Review: Raiders! The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made

I fell in love with Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation at a Cleveland Institute of Art screening in early 2007.  If you’re unfamiliar with it, the movie is a nearly shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark, created from scratch by Eric Zala and Chris Strompolos and their friends when they were just kids growing up in the 1980s.

Keeping in mind the technology of the era and the fact that this is the product of kids on far less than a shoestring budget, watch the opening sequence:

The story behind this seven-year project has been told before, but never like it is in Alan Eisenstock’s Raiders! The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made, which is scheduled for release Nov. 13.

Eisenstock writes in that narrative, near-omniscient style of nonfiction in the vein of Friday Night Lights or A Hope in the Unseen, and does an amazing job getting you inside the heads of these two best friends during the most chaotic, triumphant, fun and horrible times in their lives. While he gets the author credit, both Zala and Strompolos are acknowledged as co-contributors, which is fitting, given the richness of detail in the storytelling and the success with which Eisenstock captures their attitudes and voices.

I love the way, for instance, he recreates the overdramatic, nervous inner monologue of a pre-teen Zala, who has surreptitiously strapped a cassette recorder to his chest for a showing of their favorite movie:

Standing in the line for Raiders, which twists another block behind him, Eric taps his foot and whistles to calm his nerves. For some reason, he looks skyward. A shadow, real or imagined, a patch of darkness, hovers over him.

The shadow is a sign. A symbol of the dark side. Makes sense since he feels like a criminal. In his entire twelve-plus years of life, Eric has never done anything remotely close to this. Break the law? Sneak into a movie with a tape recorder and record the film? That’s a crime. That’s copyright infringement. He’s heard that phrase bandied about somewhere. Probably picked it up from some lawyer show on TV. Or maybe from his dad. Eric presumes that what he’s doing, should he get caught, carries a stiff penalty, a huge fine, possibly jail time.

…

He feels kind of good about it.

Then the fleeting feeling of wanting to get caught, of deserving to get nabbed, leaves. Maybe that’s what the shadow symbolizes: Deep down, beneath his straight-arrow exterior, beats the heart of evil. But there’s nothing wrong with pushing the goody-two-shoes stuff aside now and then for the sake of your art. That’s what this is really about. The movie. Doing what you have to do to make this movie. No matter what. Of course, he won’t cross a line. He won’t hold up liquor stores to finance this film. He won’t knock down old ladies and run off with their purses. Nothing like that. Nothing heinous. But he will do pretty much anything else. He will sneak into a movie theater and record Raiders. Yes, he’ll do almost anything for their movie. And he realizes – although they have been friends for only a week – that he would do anything for Chris.

And there it is: Just like Stand By Me isn’t really about hiking to see a dead body, Raiders! is much more than just the story of some kids making a fan film. It’s about the best and worst of childhood and growing up and sharing a geeky obsession through the whole journey. It’s intense and enjoyable and heartbreaking and powerful.

As the filmmakers grow up, grapple through their teenage years and dating, fighting, family upheavals, and geographical separations, the tone and memories of the book evolve with them.

Describing one of the final scenes the crew of friends filmed, six summers after their crazy idea was hatched, Eisenstock writes:

As they begin, everything looks familiar – Jayson setting up the camera and smearing blood on his face for his own amusement, Eric rehearsing actors, Chris goofing around with Angela, stealing a kiss on deck – but nothing feels the same. Once they start shooting, an unfamiliar air of formality takes over. They no longer appear to be a bunch of kids horsing around in front of a camera. This feels like an actual movie set. Eric directs with smooth authority. The actors, grown from precious eleven- and twelve-year-olds to full-bodied, deep-voiced teenagers, respond by locking down their blocking, cues and dialogue. And rather than having to smear on Vaseline and fireplace ash, seventeen-year-old Chris just takes a day off from shaving.

Raiders: The Adaptation was completed in 1989, screened for friends and family, and was then buried in time until 2002, when Eli Roth unleashed it on an unsuspecting audience at Harry Knowles’ annual Butt-Numb-A-Thon film festival. In 2003, the filmmakers received a letter from Steven Spielberg and a full-on world premiere of their movie at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema. The fourteen intervening years are compressed into roughly the last fifth of the book, which covers some harrowing, dark and adult territory of disintegrating friendships, destructive relationships, and personal demons.

Which reminds me: Not for the kids, this book, at least not until they’re old enough that their own years of doing crazy “yeah-we’re-probably-lucky-nobody-died” kids’ stuff are well behind them.

For parents who remember the adrenaline-driven rush of childhood fandom, though, and who may even recall their own unfinished epic undertakings – the book brought to mind more than once the plot outline and storyboards my best friend and I created for Star Wars Episode VII – Raiders! is likely to crack open your own Well of Souls.

Enjoy the dig.

Disclosure: Thomas Dunne Books / St. Martin’s Press provided GeekDad with a review copy of this book.