PHOTO ESSAY

Indy Spirit

Raiders of the Lost Ark: the remake

By Katrina Onstad

Chris Strompolos as Indiana Jones

"We had some injuries and hospital visits but nobody died. I got heat stroke in that scene because it was 104 degrees in my leather and I was dragging behind the truck. But even though I played Indiana, Eric was always the one who got hurt. He broke his arm and had to be rushed to the hospital when a plaster mask we made got seared to his face. He had his eyelashes and one and a half eyebrows surgically removed.

There was some supervision. We were all raised by single moms, a lot of mom power came together, very supportive and loving moms. Eric’s mom allowed us to have complete run of her house. For years, our sets filled pretty much every room. We still all stay there when we go back.

But the truck scene – no, they didn’t know that I was literally being dragged under a truck. We unearthed the truck from a swamp and put it back together. The truck didn’t actually have an engine in it, it was pulled by another vehicle. That was five and a half years into the project. We were feisty teenagers by then. We didn’t want adults around. It was our private world where we could escape to and do our thing.

After the moms saw footage of Eric [in the bar scene as ‘Ratty Nepalese’] being lit on fire, they said, ‘We have to shut it down and get some adult supervision.’ Thank God the adult they assigned to us was less mature than we were. He would just drink beer and watch us light stuff on fire."

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