Indiana Jones Mississippi Style

The filmakers circa 1988

The hottest movie ticket in Mississippi this weekend wasn't for a new film. As MPB’s arts reporter Ron Brown tells us, the exclusive showing in Ocean Springs was an adventure story with an ending yet to be written.

The excitement began early and built gradually. Four hundred people lined up for tickets at the Mary C. O’Keefe Cultural Center in Ocean Springs Saturday night.

It did not take long before every available ticket was gone.

“It’s meant to be, the last ticket and I got it.”

Jim Franks bought the last of the four hundred movie tickets, priced at 12 dollars apiece.

“I’ve never seen this and I’ve always wanted to see this. So this is my chance.”

It was a rare opportunity indeed. Although the film Franks sat down to watch was made in 1989, it has been screened for the public fewer than 100 times. And most of those one-night only screenings have been in major metropolitan markets like Hollywood, Chicago, and Boston, and overseas in Australia and the United Kingdom.

The score and the screenplay are known the world over as Raiders of the Lost Ark. But they were not watching the big budget summer blockbuster at the O’Keefe Center. The version shown in Ocean Springs Saturday night is affectionately known as “The Adaptation,” a lovingly re-shot version of Raiders acted out and produced 20 years ago by area Gulfport kids; the oldest being 11 years old. Eric Zala was the director and one of the stars.

“A lot of kids when Raiders came out in 1981 loved the movie and played Indiana Jones in the backyard. We took it a little further… maybe a lot. In ‘82 Chris Strompolis, my best friend, saw it and got the idea to do a shot for shot remake.”

It sounded like a fun summer project. But one summer stretched into two, then three, then four, then five. Complicating the problem was the boys were trying to recreate the 26 million dollar epic, on a vastly smaller budget.

“We used our allowance, and things that required real money like the bullwhip or what not, birthdays and Christmases became prop and costume acquiring opportunities. Okay Chris, your birthday’s coming up. Can you ask for the leather jacket? Christmas I’ll ask for the hat. We just begged borrowed and made due with what we had.”

Showing the dogged determination of their hero Indiana Jones, five summers stretched into six and then finally seven.
But Zala and his friends completed their movie. They showed it once at a premiere in 1989, then put it away, for good - they thought. But by 2003 bootleg VHS copies of the little homemade movie somehow found their way to Hollywood and some high powered movie professionals…. including the most powerful man in Hollywood, the same man who directed the original Raiders of the Lost Ark - Stephen Spielberg. And he admired the version Zala and his friends created.

“Each of us received a very kind letter from Mr. Spielberg thanking us for our very loving and detailed tribute. And I thought , my god, it can’t get any better than this.”

Eric was wrong. It got a whole lot better. The boys suddenly found they had a cult hit on their hands.

“We’ve screened over the past six years in over 70 different venues from a Los Angeles premiere at Mann’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C."

Since they don’t own the copyrights, the money from the adaptation goes to non-profit organizations like the O’Keefe Center in Ocean Springs. But Zala and his friends say they didn’t make the movie for money anyway.

“We did it for no other reason than we just loved the original. It’s innocence is evident. And it’s earnest love for movies.”

And the adventure is not over yet. Zala and his friends sold the rights to their life stories to Academy Award winning producer Scott Rudin. Rudin wants to make a movie about them. A true story with a Hollywood ending, Mississippi style. For MPB News, I’m Ron Brown.