession of a crystal skull
rumoured to be an extraterrestrial key to a powerful ancient Mayan
secret.
Fans of the franchise (and who isn’t, really?) will be
excited to hear that Indy’s very first on-screen love, feisty bar owner
Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) from 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark,
makes a return.
But it’s a bunch of newcomers who dominate the cast list this time.
Besides Oscar winner Blanchett, there’s John Hurt and Jim Broadbent as
academics, and tough guy Ray Winstone as Indy’s archaeologist buddy
Mac, who is also his competition.
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Then there is Shia LaBeouf. He plays Mutt Williams, a motorcycle-riding wiseacre who serves as Indy’s brash, overconfident sidekick. More than anybody, LaBeouf is grateful to become a part of the franchise.
Not only did Spielberg hire him without an audition, he recommended the young actor for the lead in last year’s surprise hit Disturbia, which in turn led to LaBeouf being cast in the hugely popular Transformers.
“I think meeting Steven was a big deal for me, a really big thing in my life,” confirms LaBeouf. “The man is a genius and says genius things. But even he couldn’t ease my neurosis as an actor working on Indy.”
While he’s just 21, LaBeouf has been around show business for eight years, having started his career as a 13-year-old stand-up comic, then starring in the Disney series Even Stevens before receiving great reviews for his early movie work in Holes.
Granted, Indy 4 wasn’t any old film and playing opposite Ford wasn’t just another assignment. “I met him first when we were doing pre-production training at a California air force base,” LaBeouf says of Ford. “He flew in on his helicopter, jumped off it and into training, like badass training for three or four hours. Then he finished, jumped back in his helicopter and flew himself back home.”
Did the young actor say to himself, “I’ve got to get one of those”?
“No, what I said to myself was people who fly in helicopters are crazy to begin with,” he says. “But somebody who flies alone in a helicopter is a certified badass.”
LaBeouf was not alone is his wide-eyed amazement of all things Indiana Jones. Even Blanchett was pinching herself. And this is the acclaimed 38-year-old actress who, last year, became only the 11th performer to earn two Oscar nominations in the same year, one for her portrayal of Bob Dylan in I’m Not There and the other for playing the title character in Elizabeth: The Golden Age. She’d previously won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for The Aviator and was nominated for Notes on a Scandal and Elizabeth.
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Treasure-hunting buddies/rivals
Mac (Ray Winstone) and Indy
(Harrison Ford) find themselves
in a spot of trouble
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In other words, the Australian is not easily cowed. But she was by this
film. “I mean, it’s such a well-oiled and an iconic franchise and one
which I grew up with,” says Blanchett. “On the first day of shooting it
was extremely surreal. I was watching the monitor as Steven [Spielberg]
set up the frame.”
Blanchett says she was immediately caught off
guard by how familiar she was with everything. “I knew the iconography
of the frame,” she remembers. “I knew the trucks. I knew the layout. I
knew the way that these things were lit.”
Eventually, she had to
snap out of her reverie and get into character. “It was very odd when I
finally understood I was meant to enter the frame,” she says. “But it
was also a real great moment.”
Winstone, 50, agrees. After coming off the gruelling demands of motion-capture acting against a green screen for Robert Zemeckis’ Beowulf, and the grim Martin Scorsese drama The Departed, Winstone says it was a relief to “have a lark” with his rogue archaeologist who may, or may not, betray his buddy.
“I really felt like I was a kid again playing around and having a
ball,” says Winstone. “It reminded me why I love this acting game so
much.”
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Much of the credit for the on-set creative spirit goes to Steven Spielberg, according to LaBeouf. It was Spielberg who insisted all of the filming be done in the U.S. — a first for an Indiana Jones picture. But to the director’s credit, says LaBeouf, you’d never know the movie was shot at locations in New Mexico, Hawaii and California, and on L.A. soundstages, instead of in Mexican jungles and on Peruvian mountains.
What was the same as previous Indy films was Spielberg’s polite attention to detail with his actors. “He’s got a very strange style all to himself,” confirms LaBeouf. “He drops these little notes. He’ll take your script and write something in it, and at first you don’t even know he wrote it in there. Then you come across it and it is this huge note and it’s perfect and blows your mind.”
And while LaBeouf acknowledges that Ford was a creative force, and that Lucas shared his opinions in his own quiet way, he says Spielberg was the one who really ran the show.
“Well, you don’t make any demands from Steven Spielberg,” LaBeouf contends. “You just go, ‘Yeah? All right, great. That sounds like a good thing to me.’” He chuckles almost to himself before adding, “I can’t imagine that I’d be questioning anything that he says ever anyway.”
Bob Thompson lives in Toronto where he writes about movies for the National Post.
The ensemble remains the same
He’s older and wider, but there are a few things about 2008’s Indy that haven’t changed since 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark
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Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark
(left) and in 2008's Indiana Jones and
the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (right)
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HAT: Indy’s fedora was created by Britain’s Herbert Johnson Hat Shop, but for the new movie the filmmakers switched to Steve Delk, a Mississippi cabinetmaker by trade and hatter only by hobby. Delk taught himself to make Indy’s fedora, and the hat caught the attention of costume designer Bernie Pollack who had Delk tweak it for the new film and make 48 copies. Delk sells them for $350 (U.S.), but you can buy a replica at the official Indiana Jones website for $42 (U.S.).
JACKET: Created by Britain’s Wested Leather Co., the zipper’s on the left-hand side as per European custom. Wested specializes in creating garments for the film and TV industries, but will be happy to custom-make you one for £165, or $335.
Bag: Oops. That pouch is an adapted World War Two Gas Mask Bag, the MkVII to be exact, which wouldn’t have existed in 1936 when Raiders of the Lost Ark takes place. You may still be able to find one in an army surplus store but they’re pretty rare.
WHIP: Voted the third most popular film weapon of all time in a 20th Century Fox poll earlier this year, Indy’s whip was created by Washington State-based David Morgan, and he’ll sell you one today for $865 (U.S.). The standard size is 10 feet, but other lengths have been used for special effects.
BOOTS: Might not sound sexy, but Indy wears orthopaedic ankle boots made by the Alden Shoe Company of New England (model #405, renamed “Indy Boot,” $320 U.S.). The upper is full-grain brown waxhide, and they have orthopaedic rubber heels.
—Marni Weisz
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