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Creating Hollywood Movie Worlds - Benjamín Fernández Interview Part II: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
After Part I: Intro and Gladiator, it's time to talk Indy and the different solutions Benja and the production team found for Spielberg in Almería for things such as a seagull-filled background, a very old tank from The Great War, or a too intrusive Rolls Royce...
Audio transcription
"Then we talk if you want Ridley and Alien and Tony, but first I wanted too, more than anything because it's so recent, Indiana Jones had a last movie last year, with obviously Harrison Ford already quite old, this year there was an Indiana Jones [and the Great Circle] video game, but you participated in The Last Crusade in the Spanish part, in the shooting in Almeria, I think there is a very charismatic background that is the one of the beach of Mónsul, with this rock that looks so identifiable, and that's where the scene with Sean Connery was filmed, where he paraphrases Charlemagne and says "let my army be the birds in the sky", I think you have a fantastic anecdote about those seagulls, I love this anecdote, it's my favorite. Well, first I have to I have to say that the effect of the seagulls comes from one of the ends of that, that it didn't work as well with the shot and he [Sean Connery] did it with an umbrella, he opened the umbrella and then the seagulls flew out, so actually there what you could do was, first production, they organised the thing, because normally Almeria, which is surrounded by coastline, has a lot of seagulls, but because of the season the seagulls were in a time of procreation, and so what they were doing, they did it with a fisherman there and a boat, that where the largest number of seagulls were, they would go and offer them sardines to take them to the place where the beach where the scene was filmed was, then this man loaded the boat with sardines and began to bait them, and as he advanced from the place where the seagulls were to the actual [shooting] location, which was quite a trip, he was throwing sardines, so that all the seagulls went after the boat until they reached the beach, when they reached the beach, there were no more sardines left, and what happened, they didn't stay, they went back again to the place where they came from, and it all was gone, they were working on that for almost a month, which gave us time to make an alternative, and what I proposed was to make them out of plaster, when I said it in the meeting we had they were a little bit surprised, I said yeah yeah, what we do is we take some seagulls, we make a mold of them, then we took three types of seagulls, one is the European herring gull, another one is one that is bigger, and another one that is smaller, that is, there were three species, then we made each one so that there was a slight variation in appearance, we made three molds and we were reproducing them during the process that the one of the boat was doing, because we were doing in parallel, in the molds we were introducing two long wires to stick them on the beach, on the beach or wherever we could put it, but we would was almost all of them were on the beach, although there were some rocks, where we then put them as well, and yeah, when it was finished it was painted, the peaks were painted, the eyes, everything very well, and you put the feathers, these plucking feathers, yes, they were plucked, you gave the plaster, some alkyl and then blowing the feathers were put, why? because normally there is a lot of wind in Almería."
"and those feathers moved with the wind, then when you put 300, we say, I think it was a thousand and some, a thousand and some pigeons, in the shot you can see them, I don't know if there are more than 100, then there was no computer, you could not replicate there, then nothing, we nailed them and with the breeze and the movement that we got naturally, so it gave you verisimilitude, it is at the moment that just when it is going to open [the umbrella], what happens is that when that opened, none of them were moving, they were already flying, but there is a cut."
"in which it was made in Madrid, because in Madrid there are some areas where there are seagulls, it is a zone where they unload garbage and there are a lot of seagulls, and then they recorded it there because there they were making with a shot and so on and they were flying out, and it hit the Nazi fighter, and then that against the sky is what what let's say was the reverse, the countershot, of Sean Connery running, and Spielberg and son loved those seagulls yes, yes, the son took four, he took them home, they might be there, at Spielberg Jr's they might be in the garden, yes, yes, hooked to the ground, but there were a lot of people, of course, where were you going to put that, no, no, no, of course, and in this film you also have to solve a problem, well, a problem, I think they bring, there's..."
"a very famous scene, Indiana Jones fights on top of a tank, the tank is carried by the Nazis, he pulls out one, gets inside, fights on top of the wheels, and this tank is brought from Germany, I think, no, no, from England, from England, and this tank has a hard time moving, yeah, yeah, well, they brought it in a special plane, because it was huge, and then the problem it had was that the moving chain was very sensitive, so sensitive that, well, we had to sweep the surface where it was moving, mostly in that scene that they had to make a cut in one of the ramblas of Almeria, in one, in this one that was a little bit straight so that, once the tank is deposited parallel to that one, let's say, that slope where it's cut off, and that's where the tank runs parallel to that surface, from so that scene was complicated, because, of course, the actor, or let's say the stuntman who replaced him, imagine that you have on your right, you have the, you have the cut, and on the left, in a pretty tight space, you've got the tank chain, right? So, and the scene was that there was an obstacle, a rock ledge, which of course, he's hanging off the tank, parallel, and between the two surfaces, he knows that getting to that rock, well, it's going to be complicated. The thing is, it was done with different cuts and so on, and that was rectified, but the problem was that the chains, as soon as there was an obstacle on the ground, so to speak, it would come up and it would break down."
"It was necessary to sweep the sandy soil of Almeria.
And when there were long flats, you had to dress it up a bit to, I mean, it was complicated.
How was your...? Well, I guess you won the Spielbergs over with the seagull idea, but how was your experience with them? With Spielberg and son, I mean, they were amazed with the seagulls."
"Well, yeah, yeah.
How did you like working with his team on...?
Yes, yes.
The part of the shooting in Spain, correct?
The truth is that it was very nice, very nice. Besides, I admired him for the films he had made, right?
Well."
"And I don't know if I have another anecdote with Spielberg.
You do?
Yes, yes. And it was in that movie too.
Uh-huh.
In Granada. Did I tell you about Granada?
No, it doesn't ring a bell."
"Didn't I tell you about Granada?
Doesn't ring a bell.
Well, we were in Almeria, weren't we? And he wanted to see, to shoot, another of the scenes of the movie, which was when the rajah, there's a scene with a rajah and they gift him a Rolls Royce."
"Yes, yes, the Nazis give him a Rolls Royce, it's true.
Well then...
It looks in an inner courtyard that, I seem to remember.
Of course, it was in a patio, but he wanted to do it in the Patio de los Leones, in Granada, in the Alhambra."
"Yes, yes, yes, yes.
So we went to the Alhambra, we had an appointment with the director then, who was a lady, the director of tourism in the palace of the Alhambra, right?
And we had a meeting in which, after we saw it, and indeed, everybody who saw it, including Spielberg, were in awe of what that monument is So, the director, we had a meeting after we saw it and we talked about, well, we talked about..."
"Well, what he wanted was to shoot in the Patio de los Leones, right?
And then the director, with a lot of education and composure, explained to us that, of course, to shoot in the Alhambra there were other places where he could do that scene, right?
To which she said that one of the places could be the patio of the Palacio de Carlos V, which is no longer Arabic."
"So, then, it couldn't be done there because he was looking for a place that meant the place where they were, right?
An Arab country [Hatay - Iskenderun]. And, well...
That's where it stayed. Where was it shot? I don't remember.
Well, it was run in Almeria."
"In Almeria too.
In Almeria I had to look for a location where there was a more or less Arabic courtyard.
And there wasn't. Well, there was a bullring, But it wasn't Arab.
And then I found a courtyard that was a little bit neoclassical."
"But it had columns and it was white walls, stone columns.
The school, right? If I recall correctly, they were on vacation.
Then it was a place you could shoot, wasn't it?
But what had to be done? Well, you had to do some arabesques on the walls and so on."
"Which we did. We painted them, we painted them as if they were tiles and so on.
On the wall itself?
On the wall itself, yes.
The problem I had was that to get into the courtyard you had to go up and down some stairs."
"because the patio was in a position where they had taken advantage of the terrain to make it downstairs.
And you had to get the Roll Royce in, up those stairs and down those stairs.
Which was an act like you can't imagine.
Well, we had to make some wooden ramps that were seles where the two wheels were covered."
"Because it was a huge Roll Royce.
I remember. It should have been very wide.
From a time when it was an old Roll Royce, too, brought over from England.
And it had to be raised and then lowered."
"They made some tails on these to hold it down so it wouldn't go down.
Well, well, the show that was done was tremendous.
So that when it got to the yard, the yard was blighted with marble, of marble slabs with a black band and white slabs."
"And when the Roll Royce came down and we put it a little bit towards the center, the marble slabs were cracking.
Then it had to be taken down and paved again with the ones that were broken and so on.
So, it was really something."
"But anyway, we in the end could shoot.
It was possible to shoot it and it looked great, both that one, and the seagulls, as well as the tank.
Sometimes you had to be historically accurate, as you said, for example, with the most Arabic setting."
"Other times it's Roman architecture, which was your specialty.
But sometimes you had to be precise instead of with history, with fantasy."
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