The embarrassing prank Steven Spielberg played on Harrison Ford: “A big joke”
If you were a child in the 1980s, few combinations were more exciting than Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg. In addition to being great in their own right, the two were responsible for one of the greatest blockbuster franchises—Indiana Jones. Between 1981 and 1989, the three Indy films transported an entire generation back to the days of swashbuckling radio serials as they hung on every second of the whip-swinging hero’s globe-trotting adventures.
Someone who got to witness this phenomenon up close and personal was Academy Award-winning actor Ke Huy Quan. At the age of just 13, he was cast as Short Round, Dr Jones’ pint-sized companion in The Temple of Doom. Alongside Ford and Kate Capshaw’s Willie Scott, Short Round battles mind-controlling priests, drives cars, and does about a million other things most ’80s kids could have only dreamt of.
According to Quan, who would re-emerge many years later with his excellent performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once, he would work with Spielberg again on The Goonies. The auteur performed a number of roles on the project, including executive producer and second unit director, while Quan played Data, the gadget-loving member of the titular group. Many years later, while speaking with The Guardian, the former child star remembered some of the celebrities who dropped in on the set during filming, including his old pal.
“I was star-struck when Harrison Ford came to visit because I’d made Indy,” he recalled before telling the story of a joke Spielberg played on his star. “There was a biography out of him [Ford] that he really hated, so Steven went out and bought about 300 copies, so that when Harrison came to visit and walked on to set, the security guard, the gaffers, the camera equipment people, everybody was reading that biography.”
Quan doesn’t name the book that riled Ford up so much, but it’s entirely possible that it could be The Harrison Ford Story by Alan McKenzie. Marketed as ‘the first in-depth coverage of the actor’s career’, the book was first published in August 1984. Production on The Goonies began that October, which would have given Spielberg more than enough time to round up enough copies to furnish the entire set. Ford is notoriously private and hates giving interviews, so it’s not surprising that he held so much disdain for an unauthorised account of his life.
According to Mr Round, Ford was a big part of why he enjoyed Temple of Doom so much, despite the film’s frightening premise. The older actor worked incredibly hard to keep the younger one safe and ensure he had a good time, almost transitioning into a second father figure. Lord knows what he made of all the bad language in The Goonies, but we do know that Quan’s mother made him promise he wouldn’t swear.
“Fuck, yeah! It’s true,” the actor confirmed. “But not any more! I did say ‘S-H-I-T’, but you’ve got to give me some credit. At least I can spell!”
Given the alarmingly high volume of horror stories child actors have to tell, it’s a refreshing relief to hear Quan talk so positively about his own experiences. It’s clear that both Ford and Spielberg fostered safe, fun environments on their sets… well, for the kids, anyway. Older actors were fair game for all sorts of tomfoolery.
