Mr. Beaks Goes To Lunch With Marion Ravenwood!!!

This is a long, entertaining interview, so I won't bore you with a protracted introduction. Basically, a small group of online journalists were offered the chance to have lunch with Karen Allen a few weeks ago, and I had no choice but to accept. An hour-plus with Marion Ravenwood? Jenny Hayden? Boone's girlfriend, Katy? ("I'm in love with a retard." "Is he bigger than me?") Um, yeah, I'm in. The occasion for this little get-together at the Paramount dining room was the looming DVD/Blu-ray release of INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL - which, it so happens, is out today! I don't know how involved the disc's special features are, but I'll gladly put our interview with Ms. Allen up against whatever Laurent Bouzereau slapped together. You get a bunch of geeks in the same room with Marion Ravenwood for an hour, and there's not a topic that's going to get skipped. Except for CRUISING. I just couldn't finesse it. Sorry. Going in, I had a feeling Ms. Allen would be a perfectly pleasant interview, but I couldn't have predicted that she'd end up being one of the nicest people I've ever met in this racket. It's always nice when your icons don't let you down. Here's Marion...

What kind of differences have you seen with the reception to the new film and the first film?

Karen Allen: It seems to me that the reception has been incredible for this film. I get a specific point of view on it - mostly people coming up to me and telling me how much they loved the film. In Japan, they were just so excited about the opening of the film. The Cannes Film Festival was just amazing for us. Cannes is an interesting place to open a film, because it can be disastrous. I mean, if they don't like a film, they don't have any problem letting you know. Films have been booed there and all kinds of things. A film like CRYSTAL SKULL is not necessarily a Cannes type of film, so you don't really know what's going to happen, but they just loved it. It was like a four-minute standing ovation. Steven had tears in his eyes. It was a lovely experience. And I hadn't seen it with an audience at all. The first time I had seen it... it was Shia and I at Paramount. We were just going in to see a screening before we went over to Cannes so we weren't seeing it for the first time in front of 3,200 people, which can be a little traumatic. (Laughs)

I think almost everyone who wrote about the film talked about what a welcome return it was not just for Marion, but for you. How did that feel?

Allen: It felt fantastic! I've had so many people who've come up to me and said, "When you came up on the screen, everybody in the theater applauded." It's just so sweet, really. It makes me feel very touched and very moved that somehow that character has somehow stayed in those people's consciousness, and that they were so happy to have me and her come back into the story. What could be better than to get that kind of enthusiastic response?

Several of the films that you've done have had quite a life afterwards. Not just Indy, but ANIMAL HOUSE and STARMAN.

Allen: STARMAN is just one of those ones that just hangs in there. And SCROOGED. And even this funny film where I just play this little part in it, THE SANDLOT. I still have little kids who constantly come up to me and go, "Oh my God. You're the mom SANDLOT!" (Laughs)

Was [INDY 4] one of those circumstances where you said, if this group of people ever comes back, I'll do another one? Or were you more particular about how you returned?

Allen: You know, I don't even know how to answer that question, because it's sort of like all of the above. To have an opportunity to work with Steven and Harrison and George Lucas and Katherine Kennedy and Frank Marshall again was just wonderful. As these rumors kind of persisted over the years, there kept being little hints that would be dropped, and they were trying to do another film and they wanted my character to come back into the story, I'd hear that and then I wouldn't hear anything for a long time. At one point, when they released the four-DVD package of the films, which I think was four or five years ago, the way they decided to do it was to get myself, Kate Capshaw and Allison Doody together out here in L.A. and do it as the women of the Indiana Jones series were going to promote the DVD's. Frank was there and Harrison stopped by, and we were kidding with them, like, "Is there going to be another one, and, if so, who's going to be in it?" Frank was like, "I'm not saying anything." So I never really knew what their plans were or how it would turn out. I think when Steven called me to tell me that they had written me into [the script], and that it was not just a cameo, but they had really written me a major role in the story, I think my first feeling was just like, "I'm there!" You know... with Steven, George and Harrison, you never worry that it's not going to be good. You know it's going to be good. They spent how many years trying to get a script that they were all happy with? Steven sounded very very happy about the outcome of the script when I talked to him, so I knew it would be a wonderful script. But I think there's that thing where you feel a little self-protective of your character, so there's a bit of trepidation when you read it, like, "What if I read it and I don't like what they've done with my character?" (Laughs) There was a little bit of a concern that I was going to be disappointed, or that I might not like the decisions they had made for where she goes from there. But when I sat down to read the script, all of that just went away. From the moment she came into the story, and when I saw where it was going and what they had done, I was just so knocked out by it. And then when we got to the end of the story, and I saw that they had Indy and Marion getting married, I was crying. I was really just so touched. I was like, "This is very special. They've really decided to bring these characters together and allow them to fall in love with each other."

At what point did you find out that Shia was involved?

Allen: Steven told me that he wanted Shia to do it, and I didn't know who Shia was. I had never heard of him. So I went Netflix-ing around, and got some films so I could see his performances. And I was just knocked out by him. I mean, what a fantastic young actor. And Steven told me he was trying to get Cate Blanchett to play the role of the villainess. He wasn't sure that she could do it, but that was who he really wanted at the time. And he had decided indefinitely on John Hurt at that point, but Ray Winstone wasn't involved yet. He wasn't sure who he wanted to play that role.

There's been talk that there was supposed to be more Marion in the movie. Is that true?

Allen: No, I think every single moment that was written, I'm there.

Do you know if there will be any deleted scenes on the DVD?

Allen: I don't. But I honestly can't tell you what scenes would've been deleted? I'd have to go back and read the script. I think the thing with the ants was a much longer sequence. That got sort of [cut] down. Other than that, I don't remember too many things that disappeared.

Working with Steve and George and Harrison, in what ways were they the same guys that you had worked with on the first film, and in what ways had they evolved over the years?

Allen: To me, it just seemed like everybody was much more relaxed and having a good time. I think when we were doing the first one, and maybe this was just more my perspective, but it just seemed like everybody was under a lot more pressure. We were all away from home [on RAIDERS], so, this time, Steven really made a decision that he didn't want to go overseas. He wanted to stay and be with his family, so the bulk of the film was going to be shot in Los Angeles. I think it had been such a long time coming, and they had been working so hard at getting a script that they liked, and... it just seemed like one of those projects that, when it was finally cleared, that we were going to all come back together and do it. From the first day, when I flew out here to do some camera tests... that was the first time I met Shia, Harrison was there, George was there, Kathleen Kennedy and Frank were there... and there was just this feeling that everybody was so excited that we were going to do the film. With RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, because it was kind of an unknown, and it was just this thing that... nobody really had a sense of what it was yet - I know I didn't. My joke is that I always thought we were making a kind of CASABLANCA. (Laughs) I had a whole different film in my head.

There were famously many drafts of [INDY 4] before it headed into production. At what point did you come in? Did you get involved with this script that we see on screen? Were there previous versions of the story that might have been a little different?

Allen: That's a good question, and I don't even know how to answer it. I read a version of it in Steven's apartment, when he first had me come into New York to sit and read it. As I'm sure you all know, they're very secretive about these scripts. They were secretive about the RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK script; I mean, a courier came and brought that script to me up in Northern California where I was shooting something. He sat in the hotel room while I was reading and then took the script back. (Laughs) [With INDY 4], I went to Steven's apartment, and I read the script. Then Steven arrived, and then David Koepp arrived, and I got to meet him. But then I had to leave without a script. There were some things that changed between my reading that script in his apartment and two or three months later when I got the new script. But what they were, I couldn't tell you; it was like, I read it once, and then two or three months went by, so I never had anything to compare it to when I got the final script. I'm thinking that once Cate Blanchett said yes to that role that... between the two versions I read, that role grew quite a bit; it got fleshed out a lot because I think Steven was so happy that she was going to do the role. I just don't remember it being as prominent, but, you know, it may have been. That script sort of remains like this vague abstract in my mind.

When someone gives you a script and takes it back, do you ever feel like, "No, I need this script so I can reflect on it"?

Allen: That's just the way [Spielberg] does things. I'm sure he'd be willing to let you read it a few times, but he didn't want to let it out of his sight. (Laughs)

What's happened with your career in the wake of this movie? Has Hollywood all of a sudden been like, "Get me Karen Allen?"

Allen: I'm reading lots of scripts now. We're in this sort of funny little holding pattern with this looming SAG strike that isn't happening but is kind of keeping films from moving forward to the extent that they might be otherwise. But there are a couple of things that I've been interested in that have been kind of waiting to be greenlit, so those are things I don't know about. I think there are going to be other roles out there for me to do. I got to a point where there was just so little that I was being offered or being given to read that I liked, probably seven or eight years ago. I was also raising my son, so I couldn't just go to Thailand for three-and-a-half months at the drop of a hat. I would get a call, and they would say, "You're being offered this role. You have to be in Thailand in four days." My son would be in the middle of 8th grade or something. I was a single parent, so I couldn't pull him out of school for three-and-a-half months to go to Thailand and have him sit in a hotel room. I had a lot of those kinds of decisions I had to struggle with and make - and I have to say, also, there were very very few things that I would've been so excited to do that I would've tried to solve those problems. Most of the time it was very easy to say, "No, thank you." Television projects haven't interested me so much because oftentimes you have to relocate; you have to live in Los Angeles or you have to live in Vancouver or you have to live in Toronto. You have to live somewhere a good chunk of the year, a good seven or eight months out of the year, and I just haven't been willing to do that. So I just shifted my focus to a life that I thought was going to be in support of my son getting through school and finishing his primary education and me finishing my primary parenting duties. And that turned out to be starting a design company and creating a really interesting creative life for myself that didn't really involve the film industry. I think I was always open to something if it came my way and was something I really wanted to do and I could figure out how to do it on a practical level. Luckily enough for me, this film sort of timed out perfectly. Just as [my son] was getting ready to start college... the CRYSTAL SKULL sort of came into my life right at that moment.

Did your experience as a single parent inform your performance as Marion, who is, for all intents and purposes, a single parent?

Allen: Well, I certainly have that identification. (Laughs) They're exactly the same age, in a way. Sometimes you just get that for free with a character, where something you're grappling with in your own life, you're right on the same page. That was kind of great.

You've worked with so many great directors over the years, but Steven is different. He's one in a million. What are the qualities that make him who he is?

Allen: He's just so clear about what he's doing, about the storytelling part of it. You always feel as though he'll let you try anything, and yet he has a good sense of what he's looking for in a given scene. I think my favorite thing about him as a director is that... you know, some directors love to work in a very improvisatory way, and some are very structured. Steven is both; he's very structured and improvisatory at the same time. He will kind of go in having an idea of what he wants to do, and yet he's quite open to doing it differently if things happen in such a way. Some directors, I feel, get stuck and can't really decide how they want to do something; if it's not working, they just sort of stick with what they're doing. [Spielberg is] very open; if it's not working, he'll immediately shift and start working with people, and trying this and trying that, and bringing in elements, or shooting it in an entirely different way. All of his preparation is there, but there is this fluidity about him where he can come at something in so many different directions. I think that is what makes him a really interesting director to work with for me. He loves to draw out ideas from people as well, and use things in the spontaneous moment. I think a lot of those moments which weren't necessarily in the script have become these classic moments in the films, like Harrison shooting the guy wielding the sword. These are just little things that happened out of the moment on the set. I think for him to recognize a moment like that, and go ahead and shoot it even though it's a far cry from what was planned in the script - you know, that was supposed to be the big fight sequence in the middle of the film, and it ended in like five seconds. (Laughs)

Was there a particular scene in the fourth movie that was improvised like that?

Allen: Let me think. (Considers for a moment) Nothing's leaping to mind. Maybe it'll come to me as we're talking. Probably there were lots of things.

There's a lot of CG in the new film. Did you have to act in front of a green screen much? And how was that different from the first film?

Allen: Well, we didn't have any green screen in the first film. But there wasn't a lot of green screen stuff in this film. I think I maybe did three or four green screen scenes. There were little bits and pieces here and there. When we were in the jungle, they would add a green screen because they wanted to change the scenery a little, give it a vista that wasn't quite there. And, of course, a lot of the stuff in the temple with all the crystal skull guys had to be green-screened. You feel a little odd when you're doing that. Steven would be there screaming, "Okay, the wall is crumbling!!!" (Laughs)

Did you know what those aliens were going to look like at the time?

Allen: Yeah, they were there! Those aliens weren't green-screened in. People might watch the film and think that a lot more of it was green-screened than actually was. All of those sets were actually there, and we were all in the sets doing a lot of the stuff that you see us do.

How did that differ from the first film when you walked into the snake pit? Did that seem really fake to you?

Allen: Well, there's nothing more real than 6,000 snakes! (Laughs) That'll really wake up your sense of reality. But that film had a lot more creepy-crawlies than this one. The ants were CG-ed, so they weren't anything anyone had to contend with. The snakes... you know, we spent two weeks shooting that snake sequence, and then the whole sequence in the crypt? That was another week or ten days, even though a lot of stuff got cut from that scene. I guess when they started looking at it, they were like, "Get out of there, already!" They were trapped in that... what was that called?

"The Well of Souls."

Allen: "The Well of Souls." Thank you. (Laughs)

What is it that makes Marion the one love interest that we want to see again. And would you come back for a fifth movie?

Allen: I just think that she was beautifully written in the first film. We meet her, and she's living in a bar in Nepal; her father is this exotic person who worked with Indy, but he's gone and she's stayed on there. She speaks Nepalese, and she's ordering around men who are twice her size. Then Indy comes in, and she punches him in the jaw. She was just such a boldly conceived character.

Especially for that time.

Allen: Especially for that time. It's in that line: "I'm your goddamn partner!" It's saying, "We're working together. We're a team." I just think something happened with Harrison and I, where their relationship clicked on screen. You wanted to see them together. And people were so disappointed when I didn't come back for the second one because... they didn't realize that it went back in time. It was a few years before [RAIDERS], and we know from what she says to him that they haven't seen each other for about ten years. Had it ever gone back as far as ten years, it would've been played by a different actress because she would've been sixteen. (Laughs)

Did you go back and watch RAIDERS to get back in character?

Allen: I watched RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK a few times, but I have to say that it's been a film that, for one reason or another... it's very unique in the sense that it kept coming back into my life. People would be doing a showing of it, like [Jeffrey] Jacobs, who runs the Paris Theater in New York... he decided he really wanted to show RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK on the big screen, and he invited me to come and do a little Q&A after these screenings. It was an amazing experience. It was packed with people who were bringing their kids to see it on the big screen for the first time. There kept being experiences like that, where people would call me and say, "Would you please come? We're going to show the film." So it was a film that sort of kept re-entering my life, so I didn't feel like I had a distance from it. It wasn't like, "Who was that character?" or "What was our relationship like?" It stayed very current in my life because often I would stay and watch the film when I was doing these things; I would get the chance to see it all over again on a big screen - which is so unusual. Once a film hits the big screen, we're kind of stuck with seeing it on television after that.

What's the working relationship like between Spielberg and Lucas?

Allen: I don't know that I can give you any real insight into that. When we're shooting the films, George only comes every now and then. Usually, he's off doing whatever in his world. He'll show up and spend two or three days with us; he'll sit around the set, and we'll have a chance to talk about whatever - we talked a lot about education this time around. But [Spielberg and Lucas] will have lunch together; they'll go off and watch dailies and talk. I can't say that I ever really got a sense of how they work together. It's private. It's not something that's necessarily on display. I know George often feels kind of useless once we get to the point where we're shooting the film. He feels his job is over by then. He comes down just to show support. He'll laughingly say, "Oh, [Steven] never listens to me anyway. If I have an idea, he never listens to me." (Laughs)

How open are you to getting the band back together one more time? Or maybe doing a spin-off with Shia?

Allen: I would say very open to it. This was a delightful experience. I would welcome it.

Has anyone raised that possibility?

Allen: Except for fans... not anybody officially.

Was David Koepp on set much?

Allen: You know, I didn't see him at all when we were shooting. I met him at Steven's apartment, and I don't think I've seen him since. Now, that doesn't mean that wasn't there on days when I wasn't shooting. Maybe he and Steven were off in their trailers talking. He might've been around, but I didn't see him if he was.

While you were shooting, where there new pages coming in?

Allen: There were occasionally pages that would come in, but they were just tiny adjustments in the dialogue. Nothing very major. There were some cuts in the ant scene. And as we got toward the end, and it looked like it was going on longer than we'd planned, they started looking for things that, if they fell away, they'd still be happy with the story. So there were little changes like that, but nothing major.

What was the flow of the shoot like?

Allen: It actually had a really great rhythm to it. It never felt that we were moving too quickly or that it was slow. There were very few problems, too. The sets, for the most part, all worked; they all did what they were supposed to do, and some of them were very, very complicated things. Like the set where the stairs are retracting as we're running down them. We all had to be in harnesses and everything, because if we fell off the steps it was a long fall. All of the sets had amazing little things that they were doing, like when we finally open up when we go into the temple, that incredible door that opens up. It was real, and... it worked beautifully. The first time that they opened that door for us, we were like, "Oh, my god!" We just wanted to go kneel at the feet of our wonderful set designer [Guy Dyas].

That door wasn't CG?

Allen: No, he made that. It was incredible. I hope they didn't destroy it because it was just a work of art to see that thing function. Other than the vacuum tubes or whatever it was that we were using when we were in the quicksand, we had some malfunctions with those that was not a lot of fun. (Laughs)

Aside from Shia, who's just starting his career, did you notice a difference in passion. Because [Steven, George and Harrison] are doing this as a choice. That it's something they love to do and are able to do.

Allen: Shia was there in a sense of awe. Shia couldn't believe his luck. He was like, "Oh my God. I'm going to be in an Indiana Jones film!" When I met him, he was sort of like, "Oh my God. I'm meeting Marion Ravenwood." "Oh my God. I'm meeting Indiana Jones." He had already met Steven and George, and the day that he met me... he met Harrison and me simultaneously. He was so excited about doing this film. He was just over the moon about it. Harrison was, too. Harrison came bouncing up the steps to my trailer, and he was just delighted to be working with Steven again. I think they have such a great working relationship, and he respects Steven so much as a director. I think he feels like he's in such great hands with Steven. I don't know anything about other directors that Harrison has worked with, but I think Harrison really wanted to do this film. He just really wanted to put on that fedora and the leather jacket again. And Cate Blanchett was so excited to do it. She had been an Indiana Jones fan as a kid, so I think there was this sense of passion and excitement, and even though it was something they had done again and again and again, it had this very fresh feeling because it had been such a long time. There were also all of these new added elements, like Cate and Shia and me coming back. But you're right. They didn't need to do it. Steven didn't need to, George didn't need to... it's not a matter of them needing to do another Indiana Jones film. Steven said he did it, really, because everybody kept asking him to. Everywhere he went, people kept coming up to him and asking, "When are you going to do another Indiana Jones film?" He said he felt like he was making this film for the fans. And that felt really good to him, to do a film that was like, "This is for everyone who supported the first three."

What did you think of Shia? How did you feel about him once you got to know him?

Allen: I just adored him. He is a great young man. He's very bright, and very funny and witty. To have the pleasure of sitting next to him in the makeup trailer every day, I would start the day laughing. He's like a raconteur. I've never met a twenty-one-year-old person who can tell stories the way he can. He's had quite an unusual and interesting life, both as an actor and starting out as young as he did. The things that got him into wanting to be an actor; he wanted to be an actor because he met an actor who had a really nice pair of tennis shoes that his family couldn't afford. (Laughs) He said, "How did you get those tennis shoes?" And [the actor] said, "I'm on this television show, and I make a lot of money." And Shia was like, "Okay!" He's lovely. As an actor, I think he can do anything that he wants to do. He's got a lot of depth to him. I've been very impressed. When I saw TRANSFORMERS... I mean, that's hard. Talk about green screen. That's really hard what he's doing: making us believe that these giant robots are there, and that he has this relationship with them. He commits himself so completely to each moment when he's working. Seeing the other independent films he's done, like [A GUIDE TO RECOGNIZING YOUR SAINTS]... he's excellent in that. I think he's fantastic. I had a great time with him. He's just an easy person to work with.

Now that CRYSTAL SKULL has brought you back, do you have a sense of where you want to take your career from here?

Allen: I suppose I feel a little reluctant to get involved in that conversation with myself. I would say I'm at this place of curiosity. I just want to see what comes my way. I feel like I'll invest myself as I go. Being realistic, I'm in my mid-fifties, and I'm not convinced that there's a real career out there to be had. I think there might be some interesting roles out there, but I just want to play it by ear. I'm not buying an apartment in Los Angeles and waiting for the phone to ring every day. I'm going to go on with my life as I was living it [before CRYSTAL SKULL] up in Massachussetts, and if an interesting script comes my way... I would love to get my career back to a place where I get considered for the interesting roles that get written for women in their fifties, sixties and even on into their seventies. I'll do whatever I can do to encourage that to happen, but you never know what you can do other than taking the best roles that you're offered and doing [the best work possible]. That's my feeling: good work begets good work.

What's the most unusual place you've been recognized as Marion?

Allen: (Long pause) Hm. I could tell you the funniest time I was recognized. It was here in Los Angeles, and it was just the situation. I had a boyfriend who lived here in Los Angeles, and I came here to surprise him on his birthday. Some friends of his were going to do a dinner to sort of get him out of the house while I came into the house to surprise him when he came home. I had a key to the house, and I came in through the front door, and then I called to say I'm here to his friends. They ended the dinner, and I'm sitting in the house. And he came home, started to open the door, and I'm listening and getting ready to say surprise. All of the sudden, I don't hear any noise. I wait and wait and wait, and I don't hear footsteps in the house. I keep waiting and waiting, and I'm thinking, "What happened to him?" I finally got up and I went to the door, and the door is slightly ajar. I went outside, and I don't see him. So I look around, and I hear a police helicopter above the house. Lights are flashing all over the top of the house, and I'm thinking, "Oh my God. He thinks somebody's in his house." Suddenly I hear all this noise outside the house. and, somehow through the glass doors, I see two cops in the yard with guns drawn coming towards the house. They're like, "Freeze!" And I went, "I'm his girlfriend! I'm his girlfriend!" So I very cautiously go over, and pull open the door, and the policeman looks in and says to me, "Weren't you in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK?" (Huge laughter)

We lobbed a few more questions Ms. Allen's way after that, but this is undoubtedly the ideal place to end the transcript. Again, I can't emphasize enough how delightful she was. Hopefully, this is the beginning of a long, sustained comeback. Faithfully submitted, Mr. Beaks