Under normal circumstances I'd file this under trivia, but after having forced myself to watch the universally disappointing Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom Saturday night, it's strictly cathartic: Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, screenwriters for Temple, were responsible for coma-inducing bomb Howard the Duck, as well as George Lucas stinkers Radioland Murders and More American Graffiti (they made a sequel?). I've learned two things. First, after American Graffiti, Huyck and Katz have written consistently bad scripts. Second - and thankfully - they seem to have come nowhere near major productions since Radioland.
Saturday was the first time I'd ever seen the movie in its entirety. All these years, I thought my parents kept me away from Temple because of its violence. Now I realize they wisely protected me from the fact that the film goes south less than thirty seconds after the Spiderman-red opening credits have ended. I want my one hundred and eighteen minutes back!
PUTTING "BAD INDY" IN HIS PLACE, LILEKS STYLE: Danny O'Brien e-mailed a link to the Bleatster's own evisceration of Spielberg's inferior-quel. About the only flaw Lileks passed up was the first scene's complete violation of the Indiana Jones character painstakingly established in Raiders. Excuse me, but wasn't it the plump sadist Nazi with the steampress-printed hand who held girls hostage and killed on a whim - let alone with a flaming shish-kabob? Why would anyone be foolish enough to eat or drink anything set in front of them by a bunch of thugs who've already made their intentions to kill you clear? Who cares - Indy drinks poisoned champagne. That should be a cardinal rule of writing, one that Mark Twain stressed in his merciless deconstruction of the Leatherstocking Tales: if your characters need to bumble their way into a plot device, stop writing fiction.
And what is with the jazz band continuing to play while screaming patrons run in every direction but the exits, Shanghai mobsters fire tommy guns and balloons drop like it's New Year's? You can bet a couple feet of film depicting Jones stuffing a ninja into a tuba lies somewhere on a Paramount cutting room floor. Thank the Lord for sweet mercies.