An Epic Remade - Raiders: The Adaptation

**Note** Do yourself a favor and download this trailer. (Right click and "save as") courtesy of TheRaider.net

Cue Don LaFontaine:
“In 1982, Jayson Lam, Eric Zala, and Chris Strompolos began shooting a shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark.”
*Ominous music plays*
Don: “They were twelve years old.”

You might recognize Don LaFontaine from a recent Geico commercial, and you’d definitely recognize the voice on any epic movie trailer. Simply put, no other voice could be paired with the trailer for “Raiders: The Adaptation”; the film and the story of how it came to be are nothing short of epic. It took seven years, a submarine, almost burning down a house, and an army of neighborhood kids, but they did it.

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Their story begins with an endless school bus ride down by the Mississippi Gulf Coast. It was the summer of 1981; right after Raiders of the Lost Ark came out in theaters. Chris Strompolos and Eric Zala shared the same bus, and the same interest for Indiana Jones. Well, I shouldn’t say the same interest, per se; since Eric had only seen the film in theatres once, and Chris was engrossed enough to already have an Indiana Jones comic book compilation. But the friendship took root as Chris generously let Eric borrow the comic; little did Eric know that his interest in comics would lead to a seven-year ordeal.

“He had seen a film that I had done in sixth-grade, and thought mistakenly that I knew something about filmmaking. He gave me a call out of the blue, ‘Hey Eric, this is Chris, the kid from the bus who loaned you the comic book… I’m doing this shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Do you want to help?’ and I said “Yeah! Sure, sounds good”, said Zala.

Like Strompolos, Zala made his own assumptive mistakes. Zala thought the sets were built, costumes picked out, and with a cast already in place… but in truth, only two things had been completed: Chris was cast as Indiana Jones and the script had been purchased from a Waldenbooks.

“It was mainly born out of fantasy to play Indiana Jones. I wanted to create that world and live in that world myself,” said Strompolos.

The pair set to work, scoping out the basement and backyard of Zala’s mom’s house for sets and rounding up neighborhood kids to play the parts. But tackling a remake was not as easy as finding a bullwhip and an Indiana Jones hat. The first Marion moved away to Alaska, and had to be recast. The Indiana Jones costume saw several changes. Puberty took hold and dragged the boys from the higher octaves and into the deep dark world of facial hair. Holiday and birthday gifts were coordinated so the film would have the right costumes and props. The bar fight scene, combined with a desire to include real special effects and inexperience with using it safely, nearly burned down the house and burned Eric in the process.

“For whatever reason, the day that I doubled for the ratty Nepalese, we decided to use gasoline on my back (instead of Isopropyl Alcohol). We were thinking we were playing it safe, because I was wearing a fire retardant rain coat underneath, and we had not one but two garden hoses, standing-by, a couple of security blankets, and a fire extinguisher as a last resort…” said Zala. “I was lit aflame, I stood up, screamed, hit my cue, and yelled cut. We had two kids run forth with the blankets to get the flames out, but these guys hadn’t done this type of thing before… they threw the blanket on my back, almost immediately pulled it off, threw it back on, pulled it off… they were actually fanning the flames higher… we finally resorted to the fire extinguisher”

But persistence paid off. The duo, now a trio with the addition of special FX and camera prodigy Jayson Lam, managed to create an entire shot-for-shot remake of Raiders (all except for the plane scene). They spent entire summers editing at night at the local ABC station (WLOX) where Strompolos’ mom was an anchor. The film was finished, and the trio was content. The local news media had even turned them into minor celebrities over the years, but soon the film was akin to the Ark itself: lost to time. Strompolos’ wife didn’t even know about the Raiders: Adaptation movie until “Raiders: The Adaptation” exploded onto the festival scene. It wasn’t until June of 2003 that the movie was given its “World Premiere” at The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Austin, Texas (theraiders.net). Overnight, the trio became “The Godfathers of the fan film”.

Touring across the country, the “Raiders: The Adaptation” guys began to show off their film to throngs of fans. They did their best to skip any legal hurdles by donating all of their proceeds to local charities or organizations like Doctors Without Borders. Zala and Strompolos routinely held classes for young filmmakers, not too far removed from the True/False event “Indy-Pendent Filmmaking” that will be held at the United Methodist church on Saturday, March 3 from 11am-1:30pm. But even better than simply avoiding legal problems, the trio had a private screening for the people at Lucasfilm and received written praise from and met the ‘Berg himself. They were given a tour of the Lucasfilm archives. Zala has a picture of when the group “opened the real Ark” at the archives, but said they were forbidden from actually opening the holy prop. No one, and I mean no one, should look inside the Ark.

Basking in the glory that is the Lucasfilm archives may be well and good, but it was just one experience. And for Zala and Strompolos, at every screening they get to see more than their own show. The audience members themselves provide the pair with just as much entertainment and excitement.

“When we were in Palm Beach, Florida, we had this guy show up, and he was in his 30s, really nice guy. He was sitting right behind us and we watched the movie, and Eric and I stood up to go do the Q&A. I remember this guy putting his hand on my shoulder and kinda turning me around, just looking at me. His eyes were wide open, he had tears in his eyes, and he was crying. He said, ‘Oh my god. You did it.’ All he could say was ‘You did it. You did what we all wanted to do.’ It was a really cool feeling.”

Strompolos and Zala agree that Raiders has been more than just a movie. Its rediscovery has been a chance for them to reconnect, to relive their past, and share the delight and wonder of childhood with entire generations of fans. And watching the movie again and again helps the Zala and Strompolos realize just how lucky they were to have had an Indiana Jones-adapted childhood.

“In college, I probably would have dismissed the idea as being too much of a kid thing. I would have wanted to do more original work. It was a bit of serendipity that we had this little seven-year window from 12-19, being able to finish the movie just as we become young adults with different tastes,” said Zala.

“It was lightning in a bottle… the thing for us was that we didn’t plan on anyone else seeing it. We did it for ourselves… we thought, ‘why would anyone want to see this?’ Our egos would probably be more involved. It wouldn’t have that raw childhood magic,” said Strompolos.

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Check out “Raiders: The Adaptation” on Sunday, March 4 at 3:30 pm at the Blue Note. It might not be your regular True/False documentary, but there’s a reason it’s listed as a “Special Presentation”. Come relive Zala and Strompolos’ childhood, and bask in the story that has already spawned at least one documentary called "When We Were Kids" (release date TBD).

Be sure to check out more Raiders info at:
The Raider Fan Page
and
The Indy Experience

Video coverage of the Raiders Guys
Videos

T/F Local Coverage Round-Up!

The press evidently loves a good old-fashioned nonfiction film festival. Here are some of the articles that have appeared in local outlets about T/F:

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KRCG-TV 13 talks with festival organizers David Wilson and Paul Sturtz. A quick interview that covers the festival's basics. Best quote:

"...if you are putting on a festival, then you want to believe that films can change people’s lives. Most of the time, they don’t. Most of the time, people watch a film and maybe they learn something or experience a subtle change in their lives. To have that direct a moment where someone watches something, then walks out and commits to doing something for other people, that is really incredible. That’s what our True/False Film Festival is all about." - David Wilson

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The Columbia Missourian previews a selection of the festival's films. Includes links to some of the official film sites, with trailers as well. A nice pocket companion.

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He linked to us, so let's return the favor: Pete Bland of the Columbia Daily Tribune blogs about the festival. It's called "Inside the Slash." Hardly bland, I'd say!

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The Trib also ran a delightful feature on the volunteers whose steel-eyed determination and boundless enthusiasm keep T/F running. Lovely portraits of some of the prominent volunteering faces - such as this blog's own Paula Elias - are included. Here's to doing what you love.

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St. Louis Post-Dispatch film critic Joe Williams is also down with the T/F, featuring it alongside the Big Muddy Film Festival in a recent column. Included are his recommended films at True/False.

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If you're near the Mizzou campus, be sure to pick up a copy of the new issue of the Maneater's MOVE Magazine, which has T/F featured on its cover. They don't have an online edition, but hey, there's nothing wrong with the smooth sensation of paper running through one's fingers, or the gentle rustle of the pages as they flap together. Mmm... I'm getting wistful just writing about it.

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And check out our partners in blogging crime over at True Slash False. They are both official and unauthorized - and, you know, funny.

That's all for now. I'll keep an eye out for other media coverage!

Mucca Pazza - The Bovine Frenzy

The high school marching band can crush a teenager's spirit if he's not careful. It's the closest thing that a kid can find to military experience without combat fatigues or flak jackets. From their bawdy pulpits, high school music directors the nation over drill their uniformed legions in the summer heat, trying to mold a disparate collection of impressionable youths into a musical killing machine. Each minute movement and every note played must mesh with immaculate precision. Otherwise, well, it's not music, is it?

Mucca Pazza, a free-form implosion of sound effectively disguised as a thirty-something-piece marching band, seems hell-bent on counteracting the corrupting effect that such militaristic order can cause in music. Their uniforms don't match. Their stage formations barely hold together, crumbling at a drumbeat into a crush of bodies that resembles a rugby scrum with brass instruments thrown in. Trombonist and original member Elanor Leskiw calls the group a "democracy," but judging from its stage act alone, Mucca Pazza ("crazy cow" in Italian) operates only a few steps removed from total anarchy.

That theatrical chaos, of course, belies the intense planning and commitment that goes into keeping this collective running. Leskiw refers to herself as the "band mom," a position which requires her to help coordinate the sundry schedules of over two dozen musicians, publicity, getting the group booked for gigs, and all of the little details that keep this ramshackle tower of sound from collapsing. Assisting her in "herding the herd" is musical director Mark Messing and a newly hired tour manager.

Leskiw could certainly use a bit of help - not only is she trying to pay her bills with work as a waitress and freelance trombone playing, but now the "little marching band" she helped to establish a few years back has exploded within the Chicago music scene. Recent conquests include a slot at Lollapalooza, a show-smashing appearance on Conan O'Brien, and an improbable performance in canoes, as part of a Friends of the Chicago River benefit.

Leskiw says that the group owes much of its ascendance to the communal spirit in the Windy City's arts world.

"We formed around fun and beauty of making music. Everything we're doing now is merely a result of what we would be doing anyway."

That collaborative spirit helped to quadruple the group's membership - it started as a relatively puny seven-piece in the summer of 2004. The original members practiced in an industrial parking lot, and occasionally landed gigs at Chicago club The Hideout - on nights when it was closed, unfortunately. But eventually they found audiences, and in taking crowd participation to a new level, began to recruit friends and admirers to swell their ranks. By the time membership hit the mid-20s, it seemed like a good time to slow down with recruiting. By then, the band had its own cadre of cheerleaders, now a staple of its raucous live act.

"We love the crazy notion that a marching band should have its own cheerleaders," says Leskiw. "It's from the idea of the music nerds versus the football team. So we thought we'd have our own nerdy cheerleaders."

With Chicago well-trampled beneath their hooves, the crazy cows are now beginning to scrape enough dough together to make brief jaunts outside of their home base - to Minneapolis, Madison, and now Columbia for the True/False Film Festival. The group has hatched designs for a full-length album (for now, there's only a self-released EP), as well as an even more audacious performance stunt: performing on bicycles during Chicago's Critical Mass, a monthly event that promotes alternative (non-car) transportation in the city.

Until then, Columbia ought to brace itself for the Mucca Pazza stampede. Be warned, folks: it ain't choreographed.

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Mucca Pazza takes the Blue Note stage on Saturday, March 3 at 9:30. Also on the bill are the Apples in Stereo, Scream Club, and Casper & The Cookies. For ticket information, visit the venue's website.

To learn more about Mucca Pazza, the "astounding circus punk marching band," visit the group's website.

Check out clips of the group on YouTube!

AIR GUITAR NATION

We've all done it. At least once. You're listening to a particularly rockin' song. Probably AC/DC or Led Zeppelin when suddenly, without even meaning to, your inner Rock God is resurrected from wherever such gods go to hide and you're suddenly rockin' out on air guitar. Though, to be clear this usually happens when you're alone in your car or in front of the bathroom mirror alone. The operative word there being alone.

But director Alexandra Lipsitz has uncovered an entire movement of people who refuse to hide their passion for Rock. People so proud of their ability that they travel thousands of miles to compete for the title of the greatest air guitarist in the world at the World Air Guitar Championships in Finland.

Alexandra Lipsitz, director of Air Guitar Nation says that the Finns believe that practicing air guitar is really all about world peace. “One cannot hold a gun and play air guitar at the same time.”

Lipsitz film tells the story of the beginning of the US Air Guitar Championships. Of how Kristin Rucker and Sedrick Devitt happened upon a story about the World Championships in Finland (in that pantheon of hip underground info, The Wall Street Journal), went to see it for themselves and came back to the United States and tried to pitch the idea as a reality show to Magical Elves, a production company known for work on reality shows such as Project Runway and Top Chef.

“It’s like a rock show and a sporting event combined and once you try it yourself it’s liberating. During the World Championship Sedrick whose stage name is Air Lingus kept yelling at me to release my inner air guitar,” says Lipsitz.

What about the licensing fees? All this music is heavily copyrighted.

Lipsitz agreed. “Nobody could wrap their mind around how you could cut it without breaking the bank with licensing fees. Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith. How could you make this without spending too much?”

“But you can’t make a movie about the love of rock without the rock. The soundtrack in this thing is amazing. We were just going for these songs and we locked it in. Magical Elves believed in it enough and they made it happen. It’s a big risk but we believe it’s that f**king good. Everybody believes in it.”

Judged on stage charisma, technique, artistic impression and something called “airness”, an air guitarist is judged on a scale of 4.0 to 6.0 like figure skating.

I asked Alex to explain the concept of airness. She was searching for words while frantically googling the word. “Well it’s not about footwear, I just wikipediad it. Airness is what makes a person a good guitarist. It transcends what they are doing and it bccomes something completely different. It’s like you are no longer watching air guitar you are watching a rock god rock out.”

Still having some difficulty understanding the concept Alex finally reassures me that it’s a concept you have to experience to understand. “You will know when you have seen it. You must come up to me and tell me at what stage you got “airness”.

We will all get that chance on Friday night of the True False Film Festival at 10 p.m. when Air Guitar Nation shows at the Forrest Theatre in the Tiger Hotel.

As they say on the movie poster, “to err is human, to air guitar divine.”

US Air Guitar
World Air Guitar

Filmmaker Spotlight - Luke Wolbach, dir. "Row Hard No Excuses"

One might call "Row Hard No Excuses" Luke Wolbach’s third child. The production, which began in earnest back in the summer of 2000, has so thoroughly overlapped with the timeline of Wolbach’s young family that the two have become almost inextricably linked.

“I was married toward the end of 2003, the year we were fundraising,” says Wolbach as he delineates his family history. “Then there was the editing after my son was born in 2004. My daughter was born last March. We thought we’d be done [with the film] by then, but that didn’t turn out to be the case.”

Many a night, Wolbach would put his kids to bed and then immediately head up to the attic of his San Francisco home for hours of solitary editing on the film, trying to compress 250 hours of raw footage into a concise package. It was his first feature-length project after years of documentary shorts and freelance editing work. Admittedly, Wolbach had gotten “really ambitious” and perhaps in over his head in attempting to complete the documentary. But with each misstep, he refined his methods.

“The past several years have been my film school experience,” says Wolbach, poking fun at his relative lack of formal training.

Throughout 2001, Wolbach worked in concert with his father and brother to document the journey of two middle-aged rowers as they attempted to traverse 3,000 miles of unforgiving ocean from the Canary Islands to Barbados as part of the Atlantic Rowing Challenge. Unable to find sponsorship for their endeavor, the pair – Tom Mailhot and John Zeigler – constructed their own boat. They dug deep into their personal savings to finance their entry into the competition – despite the fact that no prize money lay waiting on the other end of the Atlantic.

“There’s a heroic element to it,” says Wolbach of the sport, “the idea that it will make you special. They want to do it first, do it fastest. They get it in their blood. Society at large doesn’t necessarily feel like – unless it’s for charity, it’s a very individualistic pursuit. Some call it selfish.”

For their single-minded devotion to the competition, both rowers’ personal lives suffered greatly. Mailhot lost his job as a construction supervisor and Zeigler’s marriage collapsed as a result of the demands that the race placed on them. As Wolbach found himself drawn deeper into the heart of this project – the months of scrounging up funds, the marathon editing sessions, the debates on how to best tell the rowers’ story – he began to empathize all the more with the plight of his subjects.

“‘Obsession’ is close,” he says. “There are a lot of similarities and parallel experiences between making a film and rowing across an ocean. I definitely felt obsessed. But it was a worthwhile endeavor.”

Worthwhile, because not only did Wolbach complete his first filmmaking odyssey, but he also emerged from the experience with a new perspective on his father and co-producer, Bill. The whole project actually stemmed from Bill’s experience as a rower. He had met Tom Mailhot through their shared interest in canoe racing. When he heard that his old acquaintance was preparing to tackle the grueling Atlantic Challenge, he brought his filmmaking son aboard, hoping to put together a short promotional video to help Mailhot and Zeigler find a sponsor. From those small and simple beginnings, Bill’s passion helped to fuel the project as it expanded into a full-length beast.

“I learned a lot about my father, especially,” Luke says. “He feels what these guys feel. They had strained relationships with their fathers, and I think he had a strained relationship with his own father. And then there’s the whole aspect of being middle-aged and having feelings of regret. It was an eye-opener, to hear him talk about these things himself.”

The completed film also helped to salve the relationship of its two stars. After those months trapped together in the cramped confines of their boat, enduring extreme mental and physical fatigue, Mailhot and Zeigler did not speak to each other for a good two years after the race. But both attended the film’s world premier at last month’s Slamdance Film Festival, and fielded audience questions afterward.

“It felt like a closure event of sorts,” says Wolbach, part of the rowers’ “reconciliation process.”

Wolbach, however, isn’t quite ready to put the experience behind him. He’s still promoting Row Hard, hoping to get a one-hour version broadcast on television and release a DVD. Any talk of future projects might be a bit premature, but Wolbach would prefer to do something centered in San Francisco, so that his next film won’t distract him too much from raising his family. For Luke Wolbach, three children are enough for now.

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For more stills from "Row Hard No Excuses" and additional visual goodies, visit the T/F Flickr Group at:

The T/F Flickr Group

To learn more about "Row Hard No Excuses," visit:

Lantern Films Web Site

True False Live Music...

Rock and/or Roll!

There are those who call me... Jeremy Goldmeier. Up until this semester at the University of Missouri-Columbia, I lived a fairly complete life, with the usual collegiate pursuits and interests. I remained pretty convinced that I was getting by all right. However, over the past month or so I've come to realize that there was a massive, festering hole in my life experience - I had never attended a True/False Film Festival.

Mark (as you can read below) had already been collaborating with the True/False people for awhile before I entered the picture. But now, I'm sort of riding this wave of group enthusiasm as we near that blessed date when True/False begins (March 1, for those of you still unawares). I'm especially excited to be talking to some of the filmmakers... I'll be interviewing Luke Wolbach, director of "Row Hard No Excuses" tonight, and should have a little feature on that project up for you readers by the end of the week.

Clearly, I'm really eager to check out all of the cinematic happenings, but music buff that I am, I'm barely containing myself at the prospect of seeing a legendary group like the Apples in Stereo live. For those of you who aren't really familiar with the backstory, let me relate it in brief: Apples guru Robert Schneider was one of the principal founders of the Elephant 6 Label, a recording collective in Athens, GA that specialized in psychedelic-leaning pop music. The Apples went on to be one of the leading lights of a genre that critics eventually tagged "indie pop." Some folks out there might have recently seen Schneider on the Colbert Report, supporting Mr. Colbert in his efforts to defeat the Decemberists in a guitar solo contest. In short - the band embodies awesomeness. Also worth noting is this group Mucca Pazza - a thirty piece "punk marching band." Their name means "crazy cow" in Italian, so I'd expect nothing less than insane bovine action once they hit the streets of CoMo.

I don't even smoke, but I do plan to bring a lighter.

More to come...

Allow myself to introduce... myself

A few months ago I approached Paul with one goal: work on the True/False Film Festival in 2007. Several meetings, phone calls, and brainstorming sessions later, here I am. Now, to you, dear reader, I may be nothing more than a faceless author on a blog that will hopefully entertain and amuse you, but let me tell you that I am far from ordinary.

I'm a 6'2'', 200 lbs white college male that goes by the name Mark Johnson.

I am so unique that in my hometown, there were only 17 other Mark Johnsons at our bank branch. Yep. It's a pretty exclusive club. Enough about me though, let's talk about T/F.

There are just about 2 weeks left until the True/False Film Festival, and I'm stoked. I reserved all my passes online after printing out the entire schedule in black and white and neurotically taking hi-lighters to the page in an effort to maximize my weekend. Green marker for films, blue for events, stars for workshops, and then circles for the must-sees. There were a LOT of circles, let me tell you. And the Secret Screenings? Oh T/F, how did you know that I can't turn down a surprise? I'm sure you won't disappoint.

Hopefully you, dear reader, have found as much excitement from the schedule as I have. Because it only gets better from here. Director and band interviews, YouTube videos, discussion boards; it's the whole "T/F Experience"!

2 weeks. I'm counting.

TrueFalsePixels

It's almost like Christmas...

Except it happens in February and the only sign of Christmas are the credit card bills and the 3 inches of hardened, dirty ice on the deck that I've pretty much given up on ever getting rid of. But right here, in this moment, I am happy because I just finished pouring over the schedule for True/False 2007, reserving my tickets and clicking on submit. A happy little screen with the word "Thanks" came up with a list of all the films I plan on seeing over four raucous fun filled movie cramming days beginning March 1st.
Over the weeks to come I and my fellow authors will be sharing some conversations we have been having with some of the directors and musicians who will be gracing our humble burg.
Talk to you soon.